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Speaker 1: Special Operations.
Speaker 2: Coberts a Spionage The Team House with your Hopes, Jack
Speaker 2: Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety one
Speaker 1: of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park
Speaker 1: and tonight our guest on the show is Mike Shavery.
Speaker 1: He served in a Third Ranger Battalion as a medic
Speaker 1: where I knew him back in the day, and then
Speaker 1: he went on had a great career as a special
Speaker 1: operations medic, including service in the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit
Speaker 1: and retired as a Sergeant major. We're really excited to
Speaker 1: talk to Mike Tonight. Really been looking forward to this
Speaker 1: episode for quite a while. I got to give a
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Speaker 1: We appreciate them sponsoring the show. Mike, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks guys, and I apologize I couldn't be there
Speaker 3: in person. I really wanted to be, but we just
Speaker 3: moved into the South up in Maine and it's been
Speaker 3: a little crazy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, next time, You're welcome here anytime. So, Mike,
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you what I asked most of
Speaker 1: our guests about their upbringing, if you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about sort of like how you grew up
Speaker 1: and like what that path was that took you towards
Speaker 1: eventually Ranger Battalion.
Speaker 3: Sure, so I didn't come from a military background that
Speaker 3: I didn't have family in the military. For the most part.
Speaker 3: We grew up here in Maine, most of my family
Speaker 3: in a twenty thirty mile radius, but grown up through uh,
Speaker 3: you know, elementary school and and and then beyond. I
Speaker 3: was a kid at Rose Plane Army in the woods
Speaker 3: and had camouflage passed down from friends and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: so it just kind of seemed like it would be interesting.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any knowledge from anybody else or anything
Speaker 3: like that. But and this is you know, obviously preview
Speaker 3: a lot. Even the military back then is not quite
Speaker 3: what we know it is today. So I think I
Speaker 3: didn't really know that I really wanted to do it
Speaker 3: until I was about a sophomore junior in high school
Speaker 3: and I joined the National Guard and did that little
Speaker 3: split off program where I went to basic training in
Speaker 3: between my junior senior year. I signed up to be
Speaker 3: a diesel mechanic, and I thought that's what I wanted
Speaker 3: to do at the time, but finished high school and
Speaker 3: went straight to a I t as a deist of
Speaker 3: mechanic and graduated September six thousand and one, so a
Speaker 3: few days later. That's kind of when the story completely changed.
Speaker 3: But as far as my bringing up, it's very unremarkable.
Speaker 3: I suppose we were very tight as a family, but
Speaker 3: it didn't come for money, didn't come from luxury one bit.
Speaker 3: But you know, we did have a pretty tight family
Speaker 3: and very supportive and they still are. So they're still
Speaker 3: here in Maine. That's mostly why we moved back to
Speaker 3: family again.
Speaker 1: So you are a diesel mechanic when nine to eleven hits,
Speaker 1: what happened for you after that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I got to call pretty much right as
Speaker 3: right after it happened, and I had to report up
Speaker 3: to Bangor for Operation over Legal. I think this was
Speaker 3: kind of before they dubbed it Operation of Legal, but
Speaker 3: they did a gate guard for all the National Guard
Speaker 3: Reserve training sites, and this is the Bangor Internet report
Speaker 3: that we were there.
Speaker 4: Securing, if you will, And so I did that for.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know about a year, So it is
Speaker 3: one hundred and seventy nine day orders and then they'll
Speaker 3: put you on orders again so they don't have to
Speaker 3: pay the full benefits. Looking back, those probably kind of shoddy,
Speaker 3: but nonetheless, one of the first news articles I saw
Speaker 3: back then was, you know, Third Range of Battalion had
Speaker 3: two casualties stone side for Edmonton, like right away helicopter incident,
Speaker 3: and then also you know, they conducted a combat jump
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan. So that was pretty much all the news
Speaker 3: back in the day. So I knew that I wanted.
Speaker 4: To go active. I enjoyed the.
Speaker 3: Active lifestyle, even though it was the National Guard, I
Speaker 3: still enjoyed the uniform stuff and doing all that, and
Speaker 3: so I think as soon as I could get my
Speaker 3: conditional release, I set my goals right on Third Range
Speaker 3: of Battalion specifically. And it's kind of cool warning too,
Speaker 3: but that's like right around the time black Hawk Down
Speaker 3: came out, and it was kind of impressionable at the time.
Speaker 3: So I figured, if I was going to do something,
Speaker 3: I might as well do it right. And so I
Speaker 3: talked to the recruiter about switching over, and I knew
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be a mechanic. I actually wanted
Speaker 3: to be infantry, but they said it wasn't available look
Speaker 3: him back once again. I think I got deep there.
Speaker 3: So they signed me up as a medic, and at
Speaker 3: the time I didn't even want to be a medic.
Speaker 3: They're like, well they're you know, they're with the infantry,
Speaker 3: so you know you could do that. And so I
Speaker 3: went through the whole process and they they always say
Speaker 3: that recruiters kind of stream over. I actually did get
Speaker 3: screwed over, but it worked out. The only way that
Speaker 3: could get me in a contract for medic was to
Speaker 3: say that I was not prior service. So I actually
Speaker 3: went down to Fort Benning again. If I already lead
Speaker 3: a basic training, I agreed to do basic training again
Speaker 3: because I wanted to go active and I thought this
Speaker 3: whole Afghanistan thing is going to be a one year,
Speaker 3: two year thing, and I wanted to get in there.
Speaker 3: But so I went down to repeat basic training again
Speaker 3: and the girls startants came out and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know it was anybody prior service. I raised my
Speaker 3: hand and of course I looked like I was twelve
Speaker 3: years old, and they're like, when did you go through
Speaker 3: basic training? I was like, you know, about a year ago,
Speaker 3: and so they identified that I didn't have to do
Speaker 3: basic training again, they sent me straight to ports things
Speaker 3: and so I kind of dodged that for Yeah, but
Speaker 3: even then, there was really no information about rangers what
Speaker 3: they do, especially the Ranger Regiment. I think everything at
Speaker 3: that time was you know, a ranger meant range. The
Speaker 3: tab regiment was you know that knew they had black
Speaker 3: parraise at the time, and there was no information. I
Speaker 3: think that probably like motivated me even more to join
Speaker 3: the organization. So I kind of set my sights on
Speaker 3: that and every step of the way, whether I was
Speaker 3: at at Hadounteer for Airborne school and his airborne school,
Speaker 3: had to volunteer for RIP and it pretty much just
Speaker 3: worked out so pretty lucky there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thinking keeping in mind the track for combat medics,
Speaker 1: you had to go to your conventional combat medic a
Speaker 1: T after you were blessed off at basic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's sixteen week long.
Speaker 3: And like I said, I didn't even want to be
Speaker 3: a medics so and I didn't know anything about medicine,
Speaker 3: didn't really care for it too much. So did the
Speaker 3: whole sixteen week program. And you know, as we discussed
Speaker 3: going on further as throughout my career, I realized how
Speaker 3: much of a complete waste of time doing the sixteen
Speaker 3: Whiskey program was but thankfully now they've kind of straightened
Speaker 3: it out and it's a pretty good program now. So
Speaker 3: and it was kind of difficult too, because I knew
Speaker 3: I was doing it, and I knew it was kind
Speaker 3: of a waste of time because at that time I
Speaker 3: had learned a little bit about what Stockham was a
Speaker 3: special Operation of combat medic course, and most of the
Speaker 3: people I had talked to that had been or tried
Speaker 3: to go and failed out or whatever we're saying, it
Speaker 3: was like the hardest school they've ever done, and pretty
Speaker 3: much forget everything you're learning now. So I already kind
Speaker 3: of went into the sixty eight Whiskey program thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: just I might have to brain dumple all of this stuff.
Speaker 3: And it was very basic, very you know just I
Speaker 3: think at the time, turn of kits were still taboos.
Speaker 3: So I think my biggest disconcern with all of it
Speaker 3: it wasn't very combat focused. Yeah, I think it was
Speaker 3: even like healthcare specialists at the time, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: a very combat focused.
Speaker 4: And I joined for you know, I point that route
Speaker 4: for a reason.
Speaker 3: But I was a little bit disappointed with that, but
Speaker 3: I think they straightened that out nowadays too. So yeah,
Speaker 3: the whole sixteen weeks was pretty much I was considered
Speaker 3: prior service at a T, so my experience was vastly
Speaker 3: different because that was already AI, a qualified or whatever.
Speaker 3: So I had weekends off and we're allowed to wear
Speaker 3: civilian clothes. So it was the experience of it really
Speaker 3: wasn't that. I met a lot of great friends that
Speaker 3: I still talk to today on a weekly basis. So
Speaker 3: it was a pretty good experience that as far as
Speaker 3: that's concerned.
Speaker 5: When you say that the course wasn't that good, I'm
Speaker 5: assuming it's because they were preparing you for any job
Speaker 5: in a hospital that you could have in the military.
Speaker 5: So you know, you like some time in labs, you know,
Speaker 5: with labs, with radiology, with a lot of stuff that
Speaker 5: just was not applicable. Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is correct.
Speaker 3: And I think a big problem that it had, and
Speaker 3: you know, I think that they might still have to
Speaker 3: deal with today, is the credentialing piece.
Speaker 4: So you have to be at least an anti basics and.
Speaker 3: So I think that's a good thing, but it's also
Speaker 3: a bad thing because you know, a medic Combat Medican
Speaker 3: Army is well beyond anti basic. But I think the
Speaker 3: reason why they wanted to do that is as folks
Speaker 3: transition out of the military, uh, you know, they were
Speaker 3: going on unemployment and you know, they had nothing to
Speaker 3: really fall back on, and so having this certification I
Speaker 3: think kind of helped them out a little bit. But
Speaker 3: the problem is that the anti basic you can't really
Speaker 3: do a whole lot rather than wise and so we
Speaker 3: had to train up for several weeks to pass an exam,
Speaker 3: and as soon as that was done, it was like, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll forget all that. You know, here's combat medicine, which
Speaker 3: was a little bit better than anti basic. So I
Speaker 3: think that the way it was structured was a little
Speaker 3: bit ineffective. And you know, if I was starting major
Speaker 3: of the world, I used to say when I was
Speaker 3: in uniform, I would have probably liked to have seen
Speaker 3: the six eight risky combat medic kind of mirror the infantry.
Speaker 3: So you're going down there, it's oh, sit, here's your rifle,
Speaker 3: because even as the combat medic, my rifle is you know,
Speaker 3: it's my lifeline there. So you know, you got your right.
Speaker 3: So here's your aid bag and you're integrated with the infantry,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a really big problem nowadays because
Speaker 3: they graduated sixty was, of course, and they haven't shot
Speaker 3: a rifle a month and they haven't maneuvered at all
Speaker 3: with the infantrymen that they're now potentially deploying with, and
Speaker 3: I see that as a huge capability gap. Yeah, so,
Speaker 3: I you know, those are all the things I was thinking,
Speaker 3: you know, while I was there, and also looking back,
Speaker 3: I see that as a massive problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you finished that and then it's off to
Speaker 1: Airborne School and RIP.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 3: So we were training up. I did have Airborne. I
Speaker 3: have to think back as several years ago, but I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure I had Airborne locked into my contract. And
Speaker 3: at the time we had AKO and I pulled up
Speaker 3: AKO and it said I was destined for port Hoods.
Speaker 3: So I was. I was ready to jump out of
Speaker 3: window at that time. But they had this little group
Speaker 3: that could volunteer for RIP. So I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: I volunteered for RIP at I think I volunteered at
Speaker 3: Airborne school, but we were like preparing for it at
Speaker 3: the citate was forced. There was cadre there that we're
Speaker 3: familiar with it, so that definitely helped us out a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 1: So when when we were catching up the other day,
Speaker 1: we kind of realized that we probably went through the
Speaker 1: same RIP course in two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we did, and it was
Speaker 3: looking back, it was a pretty rigorous course. I think
Speaker 3: we only had twenty five twenty six people make it,
Speaker 3: but it was it was pretty rugged. I think it's
Speaker 3: relative because at the time, I don't think I did anything.
Speaker 4: Hard, but you know, going through that, it was it
Speaker 4: was quite a tough. That's so glad they've changed it now.
Speaker 3: Now it's more of an assessment selection, so you're learning
Speaker 3: something because even in rip, you know, I went through
Speaker 3: and it was great, and I finally got my tanbaret
Speaker 3: and put on my Ranger painties with my little teeny legs,
Speaker 3: but I really didn't know how to be a ranger.
Speaker 3: And so you know, in today's uh, you know, rafts
Speaker 3: one and two, I think they're vastly more prepared than
Speaker 3: we were at the time. Yeah back then, and I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people even use rips his way
Speaker 3: to get to Airborne school. So I know, for facts,
Speaker 3: some dudes were like well, now that I'm here, you know,
Speaker 3: they'd already got the jump wings or like I quit
Speaker 3: on day one, like what a massive misused of uh
Speaker 3: you know, floot or whatever.
Speaker 4: But that was a lot of folks and in the first.
Speaker 3: Few days I think we got released one hundred probably,
Speaker 3: but there's some notable folks that were in our class,
Speaker 3: so I think that's why we probably were in the
Speaker 3: same plat.
Speaker 1: I So get to Ranger Battalion that summer, tell us
Speaker 1: about what, well, no, I'm sorry, you have to go
Speaker 1: to first. You have to you got to go to
Speaker 1: Soccam before that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Balckham was h Man. That was something else.
Speaker 3: So you know, you're at RIP and everything is very indoctrinated,
Speaker 3: no fund and tender, but it's it's very you know, Ranger,
Speaker 3: you're running around, you're yelling, you're quantity easier. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's very very strict. And then you get to sock
Speaker 3: them and like the first day I'm snapping to break
Speaker 3: rest and you know, we had some stef instructors and
Speaker 3: stuff and they're just like whoa you here.
Speaker 4: It's quite a culture chain.
Speaker 3: But we also had masters Gardant Black, Perry Black retired
Speaker 3: now a wonderful human being. So he would be looking,
Speaker 3: you know, from the back to see how we're reacting,
Speaker 3: because he was extremely strict. I was going through the course,
Speaker 3: so it was kind of like it's like having a
Speaker 3: dad that's that's that's really disciplined, and then I'm mom,
Speaker 3: that's laid back. So the guys, you know, I agree
Speaker 3: with the way they were. I think that there's a
Speaker 3: time and a place for the rank and the structure,
Speaker 3: and when you're in you know, this this fire hose
Speaker 3: of a medical course where you're there to learn. It
Speaker 3: was a lot easier to learn when it was a
Speaker 3: little bit more of a laugh. Right.
Speaker 1: SOCCA is like very very academically rigorous, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's one of the it's the hardest I
Speaker 3: think to this day, minus probably static on jump Master.
Speaker 3: It's it's one of the hardest like mentally courses I've
Speaker 3: ever done. So and it's very like you know, math
Speaker 3: and pharmacology. And I think the big difference between that
Speaker 3: and it's the sixty eight whisky course too, is the
Speaker 3: sixty eight whiskey course is more of an algorithm, pretty
Speaker 3: much like I have massive memorage. This is what I
Speaker 3: do for it, but you get to stock them, and
Speaker 3: it's more of they teach you how to think, so
Speaker 3: you get that prolely a touch of the prolonged field
Speaker 3: care and you know you're putting a tourniquet on because
Speaker 3: you're trying to preserve that blood and you're trying to
Speaker 3: keep them warm, and this is why you're doing it.
Speaker 3: Versus sixty whiskey force. That was more of you know,
Speaker 3: you do your treatment and move on. So it really
Speaker 3: forced its folks to think way down the line instead
Speaker 3: of just what your with some furniture faith and I
Speaker 3: think I really appreciated that.
Speaker 5: And and trauma care was going through a lot of
Speaker 5: changes at that time too.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, it was, Oh, it's unbelievable. It was so
Speaker 3: Like I mentioned before, tourniquits were taboo. I did the
Speaker 3: combat life stave a course when I was in the
Speaker 3: National Guard, and it was like elevates your arm and
Speaker 3: put ice on it, and then it was like and
Speaker 3: then maybe a tourniquit and then if you put a
Speaker 3: tourniquite on, prepared to lose the limb. And we've gone
Speaker 3: so far from that. And I think, you know, the
Speaker 3: early globe warrant Sarism, plus you know Somalia, all the
Speaker 3: stuff that happened there, you know, in the development of
Speaker 3: the Committee of Tuatriplec and and then really saturating the
Speaker 3: special operations community with good medicine and medics who can
Speaker 3: also train organizations and training within themselves I think made
Speaker 3: the biggest difference. But I think that was probably the
Speaker 3: biggest contributing factor was you know, in throughout the years
Speaker 3: of ge what we've seen these organizations given back to
Speaker 3: that Committee of Tea Tripacy and the Joint Trauma System
Speaker 3: to just constantly, constantly develop medicine. And I think it's remarkable.
Speaker 3: And that's even just calmb that medicine. You know, we
Speaker 3: haven't even touched into like you know, orthosurgery, damage control, susptation,
Speaker 3: you know, sure upside about that later, but we learned
Speaker 3: so much more about those things too. So it was
Speaker 3: it was going through a period where literally a lot
Speaker 3: of the things I learned in the Six State Whisky
Speaker 3: course it was absolete. And it's you people. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you know, now we've transitioned to this medicine which was
Speaker 3: it was so new at that time. But it's good,
Speaker 3: it's good that it got put into that program with
Speaker 3: listed medics and PA's that already had that experience, and
Speaker 3: it definitely helped out.
Speaker 1: So you make it through the course. Now you're going
Speaker 1: back to the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. You're leaving the
Speaker 1: SF world behind for a while. Yeah what uh so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us about that culture shock a bit like landing,
Speaker 1: you know, in in range for battalion and you're a medic,
Speaker 1: so you're you know, what were the some of the
Speaker 1: stupid terms we used to use, like load density, moss
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I mean, obviously a critical part of
Speaker 1: the machine, but you're not infantry. You're assigned to an
Speaker 1: infantry platoon and doing you know, the same job up
Speaker 1: until someone gets hurt, right confuned. Just tell us about
Speaker 1: that from your perspective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I actually had a great experience there. As
Speaker 3: soon as I came over to the right, back to
Speaker 3: third Battalion. I had great mentors right away, right away, him,
Speaker 3: you know, he's still in uniform, great great person, you know,
Speaker 3: John Deetro was later on, but there were some really
Speaker 3: good enlisted folks right away that just kind of scowed
Speaker 3: me up because infantry was like, you know, I was
Speaker 3: a non tab specialist without a combat scroll, so they
Speaker 3: didn't you know, they either know you're a medica or
Speaker 3: they don't, but you know, they kind of give you
Speaker 3: a hard time there. But the most part, infantry, depending
Speaker 3: on your attitude, would just scoop you right up and
Speaker 3: it wouldn't really be too much of a problem. So
Speaker 3: I didn't didn't really see too many issues there, but
Speaker 3: I was pretty thankful for the mentorship. And I think
Speaker 3: medics too, there's not really a lot of that competition.
Speaker 3: We really just kind of want to absorb off each other.
Speaker 3: So as soon as I got there, I got, you know,
Speaker 3: a thousand pound brain, people like John May, Caleb Twilocker,
Speaker 3: you know, all like really really good medics that have
Speaker 3: gone on into you phenomenal things, and so you know,
Speaker 3: you're working with people like that, and it just kind
Speaker 3: of helps with that, like that anxiety of being in
Speaker 3: a new organization and and and doing a new thing,
Speaker 3: because you know, like I talked about before, like now
Speaker 3: I knew how to get medic, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a basic medic. I didn't I hadn't deployed, an't
Speaker 3: done anything yet. I know it's a soccer medic And
Speaker 3: now I kind of had to learn how to be
Speaker 3: a ranger because Rip didn't really prepare me for that
Speaker 3: and Stockham definitely didn't prepare me for that. So now
Speaker 3: I kind of got to figure out, what's the ranger,
Speaker 3: what's this? What do we do? And so there was
Speaker 3: a little bit of crash fork there. And unfortunately as
Speaker 3: soon as I got there, they're like, you know, you're
Speaker 3: you're deploying to blog, So I didn't really have a
Speaker 3: whole lot of time to figure it out.
