Speaker 1: Special Operations Cobert oh Spionage The Team House with your
Speaker 1: hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, welcome to episode three hundred and sixty two
Speaker 2: of the podcast. Ah sorry, I just had to mute something.
Speaker 2: Episode three hundred and sixty two of The Team House.
Speaker 2: I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on tonight's
Speaker 2: show is nic O'Kelly. Nick served in Special Forces and
Speaker 2: first Group in Okinawa, deployed to the Philippines, went to
Speaker 2: flight school, served in third Combat Aviation Brigade, deployed Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: went and assessed for one sixtieth Special Operations Aviation. You
Speaker 2: were a Blackhawk guy, didn't direct apployment, and then got
Speaker 2: medically retired and now run a financial planning firm. And
Speaker 2: you have a book called Stigma coming out October twenty first.
Speaker 3: So that's the thumbnail sketch. Nailed it, Yeah, nailed it.
Speaker 3: Thanks for coming in. Yeah, yeah, I know, Thanks for having.
Speaker 4: Me, Thanks for coming up to It's always it's always
Speaker 4: fun to have people in the studio.
Speaker 3: I agree, it's a lot better environment, it's a lot
Speaker 3: more fun, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Nick, I mean the question we typically ask
Speaker 2: our guests. First, is their origin story, if you want
Speaker 2: to tell us a little bit about kind of like
Speaker 2: your upbringing and how that took you towards the military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So grew up in western Washington, Seattle area. Ish
Speaker 3: pretty traditional family, right, like nothing crazy. I didn't have
Speaker 3: like a traumatic childhood or anything. Family is six so,
Speaker 3: four siblings living in the suburbs of Seattle. And then
Speaker 3: I did the traditional like went to college because that
Speaker 3: was the right thing to do route, but found myself
Speaker 3: drinking my way out of college very quickly after about
Speaker 3: a year. You have a good time. Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: like got the freedom out of high school and just
Speaker 3: went hard in college, and like it was one of
Speaker 3: those things where like I wouldn't go to class for
Speaker 3: a week and then I'm like, eh, I don't think
Speaker 3: it's worth going now. I think I missed too much.
Speaker 3: So long story short, I dropped out of college after
Speaker 3: a year and a half, went back home, worked for
Speaker 3: my dad for a year. He owned like a car magazine,
Speaker 3: and really was just partying and doing nothing with my life.
Speaker 3: So fortunately in college I did RTC, so I had
Speaker 3: like some exposure to the army and kind of what
Speaker 3: it was, so That's what led me to be like, okay,
Speaker 3: I should probably do something. Let's look at the military.
Speaker 3: I initially went to the Marines and they told me, basically,
Speaker 3: we can't guarantee your job, can't guarantee your rems. So
Speaker 3: if you enlist, that's fine, but we don't you don't
Speaker 3: know what you're gonna do. So I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do that. So went over to
Speaker 3: the Army recruiter and he showed me the SF recruiting
Speaker 3: video and I was like, hell, yeah, that's those bad
Speaker 3: thing I've ever seen. Yeah, so let's go what do
Speaker 3: I need to do? And yeah, signed the dott A
Speaker 3: Line eighteen X ray and then shipped off for Basic
Speaker 3: in July twenty ten.
Speaker 4: So did you know anything about Special Forces or special
Speaker 4: operations at all prior to that?
Speaker 3: Not really, I mean other than like the movies, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, nothing, Like I wasn't the kid that was
Speaker 3: like I want to go do this, you know. I
Speaker 3: didn't have that like I want to go be a
Speaker 3: groom Bret or go be a Navy seal. Now. I
Speaker 3: just was like that sounds really cool, sounds really hard,
Speaker 3: so let's try it.
Speaker 4: I think I think that for like athletic guys, it's
Speaker 4: like they they you know, therefore shows the PJ or CCT,
Speaker 4: the Navy shows the seals, the Army shows the ranger.
Speaker 3: Of stuff, and they know that a lot of those
Speaker 3: guys are going to wash out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like they're going to go you know, be the
Speaker 4: you know the deck cans, you know. Yeah, most is
Speaker 4: made sort of the you know the gun seconds, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's that's great.
Speaker 4: So what did you did you do any training prior
Speaker 4: to going to s FAS or prior to going to
Speaker 4: basic and everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was because of RTC. I knew kind
Speaker 3: of the standards, right, like the PT tests and stuff,
Speaker 3: So I knew what I needed to work on. So
Speaker 3: I was already a pretty good runner. That obviously goes
Speaker 3: so far when you're enlist. So I had the running
Speaker 3: background and that was the biggest thing that I think
Speaker 3: like made me succeed and do well throughout the whole
Speaker 3: entire pipeline was just the running background. But yeah, so training,
Speaker 3: but not like I didn't follow like a specific program.
Speaker 3: It was more just like all right, let's go sweat
Speaker 3: my ass off every day and yeah, yeah, getting get
Speaker 3: in good shape.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's always interesting me too, because like there's
Speaker 4: such a culture and we've had like do on you know,
Speaker 4: like there's such a culture around you know, kids like
Speaker 4: psyching themselves up for uh, for whatever selection is they're
Speaker 4: going to, and then other guys who are just like Okay,
Speaker 4: I'll I'm mena, let's try this, and they just do it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, And you know, I think obviously fitness in
Speaker 4: shape and condition are a part of it, but there's
Speaker 4: also just like the intent of I'm.
Speaker 3: Just going to do this. Yeah. And I also I
Speaker 3: didn't mention, but during my childhood, like my mom was,
Speaker 3: she was hard, like she was a drill sergeant at home.
Speaker 3: Basically I was the kid if I got like a
Speaker 3: B plus, it was like what happened? Would you do wrong?
Speaker 3: Not like good John?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: So I always had those high standards that were just
Speaker 3: ingrained with me, and I think that like helped a
Speaker 3: lot throughout the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So twenty ten, you're coming into the military. Tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about like the eighteen X ray experience.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all right, so it had I will say
Speaker 3: like it had more from like the early two thousand
Speaker 3: days because I heard horror stories from back then where
Speaker 3: they just miserable, right, And I think by now, by
Speaker 3: the time I was going through, there were enough cadre
Speaker 3: that were eighteen X rays that they had a little
Speaker 3: more sympathy. Right. Yeah, it wasn't like it wasn't like
Speaker 3: what are we doing with this eighteen xt reprader? Right?
Speaker 3: They were like, Okay, now I'm an atwen X ray.
Speaker 3: It's that kind of you know, mutual respect a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I will say like X rays have such a
Speaker 3: leg up compared to somebody just coming from the regular
Speaker 3: Army as far as like selection, right, because you go
Speaker 3: to Sopsey right before, so you have three weeks where
Speaker 3: you're basically working out twice a day, sleeping like ten
Speaker 3: hours a day, and just eating protein and getting ready
Speaker 3: for selection. You know, they teach you land as you
Speaker 3: already have kind of a pre selection course built in.
Speaker 3: Big Army doesn't get that, right, they exactly. So we
Speaker 3: have so we show up to selection kind of already
Speaker 3: and you hear all the G two through the pipeline
Speaker 3: right through the guys that are ahead of you, So
Speaker 3: you already kind of have an idea of like what
Speaker 3: you need to do to be successful. So I do
Speaker 3: think the X ray program like is good in that regard. Now,
Speaker 3: I will say like when you get later in the
Speaker 3: course like SUT and stuff like that, that's when being
Speaker 3: an X ray sucks because leadership experience and stuff like
Speaker 3: that was not was not something that we had ever
Speaker 3: done before. So I was just like, how am I
Speaker 3: supposed to tell this E six ranger? You know what
Speaker 3: to do when I'm an EAT three you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? With no combat, no no experience or anything.
Speaker 3: So so it's good and bad. I guess what was
Speaker 3: that like? Working with you know, a bunch of salty
Speaker 3: characters from the Big Army that come in there. There
Speaker 3: was there was hidden miss Some of them were really cool,
Speaker 3: like some of them were really down to earth. And
Speaker 3: I also think it like depended on what type of
Speaker 3: X ray you were, you know, because there were some
Speaker 3: X rays that just kind of had it coming and
Speaker 3: didn't you know they were cocky. Yeah, shouldn't have been,
Speaker 3: you know. So I do think that played a factor.
Speaker 3: I tried to stay humble throughout it, so I never
Speaker 3: got too much. Yeah. Yeah, I was kind of trying
Speaker 3: to be the great man, so I didn't get too
Speaker 3: much ship from the hardened war vets, you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: Two tens, So there there were probably quite a few
Speaker 4: combats for sure going through that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, yep. And what MS did you get assigned? Charlie? Okay?
Speaker 3: So I was originally gonna be a Bravo and then
Speaker 3: there was another guy going to OK and fortunately he
Speaker 3: wanted Charlie or excuse me, he wanted Bravo and I
Speaker 3: wanted Charlie. So we were able to do a hot
Speaker 3: swap in the so he already knew he was going
Speaker 3: to OK or no, good, good point. He we had
Speaker 3: our languageurs already because language was first. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: it was. So we both had Asian languages. That's what
Speaker 3: it was. Good point. Good point, because we didn't find
Speaker 3: out till yeah, until stage after sage. Actually, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's cool. What what what is the.
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: What was the language?
Speaker 4: So they give you guys like the D lab or
Speaker 4: whatever it is, and then how long is the language
Speaker 4: course for because it's.
Speaker 3: A shorter course. It was six months when I went through,
Speaker 3: So yeah, I did Korean. It was six months. Is
Speaker 3: the goal like one one or yeah, Gold's one one?
Speaker 3: Which yeah, I feel like after six months one one
Speaker 3: is not hard to Yeah, there's plenty of time. I disagree.
Speaker 3: Maybe it depends on the language. It might depend on
Speaker 3: the person too. I was a hardhead.
Speaker 2: So Charlie, Uh, any fun stories you want to tell
Speaker 2: about going through the Charlie Course or Robin Sage or
Speaker 2: anything before we move on.
Speaker 3: So I got two stories that I'll tell, Okay. One
Speaker 3: of them was me being a dumbass and almost getting
Speaker 3: kicked out of the Q course. So so here I
Speaker 3: am this. I think I was twenty two. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was twenty two at the time, so twenty two years old.
Speaker 3: We're going through the Q course, crushing it, crushing it,
Speaker 3: you know, as well as you can. And we were
Speaker 3: going out on weeknights, right like, and just showing up
Speaker 3: at five six am for no worries, right, everything's fine.
Speaker 3: One night we go out and we were out till
Speaker 3: like three am, and I think we had to catch
Speaker 3: a five am bus for the Charlie Course, and my
Speaker 3: alarm goes off or no, not even my alarm. I
Speaker 3: get like my phone's just going crazy and a buddy's
Speaker 3: calling me like, dude, where the hell are you? And
Speaker 3: I literally just woke up and I'm like, shit, he's
Speaker 3: like the buses here, like you probably have like two minutes, dude,
Speaker 3: and so throw my stuff on real quick. Paul asked
Speaker 3: down to the bus and I kid you not, like
Speaker 3: the bus doors were closing when I was running up
Speaker 3: to it. Knocked on the door and luckily the bus
Speaker 3: drivers of civilian, so it's not like Cadria there. But
Speaker 3: I barely made it. And you know, they read like
Speaker 3: I would have probably been kicked out of the course
Speaker 3: or at least recycled at a minimum. So like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the just shoe string, you know, metric for meeting the
Speaker 3: standard out there at the Q course. You know.
Speaker 2: The worst thing they I think they did for us
Speaker 2: was when we started having night classes in language school.
Speaker 2: Because you're in class from like one or two in
Speaker 2: the afternoon to like six or seven o'clock at.
Speaker 3: Night, and then you can go out drinking all night.
Speaker 3: You don't have to be into one in the afternoon. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were hitting it pretty hard. That's brutal. That's
Speaker 2: like the pilot life that was. That was not a
Speaker 2: good idea of them to do that. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: why I did.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of self selection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why why I maybe didn't do so good on
Speaker 2: the language proficiency test. Yeah, don't let a bunch of
Speaker 2: young twenty year old's hard charge and sleep in every day.
Speaker 2: That's not not a recipe for success. And what's the second?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, second story? So this one was actually in
Speaker 3: Robin Sage. So I met my wife at the Q course.
Speaker 3: Really we could that's a funny story too. But I
Speaker 3: met my wife at the Q course and I got
Speaker 3: engaged before Sage and we were literally getting married the
Speaker 3: day after I graduated the Q course. So in Sage,
Speaker 3: our g chief and the locals or whatever set up
Speaker 3: a scenario where we went and played poker with the locals,
Speaker 3: and there was this young chick there that her job
Speaker 3: was to seduce one of us, try to seduce one
Speaker 3: of us, and of course I had to be the
Speaker 3: freaking sacrificial lamb, and you know, she was going at
Speaker 3: me hard, and I was just like what do I do?
Speaker 3: Like I'm literally engaged in the real world, you know,
Speaker 3: and like, but I it's you know, it's Sage. She
Speaker 3: was supposed to play the part, and I'm just like,
Speaker 3: how do I navigate this situation? And I ended up
Speaker 3: kind of like lightly stiff arming, you know, enough to
Speaker 3: be like respectful, but like be like, guys, help me
Speaker 3: out here, Like I need some help, I need to curve.
