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Speaker 3: Special operations, Cobert Ox Spionage. The Team House with your
Speaker 3: hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 4: Hey, everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and twenty four
Speaker 4: of The Team House.
Speaker 5: I'm Jack Murphy.
Speaker 4: I'm here with our guest Tonight, Lance Strong, who served
Speaker 4: in the eighty second Airborne with Arista squadron. They are
Speaker 4: we'll get into it, but recon squadron, but they ended
Speaker 4: up with a very direct action mission, as we'll get into.
Speaker 4: He was, you know, seriously injured in Bagdad and a
Speaker 4: pretty horrific accident we'll talk about, med boarded out of
Speaker 4: the army and have done all kinds of interesting things,
Speaker 4: varied things in the interim since he got out of
Speaker 4: the military. So Lance, thank you for joining us tonight.
Speaker 5: Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: I definitely feel privileged and honored, you know, not having
Speaker 6: served in special operations or done anything too special. And
Speaker 6: I probably hold the record for all of your guests
Speaker 6: of having the shortest, most condensed military career.
Speaker 4: Well your podcast, This is what I offer to you
Speaker 4: and those like you, is that at least you're not
Speaker 4: a dirty, nasty leg I don't know.
Speaker 6: If I could.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I could tolerate that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I can tolerate that.
Speaker 6: But seriously, though, this isn't just a.
Speaker 4: Special ops podcast.
Speaker 5: I don't want people to think that.
Speaker 4: We try to include people all across the military, across
Speaker 4: the intelligence community, including some law enforcement and things like that.
Speaker 5: For sure, awesome all right, I'll fit right in then.
Speaker 4: So tell us a little bit about growing up. You
Speaker 4: came out of a small town, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, San Luis Obispo, which is the central
Speaker 6: coast of California, so most people have.
Speaker 5: Heard of Santa Barbara, a lot of famous people. You know.
Speaker 5: It's north of.
Speaker 6: La and then San Luis Obispo is kind of smack
Speaker 6: dab in the middle between the Bay Area and Los Angeles,
Speaker 6: rolling green hills, lots of vineyards these days. When I
Speaker 6: was born and raised, it was mostly cattle ranches. Those
Speaker 6: are all vineyards. Pretty much small town. It's getting bigger
Speaker 6: and bigger every time we go back and visit. But yeah,
Speaker 6: you know what was interesting, I think, you know, unique
Speaker 6: where I grew up. I think out of my class,
Speaker 6: you know, graduating high school, there was two or three
Speaker 6: of us, you know that that entered the military, and
Speaker 6: it was two thousand and five when I signed up.
Speaker 4: What was the size of your graduating class in high school?
Speaker 5: Probably four hundred ish, you know.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, so small town, but that's a pretty well
Speaker 4: graduating class.
Speaker 5: Really the only high school in the entire town, right,
Speaker 5: So that's it.
Speaker 6: I think there's one other private high school that was
Speaker 6: much smaller, but yeah, so big, big class.
Speaker 5: I suppose maybe it was only three hundred.
Speaker 6: I honestly don't remember, but yeah, only high school in town,
Speaker 6: so tigers.
Speaker 5: Yeah it was good.
Speaker 6: My dad went there too, so it was funny, is
Speaker 6: I So I go, you know, the same high school
Speaker 6: my dad went to. He was born and raised same
Speaker 6: you know, same town. And we had one auto shop
Speaker 6: teacher and maybe like an English or math teacher.
Speaker 5: Right, that was the same like.
Speaker 6: They started when my dad and the year after having me,
Speaker 6: they all retired. They could not handle two of us.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so three three people from your graduating class
Speaker 4: end up in the military, and one of them joins
Speaker 4: the army with you.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: So one of one of my best friends that we
Speaker 6: you know, we grew up. I probably knew him since
Speaker 6: the first grade, you know, awesome friends, and we kind
Speaker 6: of were on our own path going to join you know,
Speaker 6: and obviously, I mean, just like any other veteran in
Speaker 6: our generation nine to eleven, you know, had a huge,
Speaker 6: huge part of that. I think my buddy, he he
Speaker 6: was always.
Speaker 5: Going to go.
Speaker 6: I mean, like, you know, I don't know when it
Speaker 6: was for him, but I think Blackhawk Down the movie.
Speaker 6: You know, he was going to be a ranger from
Speaker 6: the day he was you know born kind of thing.
Speaker 6: And for me, I probably didn't get serious about it
Speaker 6: until nine to eleven. I would have been like eighth grade,
Speaker 6: fourteen or so, you know, really really had an impact
Speaker 6: like it did all of us. And really, you know,
Speaker 6: I always looked up to veterans. You know, I know
Speaker 6: a lot of young people never really saw it. But
Speaker 6: I mean whether it was movies or or real stories
Speaker 6: or you know, I had all the books, you know,
Speaker 6: everything growing up, and I just I always wanted to
Speaker 6: say thank you, especially to like.
Speaker 5: The Vietnam era.
Speaker 6: I knew a lot of Vietnam veterans who were kind
Speaker 6: of my heroes, and just the crap that they went
Speaker 6: through and everything they dealt with. Like I felt so
Speaker 6: called to somehow say thank you. And the only way
Speaker 6: I kind of knew how was to be like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna, you know, walk a mile in their boots,
Speaker 6: you know, And.
Speaker 5: So that's what I did.
Speaker 6: I was seventeen when I when I joined I needed
Speaker 6: my parents, you know, permission slip you know, to Uncle Sam.
Speaker 6: And they weren't super stoked on it just because there
Speaker 6: was two wars going on in two thousand and five,
Speaker 6: and you know, my recruiter had been told.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, I've been in the infantry for ten years.
Speaker 6: I've never been to play, you know and stuff, and
Speaker 6: they knew I was going right over there, and that's
Speaker 6: what I wanted. I think they knew as soon as
Speaker 6: I turned eighteen, I was gonna go anyway, so they
Speaker 6: signed that was in the delayed entry program for the
Speaker 6: rest of my senior year with my buddy. So I
Speaker 6: think we even got promoted once, you know, or something
Speaker 6: like that in that delayed entry program. If you yeah,
Speaker 6: I don't know, Well.
Speaker 4: Do you like take a PT test and you know
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, PT tests and then like learning all the
Speaker 6: ranks and some you know, military stuff whatever. So yeah,
Speaker 6: And for me, I never looked at any other branch.
Speaker 6: There's no way I was going to go in the Navy.
Speaker 6: I don't like water, I don't really like boats. Last
Speaker 6: the last cool ship to me was a pirate ship,
Speaker 6: and there's none of those in the Navy, you know.
Speaker 5: So I wasn't going to join the Navy.
Speaker 6: And the Marines, I I mean the Army for Airborne
Speaker 6: entry was given out twenty thousand dollars signing bonuses too
Speaker 6: in two thousand and five, so it was always gonna
Speaker 6: be the Army. I felt like the way they looked
Speaker 6: at obstacles, you know, and tried to figure out how
Speaker 6: to get around them instead of just you know, bashing
Speaker 6: right through, although some units you know, do that, but
Speaker 6: I don't know. Yeah, I think if I could live
Speaker 6: another life, i'd try to be a pilot, you.
Speaker 5: Know, or something like that.
Speaker 6: But I'm I probably from the time I watched Band
Speaker 6: of Brothers, Airborne infantry was what I wanted to be.
Speaker 6: I wanted so badly to go to one hundred and
Speaker 6: first Airborne. I had no idea they weren't jumping. I
Speaker 6: just you know, thought they were so cool and in
Speaker 6: Band of Brothers and uh yeah. So I think I
Speaker 6: graduated two thousand and six, June two thousand and six,
Speaker 6: and I mean within a few weeks I was, you know,
Speaker 6: headed to Georgia, Fort Benning, the whole you know, sand
Speaker 6: Hill experience. Oh set, So it was says like a
Speaker 6: sixteen week basic in infantry school all in one.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it was the same when you
Speaker 5: were going through or not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, similar, And so I mean, yeah, you, uh, sixteen
Speaker 4: weeks later, you're a highly trained combat killer and you're
Speaker 4: also rich with your twenty thousand dollars signed so rich.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I probably was the only uh private from our
Speaker 6: class that didn't blow that on the lemon lock cars
Speaker 6: and you know strippers and the whole bit. I I
Speaker 6: saved all that up, luckily. Yeah, saved every dime of it.
Speaker 6: You know, I really didn't have time to buy much
Speaker 6: of anything either, So as soon as I finished. It
Speaker 6: was kind of a weird time too for all the
Speaker 6: training because they'd like there were so many people joining
Speaker 6: at that time, they didn't have like enough cadre to
Speaker 6: keep things like super moving. So even when we got there,
Speaker 6: like we waited around basically just getting smoked and just
Speaker 6: it sucked, like waiting around to even start Basic, and
Speaker 6: so you never knew like, wait, when does it start?
Speaker 6: Because it all sucked so bad and it was like, man,
Speaker 6: I made a mistake, And those like two or three
Speaker 6: weeks of waiting for Basic to start, you know, we're
Speaker 6: almost worse because it just like I'm wasting my life,
Speaker 6: like let's go, you know, let's do this and then
Speaker 6: the same thing kind of happened after I graduated for
Speaker 6: airborne school. There was a lot of had airborne on
Speaker 6: my contract. Everything there was just like a backlog, right,
Speaker 6: so we're like waiting for the school to accept us
Speaker 6: and just doing stupid stuff right details.
Speaker 5: And running a lot and and all that.
Speaker 6: I got going home for Thanksgiving, yeah, and then and
Speaker 6: then finally started. Yeah, but it was Airborne school was
Speaker 6: my was by far my favorite time in the military.
Speaker 6: I think, uh uh, you know, nights and weekends off
Speaker 6: it was.
Speaker 5: It was it was fun. I loved Airborne school.
Speaker 6: I I didn't I don't know if did you get
Speaker 6: to do the towers?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: Okay, so I lucked out too, because I, you know,
Speaker 6: the whole time was like I want to do the towers.
Speaker 6: But then you're like there and you're like, I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't want to do the tower, so that that
Speaker 6: doesn't look fun at all. And like the guy before us,
Speaker 6: like our chalk or whatever, he flew into to the
Speaker 6: tower and got stuck, and it was just like, yeah,
Speaker 6: so they call it off. Right when that happens, they
Speaker 6: call it off. Takes forever to get them down all that,
Speaker 6: and it was great. Because I heard the towers were
Speaker 6: even worse than the actual jumps. I don't know if
Speaker 6: that's true because I never did the tower, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little it's a little iffy, right, I
Speaker 4: don't know what it is, like the like heights hit
Speaker 4: you differently psychologically, like jumping out of that, like you
Speaker 4: for sure did what it was a thirty four foot tower.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, thirty six right something like it's like
Speaker 6: at the scientific height of being afraid of heights. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So it's high enough, yeah, to make people not want
Speaker 6: to jump out, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And then when you jump, you know, at well fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred feet or whatever it is, I mean that's still
Speaker 4: low enough you can see like little pine trees down there,
Speaker 4: and you're.
Speaker 6: Like, well, I don't know if I want to go
Speaker 6: and do this.
Speaker 4: But then years later when I did the free fall course,
Speaker 4: it's like you get that high up at like twelve
Speaker 4: thousand feet, the earth just looks like a painting, like
Speaker 4: your brain doesn't really register.
Speaker 6: Now, yeah, for sure, for sure, it's a all those
Speaker 6: are different experiences, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I loved
Speaker 6: everyone school.
Speaker 5: I my I'll just share.
Speaker 6: One jump story, right, because I have to I'm on
Speaker 6: a podcast, right, So my fourth jump, everything had gone
Speaker 6: pretty well. Actually, I got a concussion on the first jump,
Speaker 6: hit the back of my head and I was like
Speaker 6: throwing up all night and like passing out and stuff.
Speaker 6: But if you go to sick Hall like you're done,
Speaker 6: you're you know, you wash out or whatever. So I'm like,
Speaker 6: no way, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. You know,
Speaker 6: they always make you run, right, so if you break
Speaker 6: anything a foot or a leg or something like that,
Speaker 6: there's no way they can. They'll weed you out because
Speaker 6: they'll know you'll be limping, you know, and fall out
Speaker 6: of the runs. But so the fourth jump, as I'm
Speaker 6: going out the door like I'm handing, you know, I'm
Speaker 6: handing my line to the jump master, He's like goes
Speaker 6: like whoa, whoa, whoa as I'm like jumping, and it
Speaker 6: made me hesitate, right, And I think he was talking
Speaker 6: to the person behind me who's like rushing me or something.
Speaker 6: But that wo woa whoa made me hesitate. So I
Speaker 6: didn't get a good jump out of the aircraft, and
Speaker 6: I bounced the down the side of the fuselage like
Speaker 6: bounce off the fuselage, got sucked underneath my shoote ends
Speaker 6: up opening and I'm twisted, like completely twisted up, and
Speaker 6: the guy from the other side jumping out lands on
Speaker 6: my shute and then he like runs across my chute
Speaker 6: and I just hear him go like ah, like scream
Speaker 6: and fall and his shote opens again and and I'm
Speaker 6: like trying to get out, trying to get out, doing
Speaker 6: the bicycle kick thing, you know, to get get everything
Speaker 6: straightened out. And as soon as it does, you got
Speaker 6: the rucksack and your weapon and everything right, as soon
Speaker 6: as it does, like I have almost no time to
Speaker 6: get this off of me, right, And I pulled a
Speaker 6: quick release and I as soon as I got my
Speaker 6: weapon like off, like, I just hit the ground so
Speaker 6: so hard. And there was a black cat there and
Speaker 6: he was like, you know, screaming now the bullhorn and
Speaker 6: he's like, my god, private, you're gonna die, you know
Speaker 6: all this stuff. And then I like look up and
Speaker 6: I see a dude coming in real hot right to
Speaker 6: the black Hat's truck, and I sit and I like,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm like hey, hey, hey, and he turns around.
Speaker 5: He's like what's going on?
Speaker 6: And the guy just puts that taco sized dent in
Speaker 6: the side of his you know, f one fifty or whatever. Boom,
Speaker 6: and he's like, you know, God, you guys are gonna
Speaker 6: kill me today, you know. And he's you know, all
Speaker 6: mad and everything. So I was actually pretty nervous for
Speaker 6: the fifth jump because you know, two of them have
Speaker 6: already hurt really bad, and I was like, maybe maybe
Speaker 6: this wasn't a great idea. But one of the reasons too,
Speaker 6: is like I loved flying, loved taking off, I love
Speaker 6: flying around, but I hated the landing part. So I thought, well,
Speaker 6: if I jump out of the plane before the landing part, like, hey,
Speaker 6: I'll skip my least favorite part. Well, again, I loved
Speaker 6: jumping out, I loved floating down. I hated the landing part.
Speaker 6: That part sucked. But that fifth jump just went perfect.
Speaker 6: Was it was like textbook like I didn't even feel it.
Speaker 6: It was amazing. So graduated. My my grandpa, Papa Strong
Speaker 6: came out with my mom.
Speaker 5: He got to pin my wings on me.
Speaker 6: That was a pretty proud moment for me, especially because
Speaker 6: that that was my you know, my my goal. And
Speaker 6: as I mentioned to you before, some probably towards the
Speaker 6: end of uh the school, they they took a lot
Speaker 6: of US Infantry guys in from sand Hill. And you know,
Speaker 6: if if you didn't have a RIP on your contract,
Speaker 6: they asked if you, you know, wanted to go to
Speaker 6: RIP Ranger Indoctrination Program.
Speaker 5: I think it's called RASP now.
Speaker 6: And I I don't know, just being like young and
Speaker 6: dumb and already have had to wait for the different
Speaker 6: schools already.
Speaker 5: I just I want.
Speaker 6: I wanted to get with the unit. I wanted to
Speaker 6: get over there. I didn't want to miss the surge,
Speaker 6: you know, all that kind of stuff. That's what they
Speaker 6: were kind of talking about, was this huge you know,
Speaker 6: mobilization and yeah, like I said, I wanted, I wanted
Speaker 6: to go h first. So when I got my orders,
Speaker 6: you know, it said eighty second on it. And I
Speaker 6: remember just being like, oh, man, like I missed, I'm
Speaker 6: going to the rival, you know. And I remember one
Speaker 6: of the one of the cadre like took me aside
Speaker 6: and he's like, you know, you're you're an idiot, man,
Speaker 6: You're you're super lucky, Like this is the best, you know,
Speaker 6: this is the most prestigious you know, airborne unit there is.