Speaker 4: But my reception was was actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell us about that deployment and you know,
Speaker 1: becoming a real deal ranger medic what the job entails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that one was actually pretty lethargic because I
Speaker 3: was really new. So I went to bolog to be
Speaker 3: like an outstation, the Italian age station medic or whatever,
Speaker 3: because at that time I hadn't done for Senior Valve's
Speaker 3: about like nothing. So I went over there. But I
Speaker 3: was lucky enough to be around people like Colonel Cottwall
Speaker 3: another great Americans, so I continue to learn. But on
Speaker 3: the flip side, there was the infantry, so there was
Speaker 3: people that you know, I just met. I was kind
Speaker 3: of figuring out you know, this guy's infantry Pullton sergeant,
Speaker 3: Like what does that mean? And I was intimidated at
Speaker 3: the time because you know, this guy's got like two
Speaker 3: combat jumps and a combat scroll and I'm like, to me,
Speaker 3: I'm a brand new dude, so like, I don't. To me,
Speaker 3: that's like the whole of Grail, Like what you know
Speaker 3: nowadays is whatever. But so I didn't really know, like
Speaker 3: how do I act around these people? Have it because
Speaker 3: I got to gain their trust. Everybody talks about being
Speaker 3: a medic. You got to get their trust. If you
Speaker 3: don't have their trust, you're really not the medic and
Speaker 3: you'll find out really quick. So there was a little
Speaker 3: bit of that anxiety there figuring that out. And you
Speaker 3: had mentioned low density before. I really kind of hung
Speaker 3: really close to like the fisters and the como guys,
Speaker 3: and because we just had a lot in common because
Speaker 3: and infantry comes back and cleaning weapons and you know,
Speaker 3: doing the commo stuff or gym whatever, we have more
Speaker 3: work to do. So it's just kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: hanging out with people like that who are organic to
Speaker 3: the organization but kind of separated from everybody else. So
Speaker 3: I made a lot of lifelong friends that way. So
Speaker 3: but it was pretty good and for the most part,
Speaker 3: even being a specialist, I went to the board while
Speaker 3: I was deployed on that the point, so I think
Speaker 3: it were just happening, you know, one thing after another,
Speaker 3: and so pass the board and now I'm starting and
Speaker 3: they start, well I wasn't starting yet, but I was promotable,
Speaker 3: but they start treating you that way. So I thought
Speaker 3: that was pretty remarkable too. It was very professional and
Speaker 3: I really liked that. So I didn't go through this
Speaker 3: whole hazing thing. I don't know if it's my personality
Speaker 3: or you know, I'm not really sure because I know
Speaker 3: for sure some people did. But I had a pretty
Speaker 3: good experience while I was in ballade.
Speaker 1: Oh go ahead, I was just going to say that.
Speaker 1: I think part of that is that the medics really
Speaker 1: are sort of like it's like a different level of
Speaker 1: professionalism as opposed to breaking in a brand new rangeer
Speaker 1: private is like an E three, Like you guys have
Speaker 1: kind of demonstrated your capacity to learn a little bit more,
Speaker 1: and it's a bit of a more adult environment, like rightly, So.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's that's definitely true.
Speaker 3: We did have a few outlier medics who somehow made
Speaker 3: it through the stalking force and then struggled learning how
Speaker 3: to be a ranger. And they know, they did really
Speaker 3: well in the third Infantry Division or at eighty second,
Speaker 3: and we kind of found ways to get them to
Speaker 3: move on, but they just won a good fit. But
Speaker 3: I think when people were a good fit, they stuck around,
Speaker 3: did really well. You had mentioned Tony Moore, you know,
Speaker 3: on our pre call here, another big mental of mine
Speaker 3: at the time. He probably doesn't know it, but you know,
Speaker 3: us younger medics, we looked up to those guys, and
Speaker 3: I was very fortunate to have a lot of folks
Speaker 3: to look up to, luckily so. And also, you know,
Speaker 3: my ADHD is out of control, so you guys are
Speaker 3: just gonna have to look at that. While I was
Speaker 3: in Ballade, took PT tests and you know, came back
Speaker 3: for Rangers school after that.
Speaker 4: So I got sent home really from.
Speaker 3: My first deployment just kind of flow anyway, because like
Speaker 3: I said, I was kind of dying age station, just
Speaker 3: kind of like a fill in medic or whatever. So
Speaker 3: I came back and went straight into ranger school. So
Speaker 3: I'd been in the Army only knowing schools at that
Speaker 3: time right and got thrown right into had knew nothing
Speaker 3: about Ranger school, and nobody pulled me aside and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is what to expect on it for like nothing,
Speaker 3: you go back PT tests, you're going back to for
Speaker 3: your anger When you was at that time in my life,
Speaker 3: it was just one thing after another when.
Speaker 5: You were working at the age station. I'm curious because
Speaker 5: you mentioned the e MT basic, the MTB training, which
Speaker 5: is basically just training people to stay light, scoop and
Speaker 5: sweep right and uh and combat medics can and medics
Speaker 5: of all you know in all branches and especially more
Speaker 5: isolate stations will do a lot more than even an
Speaker 5: EMTP will be allowed to do.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, So it's this.
Speaker 5: Thing of being overtrained and underqualified. Were you surprised by
Speaker 5: some of the stuff that like you were training in
Speaker 5: and some of the stuff that you were doing.
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Speaker 5: But like I like when I was a named Cormant, surprise,
Speaker 5: like getting a shipboard and doing shoot yours and like
Speaker 5: you know, taking out people's toenails, and in combat it's
Speaker 5: even more so, you know when you're seeing gunshot wounds
Speaker 5: and things like that. So like, were you surprised by
Speaker 5: some of the stuff one that you learned at soccerm
Speaker 5: and then to what they actually had you doing out
Speaker 5: in the field or teaching you how to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's soking for They did a phenomenal
Speaker 3: job preparing us for that through the years of life
Speaker 3: tissue training, simulations and stuff like that. And also we
Speaker 3: did rotations at major tronasatilities. So I went down Jacksonville,
Speaker 3: Florida and did everything you can imagine deliver babies. Did
Speaker 3: you know trauma on the roadside? Did trauma uh in
Speaker 3: the O R so in the er? So you know,
Speaker 3: seeing a real human being with these injuries really kind
Speaker 3: of helps subdue your emotions for that. And then as
Speaker 3: you transition into an organization where you're expected due to
Speaker 3: this full time, that's kind of like that's what I
Speaker 3: was expecting to see, when really that's kind of like
Speaker 3: the one percent of what I did see. So a
Speaker 3: lot of what I saw was, you know, my feet
Speaker 3: are messed up, my back, do you have any you
Speaker 3: know toward all you know, So it's kind of like
Speaker 3: a little bit different in learning that dynamic of ametic
Speaker 3: is way more than just trauma. But when we do
Speaker 3: trauma yet to be phenomenal at it. Uh, that other
Speaker 3: stuff really.
Speaker 4: Became my hyper focus, I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think the beauty of even combat medics
Speaker 3: depending on where they're assigned and uh range of medics.
Speaker 3: For sure, if you're trained to do something, you can
Speaker 3: do it underneath you know, a PA or physician. You know.
Speaker 4: We had Ray Stirling, John.
Speaker 3: Dietro from a while, we had some Ethan Miles, all
Speaker 3: people that are you know, very well known in the community. Uh,
Speaker 3: and they would teach us and feel comfortable with us
Speaker 3: doing it. So that yeah, it was a little overwhelming
Speaker 3: at first, but you know, as you get more comfortable
Speaker 3: and you do it through repetition, it becomes a little
Speaker 3: bit no no, no.
Speaker 1: So you go to ranger school because you're a combat medic,
Speaker 1: you're going to learn this ship too. Sure after after
Speaker 1: getting out of there, do you go to a platoon
Speaker 1: At that point yeah.
Speaker 3: So the day I graduated and came back up to
Speaker 3: the battalion, I was approached by the Recue. He was
Speaker 3: a squad leader at the time. Eventually the been target
Speaker 3: and I was directed to try out for the Reky platoons.
Speaker 3: So I went straight from Rangers Deployment, Rangers school pretty
Speaker 3: much straight into the Recuy platoon. So, and I think
Speaker 3: that was around the time it was it was first
Speaker 3: being developed. So yeah, Ray Schnyder was in there for
Speaker 3: a little bit. So I went in there and kind
Speaker 3: of just started for nothing. So that was my first button.
Speaker 5: Recky platoons were you mentioned it's just get started. Wrecky
Speaker 5: platweens work were a pretty new thing around that.
Speaker 3: Time, right, Yeah, they were. And I think in our case,
Speaker 3: you know, of course I'm biased, but sometimes that you know,
Speaker 3: I think some of the Wrekkie and maybe the other
Speaker 3: battalions it was a place where they may have put underperformers,
Speaker 3: But for ours, between our Wrekky and Sniper, I think
Speaker 3: that was one of our top And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that I was not the best medic, I can tell
Speaker 3: you nowhere near the bethemetic. But I could run and
Speaker 3: I could rock but some of the folks that we
Speaker 3: had in Reki have gone on to do some phenomenal
Speaker 3: things even today.
Speaker 1: I was there. I was there when they stood up
Speaker 1: the Reki section and I was in sniper section, and uh,
Speaker 1: same story, man, I was nothing special. I was not
Speaker 1: the best sniper by any stretch of the imagination, but
Speaker 1: around incredibly talented people. And actually I was talking to somebody,
Speaker 1: uh in the rekie section today who reached out to me.
Speaker 1: Do you remember Royce?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1: Still a good man, funny funny catching up with him.
Speaker 1: A lot of good guys in in Reki, man, a
Speaker 1: lot of really good cats that, as you point out,
Speaker 1: went out and they're still doing amazing things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and you know they still are doing amazing things.
Speaker 3: So it was another eye opener too. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd done this medicine thing and I thought it was great,
Speaker 3: and I was just kind of figuring out how to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 4: And then now they're like, you know, how, this is
Speaker 4: how you do it in this environment.
Speaker 3: And also here's camera equipment, here is this, and there's
Speaker 3: technical stuff and so it's just a new trade and
Speaker 3: I enjoyed with it. It worked with my nerd side
Speaker 3: quite a bit. I struggled a little bit with i
Speaker 3: think forming relationships with some of the folks on the teams,
Speaker 3: because I think they had all come from prestigious teams
Speaker 3: and squads throughout the battalion, and I'm like this new
Speaker 3: guy that was nothing about anything. So I kind of
Speaker 3: struggled to see where I would kind of fit within
Speaker 3: the Rekie teams. But eventually it all work out pretty good.
Speaker 5: And then when you were there, because they are so small,
Speaker 5: were you basically a wreck a troop and then had
Speaker 5: the initial duties of being the medic.
Speaker 3: Or was yeah, yeah, it wasn't so fortunate to just
Speaker 3: be a medic.
Speaker 4: So we had to do just pretty much.
Speaker 3: Everything everybody else did. You did, you know, the calm
Speaker 3: and stuff, the jungle two nine or two, setting up antennas,
Speaker 3: sending stuff over h p W, which is all like
Speaker 3: ARKA stuff, right because you use the A tax system
Speaker 3: and do uh everything of what we were trying to
Speaker 3: do back then. But but it was it was very good.
Speaker 3: I think what I really liked too, is they invested
Speaker 3: a lot with you know, the platoons started at the
Speaker 3: team stargeants that were there at the time, They invested
Speaker 3: a lot in our training.
Speaker 4: They got us pulled away from.
Speaker 3: Doing you know, a lot of the battalion common tasks
Speaker 3: that we would have to do, and they really made
Speaker 3: our training paramount And we did t SC training with
Speaker 3: the cameras, we did the you know, the tracking course,
Speaker 3: like we we went all in vehicle in addiction stuff
Speaker 3: and if there was a chance we would do it
Speaker 3: on our deployment, we were doing it here. And once
Speaker 3: again I was fortunate enough to have n c O
Speaker 3: s that we paid out there until we you know,
Speaker 3: couldn't mess it up and and so I was very
Speaker 3: thankful for that.
Speaker 4: So it was it was a pretty it was a
Speaker 4: really good experience.
Speaker 1: So what was the next apployment?
Speaker 3: Uh, all right, so Afghanistan? So I deployed Afghanistan with Reki.
Speaker 3: We were split between Salerno and Bob Shapman.
Speaker 4: We did that. Yeah, yeah, so that was the next apployment.
Speaker 3: It was kind of you know, you know, as w
Speaker 3: Reki back then, I think we were kind of trying
Speaker 3: to find where we fit. We did TTRS, which I
Speaker 3: thought was was pretty cool. So we would go out
Speaker 3: there and looking back now, I can't believe how crazy
Speaker 3: that it downs, but you know, we would get into
Speaker 3: the car, not even up arms. It's got tin of windows.
Speaker 3: And you know, I had a beard. I was darkish anyway,
Speaker 3: and I tell you, with the full beard, I fit
Speaker 3: the part. But then we had some folks that did not.
Speaker 3: But we're out there doing, you know, a wrecky in
Speaker 3: a car in the middle of traffic, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: maybe they knew we were. I don't know, but looking back,
Speaker 3: you know, we made it work. So we have some great,
Speaker 3: great folks that just pulled together.
Speaker 1: Do you remember, Mike, there was one kid. He was
Speaker 1: so young he couldn't grow a beard, so he bought
Speaker 1: like a Hollywood beard that glued into place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And when you say CTRS, when you say CTRS, you're
Speaker 5: talking about close target reconnaissance, right, so just to give the.
Speaker 3: Leaders, oh yeah, sorry, I forget about that. So we'd
Speaker 3: either do aerial rekis or we do a CTR or
Speaker 3: the vehicles and stuff. And it was also good too,
Speaker 3: because we were pretty much unsupervised from the battalion. You know,
Speaker 3: we had our heath sergeants or whatever, and you kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, dealt with that. And I thought that was
Speaker 3: good too, because that provided us with a little lot
Speaker 3: of that top cover, we could really focus on what
Speaker 3: we had to do.
Speaker 4: But like I said, the missions were somewhat slow.
Speaker 3: And it is what it is for the time and
Speaker 3: where we're at, so but it's still a good experience.
Speaker 1: I remember you guys working the isolation piece too for
Speaker 1: the direct action missions.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. We would go and do you know near
Speaker 3: Syde Park started security, almost basic ranger school type stuff.
Speaker 3: A lot of our guys were trained with Preacher. I
Speaker 3: did breaching stuff as well, you know, and then eventually
Speaker 3: we had Chane Eynes, so we'd go in there and
Speaker 3: do you know sniper. We'd even sometimes go up there
Speaker 3: with you guys, especially me as a medics sometimes I'd
Speaker 3: find myself hang out with you guys anyway. But so
Speaker 3: we did a lot of that, just locking the printer
Speaker 3: down and doing black side securities stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So now you're really warning how to be a Ranger
Speaker 1: in combat. Also, all of these new skills that are
Speaker 1: coming into Ranger Battalion for the first time. I mean,
Speaker 1: cruising around in low visibility vehicles with beards is not
Speaker 1: something that rangers did up until this point, right, it
Speaker 1: was antithetical.
Speaker 3: I think a year and a half before that, I
Speaker 3: had a high end tight and Stein boots, so that
Speaker 3: was it was very different. But I think that could
Speaker 3: probably be attributed to I think Star Major Birds at
Speaker 3: the time. I think he really instituted a lot of
Speaker 3: things within the regiment. And like I said before, we
Speaker 3: had a lot of folks. We even by the time
Speaker 3: I got there, had a couple of deployments and years
Speaker 3: in battalions, So it it was it worked out really well.
Speaker 5: How did how did the line not necessarily the guys
Speaker 5: on the line, but for instance, also the senior enlisted
Speaker 5: I think you know who had been there since the
Speaker 5: late nineties and then all of a sudden, like you
Speaker 5: long hairs are out there running a lot like being
Speaker 5: hooligans and brigands. Like did you guys get pushed back
Speaker 5: from like particularly like the senior enlisted on the lines.
Speaker 3: For sure, Yeah, especially when you're a state side. So
Speaker 3: we did the It was like ninety days before we
Speaker 3: would deploy, we'd have cirt throwing our beards and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it would be so much like and looking back,
Speaker 3: it's like, dude, like I didn't make it up, Like
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm just doing told you, I don't know
Speaker 3: why you're going me, but it was I.
Speaker 1: Remember getting kicked out of the the on post gym
Speaker 1: on Fort Benning. Yeah, like you like that, get the
Speaker 1: fuck out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We'd come back from a range and we'd be
Speaker 3: in the you know, the uniform beds with the bell
Speaker 3: throw up here or whatever, and no name tags or nothing.
Speaker 3: You have a beard, and you know some of the
Speaker 3: conventional folks would your commander.
Speaker 4: No, you didn't shave, and I got like three months
Speaker 4: of beer, right right, yes, you know I.
Speaker 5: Got Yeah, it's my four o'clock shadow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had a little bit of that, but not
Speaker 3: too much. Definitely battalion there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I imagine because there were still like that's early
Speaker 5: enough that there were still rangers there, especially like senior
Speaker 5: guys who felt that, uh like patrol based activities was
Speaker 5: the ranger mission and that they were the best light
Speaker 5: inventory in the world and all the c QB and
Speaker 5: all this other stuff was bullshit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think as a medic, you know, we're
Speaker 3: we're very thought provoking for the most part. So you know,
Speaker 3: if you're going to give me, if you're going to
Speaker 3: tell me what I need to do, or you're gonna
Speaker 3: tell me.
Speaker 4: This is a standard.
Speaker 3: I immediately exumin it and try to like exploit it
Speaker 3: and figure out why that's the standard what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: And there was some instances where we had a start
Speaker 3: Major I think he was the first hard and then
Speaker 3: became the star Major Glass name rhymes with Pelek, And
Speaker 3: so I'd be in like the field uniform with the
Speaker 3: field authorized field boots and my locker is in the
Speaker 3: headquarters h A C three seventy five.
Speaker 4: So I got, like, you know, my boots on because
Speaker 4: we were.
Speaker 3: Doing tracking school and they told us, you know where
Speaker 3: non standard boots or whatever, and he's like, now You've
Speaker 3: got to change the boots. And I'm like, put my
Speaker 3: Like my car is right there. I'm just wearing these
Speaker 3: boots to my car and I'm in the field. Had
Speaker 3: to change into Bellville's. So I get the Bellville's on,
Speaker 3: I put my non standard boots in the car, drive
Speaker 3: out to the site, and put my other boots on.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of things like that that it's like,
Speaker 3: why is this the thing? I don't really know? And
Speaker 3: I feel like people kind of brought more hate to
Speaker 3: the Record cartoon because of that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 3: I don't think most of us cared. Honestly, I don't
Speaker 3: really care to have a beer going deploy gets caught
Speaker 3: my chin strap and yeah, I was playing with it,
Speaker 3: so I don't really care for it too much, but
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Nick was our first sergeant at the time.
Speaker 3: Yes he was, And that was some of it. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the time and place for that. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess that was wrong. I shouldn't have put my field
Speaker 3: boots on twenty feet in my car. So I lived
Speaker 3: the rest of my career that way.
Speaker 5: And then how did you guys not end up hitting it?
Speaker 5: Because because this is after my time, so I had heard,
Speaker 5: and you guys can correct this. That snipers a little
Speaker 5: salty because Recky got stood up and then basically took
Speaker 5: the sniper's only mission in addition to all their others
Speaker 5: and their gear and whatnot, like that didn't happen.
