Speaker 1: The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David park.
Speaker 2: Hello. This is episode three and seventy two of The
Speaker 2: Team House. I'm Jack here with our guest tonight, who
Speaker 2: is Worth Parker. Worth served in the Marine Corps as
Speaker 2: a force recon and MARSAC officer. He is also the
Speaker 2: author of the book Always Faithful, about the evacuation of
Speaker 2: Allies from Kabol when Afghanistan collapsed, and he also runs
Speaker 2: a few clinics for helping veterans with writing. So we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about all kinds of different stuff here
Speaker 2: today where thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Tonight, Yeah, thank you for having me on and on Jack, And.
Speaker 2: Then I should mention this is your second time on
Speaker 2: the show. The first time was a different topic. It
Speaker 2: was you and Mick and maybe there's one other guy.
Speaker 1: Remember Mick was there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we we did. So that was about the
Speaker 2: Afghanistan evacuation. But now we'll get into this. You can
Speaker 2: start off telling us a little bit about like your
Speaker 2: origin story. You mentioned to me that you were an
Speaker 2: Eagle scout, you come from a marine family.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, I mean it kind of in a happenstance,
Speaker 1: I mean, not like in a bunch of career Marines
Speaker 1: in the family. But yeah, I grew up in North Georgia,
Speaker 1: primarily Athurs, Georgia, and the family has a pretty strong
Speaker 1: service ethos really on both sides of the family. But
Speaker 1: on my mom's side there were there's a senator and
Speaker 1: two state governors, and then a host of Marine soldier, sailors,
Speaker 1: air folk, et cetera. You know, my cousin cousins Buddy
Speaker 1: and Joe were company commanders at Pork Chop Hill in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, and Joe got the Distinguished Service Cross,
Speaker 1: Buddy got the Silver Star. Then Buddy got shot in
Speaker 1: the head in Vietnam right before the lz X ray
Speaker 1: thing with the air cap and how Moore's crowd, So
Speaker 1: you know, I was admired those folks. My dad was
Speaker 1: a Marine officer, just did his three years and got out.
Speaker 1: My grandfather, against the wishes of his own dad was
Speaker 1: a Marine machine gunner, dropped out of college, enlisted and
Speaker 1: ended up getting shot at Sugarloaf Hill in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: came home and then he was a judge, and I
Speaker 1: kind of went on into the law, which is what
Speaker 1: a lot of folks on my mom's side of the
Speaker 1: family did.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that that inspired me.
Speaker 1: That plus having a scout master who was a Special
Speaker 1: Forces NCO and who really spent a fair bit of
Speaker 1: time with me and took me just like the old
Speaker 1: Special Apps Association conventions when they'd have those in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and so I get to go meet all these old cats,
Speaker 1: and I really came to ideolize. And I was a
Speaker 1: you know, was an AMA voracious reader. So you know,
Speaker 1: I had all seventeen books by you know, every LURP
Speaker 1: in one place, Tune from whatever company in the one
Speaker 1: hundred and first and the point from the point Man
Speaker 1: to the rto and read all those kind of books
Speaker 1: growing up. So anyway, went off to college and then
Speaker 1: commissioned in ninety four and that was that more or less.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was some circuitous routes taken, but that's
Speaker 1: how it got started.
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Speaker 2: and tell us about then coming into the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: as a second lieutenant. This is like nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: Yes, I commissioned in ninety four, and I'm pretty confident
Speaker 1: I was the youngest second lieutenant in the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: at the time, and I was I know, I was
Speaker 1: the youngest Marine and Marine Forces specific, or the youngest
Speaker 1: officer in Marine Force specific when I got there. But
Speaker 1: you know, I was a baby. I was a straight
Speaker 1: up mama's boy, and I had a lot to learn.
Speaker 1: I learned it a fair you know, I was raised
Speaker 1: my parents were divorced. My mother as in her own words,
Speaker 1: I raised him to wear Brooks brothers, and all he
Speaker 1: wants to do is crawl around the mud. And there
Speaker 1: was some truth to that. And so off I went
Speaker 1: to OCS, where I had a good hardening experience that
Speaker 1: I needed, and then I went to the Basic School,
Speaker 1: where I learned a fair bit more about hardening, and
Speaker 1: then onto the Infantry Officer Course, and that was a
Speaker 1: super formative experience for me. I would tell you that,
Speaker 1: the Marine Infantry Officer Course. And I've gone to you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of schools since then for stress and oculation,
Speaker 1: or for tactics or for whatever, but the first one, right,
Speaker 1: really the second, I guess post the Basic School, the
Speaker 1: Mftry Officer Course was the single greatest, and I think
Speaker 1: it probably still is.
Speaker 2: And your first assignment was second Battalion, Third Marines YEP.
Speaker 1: I was the scout sniper platoon commander. So all my
Speaker 1: buddies from the Infantry Officer course went to the rifle companies,
Speaker 1: or you know a number of them anyway did. And
Speaker 1: then I had gone to the Army's Military Intel Officer
Speaker 1: Course at Fort Wachuka en route. So I showed up
Speaker 1: about six months after them and took the sniper platoon.
Speaker 1: And I was the first of a new MOS that
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps started back in the early nineties in
Speaker 1: response to intelligence failures during Desert Storm, and General PK.
Speaker 3: Van riper lambasted Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: Intelligence post Desert Storm, and in typical Marine Corps fashion,
Speaker 1: the core came back said, cool, you got a problem,
Speaker 1: come up with a solution. And so he started re
Speaker 1: engineering Marine Corps intelligence program. And one of the failures
Speaker 1: he saw was leadership within company grade and field great officers,
Speaker 1: and so he said, all right, we're gonna put these
Speaker 1: guys into combat roles first. And so if you became
Speaker 1: a zero two zero three ground intelligence officer, you were
Speaker 1: probably headed either to a recon battalion or to an
Speaker 1: infantry battalion scouts niper platoon. And thinking I was going
Speaker 1: to be in for three years at that time, I
Speaker 1: really didn't.
Speaker 3: See any reason to do anything else but go straight
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 1: If I had to do all over again, I probably
Speaker 1: would have been a straight you know, infantry guy.
Speaker 2: Is that kind of how the Marine Corps does things
Speaker 2: that they bounce you around a little bit, trying to
Speaker 2: make you more well rounded as you've become more senior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's very much the way that the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps manages officer assignments. You know, I say all
Speaker 1: the time, I spent twenty seven total years as a marine,
Speaker 1: about twenty two of that was active. The only thing
Speaker 1: I am an expert in is employing experts. You know,
Speaker 1: if I had to do headspace and timing on a
Speaker 1: fifty cow, I mean, obviously I'm five years past retirement,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I could have done it on
Speaker 1: retirement day. And I'm embarrassed by that fact, but it's true,
Speaker 1: and I have friends who still could do it twenty
Speaker 1: five years later. But I'm not mechanical. But so those
Speaker 1: kind of skills I know to look at the right
Speaker 1: marine to do that thing. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: my major skills that I learned were smelling bullshit, figuring
Speaker 1: out who's really squared away and really competent and capable
Speaker 1: and trustworthy, and then trusting those people.
Speaker 2: What was it like trying to lead a or I
Speaker 2: mean not trying, but you did lead a scout platoon,
Speaker 2: a scout sniper platoon in the mid nineteen nineties. Was
Speaker 2: that challenging in any ways to you know, handle a
Speaker 2: bunch of Marines in a training environment.
Speaker 1: Largely, I mean they're great marines. It was a challenging
Speaker 1: because of the usual lieutenant dynamic, you know. And I'm
Speaker 1: the Army has a way they treat their second lieutenants.
Speaker 1: Some Marine Corps has a way it treats it second lieutenants.
Speaker 1: The two are not identical. Obviously, I'm parochial, so I'm
Speaker 1: partial towards the Marine Corps way. I showed up. I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of salty one deployment lance corporals who
Speaker 1: had taken the Scout sniper indoctrination at the tail end
Speaker 1: of an Okinawa deployment, and they were now the core
Speaker 1: of the platoon I probably had. I think I had
Speaker 1: one sergeant and two corporals. One of those corporals is
Speaker 1: a good friend today he's now he's the guy in
Speaker 1: charge of the Mark Fmanship programs for the Texas Guard
Speaker 1: and is like a CW four or five. But I
Speaker 1: had that crowd when I walked in. What I did
Speaker 1: not have was staff in CEO. And I had spent
Speaker 1: my whole life preparing all I wanted to be was
Speaker 1: the green army man with the binoculars and the pistol,
Speaker 1: and who I always associated with being the lieutenant, And
Speaker 1: so now there I was being it. But now I
Speaker 1: also was a brand new MOS. There'd never been an
Speaker 1: officer in charge of a Marine sniper platoon. It was
Speaker 1: always a staff in co. And so I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing training plans and all the stuff that a
Speaker 1: second lieutenant is supposed to be learning. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do any of it, and it doesn't The
Speaker 1: Headquarters and Services Company did not have the architecture that
Speaker 1: a rifle company would have. Had to bring me along,
Speaker 1: and the other the EXO of the company was a
Speaker 1: guy that was I mean, he was there for a reason.
Speaker 1: The CEO was actually a really squared away guy, super
Speaker 1: good guy. But he didn't have time to raise one
Speaker 1: single lieutenant. He was trying to run, you know, cause
Speaker 1: the headquarters battian is the guy with all the responsibility.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, Headquarters and Services company guy is the guy
Speaker 1: with all the responsibility and really none of the authority
Speaker 1: in the battalion. So he's got to be a really
Speaker 1: strong officer. But anyway, I had a we had a
Speaker 1: great first sergeant named John Myers who used to slap
Speaker 1: me around in a loving way, and I mean physically.
Speaker 1: He was a big intimidating former interrogator type and.
Speaker 3: He would thump you. But he got me a staff incia.
Speaker 1: And I'll be the first to tell you that there's
Speaker 1: what they tell you your staff and CEO's are going
Speaker 1: to be when you're at the basic school. And then
Speaker 1: there's the reality that stefan CEO's are human beings like
Speaker 1: everyone else. And there's that spectrum between the guy who
Speaker 1: walks on water and the guy who's on divorce number
Speaker 1: seven and the DUI number two, and most people fall
Speaker 1: out in between. I got Mike Kirtschweil, who walked on water,
Speaker 1: and I say, to this day now retired Sergeant Major
Speaker 1: Michael Shawn Kertschwil is the reason I had a career,
Speaker 1: and despite my best efforts to ruin it. And he
Speaker 1: was a counselor, he was a leader, he was a trainer,
Speaker 1: and he was absolutely without ego and so he could
Speaker 1: manipulate me into doing what needed to be done and
Speaker 1: make me think that I had told him to do it,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't slimy. It was generous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was compelling or persuasive.
Speaker 1: He trained his lieutenant the way you're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: And then did you have to go and do some
Speaker 2: time like after that as like an actual intel officer.
Speaker 1: I did, and that was you know, I was super
Speaker 1: immature coming into the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3: I spent again my whole life fantasizing about how this
Speaker 3: thing was going to be.
Speaker 1: And I have only in the last couple of weeks
Speaker 1: admitted to several friends that I'm an idealist and that
Speaker 1: gets in the ways of reality sometimes, or maybe reality
Speaker 1: gets in the way of my idealism, but either way,
Speaker 1: I had an idea about how things were going to be,
Speaker 1: and I believed that was exceptional enough that I could
Speaker 1: run between the rain drops and they would be that way.
Speaker 1: And then the Marine Corps said, yeah, go be a
Speaker 1: battalion intelligence officer now, and I felt like I was
Speaker 1: being punished. Had I been a grown up about the thing,
Speaker 1: I would have realized, I'm going over to this other
Speaker 1: battalion where the battalion commander wrote all the command and
Speaker 1: control publications for the Marine Corps, or rewrote him, I
Speaker 1: should say, And as a student of the game and
Speaker 1: is the best battalion commander in this.
Speaker 3: Regiment, and he not only is willing to let you.
