Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm Jack Murphy. This is the Team House
Speaker 1: and we're here in studio with our guest today, Kenny Robertson.
Speaker 1: He is a former Marine served in an Army one
Speaker 1: hundred and first Airborne and then had an extensive Special
Speaker 1: Forces career in fifth Group. And I mean a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different things that you got involved in, teaching
Speaker 1: the PJ course, going over to Ukraine, doing executive protection jobs.
Speaker 1: And today you're with waypoint six. Do you want to
Speaker 1: tell people, like just off the top of the interview
Speaker 1: what way point six is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Jack, thanks for having me. What we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a little bit as' side of my
Speaker 2: military history, which a lot of the viewers are well
Speaker 2: aware of, but his veteran mental health, which can kind
Speaker 2: of be a boring topic for most guys, but starting
Speaker 2: to become a lot less taboo. So after my years
Speaker 2: of service and after a lot of things that I
Speaker 2: found that shaped me to be a guy that did
Speaker 2: not want to be, it took a little bit more
Speaker 2: than just a talk therapy or go into a VA
Speaker 2: so sua sponte. I end up out of the country,
Speaker 2: down in Central America and find myself in the middle
Speaker 2: of an ayahuasca ceremony and way point six was derived
Speaker 2: from that. So I founded that based off of my
Speaker 2: experience working with the plant medicine. So now we're able
Speaker 2: to take veterans down to Central America, and we even
Speaker 2: have a spot locally in Texas where we're able to
Speaker 2: operate out of and we're getting guys the mental health
Speaker 2: treatment that they need.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, and we'll get into that a little bit
Speaker 1: deeper later on in the interview. But to go more
Speaker 1: or less like in chronological order, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about, you know, how you grew up and how
Speaker 1: that took you towards the military.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I grew up in Virginia and outside of Richmond,
Speaker 2: not a big city kind of I was more than
Speaker 2: rural areas.
Speaker 1: And you know, my dad had land.
Speaker 2: It would take me out hunting and fishing. So I
Speaker 2: was working with guns from a small age and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of learning a little bit about the land and.
Speaker 1: I found my way into.
Speaker 2: I was trying to play pro football, but it turns out, Jack,
Speaker 2: I'm not that I'm not that big, I'm not that good.
Speaker 2: I had football, so I needed another option, and driving
Speaker 2: race cars was out of my budget. So I had
Speaker 2: to pick something, and honestly, I was like, man, the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps. That looks cool. This is in the nineties.
Speaker 2: What was cool about it was the dress blues. Let's
Speaker 2: just be honest, like they got snappy uniforms.
Speaker 1: They do look good.
Speaker 2: That pretty much is a defining factor of how good
Speaker 2: of a marine you are, how high and tight is
Speaker 2: your hair, and how much starch is on your uniform.
Speaker 1: Now not so much, But I think the only thing
Speaker 1: that matters is the guys that qualified on iron sits
Speaker 1: versus everyone.
Speaker 2: Who came ironsights. Obviously, you know in the ninety that's
Speaker 2: all we had, right, So you had to be able
Speaker 2: to run fast and have a tight haircut. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that that uniform was that drew me in. I did that,
Speaker 2: but realizing that the head didn't fit in the jar.
Speaker 2: And this was before Mars sok, this was before anything
Speaker 2: that was So what year is this that you went
Speaker 2: to boot camp ninety seven and what unit did you
Speaker 2: end up in the Marines? So I was over at
Speaker 2: Camp La June, ended up on I started out. I
Speaker 2: was with intelligence. Yeah, it turns out a loss of
Speaker 2: security clearance. I can't tell you that it happened, but
Speaker 2: it did. So I ended up with a squadrons across
Speaker 2: the road over at New River, and so.
Speaker 1: I was there.
Speaker 2: By the time he got out of all the training
Speaker 2: and stuff, almost the first year is gone. So after
Speaker 2: a few years I decided that Nope, this isn't for me.
Speaker 2: There was no war happening, so I'm done. And then
Speaker 2: I got out, and then there was a war, so
Speaker 2: I needed to make a move and I did that
Speaker 2: pretty quick.
