WEBVTT

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Hey guys, it's Jack. I
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at patreon dot com. Slash the
Teamhouse, Special Operations Coberts sp and I

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the Team House with your hosts,
Jack Murphy and David Bark the two hundred

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and fifty seven of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park

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and we have tonight in studio our
guest Dan Runyon. Dan is the author

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of Disciple of Chaos. He served
in military intelligence and then went and served

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in special Forces. Had two team
leader positions and ODA five five five and

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Ohda five to five to one,
participating in both the invasion of Afghanistan and

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invasion of Iraq. Dan, thank
you for joining us tonight my opportunity.

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I appreciate it. Thank you.
Yeah. So let's uh, let's start

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at the beginning. Man, tell
us a little bit about like what your

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upbringing was like and how that kind
of brought you towards the military. So

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watching a bunch of your previous episodes, it kind of the same way.

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You know, I grew up running
around the hills East Peoria. I've had

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three acres behind the house. Next
door. Neighbor, Craig Garber was born

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about five months before I was,
And for about the first ten years of

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my life, I was outside.
Mom said go outside, and so playing

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out in the woods and all that
and just being active. You know,

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we had a trampoline, so we're
jumping until dark and you can't see each

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other, and you know, mom
calls in and my dad was on the

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road a lot, so really just
running around and being pretty hyper. You

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know. Mom said I had to
answer my pants, and so always doing

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sports, always running around. You
know. I went out for every sport

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in high school, and if it
was a team sport, some of them

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I made, some of I didn't. Didn't make basketball, did football,

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couldn't catch, so they put me
on defense. Fastest guy on the team,

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so I just knocked the ball down. Didn't make baseball. So I

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went over out for track, and
you know, just did all the things

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that I like to do. Subjects
that I liked, I did well.

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In subjects that didn't make any sense, I didn't do so well. So

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you know, I you know,
by the time it came time to graduate

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high school, I had this audacious
plan. I'm going to go to you

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know, go to college. I'm
going to be in the nineteen eighty four

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Olympics. And then I realized that
being the fast white guy in Illinois doesn't

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mean you're the fastest in the world. And I realized it not going to

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be it. And besides that,
my academic advisor setting me down and saying,

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hey, you're doing really well in
these classes, and you're not doing

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really well in those classes. Do
you see yourself being a metallurgical engineer in

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a room with no windows? And
I'm like no. So that I transferred,

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and you know, I went to
college and went through ROTC. Dad

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said I should take a map reading
course. And so it's about February of

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nineteen eighty two and the professor Military
science says, hey, we're going to

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Airborne School. We're going to send
people. And afterwards I raised my hand.

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I go, I want to go
to Airborne school. I'd learned my

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sister went to Airborne school, my
dad went to Airborne school. My brother

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in law went to Airborne school.
And he's like, oh, well,

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you got to take this PT test. And you know, long story short,

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I went to Airborne School. It
was fine July and Fort Benning hotter

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than bloody blue blazes. Yeah,
you know. So I went to finished

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up college and didn't know what I
was going to do. I had a

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Bachelor of Science and psychology and I
did not want to listen to people wine

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at me. So I went down
to the recruiter and joined up. Wanted

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to be a ninety eight golf a
radio interceptor. Didn't really know what that

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was. And that started it.
So if you were an ROTC in college,

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how do you make that switch?
Why do you end up going and

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listed? So ROTC kind of has
that totem pole thing. So when I

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was at Iowa State and then I
transferred to Knox College, you go back

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to the bottom of the totem pole
and really was up for the rankings of

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you know, to get an active
duty commission, and they were talking about

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reserve this and infantry, and I
was like, I don't want to do

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that. So they gave me my
little discharge from the Army of ROTC.

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And when I, you know,
finished college, and then I went straight

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and took that and went straight to
the recruiter and said, hey, I

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want to go in interesting And did
you know you didn't know what nine eight

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GOOLF was or a voice signal intercept? Like did the recruiter sell you on

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that? Oh? No? So
I did well on my GT score and

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well on my ass FAB and I
did well on the Defense Language after your

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battery, and he said, well, you can be an interrogator, an

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interceptor, and these other two things. And I didn't even know what the

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other I don't get to remember what
the other two things was. And I'm

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like, well, I don't even
know what the interrogator does, but it

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sounds like only wartime and I don't
want to do that, So I want

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to be a radio interceptor. He's
like, okay, you're the first one

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this year and this is December.
Yeah, so yeah, so I just

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picked it by happenstance and went from
there. And then did you uh did

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you agree on your language at that
point? Was that in bated into your

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contract? Oh, it's funny put
that point that out. I'm in basic

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training and you know, when you're
towards the end, they give your orders

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and might say order, might say
Korean. And I was the honor grad

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at basic training, thank goodness.
Colonel bray Boy comes up and he says,

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you know, great on PT test. I scored on don't know,

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three sixty five or something like that. And he goes, where are you

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going. I go, well,
I'm going to dl I. He's like

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what language? I said, Well, I've got Korean. He goes,

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well, what do you want?
I go I want Russian. He goes

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why and I said, I took
two years in college. He looked sar

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major and he said, sar majors. See what we can do. Jill

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started telling me there're any chance in
hell takes an Act of Congress, all

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all the other lives. I tell
you, Tuesday, not next Tuesday.

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My language has changed to Russian.
That's awesome, it was, yeah.

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And so now you're off for a
government funded vacation at d L d l

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I, Monterey, California. We
got. When we got there, they

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had just opened what they called the
Russian Village. Was on the other side,

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brand new Barracks High school schedule,
college workload being paid. It was

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awesome. Yeah, because I had
taken Russian in college. Yeah, the

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first six months were easy. I
got straight hundreds. Yeah. DLI is

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everything that's great about school and nothing
that's bad about school. There's no homework,

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really, there's you know, it's
you know, if you study in

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your spare time, that's on you. But there's no homework. There are

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no like research papers. But class
is very interactive. It's very active,

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so it keeps you engaged. Yeah. In fact, you're right, because

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in the evenings I got bored and
so Pacific Grove High School was just on

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the other side of the fence,
and I went over and talked to a

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guy named Steve Salzanowski who was the
varsity football coach, and asked him if

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I could be an assistant. So
I I was coaching receivers and defensive backs

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in the fall, So yeah,
it was it was a great time.

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Yeah, And after you finish your
language training, what's the next stop for

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you? So then you go to
San Angelo, Texas, middle of West

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Texas, and that's where you do
all the classified stuff, all the radio

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traffic of what you're going to hear
depending on what part of the world and

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what the Russians are doing or the
Soviets at the time, what they're doing,

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whether it's artillery traffic. Because as
a basic interceptor, first you wanted

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to determine what the traffic is,
armor, artillery, infantry forwarding, all

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that other stuff, whether to do
and admin stuff. Then as you get

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better than you do the actual transcription. So that's what that school was for.

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And it was I don't know,
like four or five months. And

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then from there, because I was
going to Germany, we went to a

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tactical course how to actually operate the
tactical equipment, whether they were the man

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packables of the vehicles up at Fort
Devons. My first time at Fort Devons

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and then we went over. Then
I went over to Seas and I was

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in want to wait them? I
Betime, which was on the East German

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border. How do they so the
for people might not understand, like the

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signal intercept goes from tactical or strategic
where you're sitting in an air conditioned room

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listening to intercepted traffic to tactical where
you're actually out there with the troops,

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you're on the ground. You is
that a volunteer position because a lot of

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people who go in for that now
at the time. Well, and the

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other thing, it's so much different
now because of digital technology, so everything

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is more remote now. So they
just put up an antenna, just like

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you have a cell tower. Well, a cell tower transmits and receive.

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So that's basically what they do now. Almost nobody doesn't tactically accept in a

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combat operation or a very specific mission
that is tailored to right now at this

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place, at that location. So
back then, it's just what they had.

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So we would go, you know, to the border, I mean

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I lived seven kilometers from the border, you know, and then I'd go

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to base and we'd get our equipment. Then we'd go set up Sometimes we

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went to hard stands like well Back
and everything else that was north of Fulda

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or stuff like that. But I
think the only place there was Augsburg,

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Germany, and they were doing some
of the remote stuff at that time,

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and that was the big strategic thing. Did you get the listening to the

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Rooskies plotting and planning on the other
side of it was funny because you'd listened

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to them and there they were more
jacking around than we were. You know,

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they were bored, or they were
drunk, or they were doing whatever.

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And up north they had what was
called the Gotha training area. The

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Soviets literally filled in in between two
mountains to block the radio transmissions from their

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training area so that we couldn't intercept
it. It didn't work, so we

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we just went over to here so
we could still because everything's lying asite right,

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so but you would hear them,
you know, the same level that

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we are jacking around. One time, we were at a hard stand and

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we're doing intercept and it's New Year's
and this guy's drunk. He starts singing

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Happy Birthday in English because it's his
birthday. Too far. I wish we

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could have transmitted because we would have
said it right back to happy Birthday.

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But yeah, you just do stuff
like that, you know, it's it's

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not It would be rare that you
caught something like their short third Shock Army

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coming through. Even back in the
eighties, we would have had some type

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of satellite because you can't move one
hundred and eighty tanks without something. Fine.

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So yeah, and how long did
you spend in night unit over in

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Germany? So I got there eighty
seven, eighty eight, and then that

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was the end of my first enlist
and I was planning on getting out.

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I was married at the time,
married my college sweetheart. We had a

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boy, Zach was born in August, and I went to I said,

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hey, I'm getting out, and
they're like, well, you got to

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talk to reed List Minincio. I'm
like, okay, the only reason.

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So I went out there and talked
to him, and he goes, what

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can I do to get you to
stay in. I go, well,

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I want to sixteen thousand dollars list
bonus and I want to go to Key

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West or Hawaii. He goes,
okay, let me see what I can

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do. That's Friday, and on
Monday morning they said reen List Mininsio.

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You're supposed to call him. He
goes, you got three years in Key

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West, you know, before a
cell phone. So I get back on

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the phone. I call my wife
and I'm like, we got three years

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in Key West. She's like,
okay, yeah, that's not a hard

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cell. It was not a hard
cell. And so we moved to Key

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West, Florida, and you know, it's ninety miles from Cuba, yep.

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And you have the Lord Sigant Site
and another training area over there,

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and for some reason there was a
Soviet Mechanized Infantry brigade teaching them mechanized infantry

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tactics. Weird, Yeah, it's
Cuba. And so that's all we did

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twenty four Well, we didn't do
it twenty four seven and we did two

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eight. So sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, we did

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military intercept. Air Force was on
other time zones and stuff like that.

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And I was in Key West and
then the wall fell and they were pulling

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all Russian linguists and I'm like,
okay, this job's going to end,

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right, And I put in a
forty one eighty seven a request to go

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to tenth group and they're like,
you're crazy, you're leaving Key West,

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but okay, and all those guys
that stayed around ended up going to Fort

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Drum. So you're specifically were you
trying to get into Special Forces as an

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mi I guy? Yeah? Yeah, So I'd heard about the Saude's,

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I'd heard about the intercept, and
you know, you get to go to

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ranger school and you get to go
do all the cool stuff and you're deploying

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in small units and stuff like that, and that's what I wanted to do.

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Yeah, because Key West was good. I mean it was four days

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on, two days off, and
like I say in the book, it

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was good until it wasn't. When
you can you know, I laughed at

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my wife at the time, was
like, you know, I never know

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when you're gonna work. I'm like, are you kid me? Me?

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I know when I'm gonna work three
years from now, it's four two four

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two four two. You know when
you're gonna work. Yeah, and you

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work four days, four swings,
four days, four swings, four days,

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four swings. So seven to fifteen
hundred, fifteen to twenty three,

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how were you do you remember how
like sad A's came on your radar?

211
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Was it because you were in Key
West or were they either whispered about guys

212
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in the ninety eight golf community,
in the singing community. So I actually

213
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has as a katoon startant. I
had two guys go to selection, So

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that was the first thing that kind
of sparked sparked my head of Special Forces.

215
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And they both came back and they
weren't selected. Beave that won't you

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later on we know they quit.
But the scuba school was over there,

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right and another friend mine who was
another team startant, her husband was an

218
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instructor over at the course and so
they needed some extra bodies to do helic

219
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casting and stuff like that. So
I went and started talking to them,

220
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and that's when I got the idea, Hey, you need to go do

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tactical stuff. And I've always wanted
to be in tenth group, you know,

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up at Fort Devns and going over
to Germany and stuff like that,

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and so that's what I did.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because you

224
00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:28.600
know, like a lot more people
know about Green Beret or Special Forces than

225
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they do about the Sauda units inside
of them. Yeah, it you know,

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And it's funny because the MI guys
will say they're Special Operations Team Alpha

227
00:15:41.200 --> 00:15:43.960
it's Support Operations Team ALPA. That's
what the books. So, because you

228
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got to remember, you're not selected
to go there. You're just an mi

229
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I guy, right, you weren't
qualified, you didn't pass a selection or

230
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anything else. You're just a sign
there. So once you again get there,

231
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you've got to show your medal.
Right, And there were teams,

232
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there were go teams, and there
were no go teams, and you know,

233
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so going to ranger school is one
thing, you know, trying to

234
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cause General Frank Tony was my second
group commander, and he wanted the Saude's

235
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to be scuba qualified because that's when
Bosnia was starting to spin up. You

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know, President Clinton and he's wanting
to, you know, send us over

237
00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:23.799
and like, okay, yeah,
but we're going to infill by scuba probably,

238
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so you got to get scuba qualified. So every six months we're doing

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a physical and we're going through pre
scuba and just getting our butt smoked.

240
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Yeah. Finally he just sent us
to the paddy course like I don't care,

241
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we're going to send you in anyway. So that's where you start learning

242
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about all that stuff. And you
know, and actually when we're so nineteen

243
00:16:45.639 --> 00:16:51.600
ninety two, when I signed into
group, they handed your green beret because

244
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that was the unit headgear. And
within six months they were pulling General shack

245
00:16:57.759 --> 00:17:02.000
now and that whole story. They
were pulling the green berets if you weren't

246
00:17:02.519 --> 00:17:06.680
you know, Q course qualified,
right unless you deployed overseas and then you

247
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:07.960
had you know, we were like
pulling up a room beret and then we're

248
00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:11.119
pulling up a green beret. And
I was like, okay, whatever,

249
00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:15.319
it's just to happen whatever. But
it's not just how would they like administrative

250
00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:18.960
how would they work that because like
you said that the Sauda guys, the

251
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you know, these tactical signers,
they didn't have to go through a selection,

252
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but but in in the right setting, they could be called upon to

253
00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:33.839
do very arduous missions. Correct,
So would they try top And also like

254
00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:36.960
ranger school is a big thing for
them, like you're supposed to be ranger

255
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qualified and all this stuff. It's
slott. Yeah, So how would they

256
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how would they manage those teams?
Would they try to spread the wealth like

257
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put like the qualified guys with the
unqualified guys to make a week team stronger,

258
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or would they make like the strong
teams really strong and leave the weak

259
00:17:53.799 --> 00:17:57.200
teams to like do their own thing. It depends on which battalion you were

260
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in. I was in the third
but two, and we had three strong

261
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team leaders. Steve, Joe and
I were team leaders and on the Saude's

262
00:18:11.119 --> 00:18:15.240
and we were just strong. That's
the way it was. Second time was

263
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a little different. They actually had
better linguists, but they were tactically unsound.

264
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So it it just it was weird. You know, you would think

265
00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:27.400
they would do that, they would
get and they didn't push Ranger School as

266
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much and they should have, and
it just became an availability. And one

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time somebody said, hey, do
you want to Ranger School. I'm like

268
00:18:33.559 --> 00:18:37.279
yeah. They're like, pack your
bags are leaving tomorrow. I'm like no,

269
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no, no, no, no, I'm not leaving tomorrow. You

270
00:18:41.119 --> 00:18:42.880
know, to think about what if
you've showed up to Ranger School with twelve

271
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hours noticing, Yeah, it wouldn't
be so good. So but yeah,

272
00:18:47.720 --> 00:18:55.359
it you know, And we deployed
quite a bit to Scotland. We did

273
00:18:55.400 --> 00:19:00.400
an exercise with the sas third Ranger
Battalion and we were with the Princess of

274
00:19:00.440 --> 00:19:03.960
Wales Royal Regiment and we were infiltrators
and they were trying to find it.

275
00:19:04.079 --> 00:19:07.680
So, yeah, you learned a
lot of stuff real fast. Yeah,

276
00:19:07.400 --> 00:19:12.599
went through the British here school.
I don't recommend it. And then how

277
00:19:12.680 --> 00:19:17.359
did you guys manage it? Because
like the Saudas, the signers have a

278
00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:21.839
higher clearance than most of the team. Guys, do you have specialized gear

279
00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:26.279
from the NSA specialized gear like when
you're traveling, when you're working with these

280
00:19:26.359 --> 00:19:29.319
teams, Like how do you manage
that? Personally? To say hey,

281
00:19:29.480 --> 00:19:33.079
like this is like this, this
stuff is sort of off limits. I

282
00:19:33.160 --> 00:19:34.599
know you're I know you're cooler than
I am or whatever else, but this

283
00:19:34.680 --> 00:19:38.519
stuff's off limits. So we would
talk and we ran into that problem.

284
00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:42.480
Even on a jrtc rotation. We
jumped into Camp David, we did in

285
00:19:42.599 --> 00:19:47.079
flight rigging and jumped in and I
had talked with a team leader and said,

286
00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:52.759
hey, this is what happens when
we start doing the analysis. It

287
00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:56.240
becomes sci and he goes, I
don't have that. I got anybody on

288
00:19:56.319 --> 00:19:59.440
your team. He goes, yeah, one of our echoes does. Why

289
00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:03.119
he had it helped us out a
lot. So then we were allowed to

290
00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:07.000
try it, but then we had
to transmit through an sci channel, otherwise

291
00:20:07.119 --> 00:20:08.519
I would have to carry extra gear. I mean it's already bad enough.

292
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:12.759
We're carrying a Parody twelve, which
is the size of that refrigerator. Now

293
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:17.480
I'm gonna have to carry my own
PSC five and get my own crypto.

294
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:21.640
And luckily he had it. So
you just work it out. You know,

295
00:20:22.119 --> 00:20:26.000
you don't want to be standoffish,
and you don't and you want them

296
00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:30.279
to be integrated. And then all
of a sudden you explain, Hey,

297
00:20:30.279 --> 00:20:33.880
if you're going split team, there's
three of us, right, so if

298
00:20:33.880 --> 00:20:36.759
two guys are going with that team, I'm going with this team. It's

299
00:20:36.960 --> 00:20:41.240
just me, right, doing twenty
four hour ops. So we're in j

300
00:20:41.359 --> 00:20:45.160
RTC, we're trying to intercept,
and I'm intercepting until I fall asleep and

301
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:48.200
then I'm intercepting more. So you
just had to work it out, and

302
00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:52.400
that's that's how you build that rapport
with them. And that's why when that

303
00:20:52.599 --> 00:20:56.759
team eighty five got assigned to go
to Bosnia and they did their decision matrix

304
00:20:56.799 --> 00:21:00.319
and said we're taking them. Yeah, what was that like? When you

305
00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:03.799
got the Bosnia? We never went? Oh really went to Brindisi, Italy.

306
00:21:04.759 --> 00:21:10.319
That's a good men, didn't do
anything because all we were gonna do

307
00:21:10.519 --> 00:21:12.279
was, uh, they were gonna
put him on a PR mission. Uh.

308
00:21:12.839 --> 00:21:17.240
This is very early Brindisi is the
airfield in Bari, isn't it.

309
00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:22.960
Yeah, so it just that's beautiful. We were gonna you know, the

310
00:21:22.599 --> 00:21:29.279
and at the very beginning, because
remember this is ninety three, you know,

311
00:21:29.400 --> 00:21:30.440
this is when, hey, we're
going to be out by Christmas.