Speaker 3: No, I think now, I think we had a really
Speaker 3: good dynamic, and and me as a medic, obviously snipers
Speaker 3: don't have a medics, so I would cover down on
Speaker 3: their training, and even while we were deployed, I'd hang
Speaker 3: out with them.
Speaker 4: So I don't think we really had it.
Speaker 3: I don't think you could have told the difference, to
Speaker 3: be honest, to grough out there in training event, other
Speaker 3: than you know, Jack being out there with a long gun,
Speaker 3: and maybe I didn't.
Speaker 4: You couldn't really tell the difference.
Speaker 1: And over time I believe it got like more formalized
Speaker 1: into like a single company or like they were much
Speaker 1: closer together snipers and RECKI yep, it did.
Speaker 3: It became. I think it was after my time, but
Speaker 3: it became like that special people team or specialify company
Speaker 3: or whatever. I don't I'm not sure where they're at now,
Speaker 3: but yeah, no, I think that probably helped a little too.
Speaker 1: Thinking back on it, I don't remember any any like
Speaker 1: bad blood about it, because the the reason why it
Speaker 1: happened was because r RD was getting sucked up into
Speaker 1: all the missions and that left the battalions without a
Speaker 1: reconnaissance element, and so the battalion WRECKI eyes that Mike's
Speaker 1: talking about were stood up to kind of like act
Speaker 1: as this is not a technical term, but like scouts
Speaker 1: for the battalion like to go out, you know, ten
Speaker 1: kilometers ahead of them, recont targets and then come back
Speaker 1: and report intel. Is like the most basic way I
Speaker 1: could describe it, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, and we did it
Speaker 3: a few times. I stayed a few times, but you know,
Speaker 3: we did it a lot. But I think at the
Speaker 3: time it made sense. And you know, as we moved
Speaker 3: on through g a lot, I think it they had
Speaker 3: to change kind of their focus a little bit, get
Speaker 3: a little more technical, TFT and you know, and all
Speaker 3: that stuff. But I think it definitely had a place.
Speaker 3: But it was. To be honest, it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: So you get back from that deployment back to battalion
Speaker 1: and what's the next thing.
Speaker 3: I think that's when I hit PLDC Warriorly. Of course,
Speaker 3: one of those that came back to some just knocked
Speaker 3: out school after school and it just continued and then
Speaker 3: deployment again. So our op tempo was pretty aggressive back then.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you remember. But yeah, I think I knocked
Speaker 3: out a couple of the regular Army schools because that
Speaker 3: was already behind at this point. I was. I was
Speaker 3: field boarded while I was deployed, and I actually pinned
Speaker 3: sergeant while I was in ranger school, and then when
Speaker 3: I graduated and went straight to you know, Wrecky did
Speaker 3: all that stuff and so I think after that depointments,
Speaker 3: when I started doing the Warrior Laderpulist whatever they called it.
Speaker 1: Interesting Mike, just before we move on, there's one thing
Speaker 1: that just came into my head. I remember, and I
Speaker 1: can't remember if it was one of you guys or
Speaker 1: if it was a Charlie Company medic. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the guy getting flex cuff to the chain link fence
Speaker 1: and sealerno on his birthday?
Speaker 3: I don't, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: It might it might have been if it wasn't you,
Speaker 1: I think I know who was. Yeah, but that that
Speaker 1: remember a prank.
Speaker 3: By Remember what the company would have been there.
Speaker 1: It would have been Charlie Company, Okay, Leo Jenkins, I think,
Speaker 1: oh it, I think I think I'll have to I'll
Speaker 1: have to check with him and see if it was him.
Speaker 1: But I remember one of those guys getting flex cuff
Speaker 1: to the fence on his birthday and covered in shaving
Speaker 1: cream and everything.
Speaker 3: I mean, Leo. Leo is a big dude, so I'm
Speaker 3: not right he's a scrapper. But yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you're getting schooled up and then on the
Speaker 1: next deployment again with Reki section.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, so went out another deployment caff Gain is
Speaker 3: tam Reki, but this one was unfortunately cut a little
Speaker 3: bit short. So I don't remember how long I was there,
Speaker 3: maybe like a month or so. And we had a
Speaker 3: mission come down with Alpha Company, one of the platoons
Speaker 3: or two platoons, I think, and we're going to fast
Speaker 3: rope north of I believe it was Salerno. We're going
Speaker 3: to fast rope ninety foot bat like, just like, come on,
Speaker 3: utter miss, you're going to fast rope with three days
Speaker 3: worth of stuff in a rock sat plus you know,
Speaker 3: medical gear, MRIs, all that stuff, camera stuff. Ninety ninety
Speaker 3: foot was I think the plane was ninety foot so
Speaker 3: they forty seven comes in rope master, good to go.
Speaker 3: Globboard didn't say anything. And for those of you that
Speaker 3: don't know, glowboard is like a clipboard that has like
Speaker 3: acetate night or glowing the dark tape on it, so
Speaker 3: when you write with a black marker, you can you
Speaker 3: can read, you know what it says. It's passing around
Speaker 3: the helicopter. Because the movies aren't accurate. When you can
Speaker 3: talk like.
Speaker 1: We're can't do it. You can't do an board a helicopter.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, that's not real. So there was nothing really,
Speaker 3: you know, no surprises. They were like, all right, ninety
Speaker 3: foot rope onto this hilltop, no big deal. Well it
Speaker 3: was a big deal. So the forty seven pilot apparently
Speaker 3: found a spot on a house, so instead of hitting
Speaker 3: at the hilltop, he put us down maybe thirty feet
Speaker 3: onto a rooftop, but.
Speaker 4: Didn't tell any buddy.
Speaker 3: So long story short, the Mark Foster, the Air Force
Speaker 3: fellow that was on our Recorde team, he hits the house,
Speaker 3: walks right off it because it's what you're supposed to
Speaker 3: do in the past. Rope. We didn't know we're in
Speaker 3: the building, so we walked right off, breaks his back.
Speaker 3: I come down and the rope at this time is
Speaker 3: not even over the building. So I fall about two
Speaker 3: stories into a woodpile. I broke my right arm, like
Speaker 3: my distal radius. A couple other people fall, get kind
Speaker 3: of bumped up. Nothing really too bad. So now this
Speaker 3: three day we're supposed to just do security from from
Speaker 3: the elevation for the platoons to do their thing, now
Speaker 3: turned into we need to get Mark Foster off this
Speaker 3: this hill top. So not only had I not trained
Speaker 3: with the one sixtieth a whole lot. Usually when we're
Speaker 3: getting country, we link up with the metics, We do
Speaker 3: a high five, We chow together and talk about how
Speaker 3: awesome the one sixtieth is and how bad to get
Speaker 3: smoked in regiment, and we would kind of do that
Speaker 3: and kind of get our bearings straight because they would
Speaker 3: help us out with that. But I hadn't really trained
Speaker 3: a whole lot physically with them. So here we are
Speaker 3: under zero loom eleven. I don't know ten thousand feet
Speaker 3: I don't, honestly don't remember. Way up there, freezing cold,
Speaker 3: and now they're hoisting a basket down, so you know
Speaker 3: they're in a hover bringing the basket down. Get Mark
Speaker 3: Foster in there because he broke his back. I already
Speaker 3: got a line started, got some value pushed. You know,
Speaker 3: he's feeling pretty good, a little bit of morphine, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Take care of my guys. And
Speaker 3: so now he's being hoisted out in the first time
Speaker 3: I'd ever done it. So it was probably not ideal
Speaker 3: to figure that out on the side of the mountain top, but.
Speaker 4: It worked out, and I didn't at the time.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that my distal radius was broked so
Speaker 3: I stay on the objective. I'm carrying some of his stuff. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: we actually X filled. I don't know, maybe ten hours later,
Speaker 3: Sun comes up in to be there. We ended up leaving,
Speaker 3: so I then am taking Mark back to Germany as
Speaker 3: his medic to make sure he has that continual care
Speaker 3: that he gets the care we had the what a
Speaker 3: good call it the it wasn't the Wounded Warrior program,
Speaker 3: but it was the one for special operations, special offers
Speaker 3: of care coalition. Here we go. So I took him
Speaker 3: back and kind of did a handover with them to
Speaker 3: make sure that he was taken care of, and then
Speaker 3: I was going to fly back into country to get
Speaker 3: back with Recuteam and continue. While I was there, my
Speaker 3: wrist was like really hurting, his swollen, just had some
Speaker 3: eight wrap around it. Didn't think much of it, and
Speaker 3: one of the doctors was like, hey, you know, we
Speaker 3: just take an X ray of it, but sure, So
Speaker 3: I took an X ray and it was, you know,
Speaker 3: fractured my distal radius and we can't send it back
Speaker 3: into countries. So they put a cast on me right
Speaker 3: there and I got back to the date. So it
Speaker 3: is what it is. I was a little irritated about that,
Speaker 3: but that was my second diploma. I think that was,
Speaker 3: or it was a third deployment at that time.
Speaker 5: Did you I know you left, but did you were
Speaker 5: you in the AAR?
Speaker 6: I mean, did you it?
Speaker 5: Like one sixty pilots are notoriously like amazing and yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually have the video.
Speaker 5: It seems like an odd choice to put you guys
Speaker 5: down on it was there was.
Speaker 4: There was some lessons to be learned from that.
Speaker 3: Of course. I talked to the pilots after the fact.
Speaker 3: They came to visit Mark and that's a good thing
Speaker 3: about the community too.
Speaker 4: They came back you know.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know we didn't there's obviously an issue with
Speaker 3: communication there. The rope master should have known or you know, somebody.
Speaker 3: It's sure you should have known. Yeah, yeah, but they were.
Speaker 3: They were great about it, and it did become part
Speaker 3: of the AR and I think they used it in
Speaker 3: our m lats and stuff like that after.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's the end of that, and then you're
Speaker 1: back at the mother station healing up at Benning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the most part, Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 3: quite an experience so that at this time, you know,
Speaker 3: I've been somewhat running gunning school doing all this stuff.
Speaker 3: And now I'm on rear D. So there's like fifteen
Speaker 3: people on rear D, right, and so it's just like staff,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you yeah, yeah, I don't have
Speaker 3: to do my hands. So but there was you know,
Speaker 3: some good n c os that were on red D
Speaker 3: and they didn't. They were like, hey, go go home.
Speaker 3: He left.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't really have too much folio.
Speaker 3: So they left me. It's pretty good to go. And
Speaker 3: I think I came in like said staff duty and
Speaker 3: I still I became like an l and O for
Speaker 3: a medics. So I would go to Martin Army, get supplies,
Speaker 3: put them on the seats, have a team, ship them
Speaker 3: over if they needed it. Kind of did what I
Speaker 3: what I need, what they needed me to do.
Speaker 1: And was did you stay with WRECKI?
Speaker 3: After that, I think, uh no, I think that might
Speaker 3: have been no, Yes I did. I did.
Speaker 4: I had another deployment directly after that.
Speaker 3: Where were you?
Speaker 1: No, It's okay, we're going, we're going, We're going way
Speaker 1: down memory lane. Yeah, I got it, yep.
Speaker 3: So that was another deployment to.
Speaker 4: The learnout yep. So I've gone to learning that. It
Speaker 4: was the second time.
Speaker 3: Learn and that one was we were dug in pretty
Speaker 3: good with Charlie Company. I think they had two platoons
Speaker 3: there and we had you know, some you know, Dead
Speaker 3: Group folks there and some other folks I think at
Speaker 3: the time. So but that that's the point there. It was.
Speaker 4: We did I don't we kind of did a little
Speaker 4: bit more of you know.
Speaker 3: The target isolation that you were talking about, a little
Speaker 3: bit less PTR type stuff.
Speaker 4: It was a pretty good, good trip.
Speaker 5: What was there less CTR because there was less opportunity
Speaker 5: or because there was more risk avoidance?
Speaker 3: I think, oh, you know what it wasn't I think
Speaker 3: it was? No, it wasnt all right. When I was
Speaker 3: speaking before and I said it was Serno and Chapman,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, it was we had Team and Jabad and
Speaker 3: we had some folks out in Chapman. But on this
Speaker 3: time it was I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4: Okay, I apologize. My memory is just not that bad.
Speaker 1: Oh No, it's okay.
Speaker 4: When I think of what I did.
Speaker 3: On the deployments and who I was with, that's when
Speaker 3: I started putting the pieces together. But I know we
Speaker 3: worked a lot with I think it was Charlie Company
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 1: So the mission it sounds like it changed a little
Speaker 1: bit by that that trip.
Speaker 4: It was kind of lethargic.
Speaker 5: And what year was.
Speaker 6: If you remember, roughly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two thousand and six, mid two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: I was back into I was a jac seumatic. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's about right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, unless there's any like memorable ops that you'd
Speaker 1: like to talk about from that deployment, let's let's go
Speaker 1: into the being the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so well, there was we had this one trip
Speaker 3: where we went to.
Speaker 5: We were in.
Speaker 3: Where did we move from? I think we were in
Speaker 3: Jabad and we're going north fallowing the river and the
Speaker 3: mortar platoon they were going up to because they were
Speaker 3: acting kind of like as a platoon at the time,
Speaker 3: and one of their trucks, that drone had drove off
Speaker 3: the cliff and we actually lost a couple of guys.
Speaker 3: So that was that was a pretty hard deployment as
Speaker 3: far as I think as a ranger medic. Of course,
Speaker 3: I had nothing to do with you know, I wasn't
Speaker 3: able to treat them. We didn't even know that, you know,
Speaker 3: it had happened. It was worst case scenario forst case as.
Speaker 3: But but that was like one of the first times.
Speaker 4: Of experiencing like loss like that visceral.
Speaker 3: These are people you know, we just saw the other day,
Speaker 3: and so there was a little bit of processing of that,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't as you know, this real was later
Speaker 3: on in my career where you know, it was a
Speaker 3: little right in front of me. So so I think
Speaker 3: that was a pretty memorable event. And it it kind
Speaker 3: of like blowed things down a little bit and and
Speaker 3: things got to you know, sometimes we're going after it
Speaker 3: and we're just taking a cycle going out, and that
Speaker 3: that kind of made everybody kind of test the pause.
Speaker 4: We're going we're going to a bad bad for I
Speaker 4: don't remember what the part it was.
Speaker 3: I don't remember a lot of time ago.
Speaker 5: But it's kind of crazy that there aren't more stories
Speaker 5: about that because those roads, those mountainous roads, were treacherous
Speaker 5: and unbelievable driving under nods.
Speaker 6: In tough conditions a lot of times.
Speaker 5: And you know, like when you're in the passenger side
Speaker 5: of like your Humvier technical whatever, like you're looking down
Speaker 5: over oh yeah, over.
Speaker 3: When you're trusting this guy with like one not PBS fourteens,
Speaker 3: like yeah, man, and they've never scared my life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the fact that there aren't just like story
Speaker 5: after story of trucks going all over the side is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we you know, we had some folks. You know,
Speaker 3: a lot of injuries do come from a non combat
Speaker 3: if you will. It's unfortunate, but it's it's just remember
Speaker 3: going through because dudes get hurt in a vehicle and
Speaker 3: it's not a purple heart producing thing, but you know,
Speaker 3: still get hurt, they get spent back, they got wounds.
Speaker 3: You know, like Brian Valentine, you know, he's a command
Speaker 3: startant major, you know, because you know, robotic arm I
Speaker 3: call it.
Speaker 4: It's not but he's just you know, hurt some of
Speaker 4: the tricets there.
Speaker 3: But like these folks go back and it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't combat related, but it was, you know,
Speaker 3: And so these folks are dealing with this kind of
Speaker 3: stuff as they transition out and dealing with the VA
Speaker 3: and you know, luckily, you know, it's in a time
Speaker 3: of war in a foreign country. It's pretty easy to
Speaker 3: show that that's slumber related.
Speaker 4: But and even you know, I talked about it for
Speaker 4: Mark Foster.
Speaker 3: You know, he breaks his back, but it's not due
Speaker 3: to enemy fire. It's not like that.
Speaker 4: But he's still wounded just the same and right, it's
Speaker 4: going to affect him for life.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of stuff. It's a bummer. But we
Speaker 3: did have a lot of vehicle accidents roll over, especially
Speaker 3: as we you know, transition to strikers in Iraq, it
Speaker 3: became a lot more proli prevenant.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this
Speaker 5: later as we get on. But even like the Marines
Speaker 5: in Syria and the number of like artillery rounds they fired,
Speaker 5: having such severe repercussions on them for blast injuries, you know,
Speaker 5: hallucinations and psychosis and all these things that it was
Speaker 5: in war, but no purple hearts and no like none
Speaker 5: of that that valor, you know, sort of recognition.
Speaker 3: And I'm we didn't we didn't know what we were
Speaker 3: doing back then either to especially somebody for a mount
Speaker 3: traumatic brain injuries TBIs and you know, you got your
Speaker 3: bell rung and like, I'm not going to put this
Speaker 3: one out. You know, they're going out. This could be
Speaker 3: in lot and rate, you know, so like we're going
Speaker 3: out tomorrow and going so I think, you know, that
Speaker 3: was obviously not the right way to do it. And
Speaker 3: now we have more comprehensive traumatic brain injury process and
Speaker 3: so thankfully, yeah.
Speaker 1: They're they're passing some legislation now that they're going to
Speaker 1: take the soldiers bio markers early on so that you
Speaker 1: have something to compare it to before and after and
Speaker 1: you can have a better judge of what kind of
Speaker 1: damage may have been done to these guys. So there
Speaker 1: is no that's progress is slow, but it is happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because a lot of it's, you know,
Speaker 3: unfortunately the versle and so trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 3: how to manage these types of folks and manage their day.
Speaker 4: To day life for the rest of their life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're learning so much more, and a lot of
Speaker 4: that is borrow technology from even.
Speaker 3: The NFL showing these micro tears and abrasions and sprains
Speaker 3: and what that does to them. It's it's unfortunate that
Speaker 3: it happened to folks, but you know, unfortunate to get
Speaker 3: that information in what it produced.
Speaker 5: Yeah, those concussion docs from the NFL are really sort
Speaker 5: of some of the guys on the cutting edge.
Speaker 6: Of a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, yeah, I've had several TBIs, so, you know,
Speaker 3: folks that are out there that have to do that.
Speaker 4: Joint Knowledge online TBI concussion training.
Speaker 3: I'm actually in there as like a guest speaker of
Speaker 3: you know, don't do what I did and don't just
Speaker 3: try to go out the next day or like if
Speaker 3: I say something, maybe they won't take me out. That's
Speaker 3: that's really not the right way to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when you put yourself out there, even as a medic,
Speaker 3: you might be one of one, you might be one
Speaker 3: or two knows, but you go out there and if
Speaker 3: you're not one hundred percent, you shouldn't be out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fire ninety Carl Gustav rounds at the rain right right.
Speaker 5: The spendex is for Karl Gustav's where it becomes torture
Speaker 5: that stuff. Yeah, or just like breaching night after night
Speaker 5: after night, and like some you know, because P for
Speaker 5: plenty is the universal formula for a breach. So like
Speaker 5: you know, standing next you know, close to the breach
Speaker 5: and then it's like it rocks you and you know,
Speaker 5: you see the white it's like okay, go go, go go,
Speaker 5: and the night after night, it like we're just now
Speaker 5: learning about the effects.
Speaker 3: Of all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely, but luckily you know
Speaker 3: they've got the Range of Medic handbook out there, and
Speaker 3: you know, they've got pretty comprehensive field evaluations and some
Speaker 3: of it's even do it over computers, but it helps
Speaker 3: keep that record.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, glad where they're at now.
Speaker 1: So then you come back and you become the senior
Speaker 1: medic for HGC.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so and that was kind of like a I
Speaker 4: don't know if the undefined role.
Speaker 3: And I also did like Headquarters Platoon slegant pret JC,
Speaker 3: so it kind of was what I made of it.
