Speaker 1: And I said, they got too scared, aks, can I engage?
Speaker 1: And said what?
Speaker 2: And I repeated myself, and then he relays it the.
Speaker 1: Company as I couldn't talk company, just betune.
Speaker 2: And while they're whatever they're figuring out, apparently my big mouth,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: These guys in the truck. They must have known the
Speaker 1: jig was up.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they they lurched forward, but only like five
Speaker 2: or ten feet, so they're a little bit behind us.
Speaker 2: And then they all spilled out. And when they all
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Speaker 1: And then all hell broke loose.
Speaker 2: Those other two vehicles got immediately destroyed, and we started
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Speaker 2: Pace, and we, I mean, everything with the heat signature
Speaker 2: got destroyed.
Speaker 1: And our air officer called in the brevity for.
Speaker 2: You know, to get all the available air on station,
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Speaker 1: They were moving some T.
Speaker 2: Fifty fives or something, some tanks around trying to come.
Speaker 1: In close enough to fire on us.
Speaker 2: So then we got all the available air on station
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Speaker 2: I mean, that union got wiped out. I think three
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Speaker 5: Special Operations Coberts sp and I The Team House with
Speaker 5: your host Jack Burphy and David Park.
Speaker 3: Hey, everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and thirty eight
Speaker 3: of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy. Tonight we are here
Speaker 3: with Eddie Wright. Eddie served in Marine recon and he
Speaker 3: was just telling me that this is the twenty first
Speaker 3: anniversary of his alive day since the attack that he
Speaker 3: was injured in overseas. So we're pumped about that. Pumped.
Speaker 3: Have you here and thank you for coming on the
Speaker 3: show tonight, Eddie.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jack, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I start off asking most of our
Speaker 3: guests about their origin story. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about where you grew up in what your path was
Speaker 3: that took you towards the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: I was born in Chicago. My mom was an imprint
Speaker 1: from Ireland. She met my dad. Nurse met my dad.
Speaker 1: He was a.
Speaker 2: Resident at the University of Chicago Medical School.
Speaker 1: My brother and my sister and I were all born
Speaker 1: in Chicago. We moved to.
Speaker 2: California for a bit a year or two and then
Speaker 2: up to Washington State and my parents split. So my
Speaker 2: dad soldiers practice during the Air Force, so I became
Speaker 2: a military brad. So I jumped around a bit with that,
Speaker 2: but mostly, you know, I grew up with my mom
Speaker 2: and I'd say Seattle. Seattle would be what I considered
Speaker 2: my hometown outside of Chicago or where Texas, And so
Speaker 2: you wanted to know about how I got into what
Speaker 2: what drove me to get into the Marine Corps. When
Speaker 2: I was very young. I used to get up for
Speaker 2: him with my dad whenever I'd be hanging with him summers,
Speaker 2: and it was endurance athlete, so we would he would
Speaker 2: run and I.
Speaker 1: Would just ride a bike.
Speaker 2: And you know, like I said, So, there was a
Speaker 2: time when he was stationed at Blackland Air Force Base,
Speaker 2: and so we'd be, you know, up four am or so,
Speaker 2: and I'd be riding my bike, little kid, and then uh,
Speaker 2: you know, riding alongside my pops, and we used to
Speaker 2: run by the I guess they had the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: Canine Training school there.
Speaker 1: And they'd be running information in the mornings. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was just a kid. I thought they were cool.
Speaker 2: And then, of course, uh at my age being influenced
Speaker 2: by all those awesome movies that came out in the eighties,
Speaker 2: you know, the cheesy ones like you know, like the Schwartz,
Speaker 2: Neigga Ones, Commando or Rambo or.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, even Heartbreak Ridge. I thought it was the
Speaker 1: endless movie, the kid walking, What's Happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, you know, my past of the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: was a little different than most people because I was
Speaker 2: an angry kid, uh, living with my mom in Seattle
Speaker 2: and in the early nineties. It was a little back then,
Speaker 2: and they had a thing that was like a forced
Speaker 2: integration where they'd send kids from one side of the
Speaker 2: city to the other side to go to school. And
Speaker 2: so I hated my schools forty five minute bus ride
Speaker 2: each direction, and.
Speaker 1: I just started skipping school. So I got off to
Speaker 1: a rocky start.
Speaker 2: And then, of course, who you're going to hang out
Speaker 2: with if you're skipping school, but other kids that are
Speaker 2: to know good I suppose. So, long story short, I
Speaker 2: ended up getting into a lot of fights, which got
Speaker 2: me in a lot of trouble. I actually, I guess
Speaker 2: not very many people know this, but I actually was
Speaker 2: like a white kid in a Simoan gang, you know, yeties, and.
Speaker 1: So that you know, kind of escalated the trouble that
Speaker 1: I got into.
Speaker 3: How'd I got to ask you, Eddie, how did that work?
Speaker 3: I mean, the Islanders are pretty insular normally, aren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I'm an Islander too, am Irish, so I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, And I was people like to fight.
Speaker 2: I I just had a few of them as friends,
Speaker 2: and then you know, uh just started gradually, you know,
Speaker 2: hanging out with them. They got to know me, and
Speaker 2: I really didn't get too much respect from him until
Speaker 2: they saw me fighting, and and then, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: they knew that that that I would fight, so they
Speaker 2: kind of respected that, like I wouldn't back down.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There was a point where I was getting bullied and
Speaker 2: somewhere along the early part of my sophomore year, I
Speaker 2: just couldn't take it any and so I decided I
Speaker 2: would feel better being beat up than to live with
Speaker 2: myself and to just let these guys pump me out
Speaker 2: and treat me like this. So I stood up to
Speaker 2: the bully and I knocked out in front of our
Speaker 2: math teacher in Hallway West Yet High School.
Speaker 1: I was shocked. You know. It was a lucky hit,
Speaker 1: I think, and as he fell, he hit his head
Speaker 1: on the locker, so he's done ski well. Word travels
Speaker 1: fast in school. So then I had to, you know.
Speaker 2: I just started getting in a lot of fights because
Speaker 2: it felt so much better than the opposite of where
Speaker 2: I was just always getting picked on. And I went
Speaker 2: a little too far, and then I ended up getting
Speaker 2: jumped into the gang and then I had to fight
Speaker 2: one of them one on one, and and I knocked
Speaker 2: that dude down too, so I guess all the every
Speaker 2: day fighting with my brother, my little brother, who's you know,
Speaker 2: oally a year and a half apart, but he's bigger
Speaker 2: than me, you know. Apparently I was learning how to
Speaker 2: fight like we used to get knocked down dragouts, like
Speaker 2: real fights, my brother and I and uh yeah, and
Speaker 2: I just went a little crazy the other way and
Speaker 2: took the whole code of the gang or gangster just
Speaker 2: quite literally too far. So if I heard somebody was
Speaker 2: talking about me, I would if I saw them, I
Speaker 2: would call them out. We'd be fighting, and it just
Speaker 2: you know how kids are. They talk trash. But I
Speaker 2: would find them and then we be fighting. I didn't
Speaker 2: win every fight. I don't know how guys are like.
Speaker 2: I've never lost a fight. I've had my ass with
Speaker 2: plenty of times. I've been jumped down. I couldn't count
Speaker 2: them in a number of times I've been kicked in
Speaker 2: the head or something, which which doesn't.
Speaker 1: Help when you get blown up by an IMPG. But
Speaker 1: so I had a lot of hard work to do.
Speaker 1: I ended up going to Juvi for twenty months, the
Speaker 1: best thing that could happen to me. Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: So I I ended up in Juvi from all that nonsense.
Speaker 2: And the camp they sent me to was outside of
Speaker 2: the city. It was in western Washington, and and that's
Speaker 2: where I started to thrive. You know, I've noticed throughout
Speaker 2: my history of my life, if I was in a
Speaker 2: structured environment, be it unfortunately Juvi or maybe when I
Speaker 2: played rugby before the Marine Corps, and you know, of
Speaker 2: course the Marine Corps, I thrive. I do pretty well.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of lost. So being in Juvie
Speaker 2: gave me an opportunity to finish high school. And you
Speaker 2: know by finish, I mean I hurried up and I
Speaker 2: got my g D while I was there, and then
Speaker 2: I went out. I had a work through that worked
Speaker 2: outside of wire, so to speak, and we worked for
Speaker 2: Department of Natural Resources there in Western Washington. So we
Speaker 2: did a lot of things like pre commercial thinning of
Speaker 2: forest land we did. We planted ten of us kids
Speaker 2: in there in one season, planned to two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty thousand trees. We did trail maintenance, firebreaks. It was
Speaker 2: hard work, but we were outside. I loved it, and
Speaker 2: so I was able to do some college classes while
Speaker 2: I was in dub and that was great. And so
Speaker 2: I get out, I'm on probation. I buy a pistol
Speaker 2: from a buddy. We go fire it off into into
Speaker 2: a tree stump, walk out of the woods, and well,
Speaker 2: the cops are waiting for us.
Speaker 1: And so because I was on probation for my juvenile
Speaker 1: fighting and all that on my assault charges, I got
Speaker 1: that was a pellony to have a firearm. So here
Speaker 1: I am again. I set myself back, and I still.
Speaker 2: Wanted to be a marine, but this really really put
Speaker 2: that goal farther out of reach.
Speaker 1: So that took a couple of years to settle.
Speaker 2: I ended up having to do a couple months in
Speaker 2: King County downtown in Seattle, and forgot community community service,
Speaker 2: and I was able to give my probation, transferred to Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: where my dad was.
Speaker 1: Stationed at that time in the reserves.
Speaker 2: With this private practice, and I just went immediately on
Speaker 2: the straight and narrow. I went to school, I would
Speaker 2: play rugby every chance I got. I connected with the
Speaker 2: marine recruiters. They told me what I had to do
Speaker 2: to Jordan, what I had to do to Jordan Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: which is quite a bit. I had to do, pay
Speaker 2: some restitution. I had to do almost three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: of community service. I did a bunch of volunteer work
Speaker 2: and I collected some letters of reference that had an
Speaker 2: impact on the Recruiting Command's decision to give me the
Speaker 2: waivers to join, because at this point I have a ged,
Speaker 2: a juvenile felony and an now an adult family, and
Speaker 2: you know it was going to be a miracle. But
Speaker 2: you know, I think one of the letters just just
Speaker 2: the hard work I put in and getting to know
Speaker 2: the recruiters over a couple of years and becoming friends
Speaker 2: with them, that helped. But I got a great letter
Speaker 2: of recommendation from a friend of the family that my
Speaker 2: dad had gotten to know because he was a patient
Speaker 2: of his who was a World War Two marine for
Speaker 2: three and a half years. He was with Fourth Marines
Speaker 2: on Prigador, and so I think his letter, you know,
Speaker 2: he got to know me. I think that letter carried
Speaker 2: the most weight. And then also my relationship with the
Speaker 2: recruiters and the fact that I had done everything above
Speaker 2: and beyond but what I had to do, so I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. They gave me the way I had
Speaker 2: downloaded the application for the French Foreign Legion. If the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps didn't take me, I was out like I
Speaker 2: wasn't going to settle. I was working two three jobs
Speaker 2: at a time. It all worked around my rugby schedule,
Speaker 2: but I was doing something. And you know, after knowing
Speaker 2: some guys that went to the Legion, I'm glad I
Speaker 2: didn't go.
Speaker 1: It's foul stories.
Speaker 2: You can tell I'd be speaking French probably, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear, it's really rough.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So and I made it to the Marine Corps and
Speaker 2: it was a lifelong dream and I always wanted to
Speaker 2: be a reconnaissance marine, so that that was something I was.
Speaker 3: Of heartbreak ridge.
Speaker 2: Now as I got older, I started to read all
Speaker 2: the books I could on Vietnam. It was really into Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and I was into I would read stories about green Breys,
Speaker 2: I'd read stories about Navy seals, Army ALURP units, and
Speaker 2: then something about the recon units, like being a reconnaissance
Speaker 2: green really really appealed to me and I thought the
Speaker 2: stories were great. And one book that I read it
Speaker 2: is called First reecond Second to None by Paul Young.
Speaker 2: That one was one of the most influential books for
Speaker 2: some reason, which coincidentally I got to meet him years
Speaker 2: later after I was wounded at a reunion and he
Speaker 2: gave me his own personal copy of that book with
Speaker 2: little little missives in it, you know, notes on pages
Speaker 2: like from his buddies that he served with, and little
Speaker 2: ace and death card and there, and I you know,
Speaker 2: it was out of reunion in d C. I was
Speaker 2: still an impatient in the hospital. My team leader came
Speaker 2: and dressed me up with my Charlie's I was for ail,
Speaker 2: like a skinny body, big head, pale, and I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think I even had prosthetics.
Speaker 1: My my Charlie uniform was just baggy. You know.
Speaker 2: That's the the tan khaki sugar, the blue paints with
Speaker 2: the n c O stripe. So, you know, it's weird
Speaker 2: how these things happened. And I'm ahe around full circle
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 1: In my life.
Speaker 3: That's surreal. So, uh, your dream of joining the Marine
Speaker 3: Corps comes true. You fought to get in harder than
Speaker 3: most people from everything he told me, literally, and figured.
Speaker 1: Out a lot in my way. Yeah, but I knew.
Speaker 2: I knew that if I didn't try everything that I could,
Speaker 2: And this was the same attitude I had when I was,
Speaker 2: you know, becoming a reconnaissance marine, when I was in
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps if I didn't, there was no excuse
Speaker 2: for me not to try as hard as I could
Speaker 2: and if and if I didn't, then I knew that
Speaker 2: I would look back and I would regret it, and
Speaker 2: that would be one of these guys that's always.
Speaker 1: Said I was gonna Uh but yeah, yeah, there's as everywhere.
Speaker 3: So you get into the Marine Corps. I take it
Speaker 3: you came in as what is it the Marines called
Speaker 3: as zero three eleven?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got guaranteed oh three, And uh I did
Speaker 2: well in boot camp.
Speaker 1: I wasn't gone, uh you know, a guide or anything.
Speaker 2: I think one of my dr instructors like me, put
Speaker 2: me in as a squad leader during boot camp. But
Speaker 2: as soon as another you know, the senior came in,
Speaker 2: that was out. Yeah, and uh I was glad. I
Speaker 2: didn't want any extra responsibility like that or pay somebody
Speaker 2: else's mistake at that time. And then at School of Infantry, Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I got stuck with the three week guard
Speaker 2: duty in winter, standing outside on the ranges and gonna
Speaker 2: be seed. But you know it wasn't so bad. But
Speaker 2: I was able to graduate School of Infantry with the
Speaker 2: highest GPA and the highest physical fitness score of my class,
Speaker 2: my company, and so they meritoriously promoted me to the
Speaker 2: lance corporal.
Speaker 1: So I picked a plan school right out of amazing
Speaker 1: sy I thought I was badass, I learned I wasn't anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like here you get to the fleet.
Speaker 2: One of my n cels who picked me up, the
Speaker 2: three Marines came picked up three of us that went
Speaker 2: out to twenty nine Palms as an O three eleven riffleman.
