Speaker 1: Hey, guys, it's Jack.
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Speaker 3: Special Operations, Cobert Osspionage, The Team House with Your Hopes,
Speaker 3: Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, welcome to episode two hundred and eighty eight
Speaker 2: of The Team House.
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with David park.
Speaker 2: Our guest on tonight's show is former Ranger and former
Speaker 2: Delta Force operator Dave Nielsen. Really happy to have him
Speaker 2: on the show tonight. Has an incredible story to tell.
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Speaker 4: Hey, all right, Dave, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 4: us and I we really really appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Dave. It's great to be here at Jack. I'm literally
Speaker 6: like writing down Cayman Cigars and ghost bed because you
Speaker 6: guys are good at that. I need that.
Speaker 5: Are you a hot sleeper?
Speaker 6: Yes, but my wife is just coming through a certain
Speaker 6: period in life and she's liking it cool now, so
Speaker 6: we're almost But.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder because sometimes, you know, I've had hypothermia,
Speaker 4: and obviously we spend a lot of time in the desert.
Speaker 5: I wonder if that does something to your body's ability
Speaker 5: to regulate.
Speaker 6: I'm sure it does, I really think so. Yeah, Like
Speaker 6: I can handle the sun now, it doesn't like cook me.
Speaker 6: But just last week, you know, coaching football, I hit
Speaker 6: a point. I'm like, guys, I'm going in the shade
Speaker 6: and side lampbagers follow me. I mean yeah, because how
Speaker 6: many heat cats But first one was on a sniper
Speaker 6: stock man and training, Like.
Speaker 1: I just out, yeah, yeah, Dave.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you know what we asked most
Speaker 2: of our guests about their origin story to start off,
Speaker 2: if you could tell us a little bit about you know,
Speaker 2: where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and
Speaker 2: what was you know, that path that took you towards
Speaker 2: the military.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Thanks. So I'm from Michigan. My mom lived in
Speaker 6: the city, you know, parents divorced real early, two older sisters,
Speaker 6: younger brother, and I lived in the suburbs with my
Speaker 6: dad about forty five minutes north in a little town
Speaker 6: called Lake Orian, back and forth from the city. My
Speaker 6: mom is married to a black man to the suburbs
Speaker 6: and that was I didn't know it at the time.
Speaker 6: Me and my brother were just like you know, but
Speaker 6: it was now I know that that was an extreme
Speaker 6: culture shock that we lived in and it made us better.
Speaker 6: So that was in the eighties. But I ended up,
Speaker 6: you know, after high school. I knew I wanted to
Speaker 6: drink beer and I liked like literally, I'm not even
Speaker 6: trying to that's all I could figure out that I
Speaker 6: liked and and you know girls. So I ended up
Speaker 6: homeless and sleeping in my car and it was cold
Speaker 6: in February in Detroit, and you know, I was even
Speaker 6: okay with that because I had a little job. I
Speaker 6: had enough money for beer and food. And then somebody
Speaker 6: broke into my Ford Granada one night. I'm going, you know,
Speaker 6: it stole my little speakers, and that was something just
Speaker 6: set me off there. So I went to the recruiter.
Speaker 6: I never had anybody in my family in the military.
Speaker 6: I just had some friends do it, and it just
Speaker 6: never seemed like it was for me. But when that happened,
Speaker 6: I knew I wanted shelter in food, and so I
Speaker 6: went there and I didn't know anything that I was doing.
Speaker 6: I ended up with the Ranger contract kind of on accident.
Speaker 6: But once I got there and we started walking with
Speaker 6: weight on our back and being tested. I found that
Speaker 6: the very hard life that i'd had, the abusive childhood
Speaker 6: and straight up drama that I had endured, God was
Speaker 6: using for a reason, and that was that I found
Speaker 6: that I had this mental toughness that you couldn't make
Speaker 6: me quit. And that's how I succeeded in the army.
Speaker 6: You know, the first first phase anyway.
Speaker 2: I mean you said you ended up with a ranger
Speaker 2: contract by accident. I mean, how does that happen? I mean,
Speaker 2: did you guys go in there and say, give me
Speaker 2: the hardest thing you have, or did they say, like
Speaker 2: push that across the desk, like we got this for
Speaker 2: you right here, pal sign that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, when I tell this, it sounds like the old
Speaker 6: you know, well, it was either go to jail or
Speaker 6: go in the army. I don't know if I believe
Speaker 6: those all the time, but this really happened. I was like,
Speaker 6: I just wanted to go to a cool location. I
Speaker 6: didn't know anything about anything. I wanted to go to war.
Speaker 6: When I was sixteen, I said, if our country goes
Speaker 6: to war, I'm gonna enlist. And everybody about you know,
Speaker 6: screeching halt at the table. But I just had that
Speaker 6: Emmy in nineteen eighty six. You know, the movie Platoon
Speaker 6: came out somewhere in there, and I just love that
Speaker 6: movie and sought out the Vietnam ra vets. There's a
Speaker 6: book Charlie Rangers read that over and over and once
Speaker 6: I was in. But so yeah, so I'm going in
Speaker 6: and I'm like, I'm trying to get to California or Hawaii.
Speaker 6: And the recruiters are they had me in some a
Speaker 6: tank unit. You know, I didn't even care about the job.
Speaker 6: I just wanted location. So I'm going into the map station.
Speaker 6: My buddies are driving me from Detroit to Cleveland. You know,
Speaker 6: long story. But we're drinking old Milwaukee lights and I'm
Speaker 6: not you know, I'm not driving. I'm in the backseat,
Speaker 6: but I tipped one and uh right as we went
Speaker 6: by a state police officer. So I got a minor
Speaker 6: in possession of alcohol ticket on the way to the
Speaker 6: maps and I knew that wasn't going to go over well,
Speaker 6: and of course it didn't, and he was, you know, okay,
Speaker 6: you screwed this up. You gotta leave, come back in
Speaker 6: two weeks. Maybe. As I'm walking out the door, he said, hey,
Speaker 6: do you want to do you want to be a ranger?
Speaker 6: I can send you right now on a ranger contract.
Speaker 6: And I said, yeah, okay, I knew a little bit
Speaker 6: about it at that point. I said yeah, And that
Speaker 6: made me excited. And you know, we all need a
Speaker 6: challenge and to find our purpose. So that was the
Speaker 6: start of it, and I left right then. I you know,
Speaker 6: that night, I was in a hotel room and starting
Speaker 6: that whole process.
Speaker 2: It's you know, when you tell your story, it reminds
Speaker 2: me of you know, we had another a British military
Speaker 2: veteran on who had a very traumatic childhood and there's
Speaker 2: something he said about joining the army really struck with me.
Speaker 2: He said, it was the first time I ever felt safe,
Speaker 2: which as a as a forty one year old man
Speaker 2: and a father today, like, that's such a horrifying thing
Speaker 2: to hear. I'm glad that he found some measure of
Speaker 2: safety in the military.
Speaker 6: Though, of course, yeah, that's saying a lot. I love that.
Speaker 2: So for you, it was sort of an escape from
Speaker 2: from a pretty troubled background.
Speaker 6: It sounds like, yeah, and it was easy. It was
Speaker 6: security and you know, people were crying and all that,
Speaker 6: and I get it. They had, you know, good families,
Speaker 6: but like like now I know I'm going to get
Speaker 6: food and I'm not in Detroit on the streets like
Speaker 6: that was dangerous in itself. I used to just sometimes
Speaker 6: going to work at four in the morning, I would
Speaker 6: like start running, acting like I'm already being chased to
Speaker 6: avoid you know, certain situations. So yeah, it was it
Speaker 6: was good to be in and it just it was
Speaker 6: so easy, Like even the hard stuff, it's just I laughed,
Speaker 6: and it's not. You know that the toughness comes from
Speaker 6: from I don't know where, but I think it's in
Speaker 6: all most of us, especially if you know that you
Speaker 6: got something like man, go walk it out, go put
Speaker 6: it on the line, take a risk.
Speaker 4: We actually when we were on any Stump show, we
Speaker 4: talked about this that there's probably a large problems of.
Speaker 5: People in special operations who are here. There were either.
Speaker 4: Like adult children of alcoholics, had had like childhood trauma
Speaker 4: things like that, and so the idea of quitting just
Speaker 4: because you're in pain.
Speaker 6: Is like so right, yeah, and I am seeing that
Speaker 6: that's common. You're right when I a couple of the
Speaker 6: Australians said, yeah, it's a common thing, and it threw
Speaker 6: me for such a loop when it was Tom Brown
Speaker 6: in nine Origins. He's like, asked, you know about my childhood,
Speaker 6: and you guys are doing the same like it's it's real,
Speaker 6: but that's not stuff you talk about in the regiment. Well,
Speaker 6: I guess we do. But it's more like you know,
Speaker 6: leverage to use against you.
Speaker 4: Joke around about you Like you have to joke around
Speaker 4: about it because if people know that your sensitive about it,
Speaker 4: they're going to use it all the time.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So like a nickname don't eat, don't fight, a nickname.
Speaker 2: You get to range for battalion in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: this is a different time.
Speaker 1: What was it like you were? You were a two
Speaker 1: seven five guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, so tell us about like landing in Savannah and
Speaker 2: what wife was like in one seven five the year
Speaker 2: you got there?
Speaker 6: Yep. So eighty nine. Uh started in April, so it
Speaker 6: was through the summer. I get through rip and did
Speaker 6: pretty well and just you know, I think we had
Speaker 6: twelve guys make it out of sixty five or something,
Speaker 6: so you know, E two, no E one Nielsen. I'm
Speaker 6: just feeling like I got that black Beret man, like
Speaker 6: feeling really good, and then I knew the shock was
Speaker 6: coming and it came. But you know, again it was
Speaker 6: like this is okay to Aspect four is like cool,
Speaker 6: I want to be that. And it was brutal like
Speaker 6: nothing else ever since Ranger Private that. I mean, there's nothing.
Speaker 6: There's no harder period of my life than that as
Speaker 6: a Ranger private.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and very quickly it sounds like after you get there,
Speaker 2: Panama kicks off.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So I'm assigned to b COO uh one seven
Speaker 6: second platoon. I start out in in second squad. I
Speaker 6: think on a fire team, and then got moved a
Speaker 6: weapons so I'm the weapon squad. I'm like it was
Speaker 6: like literally like they put the small guys, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm like five seven, yeah, one sixty. They put all
Speaker 6: those dudes in weapons just as a joke because that's funny.
Speaker 6: Look at them they gotta But again it's like all right,
Speaker 6: go ahead and try me. So get were there and
Speaker 6: uh so we sat around talking thinking about Grenada, which
Speaker 6: had happened in eighty three, like ooh a combat jump,
Speaker 6: our portuns start and had you know, the old fat
Speaker 6: scroll on his right shoulder, and it was just like
Speaker 6: Dave you mentioned earlier what it was like to see
Speaker 6: that later on, and so you would talk about Grenada
Speaker 6: and this is eighty nine and Grenade was in eighty three,
Speaker 6: and at that time, you know, as young privates, eighteen
Speaker 6: nineteen year old, it was like that will never happen again.
Speaker 6: That was so long ago. It's six years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and that was like one of the first times, you know,
Speaker 6: Jaysack tried to use all the pieces together and learned
Speaker 6: so much. But yeah, December seventeenth. It happened on the twentieth.
Speaker 6: But you know, we got alerted and all that a
Speaker 6: couple of days before and literally getting ready to go
Speaker 6: on leave my first leave in ten months of being
Speaker 6: in the Army to see a girl in Henderson, Nevada,
Speaker 6: and we were Bravo alerted that that night, I was
Speaker 6: watching The Simpsons on TV packing to go on leave,
Speaker 6: and you know, Bravo alert, get your shit fall out downstairs,
Speaker 6: Like right, I saw real quick.
Speaker 1: You never know if it's just a training, it's this
Speaker 1: the real deal.
Speaker 4: And even it's a real deal, like, what's the chance
Speaker 4: is actually gonna happen?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just want to follow a train of fight here.
Speaker 4: So you're a young Joe in Georgia and you're going
Speaker 4: to see a girl who is now.
Speaker 5: In Las Vegas. Was her vocation artistic and.
Speaker 6: At the time she had lived in Michigan Bay And yeah,
Speaker 6: child a sweethearts but yeah, okay, good intentions, but yeah,
Speaker 6: it's good that that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: So can you walk us through a little bit of
Speaker 2: the process, because I was saying before we started the show,
Speaker 2: I'm reading this book about the Jumping Grenada right now
Speaker 2: and it's very interesting to hear like kind of that
Speaker 2: process of like getting alerted, bringing the guys in, briefing
Speaker 2: them up, getting them ready to jump jmp I, getting
Speaker 2: them on the point. I mean, could you kind of
Speaker 2: like walk us through what that experience was like for
Speaker 2: you as a as a private and ranger battalion.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was. There's no other time like it in
Speaker 6: my life really, And you know, since then, been on
Speaker 6: about six hundred combat missions. I got journals and this
Speaker 6: and so much, but there's nothing like that. One man,
Speaker 6: because some of the guys quit that had just graduated
Speaker 6: with me from rit I saw him out in the
Speaker 6: hallway like handing their black brads to their space. I'm like,
Speaker 6: what are you, what's going on starting Rummels my gun
Speaker 6: team leader. They're quitting Lanier, I had this nickname, Lanier Lanier.
Speaker 6: They're quitting. You're gonna quit. I was like, no, of
Speaker 6: course not, well you're not going on the jump and
Speaker 6: I was like why, you know, we'll room and I
Speaker 6: just was like specialist rumbles, I need to go. You know,
Speaker 6: we've trained together and he we had a He's like
Speaker 6: the best leader I've ever had to this day. We
Speaker 6: talk all the time, thirty some years later. So it
Speaker 6: was like I find out I'm going pretty you know,
Speaker 6: pretty quick after that. So it was just NonStop details AMMO.
Speaker 6: Mostly a little child here and there, hurry up and sleep.
Speaker 6: And then they had terrain models like that were like
Speaker 6: twenty feet long. I mean they didn't just make those. Yeah,
Speaker 6: we had you know, briefs and briefs and it's very frightening. Mostly,
Speaker 6: you know what, man, I've learned telling stories. It's like,
Speaker 6: the reason I have been hesitant is because I don't
Speaker 6: want to get it wrong. I don't want to leave
Speaker 6: somebody out like that is the most important. That's why
Speaker 6: I'm so hesitant sometimes to come on social media. And
Speaker 6: I do it a little bit and I see that.
Speaker 6: You know what's worse than that not trying? Right? So yeah,
Speaker 6: where we were, uh, it was just so model.
Speaker 4: He had enough, Yeah, he had enough washed to to
Speaker 4: get somebody from the five shot. Some major kicked off
Speaker 4: the jump so an actual combatant could go exactly.
Speaker 6: That happened a little bit, I think in Panama. Then
Speaker 6: got worse and worse with the jumps in Afghanistan and
Speaker 6: all that. But yeah, I end up on the first chalk.
Speaker 6: I'm the ninth man out on the first bird, on
Speaker 6: the left side of A one. And we had we
Speaker 6: had jumped a few times in battalion. I mean, it's
Speaker 6: it's brutal, eight hundred feet you know, six hundred rounds whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, tripod and lots and lots and lots of wait.
Speaker 6: And the worst part was just you know, I learned
Speaker 6: that this was I always thought it wasn't necessary. We
Speaker 6: got to the airfield and we sit and we wait
Speaker 6: for hours and hours every time in the hot sun
Speaker 6: and in the rain, and this time it was in
Speaker 6: the rain. And so we rig up and we get
Speaker 6: on at like I don't know, seven o'clock at night.
Speaker 6: It's getting dark, it's raining, and it's cold, at Saber
Speaker 6: Hall Hunter ourmy airfield. We're rigged up so much weight
Speaker 6: in our rucks and we get on the birds and
Speaker 6: it's a six hour flight and you know, golly, man,
Speaker 6: thinking back, there is just no suck like range of battalions.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's so hard to explain. I've tried and
Speaker 6: tried and tried. I wanted to quit, I wanted to
Speaker 6: get hurt, not here in Panama, but just it was
Speaker 6: so hard my first training mission and battalion, you know,
Speaker 6: we fast roped in. I'm sorry and get off track,
Speaker 6: but like got to give credit and explain what it's
Speaker 6: like roped in off of Chinook, you know, into Fort McClellan, Alabama,
Speaker 6: and walk all night in the dark, right with no
Speaker 6: GPS back then compasses and pace count and somehow find
Speaker 6: what we're likeing for. And it's just such a shock
Speaker 6: to me to be walking through the woods all night.