Speaker 1: Sit at his feet and learn, but he wants you
Speaker 1: to I would have been a much better officer for it,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't grown up enough to do that, and
Speaker 1: so I was his intelligence officer, while you know, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: constantly looking backwards, wanted to wear a boonie hat and
Speaker 1: you carry a knife on my teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you hadn't gotten that opportunity, or at least not
Speaker 2: enough of it from your perspective, So you went into
Speaker 2: the reserves at that.
Speaker 1: Point I did. I wasn't getting what I wanted, so
Speaker 1: I took my ball and went home. And I'm real
Speaker 1: upfront about that, And you know, people tried to make
Speaker 1: a few options for me, a lot more in line
Speaker 1: with what I wanted. But I ultimately like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get out and go to grad school and I'm
Speaker 1: going to join the reserves. And so I went to
Speaker 1: Third Force Reconnaissance Company in Mobile, Alabama because I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a for street comrine and I took their
Speaker 1: indoctrination and I was not much of a swimmer, and
Speaker 1: you gotta be. And they had to pull me off
Speaker 1: the bottom of a swimming pool because we were treading
Speaker 1: water with weights over our head or with a weight
Speaker 1: over our head, and you know, you can't get to
Speaker 1: ten pound weight wet. And I'm treading and treading, and
Speaker 1: I'm just slowly sinking, sinking, sinking, until the weight is
Speaker 1: now underwater along with me, and I just kept sinking
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the pool. And so I finished
Speaker 1: the whole end dock, which is about forty eight hours
Speaker 1: of just getting your junk kicked. And at the conclusion
Speaker 1: of it, you do an interview. You put on your
Speaker 1: best camis and you go in there and you stand
Speaker 1: in there in front of all these staff and cias,
Speaker 1: and this one guy said, well, sir, uh, you can't swim,
Speaker 1: but you seem to be willing to die to be here,
Speaker 1: so I think we can train you. And I knew
Speaker 1: I was in and I stayed at that unit for
Speaker 1: eight years and built some amazing friends, and I met
Speaker 1: some really really.
Speaker 3: You know, cool people that are lifelong friends today.
Speaker 1: Officer and enlisted, really more enlisted, truthfully, and uh, and
Speaker 1: that that was a way to scratch the itch.
Speaker 2: For a while, and so you're enforced now, so presumably
Speaker 2: you had to go to dive school, jump school, all
Speaker 2: that good stuff.
Speaker 1: Did all that. I managed to make it through dive
Speaker 1: school without putting on water wings, although I very much
Speaker 1: wanted to. And uh, and then jump school and then
Speaker 1: did heyho never did free fall, but went out to Yuma,
Speaker 1: you know, and did the the we used to jump
Speaker 1: to m C five with a static line deployment. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so went out and did that. And then nine
Speaker 1: to eleven came and I knew I couldn't stay on
Speaker 1: the sidelines. I had worked as a pharmaceutical rep. I
Speaker 1: had gone to law school, and I was actually in
Speaker 1: law school after nine to eleven when we finally got
Speaker 1: the call from a reserve unit that we're going to
Speaker 1: send a platoon with first Force for you, with first
Speaker 1: Force to Iraq. Now, we're going to send two platoons
Speaker 1: with second Force later. And I was the operations officer
Speaker 1: for the company at that point, and I turned to
Speaker 1: my buddy, who was the active duty instruct inspector instructor
Speaker 1: at the company, and said, you know, I think if
Speaker 1: I wait till this summer, I could probably take one
Speaker 1: of those platoons instead. Of going now and being like
Speaker 1: the night Watch officer, and he said, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he probably could make that happen. So that was straight chicanery.
Speaker 1: But you know, I wanted to go and do the
Speaker 1: do the deal. So I got some guys who had
Speaker 1: just come back with first recon from doing the Generation kill,
Speaker 1: march up to Baghdad, and then some homegrown guys and
Speaker 1: off we went to Camp La June on my first
Speaker 1: wedding anniversary and headed off up there for three.
Speaker 2: Months for premission training. And what was you know, conceptually,
Speaker 2: where were you guys heading? What were you training for?
Speaker 1: We were going to Iraq. We knew we were going
Speaker 1: to ohif two. We were deployed in August of two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. We had no Someday, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write some really really really angry RANTI screed about that
Speaker 1: period of time because I flew up there in December
Speaker 1: of two thousand and three, Yeah, two thousand and three
Speaker 1: with three other Marines, and by the time we got
Speaker 1: to the Raleigh airport, we had one cell phone between
Speaker 1: us because it was in two thousand and two or whatever,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. We had a message that said
Speaker 1: two of you get on a plane and come right back.
Speaker 1: We got a prepare to deploy order. The other two
Speaker 1: of you go to Campell June and set up the
Speaker 1: summer training like you're planning to. So I go down
Speaker 1: there with the company ops chief and we send the
Speaker 1: other two guys back and we got down to La
Speaker 1: June and we did what we were supposed to do.
Speaker 3: We set up a bunch of training requested ranges.
Speaker 1: We did all the training support requests, all the stuff
Speaker 1: that you do, as well as found building, et cetera. Well,
Speaker 1: six months later, when I showed back up to Camp
Speaker 1: La June and walked into the ops shop at Second Force,
Speaker 1: all of those TSRs, etc. Were sitting in the bottom
Speaker 1: of the training assistant Training chiefs inbox.
Speaker 3: You never moved them, never processed them. We don't have
Speaker 3: a range set up.
Speaker 1: Our building was then no longer existent, French Creek Barracks.
Speaker 1: We had two functioning toilets for something like sixty nine marines,
Speaker 1: and one of those went down under that load. We
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm used, I've lived in condemned buildings
Speaker 1: before as part of being a marine, not even like
Speaker 1: in training or you know, hey, you're deployed you're going
Speaker 1: to live in this bombed out shelter. No, Like, I've
Speaker 1: lived on condemned buildings on more than one marine base
Speaker 1: for an extended period of time, and that's normal.
Speaker 3: But you know, we had feasts mounting up out of
Speaker 3: the toilets.
Speaker 1: It was grotesque, and so that that was I'm still
Speaker 1: really angry twenty years later about the way that onboarding happened.
Speaker 2: What do you what do you think that breakdown was there?
Speaker 2: And go ahead, what do you think the breakdown was
Speaker 2: that that resulted in that.
Speaker 1: Somebody didn't do their job?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, flatly, a guy didn't do his job, and
Speaker 1: there there were there were personnel things that I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to litigate two decades later, personalities and personnel.
Speaker 1: But the flat reality is none of the paperwork required
Speaker 1: to train, feed, and house a unit that was being
Speaker 1: that they knew they were gaining was processed. And hey,
Speaker 1: you know that's two way street. We didn't do our
Speaker 1: job of going did you file all the paperwork? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We did, it's good. You know, we didn't do a
Speaker 1: confirmation brief nears ing tel so you know that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: We recovered it, but it was kind of reminiscent of
Speaker 1: when I was a second lieutenant. Suddenly I'm in a
Speaker 1: situation of I don't know the training areas, I don't
Speaker 1: know the place, I don't know the procedures, and I
Speaker 1: got to come up with a plan to deploy two
Speaker 1: platoons to war in ninety days. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: none of us ever been to war except for the
Speaker 1: few guys who had just come back from doing the
Speaker 1: march up with first re combat time. And so if
Speaker 1: you ask them, well, what do you do when you
Speaker 1: go to Iraq? Well, you drive really fast, you do
Speaker 1: convoy ops. You know, you stop and get into firefights.
Speaker 1: You do ambush trill counter ambush drills. That's what you do.
Speaker 1: And we learned how to live out of a humbye. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what we did was DA raids. I did
Speaker 1: seven months of door kicking. And so what should have
Speaker 1: happened is we should have spent you know, days and
Speaker 1: days and weeks and weeks on a flat range and
Speaker 1: then in a mount facility and et cetera. But that's
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. So we kind of made it
Speaker 1: up on the fly.
Speaker 2: And so you guys get there with the second Force.
Speaker 2: It was Al Kayim, Iraq, right, mm hmm. And what
Speaker 2: was the mission that you guys were assigned at that time?
Speaker 1: I mean it was pretty pretty classic Marine Corps mission.
Speaker 1: I couldn't I couldn't tell you the exact mission statement.
Speaker 1: Although the we were working with first Battalion, seventh Marines there.
Speaker 1: Op So is still a good friend of mine and
Speaker 1: works at MARSC. Now he kind of used us as
Speaker 1: his brute squad. And you know, we had there were
Speaker 1: three rifle companies there, but one of them was guarding
Speaker 1: an ASP that had massive holes in the fence line.
Speaker 1: You could watch people walking in and walking back out
Speaker 1: with munitions on is R. So that company was literally
Speaker 1: living and patrolling at an ASP to try and keep
Speaker 1: it from becoming a supply line to the MOOS. One
Speaker 1: company was holding down Camp Gannon in Huseba, which was
Speaker 1: probably at the time before Fallujah really kicked off, was
Speaker 1: probably the most dangerous city and in Iraq, the back
Speaker 1: fence line of that camp was is Syria, and so
Speaker 1: not only were they fighting the moves, occasionally the Syrians
Speaker 1: would accidentally whip her, you know, a mortar round across
Speaker 1: the border. So that company was there, and then we
Speaker 1: had a company at Alkim with us, and they were
Speaker 1: actually out doing what the you know, mobile assault platoons
Speaker 1: out patrolling, and a mobile assault platoon was effectively a
Speaker 1: mounted infantry platoon driving around finding IDs with their tires
Speaker 1: and so and God bless them. I mean, the absolute
Speaker 1: definition of bravery is those marines. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: we used to we would eat with them in the
Speaker 1: chow hall, and we had someone who would come and
Speaker 1: hang out with us, and we would do train in
Speaker 1: with them and help them, you know, some of their
Speaker 1: CQB kind of stuff, because I had some guys who
Speaker 1: were super switched on on it obviously, And I remember
Speaker 1: one of these marines saying to me, I couldn't do
Speaker 1: what you guys do, like go in their houses every
Speaker 1: night and blowing out these doors. And I was like,
Speaker 1: you're literally out there driving around waiting to get exploded.
Speaker 1: I psychologically speaking, I'm there's no death debate. Who's tougher here, buddy.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they were out there the closest thing to
Speaker 1: an offensive arm. So eighth Platoon of Second Force Ricon's
Speaker 1: job was u literially kill or capture hvts. And then
Speaker 1: that became in politics, so it became capture or kill hvts.
Speaker 1: But you know what's the distinction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, and they kept you pretty busy. How long
Speaker 2: were you deployed over there?
Speaker 1: That was seven months? And I mean I would we
Speaker 1: were not moving with like you talked to some of
Speaker 1: my Ranger Regiment friends. We were not moving with the
Speaker 1: speed of the regiment. But you know, later being deployed
Speaker 1: forward with a lot of the regiment, I recognized, like
Speaker 1: if you read the Crystal's book about the development of
Speaker 1: the Task Force in Baghdad and procedures, et cetera, or
Speaker 1: when I talked to my friends from from that element
Speaker 1: of socom, you know, the way we.
Speaker 3: Learned was kind of happening in parallel.
Speaker 1: My CEO at Second Force who took the company right
Speaker 1: before we deployed, and as a very dear friend of
Speaker 1: mine to this day, I had come from the CT
Speaker 1: world and had kind of we we He went, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to organize a targeting board, we got to
Speaker 1: organize an intel cell, We got to start doing these
Speaker 1: things for real. There was no It was a very
Speaker 1: nascent is. Sr Ir was an intel analyst and a
Speaker 1: huet with long lensed camera overflying our targets. But they
Speaker 1: built target packages for so we could actually start looking
Speaker 1: at at where we might go and then uh that
Speaker 1: I mean, by the end of that deployment, we could
Speaker 1: look at a house and know from the shape of
Speaker 1: the house, like, oh, that'll be the prayer room, here's
Speaker 1: the entryway, probably kitchen is going to be right here.
Speaker 1: Like we've just been in so many that we knew
Speaker 1: the layout. But anyway, that that was. It's always interesting
Speaker 1: for me to talk to folks from that side of
Speaker 1: socom or and realize how organizations adapt under pressure is
Speaker 1: pretty identical.