Speaker 3: I need somebody to step in and help out. And fortunately,
Speaker 3: like I don't know if they just sensed that I
Speaker 3: was like extremely uncomfortable with it or something, but it
Speaker 3: did back off. But man, that could have been like
Speaker 3: that was one of those moral dilemmas. Who was like
Speaker 3: toling her garter, be like literally like leaning over my shoulder,
Speaker 3: you know, and like putting her stuff on me. And
Speaker 3: I'm just like, all right, I just got engaged. You
Speaker 3: know this is not good. You went through a fun
Speaker 3: Robin sage. Yeah, I mean that was one day, so
Speaker 3: I mean, are you sure that was not on Liberty? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: Those story about your wife though. Can we save that
Speaker 4: for a bonus segment for our patrion Vider? Yeah, okay, great,
Speaker 4: try to describers.
Speaker 3: Hey, if you're not subscribing to our patron you should
Speaker 3: wings down the description. It's gonna be salacious, that's right.
Speaker 3: I And so, by the grace of God, graduate the
Speaker 3: Q course get married the day after yep. And now
Speaker 3: you guys are bags and baggage going towed Japan. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and my wife was in RTC at East Carolina University,
Speaker 3: so I was marrying up she was. I was yeah
Speaker 3: obviously at E five when I graduated, but she was
Speaker 3: commissioning like six months after I graduated. So it's one
Speaker 3: of those things that we were like, we gotta get
Speaker 3: married before you're in the army, you know, just to
Speaker 3: avoid that conflict and everything. But the other curve ball
Speaker 3: was like there was no position for her to go
Speaker 3: to Okinawa. She was a signal officer, So it's like, shit,
Speaker 3: are we going to be like separated by you know,
Speaker 3: worlds right when we get married for a while. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: and you know how the army works, if you know somebody,
Speaker 3: it helps. So her dad was a forward colonel at
Speaker 3: West Point and he was able to literally call HRC
Speaker 3: and get orders like the next day, Like we tried
Speaker 3: all the avenues first, right and nothing just crickets. And
Speaker 3: then literally she's like, Dad, I don't know what else
Speaker 3: to do. Can you make a phone call next day?
Speaker 3: Shit orders? I was like a kidding me. But the
Speaker 3: crazy thing is like they had a slot for her
Speaker 3: out there, like she slipt stepped in and was a
Speaker 3: platoon leader, and it was actual like an M too slot.
Speaker 3: So it's like, why are you guys you know whatever, bureaucracy,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, worked, it's the military, right And how'd
Speaker 3: you like Gokinawa? I loved it for the short period
Speaker 3: that I was there. I mean we were honestly like,
Speaker 3: I was probably tdy more than I was on island.
Speaker 3: But now it was really cool.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: We I showed up to my team at a or
Speaker 3: my company at an interesting point though, because they were
Speaker 3: they were in Afghanistan when I got there. So I
Speaker 3: was basically showed up with like six other X rays
Speaker 3: and we were reard. You remember day fielding. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so me and Dave showed up at the same time. Okay,
Speaker 3: so we were weird d and then the company lost
Speaker 3: a guy while we were literally like right when we
Speaker 3: got there, and so when they came back, man, we
Speaker 3: were just these X rays, no experience, and I think
Speaker 3: the majority of us were X rays, if not all
Speaker 3: of us, so no experience or anything, you know, very green,
Speaker 3: and we were not treated well, like, we were not
Speaker 3: accepted right away. It was very much like the we
Speaker 3: got our click, you guys stayed in your lane, shut
Speaker 3: up you know, do what you're told, which is expected
Speaker 3: to some extent, right, but I feel like it was
Speaker 3: definitely like magnified by all that, just like the twenty
Speaker 3: eleven twelve. Yeah, so it'd been twenty twelve, Okay, yep, yeah,
Speaker 3: so so yeah, I got in a company. I mean
Speaker 3: they yeah, they had a pretty brutal deployment. So so
Speaker 3: we just had a lot of I would say imposter syndrome,
Speaker 3: you know, because we didn't know anything. You know, we
Speaker 3: thought we were cool and then we got there and
Speaker 3: we got humbled real quick. Sure, but hey, guys, it's Jack.
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Speaker 3: But after I would say two trips with the team,
Speaker 3: that's when it finally started to integrate. And where were
Speaker 3: those trips to the first one was to Nepal and
Speaker 3: second one was Philippines, so they were those were just
Speaker 3: chase its though, So those weren't cool. Yeah, what's said
Speaker 3: for people who joint combined exercise training? So basically okay,
Speaker 3: so it's basically where you're training with a another country's
Speaker 3: military training you your training that is supposed to be.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily a combat the point, right exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's more there's like a POI more like foreign
Speaker 4: Internal defense exact stuff.
Speaker 3: Was your team were they Merman or sky Kings or
Speaker 3: you know what? What what kind of team was? We
Speaker 3: were a mountain team. You were mountain to that transition
Speaker 3: that transition to a mobility team, which I don't know
Speaker 3: what that means, that just means, but you know what.
Speaker 3: You know what was cool though, was at Nepal we
Speaker 3: got to do every space camp because we had a
Speaker 3: two week I think period white Space on the front
Speaker 3: end of the trip and we were like, yeah, let's good,
Speaker 3: do it like and got per DM and everything. You know.
Speaker 3: It was high outsitude training and what the base camp for? Ah,
Speaker 3: can you explain that? Yeah? So so every space camp
Speaker 3: you you fly out of excuse me, katman do which
Speaker 3: is like the big city in the poul and then
Speaker 3: you fly to a town called Lukla, which is if
Speaker 3: you look it up on YouTube, it's actually like the
Speaker 3: most dangerous airport in the world. It's insane landing there.
Speaker 3: It's like a super short runway and it's slanted up
Speaker 3: so that the aircraft have time to decelerate like before
Speaker 3: they hit the wall, so it's it's pretty nuts if
Speaker 3: you watch the videos. So flew into there, and I
Speaker 3: think that's at around nine thousand feet. So you start
Speaker 3: at Lucla and then it's ten days up to every
Speaker 3: space camp you end up. I think base camp is
Speaker 3: around eighteen thousand. So you make stops along the way
Speaker 3: and you have we had two shurpas with us, so
Speaker 3: it was two odios that did it. So it was
Speaker 3: about twenty guys and two shurpas and it was a blast,
Speaker 3: like it was. It was one of those things that
Speaker 3: once in a lifetime opportunity to for sure, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think the most amazing thing is the the
Speaker 3: Nepalese people that live there, like just incredible. Man, you'll
Speaker 3: be it. You'll be like six teen thousand feet at
Speaker 3: like the second stop before base camp, and there's pool
Speaker 3: tables and like full bars and like somebody carried that
Speaker 3: stuff up like on their back. You know, it's just nuts.
Speaker 3: I remember I went to the Annapurna base camp. We
Speaker 3: did that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know that, you know that exact walk
Speaker 2: through that valley, did it in the summer. And one
Speaker 2: thing I'll never forget is the porters, Like you said,
Speaker 2: they someone has to carry that stuff up there, and
Speaker 2: the porters carrying the things on their back with you know,
Speaker 2: it goes from their head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the band and then they're carrying on their back
Speaker 3: the way they did a thousand years ago, I'm sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but now they're on the trail playing Candy Crush on
Speaker 3: their smartphone. I'll never forget that. No, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: I literally skype my wife from like the stop before
Speaker 3: every space camp. I was like, how's their internet up here?
Speaker 3: You know, like somebody put in the infrastructure. It's pretty wild. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is today's world, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they use a lot of hydro electric in
Speaker 2: some of those villages now, and they've connected the villages
Speaker 2: with the suspension bridges the footbridge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, which are crazy, especially when you run
Speaker 3: into like their ox maybe I don't know, but you
Speaker 3: run into like packs of like ox in or whatever
Speaker 3: they are. I'm probably butchering that. Yeah, they'll be they'll
Speaker 3: we'll be like on the bridge and that you see
Speaker 3: them coming on the other side and you're like, we
Speaker 3: have to get off this bridge. Yeah, we're about to
Speaker 3: get you. Get me nostalgic. I love Nepole. Had a
Speaker 3: really good time over there, really cool experience.
Speaker 2: Did uh was there any force protection issues? Like I
Speaker 2: remember one. Another funny thing was driving around over there.
Speaker 2: They always wanted to put me in the front seat
Speaker 2: because we want the maoists to see that we're driving
Speaker 2: a white guy around. The reason being is that they
Speaker 2: do care about tourism and they don't want to scare
Speaker 2: away tourists, so they figure we'll put a white guy
Speaker 2: in the front seat and they won't put rocks through
Speaker 2: the windshield.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I never even thought about that. I don't
Speaker 3: remember that specifically, but that you bring up the driving.
Speaker 3: The driving over there is insane, like some of those
Speaker 3: mountain rivers. Yeah, where they're doing like you got like
Speaker 3: half a wheelhir Yeah, like that's death right, Yeah, dude
Speaker 3: out there chalking it like at the last minute. It's
Speaker 3: like they just do it every days, say man, yeah,
Speaker 3: and so that the.
Speaker 2: Presumably somewhere along this j set, you guys had actual
Speaker 2: work to do. Yeah, we work with We worked with
Speaker 2: the Nepalese Rangers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so's it was cool And that was my first Jason.
Speaker 3: So it's an awesome experience. Just what was it like
Speaker 3: working with those guys? They were the language barrier was vast,
Speaker 3: like there was no English speaking and the unlike the
Speaker 3: Philippines and stuff like that, where they're you know, pretty prominent,
Speaker 3: so the language barrier is definitely there. So we had
Speaker 3: to really interpreter a lot. But it was good. I
Speaker 3: I definitely no matter who, no matter who, interpreter is
Speaker 3: hard to say, yeah, but no, it was a it
Speaker 3: was a really good experience. They were they were definitely
Speaker 3: I don't want to like fastardize this, but they weren't
Speaker 3: as competent as I would have expected. I guess for
Speaker 3: like a special operation, right, I'd say it was. But
Speaker 3: at the same time that was good for us, especially
Speaker 3: on a first jasion, because it allowed us to really
Speaker 3: like learn how to teach right and really learn how
Speaker 3: to be that SF guy instead of working with a
Speaker 3: more competent right exactly where it's almost like here peer
Speaker 3: to peer, you know. So it allowed us to be
Speaker 3: to get into that role. Really, anything else you want
Speaker 3: to tell us about Nepal, I think that's it.
Speaker 4: What about the PI, So the p I that first trip,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember the first trip.
Speaker 3: Nothing significant happened. We worked with the rangers actually on
Speaker 3: that trip, Tonge Scout Rangers. They were awesome, man, the
Speaker 3: Filipino Army. They were like our little brothers there. Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they liked the NBA like no one else's business.
Speaker 3: It is bizarre. But now that trip was really good.
Speaker 3: We kind of had a that was kind of a
Speaker 3: cush trip to some extent, like we stayed in hotel
Speaker 3: that no. Our OEFP was mexcitse Yeah, so the sixth
Speaker 3: month was excite, but that one was actually I don't
Speaker 3: even remember the location, to be honest, but no, that
Speaker 3: one was good. Actually, I do have one story from
Speaker 3: that that I can remember. So I'm an eighteen Charlie
Speaker 3: and I'm teaching time fuse and we're just doing like
Speaker 3: single blocks of C four with time fuse hooked up
Speaker 3: to it. I don't remember whatever, two minute time fuse,
Speaker 3: three minute time fee something. And we had like six
Speaker 3: blocks laid out like spread up, spread apart in this
Speaker 3: open field, right and we get our safe distance and
Speaker 3: we put off the time fuse and we go back
Speaker 3: to the safe distance and everything's going fine for the
Speaker 3: first four blocks, so it's like five four three two
Speaker 3: one bang, you know, We're all good. And then the
Speaker 3: fifth block, nothing happens, and I'm like, shit, what is happening?
Speaker 3: And at the same time, we see like a lit
Speaker 3: old brush fire on the side. So it was like
Speaker 3: an open field with like big brush on the side
Speaker 3: of it. So we see a brush fire starting on
Speaker 3: the side and we still have two live blocks, so
Speaker 3: we can't do anything right, and this fire starts spreading
Speaker 3: like pretty pretty rapidly, and I'm like shit, like this
Speaker 3: is you know, this is my second trip as a Charlie.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, oh God, like what do we do?
Speaker 3: I wanted to go out there, but I can't because
Speaker 3: there's live C four out there. So the six block
Speaker 3: actually went off. So the six block went off, so
Speaker 3: now there's a fifth block that's still just out there,
Speaker 3: and I was like, all right. I talked to my
Speaker 3: team start and I'm like, dude, we got to do
Speaker 3: something like this. This is about to burn down the
Speaker 3: jungle in the Philippines. So we gave it a couple
Speaker 3: of minutes I think it was like three minutes or something,
Speaker 3: which felt like an eternity. And then at that three
Speaker 3: minute mark, me and him went down there, kind of
Speaker 3: got like a distance look, you know, very like very
Speaker 3: cautiously approaching it. But we saw that the time fuse
Speaker 3: had gotten cut from that fourth charge, so it projected
Speaker 3: and cut that fourth time fuse before it could have
Speaker 3: hit the C four. So went out there, cut the
Speaker 3: time fuse really close to the sea four grabbed, you know,
Speaker 3: obviously the block was fine, and then literally like thirty
Speaker 3: or forty Philippine scout rangers and us rushed down and
Speaker 3: just start taking pig branches and throwing down and trying
Speaker 3: to get tack this fire out. And it was a
Speaker 3: good probably fifteen minute process. That's next time, have them
Speaker 3: pie into a ring made, right, Yeah, right, right? I know,
Speaker 3: so lessons learned? Right? And how I want to ask
Speaker 3: you a question because you know, you get this trip
Speaker 3: to an Apoli.