Speaker 3: Like I said, we had a great surgeon, great pas
Speaker 3: at the time, and so this was my chance to
Speaker 3: work with you know, Recky Sniper Canine TSC. It had
Speaker 3: really taken off with this time and kind of made
Speaker 3: a really big effect of mortar platoons and AHAC at
Speaker 3: the time. So it had that really good responsibility of
Speaker 3: making sure all those medics were trained and everybody had
Speaker 3: what they had And a big part of you know,
Speaker 3: being in that senior medical position too is what I
Speaker 3: think the Range of regiment is phenomenal at is is
Speaker 3: incorporating medical training into everything you do. So it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if we're going to the range for whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: how do we assess the casualty we're on that range
Speaker 3: and not tell anybody, you know. So they get there
Speaker 3: and you've got to make sure that all these ranger
Speaker 3: privates and all the way up to the you know,
Speaker 3: it started a major but they know how to do
Speaker 3: teachtorpal c and how to get this casualty, you know,
Speaker 3: to a surgical asset, the definitive care.
Speaker 4: As rapidly as possible and faith as possible.
Speaker 3: So being able to get in there and just kind
Speaker 3: of think of, well, what would a mortar platuam like,
Speaker 3: what would their scenario look like if they took the
Speaker 3: casualty and kind of you know, figuring out what was
Speaker 3: you know, what was common on the battlefield at the time,
Speaker 3: what were the other battalions, what were they reporting back
Speaker 3: and treating training opportunities. I think that was kind of
Speaker 3: activated my nerd sense of humor at the time, because
Speaker 3: that made them pretty fun and sadistic.
Speaker 6: Can you give us an example of what fun and
Speaker 6: sadistic might look like?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so it would be you know, just coming
Speaker 3: back from a range and fla you know, took ahead
Speaker 3: or whatever, and the medica had no clue. They'd pull
Speaker 3: open the aid bag and it'd be like candy and
Speaker 3: snacks or whatever, and it turned into like a ten
Speaker 3: hour how long field care, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So I mean it was it was for a purpose, sure,
Speaker 4: but it was it was unpleasant.
Speaker 1: And uh so what was the next stop for you
Speaker 1: after this position?
Speaker 3: So pretty much just oh I got shot, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I forgot about that one, so deployed again. I was
Speaker 3: with Charlie Company, second platoon Mike call Balls platoon at
Speaker 3: the time, and uh for Sartin Nichols, I think we
Speaker 3: had at the time for h AC. We were up
Speaker 3: on the objective and we got these strikers, this humbled
Speaker 3: and mud coming off an objective, and so we had
Speaker 3: to wait for like the third id to come out
Speaker 3: in the giant you know, records tanks or whatever they're called.
Speaker 4: And so the sun started coming up, and I guess
Speaker 4: I was the one that they wanted to hit. So
Speaker 4: I got hit through my foot and my thigh.
Speaker 3: I was the only one hit as far as I remember,
Speaker 3: And it wasn't like a huge like firefight, So I
Speaker 3: guess I was the wrong place at the right con
Speaker 3: I supposed, but like got hit. Obviously came back from
Speaker 3: that came back Stateside yet again and did the whole
Speaker 3: real d thing for a little while.
Speaker 5: How bad did you mind if I asked, like, how, like,
Speaker 5: how bad was it when you got hit your foot
Speaker 5: and thigh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it actually wasn't that bad. At the time,
Speaker 3: people like, yeah, getting shot, it's not that bad. But
Speaker 3: at the time I had a Smith and Wesson swat
Speaker 3: pocket knife in my pocket in the ground actually hit
Speaker 3: the knife, so the knife and the round are still
Speaker 3: in my leg, and I got shot through my foot.
Speaker 3: And growing up as a medic, you know, they always
Speaker 3: taught us. And I had Mike's Melvin who's a phenomenal manic,
Speaker 3: you know, so he was taking care of me and
Speaker 3: I was also doing you know, I had to fend
Speaker 3: a lollipop. You know, I ain't playing around right. But
Speaker 3: we always the thing where like if it's pushed in
Speaker 3: your boot, so you push off on a boot and
Speaker 3: they have the little eyelids, you know, blood comes out,
Speaker 3: then you might hit an artery because blood will go
Speaker 3: down your leg and fill your boot whatever. So at
Speaker 3: the time my boot I could feel it squshing and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh man, I thought I at that time,
Speaker 3: I thought it was archier bleed. I got to turn
Speaker 3: a kid on, you know.
Speaker 4: Doing what I'm supposed to do. But come to find out,
Speaker 4: I actually got hit on the top of the foot
Speaker 4: and that's where the blood of my boot was coming from.
Speaker 3: So it actually wasn't as bad.
Speaker 4: Excuse, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Speaker 3: If that knife wasn't in my pocket, it would have
Speaker 3: shadowed my female you sent mass, So it definitely would
Speaker 3: have been a bad day.
Speaker 5: And think of how much paint it would have been
Speaker 5: had you not already been sucking on that lollipop.
Speaker 3: Oh, before I even hit the ground, I was like
Speaker 3: falling on that ny Yeah, I got to cover and
Speaker 3: all that stuff. Yeah, but by the time I got
Speaker 3: on the striker, I was You know, if anybody has
Speaker 3: been treated by me, they either don't remember it or
Speaker 3: they got really hot and they thank you for it.
Speaker 4: So I was pretty Uh that was pretty generous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so high on your own supply.
Speaker 3: Literally, I don't mean that in a way of anything
Speaker 3: that farious whatsoever.
Speaker 5: This is all and just so when you got hit
Speaker 5: the first the tourniquet, did you apply to the tournic yourself?
Speaker 5: Was it all self care at that point?
Speaker 3: I don't remember. Yeah, I guess it was so like
Speaker 3: by the book. I don't remember if I did, or
Speaker 3: it might have even been first Start Nickel at the time.
Speaker 3: I honestly don't remember. But you know, if anybody wants
Speaker 3: to know what it feels like to get shot without
Speaker 3: actually getting shot, it's almost like somebody punches you as
Speaker 3: hard as they can and like your funny bone, so
Speaker 3: it's like that really weird, awkward feeling and then you
Speaker 3: take like an iron and burn it. So it's very,
Speaker 3: very hot, and and I got over that relatively quickly.
Speaker 3: Adrenaline kicked in and I was like, oh, it's so bad.
Speaker 3: But the hours after, where your muscle is just trying
Speaker 3: to swell and you're in wants the pop, that was
Speaker 3: probably the worst. Yeah, that hurt really bad. Yeah that's unpleasant.
Speaker 1: So back on rear d doing staff duty again again?
Speaker 6: Yeah, how was how was rehab for you? Like being
Speaker 6: shot in the foot, like there's a lot of bones
Speaker 6: in there that.
Speaker 3: They actually missed them. Yeah, I got so lucky, man,
Speaker 3: telling you, like, I don't think you could set it
Speaker 3: up and do it again. So on the top of
Speaker 3: my foot the bullet came right in and like just
Speaker 3: went over all my bones went right off the other side. Wow.
Speaker 3: So I was the pretty lucky chat Yeah.
Speaker 1: These were Yeah, ship man, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's not common. Usually, you know, they'll mushroom
Speaker 3: up and just take everything out. Yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of velocity behind there. But I
Speaker 3: got lucky.
Speaker 6: Did did you did you tell this?
Speaker 5: Did you tell Smith and Wesson that their knife potentially
Speaker 5: saved your life?
Speaker 3: You bet your butt. I did, and they sent me
Speaker 3: it sent me like twenty thirty nine. I bet you.
Speaker 5: I was wondering if they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sure did.
Speaker 4: It sent me a bunch of knives though, good on them.
Speaker 4: I also got a shrider Knight, So I'm trying to
Speaker 4: remember where I got it. It was one of the
Speaker 4: r RG guys knew the person that made them.
Speaker 3: I can't remember who actually gave it to me, but anyways,
Speaker 3: they gave me a nice like handmade. It was just
Speaker 3: it was really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're getting better. What's that process to recovery
Speaker 1: into getting back out on the job.
Speaker 3: Well, so when it comes to my felf, probably in
Speaker 3: my family and the worst medic possible. So I just
Speaker 3: went straight into well, you know, it's not muscle skeletal anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't break any bone with it, there's
Speaker 3: no fracture there. Might as well just you know, start
Speaker 3: running so I get back after it. So probably within
Speaker 3: a few weeks and I would get back after it.
Speaker 3: And then I went to Seers School. Probably I don't know,
Speaker 3: four or five months after getting shot.
Speaker 1: I went, you should be checked into a mental institution, Like.
Speaker 5: What the hell?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, yeah, I had an opportunity to go
Speaker 4: to Seers School.
Speaker 3: I go to.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 3: Just seemed like the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Rangering through it, that's awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty much. And looking back at the stupid is
Speaker 4: I pay for it now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Not that, not that it would have made a difference
Speaker 4: back then.
Speaker 3: As a medic now knowing what I know now, for
Speaker 3: all you people out there listening, physical therapy, occupational therapy,
Speaker 3: don't mess around, do it, do it right, and it'll
Speaker 3: make a lasting difference on your recovery in your life
Speaker 3: after for sure.
Speaker 1: So how did you get a slot for Seers School
Speaker 1: from Ranger betime? Because it was that part of a
Speaker 1: rekie thing, because that's not normal for Rangers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly, I don't remember. Kyle Andres another great mind,
Speaker 3: still still great friends. He was like a school guy,
Speaker 3: so I may have been through that. But it was
Speaker 3: also rud D and I don't remember who was on
Speaker 3: it might have been Bishop so a major bishop that
Speaker 3: it was last at the time, I think he was
Speaker 3: running three shops and they're like, hey, we need folks
Speaker 3: for Seer School. And it wasn't directed at me at all,
Speaker 3: but I was like, I'll go, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah your school ship. Yeah, I'll volunteer. I'll put my
Speaker 1: hand up for that.
Speaker 5: Yes, do that like SCOO Sars, like Scuba where it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: who wants to volunteers? Take a step back.
Speaker 3: No, I mean it was I thought it was. It
Speaker 3: was a pretty good school. It is what it is.
Speaker 3: But it was one of those things that you know,
Speaker 3: my team started and WRECKI at the time had been
Speaker 3: and so you talk about it and it's just like
Speaker 3: I hate not knowing. So I just wanted to knock
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. And So what happened after Super.
Speaker 3: School missoil deployment yep. So I went to Midula still
Speaker 3: eight medic and I was a task Force senior medic
Speaker 3: for this area. So we had Bravo Companies tack Up platoon.
Speaker 3: That was Ray Barrett's platoon at the time. Pete Benjel
Speaker 3: was the leader. We had them up in missoil and
Speaker 3: I think as the ranger medic. That was probably one
Speaker 3: of the most devastating deployments that was. It was just
Speaker 3: a man. It's like almost every day for the first
Speaker 3: couple of weeks we were taking casualties and it was
Speaker 3: it was pretty rough.
Speaker 1: This was two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: time frame.
Speaker 3: Yep, it was Christmas. Yes, it was full.
Speaker 4: All because we were there for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Yep, yes, tell us about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just looking back. It was a pretty
Speaker 3: crazy deployment.
Speaker 4: M Ben Dylon, he was killed on the first op
Speaker 4: out there, who I named my friend after.
Speaker 3: But that was that was it. Imagine you know, you're
Speaker 3: the pointing as to strike forth and everybody you know,
Speaker 3: you're amped up. You know it's Mossola, you got a hint,
Speaker 3: you've got a high five from the previous battalion and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's been pretty rugged, and you know you're getting ready
Speaker 3: for that. In the first off out we lose a
Speaker 3: ranger and it's just like dang, and you lose momentum
Speaker 3: before you even had it. Yeah, that was pretty heavy.
Speaker 3: That was a heavy lot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, kind of takes the windown of our sales for
Speaker 6: a second.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, It really does. And I think as
Speaker 3: a medic it was probably one of the most challenging
Speaker 3: experiences I had. At the time. I had Jeremy March
Speaker 3: with me, which dudes an orthopedic surgeon. Now, it couldn't
Speaker 3: be any more proud of him. Even when he was
Speaker 3: arranger of medic he was just always a sponge learning
Speaker 3: probably one of the best, better range of medics I'd
Speaker 3: worked with. He was there fort Medic and he was
Speaker 3: you know that. I think that hit him pretty hard too.
Speaker 3: So him and I know, we worked together on that
Speaker 3: out and unfortunately outcomesn't what we'd all prayed for. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was pretty heavy, heavy loss.
Speaker 5: Now, now you've done multiple deployments, and we talked a
Speaker 5: little bit about like sort of the emerging teachable sea care. Uh,
Speaker 5: the technology like prosthetics were you know growing, you had
Speaker 5: the quick quod, like, you had all these things coming out.
Speaker 6: How were you guys managing that from trip to trip?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we had worked with the JM now on CTM.
Speaker 3: So we would go to Fort Brag and the training
Speaker 3: area out there, so we would be trained up every
Speaker 3: once in a while going with them, which is just
Speaker 3: like at the time, it was just like, wow, you know,
Speaker 3: you've got these the best docs, nurses people in the
Speaker 3: Department of Defense, training and stuff on kind of the
Speaker 3: latest and greatest, and that really kind of opened my
Speaker 3: eye to the organization. I'm sure we'll talk about that later,
Speaker 3: but so and they would really work with us on
Speaker 3: actual medicine and so.
Speaker 4: What we didn't already know.
Speaker 3: We continued to compound and learn and we had that
Speaker 3: institution and organizational knowledge there, and we also had these
Speaker 3: Special Operations that Special Operations Combat Medics.
Speaker 4: Skill Sustainment Course Bockmouth.
Speaker 3: Every two years we would go back to Fort Bragg
Speaker 3: to do our medical refractor with the eighteen Delta's p
Speaker 3: days sometimes the Sparks, the four men, seal medics, whoever
Speaker 3: THEA wants to do, all the medics go back there
Speaker 3: for refresher So we were constantly kind of pushing that
Speaker 3: en below as much as you can, and a lot
Speaker 3: of I know, for me, I was pretty much experimental.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when it came to that stuff not on you.
Speaker 3: Know, experimental and not a morbid morbid way, like I
Speaker 3: would use cutting edge, newer stuff that was out instead
Speaker 3: of kind of reverting back to what everybody always does.
Speaker 3: So like with you know, do an inner ossius instead
Speaker 3: of IV when you're trying to get an IV started
Speaker 3: to push blood on a conduct casually, it's already lost
Speaker 3: a lot of blood. It's it's really hard to do,
Speaker 3: so why not just go into your bone? So I
Speaker 3: was just really aggressive when it comes to stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I think because of the job, we had to
Speaker 3: advance and we had to be on it, and we
Speaker 3: had the institutional knowledge from the organization at the Rangers
Speaker 3: Regiment because we would come together as a regiment with
Speaker 3: the training. Uh was medics a concern, but then we
Speaker 3: had the non organic stuff from softness and from the
Speaker 3: JA now and and so I think that really forced
Speaker 3: medics to mature a lot faster than than they would
Speaker 3: have if they just went to normal refreshures and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So I hope that answers your question.
Speaker 5: It does. And I actually just because of sort of
Speaker 5: the medical geek in me, you know, like you know,
Speaker 5: like I started trauming them as was Twin IV's bullets,
Speaker 5: which is not a thing anymore.
Speaker 4: Right, No, you kill people now, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So if anybody's listening, you're pushing fresh old blood, fresh
Speaker 3: old blood. If you don't have press old blood, you're
Speaker 3: pushing press old blood. So getting away from crystalloids, getting
Speaker 3: away from all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, like it's amazing to me, how far.
Speaker 5: And I think we saw the same thing in Vietnam,
Speaker 5: you know, and every war really we see this surgeon
Speaker 5: medical knowledge.
Speaker 3: But so, I mean we used we use turn kits
Speaker 3: in the Civil War, and then we stopped using turni
Speaker 3: kits and we used them again and World War two
Speaker 3: and then uh fifty eight albums people killed in Vietnam,
Speaker 3: and we stopped using it like we do it and
Speaker 3: then we stop, right, And I think that's because we
Speaker 3: didn't have a committee of futureable See, we didn't have
Speaker 3: the joint trauma, we didn't have an institutional. Instead, we
Speaker 3: have to hold this knowledge, we have to continue to
Speaker 3: develop this, this training and this capability.
Speaker 5: Right and the old we do have now and the
Speaker 5: old wisdom with with tourniquets, and please correct me if
Speaker 5: I'm wrong. I mean, I know the old uh like
Speaker 5: belief with tourniquits is you put it on and doesn't
Speaker 5: come off, which obviously risk the limb. But then wasn't
Speaker 5: it sort of developed it Actually you can at certain
Speaker 5: increments like release it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they went through this time period where it was
Speaker 3: called like milking a tourniquit, which would be medics or
Speaker 3: above only for the most part, but you know, there's
Speaker 3: some dangers with that too, because we've got you know,
Speaker 3: compartment syndrome that could be developing, and you've got tossins
Speaker 3: in there. Your blood's going through an aerobic anaerobic metabolism
Speaker 3: the whole time. So anytime you open up a tourniquit
Speaker 3: and you release all that into your normal bloodstream, you're
Speaker 3: going to have an effect. So you have to be
Speaker 3: prepared for that, right treated almost like a trust injury
Speaker 3: or something like that. Yeah, it's but for the most part.
Speaker 3: You know, what we know now is if you do
Speaker 3: put a tourniquet on, as far as saving a life,
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about you know, maybe they might lose
Speaker 3: a little bit of sensory or reflect or whatever. But
Speaker 3: if you put a tournique on, even for a few
Speaker 3: hours today and you get them to a higher standard
Speaker 3: of care. They're uh, they're up and to be pretty good.
Speaker 3: Even regularly as we do surgery, we put turner kids.
Speaker 3: They're a little bit different. They're not your one or
Speaker 3: two inch Winless style tourniquet. They're usually a noumadic wide tournique,
Speaker 3: which is it's less pressure to get occlusion. They'll do
Speaker 3: that when we're just operating on somebody's on their leg
Speaker 3: or something like that. So and they've been known to
Speaker 3: do that for hours. But there is you know, there
Speaker 3: was the thought process back in the day. You know,
Speaker 3: we put a tourniquet on high and tight and you
Speaker 3: kind of move on, and thankfully we've moved away from
Speaker 3: that a little bit. I think it's a good mindset
Speaker 3: to put a tourniquit on when you need one, but
Speaker 3: it needs to be addressed that some folks are getting
Speaker 3: a tourniquit that might not need one, or got a
Speaker 3: TURNI kit in the rights in the wrong situation, and
Speaker 3: it either costs you know, death or disfigurements. So I
Speaker 3: think we could just do better than that now.
Speaker 5: And then with medical technology at the time, it's obviously
Speaker 5: advancing too, because you mentioned like going from you know,
Speaker 5: giving an ivy to uh INTROSTI.
Speaker 6: It's like, so you're putting an ivy, Like, how do
Speaker 6: you know?
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously, very smart people figure this out that
Speaker 5: you can replenish bodily fluids by sticking a needle into
Speaker 5: the bone. But now are there new needles coming out?
Speaker 5: Are there like new vendors and things like.
Speaker 3: That that are yeah, of course, and I deal with
Speaker 3: that now. So I work for stape card Medical now,
Speaker 3: which is a pre hospital traumat device manufacturer. And I
Speaker 3: say that because that didn't exist or I became a
Speaker 3: medic back in the day. Dn't We would take curle x,
Speaker 3: which is for a hospital, we would take a raftids
Speaker 3: for a hospital. We would take these needles which a
Speaker 3: her hospital, and we would use those in a austere environment.
Speaker 3: But now we have companies who are listening to you
Speaker 3: know what these folks out there, austereo medics are saying,
Speaker 3: and now they're making hit and equipment for that application.
Speaker 3: So we had to use a lot of non standard stuff.