Speaker 2: What were some of those like lessons learned, those conclusions
Speaker 2: that you guys were coming to learning through experience.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean a lot of it was just basic
Speaker 1: tactical stuff, and some of it is, you know, to
Speaker 1: the I'm sure to the tactical crowd would be super boring. Discipline,
Speaker 1: basic Marine Corps discipline, solid SOPs. Like I organized my platoon.
Speaker 1: I had twenty five marines and I just split them
Speaker 1: down the middle, and I had an alpha element and
Speaker 1: a Bravo element, and you know, Tuesday night alpha element
Speaker 1: and is driving the trucks and running the guns and
Speaker 1: Bravo element. I don't have to let my dog in
Speaker 1: a minute. Bravo element is is going to do the
Speaker 1: actual hit? You know, I always went with the assault element.
Speaker 1: My platoon sergeant always ran the perimeter. And you know,
Speaker 1: every every mission, you know, we had a timeline the
Speaker 1: guy and I published it.
Speaker 3: The guys knew when to do what, but I still
Speaker 3: published the timeline.
Speaker 1: We had a warning order every time we had a conops,
Speaker 1: every time we had a con ops brief, every time
Speaker 1: everybody got brief together. I learned sometimes that my plan
Speaker 1: was fallible and that I needed to take suggestions from
Speaker 1: the peanut.
Speaker 3: Gallery, which they you know, we were very much a unit.
Speaker 1: And I I believe strongly, you know, in the old
Speaker 1: and the concepts of debriefs, brief backs, et cetera, where
Speaker 1: everybody sits in and everybody has a voice, and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the corporal who pipes up from the back and
Speaker 1: shreds your good idea is one hundred percent correct, and
Speaker 1: if you fail to adapt to his or her good idea,
Speaker 1: well you're screwing yourself in the whole unit.
Speaker 3: So I think that was a big thing.
Speaker 1: As I said, I split the unit down the middle,
Speaker 1: and so after we'd done an assault the night before,
Speaker 1: the folks who were in the assault element would build
Speaker 1: a tape house identical to the target, and the guys
Speaker 1: who were drivers and gunners the night before would debrief
Speaker 1: via the tape house. Here's what d this happened, Here's
Speaker 1: where that happened, Here's where we found this thing. And
Speaker 1: I just think that. And I didn't drive that because
Speaker 1: I was kind of a one man planning cell. I
Speaker 1: didn't sleep for seven months because my guys might sleep
Speaker 1: eight nine, ten hours hopefully, but I was up planning, briefing, debriefing,
Speaker 1: going to see the battalion, adjacent battalion commander, or whatever
Speaker 1: I had to do is as the officer to keep
Speaker 1: things rolling and then grab an hour a shut eye
Speaker 1: before we went out the door, which frankly I was
Speaker 1: usually to hyped up an anxious to grab an hour
Speaker 1: shut eye and then we go out and do the thing.
Speaker 2: And you worked in conjunction. Was this the deployment where
Speaker 2: you were with a SF team at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was with a fifth Group ODA. Will Bowman
Speaker 1: was the ODA commander, and so I was with those
Speaker 1: guys and then they departed. They did not have a
Speaker 1: partner force, and so they departed to go east and
Speaker 1: work with an actual partner force and do SF things.
Speaker 1: But I did enjoy love. I loved working with those
Speaker 1: because Will that was a marine who had actually gone
Speaker 1: to the basic school one class behind me, so we
Speaker 1: knew a lot of folks. And then, sort of like me,
Speaker 1: he wasn't getting what he wanted in the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: so he jumped ship and became an army SF guy.
Speaker 3: And then a tenth group team came in and I.
Speaker 1: Worked with those guys a couple of times as we
Speaker 1: were stepping out the door.
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Speaker 1: Thanks guys, and.
Speaker 2: Then talk to us about rotating back home.
Speaker 1: That you know, that's one of the things everybody talks about, transition,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But it was a big change. I was
Speaker 1: on a one year activation and I had finished two
Speaker 1: years of law school, and I had undergone a pretty
Speaker 1: significant mental shift. I mean, I told you I've finally
Speaker 1: acknowledged I'm an ideal. I went over there like I'm
Speaker 1: going to teach the Iraqi people about the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 1: And you know, four months later, I was like, you
Speaker 1: slap another pound of C four on that door au
Speaker 1: as we can. And I don't think that that wasn't
Speaker 1: a healthy shift. That wasn't a good shift. I held
Speaker 1: on to my morals, I held on to what was right,
Speaker 1: but I definitely became more callous over seven months. And
Speaker 1: then I came home and I was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: back to that. And I was like any other person
Speaker 1: who'd gotten a taste of something and wanted more and
Speaker 1: you know, it's.
Speaker 3: Like embarrassing to admit to a bunch of people, but
Speaker 3: it's true.
Speaker 1: Like my wife would be off at her job and
Speaker 1: I'd be home from law school in my third year,
Speaker 1: and I'd get home relatively early, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: clearing rooms and pying corners and stuff in my house
Speaker 1: to stay sharp because in my head like this is.
Speaker 3: Gonna I'm going back. This is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And so I ended up back at UH back on activity.
Speaker 1: The Marine Corps asked for volunteers, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six I went back in full time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so tell us how that comes about. That there's
Speaker 2: this new thing called MARSK and they're looking for volunteers.
Speaker 2: How did that happen for you?
Speaker 1: So I was there was an allmar and All Marines
Speaker 1: message went out, and I got the All mar that said, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're looking for you know, select Marine corpserve officers return
Speaker 1: to active duty and serve. You know, we got two
Speaker 1: hot wars going and we need you. Okay, cool, And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I'm a four street kind guy, like,
Speaker 1: surely I can overcome. I didn't even think about the
Speaker 1: fact that I had effected in the Marine Corps. I
Speaker 1: has been out for eight years. I had already put
Speaker 1: a bullet in my head career wise, and I didn't
Speaker 1: really I just didn't think about it. Again. I was
Speaker 1: very immature for a long time in some ways, and
Speaker 1: I now realize some of that's because I'm an idealist.
Speaker 1: Some of it was ego. I thought I as I said,
Speaker 1: I thought I could run between the rain drops. I'm special,
Speaker 1: and you know, some stuff doesn't land on me. But
Speaker 1: I applied, and I think three applicants were accepted. I
Speaker 1: think I was the only one who was brought back
Speaker 1: in in the MOS. I wanted to come back in
Speaker 1: as which was an infantry officer, so I returned to
Speaker 1: active duty with orders to Marsock. Part of that was
Speaker 1: I was sitting preparing for my last semester exams and
Speaker 1: my little cell phone rang will flip phone and it
Speaker 1: was a buddy of mine had been roommates with in
Speaker 1: two three, you know, I don't know eleven twelve years before,
Speaker 1: and now he was the monitor, which is the branch
Speaker 1: manager in the army. I think you guys call it
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a career maker job, like for
Speaker 1: an older company. Great officer and he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I just do I see your name on a message
Speaker 1: for orders because you knew I've got now And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do. And he said, well, what are you trying
Speaker 1: to do? And I said, I'm going to Marsac talk
Speaker 1: to this guy, Pepe Tronzio, who was my CEO second
Speaker 1: force on that deployment, who's now the G three at
Speaker 1: mar Sock.
Speaker 3: Pete's gonna hook it up, you know, make it happen.
Speaker 1: And and funnily enough, three years later that guy called
Speaker 1: me and was like, all right, man, you're up for
Speaker 1: orders again.
Speaker 3: What are you going to do to get the soft
Speaker 3: stink off of it?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I've I've already arranged orders to
Speaker 1: Jay Sock, So I guess nothing I get.
Speaker 2: I'm taking a bath in it. And so what was
Speaker 2: it like getting to Jason or I'm sorry to MARSK
Speaker 2: in those early years where you're trying to like stand
Speaker 2: up a unit and stand up a capability.
Speaker 1: It was so cool. Honestly, I was a total staff
Speaker 1: guy Pete. In fact, Pete hit me up and he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you want to go down to a
Speaker 1: Battian or you don't want to work in the G shop. Now,
Speaker 1: no officer in his right mind says I want to
Speaker 1: go to the G three. But one all my friends
Speaker 1: from Force Riecan were there. Two I recognized I had
Speaker 1: a serious lack of knowledge. I was coming back to
Speaker 1: active duty as a junior major. I'd never done any
Speaker 1: kind of staff stuff. I basically was, you know, a
Speaker 1: subject matter expertise in force re con operations. And as
Speaker 1: you alluded to earlier, the right pedigree for a Marine
Speaker 1: officer is to do a vast number of career broadening,
Speaker 1: knowledge broadening stuff. And again, I was immature. I was selfish.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Nobody
Speaker 1: needed to tell me how to do business. And so
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, it's time for you to
Speaker 1: grow up. And plus, my wife, you know, is a
Speaker 1: never been a military wife for outside of the reserve.
Speaker 1: She's been through a combat deployment, but this is a
Speaker 1: new thing for her. So all right, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to the G shop with all my friends. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I remember sitting one day in my cubicle in the
Speaker 1: G three and I was like, I could do this forever,
Speaker 1: Like I'm surrounded by great people. This is I've got
Speaker 1: cool work. I like organizations. When the paint hasn't dried,
Speaker 1: the cement's still wet, you know, you're figuring it out.
Speaker 1: And credit Pete Petronzio. He's the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: you know, everybody hated us in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps hated us. So Calm hated this. Everybody
Speaker 1: was mad at us. And we'd have staff meetings every
Speaker 1: morning at seven am, and you know, against the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: So typically it's shaving a haircut and you know, uniforms.
Speaker 1: You show up at seven am. My wife was living
Speaker 1: in Raleigh. I was commuting two and a half hours
Speaker 1: some morning to make the seven am staff meeting. You
Speaker 1: walk into a hoodie and you know, three day beard,
Speaker 1: it's just sit on the floor. We're gonna do the
Speaker 1: staff meeting. It was all business and look, I'm a guy.
Speaker 1: I'm for shaving a haircut. That's that's a Marine thing.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. It works for the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: and ultimately worked for us. But it was just you
Speaker 1: can shave after the meeting. Dude, I'm glad you were
Speaker 1: able to get an extra twenty minutes asleep. Now go
Speaker 1: do your thing, and Pete would be sitting at his
Speaker 1: desk and like, who should we piss off the day?
Speaker 1: And basically we just kind of go through the rolodecks
Speaker 1: and pick a name that we're gonna infuriate because we're
Speaker 1: gonna ask for something, or we're gonna say we're not
Speaker 1: gonna do something, or we're gonna say we are gonna
Speaker 1: do something that somebody's not gonna like. You know, that
Speaker 1: organization was built on one of Rumsfeldt's snowflakes, and for
Speaker 1: you know, watchers listeners that don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: they used to call his memos snowflakes because they.
Speaker 3: Would just drift down from the office of the Secretary
Speaker 3: of Defense.
Speaker 1: We had his snowflake framed on the wall for years
Speaker 1: in the G three at Marsac and all it said
Speaker 1: was Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command is designated a.
Speaker 3: Special Operations Force period.
Speaker 1: Donald J. Donald Rumsfeldt, and uh, I don't think he's
Speaker 1: a J. I think the current Donald is a J.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that was that now we're soft and neither
Speaker 1: General Brown nor General Hagey. I don't think we're you know,
Speaker 1: particularly enamored of the idea uh, and then there was
Speaker 1: a whole crew of there were a lot of SF
Speaker 1: guys who were not happy about it. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of Marine graybeards who were not at all happy
Speaker 1: about it, and so we were fighting perceptions, which again
Speaker 1: for a guy who listened to punk rocker righting a
Speaker 1: skateboard in Athens, Georgia, being the guy that people don't
Speaker 1: like was it was punk rock at the time.
Speaker 3: I mean as punk rock as the Marine Corps gets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, because we were we just figure out
Speaker 1: what we needed to do, and we were learning so much.
Speaker 1: That's another thing I love is a learning environment and
Speaker 1: a learning organization. Well we were like, okay, what, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm trying to Oh, perfect example. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's an SF colonel that I know and we just
Speaker 1: grew up in towns close to one Another's considerably older
Speaker 1: than me, but I grown up here in his name.
