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you just send us an email. We'll talk about special operations Cobert, ask
me and the Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Bark Hey,
guys, welcome to episode to forty one two of The Team House.
I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on tonight's show is Brad Thomas.
Brad served in the Ranger Regiment and Army Special Operations at a long career there,
and now he plays in a band called Silence and Light. We're really
excited to have you on the show Man, thank you for coming in studio
today. Yeah, thanks for having me and great meeting you. Dave.
We haven't met, but I was informed you were rocking the shirt screenshotting that
and sending it to me, and I don't know who this guy is,
but you know, let's figure it out. Always happy to support the band.
Man, Yeah, I know it's great. You guys got to have
a great band, and then knowing your background makes it even cooler, so
I appreciate it. It's it's funny because I think a lot of people hear
the music and they're expecting it to be like Super JB, you know,
and they hear it and they're like, man, you're actually really good,
Like this is actually good music. Yeah, it's now you're like your friend's
band that you have to go support, like it's yeah, it's great music.
Yeah there's a lot of that too though. Yeah, there's a lot
of that too. But yeah, I appreciate you guys have me on.
Jack and I met I think way back twenty eleven, maybe even twenty ten,
something like that, and I helped do an article about the Ranger Recon
Detachment and how it started to shift from the time I originally got there in
like ninety five through the time and I left there in ninety eight. So
it was a ton of fun. I'd love to revisit that subject sometime because
what RRD starting like, well eighty four somewhere around there, I think.
So. I think it stood up the same time that three seven five stood
up and RHQ stood up. I think that makes sense after Grenada, and
I think it was cold. I remember it being called the Cult Team,
and Cult Team was like something it was more about like this. It was
like Halo in and drop bombs kind Yeah. Yeah, the concept was like,
yeah, Halo and in behind enemy lines and lazing targets. Yeah,
the Cult teams were like a special team. But yeah, I would love
to revisit that topic at some point because it's a cool history. And then
obviously they've gone on to do so much else. You know, last twenty
years has been wild. But yeah, I know that stuff's super fun to
write about. Yeah, I think it's it's one of those you know,
when people ask about the time that I served, there are a couple of
things that stand out to me and I don't know if you guys have the
same kind of when you look back, you know, at however long you
served For me twenty years, When I look back at the first like eighteen
months that I was in the Rangers, it feels like that period of time
was eight years years long the longest. It was just so grueling and demanding
and having to prove yourself and everything else. It feels like of the chunk,
you know. And then I start comparing that like amount of time with
other places that I served, and how much time I was on the same
team with the same four guys for like five years, you know, and
you're thinking, man, this was just a blip, Like I served on
one team longer than I spent in B Company, Third Ranger battime, right,
you know. And anyway, it's crazy, so I think, and
I'd be interested in hearing your take on this, But I feel like your
brain's still developing, you know. When I got there, I was twenty
one, just turned twenty two, and you know, your brain is still
in development, and so really that time becomes your impressionable, It becomes a
part of really a part of who you are, you know, and not
like later in my career where you know, we were talk about this earlier,
but like, I'm not multiple play anymore. Right, I am who
I am, and I either do the job that you want me to do
or I don't. Right, I'd be curious on your I feel like it's
also part of the part of it is that it is the biggest culture shift
that you have in your life, for sure. And so you know,
like when you've been in the military for you know, a longer period of
time, Yeah, your duties may differ, and yeah, you may be
given more responsibility or things like that, but but you're already part of that
culture. So it's sort of just more of like course corrections or whatever.
Where when you go from you know, whether it's high school or college or
you know, from like me just from the street from my you know place
on the street to uh, you know, to enlisting, that like it's
a big deal. Like it's a big thing sure, and you know,
and yeah, there's there's like a definitely like a trajectory too, Like you
can read war memoirs going back as far as you want, you know,
fifty sixty, seventy years ago, and it's like when the guy first shows
up like, oh man, this is awesome. This is the shit.
You know, We're awesome. They get to that by the end of their
career and they're like jaded. Oh it's all political now. Everything's different now,
it's not what it used to be. It's not hard. But if
you think about it, like, there's some kid right now in twenty twenty
three out there and range for battalion, Like, this is his time,
man, this is this is the heat right now, right at this moment,
it's a big deal for him. Yeah, experiencing the same thing time
so exactly. So that's one of the things that stands out is looking back,
that period of time just seems like it was forever long. And the
other thing that stands out is, you know, people will say, when
you got to Delta must have been you know, amazing, it must have
been great whatever, And it was, but it's not the same type of
environment where when I was in the recon attachment, we had to do everything
ourselves. You know, nothing was taken care of for you. So hey,
as an ESIX plan of waterborne training trip for two weeks down at Tindel
Air Force Base, coordinating with air crews and doing that, what kind of
training are we going to be doing? And I don't know, there was
a part of it that you owned it right, the whole thing and not
just hey, here's your here's your stuff. It's a dam go out.
Yeah. So that was I felt like one of the best kept secrets in
the army. You know. It was a small group of you know n
CEOs. We were all you know, first name basis. While I was
there, we got to grow our hair out and go from high D tights
to you know, army army state, which was really popular in the regiment.
Oh yeah, yeah, right, especially when idiots like me like to
push the standards, right, you know, like you can't just have an
army standard haircut. We have to look like really like civilians. Right.
But yeah, that was that was a great time. You know, Brad,
what was it like, what was your origin story in terms of like
when did you start looking at the military as a life for you. So
there's the answer that I would have given you in nineteen ninety when I joined.
And then there's an answer that I would give you, you know,
having perspective and looking back and kind of recognizing the things that influenced me.
My dad a PhD doctor, and you know, grew up fairly well off,
great family, you know, no trauma and and all of that.
And I'm super appreciative of my childhood and and everything that I had. My
dad for excitement and thrills, worked as a volunteer fire captain and so every
Saturday Sunday he drug me to the firehouse and I got to see him and
his buddies, you know, kind of tooling around with one another, and
they all had nicknames. There was this camaraderie and this is something that you
know, this is my answer in twenty twenty three. I wouldn't have told
you this, you know, in nineteen ninety when I joined, but seeing
that I wanted to do that. Emergency was a huge show on TV at
the time and definitely had an impact on me, and I wanted to grow
up be a fireman, run fire calls, you know, running the burning
houses and all that stuff. And so those are some of my earliest memories.
Five years of age. I think my parents took me to my first
concert, may have been six, which was Barry Manilow Nice and when I
saw that, it was kind of like, yeah, fuck all that fire
departnership like, I want to I want to do this. This is what
I want to do. I want to entertain people. And so they ended
up buying a piano under the conditions that I take piano lessons and blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway, you know, so I think that
you see my dad and and that kind of camaraderie between you know, his
teammates was really the thing that inspired me when it came time, you know,
graduating high school, I'm getting ready to go to college. I was
a classical guitar major, which, by the way, doesn't buy you anything
in the world or get you anything in the world. By the time I
got there, I went to the fire department where he worked and was like,
what do I need to do. I'll volunteer, I'll take fire science
classes, you know, at college, I'll do whatever. And they're like,
hey, we're not really hiring. So it kind of left me in
a spot where I'm playing music, I'm playing in band, you know,
trying to make that thing happen, and it just kind of, you know,
ran its course over a couple of years, and that was it.
And at some point a buddy of mine was in He was in the Air
Force as an EOD guy and was home from basic training and AIIT and on
Christmas leave, and he was telling me about these guys that jumped in behind
enemy lines to rescue down pilots and they came recruiting at the end of his
basic and I was like, it kind of just the Spidey senses started to
tingle a little bit, and that was really where it started, you know.
And so you know what made you go to the route of like Army
as opposed to Air Force pawer rescue or something like that. So I actually
went to the Air Force and went to the Air Force recruiter and said,
you know, I want the right to try for this unit. And the
guy lied to me flat out and was like, yeah, I can get
you a contract and I can do all this, and he couldn't. And
I ended up enlisting signing and was going there every week to say when's my
contract. He basically told me if you sign, I'll get you a contract.
So I signed no contract and I'm like, all right, what's going
on? I'm leaving there one day and the Army recruiter he was like,
hey man, those lowdown recruiters, right, what's going on? What are
you doing here? And I said, well, he won't give me a
contract for what I want to do. And he goes, what do you
want to do? I want to be in Delta Force. And the dude
just cracked up and he's like, well, you can't do that. You
got to do something first, like Special Forces. And I go, okay,
I'll do that, and he goes, well, you can't do that
either. You got to do something before that, like Ranger. And I
go, okay, I'll do that. He goes, I can get you
a contrac track for that today. And so that's that's literally how the Ranger
thing came to be. I had read, you know, like we were
talking earlier. I had read some you know, Vietnam era books, you
know, CIA and Vietnam Rangers in Vietnam that, you know, those types
of things. But it it wasn't like a huge interest, you know.
It was just kind of something that I read and at the time, you
know. But anyway, so when the Ranger thing came, so then he
gets a VCR tape out, she puts it in, sit down and watch
this. This is what rangers do. And it was a film about Ranger
School had nothing to do with like the Ranger regimen, the exact same video
in like two thousands. I say, we have the video over there on
the shelf, don't. Yeah, well, the guys do a push ups
for in a rocksack, probably that there was a live fire in desert phase
they were. They showed that, they showed U daylight jumps out of like
a one forty one. It was just all ranger schools swamp stuff, and
I thought, oh, this is cool. Yeah, I'll do this.
Yeah, no idea what I'm getting into. So it's interesting. I'll have
these kids hit me up on social media and they're like, what did you
do to prepare? And I'm like, yeah, not a fucking cigarettes and
drink beer. Yeah, you know, I didn't do anything to prepare.
So anyway, there there's something to be said for preparation. But I also
think that, like, because there's so much information out there right now,
that kids tend to get like overloaded and they think there's some magical formula that
they, you know, they need to hit like these multiordinal points in order
to be ready for you know, any type of selection. It's like,
yeah, be fit if you can be fit. But beyond that, you
know, well, there's there's in my mind, there's a tangent selection,
and then there's the intangible stuff. And something I got to experience recently with
my youngest son who went down the road of hey, I want to follow
in your footsteps and do that, and I was like, hey, statistically,
chances are pretty slim. You know, the attrition rates pretty high.
So it's one of the things that I tried to instill in him was it's
one thing to say, well, how many push ups do I need to
do? How many sit ups, pull ups? All that stuff, But
then there's this thing that happens where it's like you're getting smoked the night before.
You're up at four because your squad is you know, got detailed to
go do AMMO whatever, and then you're doing that, and then you're going
into the PT test not fresh. You know, it's not like everybody's getting
this clean shot at something. You have how you fit in with your peer
group, you know, and some selection courses use PEERI valves, some don't,
some matter, some don't, whatever it might be, but you know
that's something that's like those those things aren't a standard, you know, not
getting hurt or being hurt and going all the way through something with torn cartilage
in your knee or something like that. There are just so many things that
are intangible that aren't a standard. You know, it's not black and white.
It's very ambiguous. Yeah, And it's also there's also something about,
you know, if you look at seals and they're not as swim they have
to do. There there are guys and you know, Regiment or saf or
wherever who wouldn't who are tough dudes and can do anything, they just can't
do that. And then you have seals who are phenomenal, you know,
or well rounded athletes and everything else like that, but wouldn't be able to
handle the miles under a rock that if they had gone another way on either
side, they may not just because of the specificity of what it on the
body for those two types of events. Yeah, absolutely, And I think
you know, the mental aspect of all of that is the biggest key.
You know, like you can't be a dud physically and expect to roll in
and ace everything and it's all good because I got it up here. You
know. There's a balance to that. And I feel like so much of
it comes from mental you know, and not even I don't think toughness.
The thing that fed me was guys quitting, yeah, you know, and
I remember thinking like the Ranger Cadret showed up at Airborne school and it was
like this screaming match that happened and people were like literally like frozen, you
know, paralyzed, and we throw all our bags on the truck and everybody
starts to climb on and get the fuck off the truck, like you're not
riding on the truck, your bags are riding on the truck. And the
truck takes off and we run behind the truck up to the rip barracks,
and uh, there were already probably you know, if there were sixty people
in formation, there were probably twenty that quit right on the spot. Yeah,
and do just kind of like Barrel Chest in his way through the formation,
who wants to quit? Ten nine eight seven, hands just flying and
they're like it's not that bad, like right and started yet. So once
once the actual standards and testing of that started and you start to see people
you know, quit or not make it, that that definitely gave me energy.
It was kind of like, well, it's not that bad yet for
me, you know, right. It's also it was always interesting to me
people who quit after events or before of it. It's like, like I
understand if like during an event, like you're just like your balls are dragging
and you just dog tired and you're like, okay, I can't deal.
But they wouldn't. They would get all the way through the event, right,
They get all the way through the event and then and then you know,
then they like they are or you know, the ranger cadre or whoever,
would like light a fire and go okay, you know, if you
want to quit, you can come sit by this fire and get nice and
warm, like if you want to quit, it's like you just made it
like through this like ball busting road march. Yeah. Yeah, the psychology
is very interesting and and I think that uh, you know, you mentioned
the amount of information that's out there now, it's pretty phenomenal. I haven't
googled it, like I haven't googled Ranger selection, you know, RASP or
any of that, and recently found out and maybe you guys know this,
but there's like this whole RASP rip argument online. Oh no, there is,
Yeah, there's oh, like you eat ship unless you you know RIP
like RIP does you know? Yeah, there's a whole thing about that which
I found kind of entergining in RASP. It's like it's like eight weeks,
I believe, and I mean like they get way way more training than any
of us did. Like it seems like the standards are higher, much higher
than they were when we went through. Yeah, I don't even know.
I don't know all the standards and what they are, but they kind of
front load from what I do know, they frontload all of those things.
So once they get a kid through that passes all the prerequisites, then it's
it's more about training them, right, which is probably a product of g
Y. Hey we're just smoking these guys for three weeks and they can hang.
But then they show up and they don't know anything. And then they're
on a plane, you know, going overseas to deploy and they have no
skills all except for I won't quit, you know. So But anyway,
Yeah, it's a whole it's a whole conversation on I didn't know there was.
I didn't know there was actually like RIP essentialists that are like you know,
the rider die for RIP. Yeah, I mean it was good,
but I mean times change and evolved, and yeah, guys are getting better
training now. I mean, it's it's it's probably very similar to the to
the argument when Rangers School dropped Desert Phase, like that, you know that
you didn't do Dessert phase, go through desert phase. I did not.
I did. You did not? Yeah, I did actually three times three
times in desert phase. But so this is even to prove the point even
further. I didn't go through and Dougway, And doug Way was the hard
desert face like for Bliss was nothing, even though you got over. I
think it was like originally Bliss and then they moved it to Dougway and they
moved it back and forth a couple of times. But you know, for
all the guys that were senior to me and in my platin, they had
gone to doug Way and that was the hard one. Snowed every day and
you know even in the summer and all that stuff. Eight feow. Yeah,
but I did. I did Darby Desert Desert, Darby Desert Mountains,
Florida. That was my Ranger School trajectory. Well, I mean, you
must have been good at Ranger School by then, Bro. I went to
Ranger School as I was an E two when they sent me, and they
had to send promote me to E three, I think, just so I
could go. And yeah, I did Derby a couple of times, a
little extended training stay there, did Christmas Exodus at Rangerston. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. So I had a I had a golden opportunity.