Speaker 3: So even with io inner ostiates, we were using innerasius
Speaker 3: in the field or in an environment where we've never
Speaker 3: really been used before. So it's been you know, IO
Speaker 3: has been around for a very long time, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't really used in a pre hospital environment. It was
Speaker 3: used in a hospital for somebody who's you know, got
Speaker 3: doing chemo or they've lost a lot of weight because
Speaker 3: of cancers and stuff like that. So it's kind of
Speaker 3: off label use for a lot of the stuff we're doing.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just really fascinating.
Speaker 5: And I'm sorry for everybody out there who's bored by this,
Speaker 5: but it's just incredible nerd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's like, I mean, I think what's
Speaker 1: so interesting about it is that it's this very like practical,
Speaker 1: pragmatic application of medical science in the field that maybe
Speaker 1: you don't find anywhere else.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, it really is. And I think that's the
Speaker 3: testament of our surgeons and our pas and all those
Speaker 3: folks to just continue to push even on the even
Speaker 3: on a deployment. You know, you're just took atategy. You
Speaker 3: drag them to cover and you got a pia standing
Speaker 3: right over your shoulders. That's like, yep, you're doing it right, man,
Speaker 3: you got it. You got like they would mentor you
Speaker 3: while you're doing it, and it's just you know, I
Speaker 3: don't think you see that anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, ranger medics are on point.
Speaker 5: And that's why I say that, like overtrained and underqualified.
Speaker 5: Like there's no job in the civilian world that compares
Speaker 5: to a combat medic, you know, like not not a paramedic,
Speaker 5: not you know, like you're you're somewhere between paramedic and
Speaker 5: trauma surgeon.
Speaker 1: Uh that while being shot at.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but even that, like the things that you are
Speaker 5: capable and allowed to do in the military, there's no
Speaker 5: space in the civilian world to accommodate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. And not to take away
Speaker 3: from any other folks jobs out there, but it's not like,
Speaker 3: you know, when I go out there, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: do the job of a PA.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to do the job of the surgeon.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to do the job of the range
Speaker 4: of medic.
Speaker 3: And you know, for whatever reason, you know, I can
Speaker 3: shoot and communicate with my rangeable tune, maybe this pier,
Speaker 3: this doc can't. So I need to be able to
Speaker 3: take what they're learning. I got to take their skill
Speaker 3: set and apply that in an environment that that they
Speaker 3: either can't get to or don't have access to. So
Speaker 3: and We've been lucky in the regiment to where it
Speaker 3: never it never came down to you know, a PA
Speaker 3: or doc like looking at us like, you know, if
Speaker 3: I can't be there, you're not doing that. Like I've
Speaker 3: literally been, you know, on the comms talking with Colonel Cootwall.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I'm about to push this medication. Yeah, Roger,
Speaker 3: that go ahead. So we had that access, you know,
Speaker 3: to giant brains in a firefight, literally, so I think
Speaker 3: that's that's definitely a killer for success for the revenants.
Speaker 5: So I just want to ask one more questions if
Speaker 5: you don't mind talking about this, and feel free to
Speaker 5: skip it. Uh, but what was the most challenging scenario
Speaker 5: you had in in a combat situation?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, so that one is it is kind of tough,
Speaker 3: kind of tough to talk about. But when there's a law,
Speaker 3: so it's not like there's a loss and the office over.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's a law. You've got to keep going right,
Speaker 3: so you've got in you know, when I was a
Speaker 3: brand new range of medic one in five.
Speaker 4: People at a radio, like not everybody even had a radio,
Speaker 4: so you'd have to like whisper or yell.
Speaker 3: But later on in years everybody had a radio, so
Speaker 3: everybody down to the private who's about to kick down
Speaker 3: that door and do justice here? So when you have to,
Speaker 3: you get the call or you're you know, I'm treating
Speaker 3: a casualty or whatever, and somebody's like, hey, what's the status.
Speaker 3: You really have to be.
Speaker 4: Methodical about how you translate that over.
Speaker 3: To comms because it can really destroy the momentum in
Speaker 3: that that battle field aggression very quickly. So I think
Speaker 3: that was probably my biggest challenge, was being able to
Speaker 3: keep everybody moving, and I think standing up to some
Speaker 3: of the Platina sergeants sometimes you have to be like, hey,
Speaker 3: I've got this, you keep going. Your focus is over there.
Speaker 3: And some of them are phenomenal at it, but some
Speaker 3: of them wanted to be you know, they wanted needed
Speaker 3: that intel, and it's like, you don't, like, I'll tell
Speaker 3: you what his status is when you need to know
Speaker 3: what his status is because I know that that's going
Speaker 3: to affect that. So I kind of had to like
Speaker 3: pull that apart and kind of be a prick about it.
Speaker 3: But we had to maintain that focus, and so I
Speaker 3: think that was probably one of the harder things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you did this deployment to Masul during the
Speaker 1: height of the surge. What what was the next step
Speaker 1: after that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty pretty tough depployment. After that it
Speaker 3: was another Afghanistan deployment and this one was Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was Afghanistan employment and that was all of eight I think,
Speaker 3: and nothing really too remarkable from this deployment. I think
Speaker 3: there was at this time the Mortal team out that
Speaker 3: it's like exciting. I think it's kind of cool. But
Speaker 3: the mortaval tune at the time, they used to have
Speaker 3: order to attached to the platoon infections whatever, but they
Speaker 3: actually went out as an organic platoon.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did a hell of a job, man, they did.
Speaker 3: They did a great job. They had a great medic
Speaker 3: at the time, at two medics. They really two two
Speaker 3: great medics.
Speaker 1: And were they going out to do indirect fire or
Speaker 1: going out to act like.
Speaker 4: They were going out as a platein as just a normal.
Speaker 5: Really as like a line with a line team.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, So you know, I know they would do a
Speaker 3: lot of blocking position type stuff for the other platoon,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they go out there. Yeah, so I was so.
Speaker 4: Proud of them.
Speaker 3: I say that because a lot of them were good
Speaker 3: friends of mine, so it's really cool to see where
Speaker 3: they went and how they got there.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, man. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was also my first deployment kind of
Speaker 3: working with STYOP and t A. I'd worked with them
Speaker 3: a little bit and then working with Asymmetric Forefare kind
Speaker 3: of working with them a little bit. So it's pretty
Speaker 3: interesting the point where I learned a lot more about
Speaker 3: the bigger picture. Yeah, you know, things are bigger than
Speaker 3: just third grain to get that. Yeah, so I thought
Speaker 3: that was pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Sea going out there and trying to like the patch up,
Speaker 5: what what what range of Batagiony seal teams have just
Speaker 5: been in.
Speaker 4: And yeah, they did a great job too.
Speaker 3: So you know, we had Ranger Rick Merritt, you know,
Speaker 3: I love the man, and he had told us one time,
Speaker 3: I think he actually was in Missoil at the time.
Speaker 4: We would have young ranger privates. You know, we'd come
Speaker 4: in with clear room.
Speaker 3: They're just knocking everything over, just you know, doing TFT
Speaker 3: finding everything. And I'm pretty sure Rick Merrit was like,
Speaker 3: hey man, you know what you're doing right now could
Speaker 3: be generating the next next batch of terrorists. And we're like,
Speaker 3: that kind of makes sense. You know, we came in
Speaker 3: here and just zip this dude up. You know, his
Speaker 3: kid probably just watched it, so like you kind of
Speaker 3: have to be a little bit more.
Speaker 4: Tactful focus, Yeah, a little bit more tactful.
Speaker 3: And I think that's where c A came in behind
Speaker 3: the scenes and really kind of patched that up, and
Speaker 3: I think I think they did a good Yeah.
Speaker 5: So for people who might not know, when we say
Speaker 5: c A, we're talking about civil affairs, which is really
Speaker 5: you know, we always say s F is the hearts
Speaker 5: and minds, but like civil affairs is really hearts in mind.
Speaker 1: Check out our past interviews with Joshua Leez.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, for sure, guys.
Speaker 3: You know that they I thought they were phenomenal NA
Speaker 3: in my experience with them, And I think there was
Speaker 3: also a difference when I started working or being around
Speaker 3: c A anyway.
Speaker 4: They were former ranger, former former like they.
Speaker 3: Had been in the community, uh, and then kind of
Speaker 3: shifted to c A where now CA has its own
Speaker 3: pipeline and I haven't really worked with them since that's happened.
Speaker 3: So when I worked with their medics, they had all
Speaker 3: been somewhere and so they were just phenomenal medics and
Speaker 3: so I learned quite a bit.
Speaker 5: And one of the things that like the CA medical
Speaker 5: like they are out there like taking in villagers a
Speaker 5: lot of times and treating you know, illnesses and injuries
Speaker 5: that these people have had for a long time.
Speaker 3: Sometimes yeh. Then they were doing stuff you know, I
Speaker 3: just never really been exposed to I've been, you know,
Speaker 3: at that time, I was exposed to like you know,
Speaker 3: crotch rot you know, just your Hey, I just returned
Speaker 3: from a GDUI doct Can you hook me up?
Speaker 1: I need a shock, like yeah, yeah, and family vaccination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Uh we're kidding, yeah, right right, but you know we're
Speaker 4: working with animals and.
Speaker 3: Children and babies, and you know, I took every opportunity
Speaker 3: to go out there with the C medics because you know,
Speaker 3: it's a good opportunity to learn to different piece of
Speaker 3: being a medic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like at that at.
Speaker 1: That time, And I don't know if it's true or not,
Speaker 1: but the Ranger medics did the combat the assault portion
Speaker 1: of Soccam. Where's the s F metics Scott, Like, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a typhoid outbreak in the village, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's so it's different and this is.
Speaker 5: How you treat the water in your well.
Speaker 3: And you know. Yeah, so they they go on to SFMS,
Speaker 3: which some rangers are able to do as long as
Speaker 3: they go to one of the SMUs and there's a
Speaker 3: way to do that. But anyways, Yeah, so they go
Speaker 3: on and there's like a surgical block and there's just
Speaker 3: a lot of things that you don't generally be in
Speaker 3: the regiment. So I think grander medics could benefit from it,
Speaker 3: for sure, But if you had the opportunity to go
Speaker 3: to jump Master or something else benement, that that probably
Speaker 3: would make sense. And that pissed me off at the
Speaker 3: time because I didn't understand why. I was like, I'll
Speaker 3: reenlist to go to the second part. At the time,
Speaker 3: I liked medicine and I was into it, so I
Speaker 3: was like, hey, let's I want to do this. When
Speaker 3: we do it, do it right, But there's there's literally,
Speaker 3: like I guess, no way to do it. It can't compute.
Speaker 5: So yeah, range of regement. Wasn't that concerned about your
Speaker 5: veterinary skills?
Speaker 3: Yeah no, no, despite you know me wanting to learn that, right, right, So.
Speaker 1: So what was the next step in your career path
Speaker 1: after after that one, so.
Speaker 4: I ended up going to the jam OLT.
Speaker 3: But I was at the five two eight for a
Speaker 3: little while under Steve Cody was at the first Elegent
Speaker 3: he's retired now, which was kind of the dumping ground,
Speaker 3: not dumping ground as like a bad thing, but it's
Speaker 3: kind of where a lot of the soft medics went
Speaker 3: to kind of take a knee or whatever. So I
Speaker 3: was in the five to eight for a little while,
Speaker 3: but it didn't really you know, nothing really notable there.
Speaker 3: But then I assessed them and went to the jam Now, tell.
Speaker 1: Us about that, because I think this is like, as
Speaker 1: far as public perception is, it's a kind of obscure
Speaker 1: element that not too many people know about. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us what that element is and how you assessed
Speaker 1: for it?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, So my previous experience with the organization, all
Speaker 3: I really knew was, you know, their PA surgeon surgical team,
Speaker 3: and every time we would do some kind of missing
Speaker 3: planning brief, you know, I had to include these guys,
Speaker 3: but I didn't really know what they did, and I
Speaker 3: still didn't even when I assessed for the organization, I
Speaker 3: still didn't really know it. I knew they did damage control,
Speaker 3: surgery and damage control of asuscitation.
Speaker 4: But I didn't really understand like who.
Speaker 3: They were, where they picked them from, how they got there,
Speaker 3: how they I didn't know any of that. So but
Speaker 3: I knew people that were there, and I knew the
Speaker 3: unit star major at the time. I love the guy,
Speaker 3: I've known him for so many years. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: I ended up assessing and.
Speaker 4: It was more of like just a psychological type thing.
Speaker 3: And you know, you know, your medicine, it's it's not
Speaker 3: something that you would you know, it's not going to
Speaker 3: be like, you know, a forty mile rock with you know,
Speaker 3: seven days of land now, It's just that's not what
Speaker 3: you do in that organization. So that's not really what's
Speaker 3: expected of you. So it's more of medicine and can
Speaker 3: you handle extremely high stressed situations and be in positions
Speaker 3: where you might be by yourself orchestrating National Mission Force
Speaker 3: type outlet. So that was a huge eye open So
Speaker 3: going into there, you know, just within the first couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, it was just one of the most overwhelming
Speaker 3: anxious experiences probably my whole career because of this secrecy
Speaker 3: and you know, nobody really knows anything at that time,
Speaker 3: so you couldn't just google it at the time.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he still can, but but it
Speaker 4: was pretty good.
Speaker 3: And I think I went in there with the mindset of,
Speaker 3: you know, I never joined the military to be like, hey,
Speaker 3: the military is going to make me better. And I
Speaker 3: joined the military hopefully, hopefully that I have something to
Speaker 3: give to this organization that's like my American thing to do.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, my my brother, my older brother,
Speaker 3: he was a wrestler. You know, he always taught me
Speaker 3: when I was wrestling, like, you know, find the strongest guy,
Speaker 3: find the fastest guy, and he's hevered in you, and
Speaker 3: and wrestle him and he's going to make you a
Speaker 3: better wrestler, which, come to find out, with my brother's
Speaker 3: phenomenal and I stuck. But I went in there with
Speaker 3: that mindset, let me find these surgeons and these CRNAs
Speaker 3: and these docks, and you know, let me just absorb
Speaker 3: everything that they've got to stay and just you know,
Speaker 3: trying to make myself a little bit more capable and
Speaker 3: what can I learn from them? And you know, it
Speaker 3: was just so overwhelming because everything I you know, I
Speaker 3: had talked about when I was at the sixty eight
Speaker 3: whiskey for they said, you know, brain dump all that
Speaker 3: when they got to stock them. And then when I
Speaker 3: got there, I really had to brain dump a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff that I learned in regiment because it just
Speaker 3: wasn't applicable and the medicine was good, but the medicine
Speaker 3: was a band aid. So that's when I really learned
Speaker 3: that any casualty you treat on the battlefield, for the
Speaker 3: most part, you're preparing them for surgery, right, So instead
Speaker 3: of just putting that tourniquit on and forgetting about it now,
Speaker 3: I oh, that's why we're pushing, pushing, press whole blood.
Speaker 3: That's why we're trying to get them high, and that's
Speaker 3: why we're trying to keep them warm because by the
Speaker 3: time they get to a surgeon, they're expected to be warm, high,
Speaker 3: already have an airway so they can get to work.
Speaker 3: So it was a is very drink it through a
Speaker 3: fire hose like, and it's it's very different. You know,
Speaker 3: when we studied for Jump After, it was more of
Speaker 3: like reading this piece of paper and you just remembering
Speaker 3: the nomenclature. But for this, I'm reading white papers and
Speaker 3: I have to make a decision like why would I
Speaker 3: put t X A versus this? Or why would you know?
Speaker 3: You have to actually learn and that's what these doctors
Speaker 3: and that's what they do. They don't just see you know,
Speaker 3: the Range of Medic handbook and it says, well push
Speaker 3: t X A because of this, like they learn why
Speaker 3: you're doing that.
Speaker 4: And I was able to do that in an organization
Speaker 4: and it was can you profoundly change my mind?
Speaker 3: As a medic?
Speaker 4: How do pretty much everything?
Speaker 5: So j MAL is Joint Medical Augmentation Unit and can
Speaker 5: you tell us just for people who don't know, because
Speaker 5: we imagine that they go from the field medic, get
Speaker 5: metavaced and go to a mass unit but that or whatever,
Speaker 5: but can you tell us the role of the j MOUTH.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sure, well it's actually the Joint Medical Unit
Speaker 3: now or JMU. So their goal is there's unclassified you know,
Speaker 3: special operations susstation teams, special operations surgical teams and Air
Speaker 3: Force and even forger susstation uh sturgical teams in the Army,
Speaker 3: like there's those already exist. And what they're trying to
Speaker 3: do is get the surgery as close to the casual
Speaker 3: as possible because really we want to get the casualty
Speaker 3: out you know, to that higher excellent of care. But
Speaker 3: sometimes that's not possible, especially with peer one especial missions units.
Speaker 3: They're going in the middle of nowhere and they can't
Speaker 3: just show up at a theater hospital at you know
Speaker 3: zero to zulu with you know, combat casualties. So we
Speaker 3: would get the jam OU medics or sorry, the game
Speaker 3: out teams. Their sr ts would get as close to
Speaker 3: the action is possible, and whatever aircraft are on or
Speaker 3: whatever would now become that r SO casualties would be
Speaker 3: treated by the Ranger medics for the SMU medics whoever
Speaker 3: it is, they would be handed off to them and
Speaker 3: that's pretty much where they would do surgery right there,
Speaker 3: and then they would deliver to a next session.
Speaker 1: An So the Ranger Combat medic if I'm understanding this rightly,
Speaker 1: the Ranger Combat Medic, the Special Forces eighteen Delta, the
Speaker 1: JSAK Assault medic. It's sort of the front line that
Speaker 1: is then delivering the casualty to this unit.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, pretty much. And where they deliver that to
Speaker 3: the unit is as close as possible, So whether that's
Speaker 3: aircraft that are just you know, loggering around or whatever.
Speaker 3: So it's it's pretty phenomenal to see, you know, it's
Speaker 3: pretty surgery in itself is pretty stressful, you know, even
Speaker 3: in a bright white lights and r seeing these dudes.
Speaker 3: They're just some of the most phenomenal practitioners, I would
Speaker 3: say in the world to just be able to do
Speaker 3: it's a big old dip in under night vision on
Speaker 3: their knees with the lanyard hooked in so that way
Speaker 3: they can kind of lean back and get a little
Speaker 3: bit of a stability, And it's just on. I didn't
Speaker 3: know stuff like that existed and.
Speaker 5: Perform like and not doing the great job that ranger
Speaker 5: SF medics or TIN medics do combat medics, but actually
Speaker 5: doing full surgeries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, brain on the actual surgery on the move. Yes, yep.
Speaker 3: It's damaged control of testation and damage control surgery for
Speaker 3: the most part, which is box and belly. So they're
Speaker 3: not going to go in there and do like bacular surgery.
Speaker 4: On somebody's legs.
Speaker 3: I mean that not really, They're going to go in
Speaker 3: there and clamp off vessels to preserve the life.
Speaker 1: Uh, tell us about what was your first deployment with
Speaker 1: that unit.
Speaker 3: So most for the most part, us NCOs we were
Speaker 3: going through kind of like identity identity crisis, so we
Speaker 3: would do like operations because we knew a lot of
Speaker 3: people in the communities and we would understand how the
Speaker 3: different platforms worked. So I was able to do that
Speaker 3: go over as like operations to really learn that battlefield architecture.
Speaker 3: So there's no benefit in that. So it wasn't as
Speaker 3: you know, effex as of what I would have thought,
Speaker 3: but we're going over there and just handling like the
Speaker 3: inner theater assets. I was able to do that, and
Speaker 3: then I was farmed out to like an Omega deployment,
Speaker 3: which was right back to like the tactical medicine stuff again.