Speaker 1: So you get out and after it's after nine to
Speaker 1: eleven that you see this opportunity. Yeah, yeah, And so
Speaker 1: what year did you reenlist in the Army and no one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, went right back in. And when that happened, I
Speaker 2: could just jump into the one hundred and first because
Speaker 2: when you were in the Army and you wanted to
Speaker 2: go be a marine, and I had this in my
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, we call it boot camp, right, Army is
Speaker 2: basic training. I've never gone to Army basic training.
Speaker 1: Oh really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a E five sergeant in the Army
Speaker 2: in Marine Corps boot camp. I didn't have to do it.
Speaker 2: So they were just like, Nope, you can just go
Speaker 2: right into the Army and you just there. You go
Speaker 2: here and here's a costume. Go all right, and uh
Speaker 2: so I did jump went over to the hundred and
Speaker 2: first and they're like, yep, we're going, uh, we're gonna
Speaker 2: do this thing over in Iraq. And I'm like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: why I'm here, let's go, So off we go.
Speaker 1: So now we're into like two thousand and one, two
Speaker 1: thousand and two and like the build up for a
Speaker 1: racket starting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't even really get a chance to
Speaker 2: get into a build up. I just go right over
Speaker 2: like I don't know, two weeks after i'd gotten in
Speaker 2: holy shit, yeah, and I'm probably three weeks. It was
Speaker 2: a very they were just they're pumping guys out.
Speaker 1: You go through.
Speaker 2: Med pros and you go through a couple of things
Speaker 2: and they're like, here you go, man, here's your initial issue.
Speaker 1: You're green on good luck. Here's yeah.
Speaker 2: I got like three different color camos. I got, like
Speaker 2: I don't know, something in desert, I got something green.
Speaker 2: I got so it it was uh, it was definitely
Speaker 2: while we It was some weird times. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was young.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know anything about the army, right, so
Speaker 2: I was still bringing Marine Corps, which they bring a
Speaker 2: lot of pride, morale, all kinds of stuff that in
Speaker 2: the army they don't quite have. The discipline isn't quite there.
Speaker 1: They're calling like the East seven's gunny. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, For a few times I would call it like
Speaker 2: sergeant first class and I just just say sorry. I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm down programmed to do that.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't do that. So and I'd still.
Speaker 2: Wear a high and tight like the first don't know
Speaker 2: two years, I'd be out like in I wrapped, trying
Speaker 2: to like cut my hair all looking like I'll get
Speaker 2: a horseshoe, like I'm trying to keep people at work
Speaker 2: until nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: So you went and met your unit that was already
Speaker 1: ford deployed. Yeah, what brigade did you go to?
Speaker 2: I was over with third.
Speaker 1: Okay, So tell us a little bit about what that
Speaker 1: experience was like about OIF one.
Speaker 2: So OIF one was not a lot of rules and
Speaker 2: regulations at the at that time, and we also didn't
Speaker 2: know what the hell we were doing except just go
Speaker 2: take everything, occupy land, go take take real estate. So
Speaker 2: we would we started. We pushed up to most Seoul
Speaker 2: and then we pushed out west out in the Talifar
Speaker 2: and kind of owned that whole northern area. Uh, and
Speaker 2: it was just kind of just chaos. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: from Kuwait to Missoul.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the fun thing about it was, you know, the
Speaker 2: former the vice President of the United States at the time,
Speaker 2: former what CEO of company that built the entire cities
Speaker 2: that we then later on lived in. Before all that
Speaker 2: could happen, Uh, we didn't have anything, just what you
Speaker 2: brought right, right, and you're stringing up without fifty cors
Speaker 2: to wash your clothes and dry them, sleeping under a
Speaker 2: truck when we still slept under trucks. But now you
Speaker 2: know the safety guy won't let you do that anymore.
Speaker 2: So uh, yeah, we just it was you ride around
Speaker 2: in your trucks, you lived in your truck, you lived
Speaker 2: with your platoon, and you would get resupply with some
Speaker 2: food and you would just be out and about. We
Speaker 2: would take over whatever it might be a palace, we
Speaker 2: might take over any type of real estate, and then
Speaker 2: that would kind of become where we lived and you
Speaker 2: might stay there for a few months and then you're
Speaker 2: just pushing out and going and finding bad guys. But
Speaker 2: of course at that point, everybody was a bad guy,
Speaker 2: we just showed up into their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They don't like that.