Speaker 6: Nobody talks. You're so tired, can't smoke, you can't, you know,
Speaker 6: you just suck it up. You learn to like do it.
Speaker 6: And it's so hard. So we're on the plane, man,
Speaker 6: and they opened the doors after six hours of this
Speaker 6: long flight, and the air came in it was warm air.
Speaker 6: It felt so so good and until I you know,
Speaker 6: saw orange snakes in the air and heard round hitting
Speaker 6: the plane, and it was like a mix, an equal
Speaker 6: mix of total excitement, like I want to go to war.
Speaker 6: I need to go to war. I need to test myself.
Speaker 6: Am I a man? I want to find the most
Speaker 6: difficult thing that scares me, which is war dying. Really
Speaker 6: I want to confront it. And my life is so
Speaker 6: miserable anyways, as a range of private, like I want
Speaker 6: to see. I wanted to conquer fear. That was my thing,
Speaker 6: and of course you can't. Now I'm afraid of the
Speaker 6: silliest things, but I know how to deal with it.
Speaker 6: But so it's equal parts excitement and you know, hua
Speaker 6: and just straight fear like I've never had since before
Speaker 6: then or since then, because it was my first time.
Speaker 6: I'm an E two private hooked up and there was
Speaker 6: a dude right in front of me that we had
Speaker 6: gotten in a fight at a bar. Not a bad
Speaker 6: just an argument and like we skinned each other, you know,
Speaker 6: we like made up right there and my gun team
Speaker 6: leaders on the other side, and he screamed, you ready
Speaker 6: to get some team, Like I could hear him over that,
Speaker 6: you know, the engines of the mold one, And that
Speaker 6: sort of snapped me out of it because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: what what's the process right here? When when people go
Speaker 6: to war for the first time. Oh yeah, I should
Speaker 6: be scared. I should be thinking about my family. I
Speaker 6: couldn't remember any of my family's names or faces. Blank.
Speaker 6: We go out and as I got to the door,
Speaker 6: you know the slow motion like you got so much
Speaker 6: time to do so much stuff because your brain is
Speaker 6: processing is quicker than it ever has. I remember seeing
Speaker 6: the grass move on the ground like we're that low.
Speaker 6: I could just see the tall grass kind of going
Speaker 6: like this.
Speaker 5: What altitude do you think you guys were at?
Speaker 6: I got out higher than most. I know they started
Speaker 6: at five hundred they somebody said there were there were
Speaker 6: altitude calls. I think I went out around four to
Speaker 6: eighty four hundred and eighty, which is like when you
Speaker 6: see a jet that low, you think it's going to crash. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: And they're struggling. So I'm in the front pretty so
Speaker 6: I got out pretty you know, higher. There's trace a
Speaker 6: rounds below me. I landed and then they shot above me.
Speaker 6: So it's just nuts. You know, we only had five kias.
Speaker 6: That's more than you know needed, but I thought it
Speaker 6: would be so much more, but lots of wounded. And
Speaker 6: then as I d rigged and got moving, I felt
Speaker 6: like again the slow motion thing. I felt like, I'm like,
Speaker 6: come on, body move something's wrong. I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 6: gonna make it. I'm not going to do it. And
Speaker 6: I looked over and I saw a dude like going
Speaker 6: about the same speed as me, you know, shucking and
Speaker 6: driving and taking cover and this and that. So I
Speaker 6: learned later that I was doing everything fine from the training.
Speaker 6: That's why we train, you know, I had no If
Speaker 6: we wouldn't have had training, I would have just been useless.
Speaker 6: But I was doing my training, So that's you know.
Speaker 6: I became a believer once I learned about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, did you guys jump on was
Speaker 2: it Rio Hoto? No?
Speaker 6: That second back we jumped on to Qmantorios.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so tell us about what the what
Speaker 2: the objective was and what you guys were trying to accomplish.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So we had our building, I forget the name
Speaker 6: of it, but everybody had their their thing and E
Speaker 6: two private man I was like, have the tropod ready,
Speaker 6: and my my, uh my, ammo. And there was a kid,
Speaker 6: a guy on another gun team in my squad. He said,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna drive. I'm gonna dump this AMMO when we
Speaker 6: land and I rated him out man, and I would
Speaker 6: do it again like no, you're not brother, Uh huh,
Speaker 6: that's all of us, that's team stuff. And uh he didn't.
Speaker 6: He was gone, yeah, you're not gonna dump ammo. Man.
Speaker 6: So landed. I didn't hit tarmac, I just missed it.
Speaker 6: I hit grass, But it was still like like getting
Speaker 6: punched in the neck. Yeah, we wore reserves. I don't
Speaker 6: you know. In Grenada they didn't and like we didn't
Speaker 6: want to, like we want to be cool like Grenada,
Speaker 6: you can't use them, well, just put them there to
Speaker 6: stabilize your ruck and all that, like whatever.
Speaker 5: Okay, it's so ridiculous, isn't it?
Speaker 4: That you know they're they're so And it's probably not
Speaker 4: your like direct line supervisor, but it's probably some colonel
Speaker 4: or lieutenant colonel or whatever who doesn't want to have
Speaker 4: to explain why they didn't wear reserves, even though a
Speaker 4: reserve is going to do absolutely no good at all.
Speaker 5: At four hundred and eighty feet, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard to get that thing out at eight
Speaker 6: hundred Yeah, really hard. What is cool? But they did
Speaker 6: that was cool. I just found this they made us
Speaker 6: where they make these helmet covers. Yeah, I kept this thing.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just tore up b to us and we you know,
Speaker 6: so we all look like predators running around. That was
Speaker 6: a good call.
Speaker 2: So so you land, you start heading out to the
Speaker 2: assembly area, and you said there was a target building.
Speaker 6: Yep, and there's the old choke point. So I see
Speaker 6: people are kind of bounding up going through the choke point.
Speaker 6: I forget if it was marked with the cam light
Speaker 6: or something, but there was a choke point to get through.
Speaker 6: I heard, you know, sort of skirmishes left and right.
Speaker 6: There was nothing in front of me to deal with,
Speaker 6: but I heard you know, RPG explosions, which I would
Speaker 6: find out later some of my buddies took you know,
Speaker 6: got blown up, got through the choke point in there. Well,
Speaker 6: there was a body there that people made sure was dead.
Speaker 6: That so that's my first dead body. I went through
Speaker 6: the choke point and then got to my objective kind
Speaker 6: of quiet at that point, and then uh, something god
Speaker 6: I had I had to crawl to another gun position
Speaker 6: for AMMO to redistribute, and somebody came up on a roof.
Speaker 6: So I see this sort of you know, I'm crawling
Speaker 6: like high crawling, and I just see somebody on a
Speaker 6: roof with a gun look down at me. And I'd
Speaker 6: had dreams about this. I'm getting like dry mouth talking
Speaker 6: about this. I'm like waiting for it, and I hear
Speaker 6: a gun, you know, a pop. My squad later shot
Speaker 6: him with his pistol. I mean, it's like unreal. So
Speaker 6: there was that, and then then it got quiet, and
Speaker 6: then the eighty second jumped in, and then uh, we
Speaker 6: watched them jump in and come up and and then
Speaker 6: the seventh id landed and came in. And then the
Speaker 6: air Force had it had an ice cream or a
Speaker 6: box truck, and my platoons start and picked me and
Speaker 6: another private said Nielsen and from Kia, unload this truck.
Speaker 6: It was bodies. You know, he told us they had
Speaker 6: gone out collected bodies. So we opened the truck doors
Speaker 6: and you know, it's like half full of this box
Speaker 6: truck of hot bodies in the hot blood man. When
Speaker 6: you first the first time it's just like, wow, you know,
Speaker 6: it got real. So we're unloading these I can feel
Speaker 6: it right now, just warm copper, blood smell. Bodies were
Speaker 6: stacking them up and on the bottom of the pilots.
Speaker 6: Jim Markwell, ranger medick from one seven to five, and
Speaker 6: he had tried to put his first aid kid on it.
Speaker 6: He was shot in the in the pell of this
Speaker 6: horrible spot. Yeah and yeah, so we got him off,
Speaker 6: wrapped him in my squad leader's poncho. And man, at
Speaker 6: that point, I had been up for almost three days.
Speaker 6: So I go back to my security position and the
Speaker 6: sun's starting to come up, and there's this stack of
Speaker 6: bodies and you know, I'm starting to hallucinate so and
Speaker 6: other people were too, so I think I can't even
Speaker 6: remember what happened, But somehow we went in and got
Speaker 6: sleep in this hangar and I slept for a long time.
Speaker 6: That was that. That was the first combat.
Speaker 2: Wow, And what was kind of the follow on to Panama?
Speaker 2: Because I mean, the invasion it all popped off relatively quickly.
Speaker 2: Were there like follow on targets that you guys had
Speaker 2: to hit or were pretty much just chilling on the
Speaker 2: airfield at that.
Speaker 6: Point, we chilled for like a week and then we
Speaker 6: went out in the bush to look for Noriega. I
Speaker 6: think it was just training exercise. And that was, to
Speaker 6: this day the hardest humping I've ever done, Harder than selection. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that was Panamama. Oh my god. Yeah, the jungle's no.
Speaker 4: Joke down there, Triple canopy, the black palm, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, black palms, no joke.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And and uh, and I had lost my PC
Speaker 6: when the when the I think Huey's took us. I
Speaker 6: don't know if it was black Hawk. We run it
Speaker 6: a hue I think lost my PC, and and so
Speaker 6: did another private. So what do you do? You wear
Speaker 6: a sand bag on your head? Ranger Nielsen. So we're
Speaker 6: out in freaking jungle patrolling looking for Noriega, and I
Speaker 6: have a sand bag. I put E two rank on it.
Speaker 4: Well fortunately so for people who don't know a PC
Speaker 4: has patrol cap it's also as you dirty civilians would
Speaker 4: call it a hat, and you stand in line for
Speaker 4: hours outside and boutique to buy them.
Speaker 5: But I'm if it just.
Speaker 4: Hadn't been actual combat, the entire all the privates would
Speaker 4: have been online looking for it walking through the jungle.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so after Panama that's nineteen eighty nine. Uh, it
Speaker 2: sounds like we're relatively quickly, you guys get spun up
Speaker 2: for Desert Storm.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we go back and now life's kind of good.
Speaker 6: It's like I'm a PFC with the CIB that was
Speaker 6: our thing. Yeah, you go to Ranger School and and
Speaker 6: you know we're driving with the second bat guys, which
Speaker 6: is not normal, you know, because there's other there's always tension,
Speaker 6: but and and third back because you know, everybody's got
Speaker 6: their stories. But you know, the Black Sheep and all
Speaker 6: that are doing their thing. But we're all PFCs with
Speaker 6: CIVS and Ranger School and it's like untouchable, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Bustard, Yeah, combat Scrolls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, the altho, the
Speaker 2: entire Ranger regiment jumped into Panama time.
Speaker 1: I think that's ever happened.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of cool, Like you and your peers
Speaker 2: all had this sort of like shared experience, even across
Speaker 2: the geographically separated battalions.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was it was very Uh it was a link.
Speaker 6: You know. It changed everything for me anyway, because one
Speaker 6: I knew I could do it. Uh, you know, my
Speaker 6: gun team later was like the near a good job,
Speaker 6: Like I did it everything I was supposed to do,
Speaker 6: barely with that sandbag. I was so mad at this.
Speaker 6: You know, it's some spec for in another squad that
Speaker 6: heckling me and making me do that. But whatever, I
Speaker 6: got through it. Uh. Not long after that desert storm
Speaker 6: comes up and they pick one company out of the regiment,
Speaker 6: BIKO one seven, which is fine, and like.
Speaker 1: Us, what's that schwartz a cough didn't like us?
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, I had to meet him. We had to
Speaker 6: do this like, you know, put your stuff up there
Speaker 6: and he's gonna come through and just general Orman schwartz cuff.
Speaker 6: This was a number sixty year cool belt fed machine gun.
Speaker 6: So he's like, I, no, ranger, Yeah, tell me about yourself,
Speaker 6: you know, shook his hand and all that. So it
Speaker 6: wasn't bad, but we didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: You guys sat out there. Yeah, there there was and
Speaker 2: I mean I guess it wasn't you guys, but there
Speaker 2: was like one ranger target. I think they hit like
Speaker 2: a radio relays station or a radar installation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, so that was first between my buddies.
Speaker 6: They went cool with some unit guys and that thing
Speaker 6: up at the Kicker charged in Ghost. It was like
Speaker 6: big old, massive tower. Yeah, and I think it was
Speaker 6: after that, and then a black Hawk went down because
Speaker 6: of weather and thirteen or fourteen guys were killed at
Speaker 6: the tail end of that. We had to go out
Speaker 6: and recover that. So you know, just sad.
Speaker 1: Were those the unit guys that were out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I remember Dale Comstock was out there on
Speaker 2: the ground when that happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that And then I went to that
Speaker 6: right after ranger school and I had gotten married, so
Speaker 6: it was just good living, but but hard living. Got
Speaker 6: back and then I got out the army. That was
Speaker 6: just always my plan. I was just gonna do a
Speaker 6: I did a three year en listening. I got out
Speaker 6: in ninety two and never thought about staying in.
Speaker 2: Right, you held that you had that experience and you're
Speaker 2: ready to move on to the next thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, not to mention how difficult it is to be
Speaker 6: a ranger man. So yeah, I'm out for ten years
Speaker 6: and then you want to talk about the BlackBerry. Now
Speaker 6: you guys got one on yourself.
Speaker 1: David's is right behind mine, is right here.
Speaker 6: Nice.
Speaker 2: I was a school ranger. I never I never breathed
Speaker 2: the same. You guys were the same rarefied air as.
Speaker 5: A bad dog, teams and interrogators.
Speaker 2: But you went to George Mason, you went to school.
Speaker 2: I mean, before we get to your your road march protest,
Speaker 2: I mean, what were you doing on the outside, what
Speaker 2: was what was sort of your your wife ambition?
Speaker 6: There still very lost, kind of just searching. So you know,
Speaker 6: we talk about the trauma and the childhood stuff. It
Speaker 6: was bad. My brother, my little brother, best friend hung
Speaker 6: himself twelve years ago and twenty twelve, just you know,
Speaker 6: he couldn't get through it. So you know, it's bad.
Speaker 6: It's so I was just lost. I was really lost
Speaker 6: at George Mason. I was an English major. I like
Speaker 6: to write, and so I just you know, I never
Speaker 6: really knew what my calling was. Like I'm just I
Speaker 6: don't figuring it out. It's it's being a coach, and
Speaker 6: it's telling our story. So one oh seven says, let
Speaker 6: the Redeemed of the Lord Teller's story. It's so important,
Speaker 6: and let the wise listen. You know, I was at
Speaker 6: the VA and this this man was like, well I
Speaker 6: only did one rotation, so I'm not blah blah blah,
Speaker 6: you know, it's just a not just he's a he's
Speaker 6: a regular infantry guy. And I felt compelled to talk
Speaker 6: to him. I said, man, you did it, or that
Speaker 6: you went there for a year, you did your job.
Speaker 6: It doesn't work with on us all. Like so, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm out and just you know, on the fast track
Speaker 6: to realizing I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I'm
Speaker 6: sober today. Fifteen years is my sobriety date. July twenty six,
Speaker 6: two thousand and nine. Yeah, I just can't can't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, congratulations, How how did you you know?
Speaker 4: I think that a lot of guys from the community,
Speaker 4: a lot of people form the community, have to come
Speaker 4: to terms with this idea of the quiet professional.
Speaker 5: But stories deserve to be shared. People deserve to hear them.
Speaker 4: And the people who have them deserve to be able
Speaker 4: to tell them. And and not just you know, for
Speaker 4: the historical part. And and I'm not talking about the
Speaker 4: guy in the bar you know who killed in laden
Speaker 4: but but you know, the the just the stories and
Speaker 4: and again, like a person could be an admin person
Speaker 4: like you do your time, to do your time, like
Speaker 4: and there's no shame and there's no comparison or whatever.
Speaker 4: But but we come from this community, and you in particular,
Speaker 4: come from this community where it's always impressed.
Speaker 5: Upon you to be the quiet professional, right, you know.
Speaker 4: And but then you get out to the real world,
Speaker 4: and one, being a quiet professional doesn't get you a job,
Speaker 4: right uh?
Speaker 5: And two.
Speaker 4: You're doing yourself and the next generation a disservice when.
Speaker 5: You don't share. Did did you have a difficult time
Speaker 5: coming to grips with that? Or how did you? How
Speaker 5: did you do that?