Speaker 3: And so it's and then tell us about that one,
Speaker 3: Oh go ahead. Yeah, So that one was you know,
Speaker 3: I was familiar with the program already. It was I
Speaker 3: think twenty fourteen when I was able to do that,
Speaker 3: but I went out with the Navy at the time,
Speaker 3: and we had a small I know, you guys have
Speaker 3: had my Edwards on a show before, so but yeah,
Speaker 3: we had a small team going out there just enabling
Speaker 3: you know, the assets. So that one there was that
Speaker 3: deployment is probably my most probably uneasy or unnerving deployment
Speaker 3: because you're literally like four or five people middle of nowhere,
Speaker 3: like no asket, like just I really had to know
Speaker 3: my medicine and I needed to know my theater athletes
Speaker 3: at the time, and.
Speaker 4: So it was very very sketch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, battalion, no no, no, no, no, it's it's very
Speaker 3: big boy. Nobody's checking on you. Nobody's you know, even
Speaker 3: in range of Italian for the most part, it come
Speaker 3: back and do PCI, S PCC, you know all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and and you know you're kind of just used to
Speaker 3: that it's automatic, but here it's like nobody checking my dad,
Speaker 3: nobody's checking on the standard load is nobody's you know,
Speaker 3: you just have to use common sense at that time.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I was like the seventh motivle wasn't
Speaker 3: It wasn't really that difficult transition.
Speaker 4: But it's it's pretty good. I was with a good
Speaker 4: team and it was we saw.
Speaker 3: Is a lot more.
Speaker 4: Eventful than I than I probably would have thought.
Speaker 5: How how would you go about in the sort of
Speaker 5: this remote position, how would you go about getting your
Speaker 5: load out? You know, determining what you needed obviously you
Speaker 5: know how to term what you need. But what I
Speaker 5: mean is like if you needed extra stuff that you
Speaker 5: didn't have, Like, how did you go about doing that?
Speaker 5: Could you walk down to like the the not matched
Speaker 5: I could like the field hospital and get it, or
Speaker 5: how did that work?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I could, Yeah, I could do that. I think
Speaker 3: that was one of the magic things of being in
Speaker 3: the organization. It is everybody knows it ready. So I
Speaker 3: could go to the local place and this was intel
Speaker 3: all about it time. I could go in there and
Speaker 3: just nobody was really unaware of the off folks. So
Speaker 3: I go in there and they're just like one of
Speaker 3: you guys, you know, and and they were great about it.
Speaker 3: It was a conventional army unit. I don't remember who
Speaker 3: it was, but I think the one hundred and first
Speaker 3: was in theater at time. I got anything I possibly needed,
Speaker 3: but for my personal load out, I kicked Mike ket
Speaker 3: slur and balls. They had like a I can't remember
Speaker 3: the title of it, but there's a there's a white paper,
Speaker 3: all right, a white paper. They wrote a article about
Speaker 3: how to pack an AID bag and how to pack
Speaker 3: a truck bag and a rock, and I apologize I
Speaker 3: probably should have prepared and wrote it down, but that
Speaker 3: mindset and having my Ketsler in that organization of course
Speaker 3: trained in prefast, but having that mindset, I was able
Speaker 3: to crossload a lot of my medical stuff amongst the
Speaker 3: folks that was with. So everybody had narcoticts everybody because
Speaker 3: that's everybody needs own products, right, So, and everybody had
Speaker 3: a way to start and interer ossius and I taught
Speaker 3: them how to do it. And everybody had all that
Speaker 3: and turner kissed and pressure dressings, all the things they needed.
Speaker 3: And we trained and I trained and I trained and
Speaker 3: I trained them and they were pretty receptive to it.
Speaker 3: They were very good about it. And then I had,
Speaker 3: you know, my truck stuff that I always had in
Speaker 3: the truck, and then whenever we'd enter a house, if
Speaker 3: they had to do that, I would.
Speaker 4: But we didn't do a whole lot of easily. We
Speaker 4: kind of stayed off sped a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I would have you a bag that were dropped
Speaker 3: for that so and then a speedball that you know,
Speaker 3: we dropped from the helicopter if we needed it.
Speaker 4: So I was pretty pretty well equipped for being only
Speaker 4: a small element.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but my aid bag when I was with the regiment,
Speaker 3: which is also compounding off of either another platem medic
Speaker 3: or you know, somebody else who's one of the other
Speaker 3: trum in that's also trained medically somewhat would kind of be.
Speaker 4: The person who chose some of the others up. And
Speaker 4: everybody trained at tea truble c.
Speaker 3: You can crossload really well, and you got a striker,
Speaker 3: you could drop a couple of bags in the area
Speaker 3: got you know, there's a lot of room there. But
Speaker 3: I had to I had to do more of one
Speaker 3: off stuff. So if I, for me, on a small team,
Speaker 3: a mass cow is one person, so I kind of.
Speaker 4: Had to gear for that.
Speaker 3: So I wouldn't need twenty pirnicates because that's more than
Speaker 3: what I could do anyway, So I would prep more
Speaker 3: for you know, if I had to do boxer belly
Speaker 3: or something like that on just one person. Uh.
Speaker 1: Any memorable operations from that deployment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there was a couple of times where we
Speaker 3: got pretty pretty big ticks or troops and contact and
Speaker 3: one we actually lost, uh an American advisor on that
Speaker 3: one there, and it was a it was a mass cow.
Speaker 3: So the Afghans that we're working with, I think I
Speaker 3: had six or seven casualties at the time. So I
Speaker 3: was working with them, and uh, they were what you
Speaker 3: would think just grazed and they were like limping, Like
Speaker 3: I remember the first time I got shot, you know,
Speaker 3: So I was kind of irritated with them because they
Speaker 3: didn't really.
Speaker 4: They would get hit and just laid down and.
Speaker 1: Something like trained from the get go, Like you get shot,
Speaker 1: you keep going even in training. Yeah, until they assessed
Speaker 1: them with casualty.
Speaker 3: They would come see me in the aide station later
Speaker 3: on they're, yeah, I think I got hit and you
Speaker 3: look and they're like uniforms torn up, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: you're an idiot. Yes you got hit. You know it
Speaker 3: does happen, but but no, we lost an American on
Speaker 3: that one, and that that was a pretty brutal hit
Speaker 3: at the time. But we worked through it and you know,
Speaker 3: continued mission.
Speaker 1: That's got to be rough man going a mass cow situation,
Speaker 1: and like, I think it's a very interesting like psychological
Speaker 1: dynamic that you mentioned earlier, that all of this happens,
Speaker 1: but you've got to keep going, like the mission doesn't
Speaker 1: just stop. Fight doesn't just stop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's kind of working through that and making
Speaker 3: sure that you know, everybody else is maintaining that focus
Speaker 3: will also getting irritated with some of the partner Nation
Speaker 3: that I didn't really you know, at the time, there's
Speaker 3: so much you know, green on blue whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't. I didn't. I wasn't comfortable working with some
Speaker 3: of the partner Nation, to be honest. So it was
Speaker 3: another added thing that I had to worry about, right.
Speaker 3: So it's just it's just stressful one of the things.
Speaker 3: And I didn't I didn't trust to just hand it
Speaker 3: casually off the people I didn't know, so I ended
Speaker 3: up carrying the litter and handing off to the helicopter
Speaker 3: that came in. It's just made it a different experience
Speaker 3: to where, you know, you know, back in the Ranger regiment,
Speaker 3: you're treating somebody, You get a couple of range of privates,
Speaker 3: they're carrying stuff.
Speaker 4: You hand off to one sixtieth guy.
Speaker 3: You know who it is.
Speaker 4: I've worked with him for years.
Speaker 3: You hand off. I know he's good to go. Now
Speaker 3: you're working with people you've never seen before, putting on
Speaker 3: an aircraft we vaguely know who's on it. It's just
Speaker 3: just not comfortable. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And one of the things you mentioned earlier was.
Speaker 5: How sometimes a platoon sergeant would stop and overlook and
Speaker 5: want to know the status. But sometimes with indage, an
Speaker 5: entire like an entire group of guys would stop, just stop,
Speaker 5: just stop, just to see if their buddy was flying.
Speaker 3: We had, you know, I had a couple of folks
Speaker 3: on the ground. It helped out with the crowd control,
Speaker 3: so they were able to divert really well. So I
Speaker 3: didn't That was just one last thing that I had
Speaker 3: to worry about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, Mike, I remember, and I'd love to
Speaker 1: ask you this. I mean, I remember. You may have
Speaker 1: mentioned to me that you got spun up for a
Speaker 1: counter terrorism deployment during your time at the unit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I did.
Speaker 4: It was the whole Benghazi thing there.
Speaker 3: So a part of our mission was also goin to
Speaker 3: be prepared for their surgical teams. And I you know,
Speaker 3: being in the unit's not only about surgery. It's also
Speaker 3: about that inner theater operations, getting folks where they need
Speaker 3: to go back to Germany or wherever. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: Benghazi you know that that went off and I reported
Speaker 3: to work, and you know, because it was a page
Speaker 3: or phone call or whatever, and usually you know, we
Speaker 3: would train and you know, I wasn't sure if it
Speaker 3: was like a real thing or not. But oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I was on the Sea seven team headed to taking
Speaker 3: Italy pretty quick, so that was uh my first time
Speaker 3: doing kind of that kind of blowout for real. So
Speaker 3: it was also kind of a nervous thing because you know,
Speaker 3: we didn't really know a whole lot of what was
Speaker 3: going on. I'm sure you've seen the movie Thirteen Hours.
Speaker 3: This is far removed from like the movie. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I don't want to say like it, you know, it
Speaker 3: is what it is. The movie is pretty active, by
Speaker 3: the way, but at the time we didn't know any
Speaker 3: of that was really going on. The intel we got,
Speaker 3: you know, we're already starting to develop, you know, targets
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. So that was just a a
Speaker 3: different experience. When you take off an aircraft and you
Speaker 3: have no crew where you're landed.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and you got enough, you know, you've got
Speaker 3: palette load of equipment that could literally go anywhere in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're kind of prepared for it. But it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 1: But it's great that capability exists, right, Oh absolutely, And
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 5: Time, did you because you're you're seeing with right now
Speaker 5: you're in this like legit Tier one unit. Did you
Speaker 5: not know where you were going because the pilots didn't
Speaker 5: brief you were because the pilots didn't know it, like
Speaker 5: everything was so influxed. No, Like decisions were being made
Speaker 5: while you guys were in the air.
Speaker 4: Yeah, decisions were definitely made while we're in the air.
Speaker 3: Right as we got closer, we knew where we were going. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean we could start developing a plan, but at
Speaker 3: the time, there wasn't you know, we just we didn't
Speaker 3: know much. I think that the news and the media
Speaker 3: at the time was saying, uh, you know there was
Speaker 3: uprising because of a political cartoon, because of the video
Speaker 3: it was on. Then Yeah, it was on the anniversary,
Speaker 3: right after September eleventh, So that was bad intelligence, that was.
Speaker 5: Not Yeah, and so when you've got to singinale, because
Speaker 5: you know, everybody in the military has been subject to
Speaker 5: the hurry up and wait uh you know syndrome, what
Speaker 5: was it like when you guys got to singanella?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, we're going on thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 3: We do what we do. We've we've perfected the art
Speaker 3: of setting up, tear down, set up tear down. So
Speaker 3: we got there, we set up ready to go no
Speaker 3: matter what we need to do. I started making local
Speaker 3: connections with hospitals if we needed to bring somebody back
Speaker 3: or we needed to move an o R over there.
Speaker 3: We started making you know, starting to meet the other
Speaker 3: assets that we had in country to kind of figure
Speaker 3: out where we could push people around if you had to.
Speaker 3: So the first couple of days was like two hours
Speaker 3: of sleep ranger school upon us, just trying to figure
Speaker 3: out who's doing what we're doing. If you know this
Speaker 3: organization watches and does this, how would we support that.
Speaker 3: So it was it was a bunch of ants making
Speaker 3: an ant hill for the first couple of days. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, when you know, one of the things we see
Speaker 5: sometimes with Special Operations units is you know, like there
Speaker 5: are conventional theater you know, owners or or owners of
Speaker 5: a certain area and they may not always like what
Speaker 5: the Special Operations Units are doing there. And there can
Speaker 5: be a little bit of a rub when.
Speaker 6: You guys fly into place like Cinella. And obviously you
Speaker 6: have not.
Speaker 5: Saying anything bad about doctors or surgeons at any given
Speaker 5: military base, but fifty percent of doctors were at the
Speaker 5: bottom of the bottom of their class, right like fifty
Speaker 5: percent of them. So so you never know. So you
Speaker 5: never know what you are getting in any one location.
Speaker 5: And when you guys fly in, do you have the
Speaker 5: authority to sort of commandeer a surgical room and say,
Speaker 5: anybody coming from.
Speaker 6: This is ours?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I don't know about the authority to do it.
Speaker 3: But we go in there and lack of like I
Speaker 3: want to, you know, tell you guys that we go
Speaker 3: in there and kick down doors and hold a clock
Speaker 3: to somebody's head, but like, you know, man, like, we
Speaker 3: walk in there and it's like a naval unit and
Speaker 3: they're like, we know why you're here, you know. So
Speaker 3: I'm in plain clothes and I just walked in there.
Speaker 3: They're like, you know, we know why you're here. What
Speaker 3: do you guys need? And and so I don't know
Speaker 3: if that was just that specific naval unit that was
Speaker 3: helping us out, but I really didn't have any issues
Speaker 3: with that whatsoever. They said, whatever you guys need, it's yours.
Speaker 5: Pretty good, that's fantastic, Yeah, Because I didn't know if maybe,
Speaker 5: like you know, some chief of medicine to be like, ah,
Speaker 5: this is our hospital and you guys blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm sure it's happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've I've been fortunate to where I was able
Speaker 3: to sweet talk just about anybody to get whatever I needed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so what what came I I mean I just
Speaker 1: following the chronology, I mean what came after that whole
Speaker 1: Bengazi situation.
Speaker 4: A whole lot of nothing. They sat there, did nothing.
Speaker 3: So they're trying not to get too political, but we
Speaker 3: had I personally think that we had targets, we had
Speaker 3: a show of force.
Speaker 4: That we're we'reing ready and able to do and we
Speaker 4: did not.
Speaker 3: So it sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Like of course, no
Speaker 3: more American lives were jeopardy put in jeopardy or harmed or.
Speaker 4: Anything, so that's a good thing. But I think we
Speaker 4: could have done more.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it you know, it's not just any special
Speaker 5: operations in that theater, special operations in other areas. And
Speaker 5: I can't remember the unit in Chiganella, the airborne unit
Speaker 5: which is supposed to be there for a lot of
Speaker 5: the inextremist stuff.
Speaker 3: We had Charlie.
Speaker 4: We had Charlie one ten from s DEF.
Speaker 3: They were in West stutgard I leave, so they were
Speaker 3: actually they met us in Italy pretty quick yeah, so
Speaker 3: they had assets there. We had some folks from the
Speaker 3: five two eight, which luckily I did a little time there,
Speaker 3: so I integrated them really quickly. But as far as
Speaker 3: like conventional infantry, I don't think they had a whole lot.
Speaker 3: They had like a marine rifle platoon that might have
Speaker 3: been in somewhere in Northern Africa, but I don't We
Speaker 3: didn't have a whole lot where we were at. Uh,
Speaker 3: they have the one seventy third, but I don't think
Speaker 3: they were They were not there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh they weren't.
Speaker 3: They weren't in Italy, they were not at our location.
Speaker 5: They were not your Okay, so what what?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: What came after that? What was the next thing for you?
Speaker 5: More?
Speaker 3: Ops?
Speaker 4: Deployments?
Speaker 3: More? Most of my time in the unit was training
Speaker 3: and training other people. So I did a lot of
Speaker 3: training the newer teams that would attest and get selected,
Speaker 3: and we eventually developed a pretty pretty good selection tatics,
Speaker 3: but helped make it so we can test them physically, mentally,
Speaker 3: emotionally in some cases to ensure that they were the
Speaker 3: right fit for the organizations that were going out. It's
Speaker 3: because they were a good surgeon doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 3: fit to be in that remote environment. So I worked
Speaker 3: a lot with that and just running the day to
Speaker 3: day operations at the jumps and and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So that's what I was saying. We went through kind
Speaker 3: of like a change of where we did a lot
Speaker 3: of ops and then we did tactical medicine stuff where
Speaker 3: we worked with the surgical resuspension teams a lot, and
Speaker 3: then we moved into like and doing other administrative stuff.
Speaker 3: So I also did like counterpoort reparation for a lot
Speaker 3: of NBC like live agent training and you know, all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff to the very broad kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But I think as a medic and organizational wise, it
Speaker 3: was just like every single day you're learning something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's like also it's.
Speaker 1: Like a whole other field of medicine when you get
Speaker 1: into the NBC stuff, but like assessing like someone who's
Speaker 1: exposed to sarian or like somebody who's exposed to like
Speaker 1: a radiological device.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I know, it is very different. And we
Speaker 3: were able to go up through up to Canada soduced
Speaker 3: in live agent training and stuff because we don't really
Speaker 3: do that in the US, but it was it was
Speaker 3: definitely a big eye opener at just learning you know,
Speaker 3: the LD fifty or at least lethal dose of a
Speaker 3: chemical that will kill of the population and given aunt
Speaker 3: of time, like you know, a grain of rice size
Speaker 3: of this chemical will kill somebody. It's just it's kind
Speaker 3: of crazy. But it also opens your eyes to fought
Speaker 3: movie fakes, which me and my son do all the time, like,
Speaker 3: a ha, you know that's not true. So when you
Speaker 3: watch like The Rock and he's like, you're gonna stab
Speaker 3: this and it's not how that's not how that works.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, it's like this is VF gas and
Speaker 3: it melts your faith. Right, No, that's not what it does.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of cool to learn all that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff and also work with the different tiers and
Speaker 3: you know, what would they do because you.
Speaker 4: Know, Korea is kind of a thing and we didn't
Speaker 4: really know.
Speaker 3: NBC was kind of ramping up a little bit, so
Speaker 3: it was it was an eye opener because it's not sexy,
Speaker 3: you know, as a medic where like you know, trauma,
Speaker 3: you're doing this. You know, I'm you know, doing chest
Speaker 3: tubes and I'm criking and you're doing stuff and now
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, you're doing atrophine and Pisa, stigmine
Speaker 3: and you know value, it's just.
Speaker 4: Like not you know, it's not cool, but it's it's
Speaker 4: stuff you just gotta move.
Speaker 6: Did you ever did you ever find it?
Speaker 5: Because like some of the things that I learned about,
Speaker 5: like the NBC stuff and then sometimes how easy it
Speaker 5: is or liked, were you ever just terrified like wow,
Speaker 5: like how have we not been hit by this stuff?
Speaker 3: Well? Now, actually, the smarter you get on it, the
Speaker 3: more you realize that it's not as easy to do
Speaker 3: as you think. Really, yeah, so you know, it's not
Speaker 3: as easy to just you know, VX gas. We're going
Speaker 3: to throw it in a missile. You know, most of
Speaker 3: a lot of these chemicals they boil at room temperature,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't become you know, it's it's not as
Speaker 3: easily used as weaponized, if you will. So it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's once I get the more you learn, the more
Speaker 3: you realize things just aren't It's very hard that movie.
Speaker 3: It could still hurt you. It still hurt you, of course,
Speaker 3: but I was more concerned in biological agents that that
Speaker 3: still freaks me out. You know, we see what happened
Speaker 3: with COVID. COVID could very easily be biological agent, right,
Speaker 3: But when we're talking about nerve agents and stuff like that, it's.
Speaker 1: We're talking about like dirty, dirty bombs, and even like
Speaker 1: e MPs, like they're not quite as effective as like
Speaker 1: the movies would have us believe.
Speaker 3: No, they're really not. So, you know, I think that
Speaker 3: in modern warfare we just don't see it that often.