Speaker 2: You come to my house at two am with big
Speaker 2: green eyes. You're going to be met, you know, with
Speaker 2: a field of fire. But I didn't expect that they
Speaker 2: felt that way, right, So I'm going to show up
Speaker 2: at their house at two o'clock in the morning and like,
Speaker 2: I just kicked down your door. Why are you shooting
Speaker 2: at me? You're a bad guy.
Speaker 1: Did you guys have some pretty big dust ups with
Speaker 1: the Iraqi Army at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely a lot of conflict because a lot
Speaker 2: those guys didn't want us there either, at least from
Speaker 2: my perspective of it. Some of their some of their
Speaker 2: I guess like their high ranking officers, understood the political
Speaker 2: portion of that and what we brought to the table.
Speaker 2: By that, I mean our weapons and our aircraft. Like
Speaker 2: they knew that that was important, right, and that's what
Speaker 2: they were going to be able to use to take
Speaker 2: back over their country. But a lot of the other
Speaker 2: like junior guys, the enlisted guys, they didn't really want to.
Speaker 1: Work with us. They didn't want to stare at all.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I mean, I had a lot of people
Speaker 1: tell me that at the time, maybe like eighty percent
Speaker 1: of Iraq supported disposing of Saddam Hussein. But you know,
Speaker 1: then the question becomes, well, why are you guys still here? Right?
Speaker 2: So I think the problem and it was the same
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan. It was when I say that they don't
Speaker 2: want to work with us, so they because they're going
Speaker 2: to they sit down on the objective. We can't really
Speaker 2: push them to do. But so much their work ethic
Speaker 2: is different. Yes, right, So if we're out on a hit,
Speaker 2: we're out doing a raid. If we're halfway through it,
Speaker 2: we're still in a gunfight. They're just gonna go sit down.
Speaker 2: They're just not into it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The curds up North were a lot better than some
Speaker 2: of the other cats that we had to work with.
Speaker 2: Those dudes were pretty motivated to get the job done,
Speaker 2: but a lot of these units just didn't want to.
Speaker 1: It reminds me, you know, you talk about like doing
Speaker 1: CQB and like theriorities of work in the room and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Remember, I had one of
Speaker 1: these guys walked right through the door, did not clear
Speaker 1: any corners at all, went right to the refrigerator, popped
Speaker 1: it open, shuffled around in there, shut it, sat down
Speaker 1: on the couch like we're all there like doing this,
Speaker 1: trying to clear the structure.
Speaker 2: Like, what the fuck that is a priority of work.
Speaker 1: Screaming. I was screaming at this guy.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is different, dude, they'll take smoke breaks
Speaker 2: or after it. Man, we're in a gunfight, I'm treating
Speaker 2: a patient and they just come over. They just sit
Speaker 2: down and they're just like, we're good, We're gonna take fifteen.
Speaker 1: What were some of the like memorable actions that you
Speaker 1: know you recall from the invasion.
Speaker 2: Crashing? Oh yeah, yeah, uh so, no, I don't think
Speaker 2: I can call it a crash. I think I call
Speaker 2: it a hard landing twice. So I actually, Aside was
Speaker 2: in a black Hawk for They needed some dudes to
Speaker 2: help with the air crew. So they were having guys
Speaker 2: fly the left seat behind the pilot. On the black Hawk,
Speaker 2: you got a left seat in the right seat where
Speaker 2: the crew chiefs would be. They would have one crew
Speaker 2: chief because those birds in the air like all day,
Speaker 2: all night, right, They're constantly working. So they hey, we
Speaker 2: need dudes to help augment And I was like, man,
Speaker 2: that sounds cool.
Speaker 1: I'll be a door gunner.
Speaker 2: So yeah, man, I got to hang out and we
Speaker 2: had the old m sixties at the time. We were
Speaker 2: just starting to get some two forties like in you know,
Speaker 2: four or fives when they first got fielded out there.