Speaker 6: And I'm wrestling with it right now. Really I'm at
Speaker 6: peace with it. But I so appreciate you guys. I'm
Speaker 6: trying to do my podcast. It's difficult, So I appreciate
Speaker 6: what you're doing. And I didn't, you know, I get
Speaker 6: to the unit. So okay, I'm a really quiet professional,
Speaker 6: you know, But what is that? What is the purpose
Speaker 6: of that? Like Jessica Lance, for example, we dug up
Speaker 6: those bodies, and I never talked about the nine bodies
Speaker 6: that we dug up. Hey, that was a reason to go.
Speaker 6: You know, stuff like that needs to be said, must
Speaker 6: be said. And so for me, it was a long process, Dave,
Speaker 6: like years, I mean just about a year ago I
Speaker 6: went to seminary some years back, and I love theology.
Speaker 6: I just love that, you know, thinking about the creation
Speaker 6: and everything. So after that, I felt moved to tell
Speaker 6: my story, tell, you know, and and hear stories and
Speaker 6: you know, so that maybe my brother wouldn't have hung
Speaker 6: himself so at a certain point, and it was it
Speaker 6: was hard. I think my first thing was an Instagram account,
Speaker 6: and I was so nervous and I had people helping
Speaker 6: me and I put out like a post and then hey,
Speaker 6: people are liking this, you know, and I put some
Speaker 6: pictures out that it was on a podcast, and you know,
Speaker 6: I think the more we do it, the more sometimes scarier.
Speaker 6: It's like I've done these interviews with David Hookstead of OutKick,
Speaker 6: and he knows he gets those questions teed up. And
Speaker 6: it's like I decided beforehand to answer the question. I
Speaker 6: really thought and prayed about it for a long time,
Speaker 6: and I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm
Speaker 6: not going to half measure it. I'm going to tell
Speaker 6: it all. So I'm going to talk about killing and
Speaker 6: not in a bragging way, but because it is a
Speaker 6: fucking burden, yea, not even that it's bad. It's not
Speaker 6: like I can't sleep because of this. No, I'm at
Speaker 6: peace with all that. But it's so it's a whole
Speaker 6: different life experience that needs to be known by people.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that you brought up bragging because I think.
Speaker 4: For a lot of us, it feels like when we
Speaker 4: are telling our stories, it feels to us like we're
Speaker 4: bragging either that or that we're boring people to tears
Speaker 4: because they don't because we think they don't care about this.
Speaker 2: You've also had a couple interesting conversations with guys after
Speaker 2: we did the podcast. Yeah, and they tell us some
Speaker 2: fairly graphic stories, you know, just man to man that
Speaker 2: they didn't want to share on a podcast because for
Speaker 2: exactly that they don't want to come across like they're
Speaker 2: bragging about it and like.
Speaker 1: This is something to glorify. And I mean, I respect that,
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a fine line, and I so I try
Speaker 6: to always caveat or disclaimer it with you know. Look,
Speaker 6: I'm doing this because I have found peace and and
Speaker 6: I've gotten better. I no longer want to die like
Speaker 6: I did, like I tried to. So you know, it
Speaker 6: does work, and like you said, the next generations, we're
Speaker 6: doing them at the service. We absolutely are if we don't.
Speaker 6: You know, these Vietnam rangers took me out on a
Speaker 6: sailing trip for three days and they told stories and
Speaker 6: the like, now you go, tell us about Panama and
Speaker 6: you know, and we did, and we shot jellyfish off
Speaker 6: the boat and all that and just had a life experience.
Speaker 1: You know, like that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So take a uh, I mean, we're gonna, We're
Speaker 2: gonna definitely I want to I want to dig a
Speaker 2: little bit deeper into some of these themes you've mentioned,
Speaker 2: but kind of going in chronological order. You're in school,
Speaker 2: You're in You're you're in Cipy Street, You're you're a dirty,
Speaker 2: nasty civilian trying to find your way. I mean, tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about how that went, and walk
Speaker 2: us into how you had this this epic protest that
Speaker 2: even I heard about.
Speaker 6: M hm, it's hilarious. Well, here's a story from a
Speaker 6: George Mason. In my English class, I we had to
Speaker 6: write a narrative of you know, I forget two thousand
Speaker 6: words or something. So I wrote and compressed the Panama
Speaker 6: story I just and then we had to read it
Speaker 6: in this class. And this is like Honors English. So
Speaker 6: we had this really good instructor who was respectful and
Speaker 6: and I went through the jump commands, you know, six minutes,
Speaker 6: and you know, I and I called it altered because
Speaker 6: I had been altered from that experience. And I read this.
Speaker 6: So I'm in my late twenties, I'm older than many
Speaker 6: most of the people in the class. I read it,
Speaker 6: and even back then in the nineties are like, what
Speaker 6: are you talking about? Right? We went why why did
Speaker 6: you do that? You know, it just it wasn't even
Speaker 6: like it was this. It made me laugh and then
Speaker 6: cry later.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like it's not like they're necessarily anti
Speaker 2: war hippies. It's just they're sort of flabbergas did like
Speaker 2: this happened?
Speaker 6: Like what exactly? So I'm like, man, people don't know anything,
Speaker 6: and without our presence and our freaking muscle through these years,
Speaker 6: we wouldn't be able to do anything good.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and you know, it's funny because I have
Speaker 4: seen guys who sort of resent civilians for that, but
Speaker 4: at the same time, it's like, that's why we're there.
Speaker 4: So they so that so that they could know who
Speaker 4: got voted off the real world or whatever, and they don't.
Speaker 5: Have to worry about something that Yeah, exactly, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, so, yeah.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's a very interesting thing.
Speaker 5: Like did the people in your class treat you differently
Speaker 5: after that?
Speaker 6: I think so. I think that's where I started to
Speaker 6: see that there was always within a group, and it
Speaker 6: became like a metric for me of who I want
Speaker 6: to be around, because I can remember a couple people
Speaker 6: who had follow on questions and they're so scared to
Speaker 6: ask questions, and you know, I learned long after that no,
Speaker 6: come on, ask anything. It's fine. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 6: I think that's where I started to, uh see that
Speaker 6: the people who at least had that look in their
Speaker 6: eye like whoa, that's heavy, Like I want to be
Speaker 6: around those people.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when did it come around that, you know, the
Speaker 2: Rangers were changing out their beret from Dave's time to
Speaker 2: the to the present modern time.
Speaker 4: To yes, when Shinseki said, you know, the Rangers are motivated,
Speaker 4: I think that if we get that black beret which
Speaker 4: motivates them to everybody else, the rest of the army
Speaker 4: will be motivated too.
Speaker 6: On paper, it was brilliant, Yeah, and then we heard
Speaker 6: about it. So this is in thatah, it was.
Speaker 5: It was two thousand, Yeah, two thousand.
Speaker 6: I'm a civilian at George Mason. We just had had
Speaker 6: that's there were like check groups, ranger check groups, and
Speaker 6: you know, I don't even know what they were.
Speaker 1: Called, like AOL or something back then.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, and we're listening, We're talking to the Vietnam
Speaker 6: guys real time. It was. It was cool. And then
Speaker 6: so I heard about this Black Barry thing and a
Speaker 6: guy named Dave Scott from Montana started it. He needed volunteers.
Speaker 6: I was like, hm, I think I can do this.
Speaker 6: I talked to my wife and yeah, I can do it.
Speaker 6: So I volunteered and I got on his team, you know,
Speaker 6: set it up. We had all kinds of support monetarily
Speaker 6: and leadership, like guys behind the scenes retired, some of
Speaker 6: some of them are still active, you know, some E
Speaker 6: nines and some officers who supported us. I still don't
Speaker 6: know exactly how, but we had just everything we needed.
Speaker 6: So it's like, yeah, we're gonna at least say suck it,
Speaker 6: General Sinzechi. That's that's crap. I mean, the Black Prey
Speaker 6: was what we why we got through rip three weeks.
Speaker 6: I did it twice sucks had to do when I
Speaker 6: went back in the second time, which was after the
Speaker 6: ro March. So yeah, so we uh, all right, We're
Speaker 6: gonna walk from Fort Benning home of the Infantry, to Washington,
Speaker 6: d C. To raise awareness about this stupidity of giving
Speaker 6: the black beat to everybody, right and every the people
Speaker 6: in the army. They not one person ever said that
Speaker 6: was a good you know, they didn't want it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: they knew, right, So yeah, we start walking twenty average
Speaker 6: twenty five miles a day for thirty days. It was
Speaker 6: I wasn't carrying weight, you know, I had a ruck
Speaker 6: with some pillows in it. Pil Frangdrick got a little
Speaker 6: smarter at that, Yeah, right right.
Speaker 2: Did at any point you hear from like the Department
Speaker 2: of the Army. Did they ever weigh in on like
Speaker 2: this controversy and what you guys were doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I would hear it from. I think it
Speaker 6: was I don't know if I should drop names, but
Speaker 6: the you know, the colonel of the Rege, I think
Speaker 6: Colonel something. I had a call at the beginning or
Speaker 6: we did saying well at first it was like what's
Speaker 6: your plan? And they asked for our social Security numbers?
Speaker 6: And then they said, okay, you're good to go. It's like, oh,
Speaker 6: they wanted to make sure you Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: That makes sense.
Speaker 6: I think they're making sure we were legit right, cool,
Speaker 6: Like yeah, yeah, please do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I tell people like always, it's okay to ask
Speaker 6: for two fourteen. I'm not going to get offended.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So yeah, because there's so many posters out there, so
Speaker 6: many liars. Yeah and so and then at the end,
Speaker 6: colonel called me on my on my home phone. I'll
Speaker 6: get to that, but yeah, So they were involved. They
Speaker 6: were watching everything Army Times was out there, and then
Speaker 6: it was like box news. It was local news and
Speaker 6: every time, you know, little city that we walked through,
Speaker 6: it was cool. Man. That was fun just to sort
Speaker 6: of be alone. People fell out. I was the only
Speaker 6: one that, you know, not by not because I'm awesome
Speaker 6: or anything. It's just I was the only dude that
Speaker 6: ended up going the whole way. But the guy that
Speaker 6: started fell out with some trouble. Again, the leadership that
Speaker 6: we had would they were they would come in, they
Speaker 6: would make sure everything was good, and then they would leave.
Speaker 6: So the news president the media really built up though,
Speaker 6: So it's like then it's like Fox New CNN and
Speaker 6: it's we're seeing it on. You know, I didn't like that.
Speaker 6: I still don't, but I'm gonna do it. That's what
Speaker 6: we're trying to do is raise awareness. So, you know,
Speaker 6: we get to d C. We we start talking to
Speaker 6: Center oh Man and I got some cool We see
Speaker 6: Al Sharpton walking down the street. So my gun team leader,
Speaker 6: Sarton Rummels, he shows up. He's a civilian. He shows
Speaker 6: up wearing deserts. I'm wearing O G one O seven's.
Speaker 6: We had John Burns Somalia. We'reing chocolate chips. And then
Speaker 6: we had Bill Rown who's dead now. He was a
Speaker 6: f Company ranger in Vietnam. Wow, going from you know,
Speaker 6: we got there. So we're at the Lincoln Memorial Parks
Speaker 6: and we're walking up and we just happened to be
Speaker 6: in a wedge for me like four or five rangers,
Speaker 6: you know, just and Al Sharpton and his entourage is
Speaker 6: coming down the I didn't my certain Rummes was like, Hey,
Speaker 6: that's that's reverend. Now I'm gonna let's go meet him.
Speaker 6: And he's like, hey, Reverend, the boys want to talk
Speaker 6: to you. Can we come over and meet you and
Speaker 6: is like they like covering up on Al Sharpton. Just
Speaker 6: a funny story, like to meet that's hilarious. So we
Speaker 6: get into d C and talking to senators and we're
Speaker 6: trying to uh, Hillary Clinton was a brand new senator
Speaker 6: at that point. She was her office was down by
Speaker 6: the mill. She was brand new and just you know,
Speaker 6: for the for the rangers were like can we you know,
Speaker 6: we're like doing everything we can to talk to Hillary
Speaker 6: Clinton just to get a picture you know, for the
Speaker 6: for the walls and the barracks because it would be hilarious.
Speaker 6: And she looked out, but she didn't come out. So
Speaker 6: but it was cool. We talked to like strom Thurman
Speaker 6: and you know, all these people that are gone now.
Speaker 6: But it went well. I testified in the Senate Small
Speaker 6: Arms or some committee.
Speaker 1: On Services committee.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you, and General sin Seki was there. This
Speaker 6: This was weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah you think I had hold that scumbag?
Speaker 5: What was that?
Speaker 6: Yeah? They they had me in there and I was
Speaker 6: like what do I do? Just sit there with your
Speaker 6: black or tanberry, I can't remember. But so they start
Speaker 6: going and is that gentleman here that walked seven hundred
Speaker 6: miles from you know, I stood up like thank you,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah, and they're hammering Shinzechy. They're like, this
Speaker 6: is why you're trying to spend six million dollars in China.
Speaker 6: That's that's what really got got it overturned was the money.
Speaker 6: It always is right, it's like hate tank boy, yeah,
Speaker 6: and always trying to tell the difference between a ranger
Speaker 6: tab and right right ye, never ending battle. But they
Speaker 6: you know, and I thought I was I was young,
Speaker 6: I'm you know, I was like, oh man, they told
Speaker 6: him good. We go out in the hallway and we're
Speaker 6: talking and he's standing right there and I wanted I
Speaker 6: just wanted to look him in the eye, and he wouldn't.
Speaker 6: He wouldn't you know. I'm kind of like not too aggressive,
Speaker 6: but just trying to like get to where and he
Speaker 6: wouldn't look at me. So after that, colonel called me
Speaker 6: at home and said, hey, we're gonna wear Tambo rays.
Speaker 6: There's a compromise. And I thought that I still thought
Speaker 6: that was BS but whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that that was gonna be what distinguished them
Speaker 2: separate from Big Army.
Speaker 4: So so for people who may or may not be
Speaker 4: falling along this, this was a real like heartache for
Speaker 4: Rangers at that time because black was a ranger of color,
Speaker 4: were night fighters black. Yeah, so you have your green beret,
Speaker 4: you have your maroon beret, you have your black beret,
Speaker 4: and uh and then Shinsaki, General Shinseki, a tank officer, right,
Speaker 4: it was an armor officer, decided that basically that, oh,
Speaker 4: the rest of the Army needs a spread of corps
Speaker 4: like the Rangers have a spree to corps. It must
Speaker 4: be the magic hat they wear, that that fantastic French
Speaker 4: poof that they wear, which was a pain in the
Speaker 4: ass to shape to it like, and nobody in the
Speaker 4: army did that. They didn't shave it, they didn't shape it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but but he thought that the answer to army
Speaker 4: morale and esprit de corps was these magic hats that
Speaker 4: the Rangers were wearing.
Speaker 5: And so he basically said, everybody gets that.
Speaker 4: Hat when that when getting the hat like getting a
Speaker 4: green bray, getting a black bereat, what was a rite
Speaker 4: of passage?
Speaker 6: It was?
Speaker 4: It was you know, for us, getting the ranger cat
Speaker 4: was no big deal like that just meant that we
Speaker 4: can make he five.
Speaker 5: We didn't care about that. We cared about getting that
Speaker 5: black Beret.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 5: So there was a lot of heartache about it at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So.
Speaker 2: And at the same time that all of this is happening,
Speaker 2: it's already percolating in the back of your mind that
Speaker 2: you want to join the you want to go back in.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was. And I because I couldn't. I still
Speaker 6: was like I couldn't find what I wanted to do
Speaker 6: with my life. And I woke up one morning and
Speaker 6: it was like, oh my god. I said to my
Speaker 6: I literally, I'm going back in the army. And she
Speaker 6: screamed the F word really a loud. I think I've
Speaker 6: been sort of murmuring it. I said, I'm going back in.
Speaker 6: She knew I was serious, and she's like, ah, but
Speaker 6: quickly or eventually got over it. I gave myself a
Speaker 6: damn high and tight and it took me a year
Speaker 6: to get back and they wouldn't take me back in.
Speaker 6: I had a spinal fusion and I was old, so
Speaker 6: I had to get waivers and wavering and I couldn't
Speaker 6: get back in. And then they're like for a year,
Speaker 6: and then they said, well, you can be a cook
Speaker 6: or a mechanic at Fort Riley, Mkansas, Kansas. You picked
Speaker 6: your job and ID so I just happened to have
Speaker 6: this paper here because my wife just had loaned it
Speaker 6: to somebody. Another story, But I mean, this is the
Speaker 6: Washington Times and there's me like George Bush. You know,
Speaker 6: we were on the front page of these papers a
Speaker 6: few times and my TBI just kicked in. What were
Speaker 6: we talking about?