312
00:21:32.319 --> 00:21:37.599
They didn't say which Christmas because we're
still there, so it's got what's kind

313
00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:38.880
of one of the running jokes.
But yeah, we didn't do anything.

314
00:21:40.359 --> 00:21:41.519
We didn't it thell. We didn't
do anything, you know. And I

315
00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:48.839
think the only true PR mission was
the what's his name Grady mission? Yeah,

316
00:21:48.920 --> 00:21:52.960
when Tomogrady got shot down? Yeah, back to one or whatever anywhere

317
00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:57.720
whatever that one was throwing your literal
seriou school that everything went wrong. So

318
00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:02.559
yeah, but yeah, we actually
never did anything, never did anything.

319
00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:06.720
Operational law was in tenth group.
Uh and then how did you find your

320
00:22:06.759 --> 00:22:12.039
way over to fifth group? How
did that come about? So we should

321
00:22:12.039 --> 00:22:17.359
mention you went to OCS too.
Yeah. So because the wall had fallen,

322
00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:19.880
they weren't going to do I wanting
to do any Russian more Russians.

323
00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:26.359
They weren't going to I wasn't gonna
get promoted, and they wouldn't let me

324
00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:32.200
change languages because there was only two
airborn you ranger of ninety eight golfs.

325
00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:37.319
So I put an OCS packet.
Actually, what was really good was Colonel

326
00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:41.920
Philbert was my battalion commander. He
was an o CS grad. The S

327
00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:45.640
three was an o CS grad,
and one of them, I detachment commander

328
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:48.839
from the other battalion was the OCS
grad. And they were like, you

329
00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:52.599
run it, and you run it
through now because we're about to leave to

330
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:55.279
go somewhere. And so I did. In a ten day time, I

331
00:22:55.359 --> 00:22:59.279
did my entire packet and walked it
straight to Colonel Tony and I said,

332
00:23:00.359 --> 00:23:04.920
will you sign this? And yeah. So then I went to I went

333
00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:08.880
to Austter Candidate School, graduated in
January of ninety four, went to the

334
00:23:08.960 --> 00:23:12.599
basic course, and then went to
Fort Campbell and did a full gamut there.

335
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:17.640
You know I have in the book. My first battalion commander was Colonel

336
00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:22.119
Rodriguez, David M. Rodriguez,
who ended up being with the Afrikaan commander

337
00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:26.000
I think is one of his last
jobs. Great, just great, commanders.

338
00:23:26.039 --> 00:23:27.680
I had the whole time while I
was there. And so when you

339
00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:32.240
came out of OCS, I mean, w W was it? Did they

340
00:23:32.279 --> 00:23:36.960
automat because you had been military military
intelligence? Did they automatically branch you?

341
00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:38.720
Am I? Or I was one
of the lucky ones they did. There

342
00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:42.039
were some guys out of OCS that
were given artillery. It's called branch of

343
00:23:42.119 --> 00:23:47.759
detailed because that reverse pyramid. You
know, they need some second lieutenants,

344
00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:52.440
but they don't need artillery captains,
right, they need artillery lieutenants. So

345
00:23:52.599 --> 00:23:56.480
no, I was given military intelligence. And when I got to Fort Campbell,

346
00:23:56.559 --> 00:24:00.960
you know I was lucky. I
was a little bit older. This

347
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:06.119
will be ninety three, so you
know, I'm thirty, I've got my

348
00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:10.880
senior wings, I got ranger tab
and I'm a lieutenant walking into an infantry

349
00:24:10.920 --> 00:24:14.119
battalion. So I got some credibility, right, and that helped a lot,

350
00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:18.960
right, And you know, Chris
the Battalion two fed me to the

351
00:24:19.079 --> 00:24:26.720
Lions with John Lair the battalion three, and you know Carogue and they just

352
00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:30.119
let me have it. But it
was good. You know, it's like,

353
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:32.799
hey, no, no pad answers. I don't want to hear doctrine.

354
00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:34.200
How long is it going to take
to reduce this obstacle? How long

355
00:24:34.319 --> 00:24:37.480
is it gonna take for the enemy
to get there? How can I do

356
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:40.960
this? Where's you know, where's
their weak points, their HPT, their

357
00:24:41.119 --> 00:24:45.480
HVT and knowing all those acronyms and
what they mean and then how to execute

358
00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.160
them. So I, yeah,
my success is based on my commanders.

359
00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:52.559
And so you're doing a lot of
mission planning, contingency planning, things like

360
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.880
that for the group. Yeah,
So I went so and that was that's

361
00:24:56.920 --> 00:25:00.240
actually in the second Baian, second
Brigade of the hundred first. And then

362
00:25:00.279 --> 00:25:06.920
I did a one year as am
I Battalion or am I presuming Leader XO

363
00:25:07.079 --> 00:25:11.319
for one j rtc rotation, and
then I went to the one sixtieth.

364
00:25:11.119 --> 00:25:17.240
I assessed with the one sixtieth somewhat
like you know some of the other one

365
00:25:17.319 --> 00:25:18.559
sixtieth guys al MAC and they talk
about, you know, you go through

366
00:25:18.599 --> 00:25:22.480
an assessment, you go through green
platoon. Green platoon for an MI guy

367
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:26.960
is really easy, like you show
up the work, but the assessment's pretty

368
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:33.559
rough for an MI guide because they're
giving you a mission and planning and it's

369
00:25:33.559 --> 00:25:37.359
all in classified because you're doing it
from home, and then they're calling you

370
00:25:37.359 --> 00:25:41.000
about every six hour, changing it
about ninety two degrees. And so what

371
00:25:41.119 --> 00:25:44.960
you were planning to do now you're
having to change. Planning to do now

372
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:48.680
you're having to change. And I
went in and did my briefing. I

373
00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:53.240
made a three D model which later
on said never they'd never seen anybody do

374
00:25:53.279 --> 00:25:56.480
it because we were supposed to go
into a compound and land and I had

375
00:25:56.920 --> 00:26:00.240
to do all the you know,
point of entries and everything else. And

376
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:06.200
yeah, the assessment, like it
says in the book, Colonel len FRELLI

377
00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:07.880
looks right at me and says,
what the fuck do you think I want

378
00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:14.000
a lieutenant for? So? Well, if you're looking for rank it,

379
00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:18.000
yeah, but you're looking for experience, I'm at yeah, and uh yeah,

380
00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:21.640
I made it and I stayed.
I was the S two for twenty

381
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:26.319
six months. Wow. And we
did Desert Thunder, Desert Fox. A

382
00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:33.279
couple other deployments deployed down to Gabone
for what used to be you know,

383
00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:37.720
zaire Democratic Republic of Congo do a
NEO that didn't happen. We got to

384
00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:42.599
do some great courses and went to
the seal. You know Intel course,

385
00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:45.440
and a bunch of other things,
and just kept learning more and more joint

386
00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:49.920
stuff. I want to take just
two seconds to tell the viewers out there

387
00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:55.000
to please check out our Patreon.
The link link is down the description and

388
00:26:55.519 --> 00:26:57.519
for five dollars a month you get
access to all these episodes ad free,

389
00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:02.480
and we really appreciate at all of
you who support the channel. I also

390
00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:06.720
want to tell people about a article
I just wrote about the green Light program.

391
00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:11.640
This is the Special Forces program where
they jumped in backpack nukes from the

392
00:27:11.759 --> 00:27:15.839
nineteen sixties to the late nineteen eighties. And the article is titled Red Menace,

393
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:18.680
Black Ops, green Light and you
can find it out there. Now,

394
00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:22.160
go check it out. Let me
know what you think of it.

395
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:25.720
It's a good title. Sean Naylor
came up with that title. Yeah,

396
00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:32.599
Yeah, it's a good title.
Jumping in a nuke. Yeah, not

397
00:27:32.799 --> 00:27:37.880
really sure i'd want to do that. Yeah. And next this coming Friday,

398
00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:41.519
we're going to have one of the
sources for that article, Bill Flavin,

399
00:27:41.720 --> 00:27:44.559
who was on a green Light team. He led a green Light team

400
00:27:44.599 --> 00:27:47.359
and he'll be on the show on
Friday, so we've got to talk to

401
00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:49.960
them about that. That's got to
be just crazy. Yeah. I mean

402
00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:52.880
I wonder how fast you'd have to
run to get the minimum safe distance from

403
00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:59.000
that, Right, that's the whole
thing. Yeah, okay, so you're

404
00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:03.920
not this time. You're at group
as am I officer am my detachment?

405
00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:06.839
Right. Yeah, So I went
over and talked to Colonel Higgins and I

406
00:28:06.920 --> 00:28:10.400
said, hey, you know,
this is my chance to get in my

407
00:28:10.839 --> 00:28:14.960
command, which is very hard to
get and I'd really like to do it.

408
00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:17.759
So were you a captain at this
point in time? Okay, I've

409
00:28:17.759 --> 00:28:26.279
been, so let's see. I
got commissioned in ninety four. So yeah,

410
00:28:26.319 --> 00:28:30.680
I made captain in ninety seven because
I remember we were getting ready for

411
00:28:30.759 --> 00:28:33.839
Desert Thunder and we're gonna go.
We weren't gonna go, and I was

412
00:28:33.880 --> 00:28:37.640
trying to get my dad down for
the promotion. I remember talked to Colonville

413
00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:40.119
Friendly and I'm like, let's just
pin it on. He goes, we

414
00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:45.440
don't do that. Promotions are for
everyone else, not for you again,

415
00:28:45.720 --> 00:28:52.680
great commander. So yeah, we
ended up. So I sorry, transition

416
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:56.519
back to good to fifth Group.
I'm a captain probably about three years am

417
00:28:56.559 --> 00:29:00.799
my detachment got great Sauday, I
actually have a tat long tab Saudes.

418
00:29:02.039 --> 00:29:03.720
They let him do it for a
while. They did Phase thirteen, didn't

419
00:29:03.759 --> 00:29:08.799
do the MOS phase and then am
I and s F didn't get along,

420
00:29:08.920 --> 00:29:12.920
so they quit that. Oh so
so they did so for a while they

421
00:29:14.039 --> 00:29:18.920
could would they have to go through
SFAs and then okay, they kind of

422
00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:22.119
did their own kind of like a
pre Ranger self unit. Once they sent

423
00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:25.279
it, then you what did the
phase one? The phase three? And

424
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:30.680
then that was it? Very interesting? Yeah, so that's let's see.

425
00:29:30.839 --> 00:29:40.599
So we did am I detachment and
we went over for Desert Fox and that's

426
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:45.720
where one of the incidents in the
book, you know, the SF team

427
00:29:45.799 --> 00:29:48.400
leaders talking about laying down the fifty
cow and the entire team is going to

428
00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:52.559
lay down in front of it.
I was just like, you got to

429
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:57.200
be kidding me, and I kind
of blurted it out and got pulled aside

430
00:29:57.240 --> 00:30:02.359
and not really reprimanded. But gerald
TONI was like, let's try to give

431
00:30:02.440 --> 00:30:07.599
him some slack. Yeah, I
go, that's nuts. He goes,

432
00:30:07.759 --> 00:30:11.519
yeah. So we had to talk
and then that's what he said. He

433
00:30:11.599 --> 00:30:14.759
goes, you need to go to
que course and I was like okay,

434
00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:18.440
and my branch said no, but
I hadn't been to the advance course yet.

435
00:30:18.640 --> 00:30:25.640
So I went to selection in September
of ninety nine, and December I

436
00:30:25.720 --> 00:30:30.880
went to Fort Knox. So now
you're in the pipeline. Yeah, and

437
00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:36.079
you're rebranching also yeah. So yeah, because the SF doesn't have an officer

438
00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:41.839
branch schools, so you're gonna go
to one of the combat arms. Oh,

439
00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:47.880
got infantry, armor or artillery?
Okay, So in nineteen so two

440
00:30:48.039 --> 00:30:53.359
thousand, I'm thirty seven. I
am not going to the Infantry Officer Advanced

441
00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:57.240
course because everybody said it was just
ranger school all over again. You're doing

442
00:30:57.319 --> 00:31:03.519
Matt Poncho's and running around. I'm
like, no. So I went to

443
00:31:03.559 --> 00:31:06.759
the Armor course, and I'm really
glad I did because of logistics. Planning

444
00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:11.519
for that helped me so much over
the next five years. And yeah,

445
00:31:11.559 --> 00:31:17.160
so I went to the events course
at Fort Knox. You do cast cube

446
00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:22.000
for a couple of weeks, and
then went to Fort Bragdon. And when

447
00:31:22.039 --> 00:31:29.160
did you graduate the Q course?
So, because I was already language qualified,

448
00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:37.160
we finished I think in May.
I did seer school, took two

449
00:31:37.240 --> 00:31:41.960
weeks leave, and I signed into
group in July of two thousand and one

450
00:31:42.680 --> 00:31:47.079
A funny story. So I signed
in. They're like, hey, you're

451
00:31:47.119 --> 00:31:51.680
in Bravo Company. Bravo Company's commanded
and my Major Dave Neir. Major Dave

452
00:31:51.759 --> 00:31:56.240
Nero was Captain Dave Nero when I
was an MII detachment commander, so he's

453
00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:01.519
now my company commander. Twice love
the guy really, So yeah, I

454
00:32:01.599 --> 00:32:06.039
mean, you get to fifth Group
at the summer of two thousand and one,

455
00:32:06.599 --> 00:32:10.640
having no idea what's coming. Where
were you when nine to eleven happened?

456
00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:15.359
So right up Gate four is the
main gate to Fort Campbell, and

457
00:32:15.400 --> 00:32:20.799
I'm at the cleaner's picking up my
uniforms and I am driving into the gate

458
00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:28.240
and the radio says a plane is
hit. Like everybody else like sess nuh

459
00:32:28.359 --> 00:32:34.279
yeah, some dumb pilot out there. Yeah, And so pulled in,

460
00:32:35.799 --> 00:32:37.319
dropped my stuff off the team room, went over to the chow hall.

461
00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:44.960
Everybody's sitting in there, and we
saw the second plane hit like shit okay,

462
00:32:45.559 --> 00:32:52.160
and sat around, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? Nobody really

463
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:57.359
knows, you know. It's Echelon's
above nosebleeder talking what they're gonna do.

464
00:32:57.599 --> 00:33:02.960
Base commanders actually General Cody, former
one sixty regimental commander. Now he in

465
00:33:04.079 --> 00:33:08.519
an eight sixty four pilot. He's
now the division commander. First time they've

466
00:33:08.519 --> 00:33:15.039
had an aviator and he's got apaches
in the air loaded armed as nobody knows

467
00:33:15.079 --> 00:33:22.000
what's going on, and they're like, go home, we'll let you know.

468
00:33:22.079 --> 00:33:24.400
So the next day we came back. So, no, it's Wednesday.

469
00:33:24.680 --> 00:33:28.319
Had you taken your team leader position? Yeah? Yeah, okay,

470
00:33:28.440 --> 00:33:32.400
yeah, probably within the first day. So he came in, you know,

471
00:33:32.559 --> 00:33:37.720
met everybody. Hey, great,
you know a little bit of background.

472
00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:45.279
There were eight of us, and
yeah, they should just go home

473
00:33:45.599 --> 00:33:49.960
next day. It took forever to
get on post and then they said don't

474
00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:54.279
come back, just stay home until
Monday. And Saturday I got a call

475
00:33:54.480 --> 00:34:00.160
saying, hey, you need to
come into the group conference room. I'm

476
00:34:00.200 --> 00:34:04.039
like, what happened to come in
Monday? I'm tearing apart my deck and

477
00:34:04.119 --> 00:34:08.239
everything else. But yeah, we'll
come into the group conference room and they're

478
00:34:08.360 --> 00:34:15.039
like, gentlemen, you are leading
your teams into Afghanistan. And Major Nero

479
00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:20.880
walks in and says, hey,
you're now in five to five because your

480
00:34:20.920 --> 00:34:27.280
warrant has elected to have knee surgery, and you're now below the number line.

481
00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:31.639
So you and one of your weapons
guys is going to five to five.

482
00:34:32.320 --> 00:34:37.480
Three of your guys are going to
five to three. They went into

483
00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:43.119
Bamian and my team's starden and the
Fox went to the B team. And

484
00:34:43.159 --> 00:34:46.360
when you say below the number line, you're saying there's a There was a

485
00:34:46.480 --> 00:34:52.320
minimum threshold for the team size,
right, So they basically looked at the

486
00:34:52.360 --> 00:34:59.639
team across the board and Colonel m'holland
stated that all teams going in would be

487
00:35:00.320 --> 00:35:06.840
at twelve. So if you were
below eight and below you got parted out.

488
00:35:07.639 --> 00:35:09.800
So went over to five to five. That put us at eleven,

489
00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:13.679
and then we got an STS guy
and then you know, so that put

490
00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:16.400
us at twelve. So that's how
the teams all got filled up. Nobody

491
00:35:16.440 --> 00:35:20.440
had twelve. They always joke around
if you see a twelve man team,

492
00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:25.119
take a picture and it's still like
that. So this is how you ended

493
00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:29.840
up on triple nickel, correct,
but you walked on there is still as

494
00:35:30.039 --> 00:35:32.800
on a team leader position. Yeah, so five to five, I'm a

495
00:35:32.880 --> 00:35:37.280
captain. You know, kind of
a little bit of jocularity going on,

496
00:35:37.440 --> 00:35:40.760
you know, brand new captain out
of the Q course, except for I'd

497
00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:46.880
been in nineteen years and I'm thirty
nine years old. You know, I'm

498
00:35:46.920 --> 00:35:51.800
older than the team startant. But
you know, you train up, you

499
00:35:51.880 --> 00:35:55.360
went through, We tried to figure
out how to do you know, your

500
00:35:55.400 --> 00:36:00.559
basic tactical drills, what's gonna happen. You start getting fed what the mission

501
00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:04.199
was, and we started partnering it
out just like you normally do. This

502
00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:09.519
is started still at Fort Campbell.
You got yeah, second, our battalion

503
00:36:09.599 --> 00:36:15.760
is actually deployed to Jordan doing Early
Victor, but it was only a couple.

504
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:21.840
It was the other two companies and
the battalion staff. So the first

505
00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:25.119
battalion staff is working with us,
doesn't know us from Adam, and we're

506
00:36:25.159 --> 00:36:29.079
trying to figure out what's going on. Nobody's been put into isolation like that

507
00:36:29.800 --> 00:36:34.760
in decades. Yeah, so we
just start planning and it was an open

508
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:38.039
planning at the beginning. We could
go home, and then we got to

509
00:36:38.440 --> 00:36:42.559
I don't know, three or four
days prior to deploying, and then we

510
00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:46.920
were locked down. What was that
process? Like, I mean, because

511
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:53.159
you guys deployed to Uzbekistan, right
correct, We land at K two and

512
00:36:54.119 --> 00:36:59.000
they're just building as fast as they
can, and they're like, go lay

513
00:36:59.079 --> 00:37:00.880
down over there, and there was
a pile of dirt over there, and

514
00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:04.440
they're like when the sun comes up, we'll figure out what to do.

515
00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:09.599
Just about sunrise, and somebody comes
over yelling like what are you doing,

516
00:37:10.440 --> 00:37:14.559
Like we were told to lay over
here. They're like, no, that's

517
00:37:14.639 --> 00:37:17.800
all the depleted uranium. You guys
aren't supposed to be near it. That's

518
00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:24.199
awesome part of the chaos. Yeah, that's my book. So you're the

519
00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:28.480
whole team's over there now, like
tell us walk us through like a little

520
00:37:28.519 --> 00:37:30.719
bit of you guys like jocking up
to go on this mission and the infiltration.

521
00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:36.199
So you're just a sponge because you're
pulling in every single time, you're

522
00:37:36.239 --> 00:37:39.280
pulling in information because there's not a
lot of information, you know, you're

523
00:37:39.320 --> 00:37:45.079
getting fed from other agencies. They
don't even know what the weather's gonna be.

524
00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:49.840
We're getting sixty degrees, we're getting
six degrees, we're getting snow hot.