Speaker 6: You know, don't worry about that band of brothers. Crap,
Speaker 6: they don't even jump anymore. You know, they're they're dopes
Speaker 6: on a rope now, you know, repelling out of helicopters.
Speaker 5: So you're you're lucky, and I was.
Speaker 6: I was like the only guy that I knew of
Speaker 6: in any of the chalks around me that was going
Speaker 6: to uh Fort Bragg. So I think I went straight
Speaker 6: from Airborne school home to do Christmas. So I had
Speaker 6: a couple couple of days, did Christmas with my family
Speaker 6: and then got on a plane and then got to
Speaker 6: UH got to go to the famous Fort Bragg, which
Speaker 6: is Fort Liberty.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, so you get to your unit. Your unit's already
Speaker 4: deployed right when you get there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I don't even I don't know if anyone
Speaker 6: knew like what unit, you know, I'd be in. So
Speaker 6: when I got to brag, it would have been December,
Speaker 6: like real late December, I don't know, like twenty six,
Speaker 6: twenty seventh of December.
Speaker 5: It is a ghost town. Like a ghost town.
Speaker 6: All of the you know, divisions or the brigades are
Speaker 6: are already mobilized. One had just gotten back, I think
Speaker 6: from Afghanistan, and kind of the word on the street was,
Speaker 6: you know, you'll the new guys will probably go there
Speaker 6: and train up for like a year and then go back,
Speaker 6: you know, for another twelve or fifteen month deployment, you know,
Speaker 6: to Afghanistan. So I had I remember calling my parents
Speaker 6: and be like, hey, don't worry, I'm not going to
Speaker 6: deploy for like a year.
Speaker 5: I'm pretty bummed, you know whatever.
Speaker 6: And then within like a couple of days, it was like, actually,
Speaker 6: you're assigned to the first of the three two five.
Speaker 6: So they always said one thing will change three times
Speaker 6: twice every five minutes in the first of the three
Speaker 6: two five. So I get to I get to them
Speaker 6: and it's just their rear D. There's you know, hardly
Speaker 6: anybody there. So some guys recovering from some things, and yeah,
Speaker 6: I get to them and we I mean, I thought
Speaker 6: I thought I knew what running a lot was. When
Speaker 6: you get to the a second, especially when you're a
Speaker 6: new guy, you know, they they you find out real fast,
Speaker 6: like if you didn't already have shin splints, like you're
Speaker 6: gonna get shin splints. And that was the first time,
Speaker 6: probably my first run with that unit, the rear D guys.
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about the big, slow like division wide runs.
Speaker 6: They're talking about just the unit runs in the morning,
Speaker 6: first thing in the morning. I think that first run
Speaker 6: was like nine ten miles. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 6: I had to ever run that far. It was first
Speaker 6: time I got runners high, like legit runners high, or
Speaker 6: my legs were not stopping after I was done, you know,
Speaker 6: and the pace was just insane. So I spent a
Speaker 6: few weeks, which again I'm like, in this waiting period,
Speaker 6: don't have a unit, just kind of waiting around, and yeah,
Speaker 6: it was just it was kind of a weird, weird experience.
Speaker 6: But then yeah, to tell them call the family and
Speaker 6: say hey, I'm getting on a plane. It's headed for
Speaker 6: Germany and then Kuwait like the next day, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: a couple weeks there. I remember watching a few football
Speaker 6: games at this at the UH they have a little
Speaker 6: sports bar there, you know, on Fort Bragg and yeah,
Speaker 6: and then headed on out to Kuwait. Did did like
Speaker 6: the most ridiculous pre deployment training in Kuwait, like you've
Speaker 6: ever so again you were saying like, I'm highly trained.
Speaker 5: You know this this infantry graduate.
Speaker 6: Right, I know how to dig a Vietnam style hasty
Speaker 6: fighting position.
Speaker 5: I've never held an M four yet.
Speaker 6: I don't think we wait, we had M fours, just
Speaker 6: not the same ones, you know that the that the
Speaker 6: the units had.
Speaker 5: Maybe we had M sixteens. I can't even remember. That's crazy.
Speaker 6: It was like twenty years ago, right, so it happens.
Speaker 6: But I don't think we had M fours. But you know,
Speaker 6: someone's gonna tell me I'm an idiot at some point here.
Speaker 6: But yeah, so we I get there and you know
Speaker 6: they had those like conics like trucks with the computer screen,
Speaker 6: and you had the little air guns and you'd like,
Speaker 6: you know, okay, corral Western style like shoot you know,
Speaker 6: the little guys off the tops of building. I mean legitimate,
Speaker 6: like the dumbest thing you could think of, Like you're
Speaker 6: all on a line and you're like, oh yeah, the
Speaker 6: iraqis pop out and you just you know, make sure
Speaker 6: you shoot the right ones.
Speaker 5: It was. It was hilarious.
Speaker 6: And then like maybe a couple like rollover, you know,
Speaker 6: humvy things, you know, where you simulate like grabbing the
Speaker 6: gunner's legs like that's going to save his life and stuff,
Speaker 6: you know, so silly stuff. And I remember sleeping a ton,
Speaker 6: like just sleeping and then eating and sleeping and eating
Speaker 6: and doing some dumb training. So I get sent, you know,
Speaker 6: take the plane ride over to Baghdad, land in the
Speaker 6: Green Zone, get told and it's just me and a
Speaker 6: few guys like ten or twelve guys you know, from
Speaker 6: rear D for the first of the three two five.
Speaker 6: They tell us to get on this chinook and they
Speaker 6: take us to Camp Toadgy, so it's a little more
Speaker 6: the Baghdad. And that was the first time, you know,
Speaker 6: I'd been on a chinook, you know or anything. Like
Speaker 6: I'm like, you know, I had no idea we're gonna
Speaker 6: get shot down, you know, like, no, no idea, what's
Speaker 6: going on? Don't not really assigned to a unit yet,
Speaker 6: right or anything yet? And so then we land at
Speaker 6: Camp Taji and I get off, get into like a
Speaker 6: big truck like an LMTV that takes us to this
Speaker 6: little like hut thing they built, you know, with like plywood,
Speaker 6: the plywood still bear and everything.
Speaker 5: And we go in there and all.
Speaker 6: Right, you know so and so and so and so
Speaker 6: you're in Alpha company, Go with this guy. You guys
Speaker 6: are in Bravo company, Go with that guy. And nobody,
Speaker 6: nobody calls my name. I'm sitting there like alone, and
Speaker 6: I'm like, am I even supposed to be in Iraq
Speaker 6: right now? You know? Like am I might even qualified
Speaker 6: to be in Iraq? Like I'm not even on a
Speaker 6: list right, Like what's going on? And then somebody walks
Speaker 6: out and he asked me, like, do you know anybody
Speaker 6: in the military?
Speaker 5: And I said, yeah, my you know my.
Speaker 6: Best friend from San Luis Obispo. You know, we went
Speaker 6: to boot camp together all this. He's like, no, you idiot,
Speaker 6: because do you know anybody like high up in the military,
Speaker 6: any family or anything like no, no, you know, my
Speaker 6: grandpa was in World War two, and he's just.
Speaker 5: Like, you're an idiot.
Speaker 6: He goes, well, don't expect a worm welcome, but you're
Speaker 6: going to Charlie Troop, first Squadron, seventy third Calve.
Speaker 5: Like I'm not I'm not Calve.
Speaker 6: And he's like, no, no, you're going to all the
Speaker 6: Charlie troops and the squadrons are airborne infantry. It's purely infantry,
Speaker 6: you know, unit troop. You know, so this is the
Speaker 6: only infantry troop in these cave units. And these units
Speaker 6: are attached to each brigade and they're the rist of squadrons,
Speaker 6: so they're the reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, you know. And
Speaker 6: he was like, you know, most of these guys, you know,
Speaker 6: have all the you know, they got the ranger tab.
Speaker 6: They they're they're arslick, you know, they've done all the
Speaker 6: school and stuff. Like, I don't know why you're going
Speaker 6: to these guys, but like, good luck and don't.
Speaker 5: Expect a warm welcome, right.
Speaker 4: I don't know how much you know or can speak
Speaker 4: to about sort of like the lineage of RISTA, yeah,
Speaker 4: because I mean it's always interesting and frustrating to me.
Speaker 4: It seems like the army is always disbanding these you know,
Speaker 4: dismounted or airborne light reconnaissance elements.
Speaker 5: You know, we had worse.
Speaker 4: There was the visual worse at eighty second airborn yeap
Speaker 4: that could go the worst.
Speaker 5: Teams kind of go away.
Speaker 4: And then it seems like the RISTA guys were the
Speaker 4: kind of replacements that got stood up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know it's interesting you said that. I'm
Speaker 5: glad that you might.
Speaker 6: Before this podcast, I kind of wanted to like, look,
Speaker 6: you know, look up my old unit, and it just
Speaker 6: got disbanded, like in June of twenty twenty four, they
Speaker 6: killed the unit. Yeah, so I think they're now moving
Speaker 6: to I don't know if they're they're do more mechanized
Speaker 6: you know RISTA stuff now would have drones and stuff too.
Speaker 6: I think they're gonna be replaced with like different, you know,
Speaker 6: different stuff, I guess as the battlefield changes. So I
Speaker 6: was a little bit bummed out. I was like, no way,
Speaker 6: my old unit is gone. But yeah, so the lineage
Speaker 6: goes back like even I think even before Vietnam, but
Speaker 6: probably got pretty famous in Vietnam for that for the
Speaker 6: ALERPS long Range Reconnaissance Patrol.
Speaker 5: And I have a cool story.
Speaker 6: Of meeting alerts guy when I was medically retired and
Speaker 6: heading home. So if I forget that story and you remember,
Speaker 6: let me let me share it. But he was in
Speaker 6: my same unit, but in alerts in you know, eighty
Speaker 6: second Airborne ALERP Sky in Vietnam.
Speaker 5: It was pretty cool. He's the he was the Sheriff
Speaker 5: of Amarillo.
Speaker 6: So if you don't, if I don't remember Sheriff of
Speaker 6: Ambarillo's story, make make sure you let me tell you that.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the risk the units.
Speaker 6: Are basically, you know, or were the brigades recon teams, right,
Speaker 6: and so if you were thinking of it in like
Speaker 6: you know, conventional terms of you know, like if world
Speaker 6: we're you know two or whatever, again, the RISTA would
Speaker 6: would be out there doing the scouting, the recon, all
Speaker 6: that target acquisition.
Speaker 5: They would do.
Speaker 6: Some some engagement, you know when necessary, some direct action,
Speaker 6: but really their mission was you know, to get in,
Speaker 6: get the lay of the land, get all the intel
Speaker 6: you possibly can eyes on again, target acquisition piece of
Speaker 6: it there too, and then you know that was all
Speaker 6: before the brigades the airborne infantry would then come in
Speaker 6: and take care of that. So the way the risk
Speaker 6: of squadrons were were built up. I wish, I wish
Speaker 6: I had it pulled up here. But like the Alpha
Speaker 6: Alpha troop would a troop would be calv Scouts and
Speaker 6: they might be like, you know, mounted, and then you
Speaker 6: know B troop is going to be cow Scouts and
Speaker 6: they have a different mission. And then that that Charlie
Speaker 6: troop is always more of the heavy hitter fully infantry
Speaker 6: guys that are all you know, reconned up. And again
Speaker 6: like our slick Pathfinder, I think we even had some
Speaker 6: supper guys and and I mean all all the schools,
Speaker 6: you know, a lot of our leadership had done and
Speaker 6: we're incredible and so yeah, So going back to that story,
Speaker 6: so I get on another truck. I get taken to
Speaker 6: a part of Camp Todgy where there's just like these warehouses.
Speaker 6: There's like maybe eight eight or more warehouses like in
Speaker 6: a row, two rows of them, and it's it's not
Speaker 6: fully like a compound inside of Camp Todgy, but it
Speaker 6: is its own like area. And there was like kind
Speaker 6: of cat corner from us was as a seal team,
Speaker 6: and I'm not sure like who our neighbors were or anything,
Speaker 6: but you know, just to kind of paint the picture
Speaker 6: of the people I'm coming to with a high end
Speaker 6: tight just so, just so we can.
Speaker 5: Figure this out. So these guys had had just.
Speaker 6: Done five months in in Iraq, mostly into Kret. They
Speaker 6: were one of the first units or the first unit
Speaker 6: to support CAG during the Torch missions. They had been
Speaker 6: flying around Chinook's Blackhawks doing you know, direct action raids,
Speaker 6: taking out huge caches of of you know, I D
Speaker 6: s or whatever, doing like super high speed, badass shit
Speaker 6: for five months. You know, they weren't wearing eighty second patches.
Speaker 6: They weren't wearing US Army patches. They had the black
Speaker 6: patch under the shoulder and said, oh CFI other Coalition
Speaker 6: Force in Iraq. So they are and they've they've all
Speaker 6: survived this five month you know, high speed deployment. They
Speaker 6: go home for December and right around Christmas, like the
Speaker 6: day that I you know, basically get to brag. They
Speaker 6: were all told, hey, you're going back for another five
Speaker 6: month deployment.
Speaker 5: We need you back there.
Speaker 6: So not only are they kind of mad that they're
Speaker 6: back there, but they're also like again like total badasses
Speaker 6: that it's almost like when you're when you're doing stuff
Speaker 6: like above, your pay grade.
Speaker 5: You you you then have.
Speaker 6: The mentality like we're really special and awesome, right, like
Speaker 6: there's no way to not have that. But then a
Speaker 6: guy like me coming straight from building, you know, hasty
Speaker 6: fighting positions in the woods of Georgia with you know,
Speaker 6: a five jump chump, I have nothing but airborne school,
Speaker 6: and I'm useless to these guys pretty much, right, I'm
Speaker 6: just the boss body. So when I get to them,
Speaker 6: they're just like, oh god, you know, there's you know,
Speaker 6: And and luckily I got I got put with a
Speaker 6: really awesome sergeant My I guess he was like the
Speaker 6: squad leader. So I was gonna say team leader. He
Speaker 6: was a squad leader at first. And he, Sergeant Meyer,
Speaker 6: was just an awesome dude. I mean, one of the
Speaker 6: the first thing he told me is he said, uh,
Speaker 6: you look like an idiot.
Speaker 5: Don't cut your hair for two weeks. That was the
Speaker 5: first thing he said to me. Uh.
Speaker 6: And then he said, look, we played by the big
Speaker 6: boy rules here. You know, I'm not gonna mess you
Speaker 6: up unless you mess up. Don't expect to go out
Speaker 6: on missions with us for a few weeks. Like you
Speaker 6: don't even have a humbye license.
Speaker 5: You don't have.
Speaker 6: We didn't do any like air assaults. But you know,
Speaker 6: I just I have zero experience. I've worn nods for
Speaker 6: all of five minutes in basic training, right, I have
Speaker 6: like the the famous amount of experience with close quarter combat,
Speaker 6: all the all the stuff you need in Iraq, especially
Speaker 6: with a unit like these guys, I don't have.
Speaker 5: I don't have any of it.
Speaker 6: So they're not going to take me out until they know,
Speaker 6: like you know, I'm not gonna shoot one of them
Speaker 6: on accident or you know all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: So my chores were like at night when they'd go
Speaker 6: out on mission, I would run around with nods on
Speaker 6: fully geared up.
Speaker 5: Like behind our warehouses there was all these.
Speaker 6: Like just like metal garbage like all over the place,
Speaker 6: and they would have like me run and jump over
Speaker 6: these things and like just get super acquainted with nods
Speaker 6: because we we always you know, rolled out in darkness,
Speaker 6: drove with nods. You know, we had no lights, nothing,
Speaker 6: and so it was just like you gotta you gotta
Speaker 6: show us that you can drive a humbie with you know,
Speaker 6: all that kind of stuff with with nods, you know whatever.
Speaker 6: So it probably took a little bit before I went out.
Speaker 6: It was kind of like that puppy dog left on
Speaker 6: the front porch, you know.
Speaker 5: As they rolled out.