Speaker 4: Did this trip to the Philippines while the GI Watt
Speaker 4: is still you know, active or Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Particularly, How did you like, was there any sort of
Speaker 3: stigma about that? How did you feel about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Good question, There was for sure, especially when I buddies
Speaker 3: who went to fifth group and third group and were
Speaker 3: already deployed, you know, And I'm just like man like.
Speaker 3: I don't get me wrong, I enjoyed everything I did
Speaker 3: in OKI, and I loved it. But we definitely, or
Speaker 3: at least I felt that one one had that, like
Speaker 3: you know, the party group and the you guys don't
Speaker 3: do real stuff group, you know, because we were doing
Speaker 3: jasits and so yes, absolutely, I definitely felt that.
Speaker 4: And for you personally, even though you were having a
Speaker 4: great time and you were doing you were doing the
Speaker 4: SF job.
Speaker 3: Sure, did you feel like you were missing out? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah I did for sure. And because you do all
Speaker 3: this training right right, I'm just like ready to go
Speaker 3: and you wanted want to use it, Yeah, you want
Speaker 3: to do the job. So yeah I did, especially because
Speaker 3: we our company just deployed Afghanistan. We just missed it,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's like and OKI in one one
Speaker 3: you don't It's not like a normal rotation like other
Speaker 3: groups where you're you know, in a year or a
Speaker 3: year and a half, you're going to go. So it
Speaker 3: was like, damn, just kind of just miss yeah, like
Speaker 3: a couple of years or whatever. So yeah, for sure,
Speaker 3: I definitely felt that tell us about the second pump
Speaker 3: to the Philippines then, Yeah, So the second one was
Speaker 3: a it was a we were working with the law
Speaker 3: enforcement there, so the Filipino DA oh okay, yeah, so
Speaker 3: it wasn't. It wasn't necessarily military so is that the
Speaker 3: police force special action for so they were involved, but
Speaker 3: the our primary was the DA. It was the p
Speaker 3: d A okay, yeah, p DA DA or something. So
Speaker 3: we actually worked at their schoolhouse and we but it
Speaker 3: it was treated pretty much like a normal Jason, Like
Speaker 3: we did the same shooting pois and demo pois and
Speaker 3: medical pois. So it wasn't it wasn't too out of
Speaker 3: the ordinary other than who we were working with. But
Speaker 3: that was a I mean, I don't remember anything dramatic
Speaker 3: or crazy happening in that one, to be honest. It
Speaker 3: was just it was a good trip, though, I do that.
Speaker 2: And so when did the ideas start to occur to
Speaker 2: you that you were interested in putting in your flight packet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good question. So when my so OEFP was our
Speaker 3: we did a six month rotation to the Philippines after
Speaker 3: all of those Philippines trips, so I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time there, and my son was actually born right
Speaker 3: before that trip, so I literally like said good luck
Speaker 3: and I'm out. And it was like, I think three
Speaker 3: weeks after he was born, I was off to the Philippines.
Speaker 3: So the nextus of it, and I didn't mention this before,
Speaker 3: was I looked into a program called high school to
Speaker 3: flight school before I even went eighteen X ray And
Speaker 3: that's essentially where you can if you have credentials, right,
Speaker 3: if you're like a pilot already or something, you can
Speaker 3: go straight into the army and become a warrant and
Speaker 3: go fly. So I already had that in the back
Speaker 3: of my mind that I kind of had the aviation
Speaker 3: bug that I wanted to do it. And with that
Speaker 3: deployment and with kind of I don't want to tuck.
Speaker 3: I hope this comes out right. Like my wife did
Speaker 3: not deal well with me being gone all the time, sure, right,
Speaker 3: so she got really stressed out. People don't get married
Speaker 3: to be single, true, Yeah, toochet so, and she was
Speaker 3: active duty, she had a baby at home, colic baby, right,
Speaker 3: so it was a lot of just stress that was
Speaker 3: weighing on her. So I kind of I kind of
Speaker 3: saw the writing on the wall that like if I
Speaker 3: stay in this job and I'm constantly gone all the time,
Speaker 3: like I'm kind of putting her through hell to some extent,
Speaker 3: you know. So, so I'd looked to the other options,
Speaker 3: and I aviation was the thing that I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is going to not only accelerate my career pay wise, right,
Speaker 3: but it's also going to give me a tangible skill
Speaker 3: that if I want to get out, I can fly,
Speaker 3: you know. So those are the biggest factors that went
Speaker 3: into it. And then during that OEFP deployment was when
Speaker 3: I would drop my.
Speaker 2: Flight packet, yeah and tell us then a little bit
Speaker 2: about that process of you know, presumably your packet gets
Speaker 2: approved and now you're going to flight school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a pretty comprehensive packet. You do resume,
Speaker 3: you do letters of recommendation, the whole kind of traditional
Speaker 3: military packet, I guess if you will, and then it
Speaker 3: goes in front of a selection board. So there's a
Speaker 3: selection board at Fort Rucker that basically goes through all
Speaker 3: the candidates and says yes or no, we're gonna give
Speaker 3: you a chance to come to flight school or not. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: I was obviously selected and got the opportunity. I do
Speaker 3: think a lot of it was because of the letters recommendation,
Speaker 3: well and probably being an SFKU and I'm sure helped
Speaker 3: a lot. But yeah, that's that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 3: So and then once you find out you're selected, then
Speaker 3: you just play the waiting game and wait for order.
Speaker 3: Star Rucker, Fort Rucker, Yeah, good old Fort. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: how did flight school go for you? I think we've
Speaker 3: talked to a couple one sixtieth pilots about flight school
Speaker 3: and you're like going through conventional military training, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: So dude, it was a culture shock to the core
Speaker 3: for me. So I was expecting this. I had this
Speaker 3: like opinion that in aviation everybody's on a first name basis.
Speaker 3: You know, you can grow out your hair, super chill. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I had that false expectation going into it. I
Speaker 3: get to four record and you take off your staff
Speaker 3: sergeant rank and you put on this stupid like snowbird
Speaker 3: rank is what they call it. It's like a WC whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: basically signaling to everybody that you're a new bid. Yeah
Speaker 3: you're the FNG so. So first though, before even flight school,
Speaker 3: you go to Warrnan Officer Candidate School, which is, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, the stupidest army course. It's changed now, thank god,
Speaker 3: but it was not a gentleman's course. It was like
Speaker 3: a mini basic training where you you have no phones
Speaker 3: or anything for like five weeks. And dude, I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: they basically are trying to do basic training over again
Speaker 3: in a five week period, which is really.
Speaker 4: Weird because like it's not basic training and it's not
Speaker 4: like Offster Canadas, right right, Like you're taking people have
Speaker 4: already been in ye who are now you.
Speaker 3: Know, in this really unique world and you're ye triging
Speaker 3: them like their boots right exactly. And it was it
Speaker 3: was like one of those things where you had to
Speaker 3: have your clothes perfectly dressed, right dress and like label
Speaker 3: them and like all these just stupid things that you
Speaker 3: had to do to get through. It was honestly like
Speaker 3: one of those even like how many pots of coffee
Speaker 3: can you, like warrant how many course light skinny exactly?
Speaker 3: How late can you be for this fore a minute?
Speaker 3: Exactly how many cigarettes can you put out in you know,
Speaker 3: five seconds? Yeah, So that was like, so that was
Speaker 3: just dumb. It was one of those things you just
Speaker 3: had to get through. I ended up being like the
Speaker 3: cadet commander or whatever you call it for that, which
Speaker 3: was actually cool because the last two weeks of it,
Speaker 3: I got my own office with my cold sergeant major
Speaker 3: and he was a former one sixtieth guy, not a pilot,
Speaker 3: but he was going to flight school. So we got
Speaker 3: a TV to ourselves, we got a coffee maker, and
Speaker 3: we got to go to like Walmart and stuff off base.
Speaker 3: So you got the real warrant. Yeah, so we got
Speaker 3: the real Yeah. I think that's where it was exactly
Speaker 3: if you excel, then you can get.
Speaker 4: The taste of it.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, that was But honestly, that of course
Speaker 3: was just a checking the boy and then getting into
Speaker 3: flight school. So I was the second flight school class
Speaker 3: that flew the new lakotas that ELU. So that also
Speaker 3: came with some stigmas of like, you're not a real
Speaker 3: pilot training this right, because because it's not the way
Speaker 3: we did it in the old days. We went through
Speaker 3: the first easy course. Yeah, exactly, didn't have to go
Speaker 3: up with both ways anymore. So, but that was a
Speaker 3: really cool experience. The Lakota is for anybody that doesn't know,
Speaker 3: it's just a little more advanced than the old trainer.
Speaker 3: So it has a glass cockpit, which means like digital
Speaker 3: and autopilot systems, has a full hydraulics and everything like that.
Speaker 3: So it's almost, in my opinion, it's a better training
Speaker 3: aircraft for where armaviators are going, right, because we're going
Speaker 3: into these advanced airframes that have these systems. So it
Speaker 3: allowed us to learn how to use the systems. Still,
Speaker 3: we learned how to fly, right, We still like were
Speaker 3: they turned off the systems so you learned how to fly.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, it was a good It was an
Speaker 3: easier transition because of that to the black Hawk.
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Speaker 3: But in flight school, so since I had the improper
Speaker 3: expectations right, and I was expecting to be treated with
Speaker 3: respect and all this stuff, that's when I started down
Speaker 3: the mental health rout. So my daughter was born when
Speaker 3: I was in flight school, and I did not want
Speaker 3: to take paternity leave because if you get recycled, who
Speaker 3: knows how long you could be just sitting on hold
Speaker 3: to go into the next class. So I didn't take
Speaker 3: paternity leave, and I was just going, going, going, And
Speaker 3: my wife is just God bless her, She's just dealing
Speaker 3: with everything right while I'm just trying to succeed in
Speaker 3: flight school. And looking back on it now, I can
Speaker 3: see why it happened, right, because I was just stressing
Speaker 3: myself out to the max. But one day in class,
Speaker 3: we were just learning about the black Hawk engine, nothing crazy,
Speaker 3: and I just got hit with this random, suicidal thought
Speaker 3: and came out of nowhere. And it was the problem
Speaker 3: for me was that I wasn't able to just be like, huh,
Speaker 3: that's weird, right and let it go. I like obsessed
Speaker 3: over it, like I was like, why the hell did
Speaker 3: this happen? I've never been through this. I don't know
Speaker 3: how to react to it and how the hell do
Speaker 3: I fix this? Right? And that just reinforce this like
Speaker 3: endless thought, you know, and obviously I didn't know it.
Speaker 3: That's probably like you doubled down on how hard you're
Speaker 3: working exactly. Yeah. So and that's that's a good point
Speaker 3: because it lasted for a long time, Like it lasted
Speaker 3: for a good five years, and I kept trying to
Speaker 3: just succeed my way out of it, right, you know,
Speaker 3: which I think is a blessing, you know, because because
Speaker 3: I didn't, you know, I didn't take my life and
Speaker 3: I didn't get to that point because I did have
Speaker 3: a purpose. But at the same time, like I also
Speaker 3: didn't give myself the space to like actually figure out
Speaker 3: what was going on. So you weren't seeking out any
Speaker 3: like formal mental health treatment at this time. So I
Speaker 3: did one time. So there was one day where I
Speaker 3: was leaving leaving class from flight school and driving home
Speaker 3: and I was I was scared to go home because
Speaker 3: of you know, I was just scared.
Speaker 4: It was going to happen that night. Was it like
Speaker 4: an ideation? It was, it was like a vision, like
Speaker 4: I literally like visualize it. Yeah, did I wanted to
Speaker 4: revivify this. No, No, you're okay.
Speaker 5: So what was this for?
Speaker 3: Like I like.
Speaker 4: This would like I just wanted to be over, like
Speaker 4: like this would be just be it just be like
Speaker 4: so easy, like so easy to just like so and
Speaker 4: whatever I'm feeling.
Speaker 3: Yes, that, And I literally saw myself. So it was
Speaker 3: always worse when I was laying in bed, which is
Speaker 3: pretty universal, but I had my pistol in my fingerprint
Speaker 3: safe next to my bed, and I literally saw myself
Speaker 3: like do it. Obviously like you don't see yourself die,
Speaker 3: but like I saw myself do it. And it was
Speaker 3: that vision kept coming up in my head and it
Speaker 3: was to the point where it was like I can't
Speaker 3: escape this thought right right, like so yeah, to your point,
Speaker 3: it was like like it's just not going to go away.