525
00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:54.039
So I'm either going in full snivel
gear and gonna be a heat casually,

526
00:37:55.119 --> 00:37:57.880
or I'm gonna have it packed and
I'm gonna have it you know,

527
00:37:58.119 --> 00:38:00.920
frostbite. Right, So we don't
know what's going on. We don't know.

528
00:38:00.119 --> 00:38:06.280
It's just it's fluid and you know. And I talked to Colonel Mulholland

529
00:38:07.480 --> 00:38:15.360
last September about it. That man
had the hardest job in the world because

530
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:20.599
he's got four stars telling him what
he's doing wrong, he's got team leaders,

531
00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:24.199
team starts going why do I not
know anything right? You know?

532
00:38:24.360 --> 00:38:28.199
And it was it was really good
to talk to him about that, because

533
00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:31.440
I I don't envy that man at
all, and he is and he was

534
00:38:31.760 --> 00:38:36.360
he was operating under pressure, under
pressure, but also in a vacuum,

535
00:38:36.679 --> 00:38:40.440
just like everybody else. And you
know, it's like you're in ranger school

536
00:38:40.440 --> 00:38:45.000
and you got your your your leadership
role, your pel time. You're trying

537
00:38:45.039 --> 00:38:47.760
to get it out as fast as
possible, but you're head swimming and people

538
00:38:47.800 --> 00:38:52.920
are feeding you stock. It's just
it's time. Yeah. So yeah,

539
00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:58.480
we were planning the best we could
and then we're getting we're getting Hey,

540
00:38:58.519 --> 00:39:00.320
you're going in civilian clothes, have
me something clothes. Hey, you're going

541
00:39:00.400 --> 00:39:05.440
in green BDUs, You're going in
Acus, You're going in you know,

542
00:39:06.039 --> 00:39:08.559
chocolate chips, You're going to You're
like they're sending a guy down to Hu's

543
00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:13.079
Beckett, you know, the Karshi
Kanabad, and he's coming back with fubu

544
00:39:13.199 --> 00:39:16.440
waar And I'm not joking, you
know, I'm like, yeah, you

545
00:39:16.559 --> 00:39:20.480
gotta be kid man. I mean, there's a picture I don't I don't

546
00:39:20.519 --> 00:39:22.480
put it online because it's got other
guys faces in it. But we looked

547
00:39:22.559 --> 00:39:27.800
like the French resistance from World War
Two, you know, we got chapeause

548
00:39:27.880 --> 00:39:32.519
and I'm like, we're gonna die, right right? So how did how

549
00:39:32.559 --> 00:39:37.039
did the infiltration finally take place?
And like, what was your conception of

550
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:39.960
the of the mission by the time
he deployed? So this was the first

551
00:39:40.039 --> 00:39:44.800
time that I really realized the value
of being the S two and the one

552
00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:51.639
sixtieth because now I'm talking to the
flight lead and he was a BMQ pilot

553
00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:54.000
basic mission qualified when he had first
came in when I was the S two,

554
00:39:54.639 --> 00:40:00.320
So we had grown together and we
had learned as I was learning about

555
00:40:00.320 --> 00:40:04.880
the aircraft that aircraft don't have flares, chafts and pods. Pods are on

556
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:07.400
submarines. So I don't brief that
anymore, you know. That was one

557
00:40:07.400 --> 00:40:09.199
of my briefings when our JRTC as
an S two they're like, that's a

558
00:40:09.239 --> 00:40:14.039
submarine. I'm like, okay.
So I'm learning all about the forty sevens

559
00:40:14.079 --> 00:40:16.760
and the factors and it's capabilities and
everything else. And he's briefing me and

560
00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:21.039
I already know that, and so
we're working on Okay, how am I

561
00:40:21.239 --> 00:40:24.119
We're going to get in there.
We've got to go across the Hindukush mountains.

562
00:40:24.239 --> 00:40:30.639
Hindukush Mountains have to actually stop weather
patterns. They're so tall, well,

563
00:40:30.760 --> 00:40:32.480
forty seven can only go up so
tall. You go above ten thousand

564
00:40:32.519 --> 00:40:36.880
feet, you start losing oxygen and
they only have enough oxygen for the crew

565
00:40:36.960 --> 00:40:40.039
chief and the pilots. So now
we're talking about going in and my team

566
00:40:40.280 --> 00:40:44.000
isn't going to have on any oxygen
and we're going to be up there for

567
00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:47.079
a good forty five minutes with little
to no oxygen. And so when we're

568
00:40:47.119 --> 00:40:52.199
pushing up there, and I remember
Joe telling me, he's like, I

569
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:54.320
don't think we're gonna make it.
Do you want to be put down on

570
00:40:54.480 --> 00:40:58.519
the mountain or do you want to
be put down on this side of the

571
00:40:58.559 --> 00:41:02.239
mountain. And I'm going through all
my into briefings and remembering this is on

572
00:41:02.360 --> 00:41:06.800
the north side of the Salon Pass. There was one tunnel that goes through

573
00:41:06.840 --> 00:41:13.000
there that gets the bogroom and that
comes up to Condus. Regards the one

574
00:41:13.079 --> 00:41:16.400
that's up in the north, I
think it's Condus, but still there was

575
00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:19.840
a unit there. There was a
Taliban you know, at the north side,

576
00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:22.559
because they were they thought we were
gonna have to go through the Slom

577
00:41:22.639 --> 00:41:24.199
Pass. So I'm like, don't
put us down there, And luckily it

578
00:41:24.239 --> 00:41:28.119
didn't because that's exactly what I remember. But we could not punch through.

579
00:41:28.159 --> 00:41:34.360
So we went back and was it
the weather? That is why couldn't you

580
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:37.440
guys make it? Was there not
enough like could they not get enough lift

581
00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:40.679
or Whateverooks can go up to,
you know, twenty thousand plus feet,

582
00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:46.519
but the problem is if you the
weather, the clouds, you can't see.

583
00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:52.400
They were just starting out with a
multimode radar. But you don't fly

584
00:41:52.960 --> 00:41:55.519
when you can't see in a helicopter. It's not like you can punch up

585
00:41:55.559 --> 00:42:00.199
to thirty five thousand feet and just
go across. You're in a hellic out

586
00:42:00.159 --> 00:42:04.480
so and these are the best pilots
in the world, and so when they're

587
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:07.679
saying, hey, we can't do
this, I'm trying to figure out how

588
00:42:07.719 --> 00:42:09.320
we're going to do it. So
I'm going back to my s two time

589
00:42:09.880 --> 00:42:13.159
and I'm talking to him and I'm
trying to work it out, and We're

590
00:42:13.159 --> 00:42:15.679
starting to get pretty lightheaded because I'm
not on on the oxygen. I'm like,

591
00:42:16.079 --> 00:42:21.480
we need to go back. We
just we cannot do this. And

592
00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:25.920
so we did, and then they
came down under the clouds and they had

593
00:42:25.960 --> 00:42:31.119
an engagement with one of the mini
guns and just high tailed it out of

594
00:42:31.119 --> 00:42:36.679
there. And so it was about
it was a couple of days later that

595
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:40.199
we finally were successfully to go in. That's why we'll always say we're arguably

596
00:42:40.280 --> 00:42:45.119
the first team in because we actually
went in, but we didn't land.

597
00:42:45.360 --> 00:42:52.000
That's a fun jocularity between teams.
So when you guys finally got on the

598
00:42:52.039 --> 00:42:54.639
ground, I mean, what was
like the mission statement that the group commander

599
00:42:54.800 --> 00:43:00.159
gave to you guys, what were
you You know, it's funny because it's

600
00:43:00.239 --> 00:43:13.039
three quarters of a page that's it
purpose key tasks and state the purposes to

601
00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:20.280
defeat the Taliban and remove you know, okay from Afghanistan. The key tasks

602
00:43:20.320 --> 00:43:23.599
are link up with the Northern Alliance, train them up. When the snow

603
00:43:23.679 --> 00:43:29.719
melts, start an offensive, capture
Cobble and state is Cobble is captured.

604
00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:35.760
That's it, which we did very
quickly. You guys did very quickly.

605
00:43:35.840 --> 00:43:38.840
We didn't wait for it. We
didn't even wait for it to snow.

606
00:43:39.760 --> 00:43:45.599
We were so successful going in that
nobody had the patience. As again talking

607
00:43:45.639 --> 00:43:52.079
to Colonel Mulholland, the pressure from
above was just too much. You gotta

608
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:55.639
go. Your teams are in.
Why are they going to wait six months?

609
00:43:57.840 --> 00:44:00.320
So you know, we're so we
do. We link up and you

610
00:44:00.559 --> 00:44:02.079
know, you got to do your
bona fides and you know, and these

611
00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:07.079
remember their tribes. We've learned a
lot about the Afghans. You know,

612
00:44:07.159 --> 00:44:10.199
they are tribal and they want to
know you know, they they don't they

613
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:15.719
do the small talk. They drink
tea and they figure out what you are

614
00:44:15.880 --> 00:44:20.639
and why are you trustworthy and everything
else. So that's what had to be

615
00:44:20.760 --> 00:44:25.679
built, and then all the other
ancillary stuff that motivated them to actually move

616
00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:30.159
and get want to do it.
So you guys get on the ground,

617
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:37.400
link up with the Northern Alliance and
then who were you guys assigned to?

618
00:44:37.480 --> 00:44:43.840
So Masud was the big guy,
right and Fahim Khan was his security guy

619
00:44:45.079 --> 00:44:49.280
didn't do so well. Musud was
killed on the tenth Yeah, so that's

620
00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:51.440
who we had to link up with. So we had to link up with

621
00:44:52.199 --> 00:45:00.039
Fahim Khan and his generals and everything
was in again layers, peeling back the

622
00:45:00.159 --> 00:45:02.800
layers of security and the bona fides, I would say, because we linked

623
00:45:02.880 --> 00:45:07.199
up with these guys and we linked
up with this guy and we slowly moved

624
00:45:07.280 --> 00:45:12.519
down the Hindu Kush mountains the mountain
range until we got to the point where

625
00:45:12.599 --> 00:45:16.000
we were was at the time,
the Northern Alliance had the northern part of

626
00:45:16.079 --> 00:45:22.719
Bagram Airbase the airfield, and the
Taliban had the southern part, so really

627
00:45:22.920 --> 00:45:28.239
the airfield was split in half.
That was kind of the flat so to

628
00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:30.719
speak, because the first time we
went down, a couple of days later

629
00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:36.320
we finally have gotten down to our
safe house, the final safe house,

630
00:45:37.519 --> 00:45:40.559
and we would get into Pagero's covered
up in a blanket. We would go

631
00:45:40.599 --> 00:45:45.599
down air base where the tower was
and we would actually crawl up there and

632
00:45:45.760 --> 00:45:52.079
start identifying where the Taliban was,
and that's when we started the cast from

633
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:58.519
there and figuring out who is Taliban
and other things. That went on and

634
00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:04.480
realizing that they were were Arab Talibans
and Afghan Talibans, which was a big

635
00:46:04.559 --> 00:46:10.280
difference. Did they know at the
time, were they planning on using Bogram

636
00:46:10.480 --> 00:46:15.800
as what it eventually became, and
did they want to minimize like battle damage

637
00:46:15.880 --> 00:46:19.559
to it or the Americans? I
don't, I don't know, Okay,

638
00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:22.119
I mean I know because the flot
was there, they weren't cratering it as

639
00:46:22.199 --> 00:46:28.880
much as they did Cobble Airport.
That level was not down to us.

640
00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:32.079
But it was start calling casts,
start figuring out where the Taliban is and

641
00:46:32.199 --> 00:46:37.960
start calling casts. And we did
every time we found groups and pockets,

642
00:46:37.039 --> 00:46:44.440
and we just started lay laying waste. And so how long I mean,

643
00:46:44.519 --> 00:46:57.079
how long were you out there at
Bagram? I think by forty five days

644
00:46:57.199 --> 00:47:01.880
later we had captured Gobble and that
that was correct me if I'm wrong,

645
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:05.599
that was kind of the end point
for your oda's mission, right when you

646
00:47:05.679 --> 00:47:10.000
got to do we were done.
And you know, other areas were faster,

647
00:47:10.199 --> 00:47:15.920
other some areas were not. There
were more squirmishes, and then as

648
00:47:16.280 --> 00:47:25.960
time came down and more of the
IPB, the intel preparation of the battlefield

649
00:47:27.199 --> 00:47:31.719
was done more teams were going in
because I think by the time we had

650
00:47:31.800 --> 00:47:37.639
stopped populating the country, we have
probably had forty five odas through Wow wow

651
00:47:37.519 --> 00:47:42.920
significant. Really yeah, it was
probably the largest in quite a while,

652
00:47:43.239 --> 00:47:46.960
not ever, and we were postured
for success. And how was I mean,

653
00:47:47.039 --> 00:47:51.199
with that many odas or even the
build up to that many odas over

654
00:47:51.239 --> 00:47:54.519
that time, how are the logistics
and support for you guys from the American

655
00:47:54.679 --> 00:47:59.360
side, Just like an SF is
supposed to be, you're going to have

656
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:02.280
an SFO be, you're gonna have
aob's And everything comes down to log points,

657
00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:07.800
log points, turned up, distribution
points, distributions to teams. So

658
00:48:07.920 --> 00:48:10.559
you guys didn't outrun yourhibbites because because
you were advancing so quickly. No,

659
00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:15.960
no, because it really it wasn't. You weren't advancing. You were just

660
00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:20.880
pushing out. We had the nodes, so we had Bogram, Massari,

661
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:24.039
Sharif, Harat and Condahar, and
then you just started pushing out. Interesting

662
00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:30.239
and then you know the guys that
went into Bamian, which was into the

663
00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:38.719
mountains the other direction from Bogram,
and then Condus and Gardez and all those

664
00:48:38.760 --> 00:48:43.960
other Jalalabad and Jacoba Bad and all
those other you just started populating out,

665
00:48:46.760 --> 00:48:52.239
So yeah, it you just you've
never outran it. But you also did

666
00:48:52.239 --> 00:48:55.960
a lot of local procurement too,
all your rice and your goats and you

667
00:48:57.039 --> 00:49:01.119
know water. Almost all those places
have some type of natural water source.

668
00:49:01.199 --> 00:49:04.920
So they don't live there. You
know, they don't have a phoenix,

669
00:49:05.599 --> 00:49:08.920
right, there's no river there.
They don't put people there. So you

670
00:49:09.000 --> 00:49:15.400
know it it was pretty good.
I mean, we we did it good.

671
00:49:16.119 --> 00:49:19.280
I mean, what did that feel
like when you guys got down.

672
00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.679
Because there is that picture that of
Triple Nickel that, at least in my

673
00:49:22.760 --> 00:49:25.480
mind, it's fairly famous. If
it's not famous to everyone watching of you

674
00:49:25.599 --> 00:49:30.320
guys standing in front of the embassy, the American embassy in Kabol, it's

675
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:37.719
just another team picture. You know. There there were caretakers. I still

676
00:49:37.800 --> 00:49:40.360
have some of the business cards at
the end that the ambassador left. You

677
00:49:40.440 --> 00:49:45.400
know, I still got a stationary. It's just kind of surreal, you

678
00:49:45.480 --> 00:49:52.880
know it. There are certain areas
the initial push scared the crap out of

679
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:57.840
the Taliban and they ran. There
were fights. There were firefights, you

680
00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:00.639
know, and there are some teams
that got into hell of firefight. But

681
00:50:00.760 --> 00:50:08.599
then there's some teams that just didn't
you know, so the initial collapse was

682
00:50:08.679 --> 00:50:14.639
a false success. Is it accurate
to say that for your team, most

683
00:50:14.679 --> 00:50:17.280
of the action was calling in casts
and acting as a coordinator for the Northern

684
00:50:17.320 --> 00:50:22.960
Alliance. Yeah, I mean they
the guys did the fights going down,

685
00:50:22.039 --> 00:50:28.000
but it wasn't it wasn't trench warfare. Sure, and you know, the

686
00:50:28.079 --> 00:50:32.760
guys did great, all of them
did. From the warrant the team started

687
00:50:32.760 --> 00:50:35.639
and all that. You know,
they did what they were supposed to do,

688
00:50:36.599 --> 00:50:39.599
you know, but then idle minds
in the city and it's not so

689
00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:45.440
good. And how long were you
guys down in a couple before they finally

690
00:50:45.519 --> 00:50:47.360
said, like okay, Triple nickels
out, like you've you've done enough,

691
00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:52.199
you did your mission. Well,
I got pulled back up to BOGRAM and

692
00:50:52.599 --> 00:50:58.679
we're Major. Nero was the AOB
and then started working with Task Force Bowie

693
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:05.719
when General Harrold came in, which
was part of Anaconda, and then the

694
00:51:05.800 --> 00:51:15.000
team went back to K two and
then the first it's either the third or

695
00:51:15.039 --> 00:51:20.320
the thirteenth of January. First group
guy was killed. He was an eighteen

696
00:51:20.360 --> 00:51:25.079
ECHOCAMMO sertant that was supporting another agency
and he was talking about Chapman. Yeah,

697
00:51:25.320 --> 00:51:30.719
yeah, yeah, he was killed
by I wouldn't say it's an air

698
00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:37.639
and bullet, but ambushed and was
shot and instantly killed, and they needed

699
00:51:37.719 --> 00:51:43.000
somebody to outrank him and escort his
body back. And so I was told,

700
00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:50.599
grab your stuff, you're going now. So we left Bogram, went

701
00:51:50.679 --> 00:51:53.800
to K two. I had to
shave, get a haircut, take a

702
00:51:53.920 --> 00:52:01.039
shower, change clothes, and then
we went to Onstool and there I met

703
00:52:01.039 --> 00:52:07.360
his team startant and passed him on
that way, and then I went back.

704
00:52:07.480 --> 00:52:10.039
But I went to K two and
I did land Dee confliction because we

705
00:52:10.119 --> 00:52:19.079
had so many problems with ground verification, air and ground verification stuff like that.

706
00:52:19.159 --> 00:52:21.280
That's what I now. Now it's
getting so built up. I mean,

707
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:23.360
everyone wants to get in on the
war, right. Well, okay,

708
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:27.320
so when I left Bogram Air Base
there was one hundred and thirty five

709
00:52:27.360 --> 00:52:32.400
people there. I think at its
height there was fifteen thousand, twenty thousand.

710
00:52:32.440 --> 00:52:36.559
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
it's a little different. Yeah.