Speaker 4: The Yeah, you were talking about your decision to go
Speaker 4: back in and they said no. And I just want
Speaker 4: to stop you right there real quick.
Speaker 5: You said you were old. And for our audience out there,
Speaker 5: how old is old? I want you guys to hear this.
Speaker 5: How old were you at that point?
Speaker 6: You're talking thirty thirty two years old? So ancient?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you were ancient for the airborne ranger in the sky.
Speaker 6: Yeah, kind of like athletes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that isn't that The average age in
Speaker 2: ranger regimen is eighteen, isn't it?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: I mean I think the average age is probably like
Speaker 4: it's probably like twenty one because you.
Speaker 1: Have your leadership, you do, but there's much more privates
Speaker 1: there was on average. Yeah, it's like it's.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's it's a teeny bopper organization.
Speaker 6: We have soccer school with guns. Yeah, yep, but we
Speaker 6: get it done somehow.
Speaker 4: So here you are an elderly man of thirty, well
Speaker 4: into your wisened years.
Speaker 6: Yes, yep. And again, man, Dave, we're not bragging, but like,
Speaker 6: this is a hilarious thing that happened. So there was
Speaker 6: an e eight woman working at the MAPS. I had
Speaker 6: this pray, but this is my last resort. I brought
Speaker 6: it in. I said, Master short, this is me. I
Speaker 6: did this walk because I love our country and our army.
Speaker 6: She was like, damn, that's freaking cool. Where do you
Speaker 6: want to go that day? Right there? I had orders
Speaker 6: to one five no basic training after ten years and
Speaker 6: and then, man, it was either then or the next
Speaker 6: time when I went in. I'm sitting in this at
Speaker 6: the MAPS in Baltimore. I'm living in Northern Virginia for
Speaker 6: George Mason to go back in. There's this like one
Speaker 6: hundred inch TV screen on MTV and I'm sitting there
Speaker 6: with all the other idiots getting into the MTV's on
Speaker 6: and they this is back Martha McCallum whatever, Like what
Speaker 6: are special operations? And they showed me and my little
Speaker 6: antrage walking up the Black Brace to the Lincoln memorial.
Speaker 6: Nobody knows it's me, right, It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: I never saw that commercial, that thing before or since then,
Speaker 6: but it's like, wow, you know, nobody knew it was
Speaker 6: me sitting there. But ridiculous, just ridiculous.
Speaker 5: So you didn't have to do basic again. Did you
Speaker 5: have to go back through maps or not maps on rip?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so straight to one seventy five. That eight was
Speaker 6: just like she just wrote over. It was so easy.
Speaker 6: So I show up. They're on leave. I just show
Speaker 6: up the army. I got my whole uniform. I think,
Speaker 6: no rank, but I you know, I certainly got my
Speaker 6: mustards stained and scroll on and old star Major Turner's there,
Speaker 6: who was in the six when I got out in
Speaker 6: ninety two? Oh grab what?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: I remember you? You know everybody's on leave, but he's there, Rudy.
Speaker 6: So he puts me in snipers, and I'm just elated, like, oh,
Speaker 6: that's what I want to do. Nine and eleven had happened,
Speaker 6: you know, I want to get back in a fight.
Speaker 6: So they're gone on leave, I'm in, uh snipers. I
Speaker 6: kept my little barracks room twelve seventy six North or whatever,
Speaker 6: and I get in there and I slp my wallocker.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys had to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm trying to remember. I don't remember if we.
Speaker 5: Did or not.
Speaker 6: So I do that, and uh, they come back and
Speaker 6: leave and I'm in their formation, like what else am
Speaker 6: I going to do? So I just their first woe
Speaker 6: when they get back. You know, you're back from leave.
Speaker 6: Everybody was just like January and they're like, who are you?
Speaker 6: So I tell them and they're like, oh, okay, so
Speaker 6: are you? So?
Speaker 1: Are you a TAPSPEC for at this point in time.
Speaker 6: I'm a tabed PFC. PFC Wow, they put me back
Speaker 6: in as a PFC.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, like why couldn't. I was any five when
Speaker 6: I got out and they couldn't even make me expect
Speaker 6: for there was some hate there. Yeah, so yeah, PFC
Speaker 6: back in And then I went to that must have
Speaker 6: been after it. I went back to RIP, which was
Speaker 6: which was hard, but it was cool because when it
Speaker 6: got when we got to Cold Range, those guys knew
Speaker 6: the structures. They had jumped into Afghanistan. They knew that
Speaker 6: that I had done the walk, So like when it
Speaker 6: was getting ready, you know, we're carrying the log and
Speaker 6: we're going to do fun games all night for three
Speaker 6: nights or whatever. Somebody taps me on the shoulder and
Speaker 6: I turned around, like to a fight, I thought it was,
Speaker 6: and he's like, no, no, no, come here. He's like,
Speaker 6: get your rug and go over there in the woods
Speaker 6: and sleep. And I was like, are you sure? And
Speaker 6: oh was that nice? Hover? Many hours it was and
Speaker 6: I heard it all going on, but save my bacon.
Speaker 6: Then we do the twelve miler, you know, there's ninety
Speaker 6: night guys, and like, I got to come in first.
Speaker 6: I'm the old man, and I did, but oh did
Speaker 6: I hurt myself doing so? Back to rip and then
Speaker 6: it tried to put me in three seven five, which
Speaker 6: I wouldn't. I didn't mind. It was just I had
Speaker 6: my family at Savannah, so yeah, got that change, went
Speaker 6: back there, and yeah, we deployed to Afghanistan and then Iraq, Iraq,
Speaker 6: and then I went to selection.
Speaker 5: And what was it like for you going to Afghanistan
Speaker 5: and Iraq? Having been a Panama of that?
Speaker 6: Looking back, I don't know what I could have done
Speaker 6: different With my personality. I'm an introvert, so I just
Speaker 6: tried to like jump in, but man, I was pretty
Speaker 6: freaking dumb on a lot of stuff. We had prick
Speaker 6: seventeen's and they had what was it seven? No, it's
Speaker 6: a seventeen now, new radios, new machine guns, new airplanes.
Speaker 6: Man Like, we went to jump the first time and
Speaker 6: I put my hands on the door. They're like, whoa,
Speaker 6: what are you doing there? Geronimo? Yeah, everything was different.
Speaker 6: So I got pretty mocked and ridiculed, you know, all
Speaker 6: the way till I made election for Delta.
Speaker 4: So but what I mean was the mocking and the
Speaker 4: ritual like in a fun way, like hey, old man
Speaker 4: like or or was there do you think there was
Speaker 4: actual short of malice behind it?
Speaker 6: I think a little of both. Good question, you know,
Speaker 6: I think it was both. There was just you know,
Speaker 6: there's one guy who's just trying to get under my skin.
Speaker 6: And he did and probably looking back as I could today,
Speaker 6: it which is it wouldn't bother me, Like I don't
Speaker 6: need to let that bother me. But he did and
Speaker 6: made it really hard. I made it harder than it
Speaker 6: needed to be. You know.
Speaker 5: It's just like, what was he a here or was
Speaker 5: he a senior to you?
Speaker 6: He was? He was equal? So in the we're in
Speaker 6: snipers were both tab spectors, and it's just, you know,
Speaker 6: it was just pretty much dick measure and I mean
Speaker 6: like trying to out do me whatever for whatever reason.
Speaker 6: I don't know, but it's like that's still I mean,
Speaker 6: that's why I coached high school football. It's like that's
Speaker 6: the thing that you guys have. But I think a
Speaker 6: lot of people have. They don't know that that needs
Speaker 6: to be brought out. When you see something wrong, when
Speaker 6: you see hypocrisy, do something m and and and I
Speaker 6: think it's time that people listen to two warriors, the
Speaker 6: warrior class of people of men and women some women.
Speaker 2: What was uh, what was it like now going back
Speaker 2: to war with the Ranger Regiment because as you point out,
Speaker 2: like the technology had changed, but the regiment was also
Speaker 2: going through tremendous changes at the time. And I mean
Speaker 2: you said you did a couple of pumpst Afghanistan, a
Speaker 2: couple to Iraq.
Speaker 6: Yeah, one to Afghanistan. I was pretty slow. I mean
Speaker 6: I probably should have had basic training again, I mean
Speaker 6: I was. It took me a while to catch up,
Speaker 6: it really did. So I did my best. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: we we had the Jessica Lynch thing. We talked about
Speaker 6: a little bit earlier where it still pisses me off,
Speaker 6: but you know, we went there to get her and
Speaker 6: the nine American bodies that were buried in shallow graves
Speaker 6: for three weeks that we dug up that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've heard story to herry up pretty that
Speaker 1: it was pretty bad.
Speaker 6: It was horrible. Yeah, but the worst you know, that's doable.
Speaker 6: But the worst part is is here in the news
Speaker 6: and and just all the bs and it's like, never
Speaker 6: I never heard about the nine nine bodies.
Speaker 4: Do you remember, you know, when crazy like conspiracy theories
Speaker 4: had actually caught on to where even like major news
Speaker 4: networks was that the Rangers had b fas on their weapons.
Speaker 4: Do you remember that it was so crazy in firing
Speaker 4: an adaptor? So even mainstream media was like cat was
Speaker 4: like sort of propagating.
Speaker 5: They weren't like this is what happened? Like did this happen?
Speaker 5: And so you know what does that mean? Was this right?
Speaker 5: Just a hoax? It's like, where are you guys getting
Speaker 5: your information from?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's maddening if you let it, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't. I'm hesitant to bring up the name Pat Tillman,
Speaker 6: but I saw in that movie that just came out
Speaker 6: where he was thinking that we were just there to
Speaker 6: shoot airplanes. It's like, dude, like he didn't know that
Speaker 6: we were digging up bodies because they don't freaking communicate
Speaker 6: disem of that information, right, he didn't. He thought we
Speaker 6: were just there for hours. That I saw that, I
Speaker 6: was like, oh my god, that's m man, we're not
Speaker 6: telling stories.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when when did the unit sort of come
Speaker 4: on to your Were you like, I don't want to
Speaker 4: be a ranger, or were you like, I want to
Speaker 4: do this thing.
Speaker 6: Rangers were cool. I just honestly like the physicality of it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I did it for almost six years total,
Speaker 6: three years, and then the other enlistment almost three years.
Speaker 6: I don't think I could have done it much longer.
Speaker 6: It is so demanding. I mean, I just so I
Speaker 6: knew in the unit I knew he had. It was
Speaker 6: hard to get there, but I knew that we didn't walk.
Speaker 6: They didn't walk everywhere. I just hated walking everywhere, eveno
Speaker 6: I did seven hundred mile marks. But yeah, it was
Speaker 6: kind of like, I wonder if I could do that,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna try, and had the opportunity. Patuon started and
Speaker 6: let me train and irack. So I walked around at
Speaker 6: the MSS, those ten houses we had up and down
Speaker 6: those driveways with you know, bare feet sometimes just to
Speaker 6: toughen up my feet and get ready and you know.
Speaker 6: And then there was something that there was this first sergeant.
Speaker 6: I had smart wool socks on. In Iraq during the war,
Speaker 6: we're wearing whatever we call it range uniform, like shorts
Speaker 6: and boots, T shirt for workout, whatever it was. I
Speaker 6: had some brown T shirt range of panties, right, yeah,
Speaker 6: how can I forget that? And he comes up, He's like, hey, ranger, buddy,
Speaker 6: of those those army issued socks. I'm like, well, other
Speaker 6: smart wool socks. First aret gotta change him. And I
Speaker 6: was like, man, that's it. The little thing, yeah, pushes
Speaker 6: me over the edge.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I went to selection. Yeah, and all those dudes
Speaker 6: were like, what do you what are you going for?
Speaker 6: You're old.
Speaker 1: And what was that experience like? And I mean did
Speaker 1: you kind of find what you were looking for in
Speaker 1: the unit?
Speaker 6: Yeah? And then some I mean it just loved it,
Speaker 6: loved it it. I don't I don't stay in touch
Speaker 6: and go and go to reunions and all that like,
Speaker 6: I'm it's not my identity anymore, right, But it was
Speaker 6: so cool because you know, and the Rangers there was like,
Speaker 6: you don't get paid to think. I need to think, man,
Speaker 6: lady needs to think, right, So I wanted to do that.
Speaker 6: And then I get to the unit and they're like,
Speaker 6: you got to invent something in your first year. I
Speaker 6: was like, cool, I'm in the right place. Yeah cool.
Speaker 4: And when when you showed up the unit, did you
Speaker 4: go to the line or did you go to the sniper,
Speaker 4: Like where did you go first?
Speaker 5: Where did you end up?
Speaker 6: So I got through selection my first try, and I'm
Speaker 6: elated walking on you know, Oh I made it the
Speaker 6: first time. Then I get to OTC and failed. I
Speaker 6: made it to the end. My pistol shooting just sucked.
Speaker 6: I mean I never saw a pistol. I never sat
Speaker 6: a gun before I joined the army. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: you're gonna shoot a live round in a real airplace,
Speaker 6: and you got to be into a bullet trap. You
Speaker 6: can't mince.
Speaker 5: And in the nineties, rangers and that, like now Rangers
Speaker 5: have pistols. In the nineties they didn't like maybe the
Speaker 5: squad leader, I don't know, maybe I can't remember, but yeah.
Speaker 6: Well and then you know the yeah yeah, the beauty
Speaker 6: commander was Burretta but yeah, I mean but that it
Speaker 6: was important. So I failed. I made all through and failed,
Speaker 6: and that's how I became a dog handler. So you know,
Speaker 6: twenty five thirty percent of people fail LOTC. It's not
Speaker 6: an uncommon thing. I had a plan. I had seen Rudy,
Speaker 6: this awesome dog when I was a ranger with the unit,
Speaker 6: so I was like, I want to do that. So
Speaker 6: I failed, and I asked the sorry major telling me
Speaker 6: that I failed, if I could do that, and he said,
Speaker 6: hold on a second. He came right back and he's like,
Speaker 6: you're going to see You're going to squadron. So so
Speaker 6: I'm a West Virginia graduate but a no TC failure,
Speaker 6: so I'm directed right, Okay, cool. That was priceless because
Speaker 6: I really learned to appreciate everybody now that i'm director.
Speaker 6: I failed something. I'm not superman anymore. And I had
Speaker 6: this wonderful dog, Pepper, who you know we've talked about
Speaker 6: a lot and it was a great experience. I hit
Speaker 6: her for two years. She was killed in six After that,
Speaker 6: I went back to OTC crushed. It was drafted first,
Speaker 6: you know, up high like they have a draft, So
Speaker 6: it was Yeah, then it was straight to a sniper
Speaker 6: wreckie team. And you know we still do assault of course,
Speaker 6: you know, it's pretty much what you do. And so
Speaker 6: the rest of my years just on a couple of
Speaker 6: different teams and different squadrons, and I mean we just
Speaker 6: hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of of hits every night,
Speaker 6: all night.
Speaker 5: How how mature when you went direct support?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 5: How how mature was the dog program at that time?
Speaker 6: I would say, not fledgling, but but close. Uh we
Speaker 6: could do CQB without issue. That dogs knew what they
Speaker 6: were doing. So it was still young but not established
Speaker 6: there were it was only at the unit. Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yet what were what was the role of the dogs
Speaker 1: of the unit? I mean you were the knine handlers
Speaker 1: at that time.
Speaker 6: Two main two main things like detection and uh, you know,
Speaker 6: going after a person attack like so some of them
Speaker 6: you know, well, yeah, my thing was, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: a squirter, somebody's gonna try and run away. This this
Speaker 6: fifty three pound girl can uh, she's gonna get you. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and she's like awesome around the house. She loves with
Speaker 6: the boys, so she you know, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 4: The breathe, I don't know if people want that out,
Speaker 4: but the breath that they use is it's amazing.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's not a house pet, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 4: it's not something you get for you know, your two
Speaker 4: bedroom apartment in New York. But it's I mean, it's
Speaker 4: a working dog, smart as hell light and when they
Speaker 4: turn it on, it's on.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 6: They're pointy eared dogs, and there's there's a few varieties,
Speaker 6: but the pointiered ones are the ones that mean business.
Speaker 6: And then they go through selection. That's pretty cool. You know,
Speaker 6: out of one hundred dogs will get one or two
Speaker 6: that will like my dog Pepper. You know, they had
Speaker 6: to set up in a dark room looks like a
Speaker 6: hole in the wall, and they you know, like and
Speaker 6: she jumped into a hole blindly. Yeah wow, and like yeah,
Speaker 6: that's how you know. There's there's tests to see if
Speaker 6: they're going to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: A friend of mine who who has a I think
Speaker 4: three of them I can't remember me for but she
Speaker 4: was saying that that a lot of times they use
Speaker 4: the females because they're more aggressive.