Speaker 2: But man, they have sixties at that time. So I
Speaker 2: got to ride a lot of left seat. I think
Speaker 2: I got close like five hundred and some hours and
Speaker 2: that thing. Yeah, it was ridiculous because you go out
Speaker 2: for twelve hours a day, they'd break. They're not supposed
Speaker 2: to break this crew rest they have to they can
Speaker 2: only out for a certain amount of time. But you know,
Speaker 2: the rules were slightly you know, they they worked with
Speaker 2: them a little different right right back then. So we
Speaker 2: had some two hard landings about six months apart, and
Speaker 2: I was on that aircraft both times, and I had
Speaker 2: the same crew chief with me. It messed him up,
Speaker 2: like uh he had I mean, his head got scrambled.
Speaker 2: So he ended up having to get out seek a
Speaker 2: lot of he had a lot of TBI stuff going
Speaker 2: on and a lot of VA appointments. I just kept
Speaker 2: driving on and then the same pilot both times, different
Speaker 2: co pilot or maybe he but it was the co
Speaker 2: pilot and it was a different pilot, but same dude.
Speaker 2: He ended up when we got back to Fort Campbell.
Speaker 2: That dude, that pilot ended up, he died in another
Speaker 2: crash that was training accident. Yeah, so those were definitely some.
Speaker 2: We actually were flying the Speaker of the House at
Speaker 2: the time, Bill Hastard, and we crashed with him. He
Speaker 2: was he was in the other aircraft like we were
Speaker 2: like the gunship that was supporting him and we crashed.
Speaker 1: So were you one of the dudes that was there
Speaker 1: when they found u DA and QSA, Because I remember one.
Speaker 2: Hundred first was first was there? I was not there, gotcha?
Speaker 1: It was in the region, but.
Speaker 2: Not unfortunately I missed out.
Speaker 1: So you were over there. Sounds like you're pretty busy. No,
Speaker 1: no shortage of jobs to do. Yeah, we have plenty
Speaker 1: of work. Yeah. How did kind of that like campaign
Speaker 1: wind down for you? Ah?
Speaker 2: That was it when we just we were done, came
Speaker 2: back home and then uh, it was just one day.
Speaker 2: We actually started building some pretty good fobs and we
Speaker 2: were hiring some local force dudes. I was paying them
Speaker 2: four dollars a day in cash and they were a
Speaker 2: lotning them up. At the end of the day. They
Speaker 2: did work for eight nine hours digging ditches, building stuff
Speaker 2: with you know wood that we were you know, a
Speaker 2: crew and to build whatever kind of structures or places
Speaker 2: for guys to live and things like that. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of a fun transition when you know, I
Speaker 2: got to see that we were doing something was happening
Speaker 2: r right.
Speaker 1: It was like we were leaving.
Speaker 2: Us some kind of infrastructure in place.
Speaker 1: So that was good.
Speaker 2: Now, we did have an interpreter that I worked with,
Speaker 2: not like I said, daily, but definitely mostiple times.
Speaker 1: A week, and.
Speaker 2: We would have to get money from accounting and then
Speaker 2: we would use that cash, you know, we'd pay out
Speaker 2: our dudes. We'd have contractors to help moving heavy equipment,
Speaker 2: moving earth whatever. So my interpreter was kind of also
Speaker 2: like the contract liaison, and a pile of money got
Speaker 2: him killed once he left outside of the fob. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that that happened after I'd go out to the
Speaker 2: edge of the fob that we were building every day
Speaker 2: and I had this like big concertina wire fence. It
Speaker 2: was probably like I don't know, eighty feet fifty feet
Speaker 2: or something, and there'd be one hundred and fifty dudes
Speaker 2: packed into this thing trying to get them to do
Speaker 2: work force because they're getting that four dollars a day
Speaker 2: in cash, right, So they would they would be out
Speaker 2: there and me and Chris.
Speaker 1: Would go out and it was just chaos. Man.
Speaker 2: He got all these dudes trying to and most of
Speaker 2: them were good dudes, Iraqi citizens that wanted to get
Speaker 2: some work. And so they're like they're begging, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna come up to you, and they're gonna
Speaker 2: be with the man. You start touching us, like at
Speaker 2: we're freaking out. We're still I mean, I don't know
Speaker 2: what the hell's going on at this point. He come
Speaker 2: up here and you start touching me. Now I feeling
Speaker 2: like you're reaching for my magazines or whatever. Now I'm
Speaker 2: screaming like a fool. Everybody get down, like I'm rambo,
Speaker 2: you know, bring a two oh three out one day
Speaker 2: just to I don't have any.
Speaker 1: No ammunition for it.