711
00:52:37.599 --> 00:52:40.800
So getting back to the United States, I mean it sounds like you didn't

712
00:52:40.840 --> 00:52:44.760
really have a whole lot of time
to process what you had just been through

713
00:52:45.039 --> 00:52:53.480
before you get sucked into the next
adventure. We got back, everybody just

714
00:52:53.559 --> 00:52:57.800
kind of went on leave. You
know, you did your sensitive items accountability

715
00:52:57.840 --> 00:53:02.000
all that. Everybody went on leave, and then all the people started coming

716
00:53:02.119 --> 00:53:07.320
back. Major Nero came back and
he said, hey, you know,

717
00:53:07.239 --> 00:53:09.000
do you want to stay on five
to five? Do you want to go

718
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:12.320
back to five one? And I
wanted to go back to five one because

719
00:53:12.719 --> 00:53:15.199
those were my original guys. Those
were the team startant that I wanted to

720
00:53:15.239 --> 00:53:20.239
work with, and we were going
to get plussed ups. We got plused

721
00:53:20.280 --> 00:53:22.320
up too, like eleven with new
guys out of brag, out of the

722
00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:27.679
Q course. Well, we got
a little bit of leave and then we

723
00:53:27.800 --> 00:53:32.880
started needing to do desert train up. So we packed up our humbies and

724
00:53:32.920 --> 00:53:38.079
we went to El Paso, Texas
to practice how to suck right right the

725
00:53:38.400 --> 00:53:44.679
hide sights and everything else. And
we really we knew vaguely what our missions

726
00:53:44.760 --> 00:53:46.639
were, like, hey, you're
going to do a reconnaissance, and you

727
00:53:46.760 --> 00:53:51.719
know pretty much that's what everybody was
going to do. Some former reconnaissance didn't

728
00:53:51.719 --> 00:53:53.800
know how you were going to infiltrate, didn't know how you were going to

729
00:53:53.960 --> 00:54:00.920
put eyes on target. It wasn't
until October November that I actually got the

730
00:54:00.039 --> 00:54:07.599
first inkling of our mission. So
were they already took because Iraq was March

731
00:54:07.679 --> 00:54:10.760
of two thousand and three, When
did you first like get what are you

732
00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:15.440
two thousand and two? Yeah?
So are you prepping for Iraq? Or

733
00:54:15.480 --> 00:54:17.159
do you think you're going back to
Afghanistan? Now we know we're going to

734
00:54:17.320 --> 00:54:21.880
Iraq? Okay, so you're already
prepping for it. Okay, we are

735
00:54:21.960 --> 00:54:29.599
prepping and figuring out stuff everything from
you know, how to do vehicle self

736
00:54:29.639 --> 00:54:31.840
recovery, the new vehicles they have
just come out with, the GMVS,

737
00:54:32.480 --> 00:54:42.760
which is the ambulance frame heftier hydraulic
winch. You know, when it's empty,

738
00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:45.800
it bounces around like a dune buggy
and when it gets about ten thousand

739
00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:50.239
pounds it is an awesome maneuver vehicle. So yeah, we know we're going

740
00:54:50.559 --> 00:54:57.840
and we just don't know what and
nobody knows what. And what's funny is

741
00:54:57.960 --> 00:55:01.239
now coming back from Afghanistan all the
new team leaders or guys that I went

742
00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:05.920
through the Q course with because I
didn't take you have to go to language

743
00:55:05.920 --> 00:55:08.880
school. I went to Afghanistan.
So now they're all talking about how they

744
00:55:08.960 --> 00:55:12.079
lost you know, I missed out
in the war, and I said,

745
00:55:12.360 --> 00:55:16.159
you got it coming, yeah,
and they did. So we prepped for

746
00:55:16.440 --> 00:55:20.440
Iraq. Like I said, we
all went out to Al Paso, did

747
00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:24.760
all the desert train up, trying
to figure out that self recovery, putting

748
00:55:24.840 --> 00:55:34.760
in you know, logistics requests,
and then just waiting for the At what

749
00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:38.440
time did you guys receive you know, an oper order to conduct a strategic

750
00:55:38.519 --> 00:55:44.199
reconnaissance mission. I think it was
October November. I actually got that I

751
00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:46.840
was going to do. My team
was going to do a special reconnaissance in

752
00:55:46.960 --> 00:55:52.000
the Carbalala Gap. And the reason
why the third ID was going to either

753
00:55:52.280 --> 00:55:57.280
have to go through that little narrow
piece of land between the bar Ala Mill

754
00:55:57.360 --> 00:56:02.119
Sea assault there's a lake and the
eight Fields in the Euphrates River, or

755
00:56:02.159 --> 00:56:05.920
they're gonna have to go all the
way around. So they want somebody in

756
00:56:06.079 --> 00:56:10.360
there to figure out what's in there, identify up to the last minute,

757
00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:15.920
and they say it's gonna take third
I D maximum of three days. So

758
00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:17.320
you've got to get in there before
the war starts because they're going to be

759
00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:22.400
right there. Which if you studied
desert storm, you knew that wasn't gonna

760
00:56:22.400 --> 00:56:28.960
happen. And having gone to the
Officer Advanced Course, knowing tanks and logistics,

761
00:56:29.440 --> 00:56:32.679
you knew it wasn't gonna happen.
I'll tell you all this stuff just

762
00:56:34.039 --> 00:56:37.320
plays right into a story. It
just just just out of curiosity before we

763
00:56:37.400 --> 00:56:42.360
move on in Iraq, because you
mentioned all these new captains showing up saying

764
00:56:42.760 --> 00:56:45.480
we missed Afghanistan, like we missed
the war, and you know, now

765
00:56:45.559 --> 00:56:51.119
you're prepping for Iraq, but in
your mind, like knowing what the key

766
00:56:51.320 --> 00:56:58.039
tasks of the Afghan mission were and
then you know, knowing how how fast

767
00:56:58.079 --> 00:57:01.079
you guys got there, what had
happened? Did you have like how long

768
00:57:01.159 --> 00:57:07.039
did you expect us at that point
in time to stay in Afghanistan when we're

769
00:57:07.039 --> 00:57:15.039
in that kis it no idea?
I mean I thought I had. I

770
00:57:15.079 --> 00:57:21.599
had one vision that they were going
to say, find a safe house.

771
00:57:22.400 --> 00:57:25.800
You're going to be here for a
couple of years until you build out till

772
00:57:25.880 --> 00:57:30.239
you do what ended up being VSL
Village Stability operation, right, building your

773
00:57:30.440 --> 00:57:37.000
tribe, making sure everything sell safe, powers it being like yep, okay,

774
00:57:37.039 --> 00:57:42.360
we're good. I was home by
Memorial Day. Well, What I

775
00:57:42.840 --> 00:57:46.079
mean though, is like, how
like the war effort was very successful?

776
00:57:46.079 --> 00:57:51.119
From you guys, did you expect
the large conventional follow on? Did you

777
00:57:51.159 --> 00:57:53.280
expect to be there for the next
twenty years or did you expect that it

778
00:57:53.320 --> 00:57:58.519
would be over shortly after you left? Well, the thing you find out,

779
00:57:58.679 --> 00:58:01.559
and I'm sure you guys are saying, what what happens in your bubble

780
00:58:02.199 --> 00:58:07.320
is all you know. And over
time you start hearing more and more stories

781
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:10.320
and like why did this happen?
Why did that? And one of the

782
00:58:10.400 --> 00:58:16.920
greatest statements I've heard and I use
is we weren't in Afghanistan for twenty years.

783
00:58:17.920 --> 00:58:22.840
We were in Afghanistan one year at
a time twenty times. Right,

784
00:58:23.639 --> 00:58:29.440
Yeah, Because when I listen to
stories of everybody, it is the same

785
00:58:29.559 --> 00:58:32.199
thing. Every time. We don't
hear the histories. We don't know what

786
00:58:32.239 --> 00:58:37.199
it'sh We didn't put we didn't take
that team and put them right back into

787
00:58:37.239 --> 00:58:40.440
gardas every single time. We didn't
just rotate two guys out at a time

788
00:58:40.840 --> 00:58:45.119
keeping that team in our gard deak. So you're building that tribe's trust and

789
00:58:45.280 --> 00:58:50.280
just keep it going. Nope,
new team leader, new team, start,

790
00:58:50.760 --> 00:58:55.599
new team, this new civil affairs
team. You know it just yeah,

791
00:58:55.679 --> 00:59:00.440
we know it wasn't the right way. It's interesting, so let's walk

792
00:59:00.559 --> 00:59:10.280
us through the infiltration piece for oif
so take it as you know again,

793
00:59:10.920 --> 00:59:15.360
the advanced course is at Fort Knox. I'm figuring out how the tanks are

794
00:59:15.400 --> 00:59:16.599
gonna go through? How am I? First of all? How am I

795
00:59:16.639 --> 00:59:22.039
gonna get there? Right? And
nobody can tell me? Am I going?

796
00:59:22.119 --> 00:59:22.920
You know? Am I doing a
C one thirty? I'm gonna do

797
00:59:22.920 --> 00:59:27.559
AirLand and a dust landing? And
then I remember back when I was in

798
00:59:27.559 --> 00:59:30.719
the one sixty, the Air Force
doesn't do that. They say that a

799
00:59:30.840 --> 00:59:34.320
C five and a C seventeen can
do dust landings, and see when thirties

800
00:59:34.559 --> 00:59:37.920
they won't. So I'm like,
okay, that's out. So am I

801
00:59:38.000 --> 00:59:40.519
gonna go on a rat line?
Am I gonna dress up like a bedolin?

802
00:59:40.679 --> 00:59:45.480
I stopped? They said no beards, but I start growing my navy's

803
00:59:45.599 --> 00:59:47.840
my Navy seal mustache. I mean, I'm like from the seventies. I'm

804
00:59:47.880 --> 00:59:51.760
all the way down here. I'm
not cutting my hair, and I'm getting

805
00:59:51.760 --> 00:59:53.599
harassed by Sar Major and I go, Sar Major, do you know how

806
00:59:53.599 --> 00:59:57.599
I'm getting infield? He's like,
no, I go. I can cut

807
00:59:57.719 --> 01:00:00.679
my hair, but I can't grow
it right. My guys are going to

808
01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:04.519
do the same thing because you don't
know. So I don't know whether I'm

809
01:00:04.519 --> 01:00:07.079
going to ratline. I don't know
whether I'm going on camels, horses,

810
01:00:07.199 --> 01:00:14.360
goats, or by foot. And
so we're just prepping and I know that

811
01:00:15.519 --> 01:00:22.039
here's where I'm gonna hide, and
I want to go there about midnight.

812
01:00:22.199 --> 01:00:25.679
So I'm going to go this far
back and put my remain over day sight

813
01:00:27.159 --> 01:00:30.000
and then do sequencing all the way
back until I can infiltrate far enough away.

814
01:00:30.440 --> 01:00:36.800
So I started planning that and it
was funny. One of the one

815
01:00:36.840 --> 01:00:38.039
of the guys I don't want to
sink to, this guy was talking about

816
01:00:38.079 --> 01:00:43.039
the software. It's called falcon View. It's open sources how Georgia Tech.

817
01:00:43.800 --> 01:00:47.880
It is an unbelievable planning software.
I planned my infiltration route while I was

818
01:00:47.960 --> 01:00:53.679
on staff duty from a laptop I
took from the S two shop that I

819
01:00:53.760 --> 01:00:59.079
had purchased when I was the mid
commander. And I am literally going through

820
01:00:59.119 --> 01:01:01.920
that on a zach Sport, just
going through trying to figure out all the

821
01:01:02.079 --> 01:01:07.400
layers in how to do an infiltration
and figuring out where the number, you

822
01:01:07.440 --> 01:01:10.079
know, main lines of communication,
staying away from the main lines of communication.

823
01:01:10.159 --> 01:01:13.320
Where are the waddies, Where are
the river beds? Where are the

824
01:01:13.719 --> 01:01:15.000
sources of water that I've got to
avoid? Where are the you know,

825
01:01:15.559 --> 01:01:22.440
look at because there are there's a
certain image that you can see where cattle

826
01:01:22.679 --> 01:01:27.239
or some type of animal has probably
walked for the last thousand years, not

827
01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:31.119
ten thousand years. This is Mesopotamia. Your Garden of Eden's right over here,

828
01:01:31.639 --> 01:01:35.159
you know, so you could see
where these things walk. So you're

829
01:01:35.159 --> 01:01:37.840
gonna have to avoid those. So
I'm going through all that stuff. And

830
01:01:37.960 --> 01:01:44.400
finally, so I don't know whether
I'm taking Toyota Tacoma's in. You know,

831
01:01:44.559 --> 01:01:45.719
we talked to Toyota and like,
hey, if we take all the

832
01:01:45.760 --> 01:01:49.159
doors or like, don't take all
the doors off because you lose the integrity

833
01:01:49.199 --> 01:01:51.360
of the cabin. You gotta keep
at least two doors on. Because they

834
01:01:51.400 --> 01:01:54.559
said, I'm like okay, And
then you know, or Toyota high Loucks.

835
01:01:55.519 --> 01:01:59.559
Am I getting fifty threes a water
fifty three? I can't take any

836
01:01:59.599 --> 01:02:00.480
of this stuff. If I canna
take that stuff and I get a forty

837
01:02:00.480 --> 01:02:04.079
seven I could put anything on there, you know, see one thirty,

838
01:02:04.079 --> 01:02:06.320
I can put even more stuff on. So we are just going through all

839
01:02:06.360 --> 01:02:10.559
the possibilities. And while we were
in isolation in Kuwait, that's what we're

840
01:02:10.599 --> 01:02:17.119
going through. And I remember being
told like, Okay, hey, we

841
01:02:17.239 --> 01:02:21.719
got the orders, you're going and
I go up to the S three shop

842
01:02:21.800 --> 01:02:25.239
and that's when General Granger whatever briefs
about where he'd put an SF team.

843
01:02:25.320 --> 01:02:29.119
Yeah, third id's gonna have to
go right here, and he puts his

844
01:02:29.239 --> 01:02:32.880
finger right exactly my reconsite, I'd
put an SF team right here. He's

845
01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:38.679
on CNN, CNN the night before
I'm going in, Thank you very much.

846
01:02:38.800 --> 01:02:44.119
Yeah, I'm like whatever. But
yeah, So they're like, hey,

847
01:02:44.440 --> 01:02:46.239
you're gonna take a C one thirty
over to this point. You're gonna

848
01:02:46.280 --> 01:02:50.800
link up with third time one sixtieth. Who's the commander, Bob Welch.

849
01:02:50.880 --> 01:02:55.239
Bob Welch is a brother of another
guy, another Welch, a great friend

850
01:02:55.280 --> 01:03:01.199
of mine, the Estuary in arpetime
when I was the too, And so

851
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:04.760
we're gonna grab the forty sevens.
Then we're going down to our R to

852
01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:07.920
refuel, and then we're gonna punch
in and Uh, so yeah, we

853
01:03:08.079 --> 01:03:13.440
land. I go talk to Colonel
Welch and I've been to his wedding,

854
01:03:14.760 --> 01:03:17.599
So again it starts clicking and and
we start doing all the planning, and

855
01:03:17.679 --> 01:03:21.519
I find the flight lead and we're
trying to figure it out, you know,

856
01:03:21.639 --> 01:03:24.800
and I got to do your what's
called the helicopter factor. If you

857
01:03:24.880 --> 01:03:29.880
need three, you play, you
make four because something's gonna happen. It

858
01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:32.119
did. We were so heavy,
every single one of our humbies was fourteen

859
01:03:32.199 --> 01:03:37.719
thousand pounds. Wow. And they
had done some maneuver and broke a landing

860
01:03:37.800 --> 01:03:40.920
gear, so they had the one
of the teams had one of one of

861
01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:45.719
my vehicles had to come off that
beat off that helicopter and go on another

862
01:03:45.760 --> 01:03:50.800
one. And we went down into
our r to do the refueling. And

863
01:03:50.880 --> 01:03:55.480
that's when we were you know that
point in top Gun Maverick where those tea

864
01:03:55.559 --> 01:04:01.280
lambs are going Hu. We were
flying under that under the Tomahawk Cruiseman under

865
01:04:01.400 --> 01:04:04.880
the Tomahawk. I mean, if
I saw that movie, that would have

866
01:04:04.920 --> 01:04:10.280
been exactly what I saw. I
could see those under my nods wow.

867
01:04:10.599 --> 01:04:13.960
And sitting on the tailgate of a
forty seven like several hundred of them going

868
01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:18.800
overhead. Yeah, that's fucking insane. It's amazing. Yeah, and and

869
01:04:18.920 --> 01:04:23.320
it's actually one of the creuchies that
I knew from before. The whole thing

870
01:04:23.480 --> 01:04:26.079
was just you know, you're like, this is awesome sharing that moment.

871
01:04:26.159 --> 01:04:32.000
Yeah. So just to lay out
sort of like the the table of organization

872
01:04:32.119 --> 01:04:38.360
and equipment a little bit, So
twelve and ODA going behind enemy lines to

873
01:04:38.440 --> 01:04:43.360
do this, and fifty miles behind
enemy lines and you have what three is

874
01:04:43.400 --> 01:04:46.760
it? Three gun trucks taking how
many birds over the border? Three?

875
01:04:46.960 --> 01:04:51.519
So? Uh three plus two DAPs
okay, okay, And I don't know

876
01:04:51.639 --> 01:04:57.039
if the little birds clear cleared the
trenches first or they did, but you

877
01:04:57.159 --> 01:05:00.039
heard a lot of fun. Yeah
yeah, but yeah. So the DAPs

878
01:05:00.039 --> 01:05:09.599
were leading and we flew in and
by the way it worked out, we

879
01:05:09.719 --> 01:05:13.719
were just going to do one remain
over day sight and so they got us

880
01:05:13.840 --> 01:05:17.880
up and they let us go.
One of the DAPs said they saw enemy

881
01:05:17.960 --> 01:05:24.760
four hundred meters this direction. And
I never heard anything anymore. You did

882
01:05:24.800 --> 01:05:27.280
it to me again, because they
did that in Afghanistan. Oh you got

883
01:05:27.280 --> 01:05:30.800
an enemy over here. Anyway,
We went down to just like in Raidar

884
01:05:30.840 --> 01:05:36.079
school, you conduct seals. They
sit around, hear nothing, see nothing,

885
01:05:36.199 --> 01:05:40.000
smell nothing. All right, let's
go start them up and let's go.

886
01:05:40.840 --> 01:05:44.360
And so we started moving over to
the remain over day sight and everything

887
01:05:44.559 --> 01:05:50.000
in the desert looks like the enemy. Yeah, contact three o'clock. Like,

888
01:05:50.159 --> 01:05:55.000
okay, it's not contact unless they're
shooting, right, you can say

889
01:05:55.159 --> 01:06:00.599
the enemy. Let's just say the
enemy. Just say let's not they contact

890
01:06:00.679 --> 01:06:04.280
unless they're shooting. Because we were
a pucker factor for the time. There

891
01:06:04.360 --> 01:06:06.840
is because they don't know who you're
going to run into, and there was

892
01:06:06.920 --> 01:06:11.320
no way anybody was going to save
us. Yeah. Did you guys have

893
01:06:11.480 --> 01:06:15.719
any any air stacked at the time
or were you you know, because everything

894
01:06:15.880 --> 01:06:21.320
was going on at that time.
You've got the border crossing way down south.

895
01:06:23.519 --> 01:06:27.159
I know they're doing some attack runs. The tomahawks just hit. Yeah,

896
01:06:27.320 --> 01:06:31.119
and that's always preparatory strike. So
you got infiltrated the same night that

897
01:06:31.280 --> 01:06:34.840
they were pushing across the BERM.
I honestly don't remember, Yeah, but

898
01:06:34.960 --> 01:06:39.760
I know it's the same night as
as the shock and all. Yeah,

899
01:06:39.880 --> 01:06:42.559
it must have been right right around
there, right around a couple of days

900
01:06:42.599 --> 01:06:47.079
before, right around so that first
night you guys maneuver your vehicles, you

901
01:06:47.159 --> 01:06:50.119
get to your first run site,
we go to remain over day sight.

902
01:06:53.559 --> 01:06:58.159
It is basically a depression and there's
a picture in your book, right,

903
01:06:58.360 --> 01:07:02.119
yeah, yeah, there's a depression. And if you walk out there,

904
01:07:02.239 --> 01:07:05.039
the only thing you could see is
if a guy was standing up out of

905
01:07:05.079 --> 01:07:10.480
the turret, which was perfect.
We're re main over day sight, and

906
01:07:10.599 --> 01:07:14.239
I've got deja vu, just like
Colonel o' connor, my Batian command at

907
01:07:14.280 --> 01:07:17.400
the time, was a team waiter
did an SR mission during desert storm,

908
01:07:17.679 --> 01:07:21.599
okay, and they were the ones
that had the Bedouins, And I popped

909
01:07:21.639 --> 01:07:25.880
my head up, all right,
Actually I don't. Shane, the one

910
01:07:25.920 --> 01:07:29.840
of my bravos, says, we
got people. Now, they're far enough

911
01:07:29.880 --> 01:07:35.159
with they're about a half mile away. But they're also up wind, so

912
01:07:35.320 --> 01:07:39.360
we're not down wind, so they're
not they've got a dog, they're not

913
01:07:39.400 --> 01:07:42.239
gonna smell us and everything else.
So we're up wind, which was very

914
01:07:42.320 --> 01:07:45.199
blessed, and we just I was
just keep an eye out for him.