Speaker 2: But we went to a unit called Third Light Armed
Speaker 2: Reconnaissance Third l R. I had no idea what third
Speaker 2: la R was. One of my n CEOs picked us up.
Speaker 2: He was you know, everybody's in their alphas and he's
Speaker 2: a lance corporal also, but he's only an Alliance COBO
Speaker 2: because he'd been bust it down from sergeant for hazing.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was back in the day before
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. There was there was no It didn't
Speaker 1: stop him from continuing, you know.
Speaker 2: So I got a good pick to the old school,
Speaker 2: old school hazing and one on Palms.
Speaker 1: That is great.
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Speaker 3: the fleet, well, I mean you started to describe a
Speaker 3: little bit of it, but what was that experience like
Speaker 3: as you went on through your early career.
Speaker 2: Well, I remember when we got to twenty nine Palms.
Speaker 2: It was, you know, pitch black outside and all I
Speaker 2: could see were lights in the distance, and I had desolate.
Speaker 2: It was until the next morning when the sun came up,
Speaker 2: which we didn't get much sleep. Immediately, like the whole
Speaker 2: in every every boot or so so called boom, a
Speaker 2: new guy that had showed up.
Speaker 1: That day to the unit. We were field day in.
Speaker 2: The barracks and scrubbing the catwalks with two brushes and
Speaker 2: just nonsense for hours. And so the sun comes up
Speaker 2: and you know, I realized, well there's nothing out here,
Speaker 2: and okay, so.
Speaker 1: We you know, I.
Speaker 2: Got introduced to the fleet and all my n c
Speaker 2: O s and and just started getting with it. And
Speaker 2: I was lucky because our company H brought a company
Speaker 2: third l R. We were part of the UDP program
Speaker 2: that came up soon after I got to the fleet.
Speaker 2: I think I got to the fleet in March, our
Speaker 2: second of both one. And I, uh, you know, because
Speaker 2: I went to boot camp in two thousand and uh,
Speaker 2: I I think, yeah, we left, maybe it was July.
Speaker 2: I think we went on the udip'd Okanawa and.
Speaker 1: So I love.
Speaker 3: What's the UDP for those of us, I'm sorry, it's.
Speaker 1: A unit deployment program.
Speaker 2: So they have like a battalion landing team and marines
Speaker 2: will do a rotation every six months through oknow cool,
Speaker 2: and so you'll have marines of different moss but there's
Speaker 2: always an infantry infantry component and an L A R
Speaker 2: component and other units.
Speaker 1: And so I was that to me was great. I
Speaker 1: was all about it. You know.
Speaker 2: Now you know I'm traveling the world. That's exactly what
Speaker 2: I expected. And I was a boot and that's a
Speaker 2: new guy, you know. So as a boot, we all
Speaker 2: had to shave our heads back then, so we're all
Speaker 2: running around with bald heads so that we're known to
Speaker 2: all then. And there was a lot of cool training
Speaker 2: and hazing is hot in a way that was hotter
Speaker 2: than twenty nine pounds because of all the humidity. You know,
Speaker 2: by lunch, if you had time at lunchtime, you run
Speaker 2: back to the barracks and swap your skiv shirt out
Speaker 2: for a dry one because you'd be soaked sweat. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I really enjoyed it. And while we were there,
Speaker 2: we I had a great opportunity because my opportune commander
Speaker 2: was prime enlisted and he knew about a training opportunity
Speaker 2: in Australia and he organized this for three of the
Speaker 2: LA R scouts, which was three eleven, myself and three
Speaker 2: of the crewmen and himself. We took a C one
Speaker 2: thirty down to Darwin, Australia from and we trained with
Speaker 2: the North Force which is their Northern Territory Guard kind
Speaker 2: of like a National Guard. They don't they don't deploy
Speaker 2: overseas UH in combat, but they protect the Northern Territory.
Speaker 1: They patrol the waters, they patrol the bush.
Speaker 2: They they watch out for smuggling, you know, flora and
Speaker 2: fauna or drugs or illegal immigrants and things like that
Speaker 2: and that that was really fun and we got to
Speaker 2: do a survival course that was topped by the Aborigines
Speaker 2: with them, and so we had a classroom portion, went
Speaker 2: to the ranges, UH worked with some different units and
Speaker 2: we went out to the bush about five and a
Speaker 2: half hours deep into Kakadu National Park by land.
Speaker 1: Rover over the roads and we.
Speaker 2: Were starting our practical application part of the survival course
Speaker 2: and the sun came up. We slept into you know
Speaker 2: on the ground, you know, things biting us and whatever,
Speaker 2: and everybody's worried about saltwater crocs and things like that
Speaker 2: that you could hear sliding off into the rivers and
Speaker 2: from the banks and other weird noises and you know,
Speaker 2: like bush in Australia for the first time.
Speaker 1: And when the sun came up, we were ready.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, we were all ready to go, thinking
Speaker 2: that here we go, We're gonna probably have to strip
Speaker 2: down and throw our stuff in a pile and you know,
Speaker 2: run off into the bushes with the shoe stream one
Speaker 2: boot and the knife or something, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: we heard them yelling for us.
Speaker 1: OI.
Speaker 2: You know, we heard them yelling OI, get all the
Speaker 2: Yanks and uh so like we get it. We gather
Speaker 2: around and they tell us that America has been attacked.
Speaker 1: My mind, I'm.
Speaker 2: Thinking, hey, this is part of the training. This must
Speaker 2: be part of the scenario training or something. They're like, no, seriously.
Speaker 2: And so that was nine to eleven. So I was
Speaker 2: in the middle of the bush, Australia when nine to
Speaker 2: eleven happened. So we had along, you know, the five
Speaker 2: and a half hours drive back to Darwin, just you know,
Speaker 2: no intail we didn't know what was going on. I
Speaker 2: just knew that America had been attacked. So we got
Speaker 2: to think about all these things like, well, we're in Okanawa.
Speaker 1: Who attacked us?
Speaker 2: And are we, you know, at the forefront of World
Speaker 2: War three or war? Then we're going to go in first?
Speaker 1: And then you know, my mind, I'm calculating what about
Speaker 1: who the first guys into World War you know, first
Speaker 1: guys in to fight, Like how long do they last?
Speaker 1: One of the oddosite being there at the beginning to
Speaker 1: be there at the end of the war.
Speaker 2: So not really understanding how kind of you know, would
Speaker 2: be you know, it was different, never haven't been and
Speaker 2: so these days it is.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, as you know, that was.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and one September. It was something that I
Speaker 2: think is cool talking about synchronicity, is uh. The MW
Speaker 2: rolled in right before we went out to the bush
Speaker 2: to do the practical app or the survival course, and
Speaker 2: I think it was the fifteenth MEW and that's the
Speaker 2: MEW that rolled into Afghanistan first. Yeah, and so we
Speaker 2: had the hold town of Darwin to our to ourselves,
Speaker 2: which was great, but then the MW rolls in and
Speaker 2: now there's three thousand sailors and marines and all, yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: we're not a novelty anymore. I'm like, yeah to hear mew.
Speaker 2: And so the only people from the MEW that got
Speaker 2: to stay on larry Kia Barracks, which was the Australian
Speaker 2: military base thereon Darwin was And when the recomplict came on,
Speaker 2: they were all like great shape.
Speaker 1: You had a.
Speaker 2: Giant jungle rucks and their fins hanging off the back,
Speaker 2: and you know, two of them got into a fist
Speaker 2: fight with each other and I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Did I lose? You?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got we got you. It's just some bad
Speaker 3: internet connection.
Speaker 1: Okay, So these these guys are fist fighting.
Speaker 2: It's just like, you know, they stayed in like a hangar,
Speaker 2: and I thought to myself, damn, I need that's where
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be with Recomb. Well, ironically,
Speaker 2: when I got to Recom, that was the very platoon
Speaker 2: that I went to with some of the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's just a trip. So we go back to
Speaker 2: Kadeena three days later. We finally got a C one thirty.
Speaker 2: It's eight and a half hour trip. The whole entire
Speaker 2: playing in the back. The floorboards were covered in just
Speaker 2: cases and cases of beer, Australian beer, just full of beer.
Speaker 2: And looking back on and I think because it was
Speaker 2: the new marine.
Speaker 1: Boot I I you know, and that we all were
Speaker 1: we didn't really have the guts, But nowadays I would
Speaker 1: have been like, yeah, drinking and what are they gonna say,
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: So, Yeah, we came back to Kadina. We did some
Speaker 2: security for Kadina for a couple of weeks. That was
Speaker 2: really cool. A lot of adventures there and eventually we
Speaker 2: go back to We did a month in Fuji at
Speaker 2: the base of Mount Fuji.
Speaker 1: That was that was cool, training with those guys on
Speaker 1: their base.
Speaker 2: And then we went home to fun on Palms in
Speaker 2: January of two and then that whole year leading up
Speaker 2: until we deployed to Kuwait before the invasion in three
Speaker 2: was just a workup where we trained exclusively for combat
Speaker 2: in Iraq Armor I D learning how to id through
Speaker 2: the thermals you know, enemy vehicles. Yeah, I had picked
Speaker 2: up corporal. I took my marines down to e O D.
Speaker 2: Had e O D give us classes on uh land
Speaker 2: mines and IDs and things like that. Just to really
Speaker 2: put the fear of God in us about what we're
Speaker 2: going like. And then and then we deployed on over
Speaker 2: to Kuwaite and Jane very.
Speaker 1: Or February early February of three.
Speaker 3: And this was like your whole mew going over there
Speaker 3: at once, our whole battalion Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there was different regimental combat teams on different
Speaker 2: locations there and waded along the border.
Speaker 1: So just the Marine Corps was there.
Speaker 2: I mean it was I mean, we knew we were
Speaker 2: bringing all this stuff over here if we weren't going.
Speaker 1: To go to war.
Speaker 3: Well, well, I mean that's what I'd like to ask you.
Speaker 3: What your impression was like. Was there was there an
Speaker 3: OP order given to you guys? Like when you deployed,
Speaker 3: did you know what your mission was going to be
Speaker 3: or did you find that out later?
Speaker 2: We had no idea what our mission was going to be.
Speaker 2: We I think the first thing we learned was which
Speaker 2: breach lane we were going up in only days before wow,
Speaker 2: like across the border. Yeah, and we didn't have we
Speaker 2: didn't even know.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, at least at my level, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what any of.
Speaker 2: Our first objectives were or anything, and we got really
Speaker 2: deep into Iraq before we got into our first firefight.
Speaker 2: We saw a lot of blown up vehicles from air
Speaker 2: strikes and artillery. We saw some oil and gas fires,
Speaker 2: and just weird things like can imagine an old school
Speaker 2: train just flying by, like at one hundred miles an hour,
Speaker 2: just you know, just things like that, or guys in
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere just on a camel just booking
Speaker 2: it like a jockey, Like where's that guy?
Speaker 1: You know, just things like that. And then.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until the twenty third of March on the
Speaker 2: one eighth Northern that we got into like our big
Speaker 2: our first firefight, which was the biggest by far of
Speaker 2: any during the invasion.
Speaker 3: Did you guys run into like the fetti yin or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: I think they were fetti yen and regular army and conscripts,
Speaker 2: And I think they used these conscripts as bait because
Speaker 2: we gone we crossed the tigers that morning, and then
Speaker 2: we were by the time we got into that big
Speaker 2: firefight that was I think we were ten clicks ten
Speaker 2: kilometers farther north than any other marine unit. Because the
Speaker 2: LAV twenty five system they can go, they drive fat
Speaker 2: it was a perfect vehicle for the invasion, for that drain,
Speaker 2: and that at that time and that technology the way
Speaker 2: that the wars were fought. And so we had some
Speaker 2: cobras doing orbits ahead of us for most of the day.
Speaker 2: When we when we got real far north, but they
Speaker 2: they had returned to refuel. And then we started seeing
Speaker 2: large you know, we're going up in a big column formation,
Speaker 2: the whole battalion. I'm the third vehicle from the very
Speaker 2: front of the battalion movement, so the tip of the sphere,
Speaker 2: of the tip of the sphere, you know, they said,
Speaker 2: la r to the sphere.
Speaker 1: So we we were seeing these.
Speaker 2: Big groups of men standing here and there once in
Speaker 2: a while on the size of the road, but they
Speaker 2: weren't wearing uniforms. We didn't see any guns or anything
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere, so it's fishy. But nobody
Speaker 2: had fired a shot. Nothing had happened. And three vehicles
Speaker 2: came towards our you know, our battalion directly from the
Speaker 2: front down the road, which at this point was just
Speaker 2: a dard road, and there was three white pickup trucks.
Speaker 2: There was four guys on each side of the gunnales
Speaker 2: sitting in the back facing the inboard, so eight guys
Speaker 2: in the back and three guys in the front cab.
Speaker 2: And I could hear I had a calm helmet. I
Speaker 2: was popped up out of the scout hatch.
Speaker 1: My my was popped up out over here on the
Speaker 1: right side, and I had the calm helmet on, you know,
Speaker 1: in there, so I could hear the radio chatter, and
Speaker 1: they were saying, you know, nobody's As these three trucks
Speaker 1: approached us and the sun was setting its dark, you know,
Speaker 1: they had their headlights on.
Speaker 2: We were running all blacked out, and for some reason
Speaker 2: they came right up to us, and two of them
Speaker 2: stopped before they entered into our column. But the first
Speaker 2: vehicle drove past the first two vehicles and stopped to
Speaker 2: the right of my vehicle, right next to us, like
Speaker 2: I could have spit on, you know. And I could
Speaker 2: still hear them saying, hold your fire, not showing any
Speaker 2: we don't see any weapons. And my MVG now on
Speaker 2: my helm had broken. So I'm holding my mvgs up
Speaker 2: like this with my left hand, and I'm looking over
Speaker 2: my saw gunner. He's got the saw trained on him,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, Dan and keep your keet
Speaker 2: that gun on him, you know, and they do anything
Speaker 2: like let him have it. And he's a young kid
Speaker 2: from Texas at eighteen. He's he's all about it. He's excited.
Speaker 2: And so I'm looking, I raise, I'm looking through my
Speaker 2: mvgs and I see the guy in the middle of
Speaker 2: the row of guys sitting on the back of the
Speaker 2: truck that's facing away from us. I see one guy
Speaker 2: turned and said like this, and he looks up over
Speaker 2: his shoulder up at us, and as he does, the
Speaker 2: barrel of his AK peeks out outside of his coat collar,
Speaker 2: and so I see that, and then I look across
Speaker 2: at the guy sitting right across from him, and he
Speaker 2: had his jack could close, but but there's a gap.
Speaker 2: And that's when I saw AK like chest rig And
Speaker 2: so now I'm all excited, and I hit the home helmet.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, staff, sergeant, you know to my vehicle.
Speaker 2: They got was opportune, sergeant, And I said, they got
Speaker 2: too scared, and ak's can I engage?
Speaker 1: He said what?