Speaker 2: But they don't know this, you know, just to make
Speaker 2: a sound like a racking a shotgun. So it was, uh,
Speaker 2: it was interesting to say the least, just trying to
Speaker 2: do like two dudes trying to do this crowd control
Speaker 2: and then you grab ten, twelve, fifteen guys and they
Speaker 2: throw them in the back. You know, I drove one truck,
Speaker 2: he drove another truck. It was just kind of all
Speaker 2: over the place. You're also a young guy.
Speaker 1: Kind of sounds like in some ways acting like the
Speaker 1: mayor of a little town.
Speaker 2: Early twenties. I did not have any business doing what
Speaker 2: I was doing, or doing what I thought that I
Speaker 2: was doing.
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Speaker 1: So when you get back to the United States, when
Speaker 1: does SF sort of come into the picture for you?
Speaker 1: How's that on your mind?
Speaker 2: So when I was deployed, I saw dudes that looked
Speaker 2: a lot cooler than me.
Speaker 1: They had pockets on their sleeves and bevelcrow.
Speaker 2: I remember I was coming from the Marine Corps. I
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about the Army. So this guy, Chris,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about who those cats?
Speaker 1: Like? There?
Speaker 2: Those are Special Forces? Man, they don't even exist. I
Speaker 2: see them right there. He's like, no man, you can't
Speaker 2: do that, okay, Like what do you gotta do? He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he advertises Seer school because that's all he.
Speaker 1: Knew about it. He's like, oh man, you gotta like,
Speaker 1: you know, go live in the woods and survive.
Speaker 2: All right, let's try it. So uh yeah, man, you
Speaker 2: talk to a recruiter that tells you a little bit
Speaker 2: more about it, still slightly vague. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's give it a go. And uh I got in
Speaker 2: shape and I went to a selection and uh yeah
Speaker 2: that sucked.
Speaker 1: That was what year was that that you went to selection?
Speaker 2: Eight seven?
Speaker 1: Okay? And then uh yeah.
Speaker 2: So I was like, you know that you got to
Speaker 2: fill a wish list and I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: speak Arabic and be an eighteen delta and they were
Speaker 2: like sold and like got it, man, Like skip selection,
Speaker 2: you just go right to the course and train this.
Speaker 1: Guy who wants that.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, I got what I wanted and yeah
Speaker 2: that was that was super interesting And I got through
Speaker 2: the medic course. Uh it made it out to fifth group.
Speaker 1: What was kind of your impression going through the Q
Speaker 1: course at that time? Was it sort of the the
Speaker 1: experience that you were hoping for Yeah, it was professional.
Speaker 1: It was really professional because especially the eighteen Delta course.
Speaker 2: That part was definitely, uh, that was an experience that
Speaker 2: because that's long, you know, going through that. It was
Speaker 2: a year long, and it was it was run by civilians.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was definitely a lot of military cadre there,
Speaker 2: but it was a majority of it were civilians PAS,
Speaker 2: retired guys. Yeah, a lot of retired eighteen Deltas dudes
Speaker 2: that have now gone on to nursing school, dudes that
Speaker 2: have gone on to become PAS, civilian PAS, dudes that
Speaker 2: have had a lot of experience. And these guys are
Speaker 2: super smart, like ridiculously intelligent and trying to teach me
Speaker 2: how to be a doctor and a surgeon in.
Speaker 1: Less than a year.
Speaker 2: And I was like, man, I you know, I couldn't
Speaker 2: even put on a band aid, you know, before going
Speaker 2: to this course, I had no idea about trauma medicine.
Speaker 2: Guys are teaching me how to do an IV you know,
Speaker 2: back when I was in the regular Army and I
Speaker 2: didn't understand the concept of like a needle and a catheter.
Speaker 2: That's foreign to me. I have no idea how I
Speaker 2: made it through that course zero social life, three hours
Speaker 2: of studying every night, and a lot of luck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I ask you some really crazy questions on there
Speaker 2: on these tests and you're getting tested every every few days, right,
Speaker 2: So and then they've got so we had cadavers in
Speaker 2: this course and we had this pin test which on
Speaker 2: went as a cadre like anatomy. Yeah, as a cadre,
Speaker 2: I tried to help alleviate some of that struggle because
Speaker 2: it's it's at a doctorate level, for sure. It's asking
Speaker 2: you about You've got this cadaver that's broken down into
Speaker 2: all the nerves, vessels, veins, everything you can imagine, and
Speaker 2: it's asking you not specifically, like what muscle is this?