Speaker 6: And then I'd always have tasks or something to do,
Speaker 6: but it was kind of lame. And then yeah, I
Speaker 6: remember the first the first mission I did, uh started
Speaker 6: in the day, and I think going back, so I've really,
Speaker 6: I've really tried to piece this together because again I
Speaker 6: wasn't obviously in any leadership role, had no privy of
Speaker 6: exactly what our mission was or anything. I knew what
Speaker 6: the surge was supposed to be about. I knew what
Speaker 6: the eighty second was, what their mission was. Each of
Speaker 6: the you know units and battalions are taking a piece
Speaker 6: of bag Dad, so we'd have aos, right, and we
Speaker 6: were assigned My Arista unit was assigned an AO, and
Speaker 6: we were going out and we were checking. We were
Speaker 6: getting to know our AO was the first thing, right,
Speaker 6: and then we were checking on sites that we could
Speaker 6: actually build like a cop. Everyone was going in building
Speaker 6: up a cop and we were going to occupy, you know, Baghdad.
Speaker 6: I think our leadership, after doing all the cool stuff
Speaker 6: that you know, just a mon month earlier, was kind
Speaker 6: of like, yeah, f that we're not doing that we're
Speaker 6: gonna do cool stuff. And because really quickly kind of
Speaker 6: it was like, oh, no, we're gonna stay at Camp
Speaker 6: Toadgy in these awesome you know warehouses with bunk beds
Speaker 6: and porcelain and and showers and stuff. But we're gonna
Speaker 6: we're just gonna start hitting like all the all the
Speaker 6: insurgent stuff. I don't know where we got our intel
Speaker 6: from completely or whatnot, but we would build you know,
Speaker 6: target packages and then we would go after after, you know,
Speaker 6: high value targets. And again I don't know what kind
Speaker 6: of level these high high value targets were. I knew
Speaker 6: some of them were pretty big deals at the time
Speaker 6: in two thousand and seven, and that's I think we
Speaker 6: just proved that that is.
Speaker 5: What we were really good at.
Speaker 6: Again, it'd be awesome to have some of my leadership
Speaker 6: on at some point to talk about what exactly happened,
Speaker 6: But we just were doing time sensitive target raids short
Speaker 6: you know. There we would do some presence patrols and
Speaker 6: some knock and talks and stuff and our aos during
Speaker 6: the days, but then almost every night, uh, it was
Speaker 6: just hitting, hitting targets. And at first we would we
Speaker 6: would kind of uh switch it up. So you know,
Speaker 6: first platoon would be the court on and the court
Speaker 6: on off the area. Second platoon we would hit the
Speaker 6: we would hit the target houses. There might be like
Speaker 6: two or three target houses, and and then we'd kind
Speaker 6: of switch that up right and we would be the
Speaker 6: court on the next night or whatnot. And then as
Speaker 6: things developed, we kind of got more and more specific
Speaker 6: kind of in everyone's roles. And especially at the beginning,
Speaker 6: I mean, we were so successful, like there were hardly
Speaker 6: any dry holes.
Speaker 5: We were.
Speaker 6: We were just bagging and tagging dudes left and right
Speaker 6: every single night. We were waking them up in their sleep.
Speaker 6: We were using this new technology track and cell phones.
Speaker 6: It was like find your friends that we have now,
Speaker 6: you know, but it was like the old school version
Speaker 6: where someone's sitting in the hum V with like an arrow,
Speaker 6: you know, and like yeah, yeah, right there, right there,
Speaker 6: hit that house, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And then as as we I guess became successful in
Speaker 6: that or whatnot, or word got out or I don't
Speaker 6: really know, and there's rumors there's like the un you know,
Speaker 6: like the war talk, like yeah, war talk where guys
Speaker 6: are like, well, so and So's dad is actually a
Speaker 6: JSOW commander. So that's probably why we're getting these you know,
Speaker 6: missions or whatever, and that is true, but I've never
Speaker 6: been able to confirm that. And then I think it
Speaker 6: was kind of you know, from the previous experience they
Speaker 6: had or whatnot.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 6: But after we cleaned up our ao, which was super quick,
Speaker 6: I mean, we cleaned it up fast, and we got
Speaker 6: in some gnarly firefights early on. I don't know like
Speaker 6: what number mission it was, or what night or whatnot.
Speaker 6: I guess I guess before a firefight was an e
Speaker 6: FP that rocked us real bad. So I'll talk about
Speaker 6: these hunter boxes we used. But we had these big,
Speaker 6: huge LMTV or Juice and a half trucks that up
Speaker 6: armored and everything open tops.
Speaker 5: We'd drape some like sniper netting over the top.
Speaker 6: And we had some guns mounted on the side and
Speaker 6: I think on the top, and then we had humbies, right,
Speaker 6: so the the platoon that was hitting the target buildings
Speaker 6: would be in the hunter boxes and then the cord
Speaker 6: on off would be the humviies.
Speaker 5: And again we would switch it up.
Speaker 6: But we were doing there was like a huge operation
Speaker 6: in all of Baghdad where they were like going through
Speaker 6: and we were going to go like house to house,
Speaker 6: like everybody had their AO and they were going to
Speaker 6: clear their entire AO and stuff. So I remember doing
Speaker 6: this really long, like all day, maybe all night and
Speaker 6: then into the next day kind of mission where you're
Speaker 6: just literally going house to house to house. And on
Speaker 6: our way back, so they saw us drive out of
Speaker 6: Camp Todgy in these lmtvs with all like we used
Speaker 6: to stand up in them, so it was like we
Speaker 6: packed these things out and they saw of our heads
Speaker 6: back there and everything. Well, on our way back, we
Speaker 6: got hit right outside Camp Toadgy, like at where one
Speaker 6: of the guard towers was. We got hit with a
Speaker 6: huge EFP angled up because they knew they were going
Speaker 6: to hit this LMTV with this big box trying to
Speaker 6: get like mass casualties. And fortunately and unfortunately we had
Speaker 6: a few take shrapnel and one guy who ended up
Speaker 6: losing his hand. They couldn't save it. McCart was his name,
Speaker 6: and that that first experience, you know, getting hit with
Speaker 6: the EFP was like holy yeah, it was you can't
Speaker 6: even describe like the power. It's like getting hit with
Speaker 6: an invisible wall, you know, like four hundred miles an
Speaker 6: hour and like rocks, your brain rocks. All the senses
Speaker 6: couldn't can't hear for a second, so everything's filled with smoke,
Speaker 6: you know, the smoke clear because there's no top, and
Speaker 6: everything pretty fast, like as your hearing's coming back, you're
Speaker 6: contraind to, like, especially me just being a super green cherry,
Speaker 6: like what that I didn't even know an idy hit us.
Speaker 6: Then I just start hearing the screams, you know, of
Speaker 6: a couple of people that had gotten hit, you know,
Speaker 6: nosing blood at different places. And then my squad leader,
Speaker 6: who I talked about, Sergeant Meyer, just basically took charge.
Speaker 6: I mean there were there were like some pretty high
Speaker 6: ranking dudes in that truck, and there was a newsweek
Speaker 6: like an embedded journalist. I'll never forget that too, on
Speaker 6: that same same truck, and he you know, everyone's kind
Speaker 6: of stunned, and my my squad leader, was like, you know,
Speaker 6: everybody off the truck and got everybody moved, got him
Speaker 6: off the truck, and then we started kind of trying
Speaker 6: to see if we could go after anybody that might
Speaker 6: be in the vicinity, and there was really no one around.
Speaker 5: I ended up.
Speaker 6: Falling into one of those like shit, creaks, you know
Speaker 6: where like the sewage goes. So we're running through one
Speaker 6: of those, and I mean I was like one step,
Speaker 6: two step, boom, a face plant right into this crap
Speaker 6: and so I'm covered head to toe and like poop,
Speaker 6: Oh my god. And I'm trying to run through this
Speaker 6: like like I don't know, like a field to get
Speaker 6: online with everybody. And I was like one of the
Speaker 6: last people, like huffing and puffing, and I had swallowed
Speaker 6: my eyes are burning, like you know, I'm having a
Speaker 6: really hard time. I remember getting back back to our
Speaker 6: warehouse and showering and everything, and my squad leader was like,
Speaker 6: come with me, and he like takes me to the
Speaker 6: gym which is across the street, and we had this
Speaker 6: little gym and he like tells me to get on
Speaker 6: a treadmill and he's like, I don't ever want you
Speaker 6: to be last again. You're gonna like run every single
Speaker 6: day on this treadmill until you know you can prove
Speaker 6: that you're not going to be like the last guy
Speaker 6: when stuff happens.
Speaker 5: And I was like I couldn't really say, like like.
Speaker 6: It's because I literally swallowed poop and him covered head
Speaker 6: to toe, you know, what.
Speaker 4: Like like no, no, no joke, Like you're lucky to
Speaker 4: survive that alone. Guys who went into those pits, I
Speaker 4: mean they got hepatitis A through Z Like bad stuff happened.
Speaker 6: I mean maybe that's why I have Crohn's disease. There's
Speaker 6: a few other other things that might have gave you that. Yeah,
Speaker 6: who knows, Yeah, probably Yeah, fortunate that that, Yeah, that
Speaker 6: that happened. That was kind of my first you know,
Speaker 6: taste of actual real combat, you know, the missions that
Speaker 6: had gone on. We're just kind of like, hey, when
Speaker 6: is when is when are things? Like when are we
Speaker 6: get in a firefight? Like when do we you know,
Speaker 6: like what happens?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: And we were like doing things too where there was
Speaker 6: like the guys would have these uh scavenger hunts, Right,
Speaker 6: you kick a chicken, it was like five hundred points.
Speaker 5: You slap a donkey was like a thousand points. You know.
Speaker 6: One night, you know, there there was like a donkey
Speaker 6: noise you know, going off and it was like found one,
Speaker 6: you know over the columns, and uh yeah.
Speaker 5: We kind of did did some fun stuff like that.
Speaker 6: But then you know, as as it progressed, it got
Speaker 6: more and more serious. What one day we had, uh,
Speaker 6: we had a new platoon leader join us and he
Speaker 6: was right out of ranger school, super awesome dude. His
Speaker 6: first time out with us, he gets hit by a
Speaker 6: sniper in the side plate right hits me in the
Speaker 6: side plate and part of the fragments when when I
Speaker 6: don't know if the side plate or whatever, something was
Speaker 6: like burning in his side and it was some shrapnel
Speaker 6: from that bowet or whatever.
Speaker 5: And he was totally fine.
Speaker 6: But we had all like a lot of guys were
Speaker 6: some of the guys were wearing plate carriers at least
Speaker 6: by the end.
Speaker 5: But you know, I had the.
Speaker 6: Eye the cherry iba and everything. But I had noticed
Speaker 6: everybody's taking their side plates out. That's super heavy, and
Speaker 6: so my side plates were out, you know, and I
Speaker 6: was ditching things left and right whenever I could, because
Speaker 6: we were all usually moving pretty quick. And as soon
Speaker 6: as he got hitting the side plate, you know, I
Speaker 6: look around and we get back and everybody is reaching
Speaker 6: into their foot grabbing the side place and like making
Speaker 6: sure no one's looking, but putting their side plates back in.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and again, like I'm saying with the TST missions,
Speaker 6: like we you know, at first, we weren't really getting
Speaker 6: into anything heavy. We were just taking you know, taking
Speaker 6: guys pretty quick. And as we started moving into other
Speaker 6: areas of operation and doing things all over the place,
Speaker 6: so Gazily Academia and then Shulah was the worst place.
Speaker 6: We've always gotten firefights there. But then yeah, it's like
Speaker 6: they started getting smarter. They started having you know, their
Speaker 6: guards or whatever out. They started swapping SIM cards. They started.
Speaker 6: One time, we hit this place so eerie. We go
Speaker 6: in and there's just a cell phone propped up against
Speaker 6: the wall. The whole building is empty and it's just
Speaker 6: a cell phone like on It's like, yeah, and we
Speaker 6: thought the building was going to blow up.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: We were trying to get out there super fast.
Speaker 6: And so as they started getting smarter, you know, is
Speaker 6: when we started really especially when we started moving into
Speaker 6: Shula the Cave. I can't remember what cave unit was there,
Speaker 6: but they had taken crazy casualties in Shoela in two
Speaker 6: thousand and seven. And when we started operating in their
Speaker 6: oda's were operating in there. Different task force and stuff
Speaker 6: we're working in there with us. We had some AWG
Speaker 6: Asymmetric Warfare Group guys join us I think the word
Speaker 6: was getting out like, hey, these guys go out every night,
Speaker 6: like you got to in bed with them or whatever.
Speaker 6: I would love again for some leadership to come on
Speaker 6: here and tell me exactly how that all went down.
Speaker 6: But for me, being like the cherry guy, it was like, hey,
Speaker 6: see those two guys over there that look super cool
Speaker 6: and have all that awesome gear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, don't don't even look at them, don't talk to them,
Speaker 5: you know nothing.
Speaker 6: So those were like the AWG guys and other dudes
Speaker 6: that were embedded with us.
Speaker 5: But yeah, we were getting in some crazy firefights.
Speaker 6: I remember my first firefight was was it was funny.
Speaker 6: It was eerily similar to that black Hawk down scene.
Speaker 6: At the very beginning, we're like, how do they know?
Speaker 6: How do you know they're shooting at us?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: I remember asking telling my squadalider like it's so loud, right,
Speaker 6: And when you're in in that urban environment, I mean,
Speaker 6: a bullet that's you know, getting sent from over here
Speaker 6: sounds like it's you know, over here and all that stuff,
Speaker 6: and when you're really in experience, like you just you
Speaker 6: have no idea what's going on, and you know it's
Speaker 6: really up to the sergeants and squad leaders will be like, hey,
Speaker 6: like this is your sector of fire. This is where
Speaker 6: you're you know, during our court and off, like this
Speaker 6: is the only thing you need to know is like
Speaker 6: this corner. But the problem is, as you know, like
Speaker 6: missions change and things go haywire suddenly it's like, you know,
Speaker 6: I realized, like, no, I need to like even though
Speaker 6: I'm not in those briefs, it's like pre op briefs
Speaker 6: and stuff like, I need to make sure I understand
Speaker 6: the area, understand where we're going because if if squad
Speaker 6: leader goes down or my sergeant go you know, whoever
Speaker 6: goes down, or things change, like I really need to
Speaker 6: make sure that I'm on it and know where to
Speaker 6: go nowhere the other guys are because a lot of times,
Speaker 6: I mean, you're just kind of a little bit Oh
Speaker 6: it feels like you're a little bit alone, right with
Speaker 6: a few guys. I don't mean solo. I just mean
Speaker 6: you know, you're kind of you know.
Speaker 4: I feel isolated and kind of out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And I remember going, hey, how do it?
Speaker 6: Because it was getting it was starting to sound really different,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, hey, are we getting shot at?
Speaker 5: No? No, I don't think hey, are we getting shot at?
Speaker 6: And it was like it's like now we're getting shot at,
Speaker 6: you know, And I remember, I'll never forget that snapping,
Speaker 6: you know, because you could be on a range, you
Speaker 6: know where where you're getting shot from over the top
Speaker 6: and hear that snapping. But when it's like aimed at you,
Speaker 6: there's like a throaty noise to that, you know, it
Speaker 6: almost like you could hear the barrel like spitting at you.
Speaker 5: And that snapping is different.
Speaker 6: And and when things start moving, yeah, things get get
Speaker 6: crazy really fast, and so I'll never forget that.
Speaker 5: I'll never forget. There was a few times.
Speaker 6: Where we hit a dry hole, but we were like
Speaker 6: really positive that it was the dude's house. So there
Speaker 6: was a couple of times where we left and I
Speaker 6: was with them. It was like me and four other
Speaker 6: guys just stayed in the house and our humbies and
Speaker 6: everybody drove off, you know, to a distance. You know,
Speaker 6: that was going to be quite a while if we
Speaker 6: got into some you know, bad stuff, And we just
Speaker 6: waited for the guy to come home and you know,
Speaker 6: bagged him up and called everybody in and and and
Speaker 6: and rolled out again, you know, or whatever. But there's
Speaker 6: there was some cool stuff like that. We did a
Speaker 6: lot of like overt denial stuff for there's a lot
Speaker 6: of IEDs on this route Vernon that would taken out
Speaker 6: tons of people and we'd roll up on them. Some
Speaker 6: of the worst things I saw were rolling up on
Speaker 6: people that had gotten hit with you know, e FPS,
Speaker 6: trying to you know, they'd be stuck in like they're
Speaker 6: humby on fire, trying to help pull them out. And
Speaker 6: we even we even would if we weren't like a
Speaker 6: TST mission that night. You know, we were like helping
Speaker 6: rush them to the nearest talk or FOB or whatever
Speaker 6: and and stuff.