Speaker 3: I think the only time that I know of in
Speaker 3: the soft community that we had to deal with that
Speaker 3: was folks that treated children who had walked through some
Speaker 3: of the poppy fields in Afghanistan where they were exposed
Speaker 3: to some of the chemicals that they'd used that were
Speaker 3: very similar to the nerve agent poisonous organophosphate poisoning, and
Speaker 3: so kind of identifying that and treating it almost the
Speaker 3: same way. So that happened. And then there was chlorine
Speaker 3: that you know, I think happened in Iraq a few
Speaker 3: times where they tried to be like chlorine bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: did that too, Yeah, that's pretty dirty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the invasion of Iraq with the whole Islam Ulstaria group,
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, Northern Iraq suspected to have a
Speaker 1: chemical weapons factory. They dealt with it there too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, it's just not something that I remember.
Speaker 3: On my first deployment, we had like the you had
Speaker 3: your pro mask on your side and you appointed that
Speaker 3: for a pillow, and then it eventually became like I
Speaker 3: don't even know where the pro mask is. Yeah. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 3: and also I did learn a lot so with relaxed
Speaker 3: groening standards. Yet you can get a steal on a
Speaker 3: pro mask and they have a papper positive air pressure
Speaker 3: pump that helps push positive air into your math. So
Speaker 3: all these people that are saying you can't have a
Speaker 3: beer to the math because it's just that's not sure.
Speaker 5: I think that's just an excuse to to make it
Speaker 5: so you can't I can't have a beer and it
Speaker 5: excluded or.
Speaker 1: Seek brothers right military service.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, yeah, because I remember like obviously in
Speaker 5: the Army it's like pro mass, but in the Navy
Speaker 5: because everybody has to be a firefighter or be on
Speaker 5: damage control on a ship. Like it's like that's why
Speaker 5: we don't have beards. You can't have beards. You can
Speaker 5: have three day growth because you won't get a seal
Speaker 5: on your you know mask, And it's like I don't
Speaker 5: think that's right.
Speaker 1: So Mike, you get you get promoted to sergeant major,
Speaker 1: You're you're up at the top.
Speaker 5: Yeah, do we miss something?
Speaker 3: Well yeah he did kind of.
Speaker 4: So I ended up taking a taking a knee.
Speaker 3: So it was time to leave all the you know
Speaker 3: that stuff, and I talked to Dennis Smith, who was
Speaker 3: former first sergeant three seventy five back in the day,
Speaker 3: and he was the ar TV everyone ready Training Brigade
Speaker 3: started the major and so I was able to get
Speaker 3: back to Fort Penning and I was gonna be one
Speaker 3: of the Airborne School first sergeants or whatever. She just
Speaker 3: taking a knee kind of stop the point for a
Speaker 3: little bit, focused on my mental else But I ended
Speaker 3: up going back and being like the s penior medic
Speaker 3: for the airbone inder train to day and then ended
Speaker 3: up they put me in the position to be the
Speaker 3: HP first target. So I did that for a little
Speaker 3: while working at Ranger School, which believe or not, was
Speaker 3: one of my best assignments. More so for you know,
Speaker 3: my mental health for sure, but the predictability and being
Speaker 3: part of something that's not medical, because you know, it's
Speaker 3: something I talked about a little bit, but like you know,
Speaker 3: throughout my career, with all the loss and all the
Speaker 3: things I saw, it was kind of nice to step
Speaker 3: away from medicine for a little while. Yeah, just kind
Speaker 3: of take that break and just kind of you know,
Speaker 3: button and some people they're die hard into medicine. I'm
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I am. I was die hard
Speaker 3: into being a ranger medic. I was die hard into
Speaker 3: being a medic, but I wasn't really die hard into
Speaker 3: medicine in itself. But stepping aside, but still being with
Speaker 3: the infantry and still being with maneuver, I actually enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Uh was that like to work with young soldiers going
Speaker 1: through this arduous training?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was very different, and you know,
Speaker 3: I took it. I took it head on, being a
Speaker 3: very different assignment and and man, I don't know, just
Speaker 3: seeing these young kids come through, and you know, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, my uniform at the.
Speaker 4: Time was you know, pretty uh, you know, I had
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff on there or whatever.
Speaker 3: But so they would see that and they instantly would
Speaker 3: asking questions or this or that, and you're a medic,
Speaker 3: why you know, why are you in this position or
Speaker 3: that or whatever?
Speaker 4: And just being able to mentor those folks.
Speaker 3: I thought was really good to see, you know, how
Speaker 3: stupid a ranger student can be, but how remarkable they
Speaker 3: can be and how funny they could be.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a great, great opportunity and working with a
Speaker 3: lot of the r I a lot of the senior
Speaker 3: tax folks, and it was the It was a phenomenal
Speaker 3: part of my career.
Speaker 5: I'm curious had Ranger School changed much between the time
Speaker 5: you went through and the time you became cadre.
Speaker 3: Uh kind of so one of my biggest discontent And
Speaker 3: of course I went in there with you know, I
Speaker 3: had the full soft mindset of you know, ranger school
Speaker 3: is still archaic and Vietnam, and it pissed me off,
Speaker 3: honestly because it wasn't different.
Speaker 4: So look at all these lessons learned, and I think
Speaker 4: being a medic kind of like it.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It kind of set me up with
Speaker 3: failure in that because we always take the things we
Speaker 3: learned from combat and make sure that we incorporate that
Speaker 3: into our training and make sure that we report our
Speaker 3: casualties back to the Joint Trauma and it gets back
Speaker 3: to Committee of Tutor we'll see, which then feeds back
Speaker 3: into STOCKERM and feeds back into the medical represser, and
Speaker 3: medics are better tomorrow because of what we went through yesterday.
Speaker 3: And at Rangers School, we had this amazing opportunity of
Speaker 3: what do we learned in Iraq, what do we've learned
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan to at least apply it to the training.
Speaker 3: And then some folks are like, wow, the leadership school,
Speaker 3: and I kind of disagree with that. Ranger School when
Speaker 3: it began was supposed to prepare people for this guerrilla
Speaker 3: warfare type environment that they were going to be in,
Speaker 3: and so it's not necessarily leadership school. I know it
Speaker 3: uses leadership as a means to evaluate, but what if
Speaker 3: somebody went to the Ranger School and didn't even maybe
Speaker 3: you didn't pass, Did you go back to your unit?
Speaker 3: Was something that's going to save somebody's life, right, whether
Speaker 3: that's survivability or lethality, Like, are you going to go back.
Speaker 4: And it's going to do something? Probably not?
Speaker 3: So I think that was probably one of my biggest
Speaker 3: discontents was they didn't take the lessons learned from actual
Speaker 3: combat and find a way to incorporate that into Ranger School.
Speaker 3: And I don't know where they are now maybe they
Speaker 3: have now, but.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, and do you mean when when you say that,
Speaker 5: do you mean in terms of the way we actually
Speaker 5: tactically do combat on the ground or treatments on the ground,
Speaker 5: or in the leadership aspect of the way were reporting
Speaker 5: these things back and the way like the the whole
Speaker 5: command and communication structure work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much all of it. So you know,
Speaker 3: even if something as small is making a day, you know,
Speaker 3: a power point on you know, this is your truck annex,
Speaker 3: but it's not in the back of the ranger handbook.
Speaker 3: It's on a power point you know. Or everybody thinks
Speaker 3: rangers you must be able to shoot good. We don't
Speaker 3: shoot a single live around at ranger school. You know,
Speaker 3: there might be a good opportunity to be able to
Speaker 3: incorporate that in there, and folks that you can't do
Speaker 3: it while they're doing at RASP as you can. So
Speaker 3: I think showing that small unit tactics and lead and
Speaker 3: teaching people the small unit tactics stuff that comes directly
Speaker 3: from the regiment.
Speaker 4: Maybe some of the SME stuff doesn't apply.
Speaker 3: Maybe it does, but you can't tell me a ranger
Speaker 3: a rifle putoon in the eighty second can't benefit from
Speaker 3: kniper theory. Where do I even put a sniper? Where
Speaker 3: do I put you know, where should I put these folks?
Speaker 3: Where should I do this? Or I have to report
Speaker 3: up higher? I have to do this. You know, there's
Speaker 3: so much more that they have to do that. I
Speaker 3: wish somebody that graduated from Ranger School goes straight to
Speaker 3: you know, that position and enable that element so much
Speaker 3: better than they do now. And the reason why I
Speaker 3: know it's kind of outdated is and this used to
Speaker 3: piss me out too because and a lot of things
Speaker 3: fits more. But like, why isn't it like Marstock thing
Speaker 3: Ranger School. You know, before you can get a Marstock position,
Speaker 3: you need to go to this school. Why isn't you
Speaker 3: know FF saying, before you can be an eighteen bravo
Speaker 3: on my team, you're going to this school. You know,
Speaker 3: they have this opportunity to where it can be a
Speaker 3: great school to teach people things they can't learn anywhere else.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, everything you learn at Ranger School you can
Speaker 3: get from the Ranger handle Like it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: not teaching you something you couldn't do yesterday, right versus
Speaker 3: like Airborne School I couldn't jump out of the plane
Speaker 3: three weeks, so now I can. So I just think
Speaker 3: they probably could have done a little bit better at that,
Speaker 3: maybe even adopt like the Arslick model where it's more
Speaker 3: of like your team and you're you know, you're still
Speaker 3: using some of the capability from the team you came from,
Speaker 3: and kind of using that is a way to enhance
Speaker 3: the course.
Speaker 4: And I think there's still measures and ways that they could. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, we're not creating course just to make it hard,
Speaker 4: just to make people fail.
Speaker 3: That's good. Yeah, as my son says, like when they
Speaker 3: when they when they built the you know, the the
Speaker 3: Dark Vader when it when it built the day thing.
Speaker 3: Of course it created a lot of jobs, but like
Speaker 3: it's the Death Star. So like we don't want to
Speaker 3: create somethings really hard just for people to fail. I
Speaker 3: would rather they kind of take a look at Rangers
Speaker 3: School and create something that, like I said, even if
Speaker 3: you failed on the last day, you go back to
Speaker 3: your opportunity, You're you're still value added. Do you think
Speaker 3: just think they miss the much.
Speaker 5: Do you think the part of that is because and
Speaker 5: and again I am not well, first off, I'm not
Speaker 5: putting down conventional forces, because conventional forces we're out there
Speaker 5: hooking and jabbing at these little ship fobs and and
Speaker 5: cops out in the middle of nowhere. Like they they
Speaker 5: saw plenty of action. But you know, when you talk
Speaker 5: about out sort of bringing these lessons into range of battalion,
Speaker 5: not not or from range of battalion. Not All these instructions,
Speaker 5: in fact, not a lot of the instructors, at least
Speaker 5: when I went, were from battalion, right, they were tabbed
Speaker 5: rangers from you know, different units, so they might not
Speaker 5: have that regiment experience coming in to bring in do
Speaker 5: you think because it's a part of trade doc and
Speaker 5: open to yeah, anybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it is. I think it is for sure.
Speaker 3: And something that I tried to brain child while I
Speaker 3: was there is I went to the SF committee and
Speaker 3: because we were talking about females coming through Granger Sports,
Speaker 3: so you know, we wanted to cover you know, SF,
Speaker 3: they had already had females and psyop and PA.
Speaker 4: So how did they run their selections?
Speaker 3: What do they do? You know, how did they infrastructure wide? Whatever?
Speaker 3: So while we're there though, talking some of their sergeants,
Speaker 3: Major was like, you know, what if we treated Rangers
Speaker 3: fool as kind of your swift time where one of
Speaker 3: their instructors would come here do their time. They still
Speaker 3: wear their green hat, they go through ridecap, there's still
Speaker 3: a certified Ranger instructor. But you know, and then when
Speaker 3: you have s F folks come through, you can maybe
Speaker 3: kind of come up with something that's a little bit
Speaker 3: more applicable to the Ranger mission set. So I think
Speaker 3: there's opportunities where they could have done that, and I
Speaker 3: think the Ranger Regiment they could almost do the same
Speaker 3: thing where hey, you know, you did your squad leader time,
Speaker 3: you're not really ready to be a platoon sergant yet
Speaker 3: it's rader at Ptpenning ortmore. You know, have them come
Speaker 3: over on loan because a lot of folks, you don't
Speaker 3: want to leave the community because once you leave, it's
Speaker 3: the community who knows what's going to happen to you.
Speaker 4: So I think a lot of people are afraid of that.
Speaker 4: But people do deserve to.
Speaker 3: Take a knee. So if they could come over and
Speaker 3: have be like a guest instructor or still do right,
Speaker 3: apps still do all that stuff, but you're like on
Speaker 3: loan or with duty at Ranger school, right. You know,
Speaker 3: I think Ranger Regiment produces the most ranger qualified NCOs
Speaker 3: Earth send the most and can receive the most, so
Speaker 3: I think that they should be a little bit more
Speaker 3: involved with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a there's a difference between I
Speaker 1: think what you and I would like Ranger School to
Speaker 1: be and what it actually is. Like we have this
Speaker 1: idea in our mind that it should be a commando's school, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's what most people, like civilians think
Speaker 5: it is.
Speaker 1: But but really, as you point out, it's a tradock school,
Speaker 1: and that most of the students are Cherry lieutenant right, IOBC.
Speaker 5: And privates out of Ranger Battalion, right, Private and six
Speaker 5: is from that's.
Speaker 1: The minority, Yeah, a minority of n CEOs from the
Speaker 1: conventional force, right, And and so Ranger School, like I was,
Speaker 1: I was definitely if you talk to me back in
Speaker 1: the day, I'd be bitter about it. But nowadays, like
Speaker 1: I can look back on it and see they did
Speaker 1: a very good job at training us on the basics.
Speaker 5: Right, and it's a basic leadership.
Speaker 1: And to this day, I could not even if I
Speaker 1: wanted to, I could not forget how to set it
Speaker 1: an ambush, right, because they do it so so many
Speaker 1: damn times. So it has value. But I don't think
Speaker 1: you're wrong either, Mike, and pointing out that it could
Speaker 1: have even more value with some modifications.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. It's just you know, i'd be
Speaker 3: dumb to think in the you know, the year twenty fifty,
Speaker 3: like it's still going to be the same, I hope not.
Speaker 3: Like there has to be a point where, you know,
Speaker 3: we're towards. Yeah, it's something a little bit more applicable.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're seeing drones in Russia and yeah, we're
Speaker 3: seeing in Ukraine. Like start moving towards a little bit
Speaker 3: more you know, modern theory when it comes to things,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't have to be you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be a six month long tactical course. That's
Speaker 3: not what you're trying to do. But I just think
Speaker 3: that they could.
Speaker 1: Well, it may have been a six month tactical course
Speaker 1: for some of us.
Speaker 5: For some people, right right, Well, And that makes the
Speaker 5: question did you go through the last hard course or
Speaker 5: the first easy course, because everybody is w last hard
Speaker 5: one for sure?
Speaker 1: Did you have the bayonet assault course? Yes, his soul
Speaker 1: is pure, his soul is pure.
Speaker 5: But I think that you pointed out Jack that uh
Speaker 5: that really Ranger School, like enlisted people can go to
Speaker 5: Ranger School because there aren't enough officers to fill it out.
Speaker 5: But it really is an IOBC. It's an inventtry officer
Speaker 5: basic course school, you know, to teach these college kids,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of your small unit and larger unit tactics.
Speaker 5: You get them kind of up to up to speed.
Speaker 5: And it's funny to me though, because, like you mentioned,
Speaker 5: coming from battalion and it's like when one of these
Speaker 5: officers getting ready to fail, when they have their first
Speaker 5: no go and they're looking at their second like who
Speaker 5: do they who do they make their you know, their
Speaker 5: platoona sergeant and their squad leaders. It's like the ranger privates.
Speaker 5: It's like, hey, where am I?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: Where are my regiment guys? All right, you guys, get
Speaker 5: him to get him a pass?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Mike, Mike. Else about then picking up
Speaker 1: sergeant major and kind of finishing out your military career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was picked up pretty early on. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, when I was selected. I've been in the
Speaker 3: Army fourteen fifteen years or whatever. So I actually didn't
Speaker 3: think i'd get picked up. I had been in soft
Speaker 3: majority of my career and I had you know, the
Speaker 3: classified n ce rs or whatever, so I didn't think
Speaker 3: that they'd even really read a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 3: no degree, and I didn't have a lot of diversity
Speaker 3: when it comes to assignments, which is all things that they.
Speaker 4: Wanted to have, and they say, you're not going to
Speaker 4: get picked up if you don't.
Speaker 3: I got picked up right away, so it was kind
Speaker 3: of a shocker. And then I ended up doing like
Speaker 3: the the online academy, which was it is what it is.
Speaker 3: It was, you know, two years of night Yeah, it's what.
Speaker 3: It sucks too because you're doing the academy, but you're
Speaker 3: also doing the job of stor major. Because as une
Speaker 3: as you know, I got selected, they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're coming here, going to do that. So I ended
Speaker 3: up going to Fort Bragg. It was the clinical chief
Speaker 3: Clinical start major of WOMAX. So you know, you're jumping
Speaker 3: right into Hey, you've been a soft medic all this time,
Speaker 3: and then you were at Ranger School and then now
Speaker 3: you're in charge of clinical medicine and one of the
Speaker 3: largest Army hospitals. It's like I couldn't be any more
Speaker 3: far removed. But I actually enjoyed it quite a bit
Speaker 3: because it allowed me to well plus id Rypop, which
Speaker 3: hopefully you can get him on the show. So he
Speaker 3: was the stargant major of Womack at the time, so
Speaker 3: we just immediately just hit it off. But there's a
Speaker 3: good opportunity to see with the conventional medics and the
Speaker 3: conventional medical teams and organizations.
Speaker 4: How they function and how they did things. And it
Speaker 4: was actually kind of an eye opener.
Speaker 3: So I was pretty blessed to be able to do that,
Speaker 3: but it came with many headaches because my thing was
Speaker 3: is a medic treating my my guys. That's my number
Speaker 3: one job, take care of my guys. And so when
Speaker 3: I got put in this position, my soldiers were no
Speaker 3: longer really my job. My delivery of health care to
Speaker 3: these beneficiaries, you know, these wives, these husbands, these children
Speaker 3: like that became my priority.
Speaker 4: And so I kind of found myself getting a little
Speaker 4: bit more aggressive.
Speaker 3: And reventful towards the service and the service member because
Speaker 3: the delivery of health care was vastly substandard in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, can I just want to ask you a question
Speaker 5: because you in the army in particular, you wear your
Speaker 5: d D two fourteen on your chest right or you know,
Speaker 5: like we love badges, we love you know, and you
Speaker 5: will go into a conventional army hospital does does does
Speaker 5: You're like you, well, what does your like chest help
Speaker 5: you like flair or whatever? Yeah, that's the what I
Speaker 5: was looking for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not really. I think most of the people in
Speaker 3: in medcom, which is you know, Army Medical Command or whatever,
Speaker 3: I don't think many of them even knew.
Speaker 4: What half of that stuff was. Yeah, I masters don't
Speaker 4: Winning free Fall, c NB all that, like, they didn't know.
Speaker 3: But I think you know, where it did make a
Speaker 3: difference was I would actually do shifts in the er,
Speaker 3: and I would go up to the o R and
Speaker 3: actually scrub in for surgeries once in a while. So
Speaker 3: when I go in there and I got the stuff, cope,
Speaker 3: and I'm a frog star major at the time, and
Speaker 3: you got the eighties second you know TV two and
Speaker 3: there with his wife and he's just like whoa, Like,
Speaker 3: who's this guy? You know, It's just I think that
Speaker 3: was that was kind of the highlight. I think they
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, you know, my families get to go
Speaker 3: they're taking care of them. Yeah, I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of what we was all about.
Speaker 1: Do we have questions for Mike, Yeah, we have a couple.
Speaker 1: I have one here for you, m Corbin asks. Over
Speaker 1: the last twenty some years, the Rangers have seen it all.
Speaker 1: Correct me if I'm wrong, But during that time, the
Speaker 1: Ranger Special Operations combat medics have led the way in
Speaker 1: innovating and pioneering advanced field medic techniques such as establishing
Speaker 1: walking blood banks, which have saved countless lives. What were
Speaker 1: some of the more counterintuitive things that were learned along
Speaker 1: the way during these twenty years.