Speaker 2: Like okay, cool, but what happens when you flex this muscle?
Speaker 2: What does this one do? And then the nerve that
Speaker 2: attached to that and the innervation of that nerve and
Speaker 2: say what the what do I need to know this for?
Speaker 2: So yeah, and you forget it.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: That was my point when I went back to as
Speaker 2: a cadre. I was like, we don't need this, Maks,
Speaker 2: We're not going to use it.
Speaker 1: Right, So I don't know. And was there a final
Speaker 1: exercise in the course back when you went through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not it was, but it was. It was kind
Speaker 2: of watered down. Uh, it wasn't. It was very anti climactic,
Speaker 2: which is actually one of the things that I wanted
Speaker 2: to change during my tenure there. So I think we
Speaker 2: did a pretty good job of doing that. We actually
Speaker 2: brought in a whole different phase during my time because
Speaker 2: I went back as a cadre later on for that
Speaker 2: Delta course and we were able to include prolonged field
Speaker 2: care because that wasn't a.
Speaker 1: Part of the course as the Golden Hour.
Speaker 2: And then you realize is that, okay, well we're actually
Speaker 2: going to have to sit on this dude for day
Speaker 2: or days again because Africa is going on and those
Speaker 2: dudes aren't getting a quick transport out of Africa. So
Speaker 2: when that happens, we're advertising that we can sit on
Speaker 2: a patient for seventy two hours. But yet we don't
Speaker 2: push blood, we don't do a lot in ventilation, we
Speaker 2: don't do a lot of things that we're advertising. You know,
Speaker 2: we might have practiced a skill one time, you know,
Speaker 2: for like two days, and then we move past it.
Speaker 2: That's not proficiency, right, I'm not gonna honestly expect myself
Speaker 2: to be able to go and handle that two years,
Speaker 2: three years from now. So a lot of that didn't
Speaker 2: get to.
Speaker 1: Change, and we were able to bring in a really
Speaker 1: good final training here. Yeah, we'll circle back around on
Speaker 1: that for sure. But after you graduate the course, you
Speaker 1: get assigned to fifth group for Campbell, Kentucky, and your
Speaker 1: first kind of spot that you need is fourth battalion.
Speaker 1: So now, what what is this two thousand and eight maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we were there at the same time, actually, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So what was your experience like on three five?
Speaker 2: It was it was awesome. One of my favorite teams
Speaker 2: that I was ever on.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Actually when I got there because they weren't spending up
Speaker 2: for deployments, so at that time at least not all
Speaker 2: the teams were. I went and did a Caribbean dive requel.
Speaker 2: I didn't even go to dive school yet, and I'm
Speaker 2: in the Caribbean for a month, so that was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a vacation. That was kind of one of
Speaker 2: the coolest training exercises that I'd gotten to go on.
Speaker 1: As I recalled, they had some of the teams going
Speaker 1: out on j sets around that timeframe, right yes, yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: we went.
Speaker 2: We were doing dive requalls and just starting to spin
Speaker 2: up later on, and then I went over to third Battalion.
Speaker 1: But I mean they sent you to dive school while
Speaker 1: you were there.
Speaker 2: No, oh really no, nope. So there was a I
Speaker 2: guess there was a school of thought at this point
Speaker 2: where Star Major was like, look at that time, no,
Speaker 2: that was ranger school because I was trying to go
Speaker 2: to ranger school at the time. He's like, man, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to lose you for sixty three days. I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna lose a Delta for sixty three days. This
Speaker 2: is just one Star Major's mindset at the time. Maybe
Speaker 2: more feeling that way. But you know, being a Delta,
Speaker 2: we weren't a lot of us, Like, not every team
Speaker 2: had two, right, so as you know, like a lot
Speaker 2: of teams had one, some teams didn't have any, you know,
Speaker 2: for periods of time. Matter of fact, I had to
Speaker 2: jump to a couple of different teams to help make
Speaker 2: their missions, even deployed with other teams, and even while
Speaker 2: I was gone on a deployment, the team would lose
Speaker 2: a medic and I'd go over and augment over for
Speaker 2: another team for a little while, so I did not
Speaker 2: get to go to CDQC. I did not get to
Speaker 2: go to Ranger school.