Speaker 5: So we saw a lot of crazy, crazy things.
Speaker 6: We my Sergeant Meyer, my my squad leader. He ended
Speaker 6: up becoming the head of like the sniper section.
Speaker 5: While we were there.
Speaker 6: He he taught me a lot of awesome stuff when
Speaker 6: I was recovering in the hospital. He actually got second
Speaker 6: place in the Army Marksmanship Competition sniper competition that year,
Speaker 6: which is really cool because I'm like watching him on
Speaker 6: TV while I'm recovering in the hospital. The International Sniper Competition, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: the Military sniper competition. Yeah, it was incredible. So he
Speaker 6: was he is he's an amazing dude. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think two towards the end, so we were supposed
Speaker 6: to do another you know, five month deployment. We get
Speaker 6: done with that five and they're like, actually, we're going
Speaker 6: to extend for another five and they now, now they've
Speaker 6: already been there for ten and this this is high
Speaker 6: you know, op tempo.
Speaker 5: Stuff, and these are not a lot of not a
Speaker 5: lot of sleep.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so exhaustion setting in kind of that like zombie
Speaker 6: not enough sleep started kind of playing into it too,
Speaker 6: So guys were starting to kind of just it was
Speaker 6: taking a toll on all of us, and anytime I
Speaker 6: wanted to complain, you know, I mean they'd already been
Speaker 6: doing this for five months, so you know, I definitely,
Speaker 6: you know, couldn't. But we started kind of doing some
Speaker 6: things where we'd leave a guy or two back one
Speaker 6: night just to kind of clear the head right and
Speaker 6: kind of rotate and shift off, just because there was
Speaker 6: just no end in sight. And then when we started,
Speaker 6: you know, I think, like we hadn't lost any guys yet,
Speaker 6: but one night, one night, I'll I'll never forget.
Speaker 5: I definitely thought I wasn't.
Speaker 6: Gonna make it that night, So we're going back into Shula.
Speaker 6: We hit a hap, we hit this house, and I
Speaker 6: want to say we had been there before, like it
Speaker 6: was a dry hole, you know. And so we go
Speaker 6: back like the next night or a couple of nights
Speaker 6: later or whatever. But this night when we go back,
Speaker 6: we're like, instead of rushing the humbies in and courting
Speaker 6: off the area and letting them escape, we'll run like
Speaker 6: super far, so we'll get dropped off way super far away,
Speaker 6: and we'll like run a real far distance and we'll
Speaker 6: and we'd done this a few times and had been
Speaker 6: really successful, and then once this shit hit the fan,
Speaker 6: then the humpies would come in and kind of support
Speaker 6: and stuff, and this had been super successful. But as
Speaker 6: we're like running, we come to this like line of
Speaker 6: people that are waiting for like the gasoline like supply
Speaker 6: or whatever. Like they're literally like lined up and they're
Speaker 6: supposed to be you know, like curfews and stuff, and
Speaker 6: nobody in Shula really really ever listened to that. And
Speaker 6: then we'd roll in and they'd things would get serious
Speaker 6: and there'd be some pop shots and everyone disappear, and
Speaker 6: then you would know, like, oh, we're about to like
Speaker 6: you know, get it and and and we get in
Speaker 6: our firefights and everything. But yeah, as we were like
Speaker 6: running through this line of people, they're like, you know,
Speaker 6: on their cell phone, like, hey, by the way, there's
Speaker 6: like this group of dudes running through here, probably coming
Speaker 6: to you, you know. So it was a it's kind
Speaker 6: of a blown thing, and you know, maybe we should
Speaker 6: have not kept going, but how do you stop once
Speaker 6: you're kind of running and getting closer. So we hit
Speaker 6: it and we just were probably we were probably a
Speaker 6: small element. I don't think we had everybody, and we
Speaker 6: just got kind of surrounded and pinned down a little bit.
Speaker 6: I remember being with a buddy of mine kind of
Speaker 6: like face down in a kitchen and just like rounds,
Speaker 6: just we're like face pinned, face down rounds or just
Speaker 6: like just ruining everything in this house. And I remember
Speaker 6: looking at him and being like, hey, like.
Speaker 5: How are we going to get out of here?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: And he like looked at me, grabbed me, and he's like,
Speaker 6: you know, like we're gonna make it, don't you worry,
Speaker 6: you know everything.
Speaker 5: It was just one of those like crazy moments, you know.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately, right around this time, one of our guys
Speaker 6: who was outside got hit in the head with with
Speaker 6: a round and ak round and and collapsed. And this
Speaker 6: Eddie Sandmeyer interesting story. His sister is Bridget from Hugh
Speaker 6: Hefner's like third girlfriend.
Speaker 5: That's his sister.
Speaker 6: So I never got to experience this, but all the
Speaker 6: all that unit would get to go to the mansion,
Speaker 6: hang out with his sister and stuff. I I, I'm
Speaker 6: not sure they would have invited me anyway, but yeah,
Speaker 6: they got they would get to do that. So yeah,
Speaker 6: and one of the other platoon leaders his uh his
Speaker 6: babysitter was Fergie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I couldn't can't confirm that one, but definitely can confirm
Speaker 6: Certaint Sandmyer. But anyway, sand Meyer ran out, ran out
Speaker 6: from his you know, covered position to to the you know,
Speaker 6: middle of the road where where mur Murphy had gotten hit,
Speaker 6: and he grabbed him and like pulls him, you know,
Speaker 6: back into a house into safety, starts doing first aid,
Speaker 6: called the medic, you know, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: and kind of we're starting to piece together like, oh,
Speaker 6: if somebody somebody got hit, you know, and I'm not
Speaker 6: I don't have comms like like the squad leader and
Speaker 6: stuff have, but so starting to get serious. The trucks
Speaker 6: finally make it there. We always had we always had
Speaker 6: apaches and drones and all kinds of stuff you know,
Speaker 6: for us. So anytime we got like really in in it,
Speaker 6: we would call in the the the the apaches, and
Speaker 6: and we could always you know make it out of there, luckily,
Speaker 6: you know, because.
Speaker 5: We could just start messing stuff up big time.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, so we got him out and then
Speaker 6: it started getting light and we got to a clearing
Speaker 6: where they could get you know, bring in a metavac,
Speaker 6: and they put him on the metavac, and I remember
Speaker 6: going back to our warehouse and like seeing guys cleaning
Speaker 6: out his helmet and there's like you know, bone fragments
Speaker 6: and his helmet and stuff, and like, you know, everybody's
Speaker 6: just like really really not doing well. And he ended
Speaker 6: up making it. So we got word that he that
Speaker 6: he had kind of pulled through and he was going
Speaker 6: to make it. The bullet went through his frontal lobe,
Speaker 6: ricocheted in the skull came and then came out the
Speaker 6: other backside, Yeah, like wrapped around.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I ended up getting to see him after I
Speaker 6: was wounded. I got to see him at a dinner
Speaker 6: at our platoon sergeant's house in in the Fort Bragg
Speaker 6: area a while later, obviously, but yeah, that was that
Speaker 6: was kind of our biggest, you know, closest brush with
Speaker 6: with losing someone at that point and and kind of
Speaker 6: from then on and I don't really even remember what what,
Speaker 6: like how far into the deployment that was, but it
Speaker 6: was pretty far, and you know, guys were just starting
Speaker 6: to talk about death and like having bad feelings and thinking,
Speaker 6: you know, it was kind of the end and it
Speaker 6: just was getting it was getting dark and weird.
Speaker 5: And everyone's getting strung out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think all of us had really seen
Speaker 6: seen kind of enough in a way.
Speaker 5: You know. We had a commander or.
Speaker 6: Yeah, our unit commander was they called him T one thousand,
Speaker 6: super ripped dude, good looking guy, blonde hair, so T
Speaker 6: one thousand from Terminator, and he was just always like,
Speaker 6: when's the next.
Speaker 5: You know, tst Target? Why aren't they sending us target?
Speaker 6: Like he was just always wanted us out there and
Speaker 6: and uh as awesome as he was, Uh, you know,
Speaker 6: some of the guys were kind of being like, dude,
Speaker 6: we need to like scale back a little bit, like
Speaker 6: it's just getting too much, you know, and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I remember, I remember, you know, getting my first guys.
Speaker 6: We got ambushed on the way back from a mission,
Speaker 6: and I was up in the turret that night, and
Speaker 6: I remember, I remember one of the it was like
Speaker 6: third squad, their squad leader, sergeant.
Speaker 5: Sergeant Gray.
Speaker 6: He at one point he was like, you know, don't
Speaker 6: talk to me, Cherry until you know you've killed.
Speaker 5: Someone or whatever, you know.
Speaker 6: And I remember after that mission going back to his
Speaker 6: bunk and just being like, hey, sergeant, so we can
Speaker 6: we can talk.
Speaker 5: Now, huh.
Speaker 6: And he's like, get out of your mother after you know,
Speaker 6: on at me, and I'm like, what the heck. So,
Speaker 6: you know, for a while there, people were putting up
Speaker 6: like ace cards, you know, on their bed and stuff.
Speaker 6: And then and then it just got so much that
Speaker 6: nobody cared at all. It was just like we're just
Speaker 6: trying to survive. I even remember like one mission, I
Speaker 6: was up in a turret, started getting shot at and
Speaker 6: I'm like shooting back, and it was like so constant
Speaker 6: and so often that like I had no adrenaline. There
Speaker 6: was there was there was like no I'm getting shot
Speaker 6: at and there's no bump, like no drug hit or anything.
Speaker 6: And I remember thinking like, oh, that's that's probably not good.
Speaker 5: Like that's like a broken something broken.
Speaker 4: It's like after a while you transcend the danger reaction,
Speaker 4: right and yeah, like kind of like just letting it
Speaker 4: hang out there, not necessarily giving a flock.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And there were some guys that like really did
Speaker 6: didn't care if they died. I mean they were doing
Speaker 6: dumb stuff like getting out of the humbies and chasing
Speaker 6: dudes down like an alley and taking them out, you
Speaker 6: know when we'd get in contact and stuff, and they
Speaker 6: didn't care.
Speaker 5: You know, at a certain point, we just kind of
Speaker 5: stopped caring.
Speaker 6: And I I never got quite there where I was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna you know, I'm just gonna be fine dying.
Speaker 6: But you definitely thought it was gonna probably happen. You know,
Speaker 6: it's either gonna be yeah something, So yeah, I should
Speaker 6: probably go into kind of the final mission for me.
Speaker 6: So the final the final mission was September tenth, two
Speaker 6: thousand and seven. Just like all the other TST missions,
Speaker 6: you know, it was like are we going to sleep
Speaker 6: tonight or we're gonna go out on mission?
Speaker 5: You know, all the lights would go off and we'd
Speaker 5: start getting.
Speaker 6: Our bunks and maybe we're gonna get some sleep and
Speaker 6: then like you know, middle of the night, you know, broom,
Speaker 6: the lights would come on and you know, tst let's go,
Speaker 6: let's go and grab all your stuff, and like always
Speaker 6: had like a task like getting the trucks ready or
Speaker 6: something while they're getting like the op briefing, like all
Speaker 6: the leaderships like going through everything. Here, targets, here's where
Speaker 6: we're going to hit, you know, all that stuff. And
Speaker 6: my job was like making sure everything was ready to
Speaker 6: go outside. You know, everything's lined up and we're ready
Speaker 6: to go. At least it was you know a lot
Speaker 6: of the time. So so they kind of come, you know,
Speaker 6: we start kind of hearing like, oh, this is like
Speaker 6: a huge one, like everybody's going. We had some like
Speaker 6: our sister unit, which was which was calv guys they
Speaker 6: were going. I want to say, we had like nine
Speaker 6: Humvies and three of those hunter boxes and each Hunter
Speaker 6: box had eighteen Americans in them, and so this is huge.
Speaker 6: Usually it was like one or two hundred boxes. You know,
Speaker 6: a few Humvies maybe you know, the most guys we've
Speaker 6: probably ever gone after It was probably like four probably
Speaker 6: before that. So nineteen dudes having a meeting was massive.
Speaker 6: We knew that if that many dudes are all together,
Speaker 6: they were going to have a lot of people kind
Speaker 6: of looking out for them too.
Speaker 5: So we were pretty preparing for some heavy stuff.
Speaker 6: So we get to the area, which again was in Shula,
Speaker 6: and that night I'm with Sergeant Meyer again. We're in
Speaker 6: the No I wasn't he was in the Oh no, okay,
Speaker 6: so I was in I was in the hunter box,
Speaker 6: like I said. But that night, instead of hitting the
Speaker 6: target buildings, I was going to go with the sniper section,
Speaker 6: link up with them, hit the building and go on top,
Speaker 6: you know, one of the highest, tallest.
Speaker 5: Buildings or whatever in the area.
Speaker 6: And we were overlooking kind of this this field or
Speaker 6: like kind of like a I don't know, playground type area,
Speaker 6: you know, but you know, Iraq style, and there was
Speaker 6: probably three or four buildings gonna get hit. And before
Speaker 6: we were totally set up up there, it was already
Speaker 6: like coming down like we got them all, like we
Speaker 6: got him, Like we we got them all. And so
Speaker 6: they're strapping them up and everything, and so it was
Speaker 6: super quick and kind of disorienting.
Speaker 5: We get back.
Speaker 4: Is this back in the day when we were like
Speaker 4: ratchet strapping.
Speaker 5: The h vts down to the bed of the y
Speaker 5: Yeah truck.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't the super nice like flex cuffs.
Speaker 6: I don't remember the super nice flex cuffs. I remember
Speaker 6: like probably your you know, your Harbor freight zip ties,
Speaker 6: you know, the thick ones.
Speaker 5: Those different times. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean like our humbies were up armored to a sense,
Speaker 6: but you know, like the turret's pretty exposed, like you've
Speaker 6: got some glass on three sides, but you know, sniper
Speaker 6: netting on top, you know, just just yeah, at different times,
Speaker 6: So they're trying to figure out, how do we get
Speaker 6: nineteen guys like out of here, you know, like they're
Speaker 6: gonna be people are gonna be sitting on them in
Speaker 6: the humbies and people. You know, we can only fit
Speaker 6: a couple in each hunter box, so I think we
Speaker 6: had three of the nineteen in our hunter box. We're
Speaker 6: starting to get loaded back on that, but we're also
Speaker 6: starting to get engaged. So there's a couple of RPGs
Speaker 6: and some kind a firefight starting to break out. So
Speaker 6: they're trying to like figure out, hey, how do we
Speaker 6: do do we stay and kind of finish the fight
Speaker 6: like we usually do. We kind of leave on our
Speaker 6: own terms, or like we kind of we're kind of
Speaker 6: in this like weird transition, and we kind of needed
Speaker 6: to just.
Speaker 5: Get out of there.
Speaker 6: So they're like, everybody, like load up and we're just
Speaker 6: gonna shoot our way out of here. So we're all
Speaker 6: loading up, and I remember so my squad leader, Sergeant
Speaker 6: Meyer had taken over the snipers section, Sergeant Rivera had
Speaker 6: taken over our squad, and he was getting he was
Speaker 6: one of the last in the truck, and we had
Speaker 6: this big ladder. We had this rope down one side,
Speaker 6: so you can actually kind of like air assault, you know,
Speaker 6: off of this LMTV on one side, you can climb
Speaker 6: and jump off the front or kind of slide down
Speaker 6: the ladder in the back. And I was like the
Speaker 6: last guy. So as soon as you'd get in, I
Speaker 6: was kind of the last guy in the very back,
Speaker 6: right by the rope that we'd slide down, and he's
Speaker 6: getting on the hum he's getting on the LMTV and
Speaker 6: slips and like I think he broke his jaw, like
Speaker 6: slips and hits his face and his blood and he's
Speaker 6: like pretty messed up, and we get he's kind of
Speaker 6: a little bit you know, out of it, and we're
Speaker 6: kind of getting him on the truck and we're like
Speaker 6: oh god, damn and trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 6: We get him on, and then once you're in the
Speaker 6: hunter box and you're like leaving, there's a little.