Speaker 2: And I repeated myself, and then he relays it to
Speaker 2: company as I couldn't talk company, just platune. And while
Speaker 2: they're whatever, they're figuring out. Apparently my my big mouth,
Speaker 2: I don't know. These guys in the truck, they must
Speaker 2: have known the jig was up, so yeah, they they
Speaker 2: they lurched forward, but only like five or ten feet,
Speaker 2: so they're a little bit behind us. And then they
Speaker 2: all spilled out. And when they all spilled out, then
Speaker 2: all the vehicles behind us and everybody saw all the weapons,
Speaker 2: and as soon as that happened, it was on and
Speaker 2: the vehicle behind us just pink misted everybody with the
Speaker 2: main gun just firing into them, and then all hell
Speaker 2: broke loose. Those other two vehicles got immediately destroyed, and
Speaker 2: we started pushing forward, and then the whole battalion kept
Speaker 2: moving forward at a slow pace, and we, I mean
Speaker 2: everything with the heat signature got destroyed. And our air
Speaker 2: officer called in the.
Speaker 1: Brevity for.
Speaker 2: You know, to get all the available air on station,
Speaker 2: because we had spotted tanks. They were moving some T
Speaker 2: fifty fives or something some tanks around trying to come
Speaker 2: in close enough to fire on us. So then we
Speaker 2: got all the available air on station and it was
Speaker 2: just just incredible show of this destruction. They, I mean,
Speaker 2: that union got wiped out. I think three or four
Speaker 2: hundred of them got killed and only we had some
Speaker 2: very slightly wounded, but nobody killed on our end.
Speaker 3: That's so weird, man, Like you do you think those
Speaker 3: guys were like doing some sort of like reconnaissance because
Speaker 3: they weren't surrendering or like trying to defect. They were
Speaker 3: clearly trying to hide who they really were.
Speaker 2: It looked like they they messed up, and you kind
Speaker 2: of see it in their faces, like, oh, hip, these
Speaker 2: are Americans. Like maybe they thought they were that these
Speaker 2: labs were bnps or BTRs or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: They didn't have I think they didn't have any night vision,
Speaker 2: and so by the time they rolled up on us,
Speaker 2: it was just like they were like oops. Or they
Speaker 2: could have been just sent to probe us out, like
Speaker 2: they probably were told go do this or else. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe they had no choice. Uh, but it seemed it
Speaker 2: seems very foolish to do that, and that may have
Speaker 2: just been to kick it off or to hold us
Speaker 2: in place or something while they moved around, moved those
Speaker 2: tanks around. But whatever their plan was was garbage, and
Speaker 2: if they had a plan, it.
Speaker 1: Just seemed ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like they didn't they they had to have
Speaker 2: known we were coming up. The battalion was moving north
Speaker 2: and just kicking up just a cloud and dust like yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, for miles and and we didn't engage till
Speaker 2: the sun had set, so like right as the sun
Speaker 2: was like as low as set, like just going below
Speaker 2: the horizon and things got pretty dark. Is when these
Speaker 2: trucks showed them. So it was I don't know what
Speaker 2: they're doing it?
Speaker 3: And how far north did your battalion push?
Speaker 2: We are battalion. We went all the way up to Baghdad.
Speaker 2: We split into companies. Delta Company is the l A
Speaker 2: R company that rescued the it's their name Jessica Lynch,
Speaker 2: Jessica Lynch, and the other pow Dang I forget her name,
Speaker 2: Mere a few years ago, a nice guroup. But then
Speaker 2: we went let's see, we went to D one, We
Speaker 2: got into another, had a couple of close calls. Had
Speaker 2: a mortar drop like right outside my patuone commander's vehicle.
Speaker 1: That was nuts. That was kind of cool.
Speaker 2: We were the La V toe variant was shooting a
Speaker 2: tow missile at water tower that there was a couple
Speaker 2: hundred soldiers mustering under like getting ready to fight us,
Speaker 2: and we had stopped and I was watching that. I
Speaker 2: thought it was going to be. In my imagination, it's
Speaker 2: going to hit that water tower and it was going
Speaker 2: to explode, and it just rained down on top of everybody.
Speaker 2: It didn't happen like that. You could see the missile
Speaker 2: going towards it, and it went through some high power
Speaker 2: lines and I think what happened is that.
Speaker 1: Guide wire hit that wire.
Speaker 2: And it just detonated in the air before it hit
Speaker 2: the tower. And then all of a sudden, we started
Speaker 2: getting rained on with mortars, and you know, because we
Speaker 2: were at a at an intersection and we had just
Speaker 2: gone through an underpass, so we kind of yeah, that
Speaker 2: actually was a better plan that they had. You know,
Speaker 2: they had us in the pre pre position targeting, so
Speaker 2: you know, the mortars started raining on us, and I'm
Speaker 2: standing up there looking idiot like trying to watch the show,
Speaker 2: and the mortar lane in the next to the vehicle
Speaker 2: in front of me, my tune commanders, and I see
Speaker 2: him drop down. All of a sudden, I think he
Speaker 2: got hit and it flattened all four of the tires
Speaker 2: on the right side of that lav But it didn't
Speaker 2: disable it in any form with the run flats.
Speaker 1: And we we backed it up rapidly.
Speaker 2: We all backed up and went under the bridge that
Speaker 2: was there, so you know, we had protection from the
Speaker 2: mortars raining down and we jumped out the back and
Speaker 2: then the scouts in the back of the vehicle in
Speaker 2: front of us jumped out and it was like a
Speaker 2: NASCAR pit crew tire change because they have you know,
Speaker 2: aar hos as you can run out the driver's hatch
Speaker 2: with the air guns, and every vehicle had two spare tires,
Speaker 2: so we we swapped out.
Speaker 1: Those tires so fast and then that was the end
Speaker 1: of it. We split. We didn't ever go back to
Speaker 1: fight them. I don't know who went to go fight them.
Speaker 1: Wherever we go.
Speaker 2: We went up to Dewanea, although we went to Nazabia
Speaker 2: right after the big Battle of Nazabrea, like twelve hours
Speaker 2: after something.
Speaker 1: It was dead dudes everywhere.
Speaker 2: We went to the two bridges by the little military
Speaker 2: base where they had a pretty heavy firefight all night.
Speaker 2: There were you know, unexploded ordnance mortars sticking out of
Speaker 2: the dirt and all kinds of like you just didn't
Speaker 2: want to mess with anything because you didn't you know,
Speaker 2: I actually kick something to blow yourself up, and that
Speaker 2: was an experience. But we didn't get into any gunfights there.
Speaker 2: We ended up going to Dewonea and then you know,
Speaker 2: the war, like most of the combat sort of fizzled
Speaker 2: out pretty quickly because the regime fell. Then it switched
Speaker 2: to the let's hunt for Saddam.
Speaker 1: We did have a day where we.
Speaker 2: Drove out to the southwestern border of Iraq and went
Speaker 2: to a cool it's like an ancient town. They did
Speaker 2: have some sort of factory there that we didn't go into,
Speaker 2: but we went into the town. There was a base
Speaker 2: there and it looked like like a medieval four like
Speaker 2: something from Lawrence of Arabia, because it had it was
Speaker 2: in a square shape. It had a walkway along the
Speaker 2: top where you could fire from, and it had parapets
Speaker 2: on each corner, and it had the thick stone walls.
Speaker 2: They reminded me of being in Europe and the castles
Speaker 2: where where they're angled and you can fire your bows
Speaker 2: or right muskets out of them, but it's harder for
Speaker 2: them to shoot you.
Speaker 1: And then they had.
Speaker 2: A radio room in there that was cool because it
Speaker 2: was a fully operational Soviet radio equipment and old school
Speaker 2: like vacuum tubes, you know, vacuum tube, I mean just
Speaker 2: old and it worked. It all worked. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: But the place was deserted, like they saw us coming
Speaker 1: and they split and uh so we stayed in that town.
Speaker 1: We drove around, we checked out another spot. We stayed
Speaker 1: maybe an hour. I did see the tru one of
Speaker 1: the prettiest girls I've ever seen in my life down there,
Speaker 1: the prettiest eyes. Like, you know, all you're seeing is
Speaker 1: the face.
Speaker 3: It's funny on that stands out in your mind from
Speaker 3: the deployment.
Speaker 2: Well, like I'm in the top of this giant fourteen
Speaker 2: ton vehicle and we drove past her house and there's
Speaker 2: maybe you know, an eight foot wall and she's in
Speaker 2: the yard and you know, she's covered but her face.
Speaker 2: You know, I could see your eyes and your face
Speaker 2: and she's looking up like what the what's you know?
Speaker 1: And and you know, probably don't know same age as us,
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen nineteen twenty. I was like they called
Speaker 1: the granks because I was twenty five.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but but yeah, like these are little things
Speaker 2: that you that stick out, so little adventures in between
Speaker 2: but no real they didn't have any gunfights. A lot
Speaker 2: of guys got sick. We used to call it the
Speaker 2: ship parts because they had us taken a doxy every day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then we had the two pam and the atropine.
Speaker 2: We we weread our mock gear for the invasion. H
Speaker 2: everything at first, and then we chucked the giant rubber
Speaker 2: boot covers. But I have to say that mock your
Speaker 2: works because we were funky after not bathing for about
Speaker 2: two months. I mean, but you couldn't really tell unless
Speaker 2: you had to use the bathroom or something.
Speaker 1: You just done zipped and you know.
Speaker 3: It really locks in the flavor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were marinating for sure, and those things. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, that was you know, like, uh, we stopped
Speaker 1: a lot. We had to wait for fuel a lot.
Speaker 1: That's how fast we moved. We had to wait for
Speaker 1: chow food. I lost a lot of weight.
Speaker 2: I lost about twenty five pounds in one month because
Speaker 2: we were eating one MRI day and we had so.
Speaker 1: You'd split it up.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't even save like the little creamer
Speaker 2: packets and stuff.
Speaker 1: You dumped that in your mouth.
Speaker 2: There's any calories you could get the humanitarian rations disappeared
Speaker 2: right away.
Speaker 1: I feel cheated because I didn't.
Speaker 2: That was you know, like we're not supposed to eat
Speaker 2: those I won't eat them, but looking back, I'm like,
Speaker 2: might as well have somebody ate them. And so I
Speaker 2: lost twenty five pounds. You know, we didn't get much sleep.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm this is not exaggerating. Maybe two three hours
Speaker 2: total in the twenty four hour period, but like little
Speaker 2: cat naps.
Speaker 1: It was kind of crazy. But you know, you get
Speaker 1: used to it. You know, you.
Speaker 2: Don't want to fall asleep because you don't want to
Speaker 2: get snuck up on. So it was quite the experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And then how did redeployment back to the
Speaker 3: United States go?
Speaker 1: Well, uh, we went back down to Kuwait.
Speaker 2: We drove back down to Kuwait, and when we got there,
Speaker 2: we had to turn in gear and do all that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff, and it went pretty fast. Joe Maddis
Speaker 2: came out, he was there. He's a two star at
Speaker 2: the time. It's the first time I met him, and
Speaker 2: he use he would say, I say, say good job,
Speaker 2: and you know, thanks, and you know, just say hi
Speaker 2: to all the units that were rotating back. So we
Speaker 2: we Uh, it didn't take long. I think we were
Speaker 2: back in the US. We were one of the early
Speaker 2: units to come back. I think it was back in
Speaker 2: by by the end of June or something. You know,
Speaker 2: it was four four and a half months we were there,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, we're back and we're
Speaker 2: all wild, and so we get off the plane which
Speaker 2: landed at March Air Force Base in southern California, and
Speaker 2: they had big, you know, just a very nice welcome
Speaker 2: fire trucks with their hoses gone and people cheering us on.
Speaker 2: People were, you know, real patriotic those years after nine
Speaker 2: to eleven when we America came together.
Speaker 1: And then we.
Speaker 2: Drove in buses back to twenty nine Palms and they
Speaker 2: had a girlfriend who.
Speaker 1: I'd met when we were doing security at Caadena.
Speaker 2: She used to fly air metabac for the Air Force
Speaker 2: and she had been transferred to Edward's Air Force Base.
Speaker 2: So we had been dating for the whole workup two
Speaker 2: to three and then she was there to see me
Speaker 2: get off the bus. And that was a strange feeling
Speaker 2: leaving my Marines, like you know, their families that they
Speaker 2: were there to see them, and then you know, we
Speaker 2: just we immediately get thirty days to leave and so
Speaker 2: that first evening home was strange for me. We went
Speaker 2: out intown, we got a place in town in state,
Speaker 2: and I felt really uncomfortable and awkward, you know, being
Speaker 2: around this girl that I knew very well. I just
Speaker 2: felt almost unsafe, like I just wanted to go back
Speaker 2: and be with my Marines.
Speaker 1: You know. It was weird adjustment.
Speaker 2: It was so fast, like you know, like back in
Speaker 2: the day when the when the Marines from World War
Speaker 2: two or career or something, we'd get on a boat
Speaker 2: and you'd have a month or two right right then
Speaker 2: and then you know, take a train or whatever you did,
Speaker 2: you'd got some time. So you know, I had a
Speaker 2: month of leave went by real fast, and as soon
Speaker 2: as I came back, I immediately they finally, my command
Speaker 2: let me take the recon screening, which I had taken
Speaker 2: before on a ninety six, which is like a four
Speaker 2: day long weekend that they'll give a unit every once
Speaker 2: in a while, and got yelled at by my opportune
Speaker 2: commander at the time for not asking permission. I was like, sir,
Speaker 2: was my day off. But he was kind of he
Speaker 2: was annoyed because you know, Vicon was calling trying to
Speaker 2: get him to cut orders for me to go train.
Speaker 2: So they finally let me go. You know, I took
Speaker 2: the screening again and pass again and immediately got orders
Speaker 2: to re Basic Connaissance Course, which was at the time
Speaker 2: in August of two thousand and three we were It
Speaker 2: was run by the Battalion and it was on Penalton
Speaker 2: and at the time recon was at Camp Margarita by
Speaker 2: the airfield on main side. And that was a gut
Speaker 2: check because I was always in pretty good shape and
Speaker 2: I've been through some tough courses, uh, you know, like
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps Martial Arts course put the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: the Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival course. That one,
Speaker 2: I got to say that for me was harder than
Speaker 2: the income. But but it was the first time I
Speaker 2: was with guys that were just the next level of fitness,
Speaker 2: and the instructors they had were just freaks. I just
Speaker 2: remember the first run we did at four am on
Speaker 2: the first day. It was the boots and youths like
Speaker 2: you know, gaming pants and the boots and we ran
Speaker 2: up the backside of the peak at Market Rita. And
Speaker 2: it's a short run hows or so, but all uphill
Speaker 2: to the very very end. And that's short downhill in
Speaker 2: your back at the at the you know, our compound
Speaker 2: or that the first time I falling out of a run,
Speaker 2: and by fallout of me not be able to keep
Speaker 2: up with the people in the front. I was somewhere
Speaker 2: in the middle of the pack. The guys were strewn out,
Speaker 2: probably half a mile because the guy they had take
Speaker 2: us on that run, he was just a I think
Speaker 2: probably slick like in pt shorts and running shoes. He
Speaker 2: could probably run fourteen and a half minute three miles
Speaker 2: or something. He was a freak, just just a phenomenal runner.