Speaker 3: It's it's going to be like this forever and and
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 4: Know, it's one of those things I think, like any
Speaker 4: sort of like uh, those recursive thoughts once you sink
Speaker 4: into it, you know, if you can't just like let
Speaker 4: it go right like once you sink into it, did
Speaker 4: it just yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And it started it started becoming like every situation too,
Speaker 3: like if I was driving even with my family. It
Speaker 3: was terrifying because I was like, we're driving over a
Speaker 3: bridge and I'm just like I could do it right, right,
Speaker 3: you know, and it was just they would just keep
Speaker 3: attacking me. So but I went to the chaplain that
Speaker 3: day because I was like, I can't go home, like
Speaker 3: I have to go talk to somebody. So I went
Speaker 3: to the chaplain, told him what was going on, kind
Speaker 3: of poured my heart out to him, and he took
Speaker 3: me to Behavioral Health while I'm in flight school at
Speaker 3: Fort Rutger. So, yeah, you were scared, right, I was terrified.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to go to behavior right.
Speaker 4: That's why I went to right because isn't there like
Speaker 4: a myth that if you go to the chaplain, he's
Speaker 4: not going to tell anything.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought, right, And that's I didn't like
Speaker 3: look into it before, but I just thought so. And
Speaker 3: apparently because he told me that he's like obligated if
Speaker 3: I say, like I have self harmed thoughts or whatever,
Speaker 3: he's obligated to take me. So literally, I had to
Speaker 3: get in his car and go to behavioral Health with him.
Speaker 3: That terrified, it was so scary, and filled out this
Speaker 3: stupid suicide questionnaire, right, it was like it was basically
Speaker 3: assessing like your seriousness, how serious you are? Did you
Speaker 3: lie on it? So I didn't have to, fortunately, because
Speaker 3: the questionnaire was like there's a couple of questions. It
Speaker 3: was like, do you have thoughts of suicide? Yes? Like
Speaker 3: do you have thoughts of harming others? No? Do you
Speaker 3: have a plan to do it? No? Because I didn't
Speaker 3: really right, but I didn't wasn't like I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: do this right, And then do you want to do
Speaker 3: it was another example of the question and I was like, no,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want this. That's just happening to me.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be talking. Yeah, exactly. So so I filled
Speaker 3: that out and then the lady takes me back in
Speaker 3: the room and I kid, you know, she just has
Speaker 3: the clipboard that I filled out, and she just reads
Speaker 3: it to me, just reads my answers, and at the
Speaker 3: end of it, her synopsis was, well, I think this
Speaker 3: is something temporary that you're going through, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to let you continue training, basically kind of the comeback
Speaker 3: if you need us right well, and I was like,
Speaker 3: thank god, though too right, it's a blessing in disguise,
Speaker 3: But at the time, I was like, are you freaking kidding?
Speaker 3: Like this was a cry for help, right, and you're
Speaker 3: just going to throw me out to the wolves. So
Speaker 3: that kind of like solidified that, like, all right, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to behavior a hole, like I am freaking
Speaker 3: fixing this on that and I'm not definitely not going
Speaker 3: to chat. So that solidified. Yeah, right, I know, dude,
Speaker 3: like that was supposed to be the same. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: so me and God right exactly. Yeah, Honestly, I was
Speaker 3: hoping the chaplain would just be like, come see me
Speaker 3: once a week.
Speaker 2: It's it's the same with a licensed psychologist if you say,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like yeah, But.
Speaker 3: Chaplains are supposed to be like that's supposed to be
Speaker 3: like sacred. Yeah, And I think they even like advertise
Speaker 3: that to something I have an open door.
Speaker 4: I think they allow it to kind of self perpetuate.
Speaker 4: You know, they might like push it along. But you're
Speaker 4: not safe, right, And when I say you're not safe, like, obviously,
Speaker 4: chaplains should report it, obviously if they think that somebody
Speaker 4: is in duress or you know, a threat to themselves.
Speaker 4: But but the thing is that like whether it's a
Speaker 4: veteran who's worried about red flag laws or somebody on
Speaker 4: active duty who is worried about getting pulled from their
Speaker 4: unit or whatever, flight.
Speaker 3: School or whatever like.
Speaker 4: There have to and there have to be ways for
Speaker 4: people to address these things like sound off, right, There
Speaker 4: have to be ways for people to address these things.
Speaker 3: That where they feel safe that they're not going to
Speaker 3: be punished for it exactly. And that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: my whole like stigma thing, right, and that's what my
Speaker 3: book's about. It's, yeah, like we have to break that
Speaker 3: because so many dudes, and you guys probably see it
Speaker 3: more than I do, but so many guys are still
Speaker 3: making that decision right and still ending it all because,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, because they don't feel safe or don't
Speaker 3: feel like they can go get the help.
Speaker 4: And I think the military has proven itself even until
Speaker 4: today and Jack probably knows more about this than I do,
Speaker 4: that they can't be trusted.
Speaker 3: Like if you go for help many times that.
Speaker 2: Will there are protections, but there's a very specific way,
Speaker 2: and I think it's actually the behavior health clinic at
Speaker 2: the hospital, like the TMC on Post. If you go
Speaker 2: in there and say I'm having a mental health crisis,
Speaker 2: there are some protections in place for you, but if
Speaker 2: you go to anywhere else, if you go to your
Speaker 2: first sergeant, you go to the company commander, you go
Speaker 2: to the chaplain, they can not always, but they can
Speaker 2: totally fuck you. Which I'm not saying they're all out
Speaker 2: to get you. A lot of them will do the
Speaker 2: right thing and get you the help you need. But historically, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are guys that totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean if if like if.
Speaker 4: They want to get somebody off their books because they
Speaker 4: don't you want it to be a black man.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if I don't know if
Speaker 2: they still had it when you were around. I mean,
Speaker 2: but when I was in the army, I mean there
Speaker 2: was like a strong social shaming aspect of it that
Speaker 2: somebody who's somebody who said I'm having suicidal thoughts had
Speaker 2: to wear a road guard vest and escorted around by
Speaker 2: two soldiers at all times.
Speaker 3: Yes, And one thing that that reminds me of thirtieth AG, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: so thirtieth AG for the audience is like your first
Speaker 3: day in the Army. Like when you're in processing to
Speaker 3: go to basic training, you go to thirtieth AG. The
Speaker 3: worst place in North yeahplace ever just purgatory. But I
Speaker 3: just remember distinctly remember there being this like there was
Speaker 3: like a quad, right, like an open quad, and then
Speaker 3: there was a balcony or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 3: a railing, and there were soldiers up there that were
Speaker 3: pulled from training and had their shoelaces taken away because
Speaker 3: they were suicidal, and the drill sergeants talked shit about them, right,
Speaker 3: like if you fuck up, you're gonna end up like them.
Speaker 3: And that's that's the day that everybody learned, like, all right,
Speaker 3: if you have health problems, you don't talk right, like,
Speaker 3: you keep your mouth shut and you just freaking drive on.
Speaker 4: So so you go to behavioral health. She gives you
Speaker 4: kind of the you know, clean Dell health. Do you
Speaker 4: tell your wife about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So that Yeah, so my wife picked me up
Speaker 3: actually because I didn't want the chap on to drive
Speaker 3: me back my wife. My wife was pissed, like she
Speaker 3: was mad at me because I went there instead of
Speaker 3: talking to her first, more pissed that like she didn't
Speaker 3: know right, and then in this right, yeah, oh absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 3: So that's how she found out. Well, actually I misspoke,
Speaker 3: so she found out before this. Okay, but she thought
Speaker 3: it was a one time thing. And how she found out,
Speaker 3: which is also a messed up. I told her, hey, babe,
Speaker 3: I need you to go in our safe, take apart
Speaker 3: my gun and hide the components from me. That's how
Speaker 3: she found out because I was just I couldn't go
Speaker 3: to bed with my gun right there available, So that's
Speaker 3: how she initially found out. And then I think this
Speaker 3: was a couple weeks later when I went to the chaplain.
Speaker 3: That's when she came, and she was pissed because we
Speaker 3: hadn't talked about it since then. It was just kind
Speaker 3: of one of those things that I don't think she
Speaker 3: knew how to deal with it right, and then obviously
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to deal with it. So yeah,
Speaker 3: she was mad. She was mad one because she knew
Speaker 3: the repercression, she knew what could happen. And she was
Speaker 3: also mad that I even had to go to be
Speaker 3: because she like she knew that I went to the
Speaker 3: chaplain first, so she was mad about that aspect too,
Speaker 3: that I got forced to go there. So so it's twofold. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So what what happened the next day at work at
Speaker 3: cool I can't even remember to be honest, it was
Speaker 3: a blur. But but did they do me say anything
Speaker 3: to you? No, No, nothing happened.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is I didn't hear a squeak about that,
Speaker 3: and I didn't even know it was in my medical
Speaker 3: records until I was getting out of the army and
Speaker 3: I like reviewed everything and I was like, huh, there
Speaker 3: actually is a note in there about that. Because I
Speaker 3: was in my mind, I was like, man, that really happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well but it sounds like the chaplain did
Speaker 2: maintain its confidence, so I think that's probably what happened.
Speaker 3: Did he ever check on you though?
Speaker 4: Now the chaplain ever came out gave you like a
Speaker 4: starburst and said, hey, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: No crazy? That is kind of crazy pocket Bible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think he just I think he just took the
Speaker 3: clinician's word for it, maybe, you know, and and trusted
Speaker 3: me to come back if I needed to. I don't know,
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to give them the benefit of doubt.
Speaker 4: But that's kind of because generally chaplains are really they're
Speaker 4: like ned Flanders, right, Yeah, for sure, you know, like
Speaker 4: a lot of chaplains are like that.
Speaker 3: You know, I remember you had this two years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember a few chaplains that were like fire and Brimstone,
Speaker 2: like ranger, Jesus wants you to kill America's enemies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they were also but I mean we had
Speaker 4: one of those. But he was also like, you know,
Speaker 4: he would come and check.
Speaker 3: On Yeah you care. I wonder if it was like
Speaker 3: one of those things that Rutgers just such a big
Speaker 3: trade off. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was just like, so, you're dealing with some
Speaker 2: pretty significant stressors in life, and at the same time
Speaker 2: you get assigned a third combat aviation brigade.
Speaker 3: What was that experience like when you hit the ground there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I actually yeah, so Third Comment Aviation Brigade was
Speaker 3: cool because I wanted to go there, like I wanted Savannah.
Speaker 3: It was my first choice because they were deploying soon,
Speaker 3: so they were going to Afghanistan. Because it's a new pilot,
Speaker 3: like flight hours is everything. So the faster you can
Speaker 3: get progressed and get to pilot and command, which is
Speaker 3: when you're like in charge of the aircraft, the better
Speaker 3: for your career. So it was good, but it was
Speaker 3: very much not big boy rules like I expected. Kind of,
Speaker 3: like I said, the warrant officers in aviation end up
Speaker 3: being kind of the the people that do all the
Speaker 3: details and stuff because the crew chiefs, they enlisted guys
Speaker 3: are busy like maintaining the aircraft so that all falls
Speaker 3: in the warrant officers the right yeah, or they're doing
Speaker 3: flight schedules, you know what I mean. So it was like,
Speaker 3: so the warrant officers, one dude will be in charge
Speaker 3: of like I was the goggle custodian, so I was
Speaker 3: in charge of inventorying, maintaining that all the MVG's one
Speaker 3: guy will be the supply sergeant for the company, like
Speaker 3: as a warrant officer and still having to fly. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of like extra duties they have to do.
Speaker 3: So I think the the short answer is I wasn't
Speaker 3: happy with my choice to go aviation initially and even
Speaker 3: through Afghanistan, Like I just wasn't happy with it. The
Speaker 3: long answer was like, at the same time, it's cool.
Speaker 3: It's still cool, like playing helicopters and progressing through that
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So you know, one of the things that up to
Speaker 4: this point that I appreciate about your story is like
Speaker 4: a lot of times people associate like a lot of
Speaker 4: the mental health stuff and whatnot with like this really
Speaker 4: severe posh aumatic stress it's really chizing event and all
Speaker 4: this stuff. But it doesn't like it doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be connected to them like it can just it can
Speaker 4: be stressors, you know, you know the way we perceive ourselves,
Speaker 4: the way you know, what the standards were holding ourselves
Speaker 4: to whatever is. But it can come from anywhere at
Speaker 4: any time, Yeah, for sure. And it's a testament to that.
Speaker 3: And this is not to brag by any means, Okay,
Speaker 3: but you see all these high performing guys like end
Speaker 3: up taking their lives right and everybody's like what happened? Like,
Speaker 3: how could that happen to him? I thought he had
Speaker 3: his life altogether right, and he did on the outside,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of what I was, right, Like I
Speaker 3: ended up graduating of this the distinguished on a graduate
Speaker 3: in my flight school class through all that, you know,
Speaker 3: even when dealing with all that, like so that just
Speaker 3: shows like that you can mask it. And it's it's
Speaker 3: fairly easy to mask it, to be honest, Like you
Speaker 3: just kind of stuff it down and keep going and
Speaker 3: deal with it on your own. That's kind of why
Speaker 3: I want to say that is because like there's a
Speaker 3: lot of people out there that are very high performing
Speaker 3: and they fall into this trap and real common with
Speaker 3: the soft guys, Like like one friend of mine used
Speaker 3: to say, you know it's being functionally fucked up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know that It's true your high performing, but your
Speaker 3: internal world is just total turmoil.