Speaker 5: The males.
Speaker 4: The males get a little dopey and a little too
Speaker 4: friendly sometimes and that honestly, like sometimes the smaller the
Speaker 4: dog that like, the more aggressive it it can be.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean she was she was fifty three pounds.
Speaker 6: She was small, and there was this kind of bruiser
Speaker 6: in the kennels, you know who old Salt who had
Speaker 6: been there and he uh one time we kept him
Speaker 6: all separate, but there was one time where he got
Speaker 6: out and Pepper was out and he tried to give
Speaker 6: her some stuff and she whipped his ass right back
Speaker 6: in his kennel. It was it was amazing, Yeah, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2: Do you have any any memorable moments from that time
Speaker 2: as a canine handler that stand out for you?
Speaker 6: It was it was so uh so now I'm with
Speaker 6: like a delta team, you know, I'm attached to them,
Speaker 6: uh feeling feeling sort of worthy, but not like TC
Speaker 6: because if I it's like looking back, you know, it
Speaker 6: was like my identity was so dependent and that's just
Speaker 6: where I was at the time. It's okay, like I
Speaker 6: know now that you know, I'm a I'm a person
Speaker 6: and a father and God loves me and all this,
Speaker 6: But it took a long time to get our first bite.
Speaker 6: So uh, just a few missions. You know, there just
Speaker 6: wasn't conditions. I'm not just gonna bite somebody. So finally,
Speaker 6: like we're taking some uh some guys that you know,
Speaker 6: detainees off off a helo. So it's dark night, you know,
Speaker 6: blot whatever wherever it was, just you know, the noise,
Speaker 6: can't hear anything. You got to get right up and screaming.
Speaker 6: Somebody's ear to to say anything. We're getting these detainees
Speaker 6: off and retired, and we're walking them and this never
Speaker 6: happened except for that time. This dude starts leaning back
Speaker 6: into me. I hadn't been to Seris school yet. I
Speaker 6: didn't know anything about resistance. He's resisting me. I didn't
Speaker 6: know what was going on. And then I'm just like
Speaker 6: I didn't know what to do. So so then he
Speaker 6: like turns around, and I was clueless, and I'm like
Speaker 6: at the end of the line, so nobody's seeing me.
Speaker 6: Pepper my dog comes around and bites this dude right
Speaker 6: in the junk and and he's just like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: and the truth the guys turn around, the guys that
Speaker 6: I want to like be accepted into, they turn around
Speaker 6: and they're just like, she did it finally, so and
Speaker 6: it was it was the right thing. This dude was
Speaker 6: I don't know what, you know.
Speaker 1: So the dodd just didn't like that dude bowing up
Speaker 1: on you like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, it was so cool. So yeah, that was
Speaker 6: the first one, and then everything was smoother after that.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, until she got killed. But we're
Speaker 6: going after Zarkkawi when she got killed. I don't know
Speaker 6: if you guys remember a MS. Yeah, of course you do.
Speaker 6: At the time, you know, forget about Bin Lauden, like
Speaker 6: Zark Cowie was. You know, we wanted to get our
Speaker 6: hands on him. He's sawing off people's heads, recording it
Speaker 6: and putting it out for the world to see. He's
Speaker 6: he's evil. He's really really evil. So that's who we're
Speaker 6: going after. When she got killed on the Tigers River,
Speaker 6: what turned out not to be him, But you don't
Speaker 6: know until you find everybody that's trying to run away.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know it's a painful experience, but do
Speaker 2: you want to talk about what happened that day?
Speaker 6: Sure? Yeah, And you know it's funny when I tried
Speaker 6: to die, when I decided I was going to die
Speaker 6: in twenty fourteen, Like I said, my brother committed suicide.
Speaker 6: I did the only thing crazier than suicide. At the time,
Speaker 6: I was like, I'm going to go to the mental hospital.
Speaker 6: And the day that's nuts. So I drove to the
Speaker 6: Durham Va High and got myself checked into the mental board.
Speaker 1: Helped me out about the mission with Pepper in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 6: So thank you. So I quickly got out of there.
Speaker 6: There my roommate had one arm and a torso in
Speaker 6: his head. Nope, he was missing two legs in one arm.
Speaker 6: And when that dude turned and looked at me, I
Speaker 6: wanted out because his eyes were death in a different way.
Speaker 6: So he helped me, and I, you know, but I
Speaker 6: got out. It took three days to get out. I
Speaker 6: got out, and then on my follow on, I had
Speaker 6: this great doctor, this awesome therapist, Sarah Boating, actress, Sarah Boating.
Speaker 6: She was incredible. She talked to me and then we
Speaker 6: ended up doing prolonged exposure, which is telling the same
Speaker 6: story over and over. And I chose Pepper and Lance Cornette,
Speaker 6: good buddy of mine had been killed the night before
Speaker 6: she was killed, and uh so for a year and
Speaker 6: a half. I went to the VA as part of
Speaker 6: my recovery, telling this story close in my eyes, trusting,
Speaker 6: you know, this awesome doctor who I'm still in touch with.
Speaker 6: You know, these guys. There's there's good help at the
Speaker 6: VA if you can find it. For eighteen months, and
Speaker 6: then right towards the end of that, I get contacted
Speaker 6: by HBO and Channing Tady wants to do this documentary.
Speaker 6: It was like, oh my gosh, So I wrote this
Speaker 6: little thing called Suicide the Red Carpet because in three
Speaker 6: years it was like I'm trying to die and then
Speaker 6: I'm literally walking the red carpet talking about my dog story,
Speaker 6: which you know, I learned to say it speak it
Speaker 6: well at the VA. So it was it was clearly,
Speaker 6: uh you know sort of I had help if.
Speaker 1: The therapy day, yeah yeah, And so what what did happen?
Speaker 6: Well, we're going after eight one squatter. There's this massive
Speaker 6: combined units thing and we just had a little, a
Speaker 6: little job. We were rerec team around little birds. We
Speaker 6: were just squarter control. So there's all this coordinated stuff
Speaker 6: with this village in South Baghdad, and now this is
Speaker 6: a nasty, nasty, nasty neighborhood, and I remember flying in
Speaker 6: seeing hoods of humbies on the ground in parts really bad.
Speaker 6: So we going to night. There was like even one
Speaker 6: hundred and first Airborne was part of this. There was
Speaker 6: units all over the place doing things. We're squarter control.
Speaker 6: We were flying there, no squarters, boom. We went home.
Speaker 6: It was five minutes from the airfield. We're back. We
Speaker 6: get off the birds and they you know, oh, there's
Speaker 6: a quarter. So we go back and me and Pepper.
Speaker 6: It had started real early at night, So we get
Speaker 6: back there. It's maybe nine thirty ten o'clock at night,
Speaker 6: going after a squirter on the the banks of the
Speaker 6: Tigers River in south Baghdad. And maybe one day I'll
Speaker 6: be able to explain how thick, thicker than Panama this
Speaker 6: stuff was at the the you know, on the edge
Speaker 6: of the river. So we get the squirter. You know,
Speaker 6: we're being sold from eyes above, from bird's eye. He's
Speaker 6: right there, he's ten feet in front of you. I
Speaker 6: can't say, are you sure? Yeah, yep, But it's straight
Speaker 6: down and it's raining and it's muddy, and it's February.
Speaker 6: I slide down. Once I scrambled back up I send Pepper.
Speaker 6: We hear a pop and it's sounds like a nine
Speaker 6: mil pop, muffled and and nothing. So we're trying to
Speaker 6: figure out what to do. Blub blah blah. Pepper comes
Speaker 6: walking back up the hill like I don't know if
Speaker 6: it's five minutes or an hour later. Probably five minutes
Speaker 6: she comes walking up the hill like dopey. I'm thinking
Speaker 6: she's shot and losing blod so I you know, I
Speaker 6: know what to do. My wife is a vetech at
Speaker 6: the unit, Laura Miller. She's awesome, not at the time,
Speaker 6: but now she's my wife. I'm checking Pepper for bullet holes.
Speaker 6: There's nothing, and as I'm doing that, she's like, all right, hey,
Speaker 6: leme alone, let me alone. She comes back to life.
Speaker 6: So I'm and she's soaking wet. So I was like
Speaker 6: she was partially drowned. You know, it appears because she's
Speaker 6: not shot anywhere, there's no wounds, so she recovered. She's back.
Speaker 6: So now, man, we just we put everything we've got
Speaker 6: and everything we can call into this guy. We can't
Speaker 6: drop a bomb because there's billion houses right there, but
Speaker 6: we're doing everything short of that, and we're not touching him.
Speaker 6: He's got this spider hole. So on and on and
Speaker 6: on and on. I made the decision, and nobody told
Speaker 6: Nobody tells you to kill somebody. You never get orders
Speaker 6: to kill somebody or to you know, you decide things
Speaker 6: like that. So I knew man. And there's a picture
Speaker 6: I sent you guys the name of that pictures last night.
Speaker 6: That was our last night. That was right before we
Speaker 6: went out, and Lance Cornet had been killed the night before.
Speaker 6: She and him were friends. So it's just like I
Speaker 6: sent her again. I made the decision to send her again.
Speaker 6: And she didn't come back that time, but she got
Speaker 6: him out of the hole. And my buddy's like, there
Speaker 6: is I got, you know, shoots the guy dead birds.
Speaker 6: I sees him floating down the Tigris and we can't
Speaker 6: find Pepper. So we're looking and then I got her.
Speaker 4: I got her.
Speaker 6: I got her. You know, somebody found her strobe light
Speaker 6: or I r strobe that it come off. So I'm like, oh,
Speaker 6: she was in a fight, because you know, things anchored
Speaker 6: on there. She was in a fight. We looked. I
Speaker 6: got on a little bird and he just crabbed around
Speaker 6: the banks, you know, looking, looking, looking, and I knew
Speaker 6: what was coming. It's getting light, and I know the commander,
Speaker 6: I know we got to go home, but I'm not
Speaker 6: gonna go home until I get Pepper. And you know,
Speaker 6: the call came and it's getting the sun's coming up there.
Speaker 6: We got to go and I just that's when everything snapped.
Speaker 6: That's when everything broke in me when because I punched
Speaker 6: the ground and I screamed, and that's when I that's
Speaker 6: when I really became a good warrior actually, because I
Speaker 6: was like, you know what, fuck everything. That's when everything changed.
Speaker 6: We got home and I threw that kennel about you
Speaker 6: know when we landed, and uh man, I had dreams
Speaker 6: for years that I was looking down like bird's eye
Speaker 6: view and she's coming back super super super tough.
Speaker 5: People.
Speaker 2: People who are are watching this and maybe not familiar
Speaker 2: or like, might not understand how closely socialized the handlers
Speaker 2: are with the canines. I mean, do you want, if
Speaker 2: you're open to talk a little bit about like what
Speaker 2: that relationship's like and why you know the way you
Speaker 2: talk about it. You know, it's like losing a family member.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, it was. I mean this was my best friend.
Speaker 6: And so I got Pepper. When I got to the
Speaker 6: kennels who Cammit dog handler and O four. They're showing
Speaker 6: me all these dogs and they're all and this is
Speaker 6: so and so, and he does he's good at this.
Speaker 6: And then I show Pepper and she's sitting down wagging
Speaker 6: her tail. And I just had my baby daughter. So
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh, look at this little sweet girl. She's
Speaker 6: the only girl. And I'm like, I didn't say anying,
Speaker 6: like I want her. And they're like, well, she bites,
Speaker 6: but you know she's too small and blah blah blah,
Speaker 6: we'll probably get rid of her. So she was assigned
Speaker 6: to somebody else. He ended up getting the duy awesome dude,
Speaker 6: Sean Kelly love him. So I got Pepper, and I
Speaker 6: was so happy because she's so smart and but she
Speaker 6: she knew like reality, she knew, you know, and and
Speaker 6: ask from a from a real person because she didn't
Speaker 6: really care about me at first, and she gave me
Speaker 6: a chance. But like, I don't know why I did this,
Speaker 6: but I just after work, everybody go home after training,
Speaker 6: and I would take her out in the back. There
Speaker 6: was this like green grass meadow and I would just
Speaker 6: lay there with her for a long time, as often
Speaker 6: as I could just to let her know that, like
Speaker 6: this is real for me, and I know it is
Speaker 6: for you. So we we bonded, you know. And and
Speaker 6: then the night before, you know, Lance Cornett being killed.
Speaker 6: The night before, I didn't sleep. I I kicked the
Speaker 6: freaking heavy bag all night with her and there in
Speaker 6: the gym with me and necessary. Yeah, two nights in
Speaker 6: a row. Oh my gosh, I don't remember that, like
Speaker 6: for two days after that, I don't remember.
Speaker 5: To put things in context for people. I'm sure everybody's
Speaker 5: fallen along.
Speaker 4: But a squirter is somebody who runs off target right
Speaker 4: when you know you have bad guys, Like, a squirter
Speaker 4: is a person who runs Now. Early in the war,
Speaker 4: that was sort of like they're retreating. What we eventually learned, though,
Speaker 4: is that there was no such thing as a squirter.
Speaker 4: There were only maneuver elements. And if they didn't have
Speaker 4: a weapon on them when they squirted, they were running
Speaker 4: to a cash to get a weapon, and.
Speaker 5: They would buy and wait, and they would wait for
Speaker 5: X phil and then they would come.
Speaker 4: Out blasting, or they'd blast from a covered position or
Speaker 4: a concealed position like this guy would have done.
Speaker 5: So it's not he was. He wasn't out of them.
Speaker 5: That dude was not out of the fight.
Speaker 6: That dude was waiting for his moments exactly. He wasn't
Speaker 6: scared if the cops come in to my house. I'm
Speaker 6: not gonna run right today? Right?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, what is it?
Speaker 1: It did this kind of like this was sort of
Speaker 1: like the end of your time in the K nine unit.
Speaker 2: You were I mean, am I wrong to say that
Speaker 2: you were a bit emotionally traumatized by that experience and
Speaker 2: like couldn't take another dog after that.
Speaker 6: You're not wrong, And I never really thought about it,
Speaker 6: but I wouldn't have It just so happened to be.
Speaker 6: Thankfully at the point where I was going back to
Speaker 6: Twoice to OTC there was a two year wait since
Speaker 6: I had failed, so it's like you can go back
Speaker 6: and try in two years, and that was just a
Speaker 6: couple of months before it so kind of again ordained
Speaker 6: to me. Yeah, I wouldn't have done it again. It
Speaker 6: was the hardest work too. Besides being ranged private, the
Speaker 6: dog handler is extremely hard work. Jumping off of a
Speaker 6: black Hawk with a dog on a twenty inch elastic
Speaker 6: tether is something to do, or you know, getting over
Speaker 6: a sandlink fence. Oh my goodness, was that difficult but
Speaker 6: well worth it. And you know she used to like
Speaker 6: So the night after Lance died, we're at the MSS.
Speaker 6: Those houses Oudi and Kus's house is on the river,
Speaker 6: is where we just where we lived for years. So
Speaker 6: somebody dies. Man, the next day, it's quiet, of course,
Speaker 6: you know, it's somb it's there's no words. But life
Speaker 6: goes on. And so you get up and four or
Speaker 6: five o'clock in the afternoon because you would go out
Speaker 6: at night. So so Pepper would go around and Man
Speaker 6: that night or that day, I uh, I just let
Speaker 6: her go some you know usually, and I could hear
Speaker 6: her going room to room normally it was like Pepper,
Speaker 6: you know, but it was just like, oh hey Pepper,
Speaker 6: and then you know, another room and she would just
Speaker 6: make her rounds. Man, it's like no other dog could
Speaker 6: do that. I don't I don't know what goes on nowadays,
Speaker 6: but she she could do that. So, man, these guys,
Speaker 6: I love these dudes that I was with. Man, it
Speaker 6: was I Team, Reckie, Troop and Squadron. They they were
Speaker 6: her uncles. I mean, this was they. They thought that
Speaker 6: she she thought that we were a pack. So they
Speaker 6: did everything they could, really really to find her, man,
Speaker 6: and we just could not.
Speaker 4: So yeah, generally, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 4: but generally those dogs are not that well socialized, where
Speaker 4: a lot of times only their hangler can really be
Speaker 4: physical with him, be like playful with him stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Very much so. And Pepper was seven years old and
Speaker 6: she so she had been taken home. She was from Belgium.
Speaker 6: She had you know, some somebody that had taken her home.