I got to B Company, third Ranger Battalion in April of ninety one,
and when I got there, I was the twelfth guy in my squad.
So there were eleven dudes more senior than me, and the majority of them
privates. By September, we were going through and I don't know if you
remember these or if they call them the same things, but it was like
platoon xtebs. So it was like all we did was patrol Monday through Friday,
and it was miserable. And it went from May through September. So
absolutely an ass kicker physically and in the heat of the fourth Benning summer and
anyway, so by September, I'm the fourth guy in my squad. There's
a squad leader to team leaders and me. Everybody else was gone, either
guys had gotten hurt or they had quit or dui or whatever. I was
the only one that passed our platoon pre ranger PT test and they're all like,
all right, Thomas, you got the golden opportunity here. You've been
here five months and you're going to ranger school. And I had no clue
what I was doing, zero clues. I was in etube they sent me.
And when I got to Ranger school there was guys from my platoon n
CEOs that had gotten DUIs that were there and they're like, what the fuck
are you doing here? Like you shouldn't be here yet, and kind of
called me out on stuff and they had a field day with me, and
yeah, I made for a miserable, absolutely miserable experience. So I was
telling my son that story and he was like, man, aren't you like
angry about how things turned out? And you had to do so much extra
time and you know I basically failed it, you know, and you know
there was no guarantee that I would stay in the regiment and what was going
to happen and if you know who knows? And interestingly, it was kind
of like everything in my life after that would have been different had that event
not happened. Yeah, like you wouldn't be here. Yeah, like nothing
would be the same. So these things have this much greater impact then I
think we can even recognize when it happened. So although it was a failure
and it was something, you know, everything that came after that, I
wouldn't have been in Mogadishu the same way that would have been. That would
have been different. Everything would have been different. You know. It's a
character building experience. Yeah. Absolutely. Let me give a shout out to
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So how did that work for you? What? What? Uh?
Were you recycled each time? Or did you go back to battalion in between?
So I did Darby Desert Desert, and I begged my last patrol in
desert phase. A guy wandered off we were doing a split platoon, you
know, split squad type thing. Wasn't with my element, but dude wandered
off in the desert and was lost for four or five hours, and I
got a no go for that, and you know, rightfully, so whatever,
I begged for a day one recycle, and I remember going into the
company commander at the time and asking him. I also got graded twice by
the same RI, which was supposed to be not allowed. And I never
saw the guy give a go my whole time there, so I'm not going
to say. You know, I did see him later in life in Fayetteville,
North Carolina, selling mattresses in sears, and I was going to go
up to him and ask him how life was working out for him, but
I didn't. My my RI in mountains, who know go would be and
again rightfully so ended up being a NCO on scuba team down the hall from
being fifth group. He's a really good guy. Yeah, yeah, I
don't you know, there's no grudges or anything like that. You know,
you're you're doing a job and if you saw me, you know a certain
way. Cool. Whatever, But begged them for a day one recycle and
they're like, no, you're going back. So I went back to B
Company for maybe six eight weeks something like that, and then went right back.
They sent me back to Pre Ranger and then went back through. But
that was a talk about a low point, yeah, you know, but
just thankful for the opportunity to be able to go back. And probably wouldn't
have worked out that way if we were still at the same strength we were
when I got there. Yeah, I would have gotten bounced down the road.
Yeah, I'll say, And I don't know about saf because I've never
been to SFAs, but I'll say one thing about Ranger School is that there
are a lot of guys who do get screwed over like it. There are
there are the guardians of the tab there for shore, who you know,
if they take disliking to somebody, it's very hard for them to overcome that
sometimes. Yeah, you know, so I got when you you know,
you're gaming everything and you know you're getting G two from a guy that recycled
and information from people, and half of it's bullshit, half of it isn't.
And I remember from Pre Rangers showing up at Ranger School and they're like
stand behind each other in a row because they break down the companies and then
that way you'll all be in the same company together. So we did that,
and you know, all my pre Ranger homies, and I'm in a
row of eleven guys, all from the same pre Ranger class. We all
know each other, and they start breaking down what companies, what I'm in
a company? And formation is complete. They're like, all right, march
back to your company areas. And here comes my platoon sergeant from B company
three seven five, who's now an ri out there? Whoa whoa, whoa
whoa, whoa, whoa whoa? Where's Thomas or B company? False motivation?
And he calls me out. He goes, you're in C company,
now move your stuff down there. So I pull my stuff out of formation
and now I'm in with guys I have no idea, don't know any of
them, and I get down there. We get information. They're signing,
okay, who here is E eight? Who hears E seven? Who hears
E six? And they're signing squad leaders everything else. So they made me
the company first sergeant as an E two. I don't know how to march
a company into the chow hall. I don't know how to do any of
this stuff. And uh, they just started pulling pranks on me, and
it just it was miserable and it definitely affected you know. You think my
peers thought I was doing a good job. It was horrible. Yeah.
As an example, they call me in the tack, calls me in to
his office and he says, hey, first sergeant, I started in December
one, December, Hey, we need five people from the company to stay
back from Christmas leave. Go ahead and go through those lead forms and pick
who you want to stay. Oh my god, yeah, So I go,
well, I'll be one of them, you know. And then I
randomly pick four leave forms out of the stack, and the dude just grabs
the lead forms and he walks out into formation. He goes, all right,
so and so so and so so and so so and so your first
sergeant picked you to stay back from Christmas exodus to do details here. It
was just stuff like that. And one day I signed eighteen major minuses,
you know, which for a failure to inspect because cat eyes were crooked on
rocksacks. So while everybody in the company is sitting in the bleachers getting a
class on how to do an ambush, I'm going through the rucksack formation,
you know, where everybody's grounded their gear and those cat eyes are fucked up,
those are jacked up. Here sign another major minus, not another major
minus. So I got eighteen major minuses. And then at the end of
the phase, I was like, there's no way I'm going on because you
can't have one major going on. At the end of the phase, I'm
thinking, okay, well I'm recycling Darby. This is gonna be great.
And they're like, we're going to take a chance on you and send you
to desert phase. And it was like, okay, awesome, I'm having
a great time. So that that whole thing just kind of drug with me
to the next phase and then recycled and you know whatever. So it's life,
you know. I mean, it's amazing though, that you that you
you know, that you kept your spirits up enough to five months later or
I mean six or eight weeks later like go back and uh like I think
too, It's like it's survival, right, It's like I have to pass
this school to be in the ranger regiment further than being a private so it's
the only thing I can do, Like what there are no other you know
it's Yeah. The other the other thing that I've talked to my son about
is the other untangible, intangible parts of any selection process, timing and luck,
and you can't do and no matter how much skill you have, if
timing and luck don't line up and aren't on your side, you're not going
to pass. Yeah, and that was a huge thing. Yeah, I
feel like it probably worked out for the better. I probably learned a lot
more. I probably got to meet, you know, and I did get
to meet a lot of other guys. There's a one dude my second time
through. He and I met in We were in different platoons in b company,
but we're still friends and still go down to Benning together all the time
and go kick around the old barracks and do all that kind of stuff.
But yeah, that's awesome. So how long had you been back from Ranger
School? I tell you, guys, until mugged issue happened. So graduated.
I should have graduated February ninety one and then ended up I think by
I was back in like March. I think that summer I went to pre
Ranger, so it was like in July went to pre Ranger and then started
in maybe August and graduated in November. So I went straight through the second
time and I didn't have any like zero issues. A second time through was
in a different company, and in fact, the guy that was pulling all
the Shenanigans on me when when I got there, the guy that had been
my platoon sergeant in B company like apologized and he was like, hey man,
we were just having fun with you, Like we didn't think it was
gonna be this whole thing, and you know whatever. But went right through.
So graduated in November of ninety two. Had torn cartilage in my knee
and went, you know, all the way through with a jacked up knee,
got back, got my knee scoped, kind of recovered from that,
and that's about when we were going on the JRX in Texas, which is
where we got you know, sent to go do the train up for Mogadishu
from there. So the timeline was pretty quick, you know, and how
large because you mentioned that one of the reasons you went to ranger school and
then got sent back was because you your platoon wasn't up to strength. Had
they filled that out by the time, like you guys were ready, No,
we were still you know maybe I think five guys on my squad five
six guys and they had you know, moved some people around from different platoons,
but that was kind of across the board, you know. The company
went from I think Panama had happened, and a lot of people saw that.
There was a huge push from Desert Storm. So you know when I
when I joined in ninety, I joined in May of ninety. We can't
get you to basic training until November. That was like there was no way
they could get me there any faster. Don't tell them you did drugs,
right, you know, like you can't talk about anything not taking you.
And the army was very selective. They almost didn't take me because I was
allergic to milk when I was a kid, and that was this huge like
Waiver had to go have doctors write all kinds of notes and say, you
know, it wasn't going to affect me, blah blah blah blah blah.
So I think the Desert Storm push was where So when I showed up to
Rip as an example and Rip holdover, we had bunk cots. I've never
seen them before and I've never seen them since. But we were in a
four man room and so there's you know, eight dudes in bunk beds and
then there were two bunk cots in the middle of the room and just jammed
full. So we started with like three hundred you know, three hundred whatever
and finished with like seventy Wow, And that was that was my rip class.
Wow. I've never heard abounk cots the other Yeah, A ton of
fund, a ton of fun living out of a D bag. That's why
I would pick three seven five to go. So I was like, I
don't feel like packing this D bag and moving anywhere else. Like, I'll
walk right over there. I can see the three seventy five. Oh you
wasn't punishment for something? No, no, no, interesting? So what
was the work up to? Like, like, did you know what was
going was there? Did you know what was going on in Moga issue?
Did was there like this awareness uh in the country in the military for you
guys, No zero of that. I remember being a little kid and seeing
something on sixty minutes. This must have been like the early eighties, maybe
late seventies, and there was something about Somalia, and so I remember hearing,
you know and knowing kind of roughly where it was on the continent,
but there was nothing, which is sparked a lot of conversations about somebody in
the Ranger regiment knew more than you know, and and I found out a
of interesting information. For example, first BAT did a whole train up during
the summer of ninety three to go do that mission, but like that word
never got to us at one seven five. And I don't even think that
they knew that they were training up for something. I think I've heard weird
stuff like that, like that they had guys training up for Haiti and nobody
understood what they were training up for until after it almost happened. Yeah,
yeah, so interesting on that. I've also heard another story from a guy
who is like Rip Cadre or pre Ranger cadre I think when I went through
Rip, but he was like his name was kind of famous for being one
of those guys in a legend, dude JB. Spizo, And he told
me a story about from two seven to five that they jumped into downtown Mogadishu,
did a show of force, walked through the city, walked to the
airfield, got on a plane and flew away in nineteen eighty four, And
it's true story. You can actually google it and find it. And I
was like mind blown when I heard that, Like, you got to be
kidding me. In eighty four yeah, yeah, yeah, never knew it.
So anyway, to answer the question a little further, nobody had any
We had no idea. I hadn't heard any anything about anything. At some
point during the j r X and I think we were there like almost a
month in total, it may have been three weeks. I don't remember exactly,
but at some point leadership you know, pulled all of us into the
tent, the command tent, and was like, all right, here's the
deal. There's something going on. We've been providing aid, you know,
to this country and the warlords are fighting and they're stealing the aid and they're
killing you in you know, peacekeepers, and there are some Americans that have
been killed, and the president wants to potentially go do this thing. And
so that was kind of it. Yeah, just kind of like a hey,
there's something up. And a couple of days went by. It could
have been the next day, I don't remember, but it turned into Hey,
we're going to go do this and going to go do this. Train
up and be prepared to go do it, which still didn't mean we're going
to go It's just more like we're going to be more prepared to go stand
by, to stand by if the word comes. Yeah, And that's that's
kind of the way it rolled out. That's interesting. So what what was
what was a train up like for Somalia? I mean, did you have
area experts come in? Wasn't mostly just everybody, you know? It wasn't
more like a like a training exercise in terms of like a non dependent training
or Yeah, we didn't get any like detailed information. I don't remember seeing
a map of anything, you know, picking specific locations or any of that.
It was more like, here's here's the thing, and here's how we're
going to go do this. Let's practice how we're going to go do this.
And so we spent eight or ten days at Fort Bragg practicing, you
know, here's how we're going to go do this. We learned a lot
of simple things like have a glow in the dark, you know, dry
erace type of device, you know, acetated blowing the dark thing with the
grease pencils, so we could pass around notes in the helo, you know,
and I like, I like to remind people of just the difference and
capability of back then, right, because everybody's seen, you know, the
dude with the four tube nods and you didn't have liked not even radios,
you know, so just the ability to communicate amongst one another, we didn't
even have that, you know. So we learned a lot of those and
kind of worked out all the bugs on that that type of thing. The
actual how we went and did it was just kind of the same. It
was repetitive, and it was just in different environments, in different conditions and
different Okay, now this happened. You know, we're going to bump an
aircraft. Now you're going from this aircraft to that aircraft, so combining of
chalks and these guys are getting cut or you know whatever, that type of
thing. So practicing contingencies and things like that. But yeah, it wasn't
we got basically because we're rangers and disciplined. We got to stay intense out
on the other side of like Fort Bragg in the middle of the pine trees
every night like humid as balls, thunderstorms, like lightning clapping off all all
around you, and our d bags and rucksacks had to be stowed underneath our
cots, you know, because we didn't want to look fucked up, right,
So, uh, tent floods out like every night. So you've got
your stuff like hanging up like a gypsy camp all over the place during the
day while you're training, come back and have to like you know, collect
up all your things and make sure everything's dried out. It was like every
day that was happening. So it was a wind but we got to use
the PX once. Super cool. I mean how they make the suck part
of the experience, right, Like we're going to stand out in the rain
for like an hour and then you can put your wet weather gear. Yeah
exactly, I know. Okay, yeah, what now? You know?
What was the mission for the Rangers, the best light infantry in the world
at the time, you know, as I think they like to be known
at the time. What was the mission in a Union vironment like you know,
Somalia, Mogadishue. So I don't know, I'm not well read on
the entirety of the operation. I don't mean Blackhawk Down or but just Unism
too was a separate portion of whatever the name was for the UN mission or
the US's involvement in the UN mission, So I don't remember what that was.
Uh Unism too, you know, was a separate thing. And you
know, our job there was just to provide security for the assault force,
and you know that's what we did, whether it was vehicular kind of further
out or closer to the target building or whatever, but that was that was
our job there, right, And then we did a lot of you know,
it never gets talked about, but the number of missions that we actually
did there, I was just about the seven or eight not to mention,
Hey, we need to bring this guy to the UN compound so that he
can have a high level meeting with so and so, and we've got a
pride. Security for that was like daily stuff. You know, things were
going on. So you know, we were doing a lot of driving through
the city and a lot of cruising around and signature flights every night and things
like that. So you know, I think people think of that whole experience.