Speaker 2: And he took off like a bat out of hill,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I thought, he's just going to sprint
Speaker 2: for a little bit. He's just playing some of mind
Speaker 2: games and it yeah, he's going to slow down over here. Nope, No,
Speaker 2: it was like a For me, it felt like a
Speaker 2: sprint because I'm a big dude. Like at the time,
Speaker 2: I was well probably two ten or something like that,
Speaker 2: still getting my meat back on my bones from the invasion.
Speaker 2: So but I can still run like three miles in
Speaker 2: eighteen and a half minutes, which is pretty good for
Speaker 2: a bigger dude.
Speaker 1: Six foot three. But now I wasn't fast enough to
Speaker 1: keep up at all, and so that was rough. Four weeks.
Speaker 1: That was like eat sleep study. That's it, Eat sleep study.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: You know, when you weren't getting thrashed, you know, all
Speaker 2: over the base all day long and all night long.
Speaker 2: I mean you just said it. You learn to just
Speaker 2: be miserable and focus on whatever the next thing you
Speaker 2: had to do was, rather than the whole picture.
Speaker 1: Because there was.
Speaker 2: Times I wanted to throw myself down the mountain, break
Speaker 2: my leg because I knew I could get a rest,
Speaker 2: But then I knew I'd have to go back through,
Speaker 2: so I did.
Speaker 3: But this isn't the in doc, this isn't the selection.
Speaker 3: This is actually the basic Reconnaissance course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they called it three Basic Reconnaissance. You passed
Speaker 2: this four weeks, then you're ready for the Basic Reconnaissance
Speaker 2: course down on Coronado at the time and Expeditionary Warfare
Speaker 2: Training Group Pacific. So you know, I think they've improved
Speaker 2: on the science of like training people up. But back
Speaker 2: then it was just a gig in tour felt like
Speaker 2: a haze fast smoke fest. Yeah. Man, it was rough,
Speaker 2: and but it did. It got you. We were ready.
Speaker 2: I mean, I graduated, that got orders, went down to
Speaker 2: Coronado and and then uh, that was that was That
Speaker 2: was tough, but it was also it also could be
Speaker 2: a lot of fun at times. And because they had
Speaker 2: prepared us physically so well that that part was certainly
Speaker 2: like it could crush you, but it was you just
Speaker 2: knew you're gonna be all right. Yeah, but a lot
Speaker 2: of guys quit, and a lot of guys who quit
Speaker 2: were the guys that you thought would never quit. I
Speaker 2: just the term for them is Gazelle's. Things come easy
Speaker 2: to them, yeah, and then the first time things get hard,
Speaker 2: they they're like, oh I can't, this isn't for me,
Speaker 2: or they don't like not being the best, so they
Speaker 2: the ego gets in the way.
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: We had a little confrontation with the Buds class once
Speaker 2: our little friendly rivalry that we had going on, and
Speaker 2: I think some of the guys stole their hot One
Speaker 2: of the guys stole one of their hard hats from
Speaker 2: in front of the chow hall because they didn't have
Speaker 2: a gear guard, and the whole the whole class came up.
Speaker 2: I was we had maybe ten minutes before we had
Speaker 2: to get back into the classroom. I was trying to
Speaker 2: take a power in that, ye know, upstairs, and and
Speaker 2: we were just banging on the hatch and Buddy ended
Speaker 2: up mine and I we opened that back door and
Speaker 2: what the hell, Like, I mean just that it was
Speaker 2: jam packed, like like these buds kids, like they were pissed.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that somebody had taken their heart
Speaker 2: at so we were just defending our territory, like you
Speaker 2: ain't coming in here. And then you know, there's a
Speaker 2: marine in there. He's like, dude, come on, we get
Speaker 2: fucked if we He was going through Buds and he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is kind of those they'll you know,
Speaker 2: just having you it back. And I'm like, well, hold on,
Speaker 2: don't come in here. And I go and I'm like,
Speaker 2: which one are you bastards? You know, kind of laughing,
Speaker 2: you know, but like come on, man, we're gonna get
Speaker 2: in trouble.
Speaker 1: Uh. And they gave it back to him. And that
Speaker 1: was that I feel. I feel bad because I had
Speaker 1: a lot of seal buddies like fuck, you know, but
Speaker 1: you know, no harm, no foul, And that was to
Speaker 1: me really exciting because I was doing I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: really in recon.
Speaker 3: Training, you know, yeah, like the stuff, the stuff you
Speaker 3: read about in the books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're running up and down the strand, you know
Speaker 2: in Cornado, we're fitting like the buds classes are running
Speaker 2: by us with their boats.
Speaker 1: We're we're running by with our F four seventy zodiacs.
Speaker 2: Just I'm tall, so I was always like, keep on
Speaker 2: the man. You guys aren't like I got short guys
Speaker 2: in my team. I'm like, retire And it was fun.
Speaker 2: It was hard, but it was just you know, when
Speaker 2: you're doing something that you love, it takes that chore
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 1: And that's I loved it. It was just siver rewarding.
Speaker 1: I made it. Graduated.
Speaker 3: So which recon platoon did you get assigned to?
Speaker 1: I got assigned to second patuone in Bravo Company, First
Speaker 1: three com Battalion.
Speaker 3: Is that that back at twenty nine poems No.
Speaker 2: First three com Battalions at Camp Pendleton on the West Coastry,
Speaker 2: So all of our companies are out there too, and
Speaker 2: we so back at Margarita and it's the platoon that
Speaker 2: was on the MEU and it's also the platoon that
Speaker 2: during the invasion was featured in uh Evan Wright's book
Speaker 2: Generation Kill and then that HBO UH docu series and
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it. I can't watch it, Like I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, come on, we don't look the best. Uh, But.
Speaker 2: It was kind of cool. Rudy Ray has played himself.
Speaker 2: I didn't like him for a while when I was
Speaker 2: first at the unit, but like now we're just you know,
Speaker 2: he grows on your brothers.
Speaker 1: Uh dude, Well we all evolved, you know, myself included,
Speaker 1: and you know that.
Speaker 2: Uh, that unit at the time was real tight and
Speaker 2: I'm and and you know first Yukon still is. But
Speaker 2: we were a collection of guys that had time and
Speaker 2: peace to go to schools and to get in shape
Speaker 2: and to train and work together in jail as a
Speaker 2: unit for the most part. I mean there's people like
Speaker 2: me who just gets I just get to report. Let's see,
Speaker 2: I graduated BRC late November and I reported to the
Speaker 2: unit and they put me in a second between Bravo Company.
Speaker 1: And they're the guys that.
Speaker 2: You know that like all these guys in the cam Marines,
Speaker 2: they were in the invasion too, so myself and a
Speaker 2: lot of the guys had combat experience. But there were
Speaker 2: some guys that you know, knew to the unit who
Speaker 2: didn't have any combat experience, even guys senior to me,
Speaker 2: So that gave me a little bit of street credits.
Speaker 2: I didn't get messed with. And I had some buddies
Speaker 2: that went to boot camp with in School of Infantry
Speaker 2: who were at the unit, and I just they vouched
Speaker 2: for me. Some nobody really messed with me, and then
Speaker 2: I never screwed up, so I never had a reason
Speaker 2: to have anybody yell at me or anything. I was
Speaker 2: pretty good at staying out of trouble at that point.
Speaker 1: So we had just.
Speaker 2: A short workup two months before we were back in Kuwait,
Speaker 2: and then that two months maybe, yeah, we were back
Speaker 2: in February, so that two and a half months or
Speaker 2: something like that. I was supposed to go to serial
Speaker 2: school after recon school, but I got into a little uh.
Speaker 2: I was trying to get these dudes off. We were
Speaker 2: at the gas lamp in downtown San Diego having a
Speaker 2: good time and we stayed till the bars closed because
Speaker 2: my buddy's wife worked at one of them and she
Speaker 2: was driving us all home. Well, we were you know,
Speaker 2: mass exit us out of the bars everybody's in the streets,
Speaker 2: and some guys were like grab assing on her, and
Speaker 2: I this is never break up a fight unless you
Speaker 2: want to get into a fight. So like I'm like,
Speaker 2: come on, guys, and u there's four of them and
Speaker 2: they all like assembled in front of me, like they're
Speaker 2: gonna with my ass. And I was like in a
Speaker 2: good mood, you know, like I'm not trying to fight anybody.
Speaker 2: We don't have anything to prove. We're just having a
Speaker 2: good time. And so I put my backup against the
Speaker 2: wall and I'm like looking at them and like they're
Speaker 2: just you know, making a bunch of noise and jumping
Speaker 2: around like talking trash. But I'm kind of ignoring them.
Speaker 2: And man, some one of them was a straggler, so
Speaker 2: he ran up from behind and broke my jaw and uh,
Speaker 2: my head bounced off the wall and I went down
Speaker 2: like a sack of potatoes.
Speaker 1: But I popped right back up. Uh you know, just
Speaker 1: down and back up. But I was a little like
Speaker 1: whoa and damn, and I go, what the fuck was that?
Speaker 2: And those guys were like running away all together at
Speaker 2: that point. Uh, like they got one licking and ran
Speaker 2: off and as they're running off talking trash. They're like that, damn,
Speaker 2: you just got to suck a punch, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: no shit, that motherfucker got me good. So I had
Speaker 2: to go get staples in my head at Balboa and
Speaker 2: so don't harm, no foul back of the unit, back training,
Speaker 2: but I was supposed to report into see your school
Speaker 2: with the rest of the guys. Two weeks after that,
Speaker 2: my jaw kept hurting and I thought I had like
Speaker 2: a bold muscle or something. I didn't know what it was,
Speaker 2: torn living in I thought. So I finally went to
Speaker 2: the battalion aid station and told him, and then they
Speaker 2: sent me down to the hospital. I got X rays,
Speaker 2: and then I went back to the field and I
Speaker 2: was back at work, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: somebody's you know, they're asking for me to hurry up
Speaker 2: and get back to the battalion aid station. So I
Speaker 2: go down there and they tell me your jaws broken.
Speaker 2: You're right, condos fractured, you can't be moving your jaw,
Speaker 2: stop talking, and I'm like.
Speaker 1: Well, it's two I mean, it's been two weeks. You know.
Speaker 2: I've been trying to eat soft food like I ate.
Speaker 2: I was like, damn, it, you know, because we were
Speaker 2: in the work up. We knew we were going to
Speaker 2: deploy again, and they said, well, they told me that
Speaker 2: at the aid station. So I went back and uh,
Speaker 2: I found my two sergeant. We were still in the field.
Speaker 2: I go up to him and I'm like, hey, gunny.
Speaker 2: Uh they told me my jaw is broken. And he
Speaker 2: looks at me and he says to me. He goes, well,
Speaker 2: can you still deploy? And I go yeah, he said
Speaker 2: all right, and we just went back to work.
Speaker 1: That was it, and yeah, this Man's club, I fucking
Speaker 1: love it here.
Speaker 2: This is right, But it healed up. I just said
Speaker 2: to be careful. So I didn't go to see your
Speaker 2: school because they would have snapped the begs out of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that wouldn't have been good with your jaw.
Speaker 2: They've ruptured one of my buddies that was in b
Speaker 2: r C with They've ruptured his ear drum. But I
Speaker 2: could see him being a mouthy guy, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean I was like, oh, I could see that. Why
Speaker 2: they might slap the bejeez out of that guy especially, So, yeah,
Speaker 2: they would have messed me up probably.
Speaker 1: So they sent me to an Arabic linguist course. With
Speaker 1: some of the guys. So every day for a month straight,
Speaker 1: I just sat and learned Arabic. I actually enjoyed that
Speaker 1: because I realized how much it could help me because
Speaker 1: in the invasion it gave us these little cards with
Speaker 1: like English and Arabic, and you would show up to
Speaker 1: them and either they pretended they couldn't read, or they
Speaker 1: probably didn't.
Speaker 2: Know how to read. A lot of these guys like
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere, but like our pronunciation was horrible.
Speaker 2: I realized after doing that course, I'm like, no, wonder
Speaker 2: they didn't understand what the hell I was trying to say,
Speaker 2: you know, like just must have sounded like gibberish.
Speaker 1: So that was cool.
Speaker 2: And then we immediately went back. I mean it felt
Speaker 2: just like I was. I'm like, I'm already back less
Speaker 2: than a year. Wow, yeah, quick turnaround. And so where
Speaker 2: did you get to ployed the second time? And what
Speaker 2: was the mission? Well, the second time, we went up
Speaker 2: to the end our province and we went up to Fallujah.
Speaker 2: And as we drove up from Kuwait, I started to
Speaker 2: get more and more of a different vibe in the
Speaker 2: environment because during the invasion we'd run into a lot
Speaker 2: of people that were cheering for us and thumbs up,
Speaker 2: and they'd say things like push number one and and
Speaker 2: and it seemed more welcoming and less shady. But when
Speaker 2: we got to Fallujah, they were not hiding the fact
Speaker 2: that they did not like us. And I think at
Speaker 2: the time the eighty second Airborne had been there for
Speaker 2: about a year, so they were ready to split. We
Speaker 2: reallyave the eighty second. Then they were all pretty cool.
Speaker 2: They were real friendly. So our mission, they told us,
Speaker 2: was to conduct counter rocket and ied ambush of opportunity
Speaker 2: and reconnaissance and surveillance missions, which would mean like they
Speaker 2: put us in hide sights and so much patrolling, but
Speaker 2: just like trying to insert get eyes on and sneak
Speaker 2: around and you know. So, so my team leader and
Speaker 2: I we asked command if we could get map data
Speaker 2: on where they're firing from. Of course they didn't have anything,
Speaker 2: and they gave us maps, but they were air maps,
Speaker 2: one in one hundred thousands, and we were supposed to
Speaker 2: make our patrol routes from these, and it's just like
Speaker 2: what And I just think they didn't have them at
Speaker 2: the time. And just like during the invasion, they passed
Speaker 2: out sappy plates like the body armor and we each
Speaker 2: only got one, so you know, we all put it
Speaker 2: in the front of our flag jacket, you know, like and.
Speaker 1: But so.
Speaker 2: We took a walk and we went to the gun line,
Speaker 2: like the counter battery artillery and then the counter battery
Speaker 2: radars and the already gunline there on Camp Fallusia, and
Speaker 2: went to the counter the d our trailer you know,
Speaker 2: and the counter battery radar guys, and just introduced ourselves,
Speaker 2: said what's up. Said, we were marines with first recond.
Speaker 2: You know, we were wondering if you guys had any
Speaker 2: information or data you can share them where these guys
Speaker 2: are firing from.
Speaker 1: And they're like, sure, come on in, and we combed
Speaker 1: into the back of the trailer. You know.
Speaker 2: They had the screen like in real time, we'll pinpoint
Speaker 2: where the rocket or the mortar is launched from and
Speaker 2: then they can get on the horn and tell the
Speaker 2: gunline put in the right data and they would be
Speaker 2: firing rounds back within thirty seconds or less.
Speaker 1: And they had maps.