Speaker 5: Bit of like security you can do.
Speaker 6: Like if you see anybody with an RPG or something,
Speaker 6: obviously you got to take him out or they I mean,
Speaker 6: you're really exposed, especially when the buildings are high, like
Speaker 6: there's eighteen Americans. It's a big target. So it's always
Speaker 6: like just like the worst time trying to drive out.
Speaker 6: You either gonna be a hit with an ID or
Speaker 6: you're gonna get shot or blown up from the you know,
Speaker 6: up top. So you just wanted to like get out
Speaker 6: of the town, you know, or the urban area and
Speaker 6: get out and head back to Taji. And so we're
Speaker 6: getting out of there and we get up onto Route
Speaker 6: vernon which the.
Speaker 5: North of Baghdad.
Speaker 6: There's like this massive overpass and it literally goes from
Speaker 6: like thirty to eighty hundred feet like massive goes in
Speaker 6: different directions and on this overpass and we're still like
Speaker 6: we're not taking probably like direct fire, but people are
Speaker 6: able to always be pop shotting us, you know, the
Speaker 6: entire way out of there, especially like we got their
Speaker 6: guy is like they're just you know, trying to get
Speaker 6: whatever they can. And the driver of the truck like
Speaker 6: hits some debris from like a previous ID or something,
Speaker 6: or like a half Hesco barrier type thing, because we're
Speaker 6: kind of going through this weird checkpoint up there as well,
Speaker 6: and we're hauling, but we always.
Speaker 5: Drove, you know, no lights with nods.
Speaker 6: The driver's an eighty eight mic like attached to us
Speaker 6: because none of us could drive the big trucks. And
Speaker 6: it's right in that horrible period of the day where
Speaker 6: it's too a little bit too bright at dawn to
Speaker 6: be wearing the nods but too dark for to just
Speaker 6: be line of sight. And for some reason or whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 6: he loses control of the of the LMTV. We end
Speaker 6: up going through the guardrail. I remember the whole thing
Speaker 6: kind of lifting up and going this way, and you're
Speaker 6: kind of having this in and out of body experience,
Speaker 6: like you know, you're on this huge high overpass. You know,
Speaker 6: the truck is losing control trying to make sense of everything.
Speaker 6: And then as we're going there was almost this moment
Speaker 6: where it was like maybe we aren't going to go off,
Speaker 6: and then it was just like that splash mountain, you know,
Speaker 6: where it's like no, we're going for sure.
Speaker 5: And then I fully like blackout, Like I just I remember.
Speaker 6: I remember as we're falling and like seeing the truck
Speaker 6: and like all the guys like are now not side,
Speaker 6: they're like down right, And as we're going down, I
Speaker 6: just remember everything just closed off. And so when I
Speaker 6: wake up. When I wake up, I kind of like,
Speaker 6: you know, like when they talk about Hell, it's been
Speaker 6: like dark and gnashing teeth and all that stuff. Like
Speaker 6: it literally was pitch dark. I'm crushed under this truck
Speaker 6: and all these bodies and there's screaming and like.
Speaker 5: Metallic noises and stuff.
Speaker 6: And I remember like just thinking like holy shit, like
Speaker 6: I died and this is hell, Like that's so messed up,
Speaker 6: you know. And then I was like, well, it's not hot,
Speaker 6: and the Bible said it was supposed to be hot, right,
Speaker 6: so it's not.
Speaker 5: Maybe this isn't hell.
Speaker 6: And then the next thing was like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: I can't breathe, like I couldn't even I was so crushed.
Speaker 6: I couldn't even breathe out, let alone take like a
Speaker 6: breath in. And then I started to panic. And then
Speaker 6: I started hearing all the screams and yells and and
Speaker 6: you go into like a very weird, I don't know,
Speaker 6: pre death space or something like where just like it
Speaker 6: was just unlike anything I'd ever experienced. And right when
Speaker 6: like I'm like, I'm this is it, Like this is
Speaker 6: the last moment. I feel this tugging on my foot,
Speaker 6: on my I think it was my left left like
Speaker 6: foot boot. It's like tugging, and I start I start
Speaker 6: just whiggling my foot as much as possible to kind
Speaker 6: of be like I'm alive, like like get me out
Speaker 6: of here.
Speaker 5: And so then I.
Speaker 6: Remember some of the weight kind of being rolled off
Speaker 6: me and someone who I haven't talked about yet as
Speaker 6: was my best friend, the only dude who was even
Speaker 6: close to looking my age. I looked I literally looked twelve,
Speaker 6: and like you know, in basic training when they check
Speaker 6: check your facial hair, you know, and stuff like, I
Speaker 6: remember not shaving and being put into the like you shaved,
Speaker 6: good job line, you know, and everyone else getting in trouble, like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I haven't shaved for a couple of days, but if
Speaker 6: they find out, you know. But anyway, so my but
Speaker 6: my best buddy, Richard Brendle, he with I didn't know
Speaker 6: at the time, but he had actually grabbed me and
Speaker 6: the pull that the that the rope was attached to
Speaker 6: and rode us like into the ground that way. And
Speaker 6: then when I lost consciousness and crushed, one of the
Speaker 6: detainees was like on me, and he was like a
Speaker 6: huge dude and a couple other dead bodies and he
Speaker 6: was able to Now, mind you, this dude has like
Speaker 6: five ribs snapped off from the spine. Like back there,
Speaker 6: he has like a ruptured spleen. I think he lost
Speaker 6: some organs. I know that a collapse lung, broken nose,
Speaker 6: broken arm, broken wrist. And he's able to somehow save
Speaker 6: my life. Like he pulls me out. He pulls me
Speaker 6: out from the back of the iba where that handle is.
Speaker 6: He pulls me out from the wreckage. And now I
Speaker 6: have four shotattered vertebrae, like like shattered vertebrae, some spinal
Speaker 6: cord damage. Some of the bone fragments were kind of
Speaker 6: pressed up to the spine. I think a collapse lung
Speaker 6: at least big time lung contusions. Sternum was crushed, I
Speaker 6: had like fluid around my heart, so there was like
Speaker 6: trauma to like the whole chest cavity.
Speaker 5: And then I broke a bunch of bones in my face.
Speaker 6: This ear was taken off like completely, like scooped out
Speaker 6: and hanging on by like a flap of skin, like
Speaker 6: scooped out deep. And then there was seventy stables, So
Speaker 6: my entire school was kind of like filayed open and
Speaker 6: falling off. And so when he's like dragging me out
Speaker 6: and like sitting me up with all these shattered vertebrae
Speaker 6: and everything, I mean like I was in like the
Speaker 6: most pain I've ever can ever describe. But also this
Speaker 6: weird like shouldn't this hurt even body experience? Yeah, it
Speaker 6: super out of body experience. And I also am like blind,
Speaker 6: and I don't know if it was from the blood
Speaker 6: or from the impact, like the head trauma or whatever,
Speaker 6: but I'm blind. Like I could see like light a
Speaker 6: little bit on the outer rims, but like super dark
Speaker 6: in the center, and I could barely breathe, just like
Speaker 6: you know, just trying to like stay alive. And then
Speaker 6: I think Richard passes out behind me, and now our
Speaker 6: entire element's up on this overpass and it is a
Speaker 6: long way to get down and around. We're in a
Speaker 6: trash field like this trash field and land's about how
Speaker 6: now you know, in retrospect, about how far did you
Speaker 6: guys fall? So if you read the official report, which
Speaker 6: is total bullshit, they say, I think they say.
Speaker 5: Thirty to fifty feet.
Speaker 6: My buddy who pulled me out of the wreckage, he
Speaker 6: ended up reclassing and went back to the same area
Speaker 6: like several years later. He says, it was like seventy
Speaker 6: five to eighty feet. All settle on fifty feet. It
Speaker 6: doesn't really matter to me how tall it was. It
Speaker 6: was really freaking I remember on some missions like being
Speaker 6: up there and like peeing off of this overpass and
Speaker 6: thinking to myself, like this would really suck to fall off,
Speaker 6: Like this is gnarly, you know. I even have some
Speaker 6: pictures I sent d of that overpass. I'd like clicked
Speaker 6: a picture of it randomly, and it turned out to
Speaker 6: be the exact overpass you know that we go off of.
Speaker 5: So this is this is super high.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, seven seven of my guys die. I think three
Speaker 6: like pretty instantly, and then the rest either died on
Speaker 6: the bird's back to the hospital to to the bag
Speaker 6: that like green zone, big hospital there, and then the
Speaker 6: rest of us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're pretty messed up.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I remember, I remember finally our element getting
Speaker 6: getting down to us. So after he pulled me out,
Speaker 6: I pass out again, and when I wake up the
Speaker 6: next time, it's my lieutenant who was in the actually
Speaker 6: the passenger seat, and he's trying to wrap my head.
Speaker 5: He's like pulling my ear up in my head and
Speaker 5: he's trying to wrap my head.
Speaker 6: And as soon as he lets go, he like shattered
Speaker 6: like everything, like his arm, so he's only trying to.
Speaker 5: Do it like one arm.
Speaker 6: And as soon as he goes, I gotta go help
Speaker 6: the other guys. And he takes off, and when he
Speaker 6: lets go, like I just feel my head and ear
Speaker 6: just kind of fall back down again, and and so
Speaker 6: then I pass out again, and when I wake up again,
Speaker 6: it's the other platoons platoon leader, and I remember thinking, like,
Speaker 6: what the heck's with up with all these lieutenants like
Speaker 6: coming and waking me up, you know, And so he
Speaker 6: starts saying, Hey, we're gonna move everybody out from under
Speaker 6: this overpass and get you guys staged up for the bird.
Speaker 6: We've got birds coming in by twos, like as many
Speaker 6: as we possibly could find, so the medovacts come in.
Speaker 6: And I was probably on one of the last birds,
Speaker 6: I think, if not the last bird, and to my
Speaker 6: left was heard agree and he was not doing well
Speaker 6: like he was. He was not doing well at all,
Speaker 6: so I kind of knew he probably wasn't gonna make it.
Speaker 6: I didn't know if I was going to make it either,
Speaker 6: but I didn't know like who. I didn't know for
Speaker 6: maybe several days because of the surgeries and stuff and
Speaker 6: all that. I remember getting flown to Ballade after all
Speaker 6: my surgeries in Baghdad, And I told you earlier there
Speaker 6: was a plastic surgeon visiting the Baghdad hospital who went
Speaker 6: to work and he reattached my right ear, put seventy
Speaker 6: staples on my head. And I have like a perfect
Speaker 6: full head of hair, like you wouldn't even know my ear.
Speaker 6: There's like little scars I could point out, but I
Speaker 6: mean he had to like reattach the little lobe. He
Speaker 6: had to reattach that other little part and the canal
Speaker 6: there was like fifty futures inside the canal, like putting
Speaker 6: everything back together. And had he not been there, I
Speaker 6: definitely would not have an ear. I definitely my top
Speaker 6: of my head would not look the same, even my face,
Speaker 6: you know, making sure everything wasn't gonna like collapse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I mean, well, looking at you, like, I
Speaker 4: can't tell that you received these injuries, so I mean
Speaker 4: they they clearly did a good job putting you back together.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And for you know, I used to look like
Speaker 6: a really young Brad Pitt and then I remember waking
Speaker 6: up there, this is the best we can do. I'm
Speaker 6: really sorry. So yeah, I got, I got. I got
Speaker 6: fortunate for sure, for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So so as quick as it all started for me,
Speaker 6: it kind of all ended, you know, my military career.
Speaker 6: Like I said, I spent a little bit, probably a
Speaker 6: short amount of time there at the Green Zone, and
Speaker 6: then they flew me to blot and probably one night
Speaker 6: there before they could get me on like an ICU
Speaker 6: bird to long stool. Spent a while in long stool,
Speaker 6: probably a few weeks, and I was in and out
Speaker 6: of like probably like a morphine induced coma type thing,
Speaker 6: you know, just like I don't remember a ton. I
Speaker 6: do remember some guy from like the Wounded Warrior Project
Speaker 6: I think had like just started with the backpacks right
Speaker 6: like out of a garage. I remember getting one of
Speaker 6: those backpacks and that was like the only clothes I
Speaker 6: had was like a pair of jeans, a T shirt,
Speaker 6: and then like some crap in this backpack I had lost,
Speaker 6: you know, just lost every everything basically. So yeah, but
Speaker 6: I remember in Ballot, I remember seeing Simpson and he
Speaker 6: came over to my bed and he and he was
Speaker 6: pretty messed up, like he had he had some crazy
Speaker 6: scars and staples and stuff too, and him coming up
Speaker 6: to me, and I remember asking like are he maybe
Speaker 6: he asked me, He's like, hey, do you want to
Speaker 6: know who made it? And I was like I can't
Speaker 6: take it yet, Like I can't. I can't handle knowing
Speaker 6: who didn't make it and who did. I knew my
Speaker 6: best buddy man, Richard Brendle. I knew he was alive,
Speaker 6: but I didn't know. And then I remember telling him,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't know how much long later, right,
Speaker 6: I remember saying like okay, I'm ready, and like each
Speaker 6: one was just a dagger, you know, as he's going
Speaker 6: through it Sergeant Patterson and Rivera and our degree and
Speaker 6: Weeks was another really good buddy of mine. Ari Weeks's
Speaker 6: going through MOA, you know, and he's just going through
Speaker 6: all seven of the guys, and well, yeah, took everything
Speaker 6: in me just to kind of I don't know, that
Speaker 6: was the worst crap you could go through, honestly.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And then, like I said, flew to long Stool.
Speaker 6: And what was so hard too about all this was
Speaker 6: like I get placed in this unit, I have this
Speaker 6: crazy nine month experience ends with this you know, crazy
Speaker 6: traumatic thing.
Speaker 5: And when I fly to Germany.
Speaker 6: When when I leave Germany after like a week or
Speaker 6: so or whatever it was, and I take an icy
Speaker 6: uber to Walter Reed for one night and then they
Speaker 6: decided to take me to Eisenhower Army Medical Center at
Speaker 6: Fort Gordon.
Speaker 5: When when they it.
Speaker 6: That was the last time I really got to see
Speaker 6: my guys, right, So it was like I got put
Speaker 6: in there and then it was like I got taken
Speaker 6: out and even the wounded ones, like all the wounded
Speaker 6: ones went to different places.
Speaker 5: You don't really get the closure on that experience.
Speaker 6: No closure. And I missed all the funerals because it
Speaker 6: was a ten month recovery. It was supposed to be
Speaker 6: like a year and a half. I did the whole
Speaker 6: you know, walking with the the like the gymnastics looking
Speaker 6: thing and and the back brace and all that stuff.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I never I never got to go to
Speaker 6: the funerals. I never got to you have any any
Speaker 6: kind of closure or anything like that. And yeah, that's
Speaker 6: that started my ten months recovery in the in the
Speaker 6: hospital part and that was that was that was really
Speaker 6: crappy ten months for sure, Like I was thankful to
Speaker 6: be alive. Obviously, the physical stuff was was crazy getting
Speaker 6: through all that. And I remember being like, hey, like
Speaker 6: I'm broken now. I can't do that job anymore. Like
Speaker 6: just let me go home, you know. Just remember thinking
Speaker 6: like just let me, let me go home.
Speaker 5: Do let me.
Speaker 6: And I was actually really fortunate because after they kind
Speaker 6: of got me to a place instead of just like
Speaker 6: sending me, they couldn't. I was convalescing, like I was
Speaker 6: still really bad, right, So I got to go to
Speaker 6: the very first active duty rehab unit, which was at
Speaker 6: the Uptown VA in Augusta, Georgia, right by the Masters.