We're there more than sixty days. I think about sixty five days,
and we did a ton of stuff. What was that like like in that
era's range of battalion, like a combat mission is a big deal in nineteen
ninety three. Yeah, so you know, trying to explain those days to
difficult. You know, a generation of people that spent twenty two years fighting
in the g want you know, it's kind of hard to convey that.
You know, most of the people that serve in the eighties and nineties didn't
see combat, right, Like, probably the large majority didn't see anything.
And you know, if your company wasn't picked or your group wasn't picked or
whatever it might be, you're you're not going to see any of that.
Yeah, maybe you got in on Panama, maybe you got to do a
training pump down to you know, Honduras or something like that. Yeah,
so we, you know, were fortunate enough to get that. And I
remember we got may have been our very first mission. We got in a
pretty pretty good gunfight, and we were in a blocking position, kind of
facing outwards, and it was kind of on a main drag, and there
was a stadium behind us, which wasn't the stadium that we ended up in,
Vitios Soccer stadium. It was where idd gave all of his speeches and
things like that. And there were twelve guys that had come up behind us,
and there were these cinder block walls and I'm like this is something I'll
never forget. The center block was like that decorative cinder block that it had
like gaps, and these knucklehead stuck their guns through there and some RPGs,
but they couldn't really traverse the weapons, so there was a hell of a
lot of gunfire coming from there. But anyway, we got in that,
and afterwards I remember having the conversation about do you think we'll get cibs for
that? You know, if this is the best that happened, if this
is the biggest gunfight we got in, are we going to get cibs for
that? Or is this just a combat scroll? Are we even going to
get a combat scroll? Are the guys that were flying around in helicopters are
they going to get it for? You know, nobody really knew and what
I was told at some point later and I can't remember by who, but
somebody who must have had some information, the plan for us was it would
have been combat that scroll only up until October third, so you know,
multiple gun fights and things that mortared, you know, interesting and up until
that point it would have been combat scroll only. And I think that people
like listening to this, people might not appreciate that in a peacetime military,
having the combat scroll, having the CIB like they're really it's they're really big
deals, like when you'd see like grenade rangers walking around or you know,
the guys from Panama with their scrolls, like like it's a big deal.
So of course that's going to be the conversation that that you guys have after
a massive firefeit. It's so I mean, like you said, man,
it's so difficult to explain what that culture must have been like prior to nine
to eleven, right, and maybe we're somewhat going back to that now.
I mean, I imagine there's a lot of guys out there who don't have
CIDs and in special ops units. Yeah, it's it's definitely interesting. But
I remember, you know, one of the other things, it's like a
standout just of that event and kind of bigger picture but getting back and you
know, the aftermath of everything and it kind of being like, hey,
we're all n c os now, like we know what we need to do
to train our guys properly, and we know what's important now because we've seen
it firsthand. And the mentality was all right, good job, glad you
guys are back. You know, now you can get back to real ranger
right as sure your boots are shine and all that stuff. And you think
about like the professional jealousy. You know, so you're talking about one company
and when they talk about there was a platoon from another company that came over,
but it was like key people. It was like a platoon of medex
fos, you know, maybe a handful of squad leaders people like that.
It wasn't an entire platoon that were you know, there were some guys there
that got chalked away to do extra bodies on the Cesar bird and things like
that. But if you think about out of the entire Ranger regiment and however
many people that was at the time, there's one hundred and twenty guys maybe
that experienced this thing. And it was kind of like, yeah, we
don't really want to Yeah, we don't want to talk about that. Let's
let's get back to the real stuff patrolling. It doesn't need a road marks
stand to and you know all those kinds of things that you know, we
all laughed at. From that point, Let's let's talk a little bit about
more on that on the aftermath, because I think unless there's something that specifically
you'd like to get into about the battle itself. I'd like to ask you
sort of about the cultural impact that that had on the military and on the
guys who were there, and sort of how that changed. But like you
talked about a little bit sullific getting swept under the rug too. Yeah,
I think that our company did a really good job of kind of getting rid
of a lot of the dumb stuff. And I'll give you an example.
And this isn't necessarily like a tangible thing that had to do with our preparedness
for war, but in a way it does. Her first sergeant, you
know, if you were married, you know, had your family support group
meeting and all that stuff. And I remember my buddy who I went to
pre ranger with that I still communicate with and still hang out with down at
Benning and stuff like that. At the very end of the meeting, you
know, the first Argeant's kind of wrapping things up, and she's like,
I have a question, Yes, first Sergeant, what exactly is the word?
And why is my husband waiting on it? At true story? And
he goes, you know what, it's a damn good question, and I'm
gonna do my best that if we got nothing going on, we're gonna get
we're gonna get people out of here and done for the day. And he
held true to his word, you know, and that was that was kind
of the first the start of the culture being you know what, it's there's
no point in sitting here in the barracks waiting for the platoon sergeant meeting to
be completed right down there drinking beers and whatever, and we're just the privates
are up here getting smoked and you know, there's no nothing of value happening
at that point, right, And that started it. And then the leadership
some of like the platoon leader that came in to replace my platoon leader at
the time. You know, imagine what he's walking into. Here's a platoon
of dudes that just did this thing. And he was very respectful of the
whole thing, like you tell me what you guys think you need to do,
and also it and I'm like, wow, this is kind of like
a change. Yeah. So I was in an interesting spot. I had
told my chain of command prior to going to the JRX in Texas that hey,
I'm out of here. I want to go to the recon detachment,
and the selection for that was actually in October ninety three, so like cool,
after the JRX, when you get back, you can start your train
up for that selection. Whatever that entailed. It may have been like a
week off or something. I don't remember, but anyway, it was supposed
to do that in October ninety three, and I don't think that they ran
a selection course that that fall, but anyway, it was just something I
remember. So for people who might not know, I mean, let's talk
about the word for a second. What was the word and why were you
waiting around for it? The word is closely attached to the poop. Yeah,
it's also the poop, Yeah, poop the word. So the word
the word was basically, you know, the first sergeant is meeting with the
platoon sergeants and they're talking about training events. They're talking about you know,
probably big level stuff, and what that would translate to is squads, squad
leaders, team leaders, privates sitting around in the barracks waiting for the word
to be returned, which was hey, zero six, first call, six
thirty pt right, So we would sit around for hours waiting for them to
come and release us. Yeah, and that's what it was, you know,
so almost as much fun as training to time and not standard Yeah.
So for because we didn't really talk about the battle much. But for people
who I mean probably people everybody's seen black Cock Down and whatnot. Can you
tell from your experience if if it got things really right, if it got
things really wrong. So I can't say that, I've like read the book
and I don't think that there's any intent to that other than like I know
what I did and talking with my buddies in different platoons and in different groups.
It took us the better part of you know, eighteen months after the
event to really be able to kind of piece together exactly what happened. There
was no big hot wash, you know, hey, what happened. Nobody
was a part of anything like that. I'm sure at other levels there were
you know, talking Joint Assault Force, you know, Security Force, air
assets, and I'm sure that there was some sort of hot wash at that
level, but we really never had anything. I'm not sure that there was.
Yeh, I know that there were from the air side that there were
some things that happened that they wanted to bring out and it wasn't allowed to
be brought out, you know, not my story to tell, but yeah,
it was just kind of so when I saw the movie, I recognized
even before seeing it. I got invited to a private screening and Ridley Scott
was there, Jerry Bruckheimer, Will Fickner, one of the actors, and
Mark Bowden. And so to back that up further, I had gone to
selection for the special Mission unit in North Carolina and I had been selected right
about the time that the whole Philadelphia Online Inquirer article started being and I was
waiting. My wife at the time was due with our first child, and
so they had told me, don't come up for the operator training course,
wait until your son's born, daughter, whatever, and come up to the
next one. So I'm in like a four month old more or less.
And so the the articles start dropping and people are all over this thing,
and it's the talk of the town because you know, online stuff is new,
and definitely people are weighing in that shouldn't be weighing in, and there
were some unit people that were weighing in and that was an issue and everything
else. I got a call from Mark Bowden at my house, who had
gotten my number from someone else that he had talked to Hey, I need
to talk to you about a couple of critical moments that you're involved with,
and I said, I would love to talk to you, but here's my
situation, and I don't want to do something and talk to someone that I'm
not supposed to talk to and screw up this opportunity that I've got to go
to where I want to go. Let me ask and find out if it's
okay, and then I'll get back with you. So I talk with the
USU socc Public affairs people and they said, absolutely, do not talk with
him. We're going to try and squash this whole thing. Don't talk with
him. Absolutely not. So I call him back. He calls me and
I can't remember which and I say, hey, man, I would love
to talk to you, but I got told no. So I'm sure that
okay. So peel back that onion a little further. Like if that story,
if that book, if that movie was in the court of law,
it would never uphold because it's largely hearsay. I heard this guy did that.
I heard from so and so that he was here and did these things.
I think the timeline is very accurate, and I think that there are
things that are kind of set in stone that there probably isn't a whole lot
of debate. I recognize going to see the screening, and you know,
before even thinking about going to see the screening and knowing that a movie was
coming out, you can't make one hundred and twenty people and have one hundred
and twenty characters in the movie. They're going to distill this down to the
bar essentials and slash. Yeah. So this guy does fifty things, right,
Really, that's an example of fifty different events that happened to fifty different
people combining it. Like, I get all that. I also get that
it's an eighteen hour battle. We're compressing that into a ninety minute format.
You know. I'm happy the story was told. I think that that's been
an incredible thing. And just so that people know and the number of people
that that touched that Jason Everman are are are you know? Third party friend?
He joined because of that, you know, because of that event that
was the impetus for him joining, and how many other people, thousands and
thousands of people to join the military because of that, you know. So
I'm glad it was told accurate in terms of events and how it happened and
how it played out and things like that. I think it's pretty accurate.
I don't think that it did justice to how barbaric it was and how up
close and personal things were. That's, you know, the first thing that
kind of stood out was, you know, getting a little anxiety watching this
and they're getting ready to roll in and you kind of know what's happening.
I don't think that it accurately can evade the absolute chaos that happened. And
when I look back twenty twenty three, ME can see the failures at just
so many levels. Nineteen ninety three me, you know, hey man,
we made it happen, and it was great and we got through it,
and you know, we kicked our ass and there are X amount of thousands
of them dead and we only lost eighteen and blah blah blah and all of
that. But when I see, you know, twenty twenty three, ME
looks back and says, we had no contingency for what happens if the volume
of gunfire is such that we can't communicate, Like, how do I tell
my guys what we're doing when there's that much shit flying through the air and
it's that loud. How do I convey that? Do we get inside of
building and talk somewhere safe so that people know what's going on? And that's
not what happened. It was just everything running a muck, having no idea.
So as an example, first time I got out of the vehicle and
I started engaging people, I think I'm at the target building. Now we're
not even close to the target building. Like we fought our way to the
target building, and then we got to the target building, my vehicle left
and drove down the road and I ended up having to Singleton down to link
up with the vehicle. I had no idea what was going on. It's
not like, hey, here's what's going on. You know, we're going
to go do this. When we went to go pick up Blackburn and Casey
Joyce was killed, Yeah, so Blackburn, it's a kid that fell out
of that halo. We went to go pick him up. I had no
idea. I thought we were X filling, like mission over, we're headed
back right, So just to kind of convey the chaos and not having a
radio, not having any situational awayareness to what was going on, what you're
doing, Nobody had a chance and it's not like we could even talk.
You see people's lips moving and screaming and people yelling and stuff, but that
was about it. So I don't know if the movie necessarily, you know,
captured that. Yeah, the gravity of this situation. Right, I've
been in a lot of gunfights since, and I never felt like I felt
there, right, just not even in the same I mean, shit could
be going sideways, a helo crash, a helo shot down, QRF is
being called, all this stuff might be happening, and I'm like, yeah,
we got this, you know, totally different situation. This was completely
different and unlike anything that I ever you know, saw after that out there
flapping. Yeah, do you think what do you This might be asking you
to sort of guess and you might not want to guess. So, but
why do you think that USUSA was trying to squash it? Was it a
military thing that they didn't want people to know the details? Do you think
they were getting pressure politically? Because I don't think if I'll defend them in
this and say it was kind of unprecedented, right, so Panama happened,
It's not like we had all this footage and their CNN, right, there
and seeing people drag through the streets and all that. I don't think.
I don't think we had the same kind of you know, connectivity and the
Internet, you know, developing years later and becoming a thing allowed him to
kind of piece together a lot of the book and a lot of the story
in a different way. I don't think that use of SOAC, if that's
the approving authority of something, I don't think that they had any idea how
to deal with something. There's no class in that, you know. I
think much of that applies to this day. That, yeah, they still
have difficulties dealing with the media and don't understand and think like we can just
this will all just go away, This will just turn it away. Yeah,
and if we apply enough pressure on someone, you know, maybe bring
our we have attorneys and maybe try and you know, seasoned desist or whatever.
You know. I don't even know. I'm you know, speculating there.
But I've talked with Mark Bowden since then, and I was trying to
put together for the thirtieth anniversary, which just happened. I was trying to
put together I didn't want it to be a podcast, but I was trying
to put together a mechanism for how to tell some of these like really incredible
stories of not war stories, but kind of other stuff that happened that people
aren't familiar with or know about. And again, some of them aren't really
my story to tell. But the only way that I felt like I could
tell all these stories was through like a podcast, because you could have different
people on, you can kind of let the conversation evolve, not like a
book where it's like hear him writing about what this guy experienced or something like
that. And anyway, kind of got everything lined up for that. I
talked to Mark Bowden would he be interested in participating. He was absolutely yes,
And really one of the things that I wanted to talk to him about
was the hollywoodization of real people. So, you know, Matt Eversman being
the main Ranger character, Josh hartenz Kim or Josh Hartnett, who did a
really good job of portraying the guy you know, like really did a great
job of portraying him and kind of his mannerisms and everything else. You know,
went out on the initial assault and never went back out after the initial
assault. And so imagine being mad and being asked by everyone that knows that
you were there, you know, hey when this happened, Well, it
wasn't really there, you know, no that really didn't know. That was
somebody else that was you know, did they have to pay him wife rights
to use his name like that in the movie. No, I don't think
so. I mean I got my name got used in the movie, and
I didn't participate in any way as Brad Thomas. Yeah really yeah. Well
the other thing though, is that you know, if people, if people
in the community, people who were there or whatever, like yeah, but
if they're like, hey, like what did you tell Walden that like you
were there the whole time? He's like, I, like, I told
him exactly what I did. Well, Bowden didn't make the movie really,
Scott. Yeah, yeah, it's when I adapted from the book and all
of that. But it just from my perspective, how did he gather information?