Speaker 1: So we're sitting in one of the seven AM staff
Speaker 1: meetings and we were talking about, uh, you know, uncommissional warfare. Well,
Speaker 1: none of us has ever done uncommisional warfare. This is
Speaker 1: not one of our miss I was like, well, I
Speaker 1: know SF guy over at Fort Bragg he's a retired colonel.
Speaker 1: You want to should we go talk to and people
Speaker 1: was like yeah, go. So we jumped on the truck
Speaker 1: and we drive to Fayetteville and literally sat in this
Speaker 1: guy's basement going through pubs and he's like, okay, take
Speaker 1: your notebook, guy by with through? Okay, with through. It
Speaker 1: sounds good. And that was, you know, kind of how
Speaker 1: we were working through all this stuff. We da sure,
Speaker 1: sr sure all day long, that kind of stuff. We
Speaker 1: were super strong on. But I had Iraqis with me
Speaker 1: on exactly one mission. Yeah, one mission in Al Qaim,
Speaker 1: and in my very you know again, I keep calling,
Speaker 1: keep calling myself immature, I was like, we're not doing
Speaker 1: that again. It was unilateral marines kicking indoors at two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, m fours and flash bangs, and
Speaker 1: I was living out my Gi Joe fantasy.
Speaker 3: I now refer to that time as my Isis recruiting tour.
Speaker 1: But it there was a lot to learn, a lot
Speaker 1: to learn.
Speaker 2: During this time frame. Because it sounds like Secretary of
Speaker 2: Defense didn't leave you guys with a lot of guidance.
Speaker 2: How did the idea itself of Marsak kind of develop?
Speaker 2: Like you mentioned DASR. That makes sense because you guys
Speaker 2: came from Fort Recon. But then you w I mean,
Speaker 2: was there's this this idea that marines are going to
Speaker 2: do unconventional warfare?
Speaker 1: Now, so I think some of it. We had a
Speaker 1: group of really smart guys. There was a guy that
Speaker 1: I deployed with in that second Force deployment in four
Speaker 1: oh five named Jason Shauble. Jason got shot up badly
Speaker 1: enough that he got retired as a captain Silver Star recipient.
Speaker 1: In fact, on his retirement day he got a bronze
Speaker 1: star with a be a silver star, and I think
Speaker 1: a legion of merit, you know, which for a captain
Speaker 1: is his nuts.
Speaker 3: He became the GS fourteen Deputy.
Speaker 1: G three, which, if you know how GS fourteen's and
Speaker 1: fifteens are hired, those are typically retired lieutenant colonels and colonels.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of grumpy faces when this
Speaker 1: pretty junior captain who hasn't off the charts GT score
Speaker 1: IQ score is suddenly the deputy G three. But so,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're tearing through, like the OSS Manual's Assessment
Speaker 1: of men, We're tearing through all those kind of pups
Speaker 1: and I'll be arrogant enough to say we had a
Speaker 1: hallway full of really smart men and women, and we
Speaker 1: had a lot of free thinkers, and we had a
Speaker 1: lot of people who really excited to be in on
Speaker 1: the ground floor of building the Marine Corps. So calm
Speaker 1: component and honored to get to do it. Like it
Speaker 1: was a really heady time. Like I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: have a kid, so it probably wasn't that big deal.
Speaker 1: But there were plenty of times where it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I slept four hours last night because I was here
Speaker 1: till all hours reading doctrine or writing this plan or
Speaker 1: writing this proposal, you know, and we're fighting. We're fighting
Speaker 1: use sock to get them to accept us. In some ways,
Speaker 1: we're fighting just old doctrine. We're fighting the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: Everybody's interested in what you're doing because you're the new
Speaker 1: kid on the block.
Speaker 3: It was a it was a fabulous experience.
Speaker 2: When you look back on that period of your career
Speaker 2: or what, what are like the lessons learned, Like if
Speaker 2: you were to give some advice to some guys that
Speaker 2: are standing up a new unit today, what would be
Speaker 2: some of the big considerations that you wish you had
Speaker 2: known beforehand going into.
Speaker 1: It, no know the reality, know the doctrine. People say,
Speaker 1: doctrine is a starting point for your deviation, right, you cannot.
Speaker 1: You've got to be smarter than the guys who already
Speaker 1: excuse me, you may not be smarter. That's a matter
Speaker 1: of genetics. You've got better educated, there's one of the dogs. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you got to be better educated than the folks who
Speaker 1: may have been doing this for a long time, who
Speaker 1: may have gotten complacent. And so you walk into a
Speaker 1: room with folks and they're like, oh, here come the
Speaker 1: dumb Marines.
Speaker 3: And turns out that the dumb marines had done a
Speaker 3: whole lot.
Speaker 1: Of research, done a whole lot of talking to people,
Speaker 1: had done a whole lot of reading of history, and
Speaker 1: actually did know some of the stuff we were talking about,
Speaker 1: or at least knew it well enough to ask questions.
Speaker 3: And so it's a lot of work to be well educated.
Speaker 1: And when you walk into, you know, a room with
Speaker 1: folks are like, hey, man, I've been doing this for
Speaker 1: twenty five years and you're fifteen years into your career
Speaker 1: and you just got tasked to be me Like, good
Speaker 1: luck with that sport. You know? That was sometimes the adage.
Speaker 1: There were also guys who were very much like, hey,
Speaker 1: come on in more than marry or whatever you need,
Speaker 1: what do you want to learn? And so in that sense,
Speaker 1: the flip side of me saying you need to be
Speaker 1: better educated than the experts is you also need to
Speaker 1: know you don't actually know anything, So you need to
Speaker 1: be real ready to walk in and listen and ask questions.
Speaker 1: And if you lead with questions, the experts will often
Speaker 1: be willing then to listen, and both of you get
Speaker 1: to a place where your preparation meets with their expertise
Speaker 1: in a way that is productive for everyone. So I
Speaker 1: think that's a main one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think people enjoy answering questions about
Speaker 2: a career field or a job field that they feel
Speaker 2: they're very good at.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And you know, if you have lived up to
Speaker 1: the charge to be as well or better educated, because
Speaker 1: you can't be as experienced, you need to keep that
Speaker 1: in your back pocket. You don't need to tell anybody
Speaker 1: about it. Again, lead with questions because if you let
Speaker 1: experts be experts, and this is as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in anything but experts. Sometimes in
Speaker 1: my career I played that up. I think back, I
Speaker 1: was a unit XO at year twenty of my career.
Speaker 1: I'd managed to avoid it all the way. And now
Speaker 1: I'm a six is XO and I'm worried about things
Speaker 1: like truck maintenance. And I don't care about truck maintenance.
Speaker 1: I mean not much, certainly not passionate about it. But
Speaker 1: there were marines who did that kind of work and
Speaker 1: they were now you know, the marines that I'm dealing with.
Speaker 1: And so I would go to these meetings and I
Speaker 1: was ignorant, but I would absolutely play up my ignorance
Speaker 1: in a staff meeting full of like E three's, E four's,
Speaker 1: E fives, and I would, you know, really give try
Speaker 1: to give them a chance to be the experts and
Speaker 1: to educate me. And sometimes I'd intentionally ask really dumb
Speaker 1: questions so that they could laugh at me, because it
Speaker 1: just changed that dynamic a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 1: when we had the Marine Corps, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: all these inspections right that the Marine Corps does on
Speaker 1: logistics or admin or whatever, and I was like, what's in?
Speaker 1: What's in? How do you get one hundred on this inspection? Well,
Speaker 1: so there's not one hundred. It's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't remember what the scoring system was. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: but whatever in the scoring system is the closest thing
Speaker 1: to one hundred.
Speaker 3: It's what I want. How do we get it? And
Speaker 3: I let this master sergeant who's advising me be in
Speaker 3: charge of that.
Speaker 1: You tell me how we're going to get what I want,
Speaker 1: and then you tell me what you need me to
Speaker 1: do to assist you to make that happen, because you're
Speaker 1: the expert. I didn't even know a lot of the word.
Speaker 1: He would throw words out of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that means, and I would say it in front
Speaker 1: of the E three's and they all got a giggle
Speaker 1: out of it, but they also see I will and learn,
Speaker 1: and then like it was kind of a joke. But
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, if you guys get a ninety five
Speaker 1: or veteran this exam, everybody's having a pizza party.
Speaker 3: And I realize a pizza party is.
Speaker 1: Like a meme now on LinkedIn, you know, and it
Speaker 1: should be right people do that instead of giving somebody
Speaker 1: a bonus. But one, you can't pay bonus, and two
Speaker 1: it was just a kind of a joke in those
Speaker 1: meetings all the time, but I will say about those Marines.
Speaker 1: Six months later we had a pizza party because they
Speaker 1: went to work, and that that's another thing I would
Speaker 1: say is true. If you're building an organization, you know,
Speaker 1: know what you don't know, figure out who does know it,
Speaker 1: and let that person be the expert.
Speaker 2: And after having this it sounds like a pretty you
Speaker 2: had a good time. Actually as a staff officer in
Speaker 2: mar sok. How did the Jaysck assignment come up?
Speaker 1: My buddy Ivan Ingram, who I know you've had on here,
Speaker 1: I haven't actually had been approached about doing that job
Speaker 1: and by the marine that was in it then, and
Speaker 1: he then got selected for command of Staff College. And
Speaker 1: you don't turn down residential command of Staff College. It's
Speaker 1: a top ten percent assignment. It's a good sign for
Speaker 1: your career. So Ivan's off to command of Staff and
Speaker 1: the guy said, well, do you know anybody else who
Speaker 1: you would recommend to do it? And I was like, yep,
Speaker 1: you're sitting right next to me, and I wanted it
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. My wife was actually the
Speaker 1: this is always funny. My wife was the lead attorney
Speaker 1: for the ACLU of North Carolina in Raleigh, and so
Speaker 1: we lived about fifty miles away from Bragg and like
Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve miles away from Le June. And
Speaker 1: then I had a little condo I crashed during the week,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to move back. I wanted to
Speaker 1: live with and so an assignment at Fort Bragg was
Speaker 1: really goal one because I could, you know, it was
Speaker 1: reasonable commute, And then I really did want to go
Speaker 1: to Jaysack. I just wanted to see that, have that experience,
Speaker 1: and learn those things, because by now I feel like
Speaker 1: I had kind of turned as a professional when I
Speaker 1: finally acknowledged and Marine Corps did not exist to feed
Speaker 1: my adventure sports habit or to give me something to
Speaker 1: write about someday. It exists to support the national security
Speaker 1: ends and means of the United States of America, and
Speaker 1: Worth Parker's particular feelings about actual assignments are completely immaterial
Speaker 1: within that construct. But I was blessed to make the
Speaker 1: Jaysock thing happen, and I went over and interviewed over
Speaker 1: there and got selected for that, and I really did
Speaker 1: have a wonderful three years and make some really good
Speaker 1: friends who you know, I'm still in contact with now.
Speaker 2: Any lessons learned from that experience that you brought with
Speaker 2: you back to the Marine Corps countless.
Speaker 1: I got to watch the Ranger Regiment in action, and
Speaker 1: I am an unabashed fan of the seventy fifth Ranger
Speaker 1: Regiment and Rangers in general. And I've worked with, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the folks in that constellation and got to
Speaker 1: watch a ton of people work.
Speaker 3: And I read somebody saying the other day, and I don't.
Speaker 1: Remember who it was, friend of mine, but my memory
Speaker 1: fails me these days, saying, you want to know the
Speaker 1: best military formation in the US government or in the
Speaker 1: Department of War. Now, it is the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment.