Speaker 6: And I was one of like twenty guys in this unit,
Speaker 6: and every single day for I don't know how many months,
Speaker 6: Like I'm I'm doing vision therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy,
Speaker 6: recreational therapy, pool therapy, seeing a shrink right, seeing a
Speaker 6: seeing a guy. I remember I remember sharing stories with
Speaker 6: the shrink dude and his like dad was in the military,
Speaker 6: but he wasn't. And I remember like thinking like this
Speaker 6: this isn't for me because the dude was just like
Speaker 6: the whole time listening to my stories everything I was saying,
Speaker 6: I couldn't believe it, Like, oh my gosh, I'm like
Speaker 6: this is this is such a weird thing to like
Speaker 6: I thought I was coming. You know, you're gonna have
Speaker 6: answers for me, and you know, I'm on all these
Speaker 6: medications and I'm so I'm kind of numb to a
Speaker 6: lot of things as far as like I'm not having
Speaker 6: like PTSD yet, you know, like and I'm almost thinking
Speaker 6: like PTSD at this point, like is fake, Like yeah,
Speaker 6: I hadn't hit me yet, nothing had really hit me yet.
Speaker 6: The and then once I started getting off all the
Speaker 6: pain meds and getting a little bit better, maybe getting
Speaker 6: out of the back break, because then the back brace
Speaker 6: for like six months or something, maybe even longer.
Speaker 5: I remember kind of the nightmare starting and a lot
Speaker 5: of the like I like.
Speaker 6: To be honest, I was more afraid of Iraq in
Speaker 6: the hospital thinking about everything that had happened than I
Speaker 6: was when I was there right right, like scary as
Speaker 6: all all of it was, Like I mean, I really
Speaker 6: honestly was like horrified by everything.
Speaker 4: Idea, now now you have time to process all of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, so that really sucked. And then I'll tell
Speaker 6: one funny story from recovery. So you know, after six
Speaker 6: months and being in the you're literally in the hospital
Speaker 6: Monday through Friday.
Speaker 5: They'd have this formation where they were you'd.
Speaker 6: Be like, wal if you're in a wheelchair, wheel into
Speaker 6: this like little cafeteria area, and they literally like it
Speaker 6: was a wounded warrior battalion, right, and they would like
Speaker 6: roll call and they'd be like, okay, Lance has got
Speaker 6: vision therapy. Make sure you don't miss a year whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, and they would like you know, and then
Speaker 6: you'd go off and everybody would do their therapies and
Speaker 6: everything and and so on the weekends, you know, we
Speaker 6: didn't have those roll calls, and so one of the
Speaker 6: guys recovering in there had like had some gnarly break
Speaker 6: to like his legs, so he was limping around. He
Speaker 6: was like out of all his stuff and not using
Speaker 6: anything but a cane, I think, but he couldn't like
Speaker 6: move his leg very well. And I was in a
Speaker 6: back brace and everything, so I couldn't drive or anything.
Speaker 6: But he's like, hey, if I ran a car, like,
Speaker 6: do you want to go to North Charleston with me?
Speaker 6: And like we'll go to this Taylor Swift and Brad
Speaker 6: Paisley concert and like yeah, like we'll like we'll like
Speaker 6: peace out of here for like a weekend. And so
Speaker 6: we totally went like a wall and we had this
Speaker 6: whole thing set up where we would like tell the
Speaker 6: nurses like we were going somewhere close or something, I
Speaker 6: don't remember, and then we I got I got in
Speaker 6: this car and I'm literally in a back brace.
Speaker 5: We're gonna spend a night in a hotel.
Speaker 6: Like I hadn't been out of the hospital at all,
Speaker 6: you know, up into the point. I actually I did
Speaker 6: get to go home for a little while while I
Speaker 6: was in a back brace. I got to go home
Speaker 6: for like Thanksgiving or Christmas, I can't remember, and my
Speaker 6: parents like rented a hospital bed that like because I
Speaker 6: had to stay like my spine had to like heal
Speaker 6: like straight, you know, so I couldn't like just sleep
Speaker 6: in a normal bed and stuff.
Speaker 5: So they got this hospital bed and everything.
Speaker 6: But yeah, so anyway, we snuck out of there and
Speaker 6: we went to a concert in North Charleston and like
Speaker 6: went to the fort out on the island there, and yeah,
Speaker 6: totally snuck out of there for a while.
Speaker 4: And is this also about the time to tell the
Speaker 4: Sheriff of Amarillo story?
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, yeah, let's transition to that perfect So we
Speaker 6: So I finally I remember having to sit down, so
Speaker 6: we'll get to that.
Speaker 5: So I have n't sit down with.
Speaker 6: One of the I think it was the back surgeon
Speaker 6: guy who tragically I tried to look him up because
Speaker 6: I loved this guy, doctor Burke.
Speaker 5: He was a.
Speaker 6: I don't know what rank he was, but he was.
Speaker 6: He was an officer, and he was the back surgeon there,
Speaker 6: the main back surgeon, and he ended up getting When
Speaker 6: I tried to look him up, I found his obituary
Speaker 6: and he had gotten run over by a truck while
Speaker 6: he was cycling with a big group of cyclists and
Speaker 6: a dude killed him. There in Augusta, Georgia and left
Speaker 6: behind a wife and like a newborn baby. And that
Speaker 6: killed me learning that. But anyway, he sat me down
Speaker 6: and he said, look, he goes, how badly do you
Speaker 6: want to stay in the army?
Speaker 5: You know? And I was like, can I jump out
Speaker 5: of planes?
Speaker 6: And he's like no, and he's like, if you really
Speaker 6: want to stay in and make a career out of it,
Speaker 6: like you could do you know, you could do paperwork
Speaker 6: stuff and everything. I said, look, I gave the army.
Speaker 6: It was super short, but I gave the everything I
Speaker 6: had and I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: I was airborne infantry, had a crazy deployment, did all
Speaker 6: the things, got wounded real bad. I said, nah, I
Speaker 6: just want to go home. So he's like, okay, I'm
Speaker 6: going to medically retire you. So I got medically retired
Speaker 6: at twenty years old to nineteen bag dad turned twenty
Speaker 6: in the.
Speaker 5: Hospital, medically retired at twenty.
Speaker 6: So I leave the military with a with a E
Speaker 6: four retired ID card. So getting you know, on base
Speaker 6: with a retire I still look twelve or thirteen, getting
Speaker 6: on base with the retired card.
Speaker 5: You know, the gate cards are just like what that?
Speaker 6: Like, you know, still to this day they're like you,
Speaker 6: how are you retired?
Speaker 4: You for?
Speaker 6: But yeah, so my my Again, I was young and dumb, right,
Speaker 6: and I was like, I'm gonna pack my car with
Speaker 6: the little belongings I have, and I'm going to drive
Speaker 6: all the way from Augusta, Georgia to San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 6: and I'm gonna do it as fast as I possibly can.
Speaker 6: So I ended up doing that in forty five or
Speaker 6: forty six hours straight with one stop in Amarillo.
Speaker 5: Texas and on my way.
Speaker 6: So I left at midnight, like literally got to the
Speaker 6: place where I was going to sign out for the
Speaker 6: last time, like eleven fifty nine.
Speaker 5: Boom, you know, I sign out and I leave. So
Speaker 5: I'm leaving in the middle of the night.
Speaker 6: Didn't get much sleep, and as the sun is coming
Speaker 6: up in Arkansas, I'm like.
Speaker 5: Nodding off while I'm driving.
Speaker 6: But I'm thinking to myself, like, man, I you know
Speaker 6: how many times we were on like multi day missions
Speaker 6: and I stayed up, you know, like you know, I'm fine. Well,
Speaker 6: I fell asleep and went into the median at seventy
Speaker 6: some miles per hour and spun out several times and
Speaker 6: almost hit oncoming like semis at the last second, like
Speaker 6: it swerved me back this way, and it was like
Speaker 6: the only strip if you've been in Arkansas on the highway,
Speaker 6: it's like mostly trees and boulders and stuff. It's like
Speaker 6: the one grass patch that I like, luckily like survive.
Speaker 6: And even the tires were still on the rims. So
Speaker 6: I just kept driving. I'm passing people calling nine one one,
Speaker 6: you know, they're like, what this dude's passing me? He
Speaker 6: just crashed. And I got a bunch of energy drinks
Speaker 6: at a gas station and finally make it to Amarillo, Texas,
Speaker 6: where I had a hotel and stuff I wanted to
Speaker 6: eat at the Big Texan.
Speaker 5: So I go to the Big Textan.
Speaker 6: I'm famished, and I'm like, I just survived another near
Speaker 6: death experience, right, so I'm going to get the most
Speaker 6: expensive thing on the menu.
Speaker 5: And it was like a ninety dollars.
Speaker 6: Humongous flame and yon, like a thirty two ounce flame
Speaker 6: and yon like biggest thing ever. And the Big Texan
Speaker 6: had that seventy eight ounce steak or whatever, and if
Speaker 6: you ate all of it, you would get it for free,
Speaker 6: you know, and you get your name on the wall.
Speaker 6: It was like on all the seat you know, food
Speaker 6: documentaries back in the day. So I'm there and I
Speaker 6: get the most basic that you get this, you know
Speaker 6: boot of coke, and you get all these sides and
Speaker 6: I'm just chowing down and they have this band that
Speaker 6: comes around and they play music and they ask you
Speaker 6: know what you where are you coming from? All that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff, and I told them. So after I
Speaker 6: finish it, I'm like trying to wave down the waitress.
Speaker 6: I'm like, you know, hey, I really want to go
Speaker 6: get some sleep real quick because I got half of
Speaker 6: the drive left. And she goes, oh, it's been taken
Speaker 6: care of. And I went that that was the most
Speaker 6: expensive thing like on the menu, Like who was it?
Speaker 6: Like I want to thank them? She goes, no, no,
Speaker 6: he doesn't want to be thanked, like, you know, just
Speaker 6: he he took care of it, you're good. And I
Speaker 6: was like, listen, I have to know who did it.
Speaker 6: She's like it's the guy right over there. So I
Speaker 6: go over to him and I say, sir, thank you
Speaker 6: so much for the meal, like this was so nice,
Speaker 6: Like you know, why did you do it?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 6: And he's like, well, I heard you talking to the
Speaker 6: band that you were wounded in Iraq and on your
Speaker 6: way home. I was in the eighty second Airborne and
Speaker 6: Alerts Unit in Vietnam. I was like, I was, I'm
Speaker 6: eighty second in ARISTA unit, you know, in Iraq. So
Speaker 6: we got to talking and he gives me his card,
Speaker 6: and he's the sheriff of Amarillo, and he said, if
Speaker 6: you ever need a job, son, here's my card. You
Speaker 6: could be a deputy in Amarillo. And I never been
Speaker 6: back to Amarillo, unfortunately, but yeah, so it made it
Speaker 6: made it home medically retired, the ripe age of twenty
Speaker 6: be where I could legally buy a beer with all that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then yeah, and the transition started.
Speaker 4: And they they med boarded you at I think you
Speaker 4: said that they gave you thirty percent disability for all
Speaker 4: that shit that you had going on, which is like
Speaker 4: what p X privileges.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so at the time, I don't
Speaker 6: so being medically retired, I always had the base access
Speaker 6: and any any type of thing that you would get
Speaker 6: as a retired member, I would have got I still
Speaker 6: get right, So I had all that, but my yeah,
Speaker 6: my rating was thirty percent.
Speaker 5: So then the VA comes and they assumed that thirty percent. Well,
Speaker 5: I had no idea.
Speaker 6: That you could add more and back back in two
Speaker 6: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, I mean it
Speaker 6: was not like today. Like today, you know, like people
Speaker 6: are getting out you know that spent all their time
Speaker 6: on a on a boat and never saw combat and
Speaker 6: they're leaving with one hundred percent. So it's it's way way,
Speaker 6: way different. But and I just had no idea. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm young, and I'm kind of like putting the military
Speaker 6: kind of like posing that chat and hey, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: move on and and uh yeah, and so yeah, thirty percent,
Speaker 6: I think mostly for like scars and like maybe headaches
Speaker 6: or something like you know, my back generated like almost nothing.
Speaker 6: I didn't have any PTSD or anxiety, nothing on there,
Speaker 6: you know, at all. And it took a long time.
Speaker 6: It actually took me kind of almost hitting like rock bottom.
Speaker 6: So I remember I told you I saved that that
Speaker 6: signing bonus. And the entire time I'm in Iraq, I'm
Speaker 6: like getting jump pay and hazardous duty pay, and I'm
Speaker 6: like investing everything and before the crash, investments are doing
Speaker 6: pretty well and I'm making you know, a nice little
Speaker 6: goose egg and I'm gonna go or nest egg.
Speaker 5: I think it's a goose egg. I'm gonna go by.
Speaker 6: Like I'm in the hospital and I'm like, mom, Dad,
Speaker 6: there's this awesome like f one fifty, Like I can
Speaker 6: custom you know, build this thing, and I'm gonna pay
Speaker 6: cash for it. And they're like you idiot, Like that's
Speaker 6: gonna be worth nothing in a few years, like you know,
Speaker 6: save your money and like, you know, buy a house
Speaker 6: when you get back. And I'm like, houses are so expensive,
Speaker 6: especially in California, you know, and everything, Well, the crash
Speaker 6: happens while I'm in the hospital, and housing became a
Speaker 6: little more affordable, and so yeah, I was able to
Speaker 6: get a house while I'm in the hospital. So I
Speaker 6: had a house to come back to. My sister and
Speaker 6: parents had gone in on it as well, and so yeah,
Speaker 6: so I got this house to go back to. Yeah,
Speaker 6: thanks to that signing bonus. I guess that helped. Oh,
Speaker 6: In the TSGLI, the TSGLI was the Traumatic Service Members
Speaker 6: Life insurance policy, so that helped too. So I had
Speaker 6: all these things going for me, and I'm kind of
Speaker 6: this like small town hero, right, everybody knows me. Everybody's
Speaker 6: coming up to me when I go to the grocery store,
Speaker 6: so they see me on the news. And I was wounded,
Speaker 6: and you know, some people thought I died, you know,
Speaker 6: and all this stuff, and so I'm getting all this
Speaker 6: fanfare and everything, but things are kind of getting worse
Speaker 6: and worse mentally, you know, and nightmares, not sleeping.
Speaker 5: All the all the stuff. And then.
Speaker 6: I get to a place where, oh so my thought
Speaker 6: was I was going to go into law enforcement, go
Speaker 6: into SWAT or something, but I'm also developing this crones
Speaker 6: disease that I don't know about, right, And I almost died.
Speaker 6: I didn't say this, but almost died of MERSA after
Speaker 6: my wounds landing in that trash field, like I was
Speaker 6: in the ICU for a while before my parents could
Speaker 6: even see me when I got back trying to beat MRSA.
Speaker 6: So maybe from that in the antidox and everything whatever,
Speaker 6: even combat stress, you know, can trigger Crone's disease, this
Speaker 6: Crone disease trying to kill me. And I cannot go
Speaker 6: through another you know boot camp, you know cop uh whatever,
Speaker 6: it's called the cop boot camp, police boot camp. Put yeah, OK,
Speaker 6: police academy. There you go please get me. So like
Speaker 6: it's it ends up like it's not gonna work out,
Speaker 6: and I don't know what to do with my life,
Speaker 6: like I have no I would thought I was gonna
Speaker 6: be in the army for a long time, you know.
Speaker 6: And and so I think my grandma saw this article
Speaker 6: in a newspaper and said, hey, like she knew I
Speaker 6: was unemployed. I'm like super depressed, like have no direction.
Speaker 6: And she tells my wife like, hey, you should take
Speaker 6: lance to this.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: It was this VA all hands meeting type thing, learn
Speaker 6: about benefits, job opportunities, all that kind of stuff, right,
Speaker 6: And my wife's like, hey, we should go to this,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, absolutely not. It's just gonna be a
Speaker 6: bunch of Vietnam vets who are pissed off at the VA.
Speaker 5: I don't want anything to do with that, you know,
Speaker 5: YadA YadA. So I end up going.
Speaker 6: She takes me there, and we're sitting in this auditorium
Speaker 6: at a junior college, and sure enough, it's a bunch
Speaker 6: of Vietnam vets who are pissed off yelling at you know,
Speaker 6: apa guys, and I literally my wife is grabbed my hand.
Speaker 5: She's like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. You were right.
Speaker 5: You were right. And it's not even the VA.
Speaker 6: It's the California Department of Veteran Affairs, by the way,
Speaker 6: and so they're yelling at the wrong people. But my
Speaker 6: wife cresinans because we can leave. So I stand up
Speaker 6: and at the time Roger brought again. He was the
Speaker 6: secretary of the VA or sorry, the CALVET, the California
Speaker 6: Department of VA. He goes, hey, young man, he's speaking.