How many people did he talk to? I was really cute says to
how what was his process? Right? When did you know when did he
find out? When did he know who he was going to use and you
know who he wasn't going to use or any of that. Yeah, I
thought that that would have been an interesting perspective to being able to tell that
story, yeah, for sure. And then another part of it was going
to be like kind of before what was life in the Ranger regiment, like
prior to nineteen ninety three, and you kind of can't really tell the story
without going back in time a little bit and talking about, you know,
the differences of how dumb we were and how nothing really made any sense and
our PT program was horrible, and you know, we talk about that now
with some of the young kids that are in I'm like, yeah, so
check it out. If you fell out of the run, you did remedial
PTE in the afternoon after lunch, so imagine being in the state of breakdown,
right, and then hey, you know you couldn't run a six minute
mile. So we're gonna do another run this after right, and then tomorrow
morning we're gonna get up and run again every day. You know. So,
did this ever, this series ever come about? No, it didn't,
And there were a lot of really good stories, and there were a
couple of reasons it didn't. One like reliving that stuff, it's not like
it puts me personally in a headspace. That's it's not like I'm walking around
suicidal or anything like that. It's just, man, it's not a fun
subject. I want to day right and then have to talk about And then
we discovered this thing and now we need to try and get this guy on
and last summer, so this all kind of conceptualized last summer. Ended up
spending almost all of July and August in the studio recording an album. And
when that got settled, you know, people don't understand the amount of work
that goes into recording is one part of actually, you know, releasing an
album. You've got artwork, You've got all the mixing, all the mastering,
all of the hey we need a strip vocal version for this thing.
We have all the social media stuff like it's it is a monster. And
I was so happy and like proud of the album and everything that we were
doing and going through, and it's like I'm in this zone, like in
this vibe, and the last thing I felt like doing was just like going
yeah, yeah, you know yeah, and I'm like, man, let's
if we can put this off to summer twenty twenty three, and if we
can release the first episode by like October, that'll be a win. And
then it just turned into scheduling stuff. Yeah, I'm going all the time
doing whatever, and you know, just couldn't get it done. But really
it was almost by choice. Yeah. Yeah, some really powerful stories.
You know, I'm not gonna name names. There was a here's a full
circle moment. There was a ranger squad leader who during the battle, directed
his squad to fire at what he thought were bad guys on the rooftop of
a building, which weren't bad guys on the rooftop of a building. They
were assaulters. And that guy almost immediately got sent home, fired, sent
down the road. So imagine being that guy and living through the trauma of
that battle and the magnitude of that and being completely ostracized. He was an
import, which didn't help him, right, And I can't say whether he
was a super likable guy, didn't work with him, didn't know him personally,
But imagine being that guy and overcoming all of the things that we all
over came as a tribe, you know. And I thought his story would
just be incredible to tell because he's got shame, you know, embarrassment,
guilt, all of these things that are really the stuff, like that's the
stuff that Fox guys up. It's not I did a horrific thing, or
I saw something bad, or it's all those other things that are kind of
rolled into it. So I'm telling this story to one of the other people
that was going to be involved, and one of the other people that was
involved was like, man, I would love to talk to that guy because
we had a fratricide incident on the very first operation and the guy that was
so vocal about what he did was the one that was cranking rounds off at
friendlies on our assault. And I was like, shh yeah, yeah,
yeah, So you start, That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's
not the intent wasn't for it to be, you know, here, relive
your war story and tell your war story. It was really to be telling
these stories. I know personally. Another thing that kind of came up from
the thirtieth happened a year prior. There was an awards upgrade that happened,
and I don't know if you guys heard about that. Okay, so somebody
decided and I've heard through the grapevine. I don't know this to be true
that it had something to do with the wards that are given during a specific
battle. If it hits a certain mark, then like anybody from the task
Force could be buried in Arlington or something that could be totally wrong. So
if you know the real story hipping up on social media and let me know
what the real story is, I'm trying to find it out. Anyway,
We're going to upgrade all these people. And first of all, you know,
I know, military awards are about as jacked up as they could you
know, never be right. But as an example, like if you're at
this level, this is the award that you got, you're at this level,
this is the award that you got. I know, a dude that
got an Arkham with a v device true story, there's like that's kind of
like the private that was running around doing stuff in the street, dealing it,
okay, dealing with death and okay, so imagine this, you know,
and this is kind of a sensitive subject, I think to some degree.
But if you're a casualty, doesn't mean that you automatically like a valorous
award isn't what you're awarded for being killed in battle. You're given a purple
heart, you're posthumously maybe promoted or things like that. But someone gets killed
and they get a Bronze Star with V and here's private guy running around for
eighteen hours laying it down and he gets an RCM with V device. So
anyway, the awards upgrade happens, and imagine being, you know, I'm
a semi public person. Imagine people asking, hey, did you get upgraded?
Did you get upgraded? No? Man, no, I'm a shit
bag. I didn't get upgraded. Like, I don't know how they picked
who got upgraded, But twenty nine years after the battle, which was probably
twenty eight years after the awards ceremony, I'm still like feeling shame or embarrassment
by the award that I was given and then I wasn't upgraded. But these
other people were right, and I don't think that anybody looked at it that
way. I think it was just like, hey, we're trying to right
or wrong. We're trying to get people silver stars that got only bronze stars.
We're trying to whatever. I don't know the impetus or the or the
intent, but I felt like at the time, and I didn't even know
if I was getting upgraded or not, having conversations with some of my peers
and was like, man, this is a bad thing. It's just it's
gonna make and ruffle a lot of feathers for people that are getting things.
Other people aren't getting things, And it's more about the people that aren't getting
things than it is the people that are getting right. So anyway, that's
just do you feel like that that whole battle was somewhat like except the I
don't know, like the zeitgeist around it was accentuated because of the intense I
don't want to say media scrutiny, but the intense amount of attention that that
particular battle got. That it's something that became like army legend, you know,
not just ranger legend, but army. Yeah. I don't know.
Like I said, I think it was. I think it was an important
I think it was an important moment in our military history and our first engagement
with al Qaeda. You know, we didn't know that at the time,
but that was really our first kind of engagement. Then. I think it
was the first real example of the media being there and having stuff. So
as an example, we ended up, you know, at about ten o'clock
the next day, we end up in a stadium. We're kind of reconsolidating,
reorganizing, and dead and wounded or being farm you know, moved out
and transported and things like that. We still have to drive back through the
city to get back to the hangar, and I don't think we got back
to the hanger until about one o'clock. So we get back to the hangar,
everybody's taking their gear off, kind of doing a reunited thing with other
guys that we haven't seen yet, and all of a sudden, in the
back corner of the hangar, they had a TV, and you know,
we'd watch movies back there, and you got like four hundred people task for
us trying to watch you know, Naked Gun or something like that back there.
So anyway, all of a sudden, everybody starts running back to the
corner and so we make our way over there, and the first thing we
see is like dudes get and drug around through the streets. So nobody knew,
like nobody had account We didn't have accountability for people, so we didn't
even know that there were people that weren't accounted for. In my mind,
it's like, hey, we're we're back home. We got everybody. You
guy's got everybody. We're all back and it was cool. We didn't know
until I think it was three or four days later that Durant pops up on
CNN, and I don't think that they knew whether he was alive or dead.
So just that in itself, you know, I guess, kind of
speaks to the chaos and or how the media was involved with something where to
find out what you've been. Yeah. So one of the things that I
remember about that time is, you know, like I would say that a
lot of the military has you know, like a lot of it gener or
used to at least generally lean somewhat conservative, so there would be this a
you know, Republican Democrat thing. But but there was a real there was
a real split at that point in time because people felt like, you know
where the government would not give them acs, you know, because they didn't
you know, because they they didn't want to appear to be too like harsh.
They didn't want the imagery of American you know, forces over there,
so we don't have necessarily, you know, the soldiers didn't necessarily have the
things that they really needed, you know, relying on Pakistani armor and you
know, and things like that, because the Americans didn't have what they needed.
Sure, I've had a few conversations about just like the political aspect of
the whole operation, and there are people that are very heated about that,
you know, to this day. We had these things, no doubt and
flying around immediate game changer, totally get it. We were there very covertly,
to the point that people got haircuts to look like we were all just
some rangers coming over here to do, you know, like it was a
very kind of under the radar, not intending to be. So how can
you go do that and then have all the shit flying around overhead, you
know, fast movers, naval gunfire, whatever you want to have. And
and so I look at it like we could have either gone and done it,
or the military could have said here's our bottom line, and if we
don't get this, we're not doing it, and maybe it would have never
happened. I think it was an important mission. I think what we were
there to do was an important mission as much as any g Watt mission could
be, you know, and all of the all of the things that we
ended up doing there. But I don't think politically, I don't think America
was in a place or you know, the landscape was in a place where
like, hey, Hey, we're gonna send over this thing and it's going
to be this big offer we're invading, right, and it was, it
was really under the radar. So I'm I'm not and I'm a very a
political person. Try not to do anything political on social media. I don't
want to divide people, you know, but I can understand why we didn't
have some of the things that maybe we would have normally, and why that
would be you know, a risk. Yeah. And also I don't I
don't want to speak out of turn, but there may have been some like
legal prohibitions about having aircraft with strafing capabilities. But we had a one historian
on the show that would be a better person to talk too, Yeah,
for sure than anything I know about. Yeah, I mean we're there.
You know, we're in this country to hand out aid, right bag,
That's why we're there. The aid starts getting stolen and they're killing people to
get the aid, and then they're you know, black marketing it or they're
you know, doing whatever and handing out to only their tribe, right,
whatever it is. And you know, so coming in with this big here
we are, you know, like I get it. You know, there
are plenty of other things that we've done elsewhere that isn't you know, this
big march into the city, right, and after something goes really really wrong,
of course we look like assholes in the afternoon here, like, yeah,
let's talk a little bit about Ranger recon. Okay, after that whole
event you came back, you had already kind of like committed yourself or voices
and so for leadership that you were interested in going to the selection for this.
Yeah, let me answer that and then I'll let you finish. So
I had told them, hey, I want to go to this selection.
Was supposed to be October in ninety three. That didn't happen, and obviously
when we got back, my platoon definitely took the brunt of everything and we're
pretty much wiped out, like all the NCOs I was soon to be.
I would have promoted to E five had I not said I want to go
to selection for this thing. So I would have promoted that summer June or
July or whatever. They actually did a promotion board over there, and I
would have gone to that and gotten promoted. So anyway, you know,
hey, I'm pulling myself out. I'm gonna go do this thing. When
that happened and we got back, I was like, I would feel like
an asshole if I said, Hey, I'm leaving. I feel like I've
got to help rebuild the platoon. I know what we need to do to
be successful. I want to make sure that we get back up, you
know, plused up as much as we can before I go and leave and
do something else. So you've got me for like another eighteen months, you
know, something like that, and ended up Spring of ninety five is when
I went to selection. But then I'll let you. I'll let you finish
your question. No, you're you're you're probably like what was my question again?
No, you're on You're on the right track. So you want to
stay around and make sure the platoon got back up on its feet before taking
off, Like I mean, just like I don't know if you know the
exact numbers, but like as far as casualties in your platoon, yeah,
pretty much every nco. And then my last peer, with the exception of
one guy got hit by the mortar round that hit on the sixth of October
that killed a unit guy and wounded a bunch of folks. But we were
standing out in front of the hangar and we were smoking cigarettes. And it's
funny because I had met Wayne Downing there on the sixth and Wayne told me
to So General Downing Ranger legend, four star general. I think he was
the Silicon General at the time. I had met him that afternoon and he
was like, you know, Rangel Thomas, you need to quit smoking.
And I was like whatever when they stopped. This was a jerry boykind that
told you to stop smoking. No, So, so General Downing tells me
I need to stop smoking. And anyway, I'm out front and it's you
know, evening or whatever, and me and a couple of dudes are standing
out there having cigarettes and a couple of dudes smoking cigars and stuff like that.
And I take like two steps and like, hey, I'm gonna go
back inside and do whatever. I take like two steps, like this thing
hits and the lights go out and then you hear people screaming. It was
just like total chaos, and I think we thought like, Okay, we're
gonna go back out into the city. I don't think we even knew what
we were gonna do or not do. But anyway, so my last kind
of peer got hit in the neck. Nick is jugglar. But he came
walking in and me and a buddy that came to my platoon. It's like
a reinforcement that came over that day. He and I had been roommates,
like when I first got there and stuff like that. He got a duy
and it had been sent down the road. He had just come back and
he was like, I'm supposed to be in B company. Totally lied,
got on the plane saying that, you know, somebody had told him he
was supposed to go back to B company. And he shows up there and
was like what's up. But anyway, friend comes staggering in and he's like,
he goes, I'm gonna pass out. They're like, no, man,
you're good, and so break out the flashlight and kind of start working
on him and he goes unconscious and it was kind of like, well he's
dead, I'm gonna start and the brain kind of immediately started to move on.
And anyway, that was a long drawn out way to answer the question.
But that was kind of like my last peer. And you know,
really after that, it was just slim pickings. There were dudes that were
getting medically you know, discharged. There were people that would never fully recover,
you know, still in the process at some degree. You know,
maybe my ankle's going to be good, maybe my foot's going to be whatever.
So yeah, I don't know percentage. It seemed like all the privates
were good to go, but gunners everybody, you know. I think there
were so one hundred and twenty people on the ground that day. I think
it was something about that and seventy seven purple hearts, So okay, so
that's a good number. Yeah, it was pretty significant. And then another
however many it came on the six when more people got hit with the morner.
So you stuck around for another year and a half or so and then
went off to selection. Tell us about r RD selection at that time,
nineteen ninety five, yeah, ninety five. So it was extremely basic,
and I think they had been through different iterations, and I can't remember.
I used to probably know like more of what it was, and you know,
they used to go do this, and I don't remember now, but
I know that I went through a very basic kind of selection for it.
It was a PT test, a road march, there may have been,
you know, one other physical type event, and then it was kind of
like a board of you know, Commander's board, and me and another buddy
from my platoon both made it and got selected, So it was it was
pretty basic. I don't think there were a lot of people trying out though.
Do they still put you up in the mountains in Delanaga at that time?
So that was something that once I got there, and this was kind
of what the article was about. So at some point in ninety six,
Colonel Azinski, the sixth colonel of the Ranger Regiment, decided that there were
some other people that were doing missions for the Rangers and he didn't want that
to happen and he wanted Rangers to do Ranger stuff and probably being a little
you know, cryptic here, but anyway, he basically said, I want
the Recon Attachment to be on par with other organizations and whatever it takes to
get there. I want some smart guys to help figure out what needs to
be done to get this group to the twentieth century. And we had things
like Bosnia or was you know, happening and so semi permissive environment, not
not combat operations per se. So he came down and talked to the Regimental
S two and the Regimental S two came and talked to the detachment and he
said, I'm looking for a couple of smart guys that are senior that can
figure out how to put together a training course, a selection process and what
it takes, you know, what we're looking for trying to figure out what
we're looking for. So I raised my hand. I had been there for
maybe a year and that was ninety seven, so I had been there for
about two years and was like an assistant team leader, and you know,
said I want to I want to be a part of that. I want
to figure out what it takes to get us, you know, into the
next generation. So I put together the selection process. And my buddy Scott
Stirling, who is died a few years ago of cancer. He and another
guy took on what has become the reconnaissance training course. So they put that
together and I put selection together. And that's kind of how I came to
be for the square community out there. Tell people what RRD is, what
like, what did you guys do? What was the purpose of the seunit?
So I don't know, I mean from the stuff that I did there
nothing of it is you know super opsec and you know secretive or anything else.