Speaker 1: There is no question, hands down that it is uniformly
Speaker 1: the finest. And for years I've been a guy eighth Marines,
Speaker 1: seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. There's no difference. Man, It's a
Speaker 1: marine infantry regiments as good as well. Maybe it could
Speaker 1: be maybe if it were resourced that way. But a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who had come from Jaysck that I
Speaker 1: worked for in the G three at Marsack, named Chris Naylor,
Speaker 1: Chris pose that to me one day. He's like, where
Speaker 1: do you think of Marine infantry regiments as good as
Speaker 1: the Rangers. And I was like, absolutely, of course. And
Speaker 1: he's like, Okay, if we go down to first Battalion,
Speaker 1: eighth Marines right now, does every Marine have a set
Speaker 1: of nods? No? Probably the fire team leaders, in the
Speaker 1: squad leaders, Okay, they're not night capable. Everybody in the
Speaker 1: eighty seconds got one, and certainly everybody in the seventy
Speaker 1: fifth got a pair. That that alone. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you start pinging dollars to doughnuts and training capabilities, you
Speaker 1: learn that, you know, it's not the Civil War.
Speaker 5: Argument one rabble can whip thirteen Yankees with a cornstalk.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, that's the equivalent argument we would
Speaker 3: have about.
Speaker 5: One marine can whip five Rangers. Why could you win
Speaker 5: to boot camp for thirteen months or thirteen weeks. But
Speaker 5: when you start becoming a pro and you realize that
Speaker 5: your job is to do what the machine needs you
Speaker 5: to do and do it as well as humanly possible,
Speaker 5: then I think.
Speaker 1: You're you're really where you need to be. And I
Speaker 1: went to Jaysok, and I watched a place where everyone
Speaker 1: does what they're supposed to do as well as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: And I really really really enjoyed my time there, But
Speaker 1: the way I got there is because I even made
Speaker 1: it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something to be said for that that. You know,
Speaker 2: people love to make these comparisons between this unit and
Speaker 2: that unit, and like Force Recon wasn't technically a special
Speaker 2: ops unit, But that's not a ding on the guys,
Speaker 2: like they're terrific marines. It's just they weren't resourced the
Speaker 2: way you talk about.
Speaker 1: The organized under special If I'm one hundred percent honest
Speaker 1: to you, I felt far more elite as a platoon
Speaker 1: commander at Second Force or Confissence Company than I did
Speaker 1: in any of my SoC ON formations. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: some of that is just you know, size of the
Speaker 1: organization and maybe the I don't know what I do
Speaker 1: know what the right word is, but TBI is stealing
Speaker 1: it from me right this minute. We'll call it cool fact,
Speaker 1: and I'll be embarrassed later by saying it. But you know,
Speaker 1: being a force free con guy was cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. That was an apex kind of assignment and
Speaker 1: so that felt awesome. And when you walked into the
Speaker 1: chow haul at al Con, everybody knew you were the
Speaker 1: forced guys. Everybody knew you were the guys who were
Speaker 1: out hooking a jab in every night. But again, if
Speaker 1: you're a pro, you also were able to look at
Speaker 1: that and go, yeah, we were hooking a jab and
Speaker 1: every night. But you guys dropping around in the broad
Speaker 1: daylight waiting to eat at one five five or one
Speaker 1: five two.
Speaker 3: Right, there's no distinction. But to my mind between you.
Speaker 1: Who's got more heart, more mojo, more guts, more honor?
Speaker 1: I mean picked the thing. You know, we fought between
Speaker 1: about eleven o'clock at night and five am, and we
Speaker 1: did that for a very specific reason. It's because the
Speaker 1: threat was lower where and because our targets were asleep
Speaker 1: in bed and it's easier to snatch them out of bed.
Speaker 1: But I just have so much love and appreciation for
Speaker 1: the eleven, Bravo, the three eleven and associated in the wests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of people also don't appreciate
Speaker 2: the you know, having a strategic global lift capability and
Speaker 2: having special ops aviation units makes a huge difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's another thing. I remember one of
Speaker 1: the generals when I was at Jaysak was saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's It's one thing to be in the
Speaker 1: one seventy third out in a fob on top of
Speaker 1: a hill and to fight from that or a cop
Speaker 1: right problem. It's another thing to be a formation in
Speaker 1: a task force where you have AGE sixty four's overhead
Speaker 1: and then there's F eighteen's overhead that or see one
Speaker 1: AC one thirties, and then there's B one bravos, and
Speaker 1: then there's m Q nine's and then and then and then,
Speaker 1: and they're just stacked to the heavens in support of you.
Speaker 3: I went out as a force freet compluatoon.
Speaker 1: I usually had either a section of.
Speaker 3: A Hui and a mixed section of Huy and cobra
Speaker 3: and supporting me.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I had an Fateen or an Ava B section
Speaker 1: flying and supported me. And they were usually just like
Speaker 1: flickering with lightning pods to help give me itg to
Speaker 1: targets and that sort of thing. But they were there again.
Speaker 1: Second Lieutenant Empty Frats and the squad that he happens
Speaker 1: to be rolling with that day in a homby, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four they were the same hummers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've cried tears a number of times because
Speaker 1: when I got there there were these mobile assault platoons
Speaker 1: running around, and they really just were reorganized counter armor
Speaker 1: assault team platoons in fiberglass backed hombies, and those were
Speaker 1: the weapons we were going to fight in the fold
Speaker 1: the gap with with toes and you know, the sanded
Speaker 1: fiberglass back. And I can remember talking to one of
Speaker 1: those marines after they'd gotten back from a mission. They
Speaker 1: had rolled out in response a QRF response to another
Speaker 1: vehicle that had hit a landmine and a marine had
Speaker 1: lost his leg. The QRF rolled out, they hit a
Speaker 1: land mine, another marine lost his leg. I drove round
Speaker 1: in unarmored vehicles. Except for the fact that a guy
Speaker 1: and I call him a real life hero, and he
Speaker 1: did get an award with a combat V on it,
Speaker 1: who was our motor tea chief at Second Force. And
Speaker 1: I think that guy stayed up for like four straight
Speaker 1: days cutting up that mac kid armor with an a settling
Speaker 1: torch and welding it onto the underside of our humbies Wow,
Speaker 1: which was the only armor we had. And that guy
Speaker 1: cut armor until every tip burned out on those cutters.
Speaker 1: And then the guy who was the orthopedist in the
Speaker 1: mass unit that was right outside my doorway got on
Speaker 1: the phone. He was a reservist, got on the phone,
Speaker 1: called home to Oregon, woke somebody up and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's my credit card number. Go to the ACE Hardware
Speaker 1: and by every cutting torch head you can get and
Speaker 1: fedexit to me here.
Speaker 3: Now, that guy is what made it happen, you know,
Speaker 3: that sort of.
Speaker 1: Stuff, going back kind of like to my showing up
Speaker 1: at Campbell jun and having no training. That kind of
Speaker 1: stuff is what I feel like those stories of Americans
Speaker 1: need to understand. Yeah, because your tax dollars go to
Speaker 1: make sure that you don't have that problem.
Speaker 3: We're on a much softer note. I didn't have pillows
Speaker 3: for my marines.
Speaker 1: Like, we're all just sleeping on these crappy Jordanian racks
Speaker 1: that somebody bought in mass.
Speaker 3: And that bent within two nights of sleeping on them.
Speaker 3: So you're like sleeping in.
Speaker 1: A taco And I hit my mom up and I
Speaker 1: was like, Mom, I don't we don't have pillows. So
Speaker 1: she went on a buying spree and boxes start showing
Speaker 1: up with applatoons, pillows. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I.
Speaker 1: Guess the lesson learned there is think through resourcing before
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things come together because somebody cared enough to make
Speaker 2: it come together, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And from there you went to a small office in
Speaker 2: the Pentagon, a SOCOM office, And I didn't know anything
Speaker 2: about this, I don't think until we spoke about it earlier.
Speaker 2: Could you tell us about that assignment?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm happy as you there were in revening assignments.
Speaker 1: I came back from Jaysack and I was the G
Speaker 1: three X at Marsak, and then I was the sot
Speaker 1: or I deployed. I deployed after that G three X tour,
Speaker 1: and I was the J five at c Jisota, Afghanistan's
Speaker 1: right came back. I was the XO at the Marine
Speaker 1: Raider Training Center for two years, which actually was a blast.
Speaker 1: And then I went up to excuse me to DC
Speaker 1: and you know, this is again a lesson learned, right.
Speaker 1: I had been called by some guys in Tampa in
Speaker 1: an office down there at SOCOM headquarters, and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to come work on this program with
Speaker 1: us down here? And I was like absolutely, because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this is going to be my last or
Speaker 1: my second to last job. I'm never going to get
Speaker 1: promoted past lieutenant colonel. I was really lucky to be
Speaker 1: a lieutenant colonel. But with eight years break in service,
Speaker 1: I am never going to be a colonel in the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. So I need to start thinking about the
Speaker 1: next phase of life. So I was all about this
Speaker 1: gig down in Tampa, and then the deputy commander, who
Speaker 1: is a friend of mine of this day, calls me.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, brother, come up my office. So I
Speaker 1: go up there and he's like, and I know you
Speaker 1: want to go to that thing in Tampa. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really do. And you know, my wife's cool with Tampa.
Speaker 1: I just I think that'd be good. He says, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is, I got a job that I have
Speaker 1: to fill in d C. So you know, when you
Speaker 1: hit on ninety five, turn right instead of left, and
Speaker 1: I need you to go go to d C. And
Speaker 1: at that point in my life, I used to call
Speaker 1: myself mars Sox Mikey and if you remember the old
Speaker 1: life checks commercials where they give it to Mikey Hilly
Speaker 1: did anything. And I knew who I was at that point.
Speaker 1: I knew what my job was at that point, and
Speaker 1: I was mature enough to accept that reality. And say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you need a guy who will go up and do
Speaker 1: a good job on behalf of the command and make
Speaker 1: the command look, you know, at least adequate and competent.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to spend a guy who's going
Speaker 1: to be a battalion commander and the regimental commander and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing on this job. I'm your utility player,
Speaker 1: got it, No worries understood. And I said that without
Speaker 1: anger or rancord, like I knew who I was at
Speaker 1: that point. I've been through all the whatever, the six
Speaker 1: stages of grief and figured out you also paid your
Speaker 1: dues though, yeah, I mean, and look, I was really blessed.
Speaker 3: I got to do a ton of stuff I wanted
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: A lot of people went out of their way in
Speaker 1: my career to make it possible for me to have
Speaker 1: things I wanted and to do things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, with the understanding that I had some limitation
Speaker 1: that I had imposed on myself at twenty three years
Speaker 1: old when I said, I'm not coooting what I want,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to reserves.
Speaker 3: And I don't regret that I loved going to law school.
Speaker 1: Living in Tallahassee Florida has opened avenues for me twenty
Speaker 1: years later as a writer, you know.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I don't have any regrets in now
Speaker 3: in retirement.
Speaker 1: Certainly there were some wailing and gnashing of teeth when
Speaker 1: I was an active dude to the lieutenant colonel, but
Speaker 1: that's the way it goes. So yeah, I ended up
Speaker 1: in DC and I checked in and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I thought I was going up there to do a
Speaker 1: liaison job with the Joint Staff J five and the
Speaker 1: office direct who was a retired guy like hey, for
Speaker 1: the first year, you're going to be the executive officer
Speaker 1: to the Vice commander of SOCOM, and that will teach
Speaker 1: you to lay of the land up here, teach you
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. You really do have to learn the building.
Speaker 1: And that's a term of art. You gotta learn the
Speaker 1: physical building, but you gotta learn the denizens of the building.
Speaker 1: And so, okay, Roger that I'm marine. I so I
Speaker 1: was the EXO for Tom Trask for the first year.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant General Tom Trask, Great American Silver Star recipient. If
Speaker 1: you ever see the picture from Desert Storm of the
Speaker 1: PJ out the back of a fifty a H fifty
Speaker 1: three rescuing a down.
Speaker 3: Pilot like about to pull him in. Tom Trask is
Speaker 3: flying that.
Speaker 1: Bird and there's a whole real heroic story behind that that,
Speaker 1: you know, he gets the Silver Star for. But as
Speaker 1: there was a truckload of Iraqi's inbound to snatch that dude,
Speaker 1: he put the bird between the pilot and the truck,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they loaded him up and got
Speaker 1: him out of there. Well in eight ten the truck.