Speaker 6: He's like, young man, please stay there, please sit back down.
Speaker 6: I'm almost done. I came here for you. And I
Speaker 6: was like, oh, shoot, so I sit down. Make it through,
Speaker 6: you know. I mean they're literally yelling about like you know,
Speaker 6: impotence and you know, all kinds of weird stuff like
Speaker 6: it was.
Speaker 5: It was bad news.
Speaker 6: So when it finishes, he comes up to me and
Speaker 6: the first thing he does is he hands me gift
Speaker 6: cards to In and Out when they had those like
Speaker 6: in and Out Bucks. So he's already I'm already gonna
Speaker 6: listen to you now, right, And he's like, hey, there's
Speaker 6: this new program in California called Operation Welcome Home.
Speaker 5: I want you to go through it.
Speaker 6: I want you to meet this representative gonna get you
Speaker 6: all squared away. So he ends up like getting me
Speaker 6: this Army Emergency relief thing to help me like pay
Speaker 6: the mortgage we were.
Speaker 5: About to you know, not pay.
Speaker 6: He helps me get a job as a contractor. So
Speaker 6: I end up working for SRI doing Sanford Research Institute. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so the Stanford Researchers had this, had this branch of
Speaker 6: contractors Conus and Oconis that would train and put on
Speaker 6: xctcs and exercises all over the country getting units deployable.
Speaker 5: So and it paid amazing.
Speaker 6: Like I'd be gone for like four to six weeks,
Speaker 6: but the pay was incredible, and I'd go out and
Speaker 6: I'd help put on these huge exercises or I'd or
Speaker 6: I'd go and I'd hide and I'd blow up you know,
Speaker 6: humpies with sim I D's. It was amazing. So they
Speaker 6: get me plugged in doing that. Oh and at the
Speaker 6: time they hit my GI bill had been denied. The
Speaker 6: VIA said, hey, you didn't complete your full term, asy
Speaker 6: you don't get your GI bill. I just took that
Speaker 6: as gospel. Well, then he goes through the whole thing
Speaker 6: and he's like in the line of duty combat wound
Speaker 6: and sends it off, I get my GI bill. So
Speaker 6: during the school year, I start going to school using
Speaker 6: my GI bill. During the summer, I'm contracting, you know,
Speaker 6: working as a as a civilian, getting our you know,
Speaker 6: men and women deployable. One time I got to work
Speaker 6: with Arista Unit, which was super cool because they're like
Speaker 6: taking helicopters everywhere and I'm loading them on birds and
Speaker 6: I'm you know, it was it was legit to kind
Speaker 6: of have.
Speaker 5: That experience again.
Speaker 6: So one day I'm driving down the road and I
Speaker 6: get a call from someone who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger, right,
Speaker 6: he's the governor at the time, and.
Speaker 5: I'm like, now, who is this?
Speaker 6: Come on, like, you know, and I pull over because
Speaker 6: you know, back then you had to like hold the
Speaker 6: cell phone up and everything. And and then his his
Speaker 6: chief of staff guy comes on. He's like, Hey, this
Speaker 6: is David. I'm with the with the governor. That was
Speaker 6: Governor Schwarzenegger. We'd love to invite you down to San
Speaker 6: Diego for you to give a speech, you know, about
Speaker 6: your experiences with Operation Welcome Home and how it's helped you.
Speaker 6: And I'm like, whoa, Okay, So I ended up doing
Speaker 6: this big old speech down in San Diego about how
Speaker 6: Operation Welcome Home helped me. I didn't realize I was
Speaker 6: the first freaking veteran through Operation Welcome Home. I thought
Speaker 6: it was this robust thing. It'd just been set up
Speaker 6: by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I meet Governor Schwarzenegger. He the first
Speaker 6: time I met him was in a live or not alive,
Speaker 6: but they were interviewing for Nightline, and like they just
Speaker 6: like push me into his like scene as he's walking
Speaker 6: down the aircraft carrier and you know what, Yeah, I
Speaker 6: told you my story. I told you what happened, right,
Speaker 6: So he has to have been brief. The first thing
Speaker 6: he says to me is is he.
Speaker 5: Goes Lad's junker. He's a true American hero. He was
Speaker 5: crushed by a boulder in Iraq.
Speaker 6: And I'm just like, oh, oh no, Like, my guys
Speaker 6: are gonna kill me if they think I told him,
Speaker 6: like a boulder crushed us right like this, This is
Speaker 6: not good and so I'm freaking out. But luckily they
Speaker 6: over dubbed like that whole thing and it was just
Speaker 6: like Governor Schwarzenegger's legacy will be helping veterans, you know whatever.
Speaker 6: Like while he's saying these outlandish things. But I end
Speaker 6: up after I give my speech, he ends up basically
Speaker 6: asking me to be his like poster child for veterans
Speaker 6: and takes me to DC several times and I meet everyone.
Speaker 6: I mean, I got a coin from the President, spoke
Speaker 6: at the White House, the Pentagon, every caucuses. Like, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm like riding this wave of like whoa, I'm this
Speaker 6: like poster child guy, you know, I have like the
Speaker 6: keys to the city of California, was a Veteran of
Speaker 6: the Year of one of the first Veteran of the
Speaker 6: yearth for California.
Speaker 5: So it's like all this good stuff's happening.
Speaker 6: And I remember, I'm in one of these meetings, you know,
Speaker 6: talking about my experiences and stuff, and this guy was
Speaker 6: one of like a staffer for like some major you know,
Speaker 6: some some major congressman I don't know who. I don't
Speaker 6: remember who or what was a governor or something. And
Speaker 6: he comes up to me and he goes like, Hey,
Speaker 6: what makes you different? And I'm like, what do you mean.
Speaker 6: He's like, well, you don't seem to be like struggling
Speaker 6: with anything, Like you're not dealing with like you know,
Speaker 6: like survivor's guilt or any of that stuff, like what
Speaker 6: makes you different.
Speaker 5: I remember thinking like I don't know, like I don't know.
Speaker 6: And I swear from that moment on, like everything hit
Speaker 6: the fan as far as like the THESD and like
Speaker 6: like yeah, just all like things were getting bad too.
Speaker 6: Working in that space where just getting taken advantage of,
Speaker 6: like you're the token veteran, not not by Governor Schortznigger.
Speaker 6: He was amazing. That whole staff was amazing. But other
Speaker 6: congressmen and women would be like, oh, I'm posing with
Speaker 6: the veteran.
Speaker 5: I'm helping veterans.
Speaker 6: And and this one, this one congressman from down here
Speaker 6: in San Diego, he's no longer.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna say his name or anything. Thank god
Speaker 5: he got voted out right after this.
Speaker 6: But we're leaving his office and he says, I don't
Speaker 6: care that you brought the veteran.
Speaker 5: I'm just glad you brought his hot wife. Wow.
Speaker 6: I like turn around, like like you know, I'm a
Speaker 6: stunned and the door shuts, you know, and we're like
Speaker 6: off running late to the next meeting. We got to
Speaker 6: go to the next meeting, and I just as I'm
Speaker 6: walking back, I'm like, that.
Speaker 5: Couldn't have just happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I remember going like I almost just lost
Speaker 6: my poster boy status, Like I just about decked a
Speaker 6: congressman and I would have lost that poster boy status.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 6: So yeah, as that wave was kind of ending and
Speaker 6: I'm getting my political political science degree, a lot of
Speaker 6: that Crohn's disease is like trying to kill me, and
Speaker 6: PTSD is just getting super super bad.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and luckily, you.
Speaker 6: Know, I have just an amazing wife who'd never let me,
Speaker 6: you know, get too far without dragging me to something.
Speaker 6: Because that first thing really helped. And then I had
Speaker 6: an amazing counselor at the VET centers for a really
Speaker 6: really long time that helped a lot too. And it
Speaker 6: probably wasn't until so some things helped with like the
Speaker 6: flashbacks and the nightmares.
Speaker 5: Was neurofeedback therapy.
Speaker 6: I kinda was one of the first veterans through this
Speaker 6: program that did all this neuro feedback, and they thought
Speaker 6: like they could fix me in twenty sessions or like
Speaker 6: we'll give you twenty free sessions.
Speaker 5: I mean nothing, I don't think.
Speaker 6: Anything happened, and they're like they just kept doing it,
Speaker 6: and probably like seventy some sessions into this, I was
Speaker 6: like I slept through the night.
Speaker 5: I didn't have a nightmare, like and my.
Speaker 6: Flashback because I was having flashback like legit like see, smell,
Speaker 6: hear feel an explosion or a sniper shooting at me
Speaker 6: or something.
Speaker 5: Gnarly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so that as that started going away and
Speaker 6: you start sleeping. Sleeping is so important to healing all that.
Speaker 6: So you know, that's one of the biggest things sleep
Speaker 6: is you got to sleep, and you gotta sleep deep.
Speaker 6: You got to get into those core deep and rim
Speaker 6: cycles and you got to start, you know, rebuilding all
Speaker 6: that from that trauma. Yeah, and then yeah, counseling really helped.
Speaker 6: And then it probably wasn't until my daughter was born
Speaker 6: six years ago. And when she was born, I remember
Speaker 6: having a panic attack while she was crying and like
Speaker 6: in her room like screaming or something as a baby,
Speaker 6: and I remember like, I can't, I can't do this
Speaker 6: right now, Like I'm having a full blown panic attack,
Speaker 6: and I'm like I have to get her.
Speaker 5: I have to take care of her, like she's my daughter.
Speaker 6: And I remember almost being able to like force the
Speaker 6: panic attack like it left and I was just like WHOA.
Speaker 6: And then I started learning more about our nervous system
Speaker 6: and about PTSD, and really you're just searching everything the
Speaker 6: sleep side of things, meditation, brain waves, the chemical side
Speaker 6: of your brain, trying to get those neurochemicals set up.
Speaker 6: So when I got the like the brain waves better.
Speaker 6: And then there was another group called the Angel Warrior
Speaker 6: Foundation that doctor Gordon, he's been on Joe Rogan podcasts
Speaker 6: a lot, he's I went through that program, got kind
Speaker 6: of the chemical side of things better, the neural hormones
Speaker 6: and everything. You get those better, and now everything's kind
Speaker 6: of working symbiotically healing. And then you know, I had
Speaker 6: tried meditation a bunch va settings that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: never thought it was helpful at all, didn't even understand it.
Speaker 5: But then I tried it on the Calm app.
Speaker 6: Especially there's this Jeff guy on there who does the
Speaker 6: Daily Trip and he has this one like Meditation for
Speaker 6: Beginners or whatever, and I did this thirty day course
Speaker 6: and I remember like, at first I was just using
Speaker 6: the app when I was having an anxiety attack or
Speaker 6: like a panic attack or something, and I was using
Speaker 6: it very symptomatically, like it was a reaction.
Speaker 5: I'd use it. I could calm myself down.
Speaker 6: And then as I started going through these different programs
Speaker 6: in there and realizing like, Okay, if my body in
Speaker 6: my mind, if I can like get my heart rate
Speaker 6: so jacked up and I can have these panic attacks,
Speaker 6: if I have that kind of power here, well, then
Speaker 6: I also have that kind of power here to kind of.
Speaker 5: Like start to like regular things. Right.
Speaker 6: So it took a really long time, but I had
Speaker 6: a goal to do to meditate every day for a year,
Speaker 6: and I did that and that was super super helpful,
Speaker 6: and I started getting like ahead of the panic attacks.
Speaker 6: I started getting ahead of the anxiety. I started building
Speaker 6: up like you know, the resilience to it. Yeah, resilience
Speaker 6: to it, right, So that was really huge. And another
Speaker 6: group that was super beneficial to me was Operations Surf.
Speaker 6: They take you for like a week long surf camp
Speaker 6: type thing. Incredible. Everybody should go through that if they can.
Speaker 5: That.
Speaker 6: That was incredible too, and that really pieced together that
Speaker 6: the meditation side too, because when you're on a wave,
Speaker 6: especially a big one, if you're doing anything where you
Speaker 6: have to be in the present moment, you can't be
Speaker 6: thinking about the future. You can't be worried and you
Speaker 6: know about the past, right you have you're on that wave.
Speaker 6: You're gonna get crushed if you're not same with you know,
Speaker 6: riding horses, whatever it is. You know, if you're in
Speaker 6: that present moment, those are hard.
Speaker 4: Those are interesting things that like I I was talking
Speaker 4: to somebody about this earlier or last week actually about
Speaker 4: high performance driving. Yeah, it puts you in this moment
Speaker 4: you have to focus on this thing. For me, you know,
Speaker 4: I've gotten really in the past into painting scale miniatures.
Speaker 6: Oh there, you're super focused.
Speaker 4: On this one thing, and that that does sort of
Speaker 4: like relieve some of the and the anxiety right.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent. And what it is, that's a flow state.
Speaker 6: Okay, So being in that pert and you can get
Speaker 6: in a flow state with meditation, you get a flow
Speaker 6: state with sports, you can get now when you and
Speaker 6: I were doing raids and stuff, you're in like a
Speaker 6: team flow state. You're you're at the pinnacle of a
Speaker 6: flow state. Combat is is the drug when it comes
Speaker 6: to being in a flow state, right, because if you
Speaker 6: mess up, you're dead or your guys die. And so
Speaker 6: luckily doing things like surfing and riding horses stuff like that.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's still danger involved, but it's not it's
Speaker 6: not you know, at that level of combat at least.
Speaker 6: But I think, you know, that addiction that everybody talks
Speaker 6: about with war really is those neurochemicals that flood you
Speaker 6: no epinephrin, endorphins, all that stuff that gets rushed when
Speaker 6: we're in combat. We're it's really hard to get more
Speaker 6: of that, you know, and usually we try to find
Speaker 6: pretty damaging ways to you know, fill that need. So yeah,
Speaker 6: so now now that I've kind of come you know,
Speaker 6: all this way, I actually full circle work for the
Speaker 6: California Department of Veteran Affairs as like the San Diego
Speaker 6: rep the local interag Network coordinator. So my whole job
Speaker 6: is trying to get veterans plugged into benefits and benefits
Speaker 6: to veterans, plugging organizations together that help veterans, all that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff. So it's really awesome to be so
Speaker 6: involved in that space. I go to all eight military
Speaker 6: installations here in San Diego and do like a California
Speaker 6: specific TAPS class and help in that transition space, trying
Speaker 6: to teach people like, hey, you know, don't do what
Speaker 6: I did. You know, like if you think something's wrong,
Speaker 6: like bring it up to the VA and it's all changed.
Speaker 5: You know, it's a lot better and streamline now and stuff.
Speaker 6: But it's from all of us old guys that had
Speaker 6: the you know, trailblaze and path find our way through
Speaker 6: the VA at the early stages. But yeah, so I love,
Speaker 6: I love, you know, the job I have. And then
Speaker 6: the biggest thing that I've that I've gotten into the
Speaker 6: last few years, here has been an organization called Saddles
Speaker 6: and Service and it is a you know, we you've
Speaker 6: probably heard of the like equine therapy, right, so it
Speaker 6: is not necessarily it's really not like a you're not
Speaker 6: going there and getting therapy, right, And it's it's an
Speaker 6: organization that was started by veterans and and a and
Speaker 6: a spouse of a veteran who was dealing with all
Speaker 6: this kinds of stuff and really just found healing and
Speaker 6: hope through horsemanship and then decided, you know, hey, let's
Speaker 6: try to bring this to as many veterans as we can.
Speaker 6: And for me, when I was growing up in San
Speaker 6: Luis Obispo, my my grandfather, the pop strong he lived
Speaker 6: in San Yanez, still does and he was a cattle rancher,
Speaker 6: and so after he he was actually an LA City fireman,
Speaker 6: and when he retired, he became a cattle rancher. So
Speaker 6: he had been doing cattle ranching for quite a while
Speaker 6: before I was born. And when I was born, since
Speaker 6: the day I could walk, you know, had cowboy boots
Speaker 6: and cowboy hat and was out there as much as
Speaker 6: I could helping my grandpa and learning that kind of
Speaker 6: way of life. And then when he retired, I was
Speaker 6: probably like I don't know, eight or ten or something,
Speaker 6: and you know, you kind of grow You have to
Speaker 6: grow out of like that wanting to be a cowboy,
Speaker 6: you know, phase of your life, right, And I never
Speaker 6: thought that that I would ever have that opportunity or.