Speaker 2: They gave us some one and fifty thousands of maps,
Speaker 2: and we were like sweet, thank you sir. And they
Speaker 2: were out of there, like they were like, yep, here
Speaker 2: you go we're going home. They were stoked and they
Speaker 2: were real cool. They were nice to us and they
Speaker 2: and then when we were in the trailer was some
Speaker 2: rockets came into the base. So we got to see
Speaker 2: the thing in like live real time. You know, the
Speaker 2: little uh little you know map that they have. You know,
Speaker 2: it's backlit and you know, they little things in it
Speaker 2: lights up exactly so that they can drop up ten
Speaker 2: digit affording it to the gun line and they fire back.
Speaker 2: And so then we returned back to the unit. We
Speaker 2: had these maps and we knew where all the mortars
Speaker 2: and the rockets had been fired from, like all the
Speaker 2: different intersections or sides of the roads and all this.
Speaker 2: We go give it to our intel guys, and of
Speaker 2: course they want to take all of it and all
Speaker 2: of our maps from us, and so we gave them
Speaker 2: the maps and the data, but we kept a map
Speaker 2: and we kept the data for ourselves too, you know,
Speaker 2: because we needed it.
Speaker 1: You know, they sometimes it's funny you can bring some
Speaker 1: in from nation to someone in the military and then
Speaker 1: uh it and they'll tell you it's classified. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm the one that gave it to you. You know,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense. That's just how it is.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we use those to do some planning, and
Speaker 1: they split our teams up into different areas, so you
Speaker 1: had a certain area of responsibility like X number of
Speaker 1: grid squares or you know, square kilometers along the euphrates.
Speaker 2: At first, when I was there on the southwestern side,
Speaker 2: the south from Campaalojah all the way over to the
Speaker 2: Rock asp is where we were operating our teams. While
Speaker 2: I was there, that was pretty exciting. What was I
Speaker 2: gonna say, It'll come back to me. But so then
Speaker 2: I was really doing what I you know, what recom
Speaker 2: marines do. We would get inserted. We well, we get
Speaker 2: a frago a mission like this, this is where your
Speaker 2: team's gonna go.
Speaker 1: This is your a. This is your area for you
Speaker 1: to be responsible for.
Speaker 2: And so make your make your plans, find your hid
Speaker 2: sight you you know, mark out your patrol routes and
Speaker 2: get your pre planning fire positions and these different things
Speaker 2: like that, and uh, you know, rid yourselves out and
Speaker 2: get all ready. And then we'd get inserted. And that
Speaker 2: was an adventure that was I'm like, this is what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, recome doing It was it was pretty it
Speaker 2: was pretty cool, but it was dangerous. We got ah
Speaker 2: every day pretty much, and every night there was rockets
Speaker 2: and mortars hitting the base. And then every time you'd
Speaker 2: be driving through Fallujah, uh you people would take pop
Speaker 2: shots at you. At least or in in the early
Speaker 2: days of the i DS, they were just down them
Speaker 2: and they were trying to hit us with the IDs,
Speaker 2: but fortunately they blow between vehicles or were they bury
Speaker 2: him too deep or something they wouldn't, So we lucked
Speaker 2: out a bunch of times. The the people in Fallujah
Speaker 2: were shocked. The first time we wrote, we drove through
Speaker 2: as a company through the city of Fallujah, like right
Speaker 2: through the main part of downtown, and I remember the
Speaker 2: eighty second had told us on to turnover, like don't
Speaker 2: go here, don't go there, and especially this or that
Speaker 2: time of the day or whatever. We completely disregarded all that.
Speaker 2: We just it's the first thing we did is went
Speaker 2: where they told us not to go to just be like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're here, what's up. And so that really I think
Speaker 2: it caught the caught the people in Fallujah, like the
Speaker 2: fighters in Fallujah, off guard because they didn't expect it.
Speaker 2: So we didn't, you know, we didn't get ambushed or
Speaker 2: anything because they were they didn't think we were going
Speaker 2: to come through, so we made you know, and so
Speaker 2: we made our presence known and and then started doing
Speaker 2: these ambush of opportunity missions, which were pretty successful.
Speaker 3: Were these going after like the water teams that were
Speaker 3: hitting the base.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we were trying to get, or people
Speaker 2: putting in IDs, and.
Speaker 1: So there were there were times we got compromised.
Speaker 2: H It's funny because we had to cross like a
Speaker 2: lot of flat ground and linear danger areas and there
Speaker 2: was just you know, we would only move when they
Speaker 2: turned the generators off at night, and then we try
Speaker 2: to be back at our hindsight by the time they
Speaker 2: turned them on at three four am, so you had
Speaker 2: a little window of opportunity to be out there. And
Speaker 2: we were also doing surveillance, reconnaissance and surveillance, so I
Speaker 2: mean that's sometimes that's tedious work.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're writing down. If you see somebody, you're
Speaker 1: gonna write it down. Describe what were they doing, what
Speaker 1: were they wearing, what kind of vehicle did you see? Color?
Speaker 1: Like where when?
Speaker 2: Why just just at anything because you don't know what's
Speaker 2: going to be valuable until later.
Speaker 1: But just and then of course baking in the sun
Speaker 1: during the day, just roasting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got compromised by a house full of women
Speaker 2: one night trying to cross through the little part of town,
Speaker 2: uh and get up to the banks of the Euphrates.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was I'm walking, I'm patrolling, and uh,
Speaker 2: we had we had some guys still in the hide sight.
Speaker 1: So there's six of us, so split our team.
Speaker 2: And so we were going through this danger area and
Speaker 2: I'm passing this house It's like fifty yards away and
Speaker 2: then start because they don't have street lights and stuff,
Speaker 2: but they had a little light at the front porch
Speaker 2: of that house.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, a woman comes out, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like just like like I was just there was nowhere
Speaker 2: to hide, there was nothing to do. So I'm trying
Speaker 2: to like melt down slowly to a knee and just
Speaker 2: make myself into a little ball.
Speaker 1: And she must have saw me. She must have.
Speaker 2: Seen me or one of the other guys or something,
Speaker 2: because I heard her saying something. And then another girl
Speaker 2: comes out, and all of a sudden, there's like ten
Speaker 2: women looking and peering, and like they got the heavy
Speaker 2: genies and they went back inside and then so I
Speaker 2: was like skirted out. Yeah, they didn't have windows on
Speaker 2: our side, so I figured that was my opportunity. We
Speaker 2: almost we almost smoked a guy on a little motorcycle,
Speaker 2: thought about it, but didn't smoke him one day, you know,
Speaker 2: because there's a curfew that technically if you're out about
Speaker 2: your fair game. But you know, we we weren't that
Speaker 2: like cavalier. We didn't just shoot everybody because they were
Speaker 2: outside after curfew. I hadn't heard about some foreign units
Speaker 2: that they would do that though, And we we had
Speaker 2: a mission what we got inserted once and we were
Speaker 2: going to our hid sight and spotted a couple of
Speaker 2: guys digging an I d into the side of the
Speaker 2: road there in Fallujah, and so we put four of
Speaker 2: our guys hungered down, and my team leader and I
Speaker 2: went and did like an L shape on him, and
Speaker 2: my team leader opened up, killed one guy, put three
Speaker 2: rounds in his chest and he dropped immediately, and I
Speaker 2: opened up.
Speaker 1: On the other guy. But I screwed up.
Speaker 2: My safety was on, so in the time it took
Speaker 2: me to take my little parasol about fed five five
Speaker 2: six by the time that I hit took that safety off.
Speaker 2: That dude that I was going for was already like
Speaker 2: flat lowered the blade of grass and so I just
Speaker 2: mowed I mean like disappeared, So I, you know, I
Speaker 2: laid down some fire and mowed down like where he was.
Speaker 2: And we both got up and we both started moving
Speaker 2: and we come up on him and I come up.
Speaker 1: Over this barn and there's the one guy.
Speaker 2: So I I stitched him up, but he was the
Speaker 2: guy that my team leader already had hit.
Speaker 1: And then we're like, where the fuck did that other
Speaker 1: guy go?
Speaker 2: And we're looking and we got a I vision and
Speaker 2: we see him and he's just flat like terrified.
Speaker 1: So we grab him.
Speaker 2: We roll him up, and we call back to the
Speaker 2: rear and we're like, we need to get extracted, and
Speaker 2: we got one enemy k one bow. So the react
Speaker 2: comes and we ended up you know, loading those guys up. Oh,
Speaker 2: then we had to extract the team. They couldn't find
Speaker 2: the hide sight, so they jump in and it's like
Speaker 2: we're in a convertible Humby and so we're all sitting
Speaker 2: around the outside and we picked this team up and
Speaker 2: they split between different humpies and my good buddy comes
Speaker 2: in and he's sitting sitting down on top of the
Speaker 2: tarfe his back to the cab of the Humby and
Speaker 2: we're driving back to the base.
Speaker 1: He's like, I heard you, guys. I heard you.
Speaker 2: Shwack somebody like yep. He's like, well, what did you
Speaker 2: guys do with the bodies? And like you're sitting on
Speaker 2: right now, Like we didn't bother to tell them.
Speaker 1: Just the weird, the twisted humor of the guys that
Speaker 1: hunt then you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so we immediately had a reputation in Flujiah, and
Speaker 2: of course our vehicles were distinct, so they hated us
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: You could really see it in their eyes. And so
Speaker 1: that's why I think they targeted us specifically for the
Speaker 1: ambush on April seven, two thousand and four. They waited
Speaker 1: for us because they let a lot of people go through.
Speaker 1: That was the first time we corded off of the
Speaker 1: city of Bellujah, first Battle of Alesia. So you know
Speaker 1: they tried to get us on April seven.
Speaker 3: So walk us through that how that transpired. And so
Speaker 3: you're saying they were targeting specifically the recon detachment out there,
Speaker 3: that's my opinion.
Speaker 2: I didn't get any like intelligence said that, but but
Speaker 2: we had killed one of them and taken another prisoner,
Speaker 2: and we were right in their backyard like that. That
Speaker 2: pissed them off. And so uh and and they, I mean,
Speaker 2: they were trying to get a lot of people. But
Speaker 2: but we were just so active in the area that
Speaker 2: maybe we were the most prevalent unit that that, you know.
Speaker 1: So we uh, we were tired.
Speaker 2: We've been just back to back missions, like we barely
Speaker 2: have any time to reset. If we were back on
Speaker 2: the fob, if we were back on Camp Loosiah. A
Speaker 2: lot of times you can get back before the chow
Speaker 2: hall closed or would be about to close.
Speaker 1: You run it, you'd be all dirty and people would
Speaker 1: tell you wouldn't care.
Speaker 2: I was a pot food of them in the dirt
Speaker 2: for days and days, you know, being in my east.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: We came back from him, you know, another mission, and
Speaker 2: then we got this order, you know, the the you
Speaker 2: know Flusia's cordoned off.
Speaker 1: We do that, and they were gonna move us.
Speaker 2: From Camp Fallujah, our company to a place called the
Speaker 2: Rock Asp which is in the old iraqi Ama supply
Speaker 2: point outside of Flujah, a mile or two south west
Speaker 2: more west and south. But uh, we were on that
Speaker 2: movement once again, just a couple hours of sleep because
Speaker 2: you had to you know down you know, just to
Speaker 2: you know, clean out the vehicle, refit the vehicle, get
Speaker 2: new fields for the radios, get you know, water, food,
Speaker 2: like just everything you've got to do AMMO and planning,
Speaker 2: uh short planning, and so then we we stepped off.
Speaker 1: Uh later in the morning.
Speaker 2: Then we originally planned and headed west out of the base,
Speaker 2: crossed over the Euphrates at this on the bridge they
Speaker 2: called the dam bridge because it's a dam literally dam
Speaker 2: so it's the dam bridge was what it's called. We
Speaker 2: took some fire and some motars crossing that. Uh. I
Speaker 2: think the motors like splashed into the water, like you know,
Speaker 2: pretty harmless, but we took a little bit of machine
Speaker 2: gun fire. So we pulled off into this one field
Speaker 2: that was like a you know, a road between the
Speaker 2: ditches and the trees, and all of a sudden the
Speaker 2: field opened up. But it was like a little peninsula
Speaker 2: because I had these big fifteen foot ditches that went
Speaker 2: around it, and.
Speaker 1: You know, we we you know.
Speaker 2: Just turned around like four of our vehicles or hum bees.
Speaker 2: We didn't have up armored hum bees at the time.
Speaker 2: And we're my own v Stopped across the ditch from
Speaker 2: me about fifty yards was a group of about fifteen
Speaker 2: men and a couple of cars, and they were pissed
Speaker 2: and looking dirty at us, but they didn't have weapons
Speaker 2: or anything. I just had my saw on them and
Speaker 2: I'm like, God, if anybody does anything, I'm just mowing
Speaker 2: everybody down. And because we were in the open, we were like,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a good spot for us. So I didn't
Speaker 2: like where we were, and we ended up, you know,
Speaker 2: getting out of there pretty quickly and back on the road.
Speaker 2: And we were on Route Boston heading there at south
Speaker 2: of Walujah, heading west, and I'm in the first vehicle.
Speaker 2: I got the radio. I'm assistant team leader, and you know,
Speaker 2: we see just people acting kind of strange. So I
Speaker 2: call it back to the to our tuned commander, and
Speaker 2: we stopped the convoy ten twenty seconds and they say
Speaker 2: get going again, and then so we get going. And
Speaker 2: whereas usually you'd see a lot of people standing around,
Speaker 2: milling about, maybe the gas station or cars coming and going,
Speaker 2: we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't see any cars and any people. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of this eerie feeling. You knew something was
Speaker 1: up and a car was coming down the road at
Speaker 1: a high rates speed towards us, and when they saw us,
Speaker 1: they just flipped a U turn and floorated away.
Speaker 2: So I called that in. We stopped the convoy again
Speaker 2: just ten seconds. They said, you know, get going again
Speaker 2: and pick up your speed to whatever it was twenty
Speaker 2: five o'cloungers hour or something, so that I really knew
Speaker 2: it was on. So I took my apple box off
Speaker 2: the swing arm mount and I put it on my gun,
Speaker 2: and I spit my dip out because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to swallow my dip and we a couple hundred yards later,
Speaker 2: all hell broke lease and they had opened up on
Speaker 2: us with heavy machine gun guns borders RPGs. They had
Speaker 2: IDs in place, but they didn't blow. And during the
Speaker 2: course of the whole firefight, one of my buddies from
Speaker 2: Opportune found some and actually disarmed them, uh and like
Speaker 2: disconnected them from their power source so that they wouldn't blow.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I when I when of when
Speaker 1: the shooting started.
Speaker 2: Uh, I called in the contact in the direction and
Speaker 2: I just threw down that headset and I went to
Speaker 2: town with my saw and they were firing at us.