But they're basically, you know, coming in and looking at things and
figuring out atmospherics and doing all that kind of stuff, so that the group
that's coming in to do whatever is, you know, got a little bit
of situational awareness about what they're getting into. That was a total bullshit answer,
but thank you, Brad. Yeah, so let's talk a moment.
Then There's also like there was at the time a bit of a stigma around
RRD that I'd like to talk about because I think it was still lingering a
bit even when I got to Range a regiment that you and I had talked
about that there is this this idea that you know, the RD got compromised
on every training operation, and I think that kind of stuck with them for
a little bit. It was kind of an unfortunate but could you talk a
little bit about like why that came about? So when I got there,
as an example, the team would get utilized, like my team supported Third
Ranger Battalion. So if there was a company that was doing a live fire
operation out on Kilo twenty two and Fort Benning, they would have my team
go in and like heysh, you go figure out where our support by fire
position would be you go figure out where, uh you know, report in,
whether, report in whatever, all that kind of jazz. So we
were really kind of being underutilized and I lost track of where I was going
with that. Where that the you know, the the battalion and a lot
of the Joe's you know the guys. Okay, r RD was just always
fucked up and always compromised. So the point would be, like you're sneaking
around out there and you're trying not to get caught by either a fake enemy
or a bunch of privates that have been assigned with being op for a for
a target, and they're being maybe a little overly aggressive because they want to
try and bust find you and they want to try and bust someone. So
anyway, what we were told there was here's where you want to push the
envelope, Like you want to try and see what you can get away with
and what you can't get away with because it's training and it doesn't really count.
See what's possible. So you know, you'd have an enemy situation as
an example, Uh, the enemy has robing patrols out to seven hundred meters
out from the target area. But really these privates were going out like you
know, two kilometers, you know, and they're beating the brush looking for
you. And you know, so here you are pushing the envelope and now
you're getting rolled up by you know, a couple of jackasses that are doing
something that they weren't supposed to do anyway, it doesn't fit with the enemy
situation and scenario and all of that stuff. So to your point, yeah,
that was that was kind of like the bad Blood. It was.
Those guys are always getting compromised. Those guys are always getting rolled up on
target. Those guys are always this. They're a bunch of cowboys. They're
you know, oh look now they've got long hair, and you know all
they do they do, all they do is jump yeah, right right,
And you know that's that's another misnomer. It's like strap a bunch of shit
onto yourself and jump out of a plane at night into a tiny little Fort
Benning drop zone from twenty four thousand feet and you want to talk about a
gut check, you know, yeah, stepping off that ramp. Well,
that's I mean, that's something the story. The story helpedel that. When
I was a tab spec for in range of battalion and RRD came and gave
us like the absolute worst recruitment brief I had ever seen in my life.
They're like, yeah, hey, guys, you come to RRD and you
can jump out of airplanes with an extra eight hundred pounds of gear in this
bundle, and yeah, we jump with an extra eight hundred pounds. You
can free fall and do and like we're all looking at this like yeah,
no, no, no, absolutely not. No one was even remotely interested
in this job, which is again it's unfortunate because there's a lot of stuff
that that element does that's really interesting and good. Yeah, especially now like
they but also a well, this this was two thousand and four or five,
I mean this was they were doing some interesting also at the time.
Like I don't know how it is now, but at the time the you
probably had just internal sabotage to not internal to RD. But but the idea
in regiment is you either grow up and die in regiment, you go to
delta or you're a ship bag. If you go to r D, you're
a ship bag. If you go to SF, you're a ship bag.
Actually, if you're on the line and you go to the sniper section.
You're a ship bag, like if if you're anything but an assaulter, you're
a ship bag, you know, and the only acceptable place to go from
Ranger Battalion is either you know, uh fort living room or Delta where you're
an assaulter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much a cultural you know,
a cultural thing. I was kind of expecting that to some degree when
I left, and I think, like, I remember, they gave me
my going away plaque maybe a month early, and it was because it coincided
with like the Ranger ball and they're like, hey man, we're gonna give
this thing to you here, so you got to be there, blah blah
blah blah blah. And I remember thinking that, and you know, like,
how am I being perceived? You know, is it I'm quitting right?
And I think the camaraderie from having all been together in Mogadishu, it
definitely wasn't. I didn't. I didn't feel that way. They didn't make
me feel that way. They gave me this huge Somalia shaped plaque that has
all kinds of like cool pictures on it and you know, artifacts and stuff
like that. So I didn't feel that way. But I know what you
say is true. Yeah, that's great. Any any other final thoughts about
R r D before we move on. Like I said, in my mind,
looking back at you know, the scope of the whole career, it
was definitely, you know, one of the best kept secrets in terms of
the amount of satisfaction I got job satisfaction. You know. I know that
they're way more versed than way more things now and probably way better trained and
everything else. But at that time it was the only real place that you
could be where it wasn't I'm a sergeant, you're a private. I'm gonna
yell at you until I get you to do what you you know, should
be doing, and things like that, and that just never really fit me.
Yeah, I did it. I was a Hellian for you know,
probably two years or probably sorry, uh sorry to people that maybe I crossed.
It's important. I won't mention his name. But I had this very
humbling moment happen, and it was kind of like the shift from when I
went from Hellian to be like maybe an actual leader. And I had this
kid who you know, the deal man. When you see kids, you
can kind of tell like not gonna fit, gonna fit, you know,
needs some work needs whatever. And I had this kid and I was ruthless
with him for about a week and he was hanging in there, and I
was like, I'm going to change my tactic, and so I called him
into my room and I'm like, all right, man, here's the deal.
We can keep playing this game and I keep smoking in all of that,
or you know, you can just quit and you know there's no shame
in that whatever. And he goes, okay, Serge, and I quit
and I'm like what, Like that's all it took, you know, being
nice to you and you're gonna quit? And I said why did you want
to be here anyway? And he goes, well, my dad was a
ranger in Vietnam. Yeah, And I was like fuck man, Like that
was that was a deep moment for me and realizing that, like, I'm
torturing this kid because I can, uh, he probably needs it to some
level and get pushed a little bit to see whether he's going to hang in
there. But that was a moment where things kind of changed for me,
like, all right, I need to get these kids squared away. It's
not my job to be a dick. They've already they've already had that I'm
gonna I'm gonna lead them, you know, and I'm gonna be different,
and that's that was kind of a start point for that for me. Yeah,
m hm. And how did it go from making that jump from r
r D to Jaysack? So, I, I mean I joined the army
with the intent of, Hey, I always want to end up telling your
recruiter and man, get me there. They need me. They don't know
they maybe, Yeah, I mean that was the intent. I think if
there was any if there was anything in a recruiter's job, isn't to like
lay out your career progression and everything else. But I didn't understand, like
my goal very quickly went from I want to be in this unit that I
view as the tip of the spear and most other people view that way.
It went to I need to survive. I need to survive here. If
I can't make it here, I can't make it, you know. And
so it became a survival thing. And then it's like, well, I'm
actually thriving in this highly aggressive, highly competitive, physically and mentally challenging environment,
like I'm living and I'm going out boozing, you know, and it's
like anybody can do this when you're not hungover. You can do it when
you're hungover. Whole different level. Anyway, Then it kind of was like,
Okay, your goal is to get to Ranger School. I make it
through that finally. Then you know, once they realize they got you and
you're gonna stick around, get to combat, that was a whole separate thing.
Then it was hey, we're sending you a jump master, We're sending
you to see your school, We're sending you to get your schooled out,
get you promoted, and all of that stuff. So I recognized at that
point, like I need to make a step somewhere, and that was where
the recont attachment kind of came in. But you know, I didn't realize
it was going to take me eight years to get to the place that I
ultimately wanted to go. And so similarly, kids will hit me up on
social media, Hey I want to go here, and it's like, man,
just get in prove yourself, like that will come right, that's years
down the road. Yeah, like years down the road. And I think
with probably the social media buzz and people seeing pictures of stuff, it's like
that's they think that they're you know gonna be there, but ultimately it takes
a lot of sacrifice and a lot of time and a lot of I mean,
it's your life. Yeah, for eight years, that was my life,
you know, just to get in the door. And so to answer
your question, I always wanted to end up there, you know, that
was kind of my plan. Even the the recon thing was more about and
something maybe I learned about myself is I'm not good at just sitting in one
thing, you know, like I need to constantly challenge. I like to
challenge myself. I think that's when you grow. I think that, you
know, that's when you learn the most about yourself. And so just being
happy with being in the line company, it just wasn't doing it for me.
That's not to say that it's not fine for somebody else, just for
me. And the same thing happened to me later when I got to the
place I wanted to be, it was Okay, I've been here for five
years, how many more times can I go do this? It's a very
cyclical lifestyle, and it got very boring and kind of stagnant, and you
know, that became a thing where it's like, okay, well, what
do I do. Now, I've got fourteen fifteen years in and it's five
years to cross the finish line. But this is kind of getting old and
yeah, all that stuff. What formth did that take for you? Is
like, you know, I understand, whether it's like seizing airfields or clearing
rooms or whatever, the mission is. At a certain point, you gain
like a certain level of proficiency, and from what you tell me, it's
like, eh, I'm kind of ready to like move on to the next
thing. Yeah. I think once you get to a point where you realize,
like whatever they throw at me, I can solve the problem. I
can handle it, I can physically accomplish it or whatever. I don't know
what it is. But I always feel like, you know, it's four
years, five years, and I'm kind of ready for that next challenge,
right. That's one of the things that I've been like with music, it's
always a challenge. It's coming up with the next thing. The creative process
of writing something. Where does that come from? You know? And I
put myself in like different mind frames for that versus something else. But yeah,
I don't know, I just that's just me. You know, I'm
always looking for something else. When I got to the unit. I remember
seeing these guys or were like, he's been here twelve years. You know,
he's been here sixteen years, and you're like, wow, that's crazy,
like legend and you know that was right for them, but for me
not so much. Yeah, you know, it was all right, what's
the next step, what's the next chapter? What am I going to do?
How am I going to continue to challenge myself or find something or learn
something new or do something different. So did you find something that was fulfilling
in those last five years for you? Yeah? I ended up working like
maybe the last four year years three and a half four years. I ended
up working like in the combat development R and D type of thing, which
you know, was a great transition out of the military. But that kind
of gave me, i don't know, the ability to learn about how body
armor is tested and how what a helmet, how it needs to perform to
do X, Y and Z camouflage, uniforms, apparel, gear, all
that kind of stuff. So that was incredibly rewarding, you know, and
fulfilling. So I had a ton of fun with that. Yeah, did
you you know, did you have an opportunity then because here you are on
the cutting edge and on the cutting edge of like R and D and I
imagine part of the procure procurement chain. Did you have an opportunity to see
things that were in development or theoretical that may not even be in production yet,
but stuff is like wow, if this ever like comes online, it's
it's it's a game changer. Yeah, And that that was kind of like
my role was to be able to see things and figure out how to apply
that to something you know, operational, to solve a problem or a deficiency
or a shortfall. You know, so if a if a military unit says
I lack the ability to be able to do X, the first thing that
the military unit looks at is cannot be solved with training. If not,
you know, is it something that we need an item? If it needs
to be an item. We're not defining what the item is and saying we
need the X, Y, and Z brand thing that does you know whatever,
You're basically saying, we need something that's going to enable us to get
from here to here in a safe manner. Whatever. You're kind of writing
a requirement for what the thing should be, and then you're throwing that to
industry to see who can fill you know, that void. Yeah, it's
kind of how that how that works? Now do you do you still like
watch the industry in terms of like what people are creating, what kind of
new things are out there to some degree, and you know, have developed
a bunch of stuff myself, Yeah, and with folks, and you know
that's been lucrative and and everything else. So I'm not in it so much
as like who's got a new boot? Right? You know, I don't
look down at that level. It's more like looking at capability gaps or you
know, missing pieces that's something that could this would help you know, this
is a good idea because these guys are missing this one thing that would make
their job easier, better, whatever it might be, Right, what do
you and we've seen technology, especially war fighting technology like changed so rapidly over
the last years. What to you as maybe as a futurist, you know,
not with you know, current technology, but as a futurist, what
do you think are like some really exciting emerging technologies right now for the warfighter.
There's a lot of stuff that I've seen that I won't talk about.
Uh, that's probably the most exciting stay And yeah, not my place to
say. You know, I will say that when if you go to a
show like like a Soft Week, which used to be Soffik down in Tampa,
and it's kind of like SOCOM's Industry Day more or less. If you
go to that, it used to be did you see that new Arcteric's jacket?
Right? Did you see that new you know, Merroal boot whatever.
It used to be all about the gear and now it's all tech. Everything
is about tech. I correlate that to the guys and gals being super happy
with the stuff that they have. If the thing that's touching you every day
sucks, like you want to change it. You know, if the thing
that's touching you every day is pretty good, you know, let's worry about
other things. I'm so happy with my wo and my bear suit, well
with my sleep. You know, this this year it was like a lot
of drones. It was a lot of technology. There's a little bit of
like Arctic warfare stuff that you probably you definitely well, you definitely wouldn't have
seen that stuff five ten years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And you know,
the world's changing in an ever evolving place, so you know, there's
all kinds of things I feel like in the gear apparel world, nothing is
really going to significantly change until the battlefield changes. Like, that's about as
mature as it can be for the current you know, landscape, and you
know they've they've got everything dialed in, you know, Yeah, we've been
operating in one basic area, yeah, for twenty two years. And the
stuff that people have is good. The levels of ballistic protection and how tweaked
that is, you know, it's about as mature as you can get it.
Stuff isn't getting any lighter really, maybe a little bit here and there,
but there's no real leap in technology because you know, there really doesn't
need to be. It's about as refined as it could be. Right.
So if you were to say, all right, we're going to now be
fighting in the jungles of the Philippines and we need gear and uniforms and things
like that that are going to sustain us there, I think, wow,
Okay, there's a whole lot of opportunity with that. But yeah, tech
is the big that's the big thing. And you heard it here first guys.
Brad Thomas, expert in the field, says we're going to be fighting
in the jungerles in the Philippine Next Insider Knowledge d make sure you clip.
That's just kidding, but yeah, it's uh, it is interesting because like
even looking at like cold weather gear, right, like you know, like
the civilian market has always moved so much faster than the military, but the
military, and I think that like jaysk Unison Jaysock had led that charge where
they were you know, adapting, like you know, whether it was the
was it like reyk lely Blutes or like just they were out there experimenting and
had the budget and the procurement process to experiment where you know, I think
like during the nineties we were wearing cold weather gear, the same cold weather
gear they were wearing in the Korean War. Yeah, probably, Yeah,
Or you know, I get to the Ranger Battalion in ninety one and I'm
wearing a Vietnam era web gear. Yeah. I was a sawgunner in Mogadishu.