915
01:07:45.880 --> 01:07:49.639
So we wait till it's dark again, and we start rolling up all the

916
01:07:49.719 --> 01:07:54.480
Camo and we started to reduce seals
again and we start them all up and

917
01:07:54.559 --> 01:07:59.800
we take off for the gap and
how about how long do you think that

918
01:08:00.239 --> 01:08:03.159
it took that second night? Forever? Yeah, because in your book,

919
01:08:03.199 --> 01:08:09.480
I mean you're worrying that the sun's
coming up right well for the rate over

920
01:08:09.599 --> 01:08:12.079
day side? Where were in the
sun's coming up? Was that one?

921
01:08:13.199 --> 01:08:19.800
But one of the one of the
trucks got stuck and behind us are headlights.

922
01:08:20.439 --> 01:08:25.920
Somebody is following us, whether they
heard it, they saw the tire

923
01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:29.399
marks or whatever, somebody has heard
us. So I've got the rear gun,

924
01:08:30.800 --> 01:08:33.239
you know, focused on them,
and we're figuring out how to pull

925
01:08:33.279 --> 01:08:40.439
them out. Remember I told you
we have hydraulic winches. When the engine

926
01:08:40.479 --> 01:08:46.159
overheats, the hydraulic winch shuts down. That wasn't after action review, right,

927
01:08:46.960 --> 01:08:51.960
no hydraulic winches. So what we
ended up doing was turning a truck

928
01:08:53.039 --> 01:08:57.640
around using a hydraulic wrench from a
working vehicle and pulled them out and then

929
01:08:57.680 --> 01:09:00.600
they were able to pull and then
we just kept on moving, you know,

930
01:09:00.840 --> 01:09:06.680
grout into Parker factor and everything else. But yeah, hydraulic winch overheating

931
01:09:06.720 --> 01:09:12.359
engine not good. It's tough for
those desert devironments like Afghanistan and Iraq also

932
01:09:12.439 --> 01:09:15.439
because you know, here in the
States, it would be rare, like

933
01:09:15.560 --> 01:09:20.119
we have roads everywhere, right,
and people drive on those roads, where

934
01:09:20.239 --> 01:09:28.199
in these other countries it's not uncommon
for civilians to like drive across a non

935
01:09:28.399 --> 01:09:31.520
road area or whatever else, like
out in a rural area. So it's

936
01:09:31.640 --> 01:09:36.439
very hard sometimes to identify, like
if people are out there just doing a

937
01:09:36.560 --> 01:09:42.600
river crossing because it's the quickest way
between villages, you know, or if

938
01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:46.760
it's a military element that's that's like
following you or looking for you or whatever

939
01:09:46.880 --> 01:09:53.840
else. But you have so as
a former rest too, you always think

940
01:09:53.960 --> 01:09:57.039
like the enemy, Yeah, where
are they, where are they moving?

941
01:09:57.479 --> 01:10:00.479
Who are your threats? And a
lot of times it's just you've got bedo

942
01:10:00.479 --> 01:10:04.479
wins everywhere. Yeah. So then
you're looking for animal tracks, yeah,

943
01:10:04.880 --> 01:10:10.119
water sources, shade the date,
palm forest and stuff like that. So

944
01:10:10.199 --> 01:10:15.239
you're trying. You can't avoid everything, right, but you can bypass,

945
01:10:15.399 --> 01:10:17.039
right. You can't doggleg a lot
of things, and that's what we did.

946
01:10:17.680 --> 01:10:20.239
So it wasn't so one of the
reasons it took you so long,

947
01:10:20.600 --> 01:10:24.960
not just because the truck got stuffed, but because you're you're not just going

948
01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:29.399
from A to B. You're making
this. We are on the very secuitiest

949
01:10:29.479 --> 01:10:32.159
route. Yeah, I mean I
think it was fifty four points in the

950
01:10:32.239 --> 01:10:36.960
E t rex. I put in
wow, because I wanted to avoid all

951
01:10:38.039 --> 01:10:42.319
of that stuff. You don't need
any high ground, which is where they're

952
01:10:42.319 --> 01:10:45.279
gonna be lazy and they're gonna sit
up on right and whether they've got their

953
01:10:45.359 --> 01:10:49.720
thia phones and it's just a bedo
win. He's like, hey, I

954
01:10:49.840 --> 01:10:54.279
want my one hundred DNR. I
just saw a truck come by at one

955
01:10:54.359 --> 01:10:58.359
am. You know, so you're
avoiding all of that stuff, So tell

956
01:10:58.439 --> 01:11:01.760
us about maneuvering the V into your
L P O P Like it sounds like

957
01:11:01.840 --> 01:11:08.399
you actually identified a pretty effective place
again by luck. By luck. It

958
01:11:10.359 --> 01:11:14.640
so a couple of funny things when
you're when you're doing translations and having been

959
01:11:14.680 --> 01:11:20.039
a former linguist. The gap we
were told is heavily mind. Well,

960
01:11:20.079 --> 01:11:26.680
when you're a defensive guy, that
means they're putting land mines everywhere. What

961
01:11:26.840 --> 01:11:33.359
we later find out it was heavily
mind for gypsum. Okay, right,

962
01:11:34.479 --> 01:11:40.680
great, right, and it's an
old gypsum mind so now it's an artillery

963
01:11:41.079 --> 01:11:47.119
impact area. So yeah, so
I had seen the divits, I'd seen

964
01:11:47.159 --> 01:11:49.640
the depressions and everything else. I'm
like, Okay, that's probably a place

965
01:11:49.680 --> 01:11:55.000
we're gonna play. We're gonna avoid
this power plant, cement plant. Over

966
01:11:55.039 --> 01:12:01.800
here. There's this road on the
southern edge that in satellite imagery looks like

967
01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:06.039
an oil trench. These guys at
US analysts, I don't know. Oh,

968
01:12:06.159 --> 01:12:11.159
they filled it with oil? What
are you talking about? This isn't

969
01:12:11.199 --> 01:12:15.199
This isn't nineteen ninety, this is
two thousand. They're not filling this with

970
01:12:15.399 --> 01:12:16.840
oil, right, It's just an
absorb bo. We find out it was

971
01:12:16.840 --> 01:12:19.640
an asphalt road. I'm like,
how do you I mean, it looks

972
01:12:19.640 --> 01:12:23.840
like a radio imagery. It looks
like oil because that's what asphalt is made

973
01:12:23.880 --> 01:12:27.119
of. But I'm like, how
do you miss all the construction equipment that

974
01:12:27.239 --> 01:12:30.760
it took to make this road.
So anyway, we come across the road,

975
01:12:30.840 --> 01:12:34.359
we get down and it's a great
heide sight. I mean it is.

976
01:12:34.840 --> 01:12:38.039
We got down in the river and
we did a hard turn. Chris

977
01:12:38.119 --> 01:12:45.000
found it and walked in and I
mean it is probably ten to fifteen feet

978
01:12:45.039 --> 01:12:47.000
taller than the vehicles, and we
can come in and we can get all

979
01:12:47.039 --> 01:12:53.359
three in a kind of a chicken
foot pattern. We've got perfect camouflage.

980
01:12:53.359 --> 01:12:56.479
We've got those camouflage, and we
just start putting up We do our little

981
01:12:57.119 --> 01:13:02.199
perimeter, you know, ranger ranger
base operations, and you know, just

982
01:13:02.239 --> 01:13:06.279
start putting up eyes on and try
and watching the road that goes up the

983
01:13:06.359 --> 01:13:10.920
south, watching the road that goes
from east to west, and just looking.

984
01:13:11.560 --> 01:13:14.840
Did you guys like dig spider holes
or do hide sites? You didn't

985
01:13:14.840 --> 01:13:19.000
have to where we were at.
We we we started pushing out patrols at

986
01:13:19.119 --> 01:13:25.840
night. The problem is we didn't
want to get too separated because we're just

987
01:13:25.880 --> 01:13:29.039
in the midle of and I and
I had the same faith and enough get

988
01:13:29.199 --> 01:13:31.039
or I racked that I had in
Afghanistan that we weren't going to get casts

989
01:13:31.960 --> 01:13:35.520
for thirty five to forty minutes.
That's a long time to be shot,

990
01:13:35.720 --> 01:13:41.479
right, and I don't I wasn't
going through that again. And because all

991
01:13:41.560 --> 01:13:44.960
the all the vehicles were in defilaid, we couldn't even use a vehicle to

992
01:13:45.000 --> 01:13:46.840
help, right, you know,
the win the walls were like this,

993
01:13:47.119 --> 01:13:53.079
right, So yeah, it was
on your belly, crawling up at night

994
01:13:53.119 --> 01:13:56.520
and then just looking and then you
know, after what day four is when

995
01:13:56.560 --> 01:14:01.479
the SMaL hit just to Lynch Era. You know that big We've talked about

996
01:14:01.479 --> 01:14:03.760
it here a few times. Yeah, yeah, we you know, we

997
01:14:03.880 --> 01:14:11.279
were in full mask and everything else
and just it we were Christmas dust cookies.

998
01:14:11.399 --> 01:14:15.039
Yeah, we were covering the guns, just trying to survive. I've

999
01:14:15.079 --> 01:14:18.000
got Oakley's with pits in them,
yeah, from the pit from the sand.

1000
01:14:18.119 --> 01:14:21.640
And there were a few other like
well maybe in retrospect they're funny.

1001
01:14:23.359 --> 01:14:28.279
There's some problems with the FBCB two. So yeah, the Blue Force tracker.

1002
01:14:29.079 --> 01:14:33.760
So because we're in the death Laide
and the takeoff angle just go to

1003
01:14:33.840 --> 01:14:38.560
the end. The takeoff angle is
like at nine degrees or ten degrees.

1004
01:14:39.199 --> 01:14:42.680
So that first night we wait,
you know, we're sending in our ANGUS

1005
01:14:42.800 --> 01:14:45.399
report. We come back up,
they're like, hey, we've been trying

1006
01:14:45.439 --> 01:14:47.079
to call you is like, dude, we're right here. They're like,

1007
01:14:47.119 --> 01:14:53.560
we thought you were dead because nobody
can see a Blue Force tracker. So

1008
01:14:53.680 --> 01:14:57.000
we had to dismount one and stick
it up there because again we were so

1009
01:14:57.239 --> 01:15:04.319
low. And from then we were
getting calls from that attack helicopter regiment that

1010
01:15:04.439 --> 01:15:09.960
came through British tornadoes and everybody else
saying hey, what are you doing down

1011
01:15:10.000 --> 01:15:14.880
there? Or Ktack is talking to
everybody. We said Blue Force tracker.

1012
01:15:14.920 --> 01:15:16.680
We thought it was something weird,
you know, anybody was up here and

1013
01:15:16.760 --> 01:15:23.279
I was talking And that's also when
third I D was slowed due to the

1014
01:15:24.640 --> 01:15:30.000
dust storm. That's what I got
word afterwards that President Bush and Rumsfeld kept

1015
01:15:30.039 --> 01:15:32.239
asking They're like, hey, how's
that team, and Sentcom is like,

1016
01:15:32.359 --> 01:15:35.920
the only good thing that was happening
was there was an s F team out

1017
01:15:35.960 --> 01:15:43.319
in the middle of nowhere and it's
still blinking. It's scary that these that

1018
01:15:43.479 --> 01:15:46.560
these air units they were passing by
you and saying that they didn't know anybody

1019
01:15:46.760 --> 01:15:50.880
was up there because it's just from
that Blue Force tracker. But the thing

1020
01:15:50.960 --> 01:15:59.119
is they don't have Blue Force and
Stinky had his I f F, but

1021
01:15:59.199 --> 01:16:00.439
he has to be transmit when it's
on. It were to turn it on

1022
01:16:00.640 --> 01:16:05.880
because those things don't have batteries for
ten days and our three day mission ended

1023
01:16:05.960 --> 01:16:10.960
up being nine and a half days. And then the other uh, you

1024
01:16:11.039 --> 01:16:15.279
know, maybe humorous only in retrospect
is the batteries and the vehicles dying.

1025
01:16:15.920 --> 01:16:23.239
So yeah, that so, because
you're so far from in front of everybody

1026
01:16:23.359 --> 01:16:28.319
and diesel engines are not quiet.
We didn't run them. We also weren't

1027
01:16:28.359 --> 01:16:31.199
run We were only running one radio
and it was a man pack. But

1028
01:16:31.600 --> 01:16:39.640
there's a trickle drain on your hum
bees and they were dead. When it

1029
01:16:39.800 --> 01:16:42.439
time time to come, it was
like click click and you know that,

1030
01:16:42.680 --> 01:16:45.840
you know that sound car click click
click click. I'm like, okay,

1031
01:16:45.880 --> 01:16:50.560
what are we gonna do? And
for some reason, when I left the

1032
01:16:50.600 --> 01:16:58.439
house of Fort Campbell, I grabbed
a spool of wire and we started doing

1033
01:16:58.479 --> 01:17:02.000
everything in parallel and syria of all
the vehicles together. Daisy chained them together,

1034
01:17:02.079 --> 01:17:06.840
Easy chained together and started that one
and then moved it over the second

1035
01:17:06.880 --> 01:17:10.359
one, started that one, moved
over the third one. Because you don't

1036
01:17:10.399 --> 01:17:15.720
have jumper cables, you have slave
cables. There's another aar comment, you

1037
01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:19.760
can't jump something like that if you
don't have jumper cables. Yeah. So,

1038
01:17:20.560 --> 01:17:29.000
yeah, you were out there flapping. That's why the Immaculate mission is

1039
01:17:29.039 --> 01:17:35.560
what it's called in John Gresham's book
Beyond Helen Back, so it's in there.

1040
01:17:35.560 --> 01:17:39.760
It's like that I don't know the
five, six or seven greatest s

1041
01:17:39.920 --> 01:17:43.880
F missions, And that's why they
say he goes. If it wasn't for

1042
01:17:44.000 --> 01:17:45.319
that, you had the greatest mission
ever. I go, it was still

1043
01:17:45.359 --> 01:17:49.720
a good mission, right, Yeah, we screwed up on the radios,

1044
01:17:49.760 --> 01:17:53.960
but it was still a good mission. But you were still able to self

1045
01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:56.920
recover though, like you didn't like
you didn't have to blow the vehicles in

1046
01:17:57.000 --> 01:17:59.720
place and hump it out because you
couldn't get we were going to do that.

1047
01:17:59.800 --> 01:18:01.039
Yeah, the next couple of days
we went from bad to worse.

1048
01:18:01.199 --> 01:18:04.479
Yeah, So and then tell us
about you know when third ID final does

1049
01:18:04.520 --> 01:18:09.800
push up to your location, how
your mission starts to change. So you

1050
01:18:09.880 --> 01:18:17.079
know you have to do a passage
of lines somehow, And I knew that

1051
01:18:17.239 --> 01:18:24.079
I wasn't going to go with all
these young privates driving these fifty four ton

1052
01:18:24.279 --> 01:18:28.239
tanks coming forward and got gunners and
everything else, I am not popping my

1053
01:18:28.359 --> 01:18:31.760
head out going we're here, So
we're gonna do a passage of lines by

1054
01:18:31.800 --> 01:18:35.920
bypass, we're gonna stay underground.
Well, we're gonna move from where we're

1055
01:18:35.960 --> 01:18:42.600
at farther south. We're going to
stay underground, and then once the lead

1056
01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:45.640
element gets passed, they're gonna stop, and then we're going to do in

1057
01:18:45.760 --> 01:18:51.720
ISLID laser in the and rope them
in. So we did that. We

1058
01:18:51.800 --> 01:18:58.239
got there early, ended up going
through a minefield, which we didn't realize.

1059
01:18:58.399 --> 01:19:00.960
Real mindfield. Yeah, yeah,
a real minefield. In fact,

1060
01:19:01.119 --> 01:19:11.600
Chris the Fox actually walked us through
it. Yeah. And so we got

1061
01:19:11.640 --> 01:19:15.279
there early. All the engines were
cold and they couldn't see us on thermals.

1062
01:19:15.560 --> 01:19:18.479
I go, because we're definitely,
I said, just look for the

1063
01:19:18.600 --> 01:19:23.800
islid and they saw it, and
then they moved and brought up a scout

1064
01:19:23.880 --> 01:19:29.840
section and we briefed the lead company
commander, then the lead battalion commander,

1065
01:19:29.920 --> 01:19:34.319
the lead brigade commander right now all
over this where we had identified the minefields

1066
01:19:34.319 --> 01:19:38.000
that we saw, and I told
him, I go, this is what

1067
01:19:38.119 --> 01:19:42.479
we've seen. There may be others. Just because I'm not writing it doesn't

1068
01:19:42.520 --> 01:19:45.479
mean because I'm not putting that on
myself. I'm not gonna say, hey,

1069
01:19:45.840 --> 01:19:48.399
you know you said there were no
minefields. No, I said,

1070
01:19:48.399 --> 01:19:54.399
I didn't see one. So they
went through pretty successful. They actually were

1071
01:19:54.439 --> 01:19:59.600
able to plow those minefields through,
and they went through the dam and you

1072
01:19:59.680 --> 01:20:02.319
know the way to Bagdad. Did
they have dozer like construction dozers. They

1073
01:20:02.359 --> 01:20:05.720
had dozers, but it was really
for talk. Stuff they had with the

1074
01:20:05.800 --> 01:20:13.880
tanks. They had the the mind
clearing plows and rollers and chains and I

1075
01:20:13.920 --> 01:20:16.000
mean all the stuff you've ever seen
in conventional They had all that stuff.

1076
01:20:16.760 --> 01:20:19.960
But the dozers were mainly just to
dig burns around talks. How were you

1077
01:20:20.119 --> 01:20:25.319
guys able to identify the minefields?
What were the tell tell signatures? On

1078
01:20:25.399 --> 01:20:29.319
the way in, we just drove
the luck of God is what that was.

1079
01:20:30.079 --> 01:20:31.600
And on the way out you just
saw them. Now, the hasty

1080
01:20:31.720 --> 01:20:38.199
ones. So what would they just
did hasty? I mean you saw foreign

1081
01:20:38.279 --> 01:20:41.680
military minds is what. I will
just leave it at that. All those

1082
01:20:41.840 --> 01:20:44.439
all those countries that signed them,
we're not going to use minds, or

1083
01:20:44.479 --> 01:20:47.079
they traded them for oil. They
were all over the place and literally just

1084
01:20:47.159 --> 01:20:53.680
sat there on roads, some semi
buried in the dirt, tickle sticks up

1085
01:20:53.760 --> 01:20:58.960
top, all over the place.
Rarely did we see any except on our

1086
01:20:59.119 --> 01:21:03.479
x fiel that actually buried. And
then after you got reintegrated back in with

1087
01:21:03.720 --> 01:21:09.560
American forces, you're no longer behind
enemy lines. It sounded like there's a

1088
01:21:09.600 --> 01:21:12.840
lot of frustration on your part.
It's like it's like, what's my next

1089
01:21:12.960 --> 01:21:16.000
mission? What am I supposed to
be doing. So yeah, it I

1090
01:21:16.079 --> 01:21:18.640
mean, we're not even in a
fog of war. We're just we're back

1091
01:21:18.680 --> 01:21:20.960
into chaos. That's why, that's
why I had to put this in the

1092
01:21:21.000 --> 01:21:26.600
book. You know, Linda Robinson
wrote the book Masters of Kings. I'm

1093
01:21:26.680 --> 01:21:30.520
just a disciple of chaos. It's
just crazy. Yeah, we were.