Speaker 4: And I think I think that for a lot of
Speaker 4: especially soft guys, I think that there is a lot
Speaker 4: of miscorrelation with post traumatic stress, and that I think
Speaker 4: so to stuff. I think that I think there is
Speaker 4: post traumatic stress, but I don't I assily I think
Speaker 4: that the post traumatic stress is what leads to it's
Speaker 4: there's so many other.
Speaker 3: Things I agree, especially with the guy's transitioning right, yes,
Speaker 3: because they're going so hard and then the noise stops
Speaker 3: and they're like what do I do? Like who am
Speaker 3: I you know?
Speaker 4: With with your process of going through do you you know,
Speaker 4: did you ever were able to put the finger on
Speaker 4: sort of what the trigger aspect or the balance aspect.
Speaker 3: Of it was for you? Kind of So I just
Speaker 3: looked at looking back, I can look at like the
Speaker 3: stressors that were leading up to it, right, So, like
Speaker 3: my transition from SF me not being happy with my
Speaker 3: aviation decision, the grind to flight school, and then my
Speaker 3: daughter being born, her not sleeping, you know, so sleep
Speaker 3: was all jacked up. My wife was also stressed out.
Speaker 3: So it was a lot of like compounding factors that
Speaker 3: just kind of landed at the same time and led
Speaker 3: to it. But the weird thing is there was no
Speaker 3: like slow lead up, right, Like, it wasn't like I
Speaker 3: was just like, ah, life sucks, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: like boom, dude, they field and told the same story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that that was the most bizarre thing because I
Speaker 3: did not I had never dealt with anything before, you know,
Speaker 3: like that, so I had no idea.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, and I think you know, like you know,
Speaker 4: they talk about the twenty two a day and twenty
Speaker 4: three a day, but also if you look at men
Speaker 4: at a certain age or whatever that they're you know
Speaker 4: that their statistics is much So it's not just the veteran.
Speaker 4: It's not just the combat veteran. It's not just the
Speaker 4: soft but it's definitely a very male oriented like you know,
Speaker 4: whether it's we feel like we're not living up or
Speaker 4: we feel disillusion whatever it is, whatever combination.
Speaker 3: Yes, I feel like we just take on so much, right,
Speaker 3: and we feel like we just we have to we
Speaker 3: just have to push through. Notter what Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: so too. Very interesting. Yeah, so your missus must have
Speaker 3: been thrilled when you got deployed to Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Fortunately by this time she was out of the army. Okay,
Speaker 3: So it was better she was out of the army,
Speaker 3: we were stable in Savannah. Like, she didn't have the stress.
Speaker 3: She she was a signal officer and she hated the army.
Speaker 3: She hated her job, like it was just one of
Speaker 3: those things that she was just like, get me out
Speaker 3: of here. I can't wait to get out. So stress
Speaker 3: was mitigated by that a lot. And the kids weren't
Speaker 3: babies anymore, so they were it was a little better.
Speaker 3: Yeah know, like so yeah, it was it was more
Speaker 3: tolerable for her. Honestly, I probably had a worse time
Speaker 3: than she did during that nine months because I was
Speaker 3: still dealing with the crap. So you were a black
Speaker 3: Hawk guy, black Hawk pilot. What was the Afghanistan deployment
Speaker 3: like very frustrating?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because seventeen eighteen, ok. Yeah, so flight school was
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen and then Afghana was seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 3: Very frustrating because as a like former SF dude, I
Speaker 3: wanted to do the cool stuff, get after it. I
Speaker 3: wanted to bring people to X. I wanted to you know,
Speaker 3: be doing the missions. And ninety five percent of our
Speaker 3: flying was acid trash, just moving people from the string routes.
Speaker 3: Whether it was day or night, it didn't matter it
Speaker 3: was And when we did get a mission that was supporting,
Speaker 3: like an SF team or something, the senior guys would
Speaker 3: take it and none of the junior guys got to
Speaker 3: go on it. So it was one of those things
Speaker 3: where I was like cool, Like how am I going
Speaker 3: to learn if I don't get the chance. So by
Speaker 3: the end of that deployment, apparently I had a thing
Speaker 3: with ended of deployments and changing careers, but I dropped
Speaker 3: my one sixtieth packet because I was like, I am
Speaker 3: getting out of the army or I'm going to the
Speaker 3: one sixtieth Like I didn't sign up to be a
Speaker 3: pilot to go fly right in land driver. Yeah, Like
Speaker 3: that's not what I wanted to do. So at the
Speaker 3: end of that deployment, I finally that was the blessing
Speaker 3: of the deployment though, is I got a lot of hours,
Speaker 3: so I got I went far ahead of my peers,
Speaker 3: like so in the matter of a year, I was
Speaker 3: able to drop my one sixtieth packet, which they do
Speaker 3: have minimum requirements for hours, so it's five hundred hours.
Speaker 3: Five hundred hours and piloting command, so you have to
Speaker 3: be a piloting command and have five hundred flight hours
Speaker 3: at least when I assessed, that's what it was. So
Speaker 3: I hit that at probably the month seventh mark of
Speaker 3: my deployment, and I was I dropped it right away,
Speaker 3: got my letters, wreck and everything, and then by the
Speaker 3: end of that deployment, I had an invitation to go assess,
Speaker 3: so I got back in June twenty eighteen and then
Speaker 3: August I assessed, So it was like it was perfect
Speaker 3: because I was in nine month deployment shape, you know,
Speaker 3: going into assessments and what was assessment like for you?
Speaker 3: It was definitely hard, mostly because I was still dealing
Speaker 3: with this crap, so I was at this point it
Speaker 3: was I was having these like physical Dizzey spells, So
Speaker 3: the depression had morphed into these Dizzey spells, which I
Speaker 3: didn't know what they were at the time, but they're
Speaker 3: panic attacks, which I didn't know, so I was dealing
Speaker 3: with that. So that part was tough. And then assessment
Speaker 3: is one of those things where it's meant for you
Speaker 3: to feel like you're failing the whole time, so you don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody goes to it and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I crush that right right, So but it was it
Speaker 3: was also at the same time, as hard as it was,
Speaker 3: it was a good insight into the regiment and into
Speaker 3: how professional and next level they are, because I, to
Speaker 3: be honest, I was feeling pretty confident in my ability
Speaker 3: to fly and my ability to brief and plan because
Speaker 3: I had just come off the deployment and a lot
Speaker 3: of like repetition, and I get to the assessment and
Speaker 3: you have to put together brief and stuff, and I
Speaker 3: got torn apart in that brief, like just annihilated, and
Speaker 3: so many questions that they asked me I just had
Speaker 3: no answer for. I didn't even know what they were
Speaker 3: talking about some of the times, and that was just
Speaker 3: kind of like, Okay, this is the big league, so
Speaker 3: like this is where I want to be type of thing.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, it specially it was definitely hard, more
Speaker 3: mentally and just you're just sleep deprived and having to
Speaker 3: do a bunch of things, so more mentally challenging than physically.
Speaker 3: The physical stuff was. It wasn't bad. It was like
Speaker 3: pet tests and stuff like that. So I feel like
Speaker 3: you should. Were you surprised to learn that you survived
Speaker 3: that panel? That board? Have you heard about that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So so the one sixtieth you're talking about the end
Speaker 3: of assessment? Yeah, yeah, so the one sixtieth board at
Speaker 3: the end of assessment. This is uh, I can't give
Speaker 3: too much away, but what I've heard and what I
Speaker 3: know now is that if you crush the assessment, they're
Speaker 3: going to be dicks to you, like they're just going
Speaker 3: to tear you apart and zere you react. Right, It's
Speaker 3: kind of their last view. It's kind of their last
Speaker 3: view of like, all right, let's tear him down and
Speaker 3: let's see what he does. And so I get through
Speaker 3: with my board and I was shaking the whole time. Actually,
Speaker 3: an interesting point is you have to talk to the
Speaker 3: site during one point in assessment, and I was still
Speaker 3: hiding everything, and during my assessment, I was like shaking
Speaker 3: and he called me out on my board and he said,
Speaker 3: you look extremely anxious right now. And I've played it off.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I mean, I am, sir, this
Speaker 3: is a lot of pressure, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like I played it off, but like at the same time,
Speaker 3: I was like, shit, he sees right through me, you know.
Speaker 3: So I leave the board. It's like I think it
Speaker 3: was an hour long board. I leave it. I go
Speaker 3: in this waiting room. It seems like forever they you know,
Speaker 3: it's where they you know, get their counsel together and
Speaker 3: say whether you made it or not. And I come
Speaker 3: back report back to the room. And when I walk
Speaker 3: in there's a paper sign handwritten it said no go.
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, like all his freaking work.
Speaker 3: So I walk in and stand at attention and the
Speaker 3: president of the board I think it was the DCO.
Speaker 3: So it's not the regim medical commander but the guy
Speaker 3: below him, and he was like, mister Kelly, like, I
Speaker 3: appreciate you coming. You know, you put your good, good
Speaker 3: foot forward. We want you to go back to your
Speaker 3: unit and then come back here in grape Tune in January.
Speaker 3: And I was like wait a second, Like I mean
Speaker 3: I passed you know, and like then everybody started clapping
Speaker 3: and stuff, So yeah, I know, I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: roller coaster. Can you imagine somebody who like spasses out
Speaker 3: at that moment.
Speaker 2: I heard a story about a gentleman at the board
Speaker 2: for Delta Force selection who picked up the folding chair
Speaker 2: and wung it at the board members.
Speaker 3: Whoa, because he's just like fucking with the.
Speaker 2: SF guy, right and at a certain point, like I
Speaker 2: can't take that all right, dude, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I get it right, Dang, that's crazy like thunderdome. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that was my That was my assessment. How did
Speaker 3: that feel for you?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: Amazing? Amazing? And I will say that the suicidal stuff
Speaker 3: did kind of get better, like it was now. It
Speaker 3: wasn't like over consuming, It wasn't like every day I
Speaker 3: was dealing with it now, it was like every once
Speaker 3: in a while. But the anxiety was still there, like
Speaker 3: the Dizney spells were still there. But the suicidal ideations
Speaker 3: did get better as my situation improved. Did you at all?
Speaker 4: You know, because you know you were in SSEF but
Speaker 4: you didn't go to Afghanistan. Then you went aviation and
Speaker 4: you were doing the ring rape. Did you at all
Speaker 4: feel as though you kept missing it like this, like
Speaker 4: this world just wasn't what it was supposed to be
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 3: Because and then Cherry on top is my brother has
Speaker 3: kind of followed my footsteps, so he went SSEF and everything,
Speaker 3: and when I got back from Afghanistan, he goes to
Speaker 3: Afghanistan with tenth Group and sees all his share right
Speaker 3: and does all this awesome stuff. And I'm just like, dude,
Speaker 3: come on, I've been in the Army for you know
Speaker 3: this long, and this is your first trip. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I definitely had that. I definitely had that, like the
Speaker 3: stain of like, you know, two deployments. I don't even
Speaker 3: have a CIB or a or a cab for that matter,
Speaker 3: like you know, like, so yeah, I definitely had that.
Speaker 3: It was like because it was one of those things
Speaker 3: where you always wonder, right like sure, like even though
Speaker 3: I know I would have done the job and I
Speaker 3: would have it's not like I would have ran away.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 3: It's always a question. Yeah, it's still that thing of
Speaker 3: like how was a green platoon when you got there?
Speaker 3: Green Platune was? It was great? So I I when
Speaker 3: I got when I found out I was going to
Speaker 3: the one sixtieth, I was told I was going to
Speaker 3: go to first Battalion and uh fly DAPs. So I
Speaker 3: was told I was going to go be a DAP pilot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I was pumped about it, and I made the
Speaker 3: fatal mistake and bought a house in Fort Campbell and
Speaker 3: found out about I think a month prior to reporting
Speaker 3: that I was going to third Battalion and not flying DAPs.
Speaker 3: So I was going to Savannah, Savannah, back to Savannah.
Speaker 3: So we had to make the kind of decision of like,
Speaker 3: all right, we'll just rent out the house if it,
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't appreciate value or whatever. So I
Speaker 3: show up to greenp Tune and the first part of
Speaker 3: Green Tune is Officer greenp Tunes. So that's when you're
Speaker 3: doing like the the kind of soft version of basic training,
Speaker 3: if you will, right like they're they're teaching you, which
Speaker 3: is actually good, Like it was actually even being a
Speaker 3: former SF guy, it was still good because I got
Speaker 3: a lot of reinforcement. Was just finally though the warrant
Speaker 3: world that you thought, yes, there was, yes, this very professional,
Speaker 3: very much so. Yeah, and the enlisted guys, it's a
Speaker 3: different story. The enlisted greenp tune. That's they're getting smoked
Speaker 3: and they're getting kind of indoctrinated. But that's also a
Speaker 3: lot of them are like straight from basic training, are
Speaker 3: so rightly so yeah, but it did feel good to
Speaker 3: be on the other side for a while, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 3: we got the big boy rules got to do. It
Speaker 3: was a lot of like medical training, shooting, some landing
Speaker 3: av things like that. Nothing crazy, But then you move
Speaker 3: into your b NAB, which is basic navigation, and that's
Speaker 3: where you learn to navigate in there without any instruments
Speaker 3: literally a map, a map and a stopwatch and you're
Speaker 3: flying off way points. Yeah, it was plus minus thirty.