Speaker 1: But I worked for him for a year and then
Speaker 1: a guy named Lieutenant General Scott Howell, who later commanded Jaysack,
Speaker 1: came in and another phenomenal human being. I call that
Speaker 1: three years my Air Force Appreciation Tour. I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the savage Marine working for these you know Air
Speaker 1: Force dudes.
Speaker 3: They were all AFSC pilots, they were all fifty three pilots,
Speaker 3: they had all served together in the same squadron.
Speaker 1: I just learned a whole lot about culture and people
Speaker 1: and appreciating other people. And Scott Howel was a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine to this day. I've called him for help, counsel, advice,
Speaker 1: or just hey, how you doing. And it's certainly the
Speaker 1: only three star that I engaged with. It that way.
Speaker 3: But then so I loved working for him.
Speaker 1: And then he got selected for Jay Sock and went
Speaker 1: on down and took command there, and I went to
Speaker 1: work for Lieutenant General Jim's Life, who until relatively recently
Speaker 1: was the Vice.
Speaker 3: Chief of Staff of the Air Force, And that was
Speaker 3: another great experience.
Speaker 1: That was a guy that's a guy who you know
Speaker 1: would pull you into his office and he was explaining
Speaker 1: why he's doing things what he's doing because he really
Speaker 1: felt like his job was to develop the people under
Speaker 1: him to become him. And you know, I had to
Speaker 1: kind of the first time you did that with me,
Speaker 1: I was like, sure, you got to understand the reality, like,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be a colonel, much less a
Speaker 1: three star. I'm just gonna work super hard for you
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna do as good a job as I
Speaker 1: can do for you. But you don't need to waste
Speaker 1: any personal development credits on me because it's not going
Speaker 1: to pay off. And to his great credit, he still
Speaker 1: did because he's somebody that develops, you know, his subordinates.
Speaker 1: He also likes really good music bands I never would
Speaker 1: have expected a three star to be into. So that
Speaker 1: was super cool.
Speaker 2: Can you explain how what that office does and how
Speaker 2: it works in conjunction with so common Tampa.
Speaker 1: Sure, so you have the four star Commander h of SOCOM,
Speaker 1: and then you have a deputy commander who's a three
Speaker 1: star who sits in Tampa and he's basically the guy
Speaker 1: who's over worldwide ops and he reports obviously to the commander,
Speaker 1: but he kind of guides all the ops related stuff, operations, intel,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to subordinate units, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And then you have the Vice Commander in d C.
Speaker 1: He lives in d C. He sits in a small
Speaker 1: office in the Pentagon, and his job is to interface
Speaker 1: with all the personalities up in d c U and
Speaker 1: within the building itself, and to also be the guy
Speaker 1: who oversees resourcing, money, acquisitions, you know, technology and logistics,
Speaker 1: the J eight in particular. And then like I say,
Speaker 1: soft ATNL, the developmental stuff within SOCOM. He's in charge
Speaker 1: of that, he or she and uh.
Speaker 3: And so that was the developmental path UH.
Speaker 1: For Trask who retired out of there, so Howell who
Speaker 1: took Jasack out of there, and then Slife who took
Speaker 1: assoc before becoming by Chief Staff of the Air Force.
Speaker 2: And this office is separate from ASD Soliic, Yes.
Speaker 1: But very much interfaced with a SC solic When when
Speaker 1: Oen West, who was a fellow forceriecon Marine, was ASD Solick,
Speaker 1: we would go, you know, sit with him once a
Speaker 1: week and have a standing meeting. And I always had
Speaker 1: fun with that because we were both forced guys, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was like, he's the ASD. But hey, Worth,
Speaker 1: what's up. Let's talk about running or something, you know,
Speaker 1: just two forced guys. It's cool.
Speaker 2: But before we move on from this time frame, anything
Speaker 2: you want to say about like working as the J
Speaker 2: five at the c Josoda some of those other experiences
Speaker 2: you said were very positive.
Speaker 1: Once I grew up and matured and was able to
Speaker 1: open my eyes to what can I learn here, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than I you know everything. So let me just
Speaker 1: shut down my brain because these people are wasting my
Speaker 1: time until I can get what I want. I worked
Speaker 1: for a phenomenal commander named Chris Riga, and I adored
Speaker 1: working for Chris Riga. You talk about a guy who
Speaker 1: empowered his subordinates to just run. I will never forget
Speaker 1: this guy. Like right after he took command of the
Speaker 1: seat of soda. If we're having one of our morning
Speaker 1: stand ups. He comes walking in. We do the whole
Speaker 1: stand up. Everybody on the jock floor stands up and
Speaker 1: says their thing, and we get to the end and Rigo,
Speaker 1: who's got like this super kind of, you know, cool
Speaker 1: whole demeanor about him, but he's like, hey, so who
Speaker 1: here does something that they think is stupid? And everybody's
Speaker 1: kind of like me. He's like, Okay, here's what I
Speaker 1: want you to do. I want you to stop doing
Speaker 1: that thing, and if the next higher headquarters doesn't call
Speaker 1: you on it within the next seven days, never do
Speaker 1: that thing again. And I just was like, this guy
Speaker 1: was on I think his thirteenth rotation in Afghanistan. I
Speaker 1: was working with him. I was working with a guy
Speaker 1: from third they were he was a third Group homeboy,
Speaker 1: now in command a seventh group, and so the j
Speaker 1: three was a really great dude who had lost one
Speaker 1: leg in a suicide bombing in Pakistan, and he was
Speaker 1: a real live, tough guy and deployed with one amputated
Speaker 1: leg and one messed up leg, and he trained so
Speaker 1: hard and ran so hard every day on the treadmill
Speaker 1: that he's jacked up his other leg. And they had
Speaker 1: to take off that foot, so they sent him home.
Speaker 1: But I mean, he was just a really impressive, hard, dedicated,
Speaker 1: brave dude, and so they brought in another guy. We
Speaker 1: had a third group guy named Dave Haskell, who had
Speaker 1: been one of Riga's oh DA commanders when Rego was
Speaker 1: an AOB commander and was now chief of Staff of
Speaker 1: the Cajus OTIF. We had a guy named Jason Johnston
Speaker 1: who is the single finest military officer I've ever worked
Speaker 1: with in any service. Jason came over to be the
Speaker 1: j three. He had been one of Riga's AOB commanders
Speaker 1: when uh excuse me, ODA commanders when Riga was an
Speaker 1: AOV commander, and then he and Haskell were AOB commanders
Speaker 1: for RIGA at first Battalion, third Group, and then Jason
Speaker 1: ended up taking first Battion, third Group, and then ultimately
Speaker 1: taking third Group. But I've said it to Jason, I said,
Speaker 1: it's gone to people, the single best military officer of
Speaker 1: any service or capability I have ever worked with is
Speaker 1: Jason Johnston, who recently retired out of the Army. So
Speaker 1: the phenomenal people just phenomenal, and I've it was a
Speaker 1: it was a really really special deployment. And the folks
Speaker 1: that I was working with in the J five like
Speaker 1: and and a lot. I you know, I had one
Speaker 1: Special four aficer, I had a Seal staff n C
Speaker 1: and I and I had an EOD guy.
Speaker 3: And I think those were my only so calm, homegrown folks.
Speaker 1: Probably the most effective guy was my URSA, who was
Speaker 1: a CAV officer that's an operational research and systems analysis
Speaker 1: guy that the Army gives you, basically a designated smart guy.
Speaker 1: He's a PhD now. But the guy had done forty
Speaker 1: eight months in back in Baghdad and Mosl, et cetera.
Speaker 1: As a CAV guy. He had written a Metal of
Speaker 1: Honor citation if that tells you the level of combat
Speaker 1: he had seen. So he was like a real legit
Speaker 1: tough guy. It was just a really really really good team.
Speaker 1: So super deployment, you know, and I say all the time,
Speaker 1: I said to you before we started recording, you know,
Speaker 1: I got one combat deployment and two deployments to combat zones,
Speaker 1: and it's two very different things. And I like to
Speaker 1: be very very clear about that because there were plenty
Speaker 1: of young Marines who were out there, you know, I
Speaker 1: met him in the intervening you who were putting tourniquets
Speaker 1: on their arms and legs before they went out on
Speaker 1: patrol because they just knew somebody was gonna need these today. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I had plenty of coffee and cliff bars and you
Speaker 1: know whatever else rip its of the thirteen months I
Speaker 1: spent at Bagram. You know, I was no kind of
Speaker 1: hero in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: So twenty twenty one, you had already kind of figured
Speaker 2: out or determined for yourself. I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: a general, but your retirement is kind of coming up.
Speaker 2: I mean, was there like trepidation about that? I mean,
Speaker 2: you were in the court for a long time.
Speaker 1: I was, but you know I bounced out, I bounced
Speaker 1: back in. I knew the reality of the situation. I
Speaker 1: say now to guys, because I do a lot of
Speaker 1: talking to marines at the fifteen to twenty year mark,
Speaker 1: the worst thing a marine does is get out too
Speaker 1: early or too late. I did both, and I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't get out with any bitterness. It was just
Speaker 1: well past time when, like when guys you raised as
Speaker 1: captains are starting to get named as battalion commanders, it's
Speaker 1: time for you to go away, And I also believed
Speaker 1: in the organizational development of MARSOC. You know, we were
Speaker 1: a hodgepodge in the early days of MARSOK. You know,
Speaker 1: you were either a prior force guy or you weren't
Speaker 1: right either at Jump and Jump Wings on Dog Bubble
Speaker 1: or you didn't. And there were a number of guys
Speaker 1: who came. So I know this isn't where we are,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go back in time. Sure. You know,
Speaker 1: when MARSOCK commenced, it was formed out of First and
Speaker 1: Second Force Recon Companies, which were the haves, and then
Speaker 1: the Foreign Military Training Unit, which was a Marine Corps
Speaker 1: stood up organization that my buddy Pete Petronzio the second
Speaker 1: Force commander and the G three was the CEO of
Speaker 1: And the way that thing got filled was, hey, everybody
Speaker 1: that speaks the languages coming to Campbell's Union. That's also
Speaker 1: an O three XX infantry guy, and they're now trainers.
Speaker 1: It's sort of I mean, it was much like an
Speaker 1: as FAB, probably realizingly, and a lot of it got
Speaker 1: pulled out of Fourth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was an
Speaker 1: ad hoc unit that got started again, like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: kick ups some marines, we're making a MEP, which then
Speaker 1: turned into everybody kick ups, some marines, we're making an FMTU.
Speaker 1: And so there were some really amazing marines with some
Speaker 1: amazing capabilities and stories, but there all were also were
Speaker 1: some guys where was like, oh, yeah, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: be soft now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, go ahead, and so there you know, the I
Speaker 6: think a critical thing going back to the question about
Speaker 6: how do you stand up a new unit.
Speaker 1: You all need to have a common bloodline. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was a forced guy, but I didn't go to ITC.
Speaker 1: Maybe this guy went to selection, but he didn't go
Speaker 1: to ITC.
Speaker 3: This guy went to selection and ITC.
Speaker 1: This guy never went to any of it because he
Speaker 1: was grandfathered in in two thousand and whatever. The best
Speaker 1: thing that happened, no matter the quality and performance and look,
Speaker 1: some of the dudes that came in in the initial
Speaker 1: draft did unbelievable things in combat in Afghanistan, in Africa,
Speaker 1: in any number of places.
Speaker 3: They burnished the unit's legacy with honor, no question.
Speaker 1: But the best thing is that guys like me retired
Speaker 1: out so that now you see a marcycle lieutenant colonel,
Speaker 1: you know exactly where it came from and how he
Speaker 1: got there and that matters.
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, So you retire and what within a
Speaker 2: month or two Afghanistan is collapsing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I retired on June thirtieth of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and I jumped in an RV with my ten year
Speaker 1: old daughter. And I got that idea from Pat McCauley,
Speaker 1: who was the CSMI socom And I was talking to
Speaker 1: him on day about what are you gonna when you
Speaker 1: retire CSM I'm going to drive around this country that
Speaker 1: I've been defending, you know, with various units for the
Speaker 1: last thirty years. And he was a marine who jumped
Speaker 1: to the army, and I'm gonna go see this countryside.