1094
01:21:31.279 --> 01:21:35.000
So we'd been around Carbala for so
long, and third I D had basically

1095
01:21:38.079 --> 01:21:42.239
did a blocking position, and then
we found out the hundred and first was

1096
01:21:42.800 --> 01:21:46.000
to do a relief in place.
But the brigade commander Third I D has

1097
01:21:46.119 --> 01:21:50.399
no idea what's going on. So
I'm calling and you know, fifth groups

1098
01:21:50.479 --> 01:21:53.520
like hey, go talk to the
hundred first. I'm like, well,

1099
01:21:54.199 --> 01:21:56.760
you know, you want to look
up the CEO I or anything the phone

1100
01:21:56.800 --> 01:22:00.239
book, and I can't find anybody. So literally we bounce around the next

1101
01:22:00.279 --> 01:22:05.439
three days trying to find him,
and nobody knows or nobody's gonna tell us,

1102
01:22:06.000 --> 01:22:10.680
you know, when the brigade talk
and then the division tack, and

1103
01:22:10.760 --> 01:22:15.479
then the division talk, which is
like four circus tents, you know,

1104
01:22:15.159 --> 01:22:17.199
and you know, I got colonels
going, well who are you? I'm

1105
01:22:17.239 --> 01:22:19.199
like, well, I'm the team
leader. I've been here for two weeks,

1106
01:22:19.920 --> 01:22:26.079
you know, I'm just trying to
help, and we couldn't figure it

1107
01:22:26.119 --> 01:22:29.000
out. And then went back up
and when I was talking to the brigade

1108
01:22:29.000 --> 01:22:31.399
commander, that's when the hundred and
first did their assault inside. And then

1109
01:22:31.520 --> 01:22:39.079
that was the Battle of Karbala.
And is I'm trying to recall from the

1110
01:22:39.159 --> 01:22:42.680
book, it sounded like you guys
ended up inside one of the cities,

1111
01:22:42.800 --> 01:22:47.520
right. So yeah, after the
clearing the surrender of all the people,

1112
01:22:48.239 --> 01:22:53.000
the fighters in Carbala, we actually
went into the city and that was when

1113
01:22:53.119 --> 01:22:58.920
they said, okay, you need
to basically start up the city, figure

1114
01:22:58.960 --> 01:23:01.479
out who the government is, start
them up, figure out who the mayor

1115
01:23:01.600 --> 01:23:05.760
is. Excuse me, vetom,
figure out get it standing up, because

1116
01:23:05.800 --> 01:23:10.720
you're not leaving until they can stand
on their own. So we went in

1117
01:23:11.960 --> 01:23:15.000
saw this one area, double walled
compound, ended up being Carbala University.

1118
01:23:16.000 --> 01:23:18.800
Pulled in there. They were waving
us down, and we went in and

1119
01:23:19.439 --> 01:23:24.479
talked to them and we're figuring out
what while they were waving us because they

1120
01:23:24.520 --> 01:23:29.039
were getting looted. People were coming
in breaking stuff, stealing computers and they're

1121
01:23:29.159 --> 01:23:32.960
like, will you stay here,
So you know, Alex Team Sart and

1122
01:23:33.039 --> 01:23:35.119
I we were talking about it and
it's like, hey, it's a double

1123
01:23:35.159 --> 01:23:40.000
walled compound. We just got to
figure out how to defend it because we've

1124
01:23:40.039 --> 01:23:44.319
still got to do green bray stuff, you know. And the Bravos did

1125
01:23:44.399 --> 01:23:49.880
great setting it up. Got a
couple of the local families to live.

1126
01:23:49.960 --> 01:23:56.319
There were huts in each of the
Cardinal direction corners. So the payment for

1127
01:23:56.399 --> 01:23:59.640
them was, hey, we'll give
you enough money for food. You tell

1128
01:23:59.720 --> 01:24:01.880
us what's going on, and you
fire your gun. If anybody comes over

1129
01:24:01.960 --> 01:24:05.359
the wall, don't shoot them,
just fire the gun and then we'll come

1130
01:24:05.439 --> 01:24:10.840
run. And then we started working
with the school and then the conventional forces

1131
01:24:10.880 --> 01:24:15.199
as they came through, trying because
you know, eleven s F guys can

1132
01:24:15.279 --> 01:24:18.720
either defend themselves or they can do
operations. You can't do both, right,

1133
01:24:19.319 --> 01:24:24.399
So that's when as teams were going, units were coming through. We

1134
01:24:24.479 --> 01:24:27.640
had eighty second, we had the
Marines, we had you know, brigades

1135
01:24:27.680 --> 01:24:30.800
and batons were coming through. In
exchange for you know, getting them chicken

1136
01:24:30.840 --> 01:24:33.880
dinners or having a place for them
to sleep in a protected area, they

1137
01:24:33.920 --> 01:24:40.119
would pull security for us. So
we did that for probably the next three

1138
01:24:40.199 --> 01:24:44.199
months, Wow, standing up figuring, you know, vetting, you know,

1139
01:24:44.239 --> 01:24:47.000
because again at the beginning, you
had the DA had somebody who should

1140
01:24:47.000 --> 01:24:55.520
be in charge of uh Carbala and
the State Department had an idea we should

1141
01:24:55.520 --> 01:24:58.079
be in charge of Carbama and the
Department of Defense. And I'm like,

1142
01:24:58.159 --> 01:25:00.800
okay, how about the locals?
Right, So that's when we start vetting

1143
01:25:00.840 --> 01:25:05.159
and you know, side usef and
so a little bit of Lawrence of Arabia

1144
01:25:05.239 --> 01:25:12.840
here. It was crazy. And
how were there multiple like families uh vying

1145
01:25:12.920 --> 01:25:15.800
for influence? Like how are you
figuring? How are you navigating the social

1146
01:25:16.239 --> 01:25:21.319
situation to set up the next Carballer
government? You know the way they do

1147
01:25:21.439 --> 01:25:27.399
your security clearance? You pick your
friends, right then they go talk to

1148
01:25:27.439 --> 01:25:29.960
your friends and who is his friends? You don't go talk to them,

1149
01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:31.720
You talked to the third the third
ring. Right, that's the way you

1150
01:25:31.800 --> 01:25:33.720
do it. That's the way we
would start doing it. And like,

1151
01:25:33.760 --> 01:25:35.359
hey, do you know this guy? No, I don't know him.

1152
01:25:35.560 --> 01:25:39.479
Well he says he's the mayor,
he's not the mayor or. I don't

1153
01:25:39.520 --> 01:25:41.880
know who the mayor was. There's
some people that just didn't know, right,

1154
01:25:42.439 --> 01:25:45.279
you know. And then you know
you had restaurant owners and this,

1155
01:25:45.399 --> 01:25:47.239
and people had agendas and like that, and you just had to still,

1156
01:25:47.359 --> 01:25:50.560
you know, you had to filter
through it and figure out I mean,

1157
01:25:50.640 --> 01:25:56.680
and what we kept found with side
you sef was he was basically I think

1158
01:25:56.720 --> 01:25:59.880
it was like the assistant mayor.
Nobody knows what happened to the mayor,

1159
01:26:00.520 --> 01:26:05.199
but everybody liked him. And then
you know, the police chief, well

1160
01:26:05.199 --> 01:26:09.159
they didn't like the police chief.
Well everybody doesn't know where he went either,

1161
01:26:10.039 --> 01:26:12.800
but this guy should be the police
chief. And then we then we

1162
01:26:12.920 --> 01:26:15.800
would go ask other people. Then
we'd ask how you do said for like,

1163
01:26:15.880 --> 01:26:17.239
okay, we think this is police
chief, Like, well I don't

1164
01:26:17.279 --> 01:26:23.319
like him, would he be a
good police chief? And he's like yes,

1165
01:26:23.560 --> 01:26:25.960
okay, okay, then he's a
police chief. I don't care if

1166
01:26:26.000 --> 01:26:30.319
you like him. We're not doing
this game again, you know, And

1167
01:26:30.319 --> 01:26:33.439
like I did in Afghanistan, it's
like it's like yeah, it's like uh,

1168
01:26:33.720 --> 01:26:38.279
you know, high school student government
or something like that. Everybody's your

1169
01:26:38.319 --> 01:26:41.520
friend and then if he's not your
friend, then he's you know, a

1170
01:26:41.600 --> 01:26:46.039
Baptist party, Like no, just
stop. You know, it's like modern

1171
01:26:46.079 --> 01:26:49.520
day swat you know, swatting is
what people are doing. I don't like

1172
01:26:49.640 --> 01:26:51.880
Jack, We're gonna swat his house
and like, oh my god, there's

1173
01:26:51.880 --> 01:26:56.479
a lady screaming she's gonna die.
You know, No, that's what they

1174
01:26:56.520 --> 01:27:00.399
were doing. We're doing it all
the time. So yeah, for the

1175
01:27:00.439 --> 01:27:02.640
next ninety days, were you just
trying to figure out and let them stand

1176
01:27:02.680 --> 01:27:06.079
their own government up? And you
know, And I got a hold of

1177
01:27:06.279 --> 01:27:11.960
Major Nero or Major Loanan actually this
is now Major Loanan, the new company

1178
01:27:12.000 --> 01:27:16.800
commander. What was our exit criteria? Well he was in Afghanistan. He's

1179
01:27:16.800 --> 01:27:19.000
like, I don't know what you're
talking about. Well, Major Niro again,

1180
01:27:19.079 --> 01:27:25.199
my company commander twice is now the
Battalions three. So I'm like,

1181
01:27:25.279 --> 01:27:29.439
hey, what's the exit criteria?
Right? He goes, you need to

1182
01:27:29.520 --> 01:27:34.720
do an area assessment and with all
the hierarchy, who's in charge, where

1183
01:27:34.800 --> 01:27:40.319
they are pictures of everybody and everything
else. And I go done deal as

1184
01:27:40.319 --> 01:27:44.520
a civil affairs team had just arrived
from nineteenth Group and so they were doing

1185
01:27:44.520 --> 01:27:46.600
it and I said, okay,
I get to leave when we've done all

1186
01:27:46.640 --> 01:27:50.720
this stuff. So I have about
seven megabytes and at the time that's a

1187
01:27:50.760 --> 01:27:55.479
lot of information. He goes,
I got five. I go, you

1188
01:27:55.600 --> 01:27:58.920
get to seven and we'll trade and
I can leave. How long are you

1189
01:27:58.960 --> 01:28:00.800
here? He goes, I'm here
for twelve months. I go, okay,

1190
01:28:01.239 --> 01:28:04.199
I had all the hierarchy, he
had all the area assessment stuff.

1191
01:28:05.399 --> 01:28:09.399
We started sending it back and it
was just shutting down the PSC five and

1192
01:28:09.479 --> 01:28:13.920
some major neros like I trust you
come on back, and we were balls

1193
01:28:13.960 --> 01:28:16.720
in the walls leaving while Fourth ID
was coming up Pipeline Road because remember they

1194
01:28:16.760 --> 01:28:19.840
had come through Turkey, were denied, so they had come all the way

1195
01:28:19.880 --> 01:28:25.880
around. But uh yeah, it
just you know, just buy the sea

1196
01:28:25.920 --> 01:28:30.640
of your pants. You're standing stuff
up, just by the book and then

1197
01:28:30.720 --> 01:28:35.119
heading back home and then heading back
home. And then so when I went

1198
01:28:35.239 --> 01:28:41.640
back home, that was my twenty
sixth month as an ODA team leader,

1199
01:28:41.800 --> 01:28:46.119
which is a lot of Team two
combat tours, which is pretty lucky.

1200
01:28:48.520 --> 01:28:54.439
So they made me the battalion S
four for about six months had a battalion

1201
01:28:54.520 --> 01:29:00.680
budget of five hundred thousand dollars and
I spent one point two million because it

1202
01:29:00.840 --> 01:29:04.119
was g Watt funding and they didn't
say no. And that that's when I

1203
01:29:04.159 --> 01:29:09.760
started campaigning because I want a Delta
company. And when I was in tenth

1204
01:29:09.800 --> 01:29:13.760
group as a support you know,
support guy. You're under Delta Company,

1205
01:29:13.880 --> 01:29:17.239
and I wanted that position. And
it was a little controversial for a long

1206
01:29:17.319 --> 01:29:20.920
taber to take the support company,
right, not as not as team leader,

1207
01:29:21.920 --> 01:29:25.319
or I shouldn't say not as an
eighteen series, not for fifth group.

1208
01:29:25.600 --> 01:29:29.079
It always been. In fact,
the first Sardan had always been a

1209
01:29:29.159 --> 01:29:33.119
long time really because there aren't many
first positions for an eighteen series. Yeah,

1210
01:29:33.720 --> 01:29:41.399
okay, so I campaigned pretty hard
and you know, very thankful.

1211
01:29:41.439 --> 01:29:45.479
Colonel Connor said, yeah, so
I got to take that, and I

1212
01:29:45.640 --> 01:29:48.399
was supposed to. He said you
need to pick your first Sarden, you

1213
01:29:48.479 --> 01:29:50.800
know, And I was talking a
bunch of eighteen series and I'm like,

1214
01:29:51.159 --> 01:29:56.199
you know, and this was the
controversial part of it. I got it

1215
01:29:56.239 --> 01:30:02.560
backwards. Rocky Sorder was an A
ninety eight. Him and I were roommates

1216
01:30:02.600 --> 01:30:08.720
in Bannock in nineteen ninety. He
was a ninety eight golf Arabic. He's

1217
01:30:08.760 --> 01:30:16.520
a fat redneck from Utah and he's
fluent in Arabic fluent later on to go

1218
01:30:16.640 --> 01:30:23.840
work for other agencies, making big
Bucks fluent. He was also a former

1219
01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:29.560
eleven Charlie Mortarman and I knew him. And what better first started to have

1220
01:30:29.720 --> 01:30:35.600
in a support company than a support
guy and Perry Bear group. Sar Major

1221
01:30:35.720 --> 01:30:40.359
called me up and he goes,
got a question about your first Sarten.

1222
01:30:40.800 --> 01:30:43.840
I go, okay, he goes, that's normally an eighteen series. I

1223
01:30:43.960 --> 01:30:48.079
go, I got it, Sar
Major, we're going to war and he's

1224
01:30:48.119 --> 01:30:53.479
a fluent Arabic speaker and he's a
former eighteen Charlie, and I need these

1225
01:30:53.560 --> 01:30:58.840
guys to know to trust him.
He goes, okay, didn't bad.

1226
01:30:58.880 --> 01:31:04.159
And I and we trained them up
and put them through nine to mili M

1227
01:31:04.279 --> 01:31:10.920
four two four, nine to forty
fifty cow because they're the ones that ran

1228
01:31:11.439 --> 01:31:15.880
the convoys, right, you know, and you know the previous battalion had

1229
01:31:15.920 --> 01:31:20.239
a problem and they had an actual
discharge and they took the guns away from

1230
01:31:20.319 --> 01:31:27.760
the soldiers for the support guys in
combat. Wow. I don't know if

1231
01:31:27.800 --> 01:31:34.479
you can even legally do that.
I don't know. So they were were

1232
01:31:34.479 --> 01:31:39.359
they running con were they running convoys
with no without weapons? Now they gave

1233
01:31:39.359 --> 01:31:41.479
them the weapons, okay, yeah, so they went to what they do

1234
01:31:41.560 --> 01:31:45.079
weapons. But see they never did
life fire test fires. They didn't have

1235
01:31:45.119 --> 01:31:46.920
straight SOPs they had a couple of
things and I'm just like, no,

1236
01:31:47.479 --> 01:31:55.720
you. So I had my support
team leader was a former Marine came in

1237
01:31:55.840 --> 01:32:00.520
as now a logistics guy, so
he's a support platoon leader. And I

1238
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:06.039
had a guy as an eighteen echo
was in between teams, and I said,

1239
01:32:06.520 --> 01:32:12.840
you guys are the conboy commanders.
You're the NCO. You're the officer

1240
01:32:13.680 --> 01:32:16.479
every convoy that goes out, you
go out. Anybody that comes on your

1241
01:32:16.479 --> 01:32:20.039
conboy, you're the conmot commander.
I don't care whether it's me. I'm

1242
01:32:20.079 --> 01:32:23.880
now a major. I don't care
where it's the colonel. I don't care

1243
01:32:23.920 --> 01:32:27.359
if the general officer. You're the
convoy commander. Like Sarah can't do that'

1244
01:32:27.439 --> 01:32:30.279
Like no, you have to.
You know the SOPs, you know the

1245
01:32:30.399 --> 01:32:33.680
calls, you know the combat,
you know what everybody's gonna do. You

1246
01:32:33.760 --> 01:32:38.079
know who to call, you know
the call signs, you know the frequencies.

1247
01:32:38.600 --> 01:32:41.239
You're gonna do it. Every single
time. You will do a pre

1248
01:32:41.359 --> 01:32:45.760
brief, you will do a life
fire weapons check, and you'll do an

1249
01:32:45.760 --> 01:32:48.000
AAR and you'll recover the vehicles getting
ready to do a convoy for the next

1250
01:32:48.079 --> 01:32:53.439
day. Every single time. And
I still have the logs. In fact

1251
01:32:53.439 --> 01:32:57.119
that we've used the logs because a
couple guys later on we're running the Combat

1252
01:32:57.119 --> 01:33:00.520
Action badge. But yeah, I
still have the logs, every single one

1253
01:33:00.520 --> 01:33:03.439
of them. How many convoys did
they run during that deployment? They did

1254
01:33:03.560 --> 01:33:10.880
seventy three, Wow, fifty four
contacts doing fifty four context. That's incredible.

1255
01:33:10.920 --> 01:33:15.079
That's crazy running all the logistics to
different Fifth Group teams around Iraq,

1256
01:33:15.640 --> 01:33:18.840
not just Fifth Group down in the
Green Zone. Two. Oh yeah,

1257
01:33:19.640 --> 01:33:27.479
we you know, I remember a
couple of them because when I went,

1258
01:33:27.560 --> 01:33:32.800
I was a fifty cal gutner Major
Smith the battalion XO fifty cal gutner when

1259
01:33:32.880 --> 01:33:41.119
he went, because that was the
most casually producing weapon. But it's also

1260
01:33:41.479 --> 01:33:44.960
a lot of the support guys didn't
get to that level, right, you

1261
01:33:45.000 --> 01:33:48.520
know, I saw an eighteen Bravo
a weapon sardant have a misfire on fifty

1262
01:33:48.600 --> 01:33:51.720
cal at the enemy because he didn't
double charge it. You know, you

1263
01:33:51.840 --> 01:34:00.760
got a double charge, he didn't
a chunk, so like no, so

1264
01:34:00.880 --> 01:34:05.600
yeah, that's probably the most senior
ranking gunner in all of the convents.

1265
01:34:06.840 --> 01:34:12.039
But like I remember one of them
cause we were going, uh April Uprising

1266
01:34:12.279 --> 01:34:16.880
two thousand and four. Sorry,
Major Stack had not gotten killed yet.

1267
01:34:17.079 --> 01:34:26.279
We were going to Taji No,
not Taji Ramadi, and Fallujah. We

1268
01:34:26.359 --> 01:34:32.239
had putting the team on the other
side four to two, and the enemy

1269
01:34:32.279 --> 01:34:35.960
had basically cut off their power and
they're like, oh, we need power,

1270
01:34:36.439 --> 01:34:42.960
Like okay, So we got two
forty kW generators. Put'em on

1271
01:34:43.119 --> 01:34:45.039
a semi, put their water,
their food, and everything else in that

1272
01:34:45.159 --> 01:34:50.920
semi, and we're going loaded for
bear. So we put that. By

1273
01:34:50.960 --> 01:34:58.319
this time, we have double armed
most of the hum vs. The picture

1274
01:34:58.359 --> 01:35:02.680
on the banner that is a kevlar
seat because we started putting kevlar seats in

1275
01:35:02.680 --> 01:35:10.079
the humbies. That is actually a
kevlar seat mounted on a pod. And

1276
01:35:10.199 --> 01:35:14.600
that is a two forty golf on
the front. And I'm in back.