Speaker 3: It was so hard. Yeah, you but the cool thing
Speaker 3: is you do I think you do nine missions total
Speaker 3: and it's this is a three week period where you're
Speaker 3: you're ingrained in it, like you're sixteen hour days every
Speaker 3: single day. But missions i'd say one through three like
Speaker 3: nobody finds their target and nobody's on time, you know.
Speaker 3: But then by mission four and five, like you start
Speaker 3: finding it and you start getting on time, and it's
Speaker 3: pretty awesome to see like what you can do right
Speaker 3: with that training because you have to adjust for wins
Speaker 3: and all this stuff and that's all in a little bird.
Speaker 3: So you're flying a little bird and literally just using
Speaker 3: a finger light on your map and like, all right,
Speaker 3: I hope that's that intersection, you know, and like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool to to
Speaker 3: see it all come together. And then by mission nine,
Speaker 3: like yeah, everybody's sitting in their target.
Speaker 4: Do you feel like your time in stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: having done you know, the star course and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Do you feel that that helped you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think just honestly, like the basic land navigation
Speaker 3: concepts right where I because I did start out right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I started out that course. I do feel like
Speaker 3: I had a leg up on everybody already because of that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: especially especially in the Green teone part, but definitely in
Speaker 3: bing app I think I think that helped a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and just understanding how it works back to assessment, so
Speaker 3: we have to do that in assessment too. And I
Speaker 3: actually humble brag I was one of the rare people
Speaker 3: that found my target. I wasn't on time, but I
Speaker 3: found it and I was so proud of myself. And
Speaker 3: then of course the cadre or the my assessment pilot
Speaker 3: was like you suck. You didn't you know? You were
Speaker 3: out of time, out of standard, you know, And I'm
Speaker 3: just like, come on, man, I've heard nobody finds their
Speaker 3: even if you would have been on time, I know something.
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, but but yeah, So that's been at and
Speaker 3: then after that you go into your airframe, so you
Speaker 3: go into I went into the sixty course and that
Speaker 3: was incredible.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: That is where you learn to fly, like like the
Speaker 3: one sixtieth, Like that's where you're going to uh Colorado,
Speaker 3: going to Virginia Beach and doing overwater mountains and learning
Speaker 3: to put one wheel on a pinnacle and it's it's
Speaker 3: really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. And one of the
Speaker 3: cooler parts of that course too is you're being taught
Speaker 3: by like one sixtieth legends, like these guys are they're
Speaker 3: just contractors now, you know, and they're insanely like relaxed
Speaker 3: but also insanely just competent good at what they do.
Speaker 3: Like those guys are just ye phenomenal pilots.
Speaker 4: So I guess I think for people who may not
Speaker 4: be familiar with like how the one sixtieth, it is
Speaker 4: different than you know, like conventional army especially with like
Speaker 4: black Hawks and stuff. Is you you think of like
Speaker 4: like maybe a BMX writer, right, you know, a guy
Speaker 4: doing jomps blah blah blah. And then you think of
Speaker 4: the guys who like hop up on rails and ride
Speaker 4: down rails and bunny hop on you know, like between
Speaker 4: like pillars and stuff like that, and it's like, what
Speaker 4: what the one sixtieth pilots are capable of doing on
Speaker 4: any airframe? Yeah, but are capable of doing is insane?
Speaker 4: It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 3: There's even and some of the pilots in the one
Speaker 3: sixtieth are a lot like I would I would consider
Speaker 3: myself like a decent pilot, right, And there's some pilots
Speaker 3: that are just insanely phenomenal. Yeah, Like I fly with
Speaker 3: one guy, one guy in my unit that I can
Speaker 3: distinctly remember, like he was so good that I was
Speaker 3: nervous in the cockpit with him flying. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: like because he was dangerous. He was just that good
Speaker 3: and that like all right, yeah, let's do this, and
Speaker 3: I'm just like dangered. I wouldn't do that, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty cool to see though, and it's cool
Speaker 3: to be a part of really cool to be a
Speaker 3: part of, and then you get deployed to Iraq. Yeah
Speaker 3: with the unit. Yeah, so this was the infamous COVID deployment.
Speaker 3: So we went out there and it was supposed to
Speaker 3: be a sixty day deployment and then the world shut
Speaker 3: down and we got to enjoy it for another sixty days.
Speaker 3: So it ended up doubling, which doesn't seem long, but
Speaker 3: when you're in the one sixty at the op tempo
Speaker 3: is insane, Like it's every day, twelve hour days, you know,
Speaker 3: so you're not like it's not like a nine month
Speaker 3: deployment where you're like five days on, one day off
Speaker 3: or whatever it is. You know, it's it's balls of
Speaker 3: the wall every single day and you're going hard. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it ended up being a yeah, a four month deployment.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much I can even get into
Speaker 3: it about there, like the specifics of that, But did
Speaker 3: you finally feel like that's what I was going to say,
Speaker 3: That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where I got airframe, Like, this is it
Speaker 4: I'm finally doing. That's where I got it in Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's where I was. Yes, that's where I was
Speaker 4: finally like finally, yes, I've done something that I signed
Speaker 4: up to do.
Speaker 3: You know, which was the coolest part about regiment is
Speaker 3: that I know Lindsay mentioned it, but like we truly
Speaker 3: train as we fight, and like on deployments, we do
Speaker 3: the job that we're supposed to do, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like we do the mission that we're designed
Speaker 3: to do. We're not just like, oh yeah, maybe we'll
Speaker 3: do that once an once in a while. Is there
Speaker 3: any that you can kind of like even around about
Speaker 3: sort of way, Yeah, yeah, so I can talk about
Speaker 3: one where I'm not gonna like say locations or anything.
Speaker 3: But we took this is this is kind of a
Speaker 3: funny story in a way because I don't have like
Speaker 3: I don't have any like crazy like you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: like I don't have any like valor worthy stories, you know.
Speaker 3: But one funny story is so we were the dirty
Speaker 3: Bird since it was COVID, so we had to figure out, like,
Speaker 3: all right, if we take someone off target, like what
Speaker 3: are we doing with them? You know? So what we
Speaker 3: figured out or what we decided, I didn't just the
Speaker 3: higher ups decided that was we're gonna have one aircraft
Speaker 3: dedicated to any detainees or anybody would take off target
Speaker 3: and they're gonna be the dirty bird. So we take
Speaker 3: someone off target and this poor guy had to be
Speaker 3: like wrapped in a body bag, COVID swabed and all
Speaker 3: this stuff, and fly back like three hours I think
Speaker 3: two and a half hours maybe in a black Hawk,
Speaker 3: just pitch black right just on the ground in a
Speaker 3: body bag, literally like no idea, what's going on. And
Speaker 3: then when we landed we had to Our decontamination plan
Speaker 3: was literally like going a connex that they put heat
Speaker 3: lamps in, stripped down and rinse off and then throw
Speaker 3: on whatever, just normal clothes and leave our uniform in
Speaker 3: there for twenty four hours. So that was like our
Speaker 3: decon plan. And while everything was good, but like that's
Speaker 3: that's like the most It's just dumb. Yeah, it's just dumb.
Speaker 3: Like looking back on I'm like, why did we do
Speaker 3: any of that? You know, but like nobody knew what
Speaker 3: to do. That was just like the answer for it.
Speaker 3: But other than that, man, I don't have any like
Speaker 3: crazy stories, like we did our job and nothing fortunately,
Speaker 3: nothing really went went sideways. Yeah, except there was one
Speaker 3: mission that this is another missing out opportunity. So there
Speaker 3: were valor awards on this mission, and our aircraft was
Speaker 3: broken so we didn't go. So four other aircraft go
Speaker 3: on this mission, and it was like a q r
Speaker 3: F in the mountains and like right on the exert. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was actually I don't remember the specifics, but it
Speaker 3: was like on a mountain side, yeah, and they had
Speaker 3: to go do some high hovers and faster people and
Speaker 3: actually I think repel people out was what it was. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was pretty intense, like hovering at like a
Speaker 3: high hover, you know, getting shot at, repelling people out.
Speaker 4: I mean that's just so that's Vietnam War, right, It
Speaker 4: really falls of steel to just keep a bird in
Speaker 4: place when everybody has a beat on, you're helpless, Yeah,
Speaker 4: because you got to, like the troops gotta get down exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you pull off and they're taken. That's a long
Speaker 3: ass fast rope. Yeah yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so getting back to the United States from that deployment,
Speaker 2: like what's going on with you personally and professionally at
Speaker 2: that juncture.
Speaker 3: So I didn't at this point, I was still progressing.
Speaker 3: So in the one sixtieth when you first get there,
Speaker 3: you're BMQ, so basic mission qualified, So that's like the
Speaker 3: entry level whatever your goal is to make FMQ so
Speaker 3: fully mission qualified, so that's when you it's the same
Speaker 3: as a piloting command in the regular arm so that's
Speaker 3: when you have control of your aircraft and you're like
Speaker 3: in charge of your career. So that was like I
Speaker 3: was progressing towards that during the deployment in Iraq. The
Speaker 3: good part about the COVID problem was that we did
Speaker 3: have like it got shut down for it, so weren't
Speaker 3: doing anything for a little bit, So there was some
Speaker 3: training opportunities, so I got to actually like lead some
Speaker 3: missions training missions right, but I got to plan, brief
Speaker 3: and execute all those and get those done, which were
Speaker 3: helped me kind of progress towards that FMQ. But then in.
Speaker 4: January of the next year, so Iraq was twenty twenty
Speaker 4: and January the next year, I.
Speaker 3: Had my FMQ right scheduled for April of that year,
Speaker 3: but I was having a lot of knee issues, like
Speaker 3: to the point where I couldn't run more than half
Speaker 3: a mile without having to stop. So I got an
Speaker 3: MRA on it, and they found that I had like
Speaker 3: a defect in my knee, like there was literally like
Speaker 3: a hole missing in my knee, that it was just
Speaker 3: bone on bone, just grinding. Yeah, I think it was
Speaker 3: just like wear and tear over time. But I also
Speaker 3: think that there had to been some genetic shit. It
Speaker 3: doesn't happen to everybody. So I ended up having to
Speaker 3: get knee surgery that January, and that was a nine
Speaker 3: month like recovery time, so blessing and a curse.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 3: I was pissed off, obviously because I wanted to like
Speaker 3: continue progressing. But during that nine month period, that allowed
Speaker 3: me to accept the fact that I was already grounded
Speaker 3: and tell somebody about these daisy spells. So that gave me,
Speaker 3: that gave myself the permission to be like, all right,
Speaker 3: let's try to figure this out. Now that I now
Speaker 3: that the consequence that I was scared of is gone,
Speaker 3: I'm not flying, Let's try to figure this out. So
Speaker 3: what that leads to, though, this is a really long story,
Speaker 3: so interrupt me if it's like that.
Speaker 4: Before you start that. I want to ask you one
Speaker 4: thing I want to before you start this story. Yeah,
Speaker 4: when you were you know, like just hop and pop
Speaker 4: in like in a rock, did won the ideation and
Speaker 4: to the anxiety was this still there.
Speaker 3: Did it seem to go away with the adrenaline and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. Yeah, that's a great question. So the
Speaker 3: suicidal ideation was pretty much gone by that point. I
Speaker 3: was still having the dizzy spells and the anxiety. But
Speaker 3: the ironic thing is that never happened in the aircraft,
Speaker 3: right it was I think it was the adrenaline though.
Speaker 3: I think it was the adrenaline and the focus required,
Speaker 3: right because like the zone. Yeah, so I really, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that's what I attributed to because
Speaker 3: like that would have been a different story if I
Speaker 3: was just a total focus exactly, and you're like task,
Speaker 3: So your mind's just but it's.
Speaker 4: So pure, right, like those moments of like that, you know,
Speaker 4: whether it's an athletic flow state or whatever, the combat
Speaker 4: is just so pure that it's don't even hard for
Speaker 4: anything else to be there.
Speaker 3: No, that's a really good point, yeah, because that would
Speaker 3: have that would have definitely been like a safety hasard,
Speaker 3: like I would have been like, okay, I should probably
Speaker 3: do something. So no, it never did, thank god. But
Speaker 3: then so during after the knee surgery, I told my
Speaker 3: flight surgeon that I have these dizzey spells, and I
Speaker 3: was like, I don't. I didn't tell her my history
Speaker 3: of mental health because I was not ready to open
Speaker 3: that can of worms yet. So I was basically sugarcoating
Speaker 3: it if you will, you know. I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on. I'm just yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: just having these Disney spells. I don't really know how
Speaker 3: to explain it. So that's exactly what they did. They
Speaker 3: sent me to E and T, got my ears checked out.
Speaker 3: That was all fine. So then to spare you the
Speaker 3: long details, we do head to toe tests right to
Speaker 3: rule out physiological things. But one of those tests was
Speaker 3: a sleep study. So I go for a sleep study
Speaker 3: with a civilian doctor in Savannah that I got referred to,
Speaker 3: and after that sleep study, I got diagnosed with narcolepsy
Speaker 3: as a pilot, right. So yeah, so I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: like one that might answer these Disney spells. Maybe I'm
Speaker 3: like falling asleep having micro naps right and causing my
Speaker 3: body to be like, yeah, you know you were you
Speaker 3: were falling over. I don't know. So there was a
Speaker 3: sense of relief in a weird way because of that, right,
Speaker 3: Like I was like, finally I have an answer for
Speaker 3: what's going on. But then the Army, so my flight
Speaker 3: doc is like, okay, dude, like you can either reclass
Speaker 3: or you get out of the Army, like you can't
Speaker 3: fly with narcole ems where this has never been like
Speaker 3: you never happened, You never nod like that never happened.