Speaker 6: So she was very well socialized, you know, and in
Speaker 6: that naivete or whatever of the dog programming, oh I
Speaker 6: want this dog kept it. You know. I would put
Speaker 6: a poncho liner in Pepper's kennel when we flew over
Speaker 6: Iraq on the bottom because it's so cold, you know.
Speaker 6: And they'd make fun of me, and I'm like, hey man, whatever,
Speaker 6: loving Pepper's wrong. I don't want to be right because
Speaker 6: we were good. But yeah, most of the other dogs,
Speaker 6: you know, Rudy just I love that. Almost everybody got
Speaker 6: a complimentary bite from Rudy. It'd come up, you know,
Speaker 6: people be standing there and he knows it. They're like,
Speaker 6: what do I do? Pet him? I don't know, man,
Speaker 6: you might get bit if you pet him, you might
Speaker 6: get if you don't, just a little snap bite. But
Speaker 6: it was, you know, yeah, incredible animals.
Speaker 2: So what was it like then landing in the UH
Speaker 2: Sniper Wreckie Troup When you became you passed oughtc the
Speaker 2: second time, became an operator.
Speaker 6: When that switch happened and I didn't really wasn't cognizant
Speaker 6: of it at the time, but when when after Pepper died,
Speaker 6: and you know, I just was like I tuned out
Speaker 6: and it worked. It got me to where I could
Speaker 6: shoot pistol, I could do whatever I gotta do. I
Speaker 6: get I'm you know, now I can run, i can
Speaker 6: keep up with with the young guys, and I'm driven again.
Speaker 6: I have a purpose. I'm gonna be the best operator
Speaker 6: I can be all that. So I did gosh oh,
Speaker 6: and then so we get we start to plan what
Speaker 6: the next like switch for me, what really took me
Speaker 6: kind of over the edge was going out and capturing
Speaker 6: these guys two and three times yep, and then our
Speaker 6: mates getting shot in the rick harm. I got shot
Speaker 6: in the head and it's like by somebody that we
Speaker 6: had rolled up And I don't mind saying it's like,
Speaker 6: I'm going to talk about this the rest of my life.
Speaker 6: I made a decision if it was legal, moral and ethical,
Speaker 6: if it lined up, boss, do you want this guy dead? Yep,
Speaker 6: all right, he's dead because I had a new daughter,
Speaker 6: a brand new baby girl, and I just made that
Speaker 6: decision and I carried it. And when I coached football,
Speaker 6: I tell guys from this experience and I try to
Speaker 6: do try to get you know, work run every place
Speaker 6: so hard that you get a look from your teammates like,
Speaker 6: who the hell are you? What are you doing? Because
Speaker 6: I got that look and they're like, and I kept
Speaker 6: it up, and not not for any reason. I just didn't.
Speaker 6: It's dumb to fight a war and not fight to
Speaker 6: win right through that.
Speaker 4: You know earlier when you were talking about the being
Speaker 4: in a college class and you know, the students who
Speaker 4: wanted to ask you more.
Speaker 5: One of the things I found.
Speaker 4: Very interesting, uh with civilians is and you can tell
Speaker 4: me if this match is your experience at all, is
Speaker 4: when they find out you've been in combat, they'll say, oh,
Speaker 4: the first question is always did you kill anybody?
Speaker 5: And then the second question is how did you get
Speaker 5: over it?
Speaker 4: Or how how did you, And and for me, it's
Speaker 4: always been like there's nothing to get over it, like
Speaker 4: they were, they were shitheads, like they were oxygen vampires,
Speaker 4: and they didn't need to be here like better luck,
Speaker 4: next life.
Speaker 6: The way to get over it is I need more
Speaker 6: like a drogue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you know, like the id
Speaker 4: meakers were the worse because you'd roll them up and.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't even have they wuldn't even try and fight back.
Speaker 6: Yeah right, yeah, yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: And good news for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know, but you're you're another five
Speaker 2: years in the sniper Reckie troop at least. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm guessing this Timeframeworth talking about it's like it's a grind.
Speaker 2: It's back to back to back, like you're from that
Speaker 2: generation of operators that really got put through it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I'm you know, I'm proud of that in
Speaker 6: a way that I'm using like this to tell my
Speaker 6: story both where I was weak, where I was strong,
Speaker 6: what I learned where I screwed up to help the
Speaker 6: next generation. Yeah, it was a grind, my god, just
Speaker 6: back to back to back. And then let's throw in
Speaker 6: a surge in the middle of all this, and yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, going out, I got my journals. I have
Speaker 6: three leather bound journals in my safe, you know, with
Speaker 6: my my guns and my birth certificates for my kids.
Speaker 6: Like those things are. They're not very detailed, but I
Speaker 6: wrote in code so that I will know, you know,
Speaker 6: I will have memories of all that. So and it's
Speaker 6: not about numbers, it's not about being better than anybody else,
Speaker 6: but it is it. Man, I'm just scratching the surface.
Speaker 2: You know, we all are of of what of what
Speaker 2: it's like, I mean to any any other as far
Speaker 2: as like what it's like, any other aspects of it
Speaker 2: that you want to talk about or things that stand
Speaker 2: out in your mind from that period of time.
Speaker 6: I was saying, it was a decision, and that's where
Speaker 6: everything that starts with. And I've tried not to get
Speaker 6: political for a long time, but we can't. We can't
Speaker 6: avoid it. We have the biggest circus going on. It's
Speaker 6: it's almost like we're being punked. I mean I wouldn't,
Speaker 6: are we. So I'm sitting there watching the Trump rally
Speaker 6: President Trump Rally with my daughter and I saw that
Speaker 6: and I said, he just got shot in the ear.
Speaker 6: This is before an nobody knew. You could tell by
Speaker 6: the way he moved and the sound of the pop.
Speaker 6: She's like, what, he just got shot in the air.
Speaker 6: Because we've seen so much of that, we've done so
Speaker 6: much of that, and then to just see this, I
Speaker 6: don't even know what to call it, and I don't.
Speaker 6: It's not looking down, but it is. I do feel
Speaker 6: like it's the sheep giving orders to the shepherds, and
Speaker 6: that needs to fucking stop. I don't know how, but
Speaker 6: if I don't say what I just said, I'm not
Speaker 6: doing my part. And it's it's the video game ers
Speaker 6: telling the football players what it's like. Is the best
Speaker 6: analogy I can come up this. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been an interesting.
Speaker 4: It's been an interesting dichotomy because you know, we saw
Speaker 4: sort of you know, like they are crazy people everywhere, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, we get him in our units, you know,
Speaker 4: you get him in politics, you get him in everywhere.
Speaker 4: And we saw sort of the QAnon phenomena, you know,
Speaker 4: on the riot, it's like, oh, well, the rights or
Speaker 4: really loons and now you have very large people with
Speaker 4: a very large presence and a lot of influence saying
Speaker 4: he wasn't shot.
Speaker 5: It was glass, it was this, it was that. And
Speaker 5: it's like, okay, so the left is equally susceptible.
Speaker 6: To That's that.
Speaker 2: I mean, going on has been a thing for a
Speaker 2: long time. These people have been off the rails with
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories. Yeah, going back to about the time, about
Speaker 2: twenty the twenty sixteen timeframe.
Speaker 4: And it's just and you're right, it's very it's very frustrating.
Speaker 4: It's it's like a bad really, it's like an abusive relationship, right,
Speaker 4: it is the gas lighting. It's like you didn't see
Speaker 4: what you know, I wasn't in bed with her, Honey,
Speaker 4: you didn't see that.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not some ethics.
Speaker 5: You do not see where you just saw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all saw it live on TV. It's not
Speaker 2: some epics conspiracy, right you know?
Speaker 6: And yeah, hell is the impossibility of reason?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean, Dave, But but to go back to
Speaker 2: this period of time, I mean, are there any before
Speaker 2: we move on and get closer to the present, I mean,
Speaker 2: any experiences that kind of stand out for you that
Speaker 2: you want to talk about before we move on?
Speaker 6: And a horse femail function on a halo drop boy,
Speaker 6: that was something twenty five thousand feet. Yeah, it wasn't combat,
Speaker 6: but you know, training in the in the desert, twenty
Speaker 6: five thousand feet jumping a long rifle. I think I
Speaker 6: had a Norma three three eight Norma mag and flying
Speaker 6: a ruck and I opened. I was sort of head down.
Speaker 6: I think my pilot shot wrapped around my ankle. I
Speaker 6: felt it, and slowly it was like this constriction and
Speaker 6: I've time slows down and I'm like, oh, that's not good.
Speaker 6: I try to wiggle out and it it caught air
Speaker 6: and it my foot kicked the back of my head
Speaker 6: and I don't bend like that as that thing caught air.
Speaker 6: So I thought my leg was just like when you
Speaker 6: take a chicken leg and thigh and you turn it
Speaker 6: and you hear that that's what it but like it
Speaker 6: didn't break, but that's what it felt. Wow. But I'm
Speaker 6: hanging upside down at you know, twenty four thousand feet
Speaker 6: now with a ball of crap. And so I laughed,
Speaker 6: and then I prayed the Peter prayer, God help, and
Speaker 6: I did my cutaway and it went away. Sometimes they
Speaker 6: don't on a horseshoe. Sometimes the reserve it's trapping around.
Speaker 6: People die. Yeah, and that was in nine and I
Speaker 6: jumped one more time after that to get it out
Speaker 6: of my head. And that was when I was like,
Speaker 6: when I was done with the fight.
Speaker 1: What altitude were you out when you got something over
Speaker 1: your head?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: Probably seventeen sixteen. I was still high because my my air,
Speaker 6: my mask came off, my nods came off, and as
Speaker 6: when I got situated, when I got my shootout, I
Speaker 6: was high pocks. I you know, that's why we do
Speaker 6: the chamber. I was starting to pass out, so I
Speaker 6: got my airback on and came to The pain was
Speaker 6: so bad. Made a radio call. Hey, I'm okay. I
Speaker 6: heard them talking about me. You know, we got a horseshoe.
Speaker 6: It's Nielsen, Bubba. Just listen to the again. The training.
Speaker 6: You know, you never think it's going to happen to you.
Speaker 4: But David, when you when you were sixteen, you know
Speaker 4: you said, if a war breaks out, I want to go.
Speaker 4: You happen to be in the right place at the
Speaker 4: right time at several points, well, I mean for Panama,
Speaker 4: for Panama, and you know when you were going back
Speaker 4: into the military, did you think that that did you
Speaker 4: think that another like one off like Panama was going
Speaker 4: to happen again. Did you think it'd be a peacetime
Speaker 4: military did you did you even think about it?
Speaker 6: I did. I hoped for it. I hope for war.
Speaker 6: I don't know why. I don't anymore. But it needed it. Yes,
Speaker 6: you know, there's a scripture. There's a scripture that says
Speaker 6: God did this just to teach the Israelites war, like
Speaker 6: the Lord is a warrior. I mean, it's it's all
Speaker 6: over the place. It's an important thing, and it's it's
Speaker 6: just not respected enough like it should be, like it
Speaker 6: has been in history and we don't know. I don't
Speaker 6: know why.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and isn't It's kind of funny because I think
Speaker 4: when when you're like that, it's like chasing. It's this
Speaker 4: escalating chase, right that, Yeah, that you know for somebody
Speaker 4: who grows up, you know, in in a not so
Speaker 4: peaceful household, like getting hit is no big deal. So
Speaker 4: where most gentle you know, gentleman, uh, you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I wonder how I do if I was ever punched
Speaker 4: in the face, or I wonder how I do.
Speaker 5: It's like you're like, ah, whatever, but then you want
Speaker 5: to be in combat.
Speaker 4: But then you get in combat, and you're like, well,
Speaker 4: I didn't kill anybody, Like, it's not really combat if
Speaker 4: I didn't kill anybody, right, And then you kill somebody
Speaker 4: and then it's like, oh, I never killed anybody with
Speaker 4: a knife, you know, or or whatever it is, Yeah,
Speaker 4: with epistol exactly.
Speaker 5: Whatever it is, like you always find that one thing,
Speaker 5: that that piece that's missing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I didn't get shot. Everybody on my team got shot,
Speaker 6: right multiple times except me? Right? Why?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: And then it's crazy like okay, dude, that's you know,
Speaker 6: that's enough.
Speaker 4: But it's absolutely that way, right, these elaborate fantasies of
Speaker 4: how a firefight goes down so that you can like,
Speaker 4: you know, pull off some John wickshit or something, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is, And then it's the next one and
Speaker 6: the next one. And I remember thinking bank Gazi happened
Speaker 6: and I had taken Arabic for a year and lived
Speaker 6: in Israel. I was off a team, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 6: I want to go back to a team. And as
Speaker 6: I'm thinking that, I see Brett Favre on the Vikings
Speaker 6: like just get murdered by some d end and it
Speaker 6: was like, Oh, that's gonna be me. If I go back.
Speaker 1: So right, So you had this injury and this horseshoe malfunction.
Speaker 2: I think you said two thousand and nine, but you
Speaker 2: were medically retired in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: So tell us about what that next step was. Like
Speaker 1: you said you were off a team.
Speaker 6: That was actually twenty ten. Okay, yep. So then I
Speaker 6: went to like I said, I volunteered for to learn Arabic.
Speaker 6: I had always thought that would be cool. We're in
Speaker 6: We're in k Cook on a rotation. Hey, anybody want
Speaker 6: to do Arabic? That would come up like once a year,
Speaker 6: and I prayed about it and it was like instantly
Speaker 6: I got this, Yes, do it? So I did. And
Speaker 6: again I felt like I was betraying my team, But
Speaker 6: why are they asking if they're not serious? So you know,
Speaker 6: and then I'm I'm in Israel earning Arabic. My whole
Speaker 6: team gets fragged in Afghanistan, of course, and I'm mad
Speaker 6: because I'm not there getting fragged with But it was great.
Speaker 6: I learned that I did that. And then so eleven
Speaker 6: twelve the process started. Then you know, somewhere in there
Speaker 6: the medical retirement because the TBI stuff, I just I
Speaker 6: couldn't keep up so in the PTSD, and so when
Speaker 6: I went and talked to the maddics, the med shed,
Speaker 6: the doctor and Colonel Dyer, the psych there, it was
Speaker 6: almost like they were waiting for me to come to
Speaker 6: them and say I'm done. So h yeah. So there
Speaker 6: was a year or whatever in there is where I
Speaker 6: just worked at the language lab and facilitated others learning
Speaker 6: foreign languages and and.
Speaker 2: Then medically retired. And you know, as we we kind
Speaker 2: of get into your like post service life, I want
Speaker 2: to ask you because as we have this conversation, like
Speaker 2: I'm sensing there there are two different days at this
Speaker 2: time right there is you mentioned praying numerous times. There's
Speaker 2: Dave who who has religious faith and has a family,
Speaker 2: and then there's Dave that as you said before that
Speaker 2: you want it.
Speaker 1: You try to die And what what what was that
Speaker 1: experience like? And uh, you know post service.
Speaker 6: I went through. I went through two divorces back to back.
Speaker 6: Uh that that was the main thing. I have three kids. Uh,
Speaker 6: it was just too much like day like Dave was saying,
Speaker 6: it's I stacked. I try to stack so much stuff
Speaker 6: and so many cool things as much as I could
Speaker 6: until I couldn't and I hope that's enough, right, I
Speaker 6: hope I did enough to be respected, Like what.
Speaker 1: To respect yourself? Yeah, it's all internal, right, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you come to learn later. But so help me out, please, man.
Speaker 1: Of your post service life, and you know some of
Speaker 1: the struggles that you went through.
Speaker 6: Its just in twenty fourteen, this night in November, something
Speaker 6: came over me and my brother had hung himself two
Speaker 6: years prior. And he wasn't supposed to. That was supposed
Speaker 6: to be me. That dies, not my little brother, right it.
Speaker 6: I I wasn't facing it. I didn't. I didn't know
Speaker 6: how to face it. I had two new babies. I man,
Speaker 6: I tried to get I didn't try to. But so
Speaker 6: I had two XY's. They're teaming up on me. Their
Speaker 6: nickname I Rack in Afghanistan because I keep having to
Speaker 6: go back and fight each one. They get like restraining
Speaker 6: order number freaking four, right where the cops come and
Speaker 6: take your guns. The cops know me. I'm like, hey, man,
Speaker 6: can I brush my teeth? Yep? Go ahead? Will you
Speaker 6: cuffed me in front? Sure? Dave like just going through
Speaker 6: the motions. But I was never ever convicted that. They
Speaker 6: were never held up. They were always dropped, so it's
Speaker 6: just harassment. So for some reason in there, man, I
Speaker 6: was like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Speaker 6: Next time they come to take my guns, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: make a stand. And I was serious about it. It
Speaker 6: happened again, and I said, sir, I'm sorry. You know
Speaker 6: they're at the door of the cops. Five cars out
Speaker 6: there blocking positions. I said, no disrespect, but I'm not
Speaker 6: going to give you my guns. This is stupid, and
Speaker 6: I shut the door. He's like, please don't do this.