1277
01:35:15.640 --> 01:35:17.800
So I've got a turret with a
fifty col gunner and i got a two

1278
01:35:17.880 --> 01:35:24.800
forty. We've taken one inch plywood
and draped kevlar blankets, so I've got

1279
01:35:24.880 --> 01:35:28.319
some protection in the front and I've
got my seat in the back, and

1280
01:35:28.439 --> 01:35:34.039
we're going to Fallujah. And both
directions were in firefights, Mad Max,

1281
01:35:34.239 --> 01:35:39.720
Yeah, just because they are,
you know, just like Jay was talking

1282
01:35:39.720 --> 01:35:43.479
about they were back from the windows
shooting. You could they were actually the

1283
01:35:43.560 --> 01:35:48.680
second the second buildings. Yeah,
and you know, a'm small beast small

1284
01:35:48.800 --> 01:35:53.640
yeah, yeah, yeah. It's
it's when they're doing stuff like that,

1285
01:35:53.720 --> 01:35:57.199
it's so hard to identify first off, where the fires come from, and

1286
01:35:57.279 --> 01:36:00.239
then and then to engage them back
because you don't Well, it's funny because

1287
01:36:00.279 --> 01:36:04.880
when we pulled up there, the
Marines had the highway blocked because it's a

1288
01:36:05.279 --> 01:36:10.920
it's an elevated highway around the east
and the north side. So you're at

1289
01:36:10.960 --> 01:36:15.399
the second floor level. They're like, hey, nobody's going, you know,

1290
01:36:15.680 --> 01:36:17.720
and Lieutenant Shilling is like, ay, sir, they're not letting us

1291
01:36:17.720 --> 01:36:21.560
go. I go send them back
to me. How you doing, I'm

1292
01:36:21.600 --> 01:36:26.680
major running and we're going, sure, why are you not the conboy commander

1293
01:36:27.359 --> 01:36:30.880
long story the tennis, Shilling is
and we're going, okay, And we

1294
01:36:31.000 --> 01:36:34.399
did and you know, unloaded it, got them all their stuff and made

1295
01:36:34.439 --> 01:36:40.520
it back and it was like driving
NASCAR because that semi was going as fast

1296
01:36:40.520 --> 01:36:43.840
as it could and we had a
tire on the back of the lead hum

1297
01:36:43.960 --> 01:36:45.600
V so he would just bumping.
It's like, keep going, keep going.

1298
01:36:45.680 --> 01:36:48.319
We had two insides and one back, one in front, two insides

1299
01:36:48.399 --> 01:36:55.119
unning back just to protect it,
just running and gunning. Yeah. It

1300
01:36:55.159 --> 01:36:58.119
sounds like some post apocalyptic Yeah it
is. It's mad Max. Yeah,

1301
01:36:58.439 --> 01:37:00.239
but the thing and I and I
at it and a smile about it.

1302
01:37:00.600 --> 01:37:03.399
And I've got the pictures and I
still talk to the guys as much as

1303
01:37:03.399 --> 01:37:08.800
I can. It all worked out, that's the thing. Yeah, Like

1304
01:37:08.880 --> 01:37:11.880
I said before, you know,
before the podcast, I'm the luckiest commander

1305
01:37:12.399 --> 01:37:15.600
ever to go through Special Forces because
I have never issued a pr part.

1306
01:37:15.159 --> 01:37:18.800
Yeah, yeah, to you were
in the thick of it three times at

1307
01:37:18.880 --> 01:37:23.359
least. Yeah. I shot more
of the enemy by a direct fire weapon

1308
01:37:23.439 --> 01:37:26.239
as a major than I did as
a captain on a Special Forces team.

1309
01:37:28.319 --> 01:37:31.600
Yeah. Those I mean, I
think to give perspective for the people who

1310
01:37:31.680 --> 01:37:38.800
may not know, convoys were really
the most dangerous sitting ducks, you know,

1311
01:37:39.079 --> 01:37:43.920
because you Yeah, the thing was, you know, strat Com Strategic

1312
01:37:43.960 --> 01:37:48.000
Command put out a great plotter chart. So it's got twenty four hours in

1313
01:37:48.079 --> 01:37:54.079
it, and then it's got all
the all the contacts and what type of

1314
01:37:54.159 --> 01:37:59.319
contacts and everything else. And when
you're going down to Route Tampa and there

1315
01:37:59.319 --> 01:38:04.279
are I ed every single morning between
seven thirty and eight o'clock. Guess what,

1316
01:38:05.279 --> 01:38:11.720
don't go there between seven thirty and
eight o'clock. Let everybody else and

1317
01:38:11.800 --> 01:38:15.319
I feel sorry for him. Let
everybody else absorb all the IEDs. Don't

1318
01:38:15.359 --> 01:38:17.960
have to be me, you know. I remember Sar Major asking, He's

1319
01:38:18.000 --> 01:38:19.720
like, how can you guys aren't
believing? The first thing in the morning,

1320
01:38:19.720 --> 01:38:25.960
I go Sar Maia and I told
him. He goes okay. But

1321
01:38:26.039 --> 01:38:29.359
the other thing was, you get
stuck some place at night, stop and

1322
01:38:29.479 --> 01:38:34.279
you stay there. You always prepare
for overnights because we had we had an

1323
01:38:34.279 --> 01:38:39.199
incident. We had a I don't
remember what it was. We had a

1324
01:38:41.199 --> 01:38:45.159
up at the battalion. We were
at the Rod Winnie Palace complex palace on

1325
01:38:45.199 --> 01:38:49.439
the hill southwest of Buyout Btyne.
Had a bunch of all the company commanders

1326
01:38:49.520 --> 01:38:54.359
up and Sar Majors and they were
going back down the hill and they got

1327
01:38:54.520 --> 01:38:58.319
ambush and that's when Sar Major Stack
was killed, you know, ambushed and

1328
01:38:58.399 --> 01:39:03.640
in a firefight for their life because
with nighttime and just you know that AOB

1329
01:39:03.880 --> 01:39:10.039
team put up a hell of a
fight. You know. They asked us

1330
01:39:10.079 --> 01:39:12.479
to QRF for him by the time
we got organized, we were ready,

1331
01:39:13.039 --> 01:39:15.880
but you know, the Marines came
in and rescued them and towed them in,

1332
01:39:16.039 --> 01:39:23.720
and you know, I was just
like just happenstance. So tell us

1333
01:39:23.720 --> 01:39:28.119
about, you know, coming home
and kind of getting into retirement, because

1334
01:39:28.600 --> 01:39:31.840
you've already had your your whole listed
career OCS, so you were a fairly

1335
01:39:32.239 --> 01:39:38.880
a fairly salty major seasoned, well
seasoned, while I was actually by the

1336
01:39:39.000 --> 01:39:43.640
end, I was older than my
battalion commander. But you know, it

1337
01:39:43.800 --> 01:39:48.720
was what it was, so I
started looking at it. What else was

1338
01:39:48.880 --> 01:39:57.159
left? You know, battalions three, battalion command six years away. My

1339
01:39:57.279 --> 01:40:02.319
wife at the time and I grew
up in the same house until we went

1340
01:40:02.359 --> 01:40:05.319
to college. You know, she
lived over here. You know, I

1341
01:40:05.439 --> 01:40:09.760
was in the same house. I
walked to grade school, I walked to

1342
01:40:09.800 --> 01:40:12.760
middle school. I walked and I
came back to the same house for eighteen

1343
01:40:12.840 --> 01:40:17.199
years. My son, when he
was fifteen, had moved seven times,

1344
01:40:18.720 --> 01:40:25.640
and now they're in high school.
I think my oldest was a sophomore.

1345
01:40:30.760 --> 01:40:34.239
My daughter was gonna be a freshman. My youngest was like nine, and

1346
01:40:34.359 --> 01:40:38.880
that just wasn't fair because I and
I talked to my branch manager, actually

1347
01:40:39.199 --> 01:40:43.680
Chris Connor, my former battalion commander, and we were trying to work it.

1348
01:40:44.159 --> 01:40:45.159
You can go to eleven Worth for
three years, but then you're gonna

1349
01:40:45.159 --> 01:40:47.520
have to move. Okay. Then
my daughter's gonna have to change high schools.

1350
01:40:48.039 --> 01:40:50.920
We can, you know, take
you to brag and you can do

1351
01:40:51.039 --> 01:40:55.319
this long. Okay. Everybody's gonna
have to move during high school and that's

1352
01:40:55.399 --> 01:41:00.399
gonna be hard. And I didn't
want to do it, so I put

1353
01:41:00.479 --> 01:41:05.079
in my packet and I retired.
I told Colonel Naylor that I was going

1354
01:41:05.159 --> 01:41:09.239
to retire, and he said,
will you stay on and be the rear

1355
01:41:09.319 --> 01:41:13.600
detachment botanic commander while I'm gone?
I go, of course, you know.

1356
01:41:13.720 --> 01:41:15.800
So that's what I did, you
know, And I supported the unit

1357
01:41:15.880 --> 01:41:19.560
from the rear and took care of
the beans and bullets and getting new guys

1358
01:41:19.640 --> 01:41:24.119
in and then receiving back casualties and
you know, doing all that, and

1359
01:41:24.159 --> 01:41:30.000
then when they came back, I
just saluted and went on coached my son

1360
01:41:30.319 --> 01:41:34.279
for the next two years and baseball
and I had a great time. Yeah.

1361
01:41:35.640 --> 01:41:40.079
So was it at all a difficult
transition for you or did you feel

1362
01:41:40.119 --> 01:41:43.159
as though you had done what you
set out to do, and you were

1363
01:41:43.680 --> 01:41:50.560
fine with moving into a mine was
delayed problems. I got a divorce afterwards,

1364
01:41:51.000 --> 01:41:55.239
which is you know, like about
fifty percent of green berets for many

1365
01:41:55.319 --> 01:42:02.800
reasons. But I had to now
figure out how to manage two households.

1366
01:42:03.520 --> 01:42:09.680
So again you start going into processes. So I went overseas and took a

1367
01:42:09.800 --> 01:42:13.840
job of contracting two thousand and nine, so it's still towards the end of

1368
01:42:13.920 --> 01:42:17.720
gy and where you're making pretty nice
money. Did that for a year,

1369
01:42:18.439 --> 01:42:25.079
and my daughter was a senior in
high school and said, you need to

1370
01:42:25.079 --> 01:42:27.960
come home. Didn't want the delay
and everything else. And I called the

1371
01:42:28.039 --> 01:42:33.600
kids every morning on Skype. I
sat outside the USO with my iPod Touch.

1372
01:42:33.800 --> 01:42:36.680
Didn't have the iPhones yet, so
I'm literally getting on Skype and I

1373
01:42:36.720 --> 01:42:40.720
can talk to them. So I
would talk to them. I got up

1374
01:42:40.720 --> 01:42:43.760
about four thirty in the morning and
talked to them, and then went and

1375
01:42:43.840 --> 01:42:45.800
worked out and then brand sources and
everything else out. Then it worked out

1376
01:42:45.800 --> 01:42:50.359
again. But I did that every
day for a year. You know,

1377
01:42:50.760 --> 01:42:54.520
I think I talked to my son, who was six at the time,

1378
01:42:54.600 --> 01:42:58.479
more then than I do now.
And I'm overseas. But yeah, and

1379
01:42:58.560 --> 01:43:00.079
then then I came back. And
then that's where I had to figure out

1380
01:43:00.119 --> 01:43:05.439
the transition because then I'm a contractor. I'm working at so Common and figuring

1381
01:43:05.479 --> 01:43:09.680
out purpose. And I loved it. I did it for ten years,

1382
01:43:10.000 --> 01:43:14.840
almost eleven years, because I got
to work with the green suitters, you

1383
01:43:14.920 --> 01:43:18.079
know, with the SF guys and
with the seals and all that replicating soft

1384
01:43:18.119 --> 01:43:23.840
and that helped a lot in the
transition because I didn't lose touch. But

1385
01:43:23.960 --> 01:43:26.560
I wasn't one of them, you
know, so you know, we had

1386
01:43:26.640 --> 01:43:32.239
we were good times, and so
yeah, the transition was more delayed from

1387
01:43:32.319 --> 01:43:40.439
me, you know, and it
wasn't so much because I was at so

1388
01:43:40.640 --> 01:43:44.319
calm. I still had that touch. Guys that go straight back and don't

1389
01:43:44.359 --> 01:43:46.840
have any touch. That's that's hard. And I've talked to guys, you

1390
01:43:46.920 --> 01:43:48.920
know, it's like, look,
you got to connect somehow, whether you

1391
01:43:49.039 --> 01:43:55.640
do Team Rubicon or somebody like that, just do it, you know,

1392
01:43:56.039 --> 01:43:58.399
give a quick plug. Do you
know Team Rubicon, I've heard of them.

1393
01:43:58.439 --> 01:44:02.039
So disaster response to disaster recovery.
You sign up, it's free,

1394
01:44:02.640 --> 01:44:06.520
you deploy. They pay for everything, whether it's a hurricane or a Tornado.

1395
01:44:06.920 --> 01:44:10.199
You can deploy for four days,
you can deploy for up to two

1396
01:44:10.239 --> 01:44:15.319
weeks. Be careful because as a
former SF guy, they're gonna make you

1397
01:44:15.359 --> 01:44:19.079
the OPSO, whether it's your first
deployment or not. I became the assistant

1398
01:44:19.079 --> 01:44:24.439
OPSO on my second on my second
day, you know. But it's fun

1399
01:44:24.520 --> 01:44:27.159
because you're back with the guys.
But that's a way to connect. It's

1400
01:44:27.199 --> 01:44:30.279
just a quick plug for them.
But it's a great thing because they cover

1401
01:44:30.439 --> 01:44:35.960
everything. But you have to stay
connected otherwise you're like Jay was saying,

1402
01:44:36.439 --> 01:44:41.199
idle hands. Yeah, you don't
need idle hands, idle minds, because

1403
01:44:41.199 --> 01:44:45.319
it's gonna get it's gonna get crazy. And so I picked up doing Ironman

1404
01:44:45.439 --> 01:44:51.960
Triathlons Extreme Triathlons. I did a
twenty nine zero twenty nine, which is

1405
01:44:53.000 --> 01:44:59.039
a high the level of everest,
you know, at Mount Stratton, seventeen

1406
01:44:59.119 --> 01:45:01.680
times up a mountain and it rained. It was forty degrees. You know.

1407
01:45:02.279 --> 01:45:06.039
Challenge your brains now, right,
you know. So that's that's what

1408
01:45:06.159 --> 01:45:09.199
I do. You know, this
year, I'm going to back off a

1409
01:45:09.239 --> 01:45:13.439
little bit. I think I'm only
gonna do one iron Man, but I'm

1410
01:45:14.439 --> 01:45:16.760
challenge my girlfriend or daughter we're gonna
do a fifteen k and then we're doing

1411
01:45:19.039 --> 01:45:25.000
Climb for Lungs, Climb for Life. You know, she's a former lung

1412
01:45:25.079 --> 01:45:27.960
cancer survivor and you know, non
smoker, and so was like, okay,

1413
01:45:27.960 --> 01:45:30.720
hey, listen to that. Do
things that challenge your brain, do

1414
01:45:30.840 --> 01:45:33.239
things that challenge your body, just
do something, you know, And how

1415
01:45:33.279 --> 01:45:38.119
did the idea of writing a book
come to mind? It's my mom's fault.

1416
01:45:39.159 --> 01:45:42.079
So my mom passed away in twenty
eighteen. But you know, when

1417
01:45:42.119 --> 01:45:46.199
I came back from Afghanistan and then
Iraq and showed her some of the award

1418
01:45:46.239 --> 01:45:48.680
write ups and stuff like that,
she was like, you need to write

1419
01:45:48.680 --> 01:45:51.640
a book. I mean, yeah, yeah, I know, to write

1420
01:45:51.680 --> 01:45:55.560
a book. And like, yeah, I just I didn't think it was

1421
01:45:55.640 --> 01:46:00.119
important. I'm still not sure how
important it is. But because that's something

1422
01:46:00.239 --> 01:46:04.760
my mom wanted me to do,
I finally decided, Hey, all right,

1423
01:46:04.800 --> 01:46:10.079
I'm gonna write a book. So
a friend of mine that I went

1424
01:46:10.119 --> 01:46:13.640
to college was actually a fraternity buddy. We were talking and he's like,

1425
01:46:14.159 --> 01:46:15.560
hop, you're right, I go
dude, I don't know anything about it.

1426
01:46:15.640 --> 01:46:19.000
So we talked about it and he
kind of just you know, helped

1427
01:46:19.039 --> 01:46:24.800
me massage it because you know,
some of the paragraphs or chapters are five

1428
01:46:24.840 --> 01:46:28.880
pages long, some are twenty two. He goes, just do them by

1429
01:46:28.960 --> 01:46:32.119
subject. Don't try to make twenty
two page chapters all the way through because

1430
01:46:32.119 --> 01:46:35.840
nobody will understand it. So we
did it, and you know Amazon's got

1431
01:46:35.880 --> 01:46:42.279
the KDP publishing and it's such a
great way to put it out there.

1432
01:46:43.199 --> 01:46:48.199
You know, sold a couple hundred
copies given away a bunch, did something

1433
01:46:48.279 --> 01:46:53.920
for a vets group up in Fredericksburg. You know, there's a wonderful lady

1434
01:46:53.960 --> 01:47:01.000
that does her version of Salvation Army
and I wish I knew the name of

1435
01:47:01.039 --> 01:47:04.039
it. I'll have to send it
to you later. But she does that

1436
01:47:04.319 --> 01:47:09.119
and all the money goes towards local
veterans. They her and a couple other

1437
01:47:09.159 --> 01:47:14.479
people. They've paid for a house, somebody's mortgage every year, in a

1438
01:47:14.600 --> 01:47:18.199
car for somebody every year. Wow. So you know somebody's selling used clothes

1439
01:47:18.520 --> 01:47:21.680
that can do that. That's amazing. So we did. I did something.

1440
01:47:21.720 --> 01:47:25.720
You know, great friend of mine, Mike Bosco, he is one

1441
01:47:25.760 --> 01:47:28.079
of my n c os when I
was in the one sixtieth went on to

1442
01:47:28.119 --> 01:47:31.039
be the j two over at sock
Pack and you know, he wanted to

1443
01:47:31.079 --> 01:47:33.399
do it, so we did that
thing for him. And so I just

1444
01:47:33.479 --> 01:47:39.880
keep doing stuff like that. And
like I said the book, it's really

1445
01:47:39.960 --> 01:47:44.119
not cathartic or anything. It just
it just is because for me, like

1446
01:47:44.159 --> 01:47:46.359
I said, I had a great
career. You know, I don't have

1447
01:47:46.600 --> 01:47:50.399
you know, you have your lulls
and your disappointments, but you know,

1448
01:47:51.239 --> 01:47:58.199
all in all, it's a great
time. And definitely, like you know

1449
01:47:58.600 --> 01:48:02.159
one, it's a reflesh of your
compid and too it's also just right place,

1450
01:48:02.279 --> 01:48:06.119
right time, like you just like
nailed it, you know. Yeah.

1451
01:48:06.520 --> 01:48:11.560
Do we have a questions for Dan? I believe we have one.

1452
01:48:12.800 --> 01:48:17.039
Uh. Actually it's from uh Corman, uh greeting, Uh, thank you

1453
01:48:17.159 --> 01:48:21.640
Gorman. Greetings from FOURD Assembly,
Chicago. So a hard, hard work,

1454
01:48:21.720 --> 01:48:26.359
ethic, humility in the face of
one's ego, and humility with one

1455
01:48:26.479 --> 01:48:30.319
success. How can we instill these
in each other and ourselves going going back

1456
01:48:30.359 --> 01:48:34.119
to work? So yeah, he
wants to ask how how to instill those?

1457
01:48:35.159 --> 01:48:40.239
Well, the thing is you everybody
has been taught. You know.

1458
01:48:40.359 --> 01:48:43.640
One of the things that when I
went through o CS was I had paid

1459
01:48:43.640 --> 01:48:49.359
attention to PLDC and then b NOC
and OCS. I may Distinguished Military grad

1460
01:48:50.439 --> 01:48:55.159
And it wasn't because I studied hard. It's because I had studied when I

1461
01:48:55.199 --> 01:48:58.680
went through PLDC, and I studied
when I went through BANCH. The Army

1462
01:48:58.720 --> 01:49:03.680
has taught you what you should be
doing. You have your troop leading procedures.