I had a LBE that had five five six mag pouches on it that
because it was the Ranger sop oursop, I had to carry six magazines in
my magazine pouches for a for a weapon that I wasn't even carrying. And
then I'm slinging around like bandoliers of AMMO. There was nothing to carry that
stuff. Then. Now if you see what these guys have now and the
way they're carrying it and how smart it is, and they're like, you
know, this could be a lot Like I have no idea. I don't
want to sound like I am, but I don't want to be like,
here's a compass and that's what you end up sounding like. But their whole
world is like different. They're trying to improve what they've got and make it
better and everything else. They've got really good stuff until we have like Star
Wars blasters that don't require magazine at all. Like we've kind of gotten to
the point where we've maximized it. Yeah, talk to us about retirement and
what you went on to the transition process, and then and then we'll talk
about the music. Sure music always gets the fucking very end, you know,
because it is fine. We're following. We're following because because we don't
like this the artist. Yeah, this is like communists. Like every everything
that I do media wise, it's like always at the very end, it's
like, talk about your story. I don't mean a short change, not
at all. It's like, that's when people are like and I'm done with
the I'm done with this. I was ready to retire, and I feel
like for a large portion of people that separated from them from the military,
whether that was retirement or whether that was being medically retired or ets ing after
eight years or whatever it might be. I got to do it on my
terms. And there's a huge difference in being able to do something on your
terms and when that's taken from you. So I lose the lower half of
my leg and I'm out. Man, It's like that's I was still doing
my I'm still trying to do that thing. Right. I was ready to
retire, and it's kind of like, all right, I've I've had a
good run. I did a ton of cool stuff. I work with the
best people. I you know, a part of everything that you could be
a part of, and then some and I'm just ready to move on and
do something else. Plus, you did the thing that you went in to
see the Air Force recruiter to do in the first place. Yeah, exactly,
exactly, So yeah, I was. I was super satisfied, ready
to you know, move on and find another challenge. I recognized going into
that process that I'm gonna lose my identity, that thing that I sack eight
years to become this, and then I spent another twelve years doing that.
I recognize that's all going away, and so I knew it was coming,
and it didn't make it necessarily any easier, but I kind of knew that
it was coming. And the one thing I would say, and this is
like a double edged sword. I never fully identified as just being an operator.
I play guitar, I'm a dad, I was a husband, I
am a brother. I love doing these things. You know, all of
those things were as much a part of who I was as being an operator.
And when it came time to not being an operator anymore, it was
kind of like, I can follow on these other things that I have that
are interests. It could be hobbies, it could be whatever. I started
struggling, not personally, I started struggling with other people coming to me telling
me how they were struggling, and it bothered me to the point that I
assembled a small group of former guys like me was like, how do we
fix this fucking problem. There's people that are, you know, full bird
kernels who were telling me that they're ready to not be on the planet anymore
because they're struggling with something so badly, and people that I would never have
dreamed, you know, confiding in me, and maybe I was a person
that was easy to talk to or whatever. The double edged sword part of
I'll go backwards a second. The double edged sword part of like not identifying
solely as a commando, is that you're not the best commando. And in
a school of great white sharks, it doesn't sit well sometimes, you know.
So No, I never claimed, nor will I ever claim, to
have been the world's best commando. I've seen tons of the world's best commandos
be horrible fathers, be horrible husbands, be horrible friends, be horrible drinkers,
whatever you name it. So when I talk with young people about what
they're getting ready or think that they are getting ready to do, I try
and explain that to them that just being the world's greatest commando, you may
be a failure in everything else in your life. So you know that it
takes a toll, right, So anyway, I got to the point,
maybe twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, two years after retirement, where all right,
people are confiding in me that they're struggling with stuff. There's nothing that
exists to help them. You know. I didn't want to start a foundation.
I did want to be like, my buddy killed himself, so I'm
gonna do this thing. I didn't want to do that. I don't want
to ask people for money, and I would every week kind of question,
you know, go out drinking, whatever, what do I need to do?
So I assembled this like small group of dudes like me that retired from
the same place, and like, how do we solve this problem? And
started going and talking with the unit leadership about we should be leading to charge
on this. It's not your job to transition people out of the military.
Your job is to kill and capture high value targets, to do whatever.
That's your role. I get it. But you have a lot of resources,
and if there's a way we can go about doing stuff that's going to
make people feel better about separating or retiring, we should be able to figure
that out. And I kept, you know, talking with them about stuff
and got even more frustrated because it just kind of that's not their job and
they don't know, you know, it's I didn't join the army to be
a you know, squadron commander and then figure out how to transition people the
military. It's interesting, like the perspective of the person who's like in it
versus out of it, and like you can be the unit sergeant major one
day and the next day you're out of it. Okay, no one out
on the street gives a shit about what who you are, what you did.
Ye, killing people isn't a marketable job. You know, if you
want a contract or you want to do that stuff, you know, have
at it. But yeah, that's that's kind of the thing that I recognized.
And the frustrating part was realizing that there is much of a problem,
a much of a part of the problem as what the guy that's struggling is
the military leadership. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And the thing is their
job is to keep their unit operational and running. So it's easier to ignore
guys with noticeable problems because those guys, like you say, can be high
performers on the job. It's just when you leave them home for eight weeks
with nothing to do, yeah, where they fall apart. Sure. So
I kind of got to a point where maybe by twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
it just kind of felt like stuff was falling on deaf ears a buddy
of mine, Tom Spooner, who started Warriors Heart, and at the time
it was kind of a very you know, there wasn't a lot of social
media presence. There wasn't a lot of how do we get people help,
how do we help raise funds to get people help, how do we you
know, do that kind of thing. And he and I didn't necessarily have
a formal agreement on anything, but it was kind of like, if I
can help out in some way and get the word you know, of the
service you're providing with the facility that you've got going, I want to do
that for you. So yeah, okay, cool. And anyway, our
mutual friend Jason Everman, this was twenty seven team now, so I'm still
kind of floundering around trying to figure out exactly what I want to do.
Twenty seventeen, Jason and I. He came into Manhattan. We're going to
see Mastadon at a Hammerstein ballroom. And I think he knew Bill Kelleher from
Mastadon and maybe it was a roommate with him for a while. And anyway,
as I'm driving into the city, the light bulb goes off, and
I was like, I'm going to put together some kind of music something or
other, and I'll take the proceeds of that and I'll contribute it to organizations
that are helping guys that need help. And I can at least be a
presence in social media and things like that to kind of say, hey,
if you do this, this is who it's contributing to, and this is
how it's helping. So and then I meet up and we're hanging in the
bar beforehand, and I said, and for people that don't know who he
is, he played guitar in Nirvana and bass in Soundgarden, and then played
guitar for another couple of years in mind Funk before Mogadishu happened, and he
got inspired in ninety four to join the Army, so you know, was
touching the scene pretty significantly. And he and I had been friends for a
number of years and would meet up in New York and hang out from time
to time. But the light bulb went up, I'm gonna do this music
thing. I'm gonna see if Jason wants to be a part of it,
because that just makes sense. And I'm literally getting ready to go see him
in just a few minutes, and I'm going to ask him to see if
he wants to do this. So we're at the bar and I said,
you know, we're having conversation and everything else. Hey man, I got
this idea. I don't know what it's gonna be. I have no idea.
You know, it could be just me and you playing guitars together.
Like, I have no idea what it's going to be. You know what,
I know you've been out of music for a long time. I know
that you left with a bad taste in your mouth. You know. Would
you want to be a part of this? And he's like, yeah,
absolutely, hell yeah. So within a week or two I started a social
media page. It was kind of trying to convey as much as you can
through pictures and a few words that people will read. Here's what I'm trying
to do, and it just kind of grew organically. So that was in
like May of twenty seventeen. I think by July, I have a mar
SoC officer. Hey man, I don't know what you got going on.
I want to be a part of it. Like do you play an instrument?
I play bass? Like all right, well, where do you live?
Raleigh. Okay, I come down to Raleigh, we hang out.
I was like, man, a A list guy, like just awesome.
I'm human being, phenomenal bass player, you know, kindred spirit, all
of that stuff. And it's like, yeah, man, you're you're the
right guy. So it just started to grow. Doesn't Jason play bass?
No, so he does guitar stuff yeah, and you guitar. Yeah.
So that grows to a point that by the fall, h a list producer
hits me up on social media, sends me a d M. Hey man,
love what you got going on. I'd love the produce your album.
And I'm like, who's this guy? Right? So I google him and
I'm like, holy shit, this is Bieber's producer, Celine Dion Bad Bunny
d Lipa Like it's pretty the pretty, the biggest. So then I don't
even know who the artists are. It's like, who's this bad Bunny?
And I looked that up and it's like four hundred and ninety ka billion followed
like holy crap. So I tell him tell him a straight up line,
sorry, straight up line, man. Yeah, we're ready to go.
We've got three people in the We're ready to go. And he's like,
okay, my schedule, I've got like about a two week gap in here
in January. If you guys can get out to La I'll book studio time.
I'll find a place, we'll get a discounted rate. I'll do all
this, you know, pro bonome kind of deal. And uh, man,
we pulled it together, pulled it out of our ass, you know,
and uh and got it across the who's the band at that point?
So the band was a guy Brandon on drums, and you probably know Brandon
on drums, Jason playing some guitar stuff. So Jason has always been and
you know j and Jason is Jason. He's as unplugged as anybody could possibly
be. He's always been like a fringe type of member. So he adds
things to the writing. He adds things in the studio and these little nuanced
things that make a huge difference in a song, but you wouldn't know it,
Like if you just listen to the song, the meat and potatoes is
there. They'll just add a little flavor to it. Tyson on bass and
Fred who was an active duty E nine in the Air Force and he's our
singer. So that's where we are in the Fall and we have four rehearsals
together. Four. We literally joke about this, were like we recorded the
first album with about sixteen hours of total playtime together. That's crazy as a
complete set, you know. So yeah, we get to LA and we
did a lot of We didn't even have enough material. We had about twelve
songs. We recorded eight, we recorded ten, and we wikered that down
to eight. But we didn't even know, like, what's our sound,
right, It's our vibe until you start to kind of like these four songs
go together, right, these three kind of don't go. So we got
to a point where we cut it to the stuff that we felt like fit
together. Once we got that first album done, it's like, now I
know our sound, I know what we are. Now it's very easy for
me to write more stuff of that vibe right, that genre, because now
I know what we are. But man, it was like pulling teeth to
get that thing done. So outside of Barry Manilow, who I love,
by the way, outside of Barry Manilow, who were your other influences?
Like growing up so my folks got I grew up in suburban Maryland, north
side of DC, like Bethesda and my folks took me to me and my
sister too, like a summer concert series at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and I
saw, like as a very little kid, saw Chicago, the Beach Boys,
another guy, Mac Davis, it was kind of like a country guy.
There was one or two others and I saw that stuff and it was
like, this is you know, this is what I want to do when
I look back, and I had. It's funny because I had a guy
asked me the other day through through the DM and he's like, do you
feel like you missed out on a career in music and spent it, you
know, twenty years in the military and you really should have been doing a
career in music. And I was like, absolutely not. I didn't have
the depth back then to actually write anything worth the damn. There are a
lot of people that are druggling with a lot of trauma and stuff that are
really talented people, and that all comes from somewhere, and in a way,
it's like I had to go to the Army to get trauma to be
able to write. I had a very accomplished musician once told me that you
know today's generation are they've gone to these music schools. They've gone to art
schools, and they're incredibly talented at playing their instruments. But the issue is
they don't have quite the emotional maturity that they they haven't really loved life.
Yeah, so people send me the you know, the here's this like nine
year old kid on the guitar just ripping it up, and it's like,
okay, cool, write a song. You know. I've always identified with
musical influences. I've always identified with the people that wrote songs. And there
there are different, you know, kind of camps that I subscribe to and
like. But I look at a guy like Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains
and he's not the most pyrotechnic guy on the guitar are but man, can
he write a song that fucking hits you? Yeah? Well, I mean
in the gut? You know. You mentioned mac Davis. I haven't heard
that name for years but years, but he had like he was he was.
I mean, he had some great songs that he wrote that other people
performed, and yeah, phenomenal songwriters. The other thing, performer is another
thing. So where did Silence and Light come from? Where did the name
come from? So the name It was something that Tyson threw out to me,
the bass player, marsk officer. He was like, I'm going to
send you a picture. Sends me a picture and I'm looking at it and
it was like the valley floor in Afghanistan, probably circa you know, twenty
fifteen, twenty sixteen, something like that, and he's like, this was
always the most surreal photo because it's like so serene and beautiful, but like
the stuff that's out there right is deadly, know, and he goes,
it reminds me of this poem called in Between the Silence and the Light,
and so we started talking about the poem and he sent me the poem and
I started reading that and I don't know how it came to be, but
we just were kind of like, what about silence and light? And we
google it and the only thing you could find was like maybe three Google entries
about in Between the Silence and the Light, and that was about it.
And anyway, so that's where it came from. It really didn't have any
significant meaning. I liked it from the perspective that like I don't want to
be like war Machine, you know, it's like so overdone and like a
name that makes you think of something like what does this mean to you?
And people will say, like to me, it means this, and I
don't know what it means. It just I wanted to be something that it's
thought provoking, like what does it mean to you? I don't know it
can mean anything. Oh, it's like it's like the silence before the bomb
flash goes up, Like no, it's not bad, it's not bad.
But yeah, that's where it came from though. Yeah. And then in
terms of like your band, Like we've talked about your musical influences a lot,
but in terms of your band, is there sort of a musical influence
or musical influences that your band sort of draws from. So I write all
the music, I do some of the lyrics, and usually it's more about
like, this is the vibe of the song. This is kind of what
I was thinking it could be about. I don't want to put words in
Fred's mouth or make him write or sing words that he's not good at singing.
And so there's a lot of you know, define who writes a song,
Like everybody's adding their own stuff, but it's kind of got to be
in a box, you know, it's like, you can't come in with
some wicked tool drum beat and it fit with something that's meant to be jangly
nutshell kind of gets you know what I mean, It's got to work together.
So we've done a very good job of speaking the same language and saying
this is kind of what I'm feeling. People kind of know we're talented enough
to kind of know what to put into something to make it sound right,
and then we just start tweaking it. And then usually I think, like
most bands, you put something down in the studio that's not the way we
rehearsed it a thousand times or played it or played it live even, and
then you have to learn how you played it on the album right, because
you're like, wait, we tweaked that one part and we did this and
changed this, and then you hear it and it comes out and you're like,
man, I've been playing that wrong. But yeah, that's that's kind
of how it comes to be. But like with this last album that released
in Gue, it specifically came from a place in me and I had been
doing a lot of traveling down to Benning and hanging out with friends and stuff
like that. There hanging out with current Ranger buddies and stuff like that,
and it's a weird place. I spent eight years there, and it was
like the soundtrack of my life when I was there, with Stone Temple,
Pilots and Nirvana and all of that stuff from that era sound Garden, and
I didn't realize what an impact it made on me, maybe not as a
guitar player, but just as a human. The first time I heard smells
like teen Spirit was low crawling down the hallway, you know, in the
Ranger barracks and hearing that song and it was like evil and you know,
my team leaders cranking it and wow, holy shit. And there was also
this thing where life was very uncertain back then, like you didn't know if
you were going to be there. I'm like, will I make it through
tomorrow? Am I going to be here in three months? The guy that
I was roommates with that said that he would never quit. Just jacked it
in this morning and goes packing his bags and moving down to the RFX RFS
platoon and he's gone. And it was just a revolving door of people.
Guys getting hurt on jumps. This guy's getting shoulder surgery, and then he's
out of the army, you know, and I didn't realize what an impact
it had on me. But this album is really a part of me.