Speaker 1: And I said, that sounds like an amazing way to
Speaker 1: kind of wash all this out of your system. So
Speaker 1: I rent this little C class RV. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to drive an RV, and I throw my daughter
Speaker 1: in it and we start driving and we drive twelve
Speaker 1: thousand miles and my wife medicine Bozeman and came to
Speaker 1: rest of the way home to Wilmington, North Carolina, where
Speaker 1: I lived. But I was very studiously avoiding Afghanistan because
Speaker 1: you know, I was obsessed with it for years. For
Speaker 1: whatever reason. I'm way more passionate about Afghanistan than Iraq.
Speaker 1: But I I would pick up little bits of data,
Speaker 1: you know, my daughter's sleeping and I'm reading the news
Speaker 1: or whatever in the RV and it would be like, hey,
Speaker 1: Lashkar guy fail to the Taliban. No shit again, you know,
Speaker 1: ninth Commando KANDAC will go down there and sort that out,
Speaker 1: and then it'll happen again next year whatever. And by
Speaker 1: the time I got home on I think August, yeah,
Speaker 1: August fifth, or August, August tenth or twelfth, I don't
Speaker 1: know what it was. I got home and the Taliban
Speaker 1: were at the gates of Cobble, and it had already
Speaker 1: gotten my attention. When they took Mizari Sharief, I was like,
Speaker 1: I took mez what? And so I started paying attention.
Speaker 1: But now I'm starting this new life. And I had
Speaker 1: started writing before I retired, so I kind of had
Speaker 1: a good glide path as a writer. And I was
Speaker 1: going on my very first real life go somewhere and
Speaker 1: write something assignment. And my job was I was going
Speaker 1: to go out to western North Carolina and I was
Speaker 1: going to do some flat fishing in the tuck of
Speaker 1: cig and some other stuff, you know, and anyway, go
Speaker 1: out there and write about it. Okay, cool, Well, we
Speaker 1: were having a hurricane off the coast of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: The outer bands are out there. Mountains are collapsing, like
Speaker 1: entire sides of mountains are falling into the river. Bodies
Speaker 1: are floating down the river. It feels like the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: I'm staying with a buddy of mine who's an author
Speaker 1: and magazine writer who lives in a cabin on top
Speaker 1: of a mountain in the boondocks of North Carolina. He
Speaker 1: has no phone service and he can text when he
Speaker 1: has internet. And I got a message the day before
Speaker 1: I left from this lance corporal in the Reserves who
Speaker 1: had been an Afghan interpreter for seven years before he
Speaker 1: migrated over here and got citizenship and joined the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: And he's like, Sir, my dad is with the Special
Speaker 1: Mission Wing in Cobble and my brother is an interpreter
Speaker 1: with them. My mom and little brother are living there
Speaker 1: with them, and I'm afraid they're going to get killed.
Speaker 1: Can you help me? And I'm like, dude, I'm a
Speaker 1: middle manager, bro, what do you you know? And I'm retired,
Speaker 1: but okay, let me see what I can do. When
Speaker 1: a lance corporal asked lieutenant colonel to do something, you
Speaker 1: figure it out. So I'm thinking on this and I
Speaker 1: started reaching out. My buddy was the new commander at
Speaker 1: the airport, and I do a couple of folks on
Speaker 1: his staff as well, and I knew some other people,
Speaker 1: and so I was just kind of attention. But I
Speaker 1: also was watching this guy, Tom Schumann, who runs patrol
Speaker 1: based Abatte. He's a Marine lieutenant colonel now who'd been
Speaker 1: trying to get his turp out for really ten years,
Speaker 1: but he got real aggressive during the evac so he
Speaker 1: ends up above the fold in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: And you know, Tom's are really really capable, really really thoughtful,
Speaker 1: organized human being. He's also tall and good looking, so
Speaker 1: that helps. But there he is, and he's running this
Speaker 1: amazing guerrilla campaign in the media to try and get
Speaker 1: his guy out. So I call him on Facebook messenger
Speaker 1: phone from the top of a mountain in the middle
Speaker 1: of a hurricane. I've never talked to him in my life,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, hey, dude, I think I got a
Speaker 1: way to get your boy out. And you know. A
Speaker 1: few weeks later we well, a few months later, we
Speaker 1: inked deal to write the book about him and his turp,
Speaker 1: and then we got the family out of the Marine
Speaker 1: lance corporal as well, so that started it. I drove
Speaker 1: back across North Carolina from the far West to where
Speaker 1: I live on the far eastern end. I had my
Speaker 1: daughter with me, and I started calling guys like Mick
Speaker 1: mulroy and hey, man, what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: How are we going to help affect this situation? My
Speaker 1: ten year old learned a whole lot new ways to
Speaker 1: say the F word because they were a day on
Speaker 1: the speaker in the car. And by the time I
Speaker 1: got back, we had organized a group to try and
Speaker 1: do some eback. But the truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: we were ineffective because it was a bunch of old dudes.
Speaker 1: It was like a bunch of colonels and ambassadors and
Speaker 1: you know Mint from the agency. People say there's a
Speaker 1: certain age where you get too old and you forget
Speaker 1: how to do work.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's true. We were willing to work.
Speaker 3: You just forget.
Speaker 1: You don't know how mechanisms and systems work anymore below
Speaker 1: you because you're so used to tasking the systems to
Speaker 1: do things. And so eventually a guy named Jim Webb,
Speaker 1: who you know, Senator Webb's kid and a journalist hooked
Speaker 1: me up with a guy named Joe Sabo, who's you
Speaker 1: know at this point, he's probably forty now. And Joe
Speaker 1: was actually being effective. He was young. He was a
Speaker 1: recently separated captain who was working in tech, and he
Speaker 1: had a bunch of dudes just like him, and they
Speaker 1: were making it happen on the ground. And I talked
Speaker 1: to him and I was good. I was again, let's
Speaker 1: talk about ego, you know, I call him up to
Speaker 1: blow him away with my resume and that of all
Speaker 1: my friends and how important we are and how many
Speaker 1: connections we have.
Speaker 3: And I did just that thing, and he handled me
Speaker 3: like a pro.
Speaker 1: He was like, that's amazing. I never thought I'd be
Speaker 1: talking to guys like you with these amazing resumes. I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, now, who are you? You know?
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, we've got eighty volunteers and you
Speaker 1: hear like a voice off to the side. He's like, sorry,
Speaker 1: a hundred volunteers and you know, we're organizing training and
Speaker 1: we've got a virtual Jock set up and we're organizing
Speaker 1: sticks on the ground so that we can get people
Speaker 1: onto airplanes. And I was like, what do you need?
Speaker 1: We need somebody to bust roadblocks administratively. I was like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: that's the one thing we can do for you. And
Speaker 1: so that way, you know, I and my fellow what
Speaker 1: they started calling gray beards, because that was the last
Speaker 1: time I had this beard. We were like, okay, got it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know the deputy unders and the assistants and the
Speaker 1: you know, vice commanders and whatever on the ground, we
Speaker 1: can help with that. And so that was our utility
Speaker 1: and cobble.
Speaker 2: How long did that process go on with you guys
Speaker 2: the evacuation effort?
Speaker 1: About two weeks. That felt like two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just awake round the clock. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was really hard. I say this now.
Speaker 3: I did before I retired.
Speaker 1: I went to the Intrepid Spirit Clinic for five weeks
Speaker 1: for TBI along with a bunch of other guys. And
Speaker 1: I had, over the course of my career, you know,
Speaker 1: sent many marines to see the psych and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go man, it's totally cool. It's just like seeing a
Speaker 1: physical therapist or whatever else. In my head, I was like,
Speaker 1: for you, yeah, not for me, right, And then a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine I respect very very much from a
Speaker 1: very elite military formation, made it okay. And then I
Speaker 1: went to that program. I still didn't do it. And
Speaker 1: then I went to that program where it was just
Speaker 1: part of the game and you got to do it.
Speaker 1: And so I've kept seeing the same psych ever since.
Speaker 1: And the cob believe that was the only time in
Speaker 1: my life where I called to clinic because like, I
Speaker 1: got some shit I'm going to need to get ahead of.
Speaker 1: Because I had people calling me twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: you know, my brother's getting murdered, or texting me pictures
Speaker 1: of you know, this is my father, he's dead. Can
Speaker 1: you get my uncle out, you know whatever? And it
Speaker 1: was just like I got to where when the little
Speaker 1: ding from the WhatsApp would go off, I would flinch.
Speaker 3: I learned to turn that thing off. I've never turned
Speaker 3: it back on. But it was a rough man.
Speaker 1: It was a rough time, but people did amazing things,
Speaker 1: none more so than the Afghans.
Speaker 2: The book that you worked on that came out of
Speaker 2: that is called Always Faithful People Good.
Speaker 1: That's out now, right, Oh yeah, it's been out since
Speaker 1: twenty two. I had to write one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand words in four months.
Speaker 3: And get that out. Came out for Harper.
Speaker 1: Somebody optioned the movie rights before we even wrote the book.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think anything's ever come of that.
Speaker 1: But it's a good book. It's a good surmount of
Speaker 1: parochial obviously, but it's a really good story. How about that.
Speaker 1: Without evaluating the merit of the writing, it's a great story.
Speaker 2: And with the writing you today do a couple writing
Speaker 2: workshops with veterans, one in North Carolina and another at
Speaker 2: a TBI clinic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do so. I got asked by a therapist
Speaker 1: in Asheville, North Carolina, to start an Eastern Carolina version
Speaker 1: of a program that the North Carolina Veterans Writing Alliance,
Speaker 1: which also operates as Brothers and Sisters like these is
Speaker 1: a bunch of Vietnam nets had started doing a writing
Speaker 1: therapy program at the VA in Asheville. They asked me
Speaker 1: to start it in Eastern Carolina. I could not get
Speaker 1: anybody to sign up for a in person writing thing
Speaker 1: just and I went on a tour. I hit every
Speaker 1: hit the VA, I hit every Veterans organization like, this
Speaker 1: is free, just want ten of you whatever. Nobody's biden.
Speaker 1: So I went on my Instagram account and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm going to do. If anybody wants to
Speaker 1: come on zoom and be part of it, you can.
Speaker 1: And so we're starting our fourth iteration of that on
Speaker 1: October first. It's eight weeks, it's Wednesday nights, it's free
Speaker 1: from I think we were doing it seven to eight thirty.
Speaker 1: I think this time around, I've got a number of
Speaker 1: repeat players, I got a number of new folks. And
Speaker 1: that one is a wide array of people, but it
Speaker 1: is wide open to anybody with a DD two fourteen
Speaker 1: or an active duty person and by active duty I
Speaker 1: mean serving guards person ever. And then I do one
Speaker 1: at the TBI Clinic from whence I came, and that
Speaker 1: is a four week version of the eight week group
Speaker 1: that I do, and that is an all active duty crowd.
Speaker 1: That's the cohorts going through the TBI clinic program. And
Speaker 1: both of them are deeply rewarding for similar and different reasons.
Speaker 2: Is the kind of intent to just help these people
Speaker 2: with whatever their project is, or like, are you trying
Speaker 2: to use writing as sort of I know there's a
Speaker 2: term the VA does when they have you, like, write
Speaker 2: about your experiences some sort of therapy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we call it writing therapy. I tell them all
Speaker 1: the time, I'm not here to make write, make you writers.
Speaker 1: I'm here to make veterans right, because there's people that
Speaker 1: just need to unload stuff. And I've had like again,
Speaker 1: I think one of my active duty groups I had
Speaker 1: and it was a room full of real, live, tough guys.
Speaker 1: Like Actually the battalion that Tom Schuman about whom I
Speaker 1: wrote the book, one of the two people that were
Speaker 1: the book. It was third battying fifth Marines, dark Horse
Speaker 1: in twenty ten, and saying in dark Horse had the
Speaker 1: most injuries of any infantry battalion in the Afghani War.
Speaker 1: They had I think twenty five or twenty six marines killed.
Speaker 1: They had north of one hundred and ten one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty single, double and trimple amputees. They had massive stuff.