Speaker 3: It's great now, that is a good question at Portland Bias,
Speaker 3: But I do think the radio medics to light years
Speaker 3: beyond a lot of data metics out there. And I've
Speaker 3: worked close with pretty much every type of medic in
Speaker 3: all the organizations. But I think the hungry Ranger medic
Speaker 3: I think, and it's not just it has nothing to
Speaker 3: do with this or nothing like that. I just think
Speaker 3: because they're just they're saturated with that knowledge of the
Speaker 3: Range of medic handbook and the institutional knowledge, and.
Speaker 4: They have the PA and the surgeons that are there.
Speaker 3: I've even seen eighteen deltas at our fresher course saying,
Speaker 3: you know, our surgeon won't even.
Speaker 4: Let us do this or do that, and they'll closed
Speaker 4: my mind or.
Speaker 3: An anteing delta, that's crazy, But ours always pushed us
Speaker 3: harder and push the envelope even when the FBA won't
Speaker 3: allow it. So yeah, when it comes to walking blood bank,
Speaker 3: we're talking about taking blood from that ranger over there
Speaker 3: who's a low tighter and putting it in this ranger
Speaker 3: who needs it. And it's not me. The medic is
Speaker 3: doing it because I have to. You know, if I'm
Speaker 3: doing damage control or censitation on this guy, I need
Speaker 3: an infantryman to draw the blood from that guy, put
Speaker 3: it in the bag, and then we can administrate it
Speaker 3: to this guy. So, you know, I think that Ranger Medics,
Speaker 3: because of the organization, I think they've been able to
Speaker 3: push that envelope harder than any other.
Speaker 4: I think PGAs are great, They're good at medicine.
Speaker 3: They did do really well. I think, you know, PA
Speaker 3: medics are good. Once sixtieth medics phenomenal, they are. But
Speaker 3: I've never seen another organization where a sergeant major or
Speaker 3: a first sergeant or a masistarn or a platoon sergeant
Speaker 3: would come over and help you do medicine. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: they're good at it because they've been doing teacher for
Speaker 3: ten years at that time. I think that's what really
Speaker 3: helps in the surgeons in the PA. I think that's
Speaker 3: what really helps the organization.
Speaker 5: That's fantastic.
Speaker 4: Uh, you did say counter into it in Yeah?
Speaker 3: Can I hear that right? So? Do you mean something
Speaker 3: that wasn't was not beneficial, something something.
Speaker 5: That seemed that seemed like it wouldn't work but did
Speaker 5: or kind of blew your mind that this is actually
Speaker 5: something that works.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the freshneld blood was good. That's changed
Speaker 3: military medicine for the better going forward. I'd say that's
Speaker 3: probably the biggest one there. And I think one thing
Speaker 3: that we had to get people out of the mindset was,
Speaker 3: you know, I had platoon sergeants that were like, Hey,
Speaker 3: we need to do IV training and I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: you don't, because you shouldn't be putting blood or you
Speaker 3: shouldn't be pushing normal saline or crystal lloyds or whatever.
Speaker 3: So let's get away from IV training and let's start
Speaker 3: doing something a little bit more applicable. Something I need
Speaker 3: you to actually do that took a lot of breaking
Speaker 3: the culture.
Speaker 5: So it's sort of like, why do we need lactat
Speaker 5: of ringers when we have private smith right there.
Speaker 3: Yep. So for a long time, because you know, starting
Speaker 3: an IV is like a technical thing, so infantry folks
Speaker 3: were like, oh, it's fun, so they wanted to do it.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, I don't really need you to start
Speaker 3: the IV. I need you to do this instead, So
Speaker 3: kind of kind of breaking that culture was a little
Speaker 3: hard to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, they just wanted it for those Saturday mornings
Speaker 5: when they were feeling like shit from me.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's what I was there for, man, I would
Speaker 3: take anybody anytime, day and night.
Speaker 1: How students bless their souls.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Abdy, thank you so much for the very generous donation.
Speaker 5: We deeply appreciate it. Abby says, Hey, I'm twenty four,
Speaker 5: just in working as a TCU nurse, wanting to be
Speaker 5: a sixty eight whiskey since high school, just stuck in
Speaker 5: the immigration limbo until until then. Thanks Jack and Dave,
Speaker 5: you guys help me. Hey, thank you, Abdy.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: We were rooting for you. I mean we had we
Speaker 5: had Adam Kamalan, you know, talking about his like you
Speaker 5: know immigration, uh sort of journey and and getting into
Speaker 5: the military and and all his stuff, and like bringing
Speaker 5: immigrants is a phenomenal like it's it's it's a phenomenal
Speaker 5: asset to the military.
Speaker 3: Oh, for sure. In my experience, I've worked with stuggle
Speaker 3: that have done phenomenal whether they've I've met a few
Speaker 3: from Rutta, from even Ukraine, and then some of the
Speaker 3: what they call it the Mavney program, is that what
Speaker 3: they called that back in the day was probably no
Speaker 3: better than I do.
Speaker 4: Where they thigh out folks.
Speaker 3: They would bring some folks in straight from some of
Speaker 3: the other countries shim. Yeah, but that's really well. I
Speaker 3: thought it was called Madne or something like that. But
Speaker 3: I'd worked with some of those folks. They did a
Speaker 3: really really good job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I'll do. We wish you all the all
Speaker 5: the best on your journey, brother Bjorn, Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: How often do cag Metics twenty fourth has ts, medics
Speaker 5: and j now work alongside each other, and how would
Speaker 5: you characterize their differences tactically and medically. I'm just I'm
Speaker 5: gonna I'm going to answer part of that for you,
Speaker 5: so so that you don't have to say anything and
Speaker 5: will just say that tactically, like they're all medics and
Speaker 5: they work according to the tactics of the people they
Speaker 5: are with. Uh so we'll just solve that right there
Speaker 5: and then you can answer.
Speaker 3: The rest of them.
Speaker 4: No, that's that's correct. But the two four their medics
Speaker 4: are phenomenal.
Speaker 3: But you'll find for medics are typically farmed out, more
Speaker 3: so when deployed to the other units. Yeah, so they
Speaker 3: work all the time. But when it comes to medicine,
Speaker 3: once again, it's a small world. So we would share
Speaker 3: a lot of our stuff, whether it's going through our
Speaker 3: medical repressure or whatever. We're all side by side and
Speaker 3: you're sureing that so nobody likes the board that experience.
Speaker 3: And even at our medical repressure, it would be a
Speaker 3: time for ar or become classified. You know, we take
Speaker 3: it from non classified to classified, close the doors whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, if we had to discuss, you know, combat
Speaker 3: lessons learned, Well, what do you think.
Speaker 5: In your opinion from the time that you were in
Speaker 5: two thousand and three or four up until and I
Speaker 5: mean act if not your guartan or guartan obviously, but
Speaker 5: until you've retired, what do you think was the biggest
Speaker 5: shift in like medical knowledge, what we thought averse what
Speaker 5: we know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would say it's probably like the two
Speaker 3: thousand and five two thousand and six seven time frame
Speaker 3: where you know, teacher pile c became prevalent. It was
Speaker 3: that dgment for a while, but became prevalent everywhere else,
Speaker 3: and then the conventional force they dragged their feet for
Speaker 3: a hot minute when it came to that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So everybody was issued a tournique around that time frame,
Speaker 3: and people started to take ownership of the casualties. So
Speaker 3: I think around that time frame because you know, there's
Speaker 3: been studies showing preventable death on the battlefield and it's
Speaker 3: and it's remarkably high. So it's twenty four to twenty
Speaker 3: six percent of combat categies were potentially survival. I mean,
Speaker 3: if the organization or the service member was trained on
Speaker 3: putting their own turn quit on or putting tournique on
Speaker 3: for the other person, if they could identify and intrigue
Speaker 3: attensive physiology or secure an airway, you know, twenty four
Speaker 3: percent of people potentially could survived. And that's that's massive.
Speaker 3: So and I think around that time a two thousand five,
Speaker 3: Sealed six. The Range of Medican book was really getting momentum.
Speaker 3: Committee of Teacher will See was staffed with some of
Speaker 3: the greatest minds, and I think that's probably when it
Speaker 3: really started to develop. And going back to our Medical
Speaker 3: Refresher was really aggressive. In that timeframe. You had dudes
Speaker 3: coming back like Hi Delta's Sarks, people coming back with
Speaker 3: real world experience, and so we really really capitalized on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and for people because I don't know if we
Speaker 5: cover with T triple C is tactical commat casualty care right, yep?
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, And there's a there's an app, Deployed Medicine app.
Speaker 3: It's free, is developed and launched by the Department's Defense.
Speaker 3: So if anybody has like an Apple Superior Apple productor
Speaker 3: or stamp Stung whatever, you should be able to find
Speaker 3: it Deployed Medicine. It has the latest and greatest, most
Speaker 3: updated information on there and of course it's free, so
Speaker 3: check that out.
Speaker 5: Can't be free on last one, Oh M Corvin, thank
Speaker 5: you very much. Be sure to hit the like inscribed. Yes,
Speaker 5: please be sure to hit the like.
Speaker 1: Check out our Patreon page the links down in the description,
Speaker 1: and you can get access to all these episodes out free.
Speaker 5: So Mike, where are you at today and what are
Speaker 5: you working on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm in Maine. We are going to stay
Speaker 3: in Maine. So this is kind of my final resting thought.
Speaker 3: I've been working for Stafeguard Medical for a couple of
Speaker 3: years now. I do new business development and they're out
Speaker 3: of North Carolina, a global company, so I'm still able
Speaker 3: to apply a lot of my medical nerd stuff there.
Speaker 3: I've also been working with some folks that ventus I
Speaker 3: getch you guys some more information if you need it.
Speaker 3: But I've been working with a lot of folks who
Speaker 3: have recently separated or are going through the separation and
Speaker 3: helping them out with getting access to care issues squared away,
Speaker 3: whether it's the VA or working with local treatment facilities
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And it's been overwhelming to see
Speaker 3: how many folks are coming back with long issues. And
Speaker 3: so I partnered up with the ventist folks and it's
Speaker 3: like a it's a respirator that helps shelter out a
Speaker 3: lot of the toxic exposure that we have just from
Speaker 3: firing a gun. You know, the leg and are are
Speaker 3: all the different chemicals there? So we're working on that
Speaker 3: becoming hopefully a standard. Is the item for special operations
Speaker 3: and the conventional forces. If they're going to the range
Speaker 3: and they're shooting a rifle or doing whatever, they should
Speaker 3: have to spend this month time for for people who uh, you.
Speaker 5: Know, for for people who you know think that they
Speaker 5: might be having a shoot like what if it but
Speaker 5: don't know it? Maybe they think I'm just out of
Speaker 5: shape these days, Like what what should they look for?
Speaker 5: What should they ask?
Speaker 6: You know, the V A to chet.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. So typically with the VA to
Speaker 3: be able to get in there and get your basic
Speaker 3: blood work done. So if thebody goes in there and
Speaker 3: they're like, well, I'm lethargic or whatever, the VA has
Speaker 3: to look at it as completely new patient like what
Speaker 3: could poss and doing a whole workup is it's going
Speaker 3: to be a lot of work, and most guys are
Speaker 3: probably gonna have issues with their test offs aone when
Speaker 3: they're getting out separating and because of the lifestyle for
Speaker 3: many years, folks deal with with that poor anxiety, with
Speaker 3: dealing with the new environment. They're in depression because they're
Speaker 3: not doing That's something I've had to battle with I
Speaker 3: used to be top of my game doing phenomenal things
Speaker 3: with phenomenal people, and then it just hit the brakes
Speaker 3: and you're doing something different. So dealing with those kinds
Speaker 3: of things they're narrowing it down to like one thing
Speaker 3: is extremely hard to do. But I would always suggest
Speaker 3: get your vitals because vitals are vital for reason. So
Speaker 3: trend your vitals. If my blood pressure was this last
Speaker 3: week and it's this this week, I can trend that
Speaker 3: I have high blood pressure. That's pretty easy to do.
Speaker 3: And get your blood labs. It's blood.
Speaker 4: Blood labs don't lie.
Speaker 3: So if your levels are you know, above normal range
Speaker 3: or above appropriate or acceptable levels, or they're below, it's easy.
Speaker 4: To see that kind of trigger. But work through some
Speaker 4: of the other things are going to be.
Speaker 3: A lot less. So I would suggest if I've worked
Speaker 3: with the v A team and they've been great for me,
Speaker 3: but I said, I want to see my values of it.
Speaker 3: I think my test officerone is low. I want to
Speaker 3: get it checked. So they've been very great about doing that.
Speaker 5: And would the VA do testone replace or do they
Speaker 5: do tr T or.
Speaker 3: That's hit or missed. In my experience, I've had to
Speaker 3: go through civilian channels to get my own personal test
Speaker 3: offsterone with the VA. Your acceptable level depending on that
Speaker 3: practitioner is it varies And it's unfortunate because we're seeing
Speaker 3: a lot of folks that have really low testosterone and
Speaker 3: it's it's kind of affecting their their day to day life,
Speaker 3: the quality outlook on life in the VA and I
Speaker 3: think and it's not doing enough about it.
Speaker 5: And correct me if I'm wrong, But like, levels are
Speaker 5: very different because if a guy used to have like
Speaker 5: an eight hundred nine hundred, now he has a five.
Speaker 5: Relative if he has a five hundred, that's going to
Speaker 5: be low to him as opposed to somebody who has
Speaker 5: three hundred and used to have five.
Speaker 3: And I'm not an end of chronologist, but sure watching
Speaker 3: and like astraally, but yeah, but you're absolutely it's relative
Speaker 3: to the person. But generally, if you used to feel
Speaker 3: this and you used to you know, be able to
Speaker 3: do this and now you're not, that could be a
Speaker 3: pretty good reason. And then when I personally got testosterone,
Speaker 3: it changed my life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and last question, I'm sorry, but you know you're
Speaker 5: you're such a wealth of knowledge and we're learning more
Speaker 5: all the time.
Speaker 6: You know, we talked about TBIs.
Speaker 5: And now we're you know, now we're finally starting to
Speaker 5: realize the effects of blast injuries, breaching and I d
Speaker 5: S and you know, mortars and stuff like that. How
Speaker 5: is medicine able to uh to split apart TB I,
Speaker 5: post traumatic stress, you know, operation like these things or
Speaker 5: is it just a big soup where they're like, well,
Speaker 5: this person's been in combat and it could be any
Speaker 5: of these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in my experience when I separated from the military,
Speaker 3: I know for a fact I had TBIs. Like I
Speaker 3: even that trip in Masoul, I hit my head while
Speaker 3: I was treating rangers shot in the face. I hit
Speaker 3: my head on the kevlar thing, and like eventually threw
Speaker 3: up from it. I know I had TBIs. And when
Speaker 3: I did the TVI screening for the VA, it was
Speaker 3: a civilian and he just was like, you know, what
Speaker 3: are these shapes? What are these animals? And asked me
Speaker 3: to memorize some things, and he said, I don't have
Speaker 3: a TVR, like you're insane. I went to Belvoir and
Speaker 3: had brain scans and they could see that I had
Speaker 3: lasting issues. So I think the VA has a long
Speaker 3: way to go. And to your point also, I've talked
Speaker 3: to a lot of practitioners that will suggest that they
Speaker 3: do exascer boats. So if somebody has depression, they have anxiety,
Speaker 3: but they also have PTS and they also have traumatic
Speaker 3: brain injuries. If they all exacerbate and they make everything worse, right,
Speaker 3: So you've got to treat all of them in different ways,
Speaker 3: different modalities to be able to get that best. And
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things out there. There's this stay
Speaker 3: like gangling block that yeah, you know, doctor mulvaney that
Speaker 3: those folks do is you know, phenomenal. I cannot suggest anymore,
Speaker 3: you know, higher than the ketamine. I think low dose
Speaker 3: ketamine has been introduced out there. There's mushroom therapy. Once again,
Speaker 3: I'm not yeah, I can't speak to it scientifically or
Speaker 3: I haven't personally tried it.
Speaker 4: But there's other modalities that are that folks are.
Speaker 3: Taking a look at, and I'm happy for it. And
Speaker 3: I think some VA systems are even looking into THHD
Speaker 3: as well. So hopefully we get there, but I could
Speaker 3: tell you we're not there yet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, especially with the VA like the stelly gangling block,
Speaker 5: I think like you have to jump through hoops of
Speaker 5: the VA and don't. They don't give it for post
Speaker 5: traumatic stress. They only give it for a certain type
Speaker 5: of pain, you know. Like, yeah, so the VA is
Speaker 5: still like they're way behind when it comes to level
Speaker 5: of care that a lot of people need.
Speaker 3: I think, I think my biggest advice to separating folks
Speaker 3: the folks that are already out you have to take
Speaker 3: charge of You have to take charge of your healthcare
Speaker 3: because if you don't, nobody else will. If you think that,
Speaker 3: you know, I go to the VA and I see
Speaker 3: this provider today, I might go back and see somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not like my time in regiment where I saw
Speaker 3: the same person every time. You have to take charge
Speaker 3: of your health care, and don't be afraid to be
Speaker 3: open about it. Be transparent with your friends, with the
Speaker 3: people you've served with. I had people calling me up
Speaker 3: and like, hey man, this is bothering me. I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: shit is bothering me. You watch somebody to get shot
Speaker 3: in the face. I'm not surprised that that's bothering you,
Speaker 3: right right, And so like being open about it and
Speaker 3: talking to folks and not seeing that as a sign
Speaker 3: of weakness or anything like that, which I think we've
Speaker 3: we've gotten so much better about because while we were
Speaker 3: in I said and saw and did things that if
Speaker 3: I said it bothered me. You know what, they're taking
Speaker 3: off the line right to lose my clearance, right, you
Speaker 3: know what are these issues and so we kind of
Speaker 3: hate a lot of that. You just don't have to
Speaker 3: do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Mike, thank you for joining us tonight and
Speaker 1: doing this show and sharing your life experiences like this
Speaker 1: has been like super cool and they're actually very unique
Speaker 1: to dive this deep into combat medicine.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I apologized. I've never done like a podcast before,
Speaker 3: and I don't really like talk about, you know, my
Speaker 3: history that much. That's you know, I've got to peek
Speaker 3: it all together based off memories and things that happened.
Speaker 5: But you were horrible. You only made it two hours
Speaker 5: and two hours and forty minutes, and so I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I have what one final shout out of shameless self promotion.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: My book We Defy is coming out December ninth. The
Speaker 1: Lost Chapters of Special Forces History about uh the SF
Speaker 1: teams that jumped in with backpack nuke weapons, about the
Speaker 1: first counter terrorism unit in Special Operations, the guys who
Speaker 1: worked under cover in Berlin. It's available for pre order
Speaker 1: now on Amazon and it will be out on December ninth.
Speaker 5: How many interviews did you do for this book?
Speaker 1: Chach like, probably close to one hundred altogether. It's like
Speaker 1: ten years of research. I mean, it's quite a while.
Speaker 1: So it covers Detachment A, Detachment Kay, Blue Light, Green Light,
Speaker 1: and the commanders in Extremist Force. That's the five chapters
Speaker 1: of the book. So I appreciate if you guys go
Speaker 1: and check.
Speaker 6: It out, order it order or the commedis Win.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean, do you hate the troops?
Speaker 3: I mean, so.
Speaker 1: Next this coming Monday, we're gonna have Ed Bogan on
Speaker 1: the show CIA Senior Dude. And then on Friday, we're
Speaker 1: going to have Mike West, who is in the Rhodesian
Speaker 1: and South African Special Forces. So that's what's coming up next.
Speaker 5: Thank you everybody.
Speaker 6: We appreciate it. Thank you Mike. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: It was fantastic.
Speaker 3: Thank girl. Stay safe,