Speaker 5: Get to do those kinds of things again or anything.
Speaker 6: And when I saw Saddles in service, I was actually
Speaker 6: doing physical therapy. So the Crohn's disease after it, you know,
Speaker 6: decimated my digestive track and we finally got some medicine
Speaker 6: and that was helping to stop that. It went around
Speaker 6: that and started attacking my SI joints and my hips
Speaker 6: and everything, and I could barely walk.
Speaker 5: I could, it was so much pain all the time.
Speaker 6: And I'm doing physical therapy and my physical therapist owned
Speaker 6: a horse ranch and she said, Hey, I've got this guy,
Speaker 6: this marine who he's kind of struggling, and I've been
Speaker 6: inviting him out to my horse ranch and he seems
Speaker 6: to open up when he's out there around the horses,
Speaker 6: like would you come and talk to him about benefits
Speaker 6: and stuff?
Speaker 5: I know what you do for a living and all that.
Speaker 6: So I go out there and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 6: would want to keep coming back like I want to,
Speaker 6: I will kind of. I love this horse thing and
Speaker 6: this might be a way to get back in there.
Speaker 6: And then one day she's like, Hey, there's this really
Speaker 6: awesome group called Saddles and Service. I'm doing a fundraiser
Speaker 6: for them for Veterans Day or whatever. And so I
Speaker 6: see this this satulesand Service, and I research and everything
Speaker 6: and it's like the seven phase program for veterans and
Speaker 6: first for spondors, and it takes you these seven phases
Speaker 6: where the first you know, you're learning like the physiology
Speaker 6: and psychology of horses, the predator prey relationship, all this
Speaker 6: stuff all about the horses. Then you're like learning how
Speaker 6: to groom them, learning how to lead them walk them,
Speaker 6: you know, all that kind of stuff, all the groundwork stuff,
Speaker 6: and then you learn how to ride and you learn
Speaker 6: the different phases of that, and then you end up
Speaker 6: doing like advanced cowboy skills and all that. Start ending
Speaker 6: up working cattle, doing all the Yellowstone stuff. And then
Speaker 6: the final thing is they send you to Yellowstone or
Speaker 6: another work or sorry Wyoming or another working ranch and
Speaker 6: you do a week long you know, full blown cowboy
Speaker 6: you cattle drives the whole bit, brandings, all that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff. And so when I saw it, I was like,
Speaker 6: oh my gosh, like that's my little kid cowboy dream
Speaker 6: like come true again, Like I gotta do this. But
Speaker 6: I'm also like can't walk. So they found this other
Speaker 6: drug they can give me. It's like an injection. And
Speaker 6: and the day that I got that approved and I
Speaker 6: took my first injection, I signed up and I got
Speaker 6: my other buddy that marine to sign up, and we
Speaker 6: signed up and we you know, went through the program.
Speaker 6: And now he's a ranch manager at one of the
Speaker 6: ranches that was donated to them, the Circle t And
Speaker 6: then and now I'm you know, I work a lot
Speaker 6: of the baby colts that they have. They got eight
Speaker 6: or seven colts that were what I didn't think of
Speaker 6: that that I lost seven guys in Iraq and we
Speaker 6: got donated seven colts that were going to slaughter and
Speaker 6: they were rescued and we took them and we've been
Speaker 6: training them up, doing a whole cult starting program. Shoot, dude,
Speaker 6: I've never made that connection seven and seven. That's incredible.
Speaker 6: But I've been working with these babies and learning myself,
Speaker 6: you know, how to train them from the earliest stages
Speaker 6: all the way up to riding them and everything. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it's been an incredible life changing, you know, opportunity.
Speaker 5: For me.
Speaker 6: It's felt like coming home, you know, like back to
Speaker 6: when my grandpa and I'd go out to the ranch.
Speaker 6: And now, yeah, it's kind of like all I think
Speaker 6: about is getting out to the ranch and working horses
Speaker 6: and cattle and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you about the next chapter, but
Speaker 4: real quick, I'm going to pitch to the audience. If
Speaker 4: you haven't already, please sign up for our Patreon. Five
Speaker 4: dollars a month gets you access to all of these
Speaker 4: Team House episodes as well as eyes on ad free.
Speaker 4: You can ask questions to our guests, all that good stuff.
Speaker 4: If you sign up at ten dollars a month, we
Speaker 4: will send you a team house patch.
Speaker 5: These are pretty cool.
Speaker 4: We just got these in recently, so really appreciate it, folks,
Speaker 4: and thank you for supporting the podcast. And so Lance
Speaker 4: tell us a little bit about getting into screenplay writing.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, so we'll go there. So this is a
Speaker 6: super random thing that just happened to me with So
Speaker 6: your producer D has a good friend named George, and
Speaker 6: George has been a producer writer for quite a while.
Speaker 5: Movies. I can't go into.
Speaker 6: His whole background because I can't remember at all, but
Speaker 6: you know, one of those producer rider guys, and somehow
Speaker 6: he got connected with sausand Service and the ranch. And
Speaker 6: actually in August I had another real bad Crohn's flare
Speaker 6: and couldn't go to the ranch for quite a while.
Speaker 6: And then as I started getting better, she was like,
Speaker 6: you know, hey, you need to come out. We're having
Speaker 6: this rider producer guy come out. You need to come
Speaker 6: out again. And I had started coming back out working
Speaker 6: the babies and everything. She's like, make sure you're there tomorrow.
Speaker 6: This guy's coming out. I want you to share your story.
Speaker 6: So he came out and George lost his cousin, I
Speaker 6: think her nephew to suicide. He's a veteran, he was
Speaker 6: a marine, and it's been really you know, pressed on
Speaker 6: his heart to do something in that space, right, And
Speaker 6: the whole goal of Sattles and Service is to help
Speaker 6: in that reduction of veteran and first respond to suicide.
Speaker 6: And so so I share my story and then I
Speaker 6: have over the years been kind of doing some writing
Speaker 6: here and there of just you know, you know, random
Speaker 6: kind of veteran related kind of like like a novel,
Speaker 6: but you know, just super piecemeal stuff.
Speaker 5: And then my.
Speaker 6: Story and that you've heard and all that, and so
Speaker 6: sharing that with him, he was like, hey, like, you know,
Speaker 6: the goal here is to like make a short film,
Speaker 6: like a fictional short film that encompasses like a lot
Speaker 6: of the stories, because there's they've helped over a thousand
Speaker 6: veterans that this ranch, and so taking a lot of
Speaker 6: these stories, putting it into like one character, right, so
Speaker 6: it's kind of manageable and making a fiction, you know,
Speaker 6: movie story about a veteran who is you know, helped
Speaker 6: by horsemanship, natural horsemanship and all that. So it just
Speaker 6: kind of organically happened where I would kind of send
Speaker 6: him some stuff and and he, you know, would would
Speaker 6: give me feedback and find it was like, dude, you're
Speaker 6: going to join the riding team.
Speaker 5: You're going to be a part of this.
Speaker 6: You're gonna help make this, you know, kind of as
Speaker 6: believable and as honest and authentic as possible, because this
Speaker 6: happens all the time right where people you know, want
Speaker 6: to honor the veteran community and military and service and stuff,
Speaker 6: but it just comes off super cheesy hallmark, especially when
Speaker 6: it has to do with horses and stuff. So the
Speaker 6: whole goal is to try and do something that does
Speaker 6: justice to all of our stories and what we do
Speaker 6: there at the ranch. And I'm just there to help
Speaker 6: help out as much as possible. And you can learn
Speaker 6: more about it at do the thingmovies dot com. It's
Speaker 6: going to be called at Liberty, so uh, you know,
Speaker 6: slash at Liberty you can find it.
Speaker 5: Maybe do you can put that link? Yeah, it'll be
Speaker 5: down the description.
Speaker 6: Cool, so that's people can learn more about that. Saddles
Speaker 6: and Service dot org. They can you know, you know,
Speaker 6: go there as well. Yeah, just amazing stuff. So I'm
Speaker 6: really excited about it. So quick little thing when I
Speaker 6: was five years old. You know, I was a real cowboy, right,
Speaker 6: help my grandpa out at the ranch and everything. Somehow,
Speaker 6: the Bank of America is doing this huge marketing thing
Speaker 6: where they're doing billboards all over the country with like,
Speaker 6: you know, real cowboys and real you know, workers and
Speaker 6: stuff like kids. And so I was chosen because I
Speaker 6: was a real cowboy kid, and I was all over
Speaker 6: the country on billboards, right cowboy hat. Like my fifteen
Speaker 6: minutes of fame made like a one hundred dollars an
Speaker 6: hour doing this photo shoot back in you know, like
Speaker 6: early nineties, which which is still the most money I
Speaker 6: think I've ever made per hour, especially if you count inflation.
Speaker 6: Think in the military, I made like twenty three cents
Speaker 6: an hour in Iraq.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: So when that was done, this producer or whatever wanted
Speaker 6: me to play this cowboy kid in a movie. I
Speaker 6: was gonna be shot on the set of Doctor Quinn
Speaker 6: Medicine Woman, and I really thought I was gonna be like,
Speaker 6: you know, the next you know.
Speaker 5: Kid cowboy actor. Well it ended up like falling through.
Speaker 6: But since I was five years old, like all I've
Speaker 6: ever wanted to do is being like, you know, a
Speaker 6: cowboy movie, and so now he's like, Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 6: get your shot. We're gonna make this movie and you're
Speaker 6: gonna you're gonna help write it, but you're also gonna
Speaker 6: be in it. So I'm really looking forward to finally
Speaker 6: getting to do that as Wellded.
Speaker 4: Do we have any questions from Lance? Sorry, we'll pull
Speaker 4: it up here.
Speaker 5: No worries littering and littering And one question from m corman.
Speaker 5: Is his friend's last name really Grendel.
Speaker 6: Brendel B with a B B R Brendel. Yeah. We
Speaker 6: didn't hardly any of us went by real names when
Speaker 6: we were over there either, right, he had a pretty
Speaker 6: funny nickname.
Speaker 5: I won't say it on here.
Speaker 6: Yeah they Yeah, we all had nicknames, but yeah, Brendel.
Speaker 4: So, Lance, anything else you want to tell people about
Speaker 4: before we get going tonight? Anywhere you want to direct
Speaker 4: the audience too, to go take a look? I mean
Speaker 4: I will have a U R L down the description
Speaker 4: for folks. But is there anything else you want them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a There's a couple of things I think
Speaker 5: you know. One is.
Speaker 6: Everybody's journey is different, right. The most important thing I
Speaker 6: think is not not giving up is always trying to
Speaker 6: find that thing that's gonna get you out of bed
Speaker 6: in the morning. It might not be horses for you.
Speaker 6: It might not be surfing, but it might be archery.
Speaker 6: It might be you know, painting the little things like
Speaker 6: you were talking about. It could be there's so many
Speaker 6: there's the world is a humongous there's so many things
Speaker 6: that you can do. I hate it when veterans think
Speaker 6: even you know, sharing my worst stories and stuff.
Speaker 5: It doesn't like, I don't know, doesn't make me.
Speaker 6: I'm not super jazz on that more jazz on like
Speaker 6: this part, like, don't let those stories be the best.
Speaker 5: Thing you ever did in your life. Like, let that
Speaker 5: be like one chapter.
Speaker 6: You know, you've written a book and I read it
Speaker 6: and it's like there's there's chapters of your life. There's
Speaker 6: things that you're doing. You're not stopping right, It's it.
Speaker 6: It could be one of the best things you did
Speaker 6: in your life, but it shouldn't be the and only
Speaker 6: best thing you did in your life.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: For me as like my I'm not really trying to
Speaker 6: be anybody and I don't have social media really or
Speaker 6: anything like that. Since having kids, like my focus has
Speaker 6: been pretty much solely on I want to be like
Speaker 6: the best father, and I want to be the best husband,
Speaker 6: and and really you know, really putting everything into that
Speaker 6: and being a good dad is not is not doing
Speaker 6: this you know all day, you know, with your kids
Speaker 6: next to you and stuff. So I just want other veterans,
Speaker 6: you know, for me, I try like meditation and different things,
Speaker 6: even different like medical things I tried several times and
Speaker 6: and would think they didn't work right. And I always
Speaker 6: encourage people like try it, like at least three different times,
Speaker 6: even like waiting a while and trying it again. Try
Speaker 6: try that thing three different times with three different providers
Speaker 6: or three different groups or whatever.
Speaker 5: And to make before you know, you write off, you
Speaker 5: write that off or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: And some veterans that you know, it might be a
Speaker 5: service animal is really you know, all they need.
Speaker 6: It might be you know, might not even be like
Speaker 6: a veteran group, you know, might be a completely separate thing,
Speaker 6: you know, getting involved in journalism, you know, something super
Speaker 6: you know different, But uh yeah, anybody that's you know, struggling,
Speaker 6: it's I think it's easy to look at the news
Speaker 6: and your phone and social media and just get so
Speaker 6: bogged down with all the negativity and all the you know,
Speaker 6: bull crap and think it's so important if the political theater.
Speaker 6: You know that happens constantly in this country. You know,
Speaker 6: it's like if you were to, like literally I turned
Speaker 6: the news app off on my phone, you know, no
Speaker 6: social media, and it's like my six foot world, this house.
Speaker 6: Everything's great in this house, and I have control over it.
Speaker 6: I don't have control over anything out there. I didn't
Speaker 6: have control in the military. I don't have control in war.
Speaker 6: But the things I can control is what you need
Speaker 6: to put your put your focus in and all your
Speaker 6: time and energy into getting mad about every single thing
Speaker 6: and all that stuff that you can't control. You know, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think it's pretty useless. With that said, you should
Speaker 6: still do things like you know, your last episode is
Speaker 6: about Chapman and everything going on with him, right, so
Speaker 6: by all means, absolutely sign that petition like I did
Speaker 6: that David, you know started. You know, there's not a
Speaker 6: guy that I served with that would be in that
Speaker 6: situation where you know, two people would have gotten an
Speaker 6: award and the dude that's alive would take the exhibit
Speaker 6: that got Everyone I served with would be like absolutely
Speaker 6: not like don't even include me in the museum, the
Speaker 6: guy that died, you know, And and and I don't
Speaker 6: know a single person that would do that, So sign
Speaker 6: that petition, you know. And we all got, all of
Speaker 6: us veterans, you know, we all have to please ourselves
Speaker 6: and our own and and and you know, look out
Speaker 6: for things like that and try and make a difference.
Speaker 6: And I don't mean, you know, don't do those kind
Speaker 6: of things or have your head so far in the
Speaker 6: sand that you don't know what's going on. But the
Speaker 6: more of the negativity that you can get out of
Speaker 6: your life and focus on the things that you can control,
Speaker 6: the happier the happier going to be in there.
Speaker 5: Your recovery is going to be better too, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, Lance, thank you for sharing your experiences with
Speaker 4: us tonight.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: I mean it's a wild ride. I mean, yeah, ups
Speaker 4: and downs, but I mean a good good overall. I
Speaker 4: mean some really good things too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: People always ask me like, hey, would you do it,
Speaker 6: you know over again? You know, And if I had
Speaker 6: to do the same life over again, I don't think
Speaker 6: I'd change a thing because of all the good things
Speaker 6: that have come out of all the bad things. You know,
Speaker 6: and it's one obstacle, you get over the next one,
Speaker 6: and there's another obstacle, and you know it's gonna come,
Speaker 6: but you know, never give up. I think if I
Speaker 6: got to live two lives, I would really love to
Speaker 6: try being a pilot, you know, like a jet jet
Speaker 6: fighter pilot, you know, or whatever. I think that'd be fun.
Speaker 6: But you don't get to live two lives, so I
Speaker 6: wouldn't change it.
Speaker 4: Well, there's still time to get your pilot's license though.
Speaker 4: Well that's true, that's true. Yeah, So thank you again, Lance.
Speaker 4: Watch some links down the description. Go check out the
Speaker 4: projects that he's working on in some of the charity organizations.
Speaker 4: And thank you everyone who joined us tonight.
Speaker 5: We will see you again next either.
Speaker 4: If you're on Patreon, we'll see you on Wednesday Live.
Speaker 4: Otherwise the episode will premiere on Friday, so we'll see
Speaker 4: you guys next time.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 6: Appreciate it absolutely, stay in touch man.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Thanks Atta