Speaker 1: I had a guy who'd been a squad leader in
Speaker 1: that now he's a sertant major. He'd done multiple deployments
Speaker 1: to include that one, and I remember him, you know,
Speaker 1: just crying while he was reading. And it's an environment
Speaker 1: in which you're sitting around a table with raiders and
Speaker 1: seals and recon marines and amphibious friconk Corman and whatever,
Speaker 1: and nobody's looking at that guy weird because he's crying
Speaker 1: because they know exactly where he's coming from and would
Speaker 1: never ever deign to question it. Right. And then the
Speaker 1: guy whose cabin I was in that night on top
Speaker 1: of that mountain and barely able to communicate while trying
Speaker 1: to coordinate the evacuation evacuated, have a family from Cobble.
Speaker 1: That guy's a six foot five two and forty pounds
Speaker 1: country boy, no military history, the exact opposite, probably, But
Speaker 1: one thing he said to me about writing, He's like,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a writer, you got to
Speaker 1: be fearless and vulnerable. And I now think about that
Speaker 1: all the time, and I think about that in leadership,
Speaker 1: I think about that in writing. I think the success
Speaker 1: I've had, what success I've had as a writer, is
Speaker 1: because I took that to heart. You know, two years ago,
Speaker 1: I never would have said on a podcast, yeah, I
Speaker 1: go see it's like every four to six weeks. But
Speaker 1: I say that now because I hope somebody else will.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like Kevin a paid best friend.
Speaker 1: I don't actually have a whole lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about, but you know whatever, we chat and so
Speaker 1: I think fearlessness and vulnerability are critical to authentic leading
Speaker 1: to authentic writing, to authentic much of anything, and that
Speaker 1: that all came out of that time.
Speaker 2: I think we have a viewer question for your worth?
Speaker 2: Uh do you got that one up day?
Speaker 1: Give me one where you mentioned your Instagram?
Speaker 2: Where can people find you on social media?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I've got my personal one, which unless you
Speaker 1: want to see pictures of my dog, you probably don't
Speaker 1: want to follow that one. It's it's at Worth dot
Speaker 1: Parker at w O R t H dot p A
Speaker 1: R k R. But I started one about books, primarily
Speaker 1: about conflict books and war books, certainly ones I think
Speaker 1: that don't get enough attention. But it's at Bookwar So
Speaker 1: it's B zero zero O K W A R And
Speaker 1: I do a lot of book reviews there. I do
Speaker 1: a lot of just talking every now and then I'll
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be like, oh, some young marines need
Speaker 1: to hear this, and then I'll get on there and
Speaker 1: you know, rip for three minutes. But it's it's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get some nice feedback on it and
Speaker 1: whatever there is people can reach out to me there.
Speaker 1: I've had folks hit me up with, you know, literature questions,
Speaker 1: but also to y gosh, you were a marine for
Speaker 1: a long time, what do you think about this?
Speaker 2: It's awesome?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 4: We got a question from easy Is there anything you
Speaker 4: would like to see change in today's military and training
Speaker 4: structure or ethically?
Speaker 1: I think an ethical military is the distinction between us
Speaker 1: and savagery. I think that when you give up that
Speaker 1: aspect of your military force, you are giving up yourself
Speaker 1: and moreover, you're giving up the future of those service members.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, and I'm going to dig deeper
Speaker 1: into it than that the person may have thought, you know,
Speaker 1: they were asking for. You have an obligation as a
Speaker 1: leader to prepare your marine sailor service members what have
Speaker 1: you for the rest of their lives? And if you
Speaker 1: allow them to do things in a time in their
Speaker 1: life when their bodies and minds will allow them to
Speaker 1: that are outside the pale of humanity, they're going to
Speaker 1: contend with that stuff for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: I've had one marine from my platoon kill himself in
Speaker 1: the intervening years since we got back from Iraq. That
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely surprising to me. Tom Schumann, about whom I
Speaker 1: wrote the book, got deep into this, which is how
Speaker 1: Patrol Basi Ibata came to exist. And what he figured
Speaker 1: out is that the two things that are really contributing
Speaker 1: to vets suicide after his rifle company had I think
Speaker 1: three marines killed themselves in one week, is loss of
Speaker 1: connection number one when you get out. And then number
Speaker 1: two something that I think is incredibly pernicious and is
Speaker 1: the I was just a fication of veterans. Well, I
Speaker 1: was only a heavy equipment operator. I wasn't a sealed
Speaker 1: team six door kicker. So clearly I can't have problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah you do, buddy, and it's okay, and there's things
Speaker 1: that exist there for you. But you go back to
Speaker 1: the question they're asking. You have to keep guys within
Speaker 1: the left and right limits of morality and just war.
Speaker 1: And I've studied just war a lot in law school
Speaker 1: and since, because why while you know there's plenty of
Speaker 1: people who are like, it's war, man, you do anything
Speaker 1: you want, take a tumult. Two guys face in moments
Speaker 1: of exigency sure. You know, if you and I are
Speaker 1: fighting for our lives at the moment, I got zero
Speaker 1: problems smashing your head in with a rock. Once you
Speaker 1: are secured and the fight is over, I have all
Speaker 1: the problems in the world with anybody even contemplating that rock.
Speaker 1: And I think so. I do think ethics and morality
Speaker 1: training absolutely matter because there's a real difference between a
Speaker 1: soldier and I use that term with a small s
Speaker 1: in a very generic sense, between being a soldier and
Speaker 1: being a savage.
Speaker 3: And while I realized there's a really dumb T shirt
Speaker 3: culture out.
Speaker 1: There that thinks, you know, savagery is badass, most of
Speaker 1: those people have probably never truly whooped it on and
Speaker 1: they certainly probably never seen somebody's lower jaws slide off
Speaker 1: their face after you shot them a bunch.
Speaker 2: Yah, maybe there's but given the rate of veteran suicides
Speaker 2: we have, I think it's good to have a little
Speaker 2: bit of humility, Like, maybe we're gonna sideline the vet
Speaker 2: bro T shirts for a moment. We might not be
Speaker 2: so bad ass if we're having all these problems, and
Speaker 2: we should address those problems.
Speaker 1: Well, And what even is bad ass?
Speaker 2: Like, what does it mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I say to people all the time, especially when
Speaker 1: I do these therapy groups. You take me in slices.
Speaker 1: I'm anybody you need me to be, stereotype wise, And
Speaker 1: I wrote about this earlier. I'm doing story core for
Speaker 1: NPR tomorrow and they wanted to ask me how I
Speaker 1: identify and I am. Let's see, I'm a straight white
Speaker 1: male with a Southern accent. I have more guns in
Speaker 1: my gun cabinet than I actually know how many I have.
Speaker 1: I write about hunting and fishing for a living. I
Speaker 1: drive a four wheel drive pickup truck, and my main
Speaker 1: hangout partner is a laborator retriever. So that's one dude.
Speaker 1: My wife is an ACLU, former acl YOU lawyer and
Speaker 1: longtime civil libertarian. I'm pretty strongly engaged in civil libertarians.
Speaker 1: Most of the bands I listen to are definitively left
Speaker 1: of center. I am a former or at least i'm
Speaker 1: a licensed attorney myself, you know, Like how I'm anti
Speaker 1: death penalty?
Speaker 3: Like how do you characterize someone?
Speaker 1: And we're in this place in America where characterize someone
Speaker 1: by their whatever their optic is, right, you know, And
Speaker 1: so my only point there is you can't. And so
Speaker 1: when we start talking about what's a badass. Well, the
Speaker 1: most badass marine that I've ever served with, and I
Speaker 1: you know, as a redneck from the South, is a Manhattanite,
Speaker 1: half Jewish guy whose dad was liberated out of Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: And the guy's a straight dynamo and combat He's a
Speaker 1: straight student of the game. There is literally no one
Speaker 1: I would prefer to have by my side, in front
Speaker 1: of me or behind me in a gunfight. He's also
Speaker 1: absolutely a left wing Democrat, and he's a straight killer
Speaker 1: in a gunfight. But there are people who maybe would
Speaker 1: think to be badass, you can't be but one or
Speaker 1: the other, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes us uncomfortable that to have these multiple
Speaker 2: identities within you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think in America we're failing right now
Speaker 1: to understand. And I don't know the why of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know what social ill to ascribe it to,
Speaker 1: and it's probably you know, fifty or sixty social ills,
Speaker 1: but uh, it just the real point is people are complex,
Speaker 1: and you know, as a culture, we've got to address that.
Speaker 1: But within our veterans culture, when we try to simplify everything, well,
Speaker 1: he's worth partner, he's a force riekan guy and a raider. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: he's worth partner. He's a freelance writer, you know, who
Speaker 1: occasionally breaks into tears when he looks his daughter, Like,
Speaker 1: who who is that guy? He's all of those guys, right,
Speaker 1: And so when we try to define ourselves as one
Speaker 1: or the other, we're a incredibly limiting and b putting
Speaker 1: a whole lot of constraints on other people that are
Speaker 1: not effective or helpful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely worth. I really appreciate you sharing your
Speaker 2: experiences with us. Is there any final thoughts, anything that
Speaker 2: we didn't cover that you'd like to get into tonight?
Speaker 1: You know, Like you say, anybody who's interested in writing
Speaker 1: therapy can reach out to me at that book where Instagram.
Speaker 1: I just need an email address and I'll get folks
Speaker 1: on it. But I think, you know, as I said
Speaker 1: in one of my random email or Instagram rants the
Speaker 1: other day, like you're enough, Like whatever your deal is,
Speaker 1: you're enough. If you threw your hand in the air
Speaker 1: and showed up to MEPs and you served three years
Speaker 1: and you never left Fort Irwin, you're enough. Yeah, you'd
Speaker 1: more than ninety nine point five percent of the country.
Speaker 1: And if you got shot at in the process, she
Speaker 1: did more than ninety nine point nine nine nine percent
Speaker 1: of the country as far as serving her art, the
Speaker 1: nation and her interests. And I think the more we
Speaker 1: recognize that and the more we reach out and go,
Speaker 1: that's the unifying factor that we have. You know, I
Speaker 1: probably have more in common with somebody with whom I'm
Speaker 1: diametrically politically opposed who also served than I do with
Speaker 1: somebody who's working on control in the narrative and didn't.
Speaker 1: But that sounds more conspiracy theorists than I mean too.
Speaker 2: We will have some links down the description to these
Speaker 2: different things in your social media that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Worth.
Speaker 2: We'll stick all that down there in the description for
Speaker 2: folks that want to check it out. Everyone, thank you
Speaker 2: for joining us tonight. Thank you Worth for sharing some
Speaker 2: of your evening with us. I know the dog is
Speaker 2: getting the dog questions.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of blown away by that fact.
Speaker 2: What questions.
Speaker 1: I note that there were people out there asking questions
Speaker 1: in real time kind of blows me away. So thank
Speaker 1: you to those people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate whoever wrote that question into us. And
Speaker 2: Worth stay in touch and we'll talk next time.
Speaker 1: Okay. I'll look forward to it.
Speaker 2: All right, We'll see you guys next time as well. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I want to tell all of you today about a
Speaker 2: new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the team
Speaker 2: House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side
Speaker 2: news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter
Speaker 2: is going to be once a week. It's going to
Speaker 2: come into your inbox and you're going to get the
Speaker 2: most current podcasts on eyes On and the Teamhouse and
Speaker 2: whatever's topical or current on the high Side. So it's
Speaker 2: another way for us to get the information out to
Speaker 2: you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you
Speaker 2: never really know what you're gonna get. So this is
Speaker 2: a once a week e mail. It'll slide into your
Speaker 2: inbox and it will have you know the greatest hits
Speaker 2: of that week.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Checking it out.
Speaker 2: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
Speaker 2: slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You go there and you enter into your email list,
Speaker 2: or you enter your email into the little thing on
Speaker 2: the website and you're good to go and that'll be it.
Speaker 2: So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll
Speaker 2: consider signing.
Speaker 1: Up the link.
Speaker 2: The link will also be down in the description if
Speaker 2: you're looking for it. There, and that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot
Speaker 2: kit k I, t Kilo India, Tango dot Com, Backslash,
Speaker 2: Join