Speaker 2: From my perspective, you know, the first vehicle like basically
Speaker 2: our twelve o'clock all the way to you know, our
Speaker 2: three or four o'clock. And so from where I was,
Speaker 2: I was suppressing like the three four o'clock, like just
Speaker 2: basically everything out to our right side. And because they
Speaker 2: were along a burn behind well, there was a berman
Speaker 2: in a big ditch with waste deep water, and then
Speaker 2: it came up for another burn and then small field
Speaker 2: and all the houses. So they were in the burn
Speaker 2: on the second burn, on the backside, so they're firing
Speaker 2: from pretty close. It was close ambush. We had nowhere
Speaker 2: to go. We stopped, like uh, set up a base
Speaker 2: of fire, you know, our bravo element. The peoples in
Speaker 2: the bag of between flanked them, and they had the
Speaker 2: erect you said, block off the road to the dumb truck.
Speaker 2: So we were we couldn't. Yeah, we were, and we didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know it yet, but this was our slp
Speaker 2: to stop instead of base of fire. I was waiting
Speaker 2: for a lull in the fire so I could get
Speaker 2: out and get behind that burn. And but the but
Speaker 2: it was like nuts, I mean, they were dumping on us.
Speaker 2: It was like that movie pulp fiction when the guy
Speaker 2: busts out of the bathroom and tries to shoot what's
Speaker 2: his name, and he's looking like, you know, like how
Speaker 2: to get shots, but so like, bullets are hitting the door,
Speaker 2: bullets are hitting the humb everywhere. They're snapping by my ear,
Speaker 2: like you can tell when they come real close. In
Speaker 2: my head, I'm like, shit, you know they I hope
Speaker 2: you know, Mason's all right? My a art o uh,
Speaker 2: the guy sitting to my left, like, I'm like, if
Speaker 2: it missed me, it came that close, it had to
Speaker 2: have hit him. And they were firing RPGs at us.
Speaker 2: I kept hearing these explosions. I moved. I suppressed these
Speaker 2: dudes to our right. They were behind the barn, and
Speaker 2: I moved over to like because there's these arpags were exploding.
Speaker 2: I thought they were shooting him at the behagles behind us.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking, damn, I hope, I hope those
Speaker 2: dudes are all right. And and this house where these
Speaker 2: RPGs were coming from. I was about to suppress in
Speaker 2: that direction, but my my barrel of my saw was
Speaker 2: like right over an inch over my teen Naterer's barrel
Speaker 2: he was shooting at some guys, and I was I
Speaker 2: just thought I'll come.
Speaker 1: Back to them.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to shoot it out of his hand,
Speaker 2: and and I was thinking I was gonna get shot
Speaker 2: in the face because of the amount of bullets that
Speaker 2: were just like coming behind my head and hitting the door.
Speaker 1: And I didn't have a real door.
Speaker 2: It was like cutting half a duct tape on so
Speaker 2: I'll find it because somebody just took a torch and
Speaker 2: cut it rough, you know, sand bags and full flat
Speaker 2: jackets glued to the floorboards and sand bags on top,
Speaker 2: just like ghetto. But but when I moved my gun
Speaker 2: back to start firing back to like around the three o'clock,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, that's when an RPG hit hit my saw.
Speaker 2: And so when I when I got hit, it was
Speaker 2: just just a boom that I can't really explain with words.
Speaker 2: Just I think I wrote it down once like a
Speaker 2: thunderclap originating from inside your head. And I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: I got shot in the face, and I screamed out
Speaker 2: as soon as it happened. It's just like boom, and
Speaker 2: I yelled out like I'm here, And as I'm yelling
Speaker 2: at I felt stupid for yelling it out. So I
Speaker 2: shut up, Like I don't know why I would feel
Speaker 2: like stupid ego or something like it was cliche.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be that guy.
Speaker 3: Like that's what's running through your head in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just well, I just felt stupid for yelling
Speaker 2: it out, like I lost my cool, you know, like, uh,
Speaker 2: so I shut up, and I was and I thought
Speaker 2: to myself, Okay, well now I'll see what it's like
Speaker 2: to die.
Speaker 1: I wonder if i'll brain damage.
Speaker 2: I'll be you know, because I got shot in the
Speaker 2: face or I got shot in the brain.
Speaker 1: And I thought briefly.
Speaker 2: About, oh no, I missed people that I love or
Speaker 2: they'll miss me, and you know, they'll have to wait
Speaker 2: a lifetime until we see each other again.
Speaker 1: And then I thought like, well, then it.
Speaker 2: Was like I got this clearity and all this is happening,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, you know, how time slow. It is,
Speaker 2: like a second or two seconds or something like that.
Speaker 2: It seemed like it was probably a few but maybe
Speaker 2: but not long. And I've realized somehow, I'm like everything's
Speaker 2: gonna be all right, you know, it's all good, almost
Speaker 2: as if I knew there was no such thing as time,
Speaker 2: and I didn't need to worry about like not even
Speaker 2: a blink of an eye.
Speaker 1: Even a blink of an eye is too big of
Speaker 1: a box to put around a section of time. It's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to explain, but just like an understanding.
Speaker 1: And the piece came on me that.
Speaker 2: I've never had at before or since as strongly. And
Speaker 2: I when I thought that, then I thought, hell, hold on, man,
Speaker 2: you had all these thoughts. Maybe you didn't get shut
Speaker 2: maybe you know, like wait a minute, you're not gonna
Speaker 2: you just need to chill out, and you know, calm down, dude,
Speaker 2: you don't want to go into shock. And so I
Speaker 2: thought all these thoughts in just a couple of seconds,
Speaker 2: and you know, time had slowed when I thought that
Speaker 2: last thought. Uh, the lights came on. They just switched
Speaker 2: back on, and my left arm was chilling me, and
Speaker 2: I picked it up like this and everything's a little
Speaker 2: bit hazy still kind of. I picked up my left
Speaker 2: arm and I looked at it and I'm like fuck,
Speaker 2: and my right hand heard, so I've like kind of like, uh,
Speaker 2: kind of like I don't know if.
Speaker 1: I want to see that.
Speaker 2: I lifted up and I'm like, mother, maybe you guys
Speaker 2: can bleep this out, and I'm like, motherfuck or both
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: So both my hands are gone.
Speaker 2: This is like shredded and bone fragments, like almost cauterized it,
Speaker 2: so it was just not like shooting blood out or anything.
Speaker 2: And then this was like my hand was off at
Speaker 2: the base of my palm and it looked like my
Speaker 2: hand all the bones had been blown out of it
Speaker 2: or something. It was just an empty glove. It was
Speaker 2: shredded like it you know, that went through garbage disposal
Speaker 2: or something. And I was like, mother a effort. But
Speaker 2: I looked down on the leg and that was the
Speaker 2: worst because my leg, the top of my leg, like
Speaker 2: all my quads have been blown off, like it was
Speaker 2: a red, pulpy mess, and my fever was sticking out
Speaker 2: to the side and it was splintered and jagged and
Speaker 2: gleaming like in a ce of bread. But with every heartbeat,
Speaker 2: I could just see, oh my god, the incredible amount
Speaker 2: of blood pouring out of my leg. And I knew
Speaker 2: that I had to that that was what was gonna
Speaker 2: kill me if I didn't get shot again. And so
Speaker 2: everybody's coming back around, like I'm coming back around, and
Speaker 2: this is not very there's maybe a minute into the
Speaker 2: gunfight if that, and Chris, we're all death. So it
Speaker 2: seemed like there was a lull in the fire coming
Speaker 2: from the enemy, but there wasn't. We just couldn't hear it.
Speaker 2: But the hearing came back right away, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, we just realized we were like fucked still
Speaker 2: stuck in the kills one. So uh, you know, a
Speaker 2: team leader told the driver to hit it, so he's
Speaker 2: he steps on it with the Humpbye is damaged, tires
Speaker 2: of flat guess, tanks leaking like it's like putt putting
Speaker 2: down the road.
Speaker 1: But we start to pick.
Speaker 2: Up speed and our gunner is laid out on the
Speaker 2: roof and well before before we before we started moving,
Speaker 2: you know, the gunner was laid out on the roof
Speaker 2: and he was curled up in the ball like and
Speaker 2: our driver was telling us that, you know, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: he's not responding, blah blah blah. In my head, I'm
Speaker 2: not a jerk, but you have to prioritize, you know, needs,
Speaker 2: and if he's dead, he's dead. We can't do anything
Speaker 2: about it. We're still in the kill zone. We've got
Speaker 2: to get the f out of his kill zone. Also,
Speaker 2: I need some tourniquets.
Speaker 1: So my.
Speaker 2: Assistant radio operator he was he didn't get shot in
Speaker 2: the face, you know, but everybody got peppered with shrapnel
Speaker 2: and jacked up. A team leader was putting a tourniquet
Speaker 2: on his right arm. His gun had been blown out,
Speaker 2: like his r been blown out of his hands, and
Speaker 2: he had a big like silver dollar hole above his
Speaker 2: triceps with his bones were shattered, and he was with
Speaker 2: the turnicet on with his left and I managed to
Speaker 2: get the a art o calm down. So, you know,
Speaker 2: he's looking for our blowout kid, where we keep our
Speaker 2: turning kids inside the vehicle when we're in the vehicle.
Speaker 2: He couldn't find it. Everything was just scattered all over
Speaker 2: the place in the vehicle. And he I'm like, don't
Speaker 2: worry about it. Just get my you know, get the
Speaker 2: turnket out of my sleep pocket. I'll be all right.
Speaker 2: Like I'm trying to calm this dude down because I
Speaker 2: can't do anything myself. But if he's if he can't
Speaker 2: do it, then I'm then I'm done with ski. And
Speaker 2: so I got him to put a turnket on my
Speaker 2: left leg up high first and then he was getting
Speaker 2: he got one on my arm a team that got
Speaker 2: done doing his. So he turns around like this and
Speaker 2: he reaches over and he grabs a turning kid that's
Speaker 2: up on my hip above my last injury on my
Speaker 2: left leg, and he pulls on it to see if
Speaker 2: it's tight enough, and it pops off, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh damn it, you know so, And it's a good
Speaker 2: thing that he did because it wasn't tight, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't tight enough, I probably would have led out. I
Speaker 2: barely made it. Like each step of the way was
Speaker 2: kind of like a little miracle. So you know, Aaron
Speaker 2: puts it back on this time, really tight like it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be where where it's hurting. But you're like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's gonna be good. So I got three tourniquits on
Speaker 2: and we get to limp and out of that kill zone.
Speaker 2: We like the vehicle. We start to pick up speed,
Speaker 2: and that's when we see like a crap. Like in
Speaker 2: my head, I guess I thought maybe we could split
Speaker 2: off from the unit and floor up to the rock
Speaker 2: asp and get help there, because we certainly it would
Speaker 2: have been faster than going back to Gampelusia. No, I
Speaker 2: didn't say any of that out loud, but we made
Speaker 2: it maybe one hundred yards and that's where we saw
Speaker 2: the dump truck blocking the road off and like we
Speaker 2: got to stop.
Speaker 1: So we stopped.
Speaker 2: And it was a good spot because it got us
Speaker 2: out of the kill zone and it got us kind
Speaker 2: of around the corner where the enemy had to dislodge
Speaker 2: from wherever they were firing from and come up and
Speaker 2: try to get into another position to finish us off.
Speaker 2: And you can see them like trying to come and
Speaker 2: you know, so hurried up. We got with our like
Speaker 2: you know, I'm like get the radio. The radio was
Speaker 2: like the one nineteen fox trot in the back of
Speaker 2: the seat. That thing was shot. But we had the
Speaker 2: little invitters, a little handheld one, so we were trying
Speaker 2: to get columns with that. We tried, we but we
Speaker 2: hit off our visual signal, you know, like a flare,
Speaker 2: and then we you know, my team leaders switched seats
Speaker 2: with the driver because he could drive. And then the
Speaker 2: driver was shooting. So we had one rifle here on
Speaker 2: the left and one in the front seat on the right,
Speaker 2: and we we the way. We had to turn around
Speaker 2: because it was the one lane road and we were
Speaker 2: elevated and exposed. Still it's like like a you know,
Speaker 2: not like a three point turn. It was like a
Speaker 2: felt like a twenty point turn, like that Austin Powers
Speaker 2: movie when he's in a golf cart in the hallway.
Speaker 1: So it's like.
Speaker 2: We got turned around and then we went you know,
Speaker 2: it's like make sure you're pressing over there and pressing
Speaker 2: over here. We're abing to get behind another hum be
Speaker 2: and uh get some cover.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: My company first sergeant runs up Santiago. He says to
Speaker 2: you know, my team leader. He's like he got a
Speaker 2: jew Ok Quarto prico. You know, it's got that thick accent.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, first time, we're all fucked up. It's like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I take care of jew.
Speaker 2: So, uh arc carman get to go to like the
Speaker 2: Army's uh eighteen delta, like this special Forces medic school,
Speaker 2: and they're squared away the sark, especially in babous Reconnaissance Corman.
Speaker 2: So my buddy Blake comes up and they slap a
Speaker 2: stretcher on the deck next to the vehicle. There's like
Speaker 2: diesel leaking and all around. I remember somebody saying, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: there's fuel on the ground and I'm and I'm like.
Speaker 1: It's diesel. Don't worry about it. It's not going to
Speaker 1: catch on fire, I think.
Speaker 2: And they pulled me out of the back seat and
Speaker 2: my leg in half like where the bone was fractured
Speaker 2: and out, and it hurt.
Speaker 1: I was like, and Blair's like, I'm sorry, brother, I
Speaker 1: go no, no, it's cool.
Speaker 2: It's cool like and and for me to stay alive
Speaker 2: and not going to shock eye was just a backseat
Speaker 2: driving like pictures are good and probably need some fluids
Speaker 2: or whatever. But I was still like full of adrenaline,
Speaker 2: so the pain of my injuries had fully I mean,
Speaker 2: it hurt like crazy, but it was I could disassociate
Speaker 2: from it because of the gravity of the situation.
Speaker 1: So it got me out on a stretcher. It ran
Speaker 1: me over to.
Speaker 2: An open back come V that had cover, and they
Speaker 2: hoisted me up and put me in the back of
Speaker 2: that thing. But from there I could still see our vehicle,
Speaker 2: and I could still see my buddy who had gotten
Speaker 2: up on the gun. You know, they got the wounded
Speaker 2: marine off the roof. He turned up to be okay, Uh,
Speaker 2: he just got jacked up a little, and you know,
Speaker 2: I had a corman, you know, like they got an
Speaker 2: IV and me and and then I had and so
Speaker 2: then my starck went off to go help some other wounded.
Speaker 2: We had seven wounded total at the time, and one
Speaker 2: of them ended up, you know, dying my opportune commander.
Speaker 2: But we uh, you know, I had this new corman
Speaker 2: who was an attachment in the headquarters or something. He's
Speaker 2: a young kid, you know, like just wide eyed, like
Speaker 2: holy shit, you know, you can tell this look on
Speaker 2: his face, and he says, he's just asking me questions
Speaker 2: like hey, you got to grow back home. Uh, And
Speaker 2: you know, I knew he was just trying to keep
Speaker 2: me from going into shock. RIGHTS just thoroughly irritated with him,
Speaker 2: like that has nothing to do with what's going on here.