1463
01:49:04.479 --> 01:49:09.000
You know what a great example was
when we were in isolation get ready

1464
01:49:09.000 --> 01:49:14.199
for Afghanistan. Everybody was floundering for
a format, like, what are you

1465
01:49:14.279 --> 01:49:16.279
talking about? Right, there's no
format that's what you're about to do?

1466
01:49:16.479 --> 01:49:19.159
You have no of course there is. You did it in the Q course.

1467
01:49:19.239 --> 01:49:24.359
It was ODA zero ninety five or
something like that. That's the format.

1468
01:49:25.560 --> 01:49:30.439
I had printed out twenty copies of
that ODA format for Robin Sage and

1469
01:49:30.600 --> 01:49:32.279
was hanging it out and that was
our briefing form. And it worked.

1470
01:49:32.479 --> 01:49:38.359
Yeah, use what you have.
There's no reason to reinvent the wheelright,

1471
01:49:38.560 --> 01:49:44.119
you have what you have, You
have all the tools, five paragraph operation

1472
01:49:44.239 --> 01:49:46.600
work, you go through ranger school, right, that's not silly stuff,

1473
01:49:47.199 --> 01:49:50.119
right, you know, use it. I mean when you think about how

1474
01:49:50.239 --> 01:49:57.960
many people have made careers out of
taking the MDMP or you know, ranger

1475
01:49:58.000 --> 01:50:01.600
school, hamdbook or whatever and translate
in into civilian to speaking going to corporations.

1476
01:50:01.800 --> 01:50:06.640
There's a reason that works. It
is solid structure. Yeah, and

1477
01:50:06.960 --> 01:50:12.520
that's what always cracks me up.
You know it again going back to krolmhlland

1478
01:50:14.720 --> 01:50:20.039
no one has done what he has
done in probably fifty years. And he

1479
01:50:20.279 --> 01:50:27.640
gave me three quarters of a page
of paper purpose, key tasks and end

1480
01:50:27.720 --> 01:50:32.880
state. Right now you get sixty
five pages of crap. Right, you

1481
01:50:32.920 --> 01:50:36.239
don't need it. But what you
got was very clear, It got the

1482
01:50:36.279 --> 01:50:39.800
point across and it was it was
all you really needed. That's all you

1483
01:50:39.880 --> 01:50:44.960
need. Yeah. We have one
other very important question from Alexander Runyon.

1484
01:50:45.319 --> 01:50:54.840
Who is your favorite daughter and why
Alexandra say Alexandra, Okay, I only

1485
01:50:54.920 --> 01:50:59.279
have one. I can't belie she's
on there. Okay, but you know

1486
01:50:59.319 --> 01:51:03.239
what, you know, it's fun
with alex People ask me if my kids

1487
01:51:03.359 --> 01:51:13.079
joined the army and no. When
Osama bin Laden was killed, she was

1488
01:51:13.159 --> 01:51:19.000
the first one to tell me because
he made me leave home. Right,

1489
01:51:20.000 --> 01:51:24.720
So it affects your kids, yeah, for sure. But I will say

1490
01:51:24.800 --> 01:51:28.920
I'm also one of the luckiest dads
on earth because all three of my kids

1491
01:51:29.000 --> 01:51:35.000
are our college graduates and doing professional
work, which is unbelievable. What do

1492
01:51:35.119 --> 01:51:38.840
we got for? Uh, all
right, we got thanks, Alex,

1493
01:51:41.920 --> 01:51:47.359
give me one second shown ass any
tricky CESTAR missions you could talk about.

1494
01:51:47.520 --> 01:51:55.359
Also, do eighteen Bravos get taught
gunsmithing slash improvised firearms like eighteen Charlie's do

1495
01:51:55.520 --> 01:52:00.520
improvised explosives. So eighteen Bravos,
yes, but it's also a lot of

1496
01:52:02.159 --> 01:52:10.000
their own desire to go deeper into
it. Yeah, I don't think in

1497
01:52:10.039 --> 01:52:12.800
the Bravo course, at least when
I went through, they certainly weren't teaching

1498
01:52:12.880 --> 01:52:15.039
like improvised weapons like how to make
zip guns or say anything like that.

1499
01:52:15.520 --> 01:52:19.279
No, you can, you know
again, it's it's kind of like when

1500
01:52:19.359 --> 01:52:26.560
they you can make your own forty
five out of spare parts except for the

1501
01:52:26.640 --> 01:52:33.279
lower receiver. Yeah, well you're
not supposed to the now. The ce

1502
01:52:33.439 --> 01:52:39.479
SAR not really when I was,
yes too with the one sixtieth. So

1503
01:52:39.840 --> 01:52:44.479
there's a difference between CESAR and pr
comment. Search and rescue is what the

1504
01:52:44.520 --> 01:52:49.479
conventional units do. The jelly greens, even though they do in flight refueling,

1505
01:52:49.600 --> 01:52:54.520
they're not allowed to go past the
green zone, you know, they're

1506
01:52:54.560 --> 01:52:57.720
not allowed to go where there are
going to be SERF Stare missiles. Even

1507
01:52:57.720 --> 01:53:01.039
though they have the AC doesn't really
make a lot of sense because they're pretty

1508
01:53:01.119 --> 01:53:06.600
much like the DAPs except they're not
loaded, or the Lima models, the

1509
01:53:06.720 --> 01:53:14.119
Kilo models. I'm sorry, but
you know, when you have to figure

1510
01:53:14.159 --> 01:53:17.840
out how you're gonna do it.
You know the great story of O'Grady,

1511
01:53:17.960 --> 01:53:23.479
it's in Beyond Helen Back and when
they talk about how the Marines went and

1512
01:53:23.560 --> 01:53:26.239
did it, because though Grady did, he ran at the Marines with a

1513
01:53:26.279 --> 01:53:28.800
gun in his hand. You know, you're supposed to turn your back,

1514
01:53:28.800 --> 01:53:32.840
you're supposed to do stuff. So
you know some of the things actually that

1515
01:53:32.920 --> 01:53:36.359
are not classified, And I'll tell
you about one. The one sixtieth went

1516
01:53:36.399 --> 01:53:45.279
in the Libya and stole a Hind
helicopter. The Russians were doing it.

1517
01:53:45.560 --> 01:53:48.119
It fell, it did a hard
landing. They left it there and we

1518
01:53:48.199 --> 01:53:56.319
went in and stole it literally slow
loaded out underneath the Chinook pictures are awesome.

1519
01:53:58.319 --> 01:54:00.680
I think they're still classified, but
I know it's not anymore. But

1520
01:54:00.840 --> 01:54:04.880
yeah, so that would be actually
the most the best one that I would

1521
01:54:04.880 --> 01:54:12.319
talk about. Told you about a
former dealt the guy then became a one

1522
01:54:12.399 --> 01:54:15.399
sixty pilot. You know, he
did the rescue of Mewse. You know,

1523
01:54:15.520 --> 01:54:17.119
that's for him to tell or books
or whatever. But you know,

1524
01:54:17.199 --> 01:54:20.560
there's a lot of stuff out there, but any secretive stuff not really.

1525
01:54:20.800 --> 01:54:26.359
Yeah, and then the what was
Oh, yeah, we've talked about Cesar.

1526
01:54:26.600 --> 01:54:30.720
Okay, what else do he One
more question from Isaac. I saw

1527
01:54:30.720 --> 01:54:34.399
a bit of the film bread Winner
about a girl living in Afghanistan during the

1528
01:54:34.439 --> 01:54:39.239
reign of the Taliband before nine to
eleven, life was brutal for everyone,

1529
01:54:39.279 --> 01:54:44.159
and especially girls and women. So
what is life like for them now compared

1530
01:54:44.199 --> 01:54:47.920
to before the invasion and during the
US involvement and after they left. Oh,

1531
01:54:48.079 --> 01:54:53.479
that's a roller coaster. And honestly
is it's a roller coaster because it

1532
01:54:53.560 --> 01:54:56.560
got really a little too free and
then a little too hard, then a

1533
01:54:56.560 --> 01:55:00.199
little too free, and it's all
based on where they live. You know.

1534
01:55:00.279 --> 01:55:06.279
One of the most touching things to
me was probably the second day we're

1535
01:55:06.359 --> 01:55:11.560
coming down through the Hindu cush and
a little girl about the age of my

1536
01:55:11.720 --> 01:55:17.800
daughter at the time, Little jellies
on little dress, on flowing blonde hair,

1537
01:55:18.359 --> 01:55:28.199
chewing bubblegum in a dirt road,
just waving people going by, you

1538
01:55:28.279 --> 01:55:35.079
know, so it's all ware.
You know, the the Taliban, you

1539
01:55:35.199 --> 01:55:43.079
know, it's like a sexy,
sexy, a sexist white male. In

1540
01:55:43.159 --> 01:55:46.479
the fifties, when we were telling
women they can't run marathons because they're uterus

1541
01:55:46.560 --> 01:55:51.600
and fall out, I'm sorry,
what you know, just let's let's bring

1542
01:55:51.640 --> 01:55:56.159
it into reality, you know,
stuff like that. You just it.

1543
01:55:58.319 --> 01:56:00.560
Yeah, so when people talk about
they're like, it's all based on where

1544
01:56:00.600 --> 01:56:03.359
you live. In Afghanistan and one
of the crazy things with the teleban,

1545
01:56:03.439 --> 01:56:06.279
you know, they had their vice
and virtue police, and a lot of

1546
01:56:06.319 --> 01:56:12.640
them were Arabs who didn't speak the
local languages. And so I remember an

1547
01:56:12.640 --> 01:56:15.520
Afghan and telling me a story about
when he was walking down the street with

1548
01:56:15.560 --> 01:56:20.079
his mom right and holding her hand, and the vice virtue police came out

1549
01:56:20.119 --> 01:56:26.159
and started beating both of them because
they were unmarried, holding and they were

1550
01:56:26.199 --> 01:56:29.279
holding hands in public, and he's
like, it's my mom. But they

1551
01:56:29.319 --> 01:56:31.399
were still like but they were Arabic, so they didn't understand what he was

1552
01:56:31.439 --> 01:56:36.239
saying and they were just beating them. So I put this out in the

1553
01:56:36.279 --> 01:56:39.560
message, and I was told never
to say it again. But I'm not

1554
01:56:39.640 --> 01:56:43.720
in the army anymore. The Afghans
don't like the Arabs, no, not

1555
01:56:43.840 --> 01:56:47.199
at all. They're tribal. Yeah, and there are peaceful people, but

1556
01:56:47.279 --> 01:56:59.159
they're tribal. We keep trying to
make it like the first whatever we are,

1557
01:56:59.760 --> 01:57:01.880
right, first world country, whatever
we're supposed to be. Leave it

1558
01:57:01.920 --> 01:57:06.800
alone. Yeah, it's it's not
one time zone. I mean, for

1559
01:57:06.920 --> 01:57:11.760
god's sake, it's Zulu plus four
and a half, right, right,

1560
01:57:11.880 --> 01:57:13.800
really yeah, it's like half an
hour. Yes, really, well,

1561
01:57:13.960 --> 01:57:15.520
it's not Zulu plus four and a
half. It's it should be like I

1562
01:57:15.520 --> 01:57:18.159
don't know, probably three or four
different time zone. Yeah, but we

1563
01:57:18.239 --> 01:57:21.560
do it for our own sake,
you know, And and it should be.

1564
01:57:23.439 --> 01:57:29.640
I mean, Herad is more Persian
than it is Afghan, so let

1565
01:57:29.760 --> 01:57:31.439
them figure it out. Yeah.
Yeah, it's not going to become a

1566
01:57:31.520 --> 01:57:35.960
Jeffersonian democracy exactly, and it shouldn't
be exactly. You know. I always

1567
01:57:36.039 --> 01:57:39.359
laughed when we were going in there, like we should bomb it into the

1568
01:57:39.479 --> 01:57:45.279
stone age like it already is.
Yet there are places that don't have running

1569
01:57:45.319 --> 01:57:48.239
walk Yeah. There were houses that
have one room and had a hole in

1570
01:57:48.319 --> 01:57:51.399
it, and that's when you did
your stuff and Oh, by the way,

1571
01:57:51.760 --> 01:57:56.359
that box full of dirt right there, that's your toilet paper, you

1572
01:57:56.399 --> 01:57:59.239
know. As one of the first
things of telling me said guys like dude,

1573
01:57:59.319 --> 01:58:01.199
you can't take your baby wipes and
use them and put them down there

1574
01:58:01.720 --> 01:58:06.760
because it gives us away. So
either put it in your bag or use

1575
01:58:06.880 --> 01:58:12.680
the dirt, and then our poop
doesn't smell like their poop. And you

1576
01:58:12.720 --> 01:58:16.680
want to get into that stuff.
So people can find the book on Amazon

1577
01:58:17.319 --> 01:58:24.119
on Amazon. I'm working on the
audio book I I got. I wouldn't

1578
01:58:24.119 --> 01:58:28.680
say diverted. I had to take
a break, but again, I'll get

1579
01:58:28.680 --> 01:58:30.600
it done by one March because my
daughter said, so I'll get it on

1580
01:58:30.640 --> 01:58:35.680
audio book. But yeah, do
reach out. Go to Dan Runyon dot

1581
01:58:35.720 --> 01:58:44.520
com. Email me. I've already
had two guys former Green Bereaves out of

1582
01:58:44.560 --> 01:58:49.359
fifth Group, their civilian ROTC instructors. I'm gonna take a hundred books up

1583
01:58:49.439 --> 01:58:53.960
top of them, hand those out. I'll be you know, pay for

1584
01:58:54.039 --> 01:58:57.319
my plane ticket. I'll do anything. Yeah, you know, I'm not

1585
01:58:57.600 --> 01:59:00.359
doing it for money. I literally
did it because my mom ask me to.

1586
01:59:00.119 --> 01:59:03.199
I also, in addition to the
book, I wanted to mention this

1587
01:59:03.359 --> 01:59:10.159
really fine bottle of whiskey that you
brought us. It's it's sent me,

1588
01:59:10.439 --> 01:59:15.000
right, is that the or that's
just what's the special? I think Heritage

1589
01:59:15.039 --> 01:59:18.359
Distiller re see it on Instagrams where
I saw it, Yeah, and I

1590
01:59:18.399 --> 01:59:26.359
bought it back in October. It's
how it's your proof and it's moving forward

1591
01:59:26.399 --> 01:59:30.239
to a very five proof. Yeah, that's definitely how it's. Yeah,

1592
01:59:30.239 --> 01:59:32.720
and they're talking about coming out with
other versions. I think they might have

1593
01:59:32.800 --> 01:59:38.920
coming out with the tenth Mountain Division. So if you legs out of out

1594
01:59:38.960 --> 01:59:41.840
of New York want to get your
own whiskey, But by all means,

1595
01:59:42.439 --> 01:59:45.199
uh, any final thoughts, anything
that you know you really want to get

1596
01:59:45.199 --> 01:59:48.359
out there that I didn't asked about
or we didn't cover. No, I

1597
01:59:48.880 --> 01:59:53.600
would say for a lot of people, and you kind of touched on it

1598
01:59:53.680 --> 02:00:00.319
with Jay. We don't need another
nonprofit, we don't need another veterans organization.

1599
02:00:01.640 --> 02:00:08.119
Find one out there and join it. You know, decades ago it

1600
02:00:08.199 --> 02:00:13.319
is either American Legion or a VFW. And now we've got catch a lift.

1601
02:00:14.680 --> 02:00:18.760
Unbroken Spirit organization out of Asheville,
North Carolina. No Barriers, USA,

1602
02:00:19.560 --> 02:00:25.640
Irreverent Warriors. I mean, there
are so many out there. Somebody

1603
02:00:25.760 --> 02:00:30.640
will pay for you to do something
somewhere in the world. Type it in.

1604
02:00:31.720 --> 02:00:36.119
There's a guy out of Fredericksburg that
wants to start doing gardens for veterans.

1605
02:00:38.199 --> 02:00:41.520
Give you all the supplies you want
to garden. There's a program out

1606
02:00:41.520 --> 02:00:46.439
there that teaches veterans how to do
be keeping. Hey, more parts you.

1607
02:00:46.600 --> 02:00:49.079
But I mean that stuff out there
and the money's out there, and

1608
02:00:49.159 --> 02:00:53.800
it's just like, you know,
there's wounded warriors, there's there's all the

1609
02:00:53.920 --> 02:01:00.479
things. We don't need another nonprofit. Just figure out how to help whatever.

1610
02:01:00.520 --> 02:01:03.920
Because I said, I really enjoyed
doing Team Rubicon. It was awesome.

1611
02:01:04.039 --> 02:01:06.880
It helped me a lot. I
didn't want to be the APSO,

1612
02:01:08.199 --> 02:01:12.560
but it's like, sure, why
not, you know, no barriers USA.

1613
02:01:13.119 --> 02:01:17.399
I was organizing and doing heights for
hikes for disabled veterans out in Fort

1614
02:01:17.439 --> 02:01:24.359
Collins, Red Feather Lakes area.
Unbroken Spirit Organization. Peter Champagne and his

1615
02:01:24.439 --> 02:01:28.159
wife Marlene have got one out of
Asheville. Look them up Unbroken Spirit dot

1616
02:01:28.319 --> 02:01:31.439
org. They pay for everything and
they're doing it right. All of them

1617
02:01:31.520 --> 02:01:35.760
now have this three phase program because
the worst thing to do is go do

1618
02:01:35.920 --> 02:01:42.640
something with somebody and then go home, empty, dark apartment. So that's

1619
02:01:42.680 --> 02:01:45.800
where their phase three comes up.
Still keeps you engaged? How do you?

1620
02:01:46.119 --> 02:01:50.920
How do you continue on and be
an active participant in your community and

1621
02:01:51.000 --> 02:01:57.119
they hold you to it, you
know, and so find them google it,

1622
02:01:59.239 --> 02:02:00.840
internet searching, whatever the word term
is. But yeah, no,

1623
02:02:00.960 --> 02:02:04.760
I I appreciate all this, and
yeah I'll tap that in with you guys,

1624
02:02:04.840 --> 02:02:09.079
and no, I appreciate all of
it. Yeah, thank you,

1625
02:02:09.239 --> 02:02:12.880
Dan, thanks for coming in and
doing this in studio. You know,

1626
02:02:13.039 --> 02:02:16.439
I think I think I want to
say that I found you and or I

1627
02:02:16.560 --> 02:02:20.760
found your book maybe on LinkedIn that
might have been might have been LinkedIn.

1628
02:02:21.680 --> 02:02:28.319
I was very appreciative the green Bery
Foundation put it on there. I somehow,

1629
02:02:28.560 --> 02:02:30.760
And we were talking earlier about algorithms
and hashtags and what puts you out

1630
02:02:30.760 --> 02:02:33.119
there. Yeah, when I posted
I did the book, I got like

1631
02:02:33.279 --> 02:02:38.560
seven thousand views. That's fantastic.
That's cool man, and and so yeah,

1632
02:02:38.840 --> 02:02:41.199
maybe that's how it is. But
yeah, you can find me on

1633
02:02:41.279 --> 02:02:44.800
LinkedIn. I had my own business
for a while, so you type my

1634
02:02:44.880 --> 02:02:48.520
name and it comes up way too
much for my comfort. Cool, So

1635
02:02:48.680 --> 02:02:53.000
people should go check out the book
Disciple of Chaos. It's on Amazon.

1636
02:02:53.039 --> 02:02:57.000
You'd find it right now. There's
a link down in the description. Thank

1637
02:02:57.039 --> 02:03:00.760
you again, Dan. Yeah,
and we will see all you guys on

1638
02:03:00.920 --> 02:03:03.960
Friday with Bill Flavin. So take
care out there.