Wanted to call it nineteen ninety one because it really comes from there. Man,
Like every sound that you hear is something that was from that era.
And it's not it's not what do they call it a concept album. It's
not that it's but it kind of is. It's kind of turned into that
a little bit where it's like a little bit of everything that really affected me
and made an impression. I mean, people will have to ultimately go and
like listen to the album to understand what it is. But like, yeah,
I mean I hate to even put you on the spot to ask you,
but like, what is that emotion? What what is that place that
that came from? Well, I mean I think I just explained it to
some degree. It was like uncertainty and despair and also hope and aggression and
like all of those every emotion that you could tap into at the time.
You know, hey, you guys need to fight. Hey one of our
privates just got you know, snatched down on weapons. It's all of that
stuff, you know, It's the driving around in and around Fort Benning on
roads that I've driven thousands of times and feeling so completely removed from it because
it's thirty years years later, yeah, twenty six years later or whatever it
might be. It's kind of all of that stuff. Yeah, and so
it really was like this kind of man very accurate soundtrack of like all my
feelings and emotions of that time. And you know what is tomorrow brain?
I don't know, but I'm gonna keep going at it, machine under it.
Yeah. So you know, you can buy their almost you also listen
on Spotify Silence and The Light. If you don't, you're not an American.
I'm just gonna put that out. You hate the troops, you hate
you hate America. Listen. It's great music. I mean I enjoy like
you're basically if you have Apple Music, Like first of all, it's on
every platform that anything that you'll get. You know, we have CDs We've
got so there are people that still have a CD player in their truck and
they don't have the ability to connect the place World School. Where should we
go to get the CDs? On our website? Yeah, So I mean
if you google Silence online or you google me, You're going to find everything
that you need to. You can also get bomb ass swag and T shirts
on their website down the description of this farm, by the way. But
I want to I want to say this, and like there there are a
couple of things, and if there's this is almost like the SoundBite that goes
in front of this whole thing. But sure, the reason I'm doing what
I'm doing, and the reason that I started it was because I wanted to
be you know the old adage of like rangers lead the way and lead by
example. It really is I've lived all the stuff that anybody else can say
that they've lived. And if I can figure out a way to do something
that's healthy and positive and creative and gives back to the community that I love.
If I can figure out a way to do it, anybody can do
it. Just figure out what it is and you know, and follow that
dream. So I put myself out there to say that it's not I want
to be a rock star riding around a limos or anything else. It's to
say I'm a real person. I lived all these things. I did all
these things, and if I can do it, no matter what you face
or what you know, stuff is out there rattling around in your brain.
If I can do it, you can do it. The music, Like
if you buy an album, great, it's just more royalty that we're contributing
to places like Warriors Heart, places like Marine Raider Foundation that do a lot
of good stuff for a lot of people. If you stream it, you're
still contributing. So like, there's no reason why everybody can't get on to
Spotify or Apple Music or Google Play or YouTube or it's on every platform you'd
normally get music. So anyway, we're taking all of those royalties and we're
contributing those to not those like the Spotify, Google Play things like that.
Apple royalties work. Is it Is it more beneficial? And for I mean,
is it more beneficial people like buy an album? Uh? Is it
more benefic Get the CD? Don't be aus, get the CD. And
the plan is to do some vinyl here soon too. But you know,
it's it's more lucrative. Royalties are more lucrative with purchases than they are with
streams. Streaming you have to hit a certain mark before it becomes actually like
Metallica lucrative, right poper Roach lucrative. You know, we could probably name
artists and at the point it's like it's pennies, you know. So if
we sell a song for ninety nine cents, Apple is taking thirty cents of
that. That the forget what the name is called, but the service that
we use that does all the upload yeah, basically codifies everything and it puts
a GPC code on it and that's that's how music is bought and everything else
is GPC code we get Once a song is done. We end up with
about sixty three cents if you buy it, if you stream it, you
know, who knows, We've got to be in the thousands. We're like
approaching a million streams on stuff. So yeah, buy it done by buy
it. If you don't want to buy it, stream it. And we
made a decision way long ago. We were like, let's just sell CDs
yeah, and they're like, I'd rather people just have access to the music.
Yeah, And it's connected with a lot of people. There's two albums
worth a really good stuff. It's only getting better. We'll be doing another
EP here in a few months. So so now just like a three or
four song thing. So this is what I recommend in order you know,
to help the causes by it is buy it, buy it but don't listen
to the CD, or don't listen to it to what you buy, listen
to it on Spotify, so that it adds up every time. Sure,
so buy it and then stream it every every little bit helps. Other thing
is, you know, recording albums isn't cheap. Mixing, mastering, you
know you're you're talking about. Mastering a song is about one thousand dollars a
song. So just mastering that album, which makes it the same whether you
listen to it on a device or you listen to it in your headphones or
you listen to it in your car. That's the thing that kind of makes
everything sound okay and no matter what platform. So that just that in itself
is about one thousand dollars a song. So we have twelve tunes on this
album. That's twelve g's just in mastering, mixing, maybe about the same
studio time, hotels, food, all of that stuff is incredibly expended.
So if people buy merchandise, that's one of the ways that we can help
recoup and not even recoup, it's more like start balance sort of offset.
Yeah, we've just kind of gotten to the point where it's like starting to
pay for itself, you know, and I view that as success from the
beginning of Like, if we can make enough selling merchandise, you know,
we play a show, we saw like eight hundred dollars in merchant Like,
okay, it starts to kind of help the offset some of those costs.
But that's the way if you want to contribute and help the band, That's
one of the ways you can directly contribute is by buying merchandise. What's uh?
I mean you said that there's maybe an EP coming in the near future,
but what do you see as the future for the band? Definitely going
to be playing a bunch of shows. So we've got one next week in
Virginia Beach. We've got I think two or three lined up in Wilmington,
Raleigh. But our goal is really to be like we don't want to.
Yeah, it's a nice scream, that's just life around. Yeah, we
don't we don't want to, you know, get in a van and drive
up and down the East Coast playing for seven people on a Thursday night,
right, Like that's now. We do a lot of special events, and
I've done a lot of one off shows and things like that with different folks.
Our first show was playing with Lenny Kravitz in front of about five thousand
people, so still it was kind of like yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, So we did that, and we've done that, I think three
times. Play with Third Eye Blind, play with Old Dominion. We did
like just an unplugged kind of acoustic set because we're like their country, We're
not. We don't want to come out and be banging all over everything.
So yeah, but twenty twenty four should be a lot of shows, and
our goal is really to kind of get in and be like the act that
opens for the Melbourns. When the Melbourn's playing Raleigh Downtown in front of two
thousand people, we can bring in one hundred extra people or something. You
know. That's that's kind of where we want to be. Uh And for
people who are not watching this, uh So the information and audio questions questions
for Brad, there are many questions. There are many questions, so hopefully
there's not just like one. So check out It's fun, Silence and Light
music dot com to buy the CD, to buy the swag. I've got
my swag and I'm buying more. You have a really cool T shirt that
was out of stock when I went to order it last time. It's back
on it. So the issue with that was the screen printing. This is
one of the things you learn about a band is business man. It's like,
no, everything like this is silence unless incorporated. It's going to have
like, am I paying taxes on the money that's coming in? Who's paying
taxes on them? You have to figure out every aspect of this. Who's
doing the design for the artwork? You know, where is this coming from?
What fonts are we using? Video questions about this podcast? And I
think I think the meat we should be paying taxes on this podcast. I
should hook up with a girl for some of your swag. Yeah, we've
done. I hooked up with her like four years. Have you seen this?
Yeah? She's rad man. Yeah, I started. I started promoting
her stuff all over the place probably like four or five years. You know,
we're super happy original work of hers here. Yeah, go ahead please,
I've got a print that she did and I kind of gave her some
guidance on it and she did one that was fucking amazing. That's awesome.
Have you guys done any swag with her yet? No? Let me know
when you do, because I'm all about it. Okay, So all right,
what is this baker hitch? Thank you very much? Would you let
Andrew Tait on your soft team? Uh, you're gonna You're gonna have to
ask the other Jack Murphy about that question. Uh. I am the reporter
Jack Murphy, not the masculinity expert Jack Murphy. So look, I'm the
I'm the real giga Chad. That guy is just fraud. But you're gonna
have to go and talk to him about Andrew Tait. I can't. I
can't answer that, and I don't think Brad can either. Yeah, I
don't know who he is. Good for you, you're a better man for
it, Alejandro Ranger two seven five, Thanks very much. When you got
to the unit where you disappointed by the lack of dirt bikes with rockets like
the Chuck Norris movies, gotta ask the real questions. Mm No, definitely
not disappointed. Yeah, definitely not disappointed. He was there, he was
there to greet me. Shock gave you the like son of a bitch.
It's funny because I never I never saw that movie before. You know,
I think at some point in like The Rangers, I saw it, but
I never saw it before joining the military. And to be honest, I
don't know where when I told a recruiter that's what I wanted to do,
I don't even where. Did you know that? Yeah, because it wasn't
definitely wasn't a thing. When I think of a secret unit has motorcycles with
rockets, I don't think fire. I think Mega Force with the flying motorcycles.
That's way before your time. That's way before my time. Do you
remember Mega Force? Yeah? Yeah, I do remember Chuck with a dirt
bike and like firing these like mini rockets off of the s dirit bikes.
It's like huge, like gasoline explosion, super lightweight technical. Yeah yeah.
Uh. Also, Alejandro are thank you girdo question? I saw that you
play Orange amps? What made you choose them over others? What guitars and
effects are you running? Thanks for coming on, dude, that's a lot.
Let's see. So Orange are no longer. I haven't been playing those
for a few years, so there's probably like some Google images and stuff like
that that have those, but I'm currently playing Bogners and I probably won't switch
or DBA from those. It's like the first amp that I've found that has
like a amazing clean and dirty channel. And it also I had some Friedman
JJ's, which this guy will probably know what those are, but it sounded
like I felt like I sounded like somebody else. And the Bogners are the
first amps that I've played that are like, it feels like it sounds like
me. In terms of effects, I'm pretty like basic. So I've got
some stuff that I'll use, the color stuff, but mainly that's just for
live shit. I've got a bunch of vintage pedals that I'll use in the
studio, but they're not They're not like roadworthy, Like I'm not gonna step
on those half lit on a stage jumping around like it'll break them. So
I'll use them in the studio. And then I've got like rugged eyes Boss
stuff that I'll use like on my pedal board for live stuff. In terms
of guitars, I'm kind of all in on on Fender strats and I modify
all those or I buy custom shop models and they all have the same pickup
in them, like a MotorCity halfway U I use basically all they all sound
the same. So and then I've got other stuff that like I've finned the
guitar herd considerably, but I've got other stuff that I'll use to record telecasters
or Gibson Less Paul specials or you know, stuff like that. But as
far as just playing in the comfortability, like, I'm definitely in under strat
ish guy, if you have an unlimited budget, if there has there been
like a guitar that's come up for auction and that's been sold, that you
would have been like, that's it. The only one that so interestingly,
I think David Gilmour's black Strat sold for like three point four million at auction,
No big deal, Yeah no, no big whoop. Jimmy Hendrix's star
spangled banner woodstock Strat would be the one that I would want, and I
would play the fuck out of it. It's not staying really yeah, there's
no way I'm letting that thing sit in the case. And I think the
people that buy those are investors, Yeah they're not. They're just looking for
it to which this is kind of like a crazy sidebar and I don't know
like what our time is here, but I'm a blabber, So whatever the
fuck You're like, there's eight people watching, so now there's I had this
argument. It's always a band argument with like how long is David Gilmour strap
worth three point four million dollars? Like at some point nobody cares about David
Gilmour because our pop culture isn't feeding that machine anymore. Nobody's listening to that,
so is it kind of like? Then they'll bring up the counterpoint is
like, well, I'm sure if Beethoven's piano bench was for sale that it
would fetch a lot of money. Well, like, sure, but is
Beethoven correlate to David Gilmore or is that just only have value now? While
there are people that are rich from that era that can support investing in buying
that, I just can't think of another instrument where it'd be like pick your
guy, you know who might be. I mean, but it's it's of
every generation they're going to be like aficionados and of those officionados and also and
I was gonna say, of those officionados, some get rich. But it's
also that some rich people as they're like what do I spend my money on
sort of developed taste too. I mean sure, like Superman Number one went
for five point three million dollars, right, and it's not it's not that
there are a ton of people that are crazy about Superman, like they know
them from the movies. But you have to be somebody who one has the
money and two wants to collect I guess, yeah, you know, and
yeah, willing to spend above what somebody else is willing to spend absolutely absolutely
so that it's in your house. Yeah, yeah, I totally get it.
I just feel like there's a there's a time limit on the value of
something like David Gilmour, right, Kirk Cobain's acoustic guitar that he played the
Unplugged Show with and his cardigan that he wore during it, and there was
like something else that sold for like seven million, you know. And again
it's like, Okay, if you're a person that has that kind of income,
sure, and you're a fan, sure, But I don't know if
that'll still be as notable in twenty years because the music probably isn't going to
be around the same way and we'll have moved on right generations by then,
you know. But there will, but there will also always be like there
are cycles too, and and there there are always people like kurk Obain,
Prince, like there. I don't think there's stuff. They will always have
a following no matter how what generation. Yeah, and people, you know,
people in that generation, someone will have money. And to think that
I'm the person of my generation. You know, when I'm eighty, my
kids and grandkids may not care about this. Yeah right, yeah, Jackson,
thank you very much. What was the difference in culture like between the
squadrons during your time in the unit. Uh, that's like anywhere in the
military, like third platoon sucks, first platoons the best. You know,
it's just it's always different. So what I've noticed in terms of culture between
different organizations is like it comes down to like how small you want to reduce
it. You know, when we had ranger rendezvous every year or every two
years, it'd be like three seven five is the best. But once you
guys left, it'd be like, well, B companies better than R A
and C. And then in B company it's like, well, third platoons
the platoon to be in, and then well in third platoon second, third
and weapon squad suck. So first squad is you know everything. Yeah,
it just wickers it down. Yeah, And you have nicknames, like you
make up nicknames for the other companies for the platoons like, yeah, hate
all the way around. Yeah, unless you know, it's just everybody's got
a band, But it's good to have a nemesis like that, kind of
that kind of like competition keeps you sharp, absolutely, Alejandra, thank you
very much, buddy, same question I got, Pat Mac. What bands
are you listening to and have on your play least? What bands up and
coming should peeps be on the lookout for. Let's see. So, I'm
in the middle of doing a lot of writing, and when I do a
lot of writing, I try not to listen to stuff that I feel like
is gonna color my palette. Uh huh. So I would love to be
listening to certain things like Alison Chains and stp Is probably like that's my been
my go to for a number of years, And I feel like I like
stuff that's diverse. I like stuff that the guitar on this song doesn't sound
the same as a guitar on that song, And there's an acoustic song.
This one's got acoustic and electric and everything is a little different. Bands like
Aerosmith did that. You know, not every song sounds exactly the same.