Speaker 1: I didn't even answer. I go, do you have somebody
Speaker 1: looking over there with security or what? You know? And
Speaker 1: but then I humored him. I'm like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta grow up. But my mind was still on
Speaker 1: the battle, which was still going on. And at this
Speaker 1: point it was like a three hundred and sixty degree ambush,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty hectic and chaotic. I lifted my
Speaker 1: head up at one point and I saw my buddy
Speaker 1: on the fifty and I was like, get some And
Speaker 1: that exertion almost made me pass out, and I had
Speaker 1: to tell myself, dude, you can't be doing that. You
Speaker 1: need to slow down your breathing, like breathe just be cool, relaxed,
Speaker 1: like you gotta hang on till the Kazvak chopper comes.
Speaker 2: So it took like from the time I got hit
Speaker 2: from the time that helicopter came, it took about forty
Speaker 2: five minutes. We got one, we got one forty six
Speaker 2: and we got one one cobra. Later I found out
Speaker 2: it's just because it shit was popping off all over
Speaker 2: the city. It was just the air was just overwhelmed
Speaker 2: and busy. And so they got me on the bird
Speaker 2: that everybody else, you know, the walking wounded, got on.
Speaker 2: Then I see him bringing in my optoon. Commander kept
Speaker 2: him Brent Morrell.
Speaker 1: And he's just white, like like just white, white as
Speaker 1: ghost and he's already white as a ghosts because it's redheads,
Speaker 1: you know, a great guy.
Speaker 2: I'm like a fuck, you know, Captain Morrell. And they
Speaker 2: put him on the bird and so we had a
Speaker 2: short maybe five minute flight back to the ALTAKA don't
Speaker 2: know where we were going. I thought maybe we're going
Speaker 2: back to Camp Fellusia, but we landed out to Condom.
Speaker 2: I find out, you know, after after everything, and while
Speaker 2: we're in the air, I'm thinking, oh, I hope they
Speaker 2: don't classify me as expectant, you know, where you have
Speaker 2: a bunch of wounded. But they're like, this dude's going
Speaker 2: to die anyway, so skip past him and pick the
Speaker 2: next guy up. So when the ramp dropped and the
Speaker 2: and the medics of the corman that were on the
Speaker 2: ground working for the field hospital now to call him,
Speaker 2: ran up and.
Speaker 1: Come and grab us.
Speaker 2: I've sat up real quick, and I startled ahead performed.
Speaker 2: Everybody grabbed me, you know, like I just wanted to
Speaker 2: let him know I wasn't dead. Good to go get
Speaker 2: me off this thing. Yeah, So he grabs me, Another
Speaker 2: guy grabs me, you know, on the east side, and
Speaker 2: they book it in like they run into the triage team.
Speaker 1: So they get me in there and immediately they start
Speaker 1: working on me like they rolled me over. There comes over.
Speaker 1: He's like checking for internal bleeding. You know. The way
Speaker 1: they do that is they got to stick fingers up
Speaker 1: your ars. So I'm like.
Speaker 2: Happy that I'm in this field hospital because I'm now
Speaker 2: I'm feeling like, okay, I made it.
Speaker 1: Like all had to do is wait, get I needed
Speaker 1: turn kids.
Speaker 2: At one point I got those, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I need forman to get hold of me and get
Speaker 2: some fluids and or whatever. I got that, and then
Speaker 2: I'm like, I need to get meta backed out of here.
Speaker 2: Once I get to the field hospital, I should be good.
Speaker 2: Like then then I know I'm gonna make it. You know,
Speaker 2: as long as I don't get shot in the face
Speaker 2: when you know, or any a more injuries, I think
Speaker 2: I can be good. So I was in a pretty
Speaker 2: good mood when I got in there, and I felt
Speaker 2: really like more relaxed. But it had but it had
Speaker 2: such a serious environment. It was like that TV show
Speaker 2: mash or something. Just there was like wounded dudes everywhere
Speaker 2: somewhere like kind of just sitting up on the gurd
Speaker 2: He's like looking dazed with minor wounds. H And then
Speaker 2: some had like a bunch of dogs and nurses trying
Speaker 2: to save their lives and stuff, and they brushed over
Speaker 2: to me. And then now checking for in term of
Speaker 2: bleeding and early I'm on my side and I looked
Speaker 2: over her. I go, hey, doc, I about to reach around,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'm cracking jokes like an idiot.
Speaker 1: And uh so they get me stabilized and I'm laying
Speaker 1: there and a nurse comes by and I got her
Speaker 1: attention and I said to her. She leaned in really close,
Speaker 1: like to my face, and I go, hey, how many
Speaker 1: irishmen does it take to change the light bulb back?
Speaker 2: And she got a real like a like a what
Speaker 2: like a confused look on her.
Speaker 1: Face, and I was like, hey, fack it, well drank
Speaker 1: in the dark. And then she laughs and then they
Speaker 1: just everything. Then she ran off. She kept going, and
Speaker 1: that's when I was fully relaxed.
Speaker 2: I finally, I think I was fully relaxed because the
Speaker 2: pain at that point, all of a sudden, I was
Speaker 2: just like, oh my god, I mean, it.
Speaker 1: Hurt so bad.
Speaker 2: That I think I passed out because the pain, or
Speaker 2: it could have been you know, any number of things.
Speaker 2: So I passed out and I woke up in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Wow, nine days later. I have a vague
Speaker 2: memory of my team leader talking to me on the
Speaker 2: one of the mattervac flights either from there the ballot
Speaker 2: or ballode to launch stool. But they eventually got me
Speaker 2: back to d C. Later I found out like they
Speaker 2: had to be suscitate me three times from that from
Speaker 2: Tacatam to d C. But I made it and I
Speaker 2: woke up in ICU. But they woke me up one day, uh,
Speaker 2: and I was dying of thirst, and uh, they were
Speaker 2: asking me questions, do you know where you are? In
Speaker 2: my head I had I wasn't really like responding, but
Speaker 2: I was thinking about what they were asking me, and.
Speaker 1: I was like, clearly I'm in a hospital. I don't
Speaker 1: know where it is.
Speaker 2: And they kept telling me I was at the National
Speaker 2: Naval Medical Center in.
Speaker 3: Maryland, Like how did I get there?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I must have looked.
Speaker 2: I must have looked like I was, uh, maybe you
Speaker 2: had a traumatic brain injury or something, because rather than
Speaker 2: responding to what they were saying, I was trying to
Speaker 2: picture in my head where Bethesda, Maryland was, you know.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't really know exactly where that.
Speaker 1: Is, and.
Speaker 2: Uh, they they ended up just putting me under again
Speaker 2: for a couple of days. There was another time I
Speaker 2: remember waking up a little bit and I forgot that
Speaker 2: I didn't have hands, and I was like trying to
Speaker 2: get the tube out.
Speaker 1: You know, I was innovated.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and uh so they put me back under there.
Speaker 2: But then they finally got me and they had me
Speaker 2: sitting up like kind of let you know. I was
Speaker 2: kind of back in the bed and they were all
Speaker 2: around me, and there was a female doctor.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she was a speech pathologist or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. She was asking me questions and I
Speaker 1: was like, water, I eat some water. I was dying
Speaker 1: thirst because I was innovated for nine days, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was just so thirsty more I've never been
Speaker 1: thirsty in my life.
Speaker 2: And they like, I can't give you any water, and
Speaker 2: I went off. I was like, okay, you I was nuts.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know where I just came girl,
Speaker 2: Like I was cussing. I was out of it. That
Speaker 2: was on a lot of I mean, I was doped
Speaker 2: up and everything, so, uh, I feel kind of bad.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that was That was a long.
Speaker 2: I was in ICU for about three weeks. I was
Speaker 2: flat on my back. They were still debating on if
Speaker 2: they were going to keep my left leg. I had
Speaker 2: like saran wrap around all these open wounds, like my tabial,
Speaker 2: like my whole left leg basically, and then my right
Speaker 2: leg on my shin and then both arms, and I
Speaker 2: had tubes coming out of both arms, tubes coming out
Speaker 2: of both legs like these little JP bulbs, like you know,
Speaker 2: I was so puffed up and swollen. It was huge,
Speaker 2: like just just my body had been through a lot.
Speaker 2: And then you know, they were draining fluids out into
Speaker 2: you know, like it was just I had feeding tube
Speaker 2: in my nose and just I was just plugged up
Speaker 2: babywhere and they so I had to have a couple
Speaker 2: more surgeries. I had some skin graft surgeries and they
Speaker 2: were able to you know, get on my leg and
Speaker 2: saved with the donor sites from the skin graft. Heard
Speaker 2: more than the actually wounds themselves at that point, and
Speaker 2: the nurses and the doctors and the staff were just incredible,
Speaker 2: amazing people. H I remember.
Speaker 1: While I was in there, Corporal Jason Dunham was in
Speaker 1: ICU too, and he was on the other side of
Speaker 1: the ICU and I could see his room, you know,
Speaker 1: because we had glass walls.
Speaker 2: And when they you know, he was worth the Medal
Speaker 2: of Honor, but uh, when the doctors declared him like
Speaker 2: clinically dead, you know, he was on life support or
Speaker 2: brain dead. I watched as his parents to calhi down
Speaker 2: everybody like whoever could be in ICU was there to
Speaker 2: pay respects. And I, you know, I'm in my bed,
Speaker 2: like I knew what they were doing. They told me
Speaker 2: that they had to unplugging.
Speaker 1: I'm in like flat out in bed, and I see
Speaker 1: you trying to lay at the position of attention, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty yeah, pretty emotional, said, but I have
Speaker 1: so many wonderful memories of beuf has to and Walter
Speaker 1: read in the staff to people.
Speaker 3: I mean that that's got to be really tough. Not
Speaker 3: just when I talk to people. I mean sometimes it's
Speaker 3: interesting that they kind of minimize what they went through themselves,
Speaker 3: but they see their buddies that went through it, and
Speaker 3: it's almost worse, you know, to kind of like see
Speaker 3: that and to not be able to to help them,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean they were receiving help in that hospital,
Speaker 3: of course.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I have some friends who who even in.
Speaker 1: You know, even though I'm good to go, like, they
Speaker 1: still feel bad like for me, and I'm like, I'm good, dude, girl.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, how does it feel, you know, twenty
Speaker 3: one years to the day to kind of like recount
Speaker 3: that experience. Like, I'm just does the emotional and physical
Speaker 3: pain does it fade? Does it heal over time, or
Speaker 3: does it take you right back to that place all
Speaker 3: over again?
Speaker 2: I think emotional and physical pain, of course fades or
Speaker 2: heels or morphs into something different, and it does take
Speaker 2: me right back to that day. But you know, I've
Speaker 2: talked about it a lot. I've thought about it every day.
Speaker 2: I've lived with it.
Speaker 1: So as far as the emotional impact to be able
Speaker 1: to speak about it, I can speak freely. I've always
Speaker 1: been able to speak freely.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, you know, I might get choked up, but but
Speaker 2: but I have just ah like pride, and I'm honored
Speaker 2: to have been part of that unit.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm relieved that I didn't screw up, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and cause anybody to get hurt or
Speaker 1: killed by my inability, by an inability to do much
Speaker 1: out correctly. That I didn't let any of my boys
Speaker 1: down in that literal sense, and you know my brother's
Speaker 1: so that's good, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And but yeah, I mean, life hasn't been the easiest
Speaker 2: since then. Sure it's been oneonderful, it's been terrible, you know.
Speaker 1: But but you know, you know, I got.
Speaker 2: My dream job ripped out from under my feet when
Speaker 2: I'm barely into it for a year and.
Speaker 1: Not even a year. And but I got to do it.
Speaker 1: I got to live my dream. And that's a comfort
Speaker 1: to me. Yea. I did it. I wanted to do
Speaker 1: it my whole life. I did it.
Speaker 2: I did it in spite of all these obstacles I
Speaker 2: put in front of myself. And you know, I have
Speaker 2: the respect of my teammates and my fellow recomornes and
Speaker 2: that means a lot.
Speaker 1: That can you know.
Speaker 2: And I have a brotherhood and I get there's times
Speaker 2: many times where I've had to call on my buddies
Speaker 2: just let it out, you know, and vice versa and
Speaker 2: so and a lot of times if I'm feeling bad
Speaker 2: for myself, if I'm having a hard day, you know,
Speaker 2: I have to do once in a while where you know,
Speaker 2: you run that risk it's starting to feel like you're
Speaker 2: a victim or feeling sorry for yourself or something.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: You know, I might get a call from somebody who
Speaker 2: needs advice from me, and just that act of caring
Speaker 2: about somebody else and thinking, you know, helping them get
Speaker 2: through whatever hard day they're going through immediately make me
Speaker 2: or anybody forget about their own personal problems. And so
Speaker 2: I've learned that that is a great way to not
Speaker 2: get caught up into self pity and also gratitude to
Speaker 2: be to find something to be grateful for when you
Speaker 2: when you just think life blows, it sucks. And sometimes
Speaker 2: I found something to be grateful for. But you can,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I have to call somebody and talk to somebody.
Speaker 2: And I've had all kinds of different treatment modalities for
Speaker 2: PTSD or trauma or things like that, and I've I've
Speaker 2: come to find that the things that bother me in
Speaker 2: life now aren't ah, excuse me, they're not my combat experiences.
Speaker 2: They're not uh necessarily getting losing my hands. That that sucks,
Speaker 2: you know, it is what it is. But I've had
Speaker 2: a great life in spite of it, I think, and
Speaker 2: still still here. But what bothers me are the traumas
Speaker 2: that everybody has. They don't have to be in the military,
Speaker 2: they don't have to be in combat. I have two
Speaker 2: failed marriages. That comes, you know, with a lot of overthinking.
Speaker 2: Where I overanalyze, Where did I go wrong? Did I
Speaker 2: screw it up? You know, is it all my fault?
Speaker 2: Like just like I'm too critical of myself, you know,
Speaker 2: childhood traumas, those things. You know, it's like whatever your
Speaker 2: trauma is. Combat sometimes can exacerbate it. But but surprisingly
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily the combat that it stresses me, because
Speaker 2: you can compartmentalize, you can rationalize, you've got a job.
Speaker 2: You know what you're getting into. You're fighting an enemy combatant.
Speaker 2: Fair is fair. You know, he signed up, you signed up.
Speaker 2: I don't even have bitterness towards the guy that dropped
Speaker 2: my hands off.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like I kind of.
Speaker 2: Had a little bit of respect. It takes some balls
Speaker 2: to like, you know, get surrounded by the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: and be like, guys, we're going to fight to the death.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't respect like whatever their reasons might be. But ually,
Speaker 2: you know, like I got to at least give him
Speaker 2: the respect, dude, like you had the guts to stand there,
Speaker 2: like they had the guts to stand toe to toe.
Speaker 2: Though I'll mention that twenty six of them are guys.
Speaker 2: We smoked twenty six of them that we counted that day,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately they killed my attuned commander.
Speaker 1: One of the nicest guys you could ever meet, Captain
Speaker 1: Brent Merle.