Speaker 3: I will say I will say that like during that
Speaker 3: anxiety period, like when I would drive home at like
Speaker 3: three pm, four pm, I was exhausted and having like
Speaker 3: a lot of daytime sleepiness. But I that's also because
Speaker 3: I was so anxious all the time, and I was
Speaker 3: like my body was working overdrive, right, So so in
Speaker 3: my mind the diagnosis was like okay, like it kind
Speaker 3: of makes sense, and I kind of talked myself into
Speaker 3: it making sense. Right, So my flight doc puts in
Speaker 3: a med board and they decline it because the sleep
Speaker 3: study wasn't done by the Army, of course, So I'm
Speaker 3: like all right, sweet, So so now I'm just grounded still.
Speaker 3: And by this time, so this was the end of
Speaker 3: that year. By this time, I knew was recovered, so
Speaker 3: I wasn't like so I kind of felt like a
Speaker 3: back of ass because I was like, you know, I'm grounded,
Speaker 3: but I could fly if I needed to, So do
Speaker 3: the Army sleep study. I have to go to Fort
Speaker 3: Gordon and do all that, and the results came back
Speaker 3: and they say, you have no diagnosable criteria for narcolepsy,
Speaker 3: freaking kidding me. So you're back on flight status. No,
Speaker 3: because they permanently grounded me when I got diagnosed with
Speaker 3: narcolepsy the first time. Rutgers like, Okay, we'll accept this
Speaker 3: diagnosed right permanent army. But the army won't let you
Speaker 3: get out of the army doesn't Yeah, they don't let
Speaker 3: that money exactly. So now I'm in this like even
Speaker 3: worse purgatory of like I don't have a diagnosis, but
Speaker 3: I can't fly because you're still a diagnosis. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I'm still in the unit. So I am very grateful
Speaker 3: that I was in the one sixtieth because my command
Speaker 3: was incredible throughout all this, like they were they had
Speaker 3: my back, right, and they actually sent me to the
Speaker 3: safety course at Rutger of the ash safety course so
Speaker 3: that I could continue contributing to the unit. So even
Speaker 3: though I was implying, I ended up being basically the
Speaker 3: company safety officer, which is like It's honestly pretty cool
Speaker 3: because you get to like, you get to be pretty autonomous.
Speaker 3: And I still got to go on like TDY trips
Speaker 3: with the company, so I was actively participating without flying,
Speaker 3: which was like a halfway point, I guess. But then
Speaker 3: this leads to me eventually the flight doc eventually saying,
Speaker 3: all right, let's have you talked to the psychologist, you know,
Speaker 3: and just see, like see if there's anything there, right,
Speaker 3: because we've ruled everything else out, we don't really have
Speaker 3: an answer. And after probably two months of talking to her,
Speaker 3: she's like, all right, we're gonna get you to the
Speaker 3: psychiatrist and we're going to try to treat you for
Speaker 3: anxiety and kind of see what happens. And at this
Speaker 3: point I didn't care because I hadn't know. There was
Speaker 3: no consequences at that point. So I do that and
Speaker 3: I get on I don't remember the first one, whatever
Speaker 3: lexapro or something like that, get on pills, and the
Speaker 3: symptoms started to improve, like not dramatically at first, but
Speaker 3: enough to be like, okay, like I think there's something here, right,
Speaker 3: and it didn't. There We went through maybe six different
Speaker 3: cocktails and drugs.
Speaker 4: Has anybody looked at your medical file to see like
Speaker 4: that you had had the ideations before, had anybody.
Speaker 3: Nobody even brought that up. Ever. Nobody brought that up ever,
Speaker 3: because I was honestly, like kind of scared that they would,
Speaker 3: right like, but no nobody ever brought that up, which
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's because it was too far
Speaker 3: back or what. But so, yeah, so I get to
Speaker 3: that point and it's working, and we finally get through
Speaker 3: a bunch of different medications because everyone has side effects
Speaker 3: of course that I hated, and we got to effects
Speaker 3: her and literally, I'm not kidding, like ninety five for
Speaker 3: some of the symptoms went away like it was like
Speaker 3: night and day, and it became it became to the
Speaker 3: point where they were still happening, but they were so
Speaker 3: situational that I could pinpoint exactly to what was happening
Speaker 3: and when they were happening. And once I told the
Speaker 3: psychologist that like, hey, it's happening when I'm in formation, right,
Speaker 3: or it's happening when I have to give a breef,
Speaker 3: or it's happening like when I go to church, or
Speaker 3: when I'm in like a big stadium. She read the
Speaker 3: symptoms of panic disorder and I was like freaking nailed it,
Speaker 3: you know, like I didn't want to accept it, right,
Speaker 3: but then I did. And I'm not gonna lie as
Speaker 3: cheesy as it is, like that's when I started actually
Speaker 3: healing and getting better. Was when I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is it, you know, like, this is actually what's
Speaker 3: happening to me. Because I did not want mental health diagnosis.
Speaker 3: What was the process of the healing for it? Was
Speaker 3: it just the realization or were there other steps that
Speaker 3: you started taking with that. Yeah, So, contrary to most
Speaker 3: people's opinion, I will say the medication was the thing
Speaker 3: that gave me the space to heal. I know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of like hate on it medication for some reason,
Speaker 3: but it did give me the space to heal. Like
Speaker 3: so it allowed me to, like I said, like identify
Speaker 3: the problem and actually pinpoint what's happening instead of this
Speaker 3: it just being like this all day, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of crazy anxiety life, I guess.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I tell guys to that and try to
Speaker 2: remind them, like, because there is a stigma against prescription
Speaker 2: drugs for some good reasons, I agree, some realistic reasons,
Speaker 2: and you know the way they affect people and guys
Speaker 2: really don't like how it makes them feel.
Speaker 4: And also, like I think the like a lot of
Speaker 4: like V eight like their reliance on it, that they're
Speaker 4: just gonna pump you full of it, and that's gonna
Speaker 4: be that's what you do.
Speaker 2: But the thing is some some of these guys, some
Speaker 2: of these veterans in this case, are hurting so bad
Speaker 2: they need those prescription drugs just so they can get
Speaker 2: to their VA.
Speaker 3: Appointments or whatever else is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like I try to frame it for them,
Speaker 2: like use it as a stepping stone to get to
Speaker 2: the place you want to go, which I.
Speaker 3: Think is that's a great That's exactly what I would
Speaker 3: say too, is like it, like I said, it gave
Speaker 3: me the space, right, it gave me the clarity to
Speaker 3: be like, oh shit, okay, like that's what's happening. And
Speaker 3: then now I can figure out like what I need
Speaker 3: to work on externally so that because now I'm off
Speaker 3: the medication and I don't have those dizzy spells.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So it's one of those things that like it was
Speaker 3: necessary at the time and it was helpful at the time,
Speaker 3: but I don't see it as a long term like
Speaker 3: don't just accept you're going to be on it for
Speaker 3: the next time years, right, Like take it if it helps,
Speaker 3: you know, and then get yourself out of that situation
Speaker 3: by doing other things other than just relying on it.
Speaker 4: So when you when that space was created for you
Speaker 4: and you could sort of see it, were you getting guidance.
Speaker 3: In terms of how to manage it? Did you do
Speaker 3: your own research? How did that happen?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I will attest for and praise my psychologists at
Speaker 3: the one sixtieth so regiment has specific psychologists, and she
Speaker 3: was phenomenal. Like she very much was the Nobs type
Speaker 3: of psychologist that wasn't just trying to you know, like
Speaker 3: say I'll just float with the world, right, Like she
Speaker 3: was very like a practice Yeah, she was very practical. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very much like hey, dude, like why did this happen?
Speaker 3: How do we avoid this happening in the future, and
Speaker 3: how can we like make sure you know, you're you
Speaker 3: have the tools so that if it does happen again
Speaker 3: or you start to see signs that you can get
Speaker 3: yourself out of it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, she was phenomenal. I know not everybody can
Speaker 3: say that about every psychologist out there, but she was.
Speaker 3: I will give her like mad props for that. She
Speaker 3: was phenomenal through that. So what was that process like
Speaker 3: for you? Was like CBT? Yep, A lot of it
Speaker 3: was CBT. Actually most of it was CBT. I will
Speaker 3: say that, like, prior to getting on the meds, we
Speaker 3: tried those things and they didn't work. Okay, So that's
Speaker 3: where I say like the meds were important because when
Speaker 3: you're so deep in it, like if you just go
Speaker 3: meditate and think that's going to fix everything, like good luck,
Speaker 3: you know, at least in my situation, it was not attack. Yeah,
Speaker 3: exactly right. Yeah, And when I tried the breathing exercises,
Speaker 3: that's what it did. Yeah, Like I would try like
Speaker 3: box breathing and all that stuff, right, and everybody's like
Speaker 3: I watched YouTube videos, you know, and everybody's like, this
Speaker 3: is how you carr anxiety, right, if you're having a
Speaker 3: panic attack, just do this, And I would do it,
Speaker 3: and I'm like that's bullshit, Like that didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: That just made me think about my anxiety more and
Speaker 3: be more pissed off. So yeah, I mean, but the
Speaker 3: irony of that is like now those tools work, Like
Speaker 3: now that I'm out of that and now that I'm
Speaker 3: off meds, Like, now those tools work because I have
Speaker 3: a clear enough.
Speaker 4: Mind that I can actually use them, you know. So
Speaker 4: so what was that So you take the menage, you
Speaker 4: start the CBT, you start these things. What was that
Speaker 4: sort of process like for you?
Speaker 3: So it was a good it was about a year
Speaker 3: actually process from were you still an active the whole time? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 3: So I got medically retired in May of twenty twenty three. Okay,
Speaker 3: so once I got and I got the panic disorder diagnosis,
Speaker 3: I think in May of twenty two, So I think
Speaker 3: it was a full almost a full year of me
Speaker 3: basically trying to get back on my feet and get
Speaker 3: figure out what's happening and whether I'm going to get
Speaker 3: medically retired or not right, because I was trying to
Speaker 3: get back in the cockpit still. But it did get
Speaker 3: to the point where she was like, well, really me,
Speaker 3: I made the decision to get medically retired. So I
Speaker 3: got to the point where I was like, these I
Speaker 3: need to be on these meds. And I couldn't fly
Speaker 3: while I was on the meds. So well, you can,
Speaker 3: but it's a pain of the ass. And I was
Speaker 3: I was just at the point where I was like
Speaker 3: I'm freaking done, Like I've gone, I've put myself through
Speaker 3: so much shit, Like I just need to be done
Speaker 3: and get out. So that last year was me basically
Speaker 3: trying getting medically retired. So it was about a year.
Speaker 3: But the process to your question was it was a
Speaker 3: lot of CBT. It was a lot of It was
Speaker 3: a lot of digging into like the why of like
Speaker 3: everything kind of which like it's a big not right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: like why are you? Like what do you want to
Speaker 3: do as a dad? What do you want to do?
Speaker 3: His husband? Like? It was a lot more like purpose finding,
Speaker 3: which was weird because I wasn't expecting that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: now that I look back on it, that's kind of
Speaker 3: what it was, was like why are you doing all
Speaker 3: of this? Why are you doing anything?
Speaker 4: You know? And like? And that was good because I
Speaker 4: never really stopped to think about that before. You know,
Speaker 4: I was just kind of knowing hud real quick. For
Speaker 4: people who might not know CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy,
Speaker 4: just just throw that out there.
Speaker 3: What did you ever tell her about like the ideations
Speaker 3: that you had had? Yeah, once I once I got
Speaker 3: permanently grounded, So once I had that narclepsy diagnosis. The
Speaker 3: gloves were off, I said, skirwt, like I'm I'm telling
Speaker 3: her everything, and that also attributes to her actually being
Speaker 3: able to diagnose me something and like actually be like okay,
Speaker 3: like that everything kind of makes sense now that you're
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, the irony or One crazy thing though,
Speaker 3: is when I like talked about those dizzey spells, nobody
Speaker 3: even brought up anxiety being an option, you know, like
Speaker 3: it seems kind of we literally did head to toe
Speaker 3: tests of everything else and anxiety never came up, and
Speaker 3: it didn't it wasn't to the point where we ruled
Speaker 3: everything out. So that was an interesting thing because I've
Speaker 3: talked to multiple people since I've like actually spoken about
Speaker 3: this who are like, dude, I've had the same dizzy
Speaker 3: spells almost, like, how is this not like a common
Speaker 3: knowledge from doctors? You know?
Speaker 4: Well, I also think though, that you know, when you
Speaker 4: when you talk about panic or anxiety, that unfortunately that
Speaker 4: there is a certain image of a person who suffers
Speaker 4: from panic or anxiety that comes to mind, and it's
Speaker 4: not some guy flying you know, black hawks through a rock.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a good point.
Speaker 4: That's a good point you think of, Yeah, you think
Speaker 4: of like some some victim, right, That's not that's scared
Speaker 4: to leave the vapors.