Speaker 6: I said, you, please, don't do this. And I'm going
Speaker 6: down into my basement. This is ten years ago. I'm
Speaker 6: going down into my basement, into my alamo to fight
Speaker 6: it out and my ex wife my wife at the time,
Speaker 6: I didn't know how sick this was until my wife,
Speaker 6: now Laura, told me how sick this was. She says, Okay,
Speaker 6: well good luck or you know whatever. She said. But
Speaker 6: she's I'm telling her to leave the house. That she's leaving.
Speaker 6: She's not trying to talk me out of it. Right.
Speaker 6: I didn't even realize it at the time. She wants
Speaker 6: me to die, she wants my so I'm saying god bye,
Speaker 6: to my son's my twin boys, who were born on
Speaker 6: November nineteenth, twenty twelve, ten years to the day after
Speaker 6: an ambush in Afghanistan November nineteenth, two thousand and two. Said, note,
Speaker 6: I'm saying goodbye to Milo, my son, who's five months old.
Speaker 6: And he starts laughing, the first time he's ever laughed
Speaker 6: and in his life, five months old. And it snapped
Speaker 6: me out of whatever dark cloud I was in, and
Speaker 6: I said, what the hell I'm doing.
Speaker 2: This is not.
Speaker 6: Worth it? Take everything except my kids, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I called. I called the cop. I said, hey, man,
Speaker 6: come and get them. They're cleared. All my guns are
Speaker 6: cleared right here in the open. And they were. They
Speaker 6: were mounting up for the attack. Yeah, so that that happened.
Speaker 6: Come on, it's so clearly divine intervention. I tell my boy, like,
Speaker 6: you saved my life. Some day I'll tell you how.
Speaker 6: He's eleven now. But they came, you know. So they
Speaker 6: come back into this guy's looking for a fight. He
Speaker 6: comes up, he's trying to smell alcohol. I'm not drinking,
Speaker 6: get some, you know, and he just takes me to jail.
Speaker 6: They go through their counting every round. It takes about
Speaker 6: six hours, I got reload and stuff. It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 6: Ends up. Man, the guy drives me home. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm sitting in the front seat talking to him. We
Speaker 6: were like friends, if we could be, but you know,
Speaker 6: we're just we talked it out of me and the
Speaker 6: cop and that was the last time that happened. But
Speaker 6: that was so close, you know, if you let that. Oh,
Speaker 6: it's so hard. There's a we've got to have our
Speaker 6: right good probably bad part. You guys know what I'm saying. Man,
Speaker 6: It's it's a fine line.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's it's whether it's a real line or not.
Speaker 4: It's a line that you feel will break you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: And you know, and I'm curious, you know, I sort
Speaker 4: of growing up in an abusive environment. You know, until
Speaker 4: we reach some level of self enlightenment and recognize our patterns,
Speaker 4: we often seek out relationships that and people who repeat
Speaker 4: that or or whatever. And it sounds like these women
Speaker 4: were very skilled or very good at that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. I mean, And who's the last person we
Speaker 6: look at to be at fault. Like, you know, my
Speaker 6: friend told me, hey, you got to be at least
Speaker 6: fifty percent of the problem. Yeah, Like I'll admit that,
Speaker 6: but not fifty one. Oh yeah, I'm probably seventy five percent.
Speaker 6: I don't know who cares. Yeah, like, yeah, let's stop
Speaker 6: finding these patterns.
Speaker 5: Yeah, essent.
Speaker 2: What was I mean you walked right up to the precipice.
Speaker 2: What was your path to recovery after that moment?
Speaker 6: So it was shortly after that was the night of
Speaker 6: like I'm gonna die. I don't know how, but I'm
Speaker 6: dying tonight. And then it was so I think like
Speaker 6: if I was to talk tell somebody about I'd say,
Speaker 6: just walk it out, move, move your ass, move your faith,
Speaker 6: whatever it is in there, move it, play it out.
Speaker 6: I'm just dealing with this with my nineteen year old daughter.
Speaker 6: She's like, I don't have a purpose of why am
Speaker 6: I alive? She had a suicide attempt last year. My
Speaker 6: baby girl is now nineteen and with slit wrist. And
Speaker 6: I was like, Cam, set a goal. I don't care
Speaker 6: if it's crazy, and see if you can do it,
Speaker 6: do everything you can. If you can't, then you know, okay,
Speaker 6: life's not worth living. And she said, okay, So yeah,
Speaker 6: it's about walking it out and moving it. Face the
Speaker 6: tank man. One time we were on patrol and we well,
Speaker 6: we're going on a hit and there's an N one
Speaker 6: tank in this field, like there wasn't supposed to be there,
Speaker 6: and we couldn't reach him on the radio. So like, man,
Speaker 6: if we just walk by and he wakes up, he's
Speaker 6: gonna shoot us. So that's my saying now, like face
Speaker 6: the tank, figure it out. I end up knocking on
Speaker 6: this tank, you know, like, what are you guys doing here?
Speaker 6: We almost shot you? Like okay, and then he's now
Speaker 6: he's pulling overwatch for us, So face the Tankah.
Speaker 2: And You've gotten involved in a bunch of other things
Speaker 2: since then, I mean, coaching high school football. Some it
Speaker 2: sounds like, you know, missionary work almost and see and
Speaker 2: even document you know, some Hollywood stuff.
Speaker 6: Also, Yeah, people ask me, I'll be like, do you
Speaker 6: have a job, Not officially, but I'm busy as hell
Speaker 6: and my life is great. I am so happy, guys,
Speaker 6: you know, joyful, just things are. Things are good now.
Speaker 6: Because I admitted that I couldn't fix myself, that I
Speaker 6: needed help, that I got to talk, somebody asked me
Speaker 6: for help or anything, yep. And and man, I look
Speaker 6: back and it's like people were so grateful to me
Speaker 6: along the way. I did so many a lot of
Speaker 6: stupid things, just hurtful things, you know, things that were
Speaker 6: done to me. And it's all about relationships. So yeah,
Speaker 6: sire Leone is a big one. We a friend of
Speaker 6: mine just he's a he's a pastor and he it
Speaker 6: happened through him. And then I'm a theologie like I am.
Speaker 6: I went to seminary not to preach. I just love
Speaker 6: studying and you know, learning the why of things. So
Speaker 6: I'm helping my friend out. He had to leave. So
Speaker 6: then I just stayed on board and I'm doing these
Speaker 6: Bible studies online with this church in siur Leone and
Speaker 6: sending them a little, a very little bit of amount
Speaker 6: of money every week. That has become an orphanage. The
Speaker 6: roof just went up. It's and when the guy told me,
Speaker 6: let's let's do this orphanage, I'm like, I said, okay,
Speaker 6: Like it's not going to happen. But it's been two
Speaker 6: years of this money trickling, and that goes a long
Speaker 6: way over there.
Speaker 1: We have an orphanage that your impossible goal that you set.
Speaker 6: Right it happens. It's like, oh wow, that's the biggest
Speaker 6: that's the coolest thing I've ever been able to be
Speaker 6: a part of. Then all this other stuff because you
Speaker 6: see a kid hurting, man, it's I can't handle that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, David, If anybody is listening and they might want
Speaker 4: to help out with this church or this orphan Asian
Speaker 4: serial leone is, is there a way that they can
Speaker 4: do that?
Speaker 6: Thank you? Yeah? Probably Christology podcast on Instagram to start,
Speaker 6: and then I'll send them right to Pastor Hamilberg, who's
Speaker 6: the pastor there, and they'll they'll do it direct. That's
Speaker 6: not this. I don't have a Bible one C. Three.
Speaker 6: I just I don't have the capacity right now for
Speaker 6: that the business side of it. But if they want
Speaker 6: to give, absolutely that would be awesome. I'll put them
Speaker 6: right in touch with the pastor and it's easy.
Speaker 5: So it's Christology.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Christology podcast.
Speaker 5: Christology podcast on Instagra.
Speaker 1: Want to tell us a bit about what your podcast
Speaker 1: is about.
Speaker 6: Also, we've done forty episodes maybe Christology the Study of Jesus?
Speaker 6: Who is He? Who he is? I in seminary it
Speaker 6: kept coming that word kept popping up. I was like,
Speaker 6: that's a silly word or what does it mean? Like
Speaker 6: you don't see it anywhere. What's the same as theology
Speaker 6: THEO is God, the study of God, Christ, the study
Speaker 6: of Christ. So it always came down to, like Paul
Speaker 6: or Peter has a high Christology and these people have
Speaker 6: a low Christology. It's who he is. I've boiled everything down,
Speaker 6: all my experiences in life to that question. Everybody's answering
Speaker 6: that question in one way or another with how we
Speaker 6: live and die of is he he says he is?
Speaker 6: And it's not about Hey, check it out. I'm gonna
Speaker 6: tell you who he is. We can have any bands,
Speaker 6: so we can talk about football or anything, because he
Speaker 6: made it all, he said, he says in the words.
Speaker 6: So that's it, I mean. And this is a great
Speaker 6: platform and way to I guess get people to look
Speaker 6: and see. So, yeah, it's a lot of work, man,
Speaker 6: it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you also got involved in the war Dog documentary.
Speaker 2: You know, you tell us a little bit about these
Speaker 2: projects that you got pulled into, and you know it
Speaker 2: sounds like you really went your professional experiences to them.
Speaker 6: That was like a gift. Hbo Channing Tatum produced and
Speaker 6: funded this documentary called war Dog A Soldier's Best Friend.
Speaker 6: When it started, it was like this is going to
Speaker 6: be maybe, you know, win an award. Like we had
Speaker 6: director Deb Scranton. She'd done this really good stuff in
Speaker 6: the past, and you know, we had this momentum and
Speaker 6: the time it took to do that. It went from
Speaker 6: like yellow ribbons and thank Troops to you know, we
Speaker 6: suck in those few years from I don't know, fifteen
Speaker 6: to twenty eighteen. But it was incredible to do. It
Speaker 6: was hard, but told my Pepper story and there's a
Speaker 6: couple other guys on there telling stories about dogs. And
Speaker 6: we go to Hollywood and meet Channing Tatum and like
Speaker 6: magic Mike like stay away from my wife, dude, like
Speaker 6: but it was. It was so cool. And then while
Speaker 6: we're there, there's these a couple guys, the dog handler
Speaker 6: from the TV show Seal Team, Justin Melnick, he's there.
Speaker 6: He's like, Hey, do you want to come out to
Speaker 6: the set tomorrow And I'm like, nope, nope, nope, I
Speaker 6: don't want to do anything. I want to go home.
Speaker 6: And we talked a little more, and so we went
Speaker 6: out to the set Laura and I my wife, and
Speaker 6: watched him film and then they said, like you want
Speaker 6: to be extras? I said, okay, So we came back
Speaker 6: for this, but I'm a dog handler now on a
Speaker 6: TV show. In episode thirteen of season one of Seal Team,
Speaker 6: I'm a dog handler that gets killed. I love it.
Speaker 6: It's just my night. I don't have any lines. I'm
Speaker 6: just walking into the team. We go into a building. Boom.
Speaker 6: You know. It was so fun to do. And I
Speaker 6: got paid four times the amount to act like what
Speaker 6: I used to do for real.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, and you found it fun to play out like
Speaker 2: the fantasy where the stakes are so much low lower
Speaker 2: than they were overseas.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all that. It was hilarious. It was fun. And
Speaker 6: then so then this is worth talking about. Sure, Chris
Speaker 6: Chulac was the director. I think he's gone out from
Speaker 6: that show. But what an awesome guy. I met these
Speaker 6: people in Hollywood. I thought it was going to be
Speaker 6: what you hear about man. Without that, like my experience
Speaker 6: from the VA and all that stuff wouldn't have been
Speaker 6: complete because they were like just real people. And can
Speaker 6: you watch this and see what you think and how
Speaker 6: I'm doing this and give some feedback. And I'm watching
Speaker 6: this scene where this RPG round comes up a string.
Speaker 6: You know they're making a TV show, right, But something
Speaker 6: freaking like the only like PTSD like movie type thing
Speaker 6: I've ever had.
Speaker 2: I was like.
Speaker 6: Something triggered and I and I had to walk away,
Speaker 6: and I was gonna start crying and I was gonna
Speaker 6: be embarrassed, but I had been to the VA, so
Speaker 6: I knew what to do. I turned back around and
Speaker 6: I talked to my wife, and then I talked to
Speaker 6: the director, Chris Julac. I was like, he said, was
Speaker 6: that was that pretty good? I said, yeah, that was
Speaker 6: really that was really freaking. That was really race.
Speaker 1: That was pretty on target.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yep, yeah, keep that up. That was good. But
Speaker 6: you know, I was able to stay in it. And
Speaker 6: that was like the first sort of win with something
Speaker 6: like that, and then it's happened many more times and
Speaker 6: now it's a breeze right now. Life is like like
Speaker 6: it should be. Hollywood was awesome. Went out to Justin's
Speaker 6: house last year and rode horses with his wife. Me
Speaker 6: and my wife and daughter went out there, and just
Speaker 6: the dog handler from Seal Team awesome.
Speaker 1: That's super cool.
Speaker 7: And you said that now you're married to a woman.
Speaker 7: Did you say she was a veterinarian in the unit,
Speaker 7: Laura Miller. She was the vet tech vet tech. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so the enlisted help her to the vet Big Army. Well,
Speaker 7: she was in the Army twenty six years. She retired
Speaker 7: right after me. We were friends when I was in
Speaker 7: she was the vet tech and yeah, so she worked
Speaker 7: with Pepper and all the dogs at the unit nine
Speaker 7: years about the same time for him, I was.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and we both found ourselves single and now we
Speaker 6: are spend every second together. That's awesome, fantastic, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so where are you at today?
Speaker 2: I mean, you've had this like incredible journey, I mean,
Speaker 2: walking almost up to the brink. I was kind of
Speaker 2: curious about, like where you're at today, and you know,
Speaker 2: you've shared some really good experiences with us. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I'm just interested in, you know, I guess if
Speaker 2: we were to like aar this entire conversation, I mean,
Speaker 2: lessons learned, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I appreciate that, Jack. You know what, It's still
Speaker 6: just as hard, Yeah, but I don't take it as hard,
Speaker 6: Like I still am struggling presently with what do I
Speaker 6: need to be doing? Do I do I write that book?
Speaker 6: I've started a book forty forty times and the title
Speaker 6: changes and I can't organize it and like blah blah blah,
Speaker 6: but I gotta get this out, you know. So it's
Speaker 6: like and if I do or don't, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 6: But then it's like, man, am I being lazy? Am
Speaker 6: I not? And then you know, people like, well, you
Speaker 6: got your missionary work on a podcast and your football coach.
Speaker 6: It's just like, okay, you know, it's kind of self.
Speaker 1: Imposed your defense, Dave. I mean, writing and rewriting a
Speaker 1: book forty times is quite normal.
Speaker 6: So I've heard yeah, good, I don't even know that,
Speaker 6: you know, it needs to be told this is this
Speaker 6: is good. It's not you know, the cliche is true.
Speaker 6: On my I've had like I got this list like
Speaker 6: it was one a week when I was doing a
Speaker 6: podcast a week of usually like a guy who was
Speaker 6: in the Rangers in the nineties or two thousands for
Speaker 6: four years and then got out in those Man, that's hard. Uh,
Speaker 6: it's so hard, and they'd be like, you know, I
Speaker 6: heard something you said, and man, I appreciate I was.
Speaker 6: I was about to just totally give up, but I'm
Speaker 6: gonna try again. It's like, oh man, that's cool, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean and it's it's wild too,
Speaker 4: you know, because like with the post traumatic stress, with
Speaker 4: the TV I S with the sort of the uh
Speaker 4: what the operator syndrome, and then the OP and then
Speaker 4: and then also the I was doing this and now
Speaker 4: I'm doing something like this, and you know, and a
Speaker 4: lot of guys, I mean girls, a lot of people
Speaker 4: uh from that life find them they find their dark
Speaker 4: night of the soul, right they they they find that
Speaker 4: and and it's not this chronic situation that they have
Speaker 4: to deal with their entire life. It's it's they have
Speaker 4: to get over that bump. And and sometimes a call
Speaker 4: from a buddy, sometimes hearing somebody like yourself talk about
Speaker 4: it sometimes that gets them past the night that that
Speaker 4: that may have changed everything.