Speaker 2: I went through recon school with him, you know, as
Speaker 2: a captain. He didn't have to, but he knew that
Speaker 2: he you know, he would respect himself and us recover
Speaker 2: where he would respect him more if he did. And
Speaker 2: so we were good. We were good friends, you know,
Speaker 2: to the extent that we could be, you know, him
Speaker 2: being an officer and me being the corporal at the time.
Speaker 2: He was a really nice guy. He loved his wife
Speaker 2: so much you brag about her. I thought to myself
Speaker 2: one time he was talking to me before we deployed,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I don't know anybody who is
Speaker 2: this in love.
Speaker 1: He's like, he's just like a good man Tennessee. You know.
Speaker 2: So that's a bummer, Like good people get killed, and
Speaker 2: I haven't always been the best person in my life.
Speaker 2: I'm still going, so I guess I got I'm not
Speaker 2: you know, good Lord ain't done with me yet for
Speaker 2: whatever the hell reason.
Speaker 3: And uh, well, before we move on, d do we
Speaker 3: have any questions for Eddie. We have a couple of
Speaker 3: viewer questions for you. Oh cool from Shane. Did you
Speaker 3: ever get to play rugby in Australia?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't get to play when I was there,
Speaker 2: but I did get to play. My first introduction was
Speaker 2: as a kid in Ireland. My mom used to bring
Speaker 2: us back. But I did get to play in Japan
Speaker 2: when I was on the six month UDP and that
Speaker 2: was cool. Like when when I was around and we
Speaker 2: weren't training, I played for the All Services team and
Speaker 2: that was super fun because we didn't play Japanese teams
Speaker 2: and they were very technical, very fast, very skilled. But
Speaker 2: I was pretty good too at that point because I've
Speaker 2: been playing fall, spring seasons and summer sevens in the
Speaker 2: Ozark Union and I was big and fast, so I could.
Speaker 2: It was kind of I mean, it was much bigger
Speaker 2: than those guys, which was strange.
Speaker 1: So it was It really was fun. It was exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a good time.
Speaker 6: Kay Jam says another twenty nine Palm survivor, shout out awesome.
Speaker 2: I greely love it, saying I want to live there again,
Speaker 2: but you know, good training.
Speaker 6: One more from Aaron ever try getting in touch with
Speaker 6: Audrey McDade Navy Cross the shipping with the hell of
Speaker 6: a story, not to mention the actions here that earned
Speaker 6: him that award.
Speaker 3: That might be a question for us rather than it
Speaker 3: might be that but he put they put it okay.
Speaker 2: No, i've not met Audrey McDade. No, maybe though, And
Speaker 2: when I do, well, Beck, I've heard of you.
Speaker 3: So Eddie, tell us a little bit about like life today.
Speaker 3: What is life like for you nowadays? What are you
Speaker 3: up to?
Speaker 2: I have a part time gig with the seberfi in
Speaker 2: America's fund, an organization I really love. I've known them
Speaker 2: for twenty years since they started. I mean very part time.
Speaker 2: I do some public speaking on their behalf or sometimes
Speaker 2: other organizations. And I rent the house here in Texas
Speaker 2: on a golf course, so I just got a new
Speaker 2: set of clubs.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to mess around and figure out how to golf.
Speaker 1: I have a daughter. She's wonderful. She's very intelligent, tall,
Speaker 1: pretty smart, kind. I'm super proud of her. Just a
Speaker 1: good girl, athletic, very talented artists, dancer, tennis player. So
Speaker 1: my life is mostly just being a dad to her.
Speaker 1: And I've had some jobs, some cool jobs. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: wish I was still doing it, but I'm glad I'm
Speaker 1: not really working full time right now. I love to travel.
Speaker 1: I travel. I've done the whole let's go to the
Speaker 1: other side of the planet space available travel. That was fun.
Speaker 2: So my life now, I I try to focus on
Speaker 2: becoming the best person that I can be, and that
Speaker 2: means that the things that I may not like about myself,
Speaker 2: the habits or the thoughts, or that maybe sometimes the
Speaker 2: down days that I will have every once in a while,
Speaker 2: I really focus on, Okay, what's going on, what's behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, and why am.
Speaker 1: I feeling like this? And what can I do to
Speaker 1: mitigate or ameliorate or to heal and move through And
Speaker 1: so that that's a big part of my journey. I've
Speaker 1: been able to try all kinds of different modalities and
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot. But what I've basically learned is
Speaker 1: any any one treatment that you know, and this is
Speaker 1: to include things like ayahuasca or a psilocybin or stellic
Speaker 1: ganglion block or hyperbarics or or counseling or anything is
Speaker 1: is an immediate goal.
Speaker 2: You want to get to a place that you can
Speaker 2: think about things in process things without having you know
Speaker 2: your biderflight, your Amigdala attached to to that thought process
Speaker 2: which which gives you like a fog of war where
Speaker 2: you can't really do it right. These things will get
Speaker 2: you to a place where you can put it into
Speaker 2: your prefrontal core takes without the emotion that is that
Speaker 2: is distracting you and making it very very hard. And
Speaker 2: and then you have to do the work. And then
Speaker 2: if if, then you can't go back to the same habits.
Speaker 2: You can't go back to the same environment because I
Speaker 2: have done that before, and then all the progress you
Speaker 2: make just gets reset. It takes it takes time. So
Speaker 2: for example, you know there's that book that I read.
Speaker 2: It's called The Obstacle Becomes the Way. It's true, you
Speaker 2: have to just don't want to do yeah, our decisions
Speaker 2: and lifestyle habit changes. You have to you have to
Speaker 2: do the work. And it's it's not going to happen overnight,
Speaker 2: but you can. With persistence and consistency, you can. You
Speaker 2: can change. You can rewire your brain. You can physically
Speaker 2: you know, they know neuroplasticity is a real thing now
Speaker 2: and you can.
Speaker 1: You can heal from trauma.
Speaker 2: You can, you know, instead of getting triggered and going
Speaker 2: to a bad place, you get triggered and recognize it
Speaker 2: and just have no associated negative feeling with it anymore.
Speaker 2: But it takes takes time and work. So so I'd
Speaker 2: say what I do now mostly is because I want
Speaker 2: to evolve so I can be present in my life
Speaker 2: and my daughter's life. Is like I've been focusing on that,
Speaker 2: you know, and trying to do positive things for myself
Speaker 2: and my family, and and I guess for the environment
Speaker 2: around me, because whether I like.
Speaker 1: It or not, I'm visible when I walk around.
Speaker 2: People know I have no you know, I'm missing hands,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'll wear you know, like what should
Speaker 2: I go out with the old becom jack on my
Speaker 2: shirt or something? You know, people will thank me for
Speaker 2: my service. So I'm also put in a position for
Speaker 2: where I'm skyline. So if I'm gonna be skylined, if
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to carry these hooks or whatever, walk
Speaker 2: this path, and I might as well, you know, show back,
Speaker 2: pick my head up and hold it high, and you know,
Speaker 2: just just show show that, show that these injuries don't
Speaker 2: define me.
Speaker 1: You know that I can be confident, and I can
Speaker 1: be a man, and I canna have a great life
Speaker 1: in spite of it because whether I like it or not,
Speaker 1: I have a position that I can inspire people or
Speaker 1: I can you know, I have them feeling pity for me,
Speaker 1: and I do.
Speaker 2: I don't want that, you know. I don't like when
Speaker 2: you know. I like when people care and they say
Speaker 2: how are you doing? You know, But a lot of
Speaker 2: the times when somebody's asked me how am I doing,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking in my head, like how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Because I understand, like everybody goes through shiit. You don't
Speaker 2: have to have a physical wound. The physical wounds are
Speaker 2: easier to deal with than than the emotional or the
Speaker 2: mental trauma that you've gone through in life.
Speaker 3: Where can people go to find you?
Speaker 1: Eddie?
Speaker 3: And you mentioned I think it was a Simper five fund?
Speaker 3: Where can people go to find them?
Speaker 2: The fund dot org and the Simple five funds wonderful organization.
Speaker 2: It started by two by a few volunteers. There's spouses
Speaker 2: of military officers, and it was grassroots. They recognized them
Speaker 2: a need that wasn't being filled by any government agency immediately,
Speaker 2: like families needed assistance because when I you know, in
Speaker 2: the beginning of the war and all these guys getting
Speaker 2: wounded and sent to Walter Reed and other places there
Speaker 2: were there weren't resources for moms and dads who had
Speaker 2: to quit their jobs to come and take care of
Speaker 2: their children, or wives or husbands quitting to take care
Speaker 2: of their spouses or not getting paid. So they knew
Speaker 2: that there was a need. People needed help with money
Speaker 2: for hotels or food. Like my mother was, she flew
Speaker 2: over from Ireland, she lived, she was at the Fisher
Speaker 2: House for a good five or six months helping them
Speaker 2: to take care of me and help me. You know,
Speaker 2: once I wasn't any patient get to them for appointments,
Speaker 2: and so I ran into them in the beginning and
Speaker 2: they've been family since. And then now the organization has
Speaker 2: grown into an organization that has granted over five hundred
Speaker 2: million to over thirty four thousand veterans and will there
Speaker 2: family members and never with an overhead that exceeded seven percent.
Speaker 2: It's it's like top rated all the charity watchdog sites.
Speaker 2: And they don't have to advertise. It just always has
Speaker 2: been word of mouth, and now it for years has
Speaker 2: been expanded to not just help Marines and Corman, all
Speaker 2: service branches, Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, God Forbid,
Speaker 2: Space Force, if we get into another thing, you know,
Speaker 2: like like I think it'd be cool to be in
Speaker 2: It sounds cool to being a space force. But maybe
Speaker 2: I'm not a numbers cruncher. Maybe it wouldn't be good
Speaker 2: for me. But so yeah, yeah, so they're just they'll
Speaker 2: help anybody. And their programs are wonderful because they have
Speaker 2: things for Vietnam there guys. They have things for spouses,
Speaker 2: they have things for children, they have mental health resources,
Speaker 2: they have teams simplify you know, sporting events, they have
Speaker 2: entrepreneurship programs, they have you know, and if if you
Speaker 2: need emergency grants for you know, your house flooded or
Speaker 2: or you know, you have a family member who's ill
Speaker 2: and you can't afford the flights to be with them,
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff and they're just they're like angels.
Speaker 2: It's a great organization. Now, there's a lot of great
Speaker 2: organizations out there, but that one right there is top notch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome. Any any final thoughts, any like questions
Speaker 3: that you wish I had asked that I didn't before
Speaker 3: we get going tonight.
Speaker 2: I'd like to say I'd like to mention up Tune
Speaker 2: Commander Captain Brian Morrell.
Speaker 1: I already mentioned he was such a good guy. He uh.
Speaker 2: I still keep in touch with his mom and dad
Speaker 2: and his wife at the time, and sometimes I feel
Speaker 2: they were able to move on or or process it
Speaker 2: faster than me, you know, Like but I call him,
Speaker 2: I don't call and you know, but break into tears
Speaker 2: and you know, feeling terrible.
Speaker 1: You know, We've we've gone through all that together, you know. Ah, but.
Speaker 2: You know, Kevin Roe was post posthumously awarded the Navy
Speaker 2: Cross for his actions on the battlefield that day, and
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, Mike Mendoza as well, and uh
Speaker 2: there was another Navy Cross that day, an opportune and
Speaker 2: some silver stars, bronze stars, like we acquitted ourselves very
Speaker 2: well on the battlefield, very proud to be part of
Speaker 2: Air Street Commeaalion and now our Portune one of the
Speaker 2: most highly decorated recomflatoons in our history from any single engagement.
Speaker 2: And I uh, let's see the questions. Uh oh, I'd
Speaker 2: like to say, like, in spite of my injuries, I've
Speaker 2: been able to do some really cool things. So you know,
Speaker 2: when if there's people out there listening and watching them,
Speaker 2: and you might have an injury you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: There's something nailment. Life is an over. I climbed out
Speaker 1: and kill them. The jar with my team leader with
Speaker 1: the raging hangover made it. That's another story. Uh. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've my my last year in the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps actually went back to work.
Speaker 2: I healed up, and I worked at the Basic School
Speaker 2: in Quantico, Virginia, teaching the Marine Corps Martial Arts program
Speaker 2: out there and structor trainer school house the Martial Arts
Speaker 2: Center of Excellence. So that was a cool way to
Speaker 2: go out. So you know, I don't try to let
Speaker 2: injuries define me. And and I think, you know, it's
Speaker 2: probably good advice for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I can get into my head and that can be
Speaker 1: like everybody looks at me and I'm a dude with
Speaker 1: no hands. But a lot of times that's just me
Speaker 1: thinking because a lot of people don't even notice.
Speaker 2: And then most of a lot of times I forget.
Speaker 2: And so life's good, you know, And and then on
Speaker 2: it's not. Don't worry. You just keep putting one foot
Speaker 2: in front of the other. We all got to stick together.
Speaker 2: We still keep losing a lot of veterans to suicide.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times it's the one you would
Speaker 2: never expect. I know these guys and I'm like, what
Speaker 2: the hell, where did that come from? You know, and
Speaker 2: families are left behind and it's terrible. So like, if
Speaker 2: you're going through a rough time, call somebody. Man, don't isolate,
Speaker 2: don't bear yourself into bottle like of course getting hammered.
Speaker 2: That has helped me on occasion, but it also has
Speaker 2: not helped me on an the occasion, And I think,
Speaker 2: just don't isolate, stay in touch.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, just keep putting one foot.
Speaker 2: In front of the other, because no matter you know, like,
Speaker 2: you know, guy, these guys who I know who have
Speaker 2: it's way too many.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, who have killed themselves.
Speaker 2: I know that maybe if they would have waited one
Speaker 2: more day, they've been feeling better. Yeah, you know, just
Speaker 2: keep putting one foot in front of the other. I
Speaker 2: call somebody. There's resources too.
Speaker 3: It's awesome advice.
Speaker 1: Eddie.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing your story tonight.
Speaker 1: M thank you actually being patient with me.
Speaker 2: I guess you know you've got a version of my
Speaker 2: story that I haven't been. I haven't been that detailed
Speaker 2: and telling my story in a long time. Honestly, I
Speaker 2: used to tell it like that, but last few years
Speaker 2: people have been getting a shortened version, so understandably it
Speaker 2: excuse me. So anyway, Yeah, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah you too, Eddie. I mean, I know it's not
Speaker 3: always an easy thing to recount, even though you seem
Speaker 3: to have processed, you know, the event pretty well at
Speaker 3: this place at this point, but it still sucks. But
Speaker 3: for folks out there, we'll have some links down the
Speaker 3: description for simplify and appreciate you guys joining us tonight,
Speaker 3: and we'll see all of you out there next time.
Speaker 3: And thank you again, Eddie, Thanks, thank you very much. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for
Speaker 3: a moment about how you can support the show. If
Speaker 3: you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to
Speaker 3: get a little bit more involved and help us continue
Speaker 3: to do this, you can check out our Patreon It
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Speaker 3: appreciate all of you, guys. There's going to be a
Speaker 3: link down in the description to that Patreon page, and
Speaker 3: there is also going to be a link to our
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Speaker 1: Thank you.