Speaker 3: It's you know yea. So yeah, And to be honest,
Speaker 3: I didn't want it to be sure, you know, like
Speaker 3: I wanted it to be like my ears were jacked
Speaker 3: up or something.
Speaker 4: That way I could justify it because panic or anxiety
Speaker 4: that that sounds like weakness. It's not exact, but it sounds.
Speaker 3: Like right exactly, yeah, and that's the Yeah, that's one
Speaker 3: of those stigmas, right yeah, yeah, good point. And so
Speaker 3: what was the next step for you and your family
Speaker 3: after being medically retired? So I've I am fortunate that
Speaker 3: I had this nerd side to me that always liked
Speaker 3: financial stuff. So I like grew up listening to Dave
Speaker 3: Ramsey and all that stuff, and I just had this like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's one of those guys that just
Speaker 3: like that would be my podcast that I listened to,
Speaker 3: you know, we're like personal finance stuff. So when I
Speaker 3: found out I was getting medically retires, is about it.
Speaker 3: I had about a year actual runway before I got out,
Speaker 3: which was a blessing. That's when I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go be a financial planner, and I
Speaker 3: started doing all my coursework and getting all my certifications,
Speaker 3: so that literally when I got out of the Army,
Speaker 3: I had my certify Financial Planner exam done and I
Speaker 3: was just ready to kind of hit the ground running,
Speaker 3: and I networked my way through LinkedIn, so people transitioning
Speaker 3: out there. One of the best things that I ever
Speaker 3: did was actually like reach out to people on LinkedIn,
Speaker 3: which went against everything I believed as a soft guy, right,
Speaker 3: no social media, but I got the balls to like
Speaker 3: actually message people that were on LinkedIn doing what I
Speaker 3: wanted to do, and we were looking at Charlotte. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and fortunately one of the guys that I messaged was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I started a firm and we need advisors. Do you
Speaker 3: want to come work for us? And I was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's amazing. So right off the bat, I was able
Speaker 3: to land a job in Charlotte and kind of it
Speaker 3: wasn't like a salary job though, so it was he
Speaker 3: would chill. It was what you kill. Yeah. It was
Speaker 3: basically like you start with nothing, you know, have clients,
Speaker 3: so you got to build it. It was kind of
Speaker 3: big with when you've got a family. Yeah, Luckily I
Speaker 3: did have like the military benefits. They weren't like full paycheck, right,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't like cover all my expenses, but I did
Speaker 3: have like the disability paycheck and stuff like that to
Speaker 3: kind of bridge the gap. And then some savings built up.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and then after about a year working for
Speaker 3: that firm, I met another guy in Charlotte who was
Speaker 3: starting his own firm and he said, Hey, do you
Speaker 3: want to come partner with me at this firm?
Speaker 4: And that's where I am now, and it's called Kaiden's
Speaker 4: Wealth Partners And what for anybody who needs a financial
Speaker 4: advisor in Northline. We're Charlotte, but we were virtual now
Speaker 4: virtual like anybody anywhere.
Speaker 3: What's the name again, Kayden's Wealth Partners, Caden's Wealth Partners. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's cool because I I work with veterans, Like
Speaker 3: that's my like niche Like I just love it, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I tried to go like the ultra high networth
Speaker 3: and all the cliche advisor you know routes, and then
Speaker 3: most of my most of the people that were coming
Speaker 3: to me were from my network, like naturally right first,
Speaker 3: and I was like I love this, Like I love
Speaker 3: working with them, you know. So so yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: I'm niched in too. It's fun. And how did this
Speaker 3: book project come about? Stigma, which is going to be
Speaker 3: out in October twenty First, good question. So when I
Speaker 3: was getting out, I none of my peers knew why
Speaker 3: I was getting out. They all I stuck with the
Speaker 3: narcolepsi diagnosis the entire time because that was the easy button, right,
Speaker 3: that was the non stigma button, right of like grounded
Speaker 3: for it, and I was grounded for it, right, So
Speaker 3: I did get diagnosed with it, you know, and that's
Speaker 3: what I felt. I was like, Okay, like I can
Speaker 3: tell people this because that doesn't mean there's something wrong
Speaker 3: with my head. Right, So all of that happened to me,
Speaker 3: all of these freaking five plus years of just grunting
Speaker 3: it out right and dealing with this and suffering through that.
Speaker 3: Once I finally got out and told I think I
Speaker 3: told my brother about it first and he was still
Speaker 3: in and he started crying and he was like, and
Speaker 3: he's not like he's a tough dude, you know, like
Speaker 3: he could kick my ass, to be honest, and he's
Speaker 3: my little brother. So that's saying a lot for me
Speaker 3: to admit that, but he started crying and I was
Speaker 3: like the hell, you know, and he's like, dude, why
Speaker 3: didn't you tell me? You know? I'm like I couldn't. Man,
Speaker 3: how am I Like? I couldn't tell anybody? Right? He's
Speaker 3: like that's a problem, and I'm like, yeah, it is, dude,
Speaker 3: I know, but I just didn't feel like I could so,
Speaker 3: like I couldn't even tell my own brother, you know
Speaker 3: who I'm like closest with more than anybody in the world.
Speaker 3: I was like, this is this is a cultural problem
Speaker 3: that like needs to be talked about. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of where I was like, screwt, I'm gonna talk about
Speaker 3: it and I'm gonna just lay it all out there
Speaker 3: and see what happens. Like it was terrifying initially the
Speaker 3: first time I talked about it. I was like, dude,
Speaker 3: I have no idea how people are going to react
Speaker 3: to this, you know, like, yeah, because those stigmas were
Speaker 3: still there, Like is my reputation going to be gone
Speaker 3: if I mentioned this? You know? But the surprisingly, man,
Speaker 3: it's been the opposite, and I, yeah.
Speaker 4: It's so weird to isn't, Because like the civilian world
Speaker 4: has gotten to a point I think where talking about
Speaker 4: whether it's panic or anxiety or whatever, you're talking whatever
Speaker 4: things you have going on with your strength, like they're
Speaker 4: almost badges of honor. And then we're civilian conversations now
Speaker 4: right where with the military or veterans and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: or maybe men in general.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, but it's still a very like yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's like, I don't know, I feel like it's
Speaker 3: like you feel like you're exposing weakness, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, even though you're not. Like to be honest,
Speaker 3: the most courageous thing I did was talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: as ironic as that is, you know, and as scary
Speaker 3: as it was, Like it it took balls to speak
Speaker 3: up about it, and like it's been super rewarding, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and my hope is that more people will come to
Speaker 3: that realization, you know that like dude, I was a
Speaker 3: zombie for six years of my life, you know, like
Speaker 3: I was not a present dad or husband, Like yeah,
Speaker 3: just sucks, you know. And so what's the book going
Speaker 3: to be about. It's your story, so it's it's going
Speaker 3: to be my story, but it's also going to be
Speaker 3: deconstructing some of those stigmas and saying showing why they're why.
Speaker 3: Some of them do have validity, right, because there are,
Speaker 3: at least in my situation as a pilot, there were
Speaker 3: repercussions for going on medication or doing that right, So
Speaker 3: there are some that have validity. But the primary objective
Speaker 3: with it is one to deconstruct the stigma and then
Speaker 3: two to show people that you can be a freaking
Speaker 3: stud and deal with this stuff and it's okay, right,
Speaker 3: it doesn't make you like less of a man or
Speaker 3: anything like that. So those are the big objectives, and
Speaker 3: then hopefully my my big overaarching mission is too and
Speaker 3: this is a really big mission, but to ultimately lower
Speaker 3: the suicide rate because like you've loved, I'm sure you
Speaker 3: guys have both lost friends to it, and I have
Speaker 3: two and they were studs, the people that I can
Speaker 3: think of literally off the top of my head, and
Speaker 3: I know they were dealing with some of this, and
Speaker 3: I know they were dealing with just the fear of
Speaker 3: what if I expose this right, And they got to
Speaker 3: the point where it was like it was easier for
Speaker 3: them to do it then to tell somebody about it,
Speaker 3: you know, which sucks, but yeah, that's the reality. So
Speaker 3: that's my overall like million you know mile mission is
Speaker 3: to go lower those stats.
Speaker 4: And so when is Stigma going to be out again?
Speaker 4: October twenty first, So please if you are listening to this,
Speaker 4: you know, there's not a there's not a pre order
Speaker 4: link out yet or not yet. So if you are
Speaker 4: listening to this, please put that in your phone as
Speaker 4: a reminder. October twenty first, Uh, for stigma.
Speaker 3: You know, you get this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are things that you know, and even if
Speaker 4: it's not something for you, if it gives you awareness
Speaker 4: and you don't even have to be a veteran or
Speaker 4: no veterans, this is these are these are issues and
Speaker 4: and it'll give you, you know, a place to start,
Speaker 4: whether for yourself or for somebody who you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, Yeah, I mean it's it's something that should
Speaker 3: just be talked about, you know, absolutely and not be
Speaker 3: like dude, you're a pussy for a saying that.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I just think that's dumb and that's literally killing
Speaker 4: people exactly. It pisses me. Yeah, well, you know, and
Speaker 4: it's unfortunate because ever since Vietnam, you know, every portrayal
Speaker 4: of military post traumatic stress or military mental health has
Speaker 4: been post traumatic stress of you know, uh, somebody having
Speaker 4: flashbacks or whether it's the punishment, like it's it's always
Speaker 4: this really horrible uh representation of what veteranent mental health
Speaker 4: looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no that's true. I mean even in my situation,
Speaker 3: I got diagnosed with anxiety, PTSD, depression, and panic disorder,
Speaker 3: Like they just lumped it all together because they're like,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do with this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's like, yeah, it's too your point, right,
Speaker 3: Like everybody just thinks PTSD, but there's so much more.
Speaker 4: And even though the even PTSD is not represented in
Speaker 4: modern culture the way it actually really is. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: you know, like we're a danger to everybody around us. No,
Speaker 4: you're just a danger to yourself, right for sure. So yeah,
Speaker 4: so Stigma October twenty first will be released like on
Speaker 4: Amazon and all the it'll be everywhere, okay, everywhere you
Speaker 4: can buy a book.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is there anything that we've left out or anything
Speaker 3: that where people find you? So? Good? Good point? Uh.
Speaker 3: The Nico Kelly dot com is my website.
Speaker 4: I got Instagram and YouTube links on there too, so
Speaker 4: I've got a YouTube channel where I'm talking about this stuff.
Speaker 3: And then I do want to do a nonprofit plug
Speaker 3: if you guys are cool, sure, absolutely so. A former
Speaker 3: one sixtieth pilot started a nonprofit in Nashville called the
Speaker 3: ARC Health Foundation, and I'm on the board of it.
Speaker 3: And essentially the the goal of it is to get
Speaker 3: around these stigmas while they still exist. So it's a
Speaker 3: human performance optimization center geared towards brain health, right, so,
Speaker 3: geared towards non medicinal ways to treat mental health. So
Speaker 3: I think, like all those modalities that like Andrew Huberman
Speaker 3: talks about, that's what it's focused on. It's going to
Speaker 3: be absolutely free to veterans and active duty So it's
Speaker 3: our health Foundation A good question, yeah, r K Health Foundation. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's going to be a completely stigma free place, right,
Speaker 3: Like somebody can just show up there and say, hey,
Speaker 3: like I want to go do this modality, right, and
Speaker 3: they don't have to say like because I'm depressed or
Speaker 3: because I'm dealing with this, right, it can just be like, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to get better at this or whatever, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's taking all that brain science and brain health
Speaker 3: that Hebreman's been spearheading and really putting the awareness out
Speaker 3: and putting them all together in one facility for active
Speaker 3: duty and veterans, right, it'll be really cool. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: still in the startup phase, so we don't have the facilities.
Speaker 3: We need three hundred k four facilities to actually be
Speaker 3: fully funded, and the first one is going to be
Speaker 3: rolled out at Fort Campbell's. So yeah, that's awesome, pumped
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 4: And so should we start the gofund me for you
Speaker 4: guys or yeah, so from are more affluent viewers and
Speaker 4: listeners or kelth is like over three hundred k of
Speaker 4: endownmas right or whatever they call it.
Speaker 3: Donations, donations, thank you text deductible donating exactly right, Nicky,
Speaker 3: Nico Kelly. Great, and my all my handles are at
Speaker 3: the y and they're all they're all in the description. Yes,
Speaker 3: so thank you Nick for sharing your story with us. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I know some of these stories aren't pleasant to like
Speaker 3: kind of relive, but for the reasons you're well aware if.
Speaker 2: It's important to get that stuff out there too. God
Speaker 2: only knows who's watching these things. I mean, all types
Speaker 2: of people watch it. People who I hear.
Speaker 3: From them sometimes were like and this podcast got me
Speaker 3: through like a hard time in my life. It's like
Speaker 3: I never thought that people engage with it in that way.
Speaker 3: But I'm glad if it helps somebody. I hope so too.
Speaker 3: You know, all this message gets out there to folks,
Speaker 3: so yeah, thank you again, and we'll make an announcement
Speaker 3: on the show.
Speaker 2: When the book comes out also let folks know and
Speaker 2: for everyone else, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 3: Take care out there, and if you are not a
Speaker 3: member of our patreon.
Speaker 4: You might want to join to hear this really salacious
Speaker 4: story about how he met his wife.
Speaker 3: It's spicy, spicy. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want
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