Kill them all, you know, Metallica's first album, same guitar, same
settings, same sound, every song, and that works for that ac DC,
same kind of thing. So I like, I like stuff that's a
little more diverse song to song on an album. But I am listening currently
to a ton of seventies like not even I guess it would be like pop
seventies pop. And when I'm not listening to that, I'm listening to a
new wave. And I was a fan of that stuff when it came out
back in the early eighties. But it doesn't color you know, when I
pick up a guitar and start like jamming a heavy riff and it's not like,
well that was kind of like love, hey love, you know,
or that was kind of like this, and it keeps me away from that.
So you're not adding a synthesizer to your what no synthesizer keyboards like what
sounds and third album had keyboards though, Yeah, how tough is that as
a musician, because you know, one of the things you say, is
it you like switching up. We're not every song you know where it's not
the same guitar, it's not the same sound. But also, like some
of the fans, it's like this is nothing like their their other stuff,
Like I like this sound of silence and light not you know, it's interesting.
So releasing this album and now because we have multiples on like we're verified
artists on all the platforms, we can see all of our analytics and everything
else. And our first album is actually streaming better than our second album,
although our second album is by far better in terms of maturity, in terms
of everything. It sounds better. It just it's way more but where it
falls. So it's like when you go to our page, the first one
that pops up is the old album, and it's like we're getting more streams
on older songs and we're getting on newer songs. Yeah, not because they're
not good. I don't think it's because people don't like them. Yeah,
there's such a difference. There is a change from like from one to two
and the stuff that I'm writing for three, Like I've already got eight songs
pretty much done, probably eight ten songs pretty much done. We just want
to do like a three song EP just to throw something out. We also
have a goal to like legit old school record, meaning two tape live tracking,
just like Zeppelin did, Just like everybody else did we almost We did
that on some stuff on this second album, and we also took all of
our pro tools digital recordings and kind of came up with the idea of like
running those to a tape machine and then bouncing them back as so it gave
it like the analog warmth tape x the way stuff sounds. So if you
listen to Angus Young's guitar live, it does not sound like it sounds on
the album. It gets impressed on the tape, which makes it sound a
little heavier, which makes it sound a little more distorted, like all that
stuff. It's super geeky, but we want to live track all our all
of our scratch tracks, and then we'll overdub stuff and things like that,
but then then bounce it to pro tools. Yeah, and then we can
kind of do the cut and paste and scalpeling. Like this kick drum is
a little off, it's a millisecond fast or whatever. That's the genius of
pro tools is like the second verse you fucked up all the way through.
We're just gonna copy and paste the third verse and drop it in. It's
literally it's just like that's the way stuff is recorded. There. Yeah,
yeah, and it's all on a grid and it's like very the music doesn't
change, the beat doesn't change. It's like everything's like a machine. So
that's that whole feel thing. Yeah, so this album, none of it's
on a grid like it's it's very much much you know live. That's very
cool. Yeah, Jackson, thank you very much. Did you enjoy selection
and OTC? What was your most favorite moment, every moment of it?
Looking back? What was your most favorite moment looking back on your time during
the training process. Let's see, without fully answering the question, because I
don't think that I really can selection, I had a blast, and again,
there's a tangible selection, and there's an intangible selection and timing and luck
are as much of a factor as any skill. And I think when we
live those things, we tend to say it's me, it's skill. I
did this, I did it happen right, That's exactly. That's what like
boosts our confidence and everything else. Looking back, it's like, dude,
I was one step away from falling off the side of this fucking thing and
breaking my ankle and everything else, And there's so much luck involved my OTC
class. We had a guy killed in a helo crash, So like,
this shit is no joke. This isn't. This isn't I'm going and doing
paintball in a room. It's serious business, right And from day one,
I think when I passed selection and I got selected, the weight and gravity
of the situation hit me and that was now it counts like now I'm just
starting. And then you get through the training course and you're like, now
I get to go prove myself to my team. So there is no sense
of accomplishment. And I'm sure you get that you've been in the Rangers,
in Special Forces anywhere. It's like you're constantly in a point of having to
prove yourself. You know. It never stops, so you never like,
oh yeah, man, I made it. I'm great now. I think
after you've been in the building a certain number of years and you're like,
whatever they throw at me, I can handle. Okay, cool, you
know I'm amongst you know, the tribe. Now, yeah, maybe it
levels off a little bit, but yeah, you know, yeah, it's
no joke. Jos, gotcha. Thank you very much. With your past
experience at r D, did the unit try to push you out of sea
squadron into the operational support troupe and do more clandestine stuff. I don't know
what he's talking about, Okay, Clayton Jensen, thanks very much, buddy.
I don't see a question there, so if you have a question,
throw it in the chat and I'll check back. And good to see you
man. Allen Paramari, Thank you very much. From a Kurdish American.
Did you ever work with Kurtishsoft? What did you think of them? Thank
you for your service and long live, long live Kurdistan and America. No
experience. Adam White, thank you very much much, buddy, great senior,
last week. Great show. Gentlemen, Brad any chance you opened for
President Bush at Fort Hood in two thousand and five, Please permit the random
question. But if so, I was a young private in your audience,
can you confirm it not? No, I did not, Alejandro, Thank
you very much, buddy, not a question. Thank you for writing look
after Me that and Falling to Pieces by Faith no More. Some songs just
really speak to the heart. Yeah, man, that look after Me was
I'll talk about that one real quick. That tune was written as a goodbye
to all the people that I never got a chance to say goodbye to and
you know, you guys know the deal. But when you're deployed and somebody
is killed, like you're still deployed, and the memorial service and a lot
of times the funeral and all that stuff is happening, you're still over sees
doing your thing. And I feel like I wanted to write something that was
just this is my goodbye to all the people that I never had a chance
to. So we were in the studio with Josh Goodwin, who and I
never completed the thought on him, but he was a marine. He'd sarved
four years in the Marine Corps, so that was his connection to the military.
When he reached out and said, hey, I want to produce your
album anyway, that tune was originally written not to be an acoustic song,
and played it. We played it a couple of times recorded and he goes,
hey, man, something's not fucking working and you need to figure it
out. But I want you to go in there tomorrow and do this on
acoustic. And I was like, okay, no pressure here. You know.
We finished at like two in the morning, after slamming however, many
beers and smoking weed and doing all kinds of crazy shit. And anyway,
on the way to the studio, I got something in my head. I
was like, don't talk to me or I'll lose it. You know,
I need to go go. I think I've got it, And anyway,
went in and started playing it. It was like record and I think I
recorded that on like a nineteen forty eight Martin acoustic, which you know,
priceless kind of guitar. But yeah, super cool song. So we stripped
it totally down and sometimes when we play it live, usually we'll pull out
stools, get a little bit soft, everybody up, We're gonna have a
toast for our friends, and we'll talk about it a little bit. And
other times we'll play it the original way, which is kind of like heavy
and everything else. But it's just kind of a fun song, yea,
even though it's a heavy subject. Yeah, I've had buddies that are like,
man, I fucking I was in the gym and was on the treadmill
and this song came on. I was like tearing up. It's a heavy
tune. Man Fred did a really good job of writing the lyrics for it.
I mean, amazing job writing the lyrics for it. So when you
like when you come up with the a song like that, because like you
said earlier, like songwrite writing is a complicated process. But when you were
playing the music for that or when you're creating that, did you did you
know what that song was about? And then you conveyed that to him?
Or it's got a vibe Like for me, music has a vibe and it
could be heavy, it could be happy. Like you listen to Van Haleman,
it's like, dude, let's break out some six packs and yeah,
go troll skank and you know, like that's what it's about, and it
just has a vibe. So it's very much good time party. And I've
always been attracted to the stuff like Alice in Chains where it's like, man,
this shit's got a dark side to it and there's something there and you
know, there's also something very therapeutic in about getting that out, you know.
Yeah, do do you know if we have anything on Patreon? Nothing?
Okay? So again uh Silence and Light music dot com. Buy the
CD links are down in the description by the CD, check them out by
the swag. It all goes to a good cause and also helps them pay
for their music and keep it all, you know, keeps it all going
like you said, like it's it's not a cheap endeavor, uh And nope,
Brad, But what else have you got for us? Who we are
at the end of the show here we are, so tell me about how
when you joined the military. We can go start over. Yeah from well
we did that on novel or Brook. Appreciate you guys having me in and
the outlet and everything else, and you know, anything I can do to
help. We appreciate you coming in and anything we gotta do help. And
we will definitely not only clip the piece of out going to war uh in
the Philippines, but we'll also clip like some of the music piece so that
it gets it does get you know, we want you so it gets its
own standout, like we want you know, we'll definitely clip you out of
context to make it the worst possible. Yeah, no, yeah no,
But we deeply appreciate you coming in because you know, it's it's like you
say, like we've talked, you know, about log a issue, We've
talked about other stuff and like you say, it's not it's not necessarily you
want to talk about this stuff all the time. Sure, and so we
appreciate you taking the time to do that. And also, I mean we
wish you guys the best of luck with the music. I mean it's great
music. It's you know, it's great music. Uh So everybody listen or
you're you're dead. It's interesting. We've we've like fought tooth and nail and
you know the deal. But like people in certain industries definitely aren't friendly or
helpful, and so for us, it's like it's an uphill battle. We
do better than probably ninety eight percent of actual music that's being released. Still
some tea brad, who is it that hates the truth? Come on,
yeah, you know. But it's one of those things where it's like we
brought in a publicist this last go round, and she was like, first
of all publicists like won't take you on if they don't believe in your story.
And we brought in a publicist. I got to compete out of twelve
like a list publicist. I got to compete like eight of them because they
were all like, we're interested, we do too much whatever they all wanted.
Yes, I got ties with here, blah blah blah blah blah.
Nobody picks up on anything. Nobody picked up on a single story, you
know, and you're just like, well, thanks for the help, you
know. Yeah, like you're gonna write about Corey Taylor and slip nod and
you know, the same clickbait on every you know. So we've we've done
this ourselves. We built a brand. You go to Google, We're all
over everything there. You know, it's taken a lot of years and a
lot of hard work. So I know we've talked about it a couple of
times, but like, no ship, where can people go to find you?
Instagram, Spotify, Instagram, Silence and Light Official Brad Thomas Official.
If you google Silence and Light, we're going to pop up there. I
think our music pops up there. If you type it in YouTube, you're
gonna find it. If you type it on Apple Music, Spotify, any
of that, you're gonna find it. Google Play, Amazon Music. We're
everywhere there. So all you have to do is google it or you know,
look where you normally get music. Okay, so we're going to do,
uh, Silence and Light hate Republicans, Clip silence Lights hate Democrats.
You can clip both of those. It'll create, it'll create, it'll kind
of buzz. You'll get the hate clicks and the people don't like, yeah,
I'm not I'm not gonna even go over there. Yeah. So if
you clip both of those, no, but you know sience light bites,
the heads off live bats in concerts, Yeah, clip that. Yeah you
need the uh, you need the controversy. The days, I guess it's
insane, man. You would just think it's like it's a great story.
These dudes are like, we're going out of pocket on this. Yeah,
you know this isn't This is me throwing thirty five g's of my personal money
into something just to release an album and recouping a quarter of that, you
know, from royalties and merchandise and stuff like that, and then doing T
shirt collaborations and all that kind of shit. They can find your tour schedule
on your website. Yeah, yeah, shows and everything else. But social
media is the best place, and we do some on Facebook. It's just
like such a hassle. And Instagram. It's like I can pose the video
on there and I've got like fifty five thousand views, and then I go
to Facebook and it's just like you know, yeah, you got it.
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. So aside from uh, the
music silence, like is there anything else that you're working on personally that you
want to plug promoter talk about Probably too early to do the promotion thing.
It might be something that go on, Brad next come on. What kind
of ties into the thing I was talking about, like trying to figure out
this podcast? Yeah thing, And I don't want to be a podcast like
I just I don't necessarily have the baby. We're all here, we're all
here. You're in the trust, you're in the trust trade. Yeah,
we're in the nest with the baby birds with the I mean, what if
she's wearing you know, Eddy Whitey's what what color is it? What?
What color is? We don't know? We want to ask. Yeah.
I I'm a part of a documentary that Ridley Scott's doing that'll come out next
year. I think it's gonna be a mat relex thing, like a four
part five part thing. Cool. It's about Mogadishu. And I was able
to kind of insert some creative stuff into that, like I'm not a part
of not a producer or anything else, but kind of working with the producer,
like, hey, have you thought about this aspect? Have you thought
about uh, you know, some of these types of things and connected him
with certain people, and I was hoping from the beginning that it wouldn't be
like the same people that have been on everything else, and it's not.
So that should be a pretty interesting thing, but it's not ready for you
know, it's it's happening. It's moving forward. But Brad, if if
you want to like continue your project with the podcast, we'd be like happy
to support you. But if not, like we'll be happy to support you
way on your studio space with Onion d. Yeah. So there's a dude
that I'm buddies with John Waters and you can look him up on social media,
but he's got the Afterburn podcast and he's a former like f sixteen part
of it. He's got a huge following. So he was like, I
want to do something with you, and that's kind of where this thing started.
And then I started talking with the Ranger buddy and we kind of started
to sort things out, and the plan was we would launch it off of
his just as like here's an initial like three parts, now go get it
here. It's his own thing, and it would have seen a couple hundred
thousand people like that. Yeah, you know, so there was also talk
about, you know, maybe a company that makes coffee would be, you
know, interested in helping out. I was like, I don't want them
having anything to do with this. Yeah, so I don't want anybody telling
me what creatively or any of that stuff. That's kind of how I got
to the point of it being podcast. I would love to do it,
yeah, I mean I really would. And and the thought that I had
on it was that this would be like a serial, so this Mogadishu thing
would be one part. But then like I got all kinds of people that
I'm friends with that we're in nine to eleven, Right, what kind of
stories about nine to eleven? Can we hear? Not the there I was
the buildings were falling, but you know, all the behind the scenes stuff,
and we could do one about Panama, We could do one about you
know, but you could start tapping into once you become a thing, you
could start tapping in and doing other stuff. That was that was my idea
for it. And you know, so somebody was like, dude, you
need to pitch it to you know, these people, and it was like
like I don't know, no, No, I hope, I hope you'll
do it. Yeah, only got so much time you know, well,
if there's any way we can support you, even if even if, even
if you know you do it, or another podcast platform, because a lot
of those, you know, the there are a lot a podcast out there
that have a huge platform, much bigger than ours, and we'll so we'll
plug you no matter where you launch it, and we're happy to help.
Yeah. Cool. Well, like I said, if it does, it
would basically be you know, at the end of twenty twenty four probably yeah,
And you know, I think there was a lot of momentum and just
kind of emotions and stuff like that that was gearing up towards the thirtieth sure,
you know, and we started talking about it and it was like the
timing would be great, there's gonna be other stories kind of piggyback off that
stuff. And now it's like, I don't know, but I would be
interested in doing it. It's just you know, no, I hope you
will. Yeah, me too. I don't see Clayton's I don't think Clayton
never said anything. So final thoughts, Brad, Dave, No, I'm
good, I'm good. Okay, We'll see you guys on Friday with Pete
Labor and that's it. That's the show yep. Thanks Averbady, Thanks be
good. We'll see you guys next time.