Speaker 6: Wow. Sure, yeah, man, that's it. That's deep. And there's
Speaker 6: a name. I think I've heard that, but I didn't
Speaker 6: know people talk about operator syndrome.
Speaker 5: Operator syndrome. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Wow. And and you've you guys are saying that the
Speaker 6: thing is to get through to that and through that.
Speaker 5: I I mean hopefully not to it.
Speaker 4: Hopefully Like people you know, deal with it, you know,
Speaker 4: they talk to you know, they they have a good
Speaker 4: mental health regiment. Most people in our field. Don't like
Speaker 4: we we we've always been self sufficient. How we made
Speaker 4: it through, what we made it through.
Speaker 5: You know, we don't. We don't focus on our problems, right,
Speaker 5: Our problems are I don't really care. I don't really care.
Speaker 5: I don't really care. But enough I don't really care.
Speaker 5: Is that it all starts to build up after a while.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and then when and then one day you
Speaker 5: do care and you care a lot.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah. So it's face the tank every day, no
Speaker 6: less than one bold move is kind of my motto
Speaker 6: because I've been slowsful, lazy or lately and uh lazy
Speaker 6: lately uh but like almost freaking had a damn heart attack,
Speaker 6: like I will go up with chess bains and went
Speaker 6: to the hospital. So like it's really hard, people say this,
Speaker 6: but to learn to relax, Yes, yeah, yeah, isn't it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what's up with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's keep it keeping up that high adrenaline rate,
Speaker 2: that's what That's what that is, you know, And and
Speaker 2: sitting still and doing nothing is just like so empathetical
Speaker 2: to you know, who we it's really who we are
Speaker 2: as people, right, because like who you were as a
Speaker 2: person is what led you to this profession.
Speaker 1: Not the other way around.
Speaker 4: A really a really good shrink at the VA told me.
Speaker 4: She said, it's its own type of post traumatic stress.
Speaker 4: It's like this low grade post traumatic stress that just
Speaker 4: taxes the body.
Speaker 5: She goes, because where you guys come.
Speaker 4: From and then where you're at now, it's like you
Speaker 4: have one foot on the gas and one foot on
Speaker 4: the brake all the time, and that's how you're driving
Speaker 4: through life.
Speaker 6: Oh my god. Yeah, mmm, well.
Speaker 4: We have some questions, right, ok, we have some viewer questions. Uh, Bjorn,
Speaker 4: thank you very much. What was your experience like with
Speaker 4: other Tier one units like dev gru and twenty fourth
Speaker 4: sts and FBI hurt Which team works best with unit?
Speaker 6: So it's always kind of a it's kind of like
Speaker 6: two dogs coming together. Really is just like you're really
Speaker 6: I mean, honestly, you're ready to fight, That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 6: It's just like you're just you're bowed up because it's
Speaker 6: good on good right, that's what we call it on
Speaker 6: the football field, ones on ones, and you end up
Speaker 6: being friends. But it's like, in the back of your mind,
Speaker 6: how am I going to take this guy? Right? Right?
Speaker 5: Be kind me courteous, but have a plan to kill
Speaker 5: everybody you meet.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's true, it really is. But I always love
Speaker 6: the Seals really. I mean a couple of incidences, but
Speaker 6: you know, I did stupid things too. I don't know, man,
Speaker 6: I always thought they were great and laid back, which
Speaker 6: is how I am like, I'm should have been s
Speaker 6: F instead of ranger. FBI was like, oh, that was
Speaker 6: a tough one, especially when they were with us. I'm like, what,
Speaker 6: we just waited him out, man. We just like had
Speaker 6: a little talk with him, you know about like, hey,
Speaker 6: we're gonna go do this. What do you think about that?
Speaker 6: One guy was like cool, and one guy was like,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure that's okay. You don't need to come.
Speaker 2: I remember when we were doing a class on EPW
Speaker 2: and searches and one of the rangers was given the
Speaker 2: class was like, so, you know, you come up. You
Speaker 2: know your barrel is hot because you've just been in
Speaker 2: an ambush. You come up to the body, you just
Speaker 2: stick your hot barrel in his eyeball, and if he flinches,
Speaker 2: you pull the trigger. The FBI guys looked like they
Speaker 2: were about to ship their pants right then and there.
Speaker 5: I always am nervous around and I'm like, you learn
Speaker 5: something wrong? At what am I?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: What have I done wrong lately?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: Are they really here for because of you know what
Speaker 5: they say.
Speaker 1: The tax in the background that they're looking into.
Speaker 6: Yeah you really hear just a fingerprint is dead, dude?
Speaker 6: That I feel you really?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Uh Bjorn? Thank you again? How different are the
Speaker 5: squadron cultures?
Speaker 6: Very just like ranger companies, just like football teams in
Speaker 6: a county, just like siblings. There's always a personality. It's
Speaker 6: it's cool. I mean, that would be a whole field
Speaker 6: of study, I think, But like Charlie Company one S five,
Speaker 6: you know, I was attached to them as a sniper, like,
Speaker 6: but then individually I got good friends from there. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm a I think then twenty years go by and
Speaker 6: you hear you grew up a little bit, and you
Speaker 6: hear other like you guys were really retarded. Some of
Speaker 6: the stuff you did wearing sandbags on your head in Panama?
Speaker 6: Why'd you do that? Like I didn't want to expect
Speaker 6: for it made me do it. I'm like, yeah, he's nuts.
Speaker 6: The dude's crazy. So it's like, yeah, we work kind
Speaker 6: of dumb, but they do have personalities squadron to squadron.
Speaker 5: It's weird, isn't it too?
Speaker 4: Because you wonder where that because it sounds as though
Speaker 4: Aco is the same everywhere, because like at two some
Speaker 4: five they were the alphabots and and if you're wearing
Speaker 4: sandbags on it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it's weird that it had that a company
Speaker 5: has a.
Speaker 4: Person and a lasting personality, not a person that's driven
Speaker 4: by you know, the sergeant major or the first argant, but.
Speaker 6: It's enduring thing. Yeah, it's it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: Bjorn. Thanks again.
Speaker 4: Also, what was more rewarding for you personally being an
Speaker 4: assaulter or a sniper? And do the jobs require a
Speaker 4: different personality?
Speaker 6: Pretty pretty awesome question. You have to be able to
Speaker 6: do both, because when I was there, you get switched.
Speaker 6: You're like, hey, you're going to a wrecky troop. You
Speaker 6: don't always have a choice, and it's just a whole
Speaker 6: extra set of skills and guns that you got to
Speaker 6: maintain and do. It's a lot of extra work, but
Speaker 6: it's its own rewards. So different personalities. I always say
Speaker 6: my greatest sniper shot was about one point eight meters.
Speaker 6: I was moving, I was reaching back like this, and
Speaker 6: I do grabbed his wife and it was the first
Speaker 6: time I shot brown tip and I hit him like
Speaker 6: you know when you blow it the yolk out of
Speaker 6: an egg with a pinhole, Like somehow it hit him
Speaker 6: magically and his brain popped out on his wife's lap. Wow,
Speaker 6: as I'm moving and like they're moving and my team
Speaker 6: leaders going up, you know, the other side, or my teammate,
Speaker 6: and we see that slow motion and he looks at
Speaker 6: me like, I'm like, I don't know, that's weird. She's
Speaker 6: sitting there with her brain and the like just nothing,
Speaker 6: I mean, what that doesn't happen? So I call that
Speaker 6: my best sniper shot, well because it was. I didn't
Speaker 6: have any long sexy sniper shots. But I'm proud of
Speaker 6: that one because you know, he was pulling his wife
Speaker 6: and to use her as a human shield. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: put I put it right in the only spot that
Speaker 6: lots of sniper training, you know. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 6: just never had a long shot. Yeah, three hundred meters
Speaker 6: but nothing nothing wrong.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: See, I've been led to believe though, that a sniper
Speaker 4: around the head would have made his entire head explode
Speaker 4: bye bye, by all the current ballistics experts.
Speaker 1: Out there, you don't even have to close by them.
Speaker 5: Close by that it'll shear half their head off.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, unless you' shooting ice bullets right.
Speaker 5: Right right if Jorn, thanks again? What was harder selection
Speaker 5: or OTC?
Speaker 6: And why damn? What's with these good questions? Really good questions?
Speaker 6: Go Lee. I've thought about this one a lot. And selection,
Speaker 6: I'd say OTCS because it was harder because selection you're alone.
Speaker 6: I got to be alone walking the mountains and it's
Speaker 6: non stop walking the mountains and you're wet and tired.
Speaker 6: But I mean it's so out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 6: I would I can't sing, but I was singing whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, hymns and hers and everything. I'm just singing
Speaker 6: like afraid that I'm you know, I'm not gonna make it.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, I mean it was miles and miles
Speaker 6: and miles, hundreds and hundreds of miles in the mountains
Speaker 6: over many states, and it was extremely difficult. But OHTC
Speaker 6: was harder because it's long, grueling, longer than it takes
Speaker 6: to train a fighter pilot. And I did it twice.
Speaker 6: I did OCC twice and ripped twice.
Speaker 4: Glutton for punishment, you are, yeah, not anymore and corporn,
Speaker 4: thank you very much. Any funny stories from when they
Speaker 4: first brought dogs into the unit.
Speaker 6: So Pepper, before I had her, she and before Shawn
Speaker 6: Kelly had her, she was with a guy named Kelly Robie,
Speaker 6: who's an awesome dude. He's out there on Instagram.
Speaker 5: Kelly is second bat with Kelly. Yeah, I was a
Speaker 5: second bat with Kelly.
Speaker 6: Oh nice, nice, nice. Yeah he had Pepper first. I wasn't.
Speaker 6: I wasn't there. But this is a true story. Kelly
Speaker 6: is just freaking he's real. He sent Pepper out, you know,
Speaker 6: on a training mission as we're attempting, like somebody got
Speaker 6: had the idea, Hey, do you think we can do
Speaker 6: cekep with thugs? Well, why, well, because they can go
Speaker 6: up and bite somebody and we won't get shot. How
Speaker 6: the hell are you going to do that? Well, we're
Speaker 6: going to train him by by doing this, and then
Speaker 6: one more step and one more step. So this was
Speaker 6: way early in the process. So you know, it turns
Speaker 6: out we go to war and we have we're fighting
Speaker 6: people that are just culturally extremely different, different diet, they
Speaker 6: smell different, so it's pretty easy for the dog watch
Speaker 6: the turf as you're getting into a panther. Pretty easy
Speaker 6: target discrimination there. But in training, so Kelly sent Pepper
Speaker 6: into it a dark room. She goes around and she
Speaker 6: comes back. He's looking for her, and she bit him
Speaker 6: in the nuts, her own handler. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 6: the end of that relationship.
Speaker 1: That'll do it.
Speaker 6: Yep, Kelly was done with Pepper. I mean, maybe I'm
Speaker 6: missing something and he'll fix it. But awesome guy. He
Speaker 6: helped me. Like I got to the unit and there's
Speaker 6: like a few guys that are just down to earth.
Speaker 6: He was one of them, Like he just knew it
Speaker 6: was hard and he was an operator the whole way.
Speaker 6: That's the that's the key man, be an operator in life.
Speaker 6: But I, you know, have the mentality of a support person.
Speaker 6: He was like that. And yeah, I mean I'm sure
Speaker 6: there's a lot more.
Speaker 4: But Joe's got Thank you very much. Do dogs play
Speaker 4: any role in the SSC process on targets?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I can't answer that one. Okay, Yeah, good question,
Speaker 6: very good question. Love it, love it, Love the thought there.
Speaker 5: And then this last question.
Speaker 4: Is asking if you knew some people by name and
Speaker 4: what you thought about them. So I can either ask
Speaker 4: you and you can say whatever you want to say,
Speaker 4: or I can not even bring the names up so
Speaker 4: you won't be held.
Speaker 6: I'm fine, I'm not I'll face that tank. I'm cool
Speaker 6: with it.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: Did you know Tom D Scott Miller or Steve Gilliand
Speaker 4: if so, what did you think of him? And what
Speaker 4: did you think of the officers you served under?
Speaker 5: Walk the unit?
Speaker 6: I know who all those men are, Scottie, General Miller. Awesome,
Speaker 6: awesome man. He's the kind of guy. I never directly
Speaker 6: directly worked with him, like in a troop, but amazing man.
Speaker 6: I'll take the time for he was a commander for
Speaker 6: a time when I was there. Excellent officer. You know
Speaker 6: this wasn't him, but I had true commanders who would
Speaker 6: We were getting ready to go on a mission and
Speaker 6: I'd be like, where's my quickie saw? You know, I
Speaker 6: got I gotta have the saw on my back because
Speaker 6: we're roping. Boss, where's the quickie? It's on his back.
Speaker 6: He's like, no, No, it's okay, I got it, Like boss, no, no,
Speaker 6: that's my job. I already got it on.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: I mean you know it's okay. Like something like that.
Speaker 6: An officer does something like that for me. We are
Speaker 6: we're good man, I got you, brother, and then that
Speaker 6: perpetuates that that real brotherhood. You know, it doesn't have
Speaker 6: to be that divide and there very often wasn't at
Speaker 6: the unit a couple of times, but for the most part, man,
Speaker 6: were they good solid men, officers, men that I still
Speaker 6: aspire to be, like, you know, Scott MILLERSA Yeah, wonderful man.
Speaker 6: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Did you know if we had on Petra nothing?
Speaker 2: Well, Dave, I mean, thank you for sharing your experiences
Speaker 2: with us man and just being so open. I really
Speaker 2: appreciate it, and you know, I think it goes a
Speaker 2: long way to you know what we've been talking about
Speaker 2: this whole time. I mean, like these conversations matter to
Speaker 2: a lot of people out there, whether they're veterans or
Speaker 2: even if they're young people. That we do have a
Speaker 2: lot of a young audience actually, of people who are
Speaker 2: thinking about signing up, thinking about and listening, and I
Speaker 2: think these are really.
Speaker 1: Like important conversations for them to hear.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm. That's good to hear. That's really I don't
Speaker 6: know if I've thought about it like that, like that's
Speaker 6: cool and man, Jack days, thank you guys. I wish
Speaker 6: there were so many times I wanted to stop and
Speaker 6: ask your opinion or you know, stuff from you guys.
Speaker 6: Maybe we can do that at some point. I want
Speaker 6: to hear some of your stories.
Speaker 1: I would be happy to have you on again, man, anytime.
Speaker 1: You know, this has been. This has been really interesting
Speaker 1: and insightful.
Speaker 6: I think, thank you guys very very much. It has been.
Speaker 6: I knew it would be. I don't get nervous anymore
Speaker 6: because I've done it a few times, and it's it
Speaker 6: takes me to hopefully many people to like the next level,
Speaker 6: Like I, okay, I just talked about more stuff than
Speaker 6: I didn't think of it. You know, I knew when
Speaker 6: not to talk about stuff, but like it's it's it's
Speaker 6: a scary thing to think that I might get it
Speaker 6: wrong because of the deadly seriousness of what we what
Speaker 6: we did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm I'm envious.
Speaker 4: I I mean, if I could change one thing in
Speaker 4: my life, it would have been that I would have
Speaker 4: kept journals because as you know, like it was just
Speaker 4: it's one green GluR after a while.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I kept grgs too, So like I've got dates,
Speaker 6: one day I'll sit down and match them all up.
Speaker 6: I haven't done it yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a I'd really encourage you to finish your book, Dave,
Speaker 2: even if you don't publish it, if you put it
Speaker 2: in a shoe box and you're safe for your kids.
Speaker 2: I get emails all the time from the kids of
Speaker 2: Vietnam veterans and how do I find out my dad
Speaker 2: did because he.
Speaker 1: Never talked about it, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a podcast of course nowadays, but you know,
Speaker 2: those sharing those memories with your kids and grandkids, it
Speaker 2: means a lot to them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you for the encouragement. I will do that.
Speaker 1: Next Friday, we'll be back. We're going to have Alan
Speaker 1: Schabarrow on the show.
Speaker 2: Alan's a great guy that I knew from back in
Speaker 2: the day, and he served in third Special Forces Group
Speaker 2: and he just got back from some time he spent
Speaker 2: in the West Bank.
Speaker 6: And in Israel.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna have an interesting conversation with Alan next week.
Speaker 2: I hope you guys will join us.
Speaker 4: Then check out Christology on Instagram. Yeah, Christology podcast on Instagram.
Speaker 5: Thanks everybody.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you Dave staying talking to Thank you brothers,
Speaker 6: appreciate it. Thanks