Speaker 1: Well, where where did you get sent I.
Speaker 2: Went to dive teams as a as a dry medic,
Speaker 2: I went to halo teams. Never got to go to
Speaker 2: Halo school. I got sent to J sets and deployments,
Speaker 2: so I didn't get to.
Speaker 1: Go to any school. So you're like a floating medic
Speaker 1: in some ways. Where which J sets did you get
Speaker 1: sent on? At the time? I did a lot of Lebanons.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, I didn't even really realize we were
Speaker 1: shooting people over there at that time. Yeah, we did
Speaker 1: a lot of Lebanons. Well what was that one? Like?
Speaker 2: So Lebanon is actually a pretty cool country. Well it
Speaker 2: was until recently, until it's now in shambles. But uh
Speaker 2: so the in Beirut is where the embassy was, the
Speaker 2: marine and barracks were there, and that got blown up.
Speaker 1: And that was what eighty eighty three.
Speaker 2: That's still there in all of its parts and pieces.
Speaker 2: Oh no, shit, there's still a fifty cow sitting up
Speaker 2: on the top under a cover. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's the one from eighty three, but it's been up
Speaker 2: there for a very very very long time, and the
Speaker 2: people that work at the embassy were like, yeah, men,
Speaker 2: that's that's been here forever. So Levanon is.
Speaker 1: Kind of nice.
Speaker 2: You've got mountains, you've got beaches all in the same day.
Speaker 2: They've got ski resorts there, They've got like terrific restaurants,
Speaker 2: so that's kind of fun, right, But then you know,
Speaker 2: you get a couple of days of that, but then
Speaker 2: you're for another twenty thirty days up in the mountain
Speaker 2: in the cold, training these dudes, you know, walking through
Speaker 2: the through the mountains and put a POI together for
Speaker 2: a month or two and then come back down and
Speaker 2: enjoy a couple of days. But it was overall a
Speaker 2: pretty good jay set.
Speaker 1: I mean they had night.
Speaker 2: Life, they had and we'd get escorts everywhere we go.
Speaker 2: But then later on it became a lot more free
Speaker 2: when I ended up going back in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 2: kind of just do whatever, just as long as you got.
Speaker 1: Somebody with you. You know, we take we take a
Speaker 1: truck and high lucks and you can go out to
Speaker 1: eat restaurants or whatever. What was elect training the Lebanese
Speaker 1: Partner Force. So I have to you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of guys got foreign jump wings. Do you get any
Speaker 1: foreign jump wings Chilean? I believe Weirdly enough, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: So a.
Speaker 2: Lot of guys get like Italian and all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 2: right unless somebody out there, somebody can going to search
Speaker 2: internet and prove.
Speaker 1: Me wrong or.
Speaker 2: Make a comment that they got him after we did.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, we were the first team
Speaker 2: and only team to ever get the Lebanese A Assault Wings.
Speaker 2: Interesting because we trained their air assault unit and they
Speaker 2: had this aerosault school tower. We went repelling off their
Speaker 2: tower and then we got these Lebanese Assault Wings. There
Speaker 2: was only ten of us that got awarded that because
Speaker 2: not everybody.
Speaker 1: Went down the tower. The captain was doing something or
Speaker 1: whatever that day briefing. Another officer we've had sitting in
Speaker 1: that same chair, Mike Taylor, who was a Tenth Group guy,
Speaker 1: but back in the day, tenth Group covered down on Lebanon, Okay,
Speaker 1: and he was on the first MTT to Lebanon. I
Speaker 1: believe it was eighty three, and then uh Gary Harrington
Speaker 1: he was over there too, around around that same time frame.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just interesting to hear these different experiences,
Speaker 1: you know, and the more things change, the more they
Speaker 1: stay the same. I guess, yeah, one of the I
Speaker 1: think I went back again in.
Speaker 2: Fifteen or fourteen, and yeah, during a rotation in fourteen,
Speaker 2: I we were working with the dive team with the
Speaker 2: Navy Seals. So I was on a dive team at
Speaker 2: the time. So we went down and we were training
Speaker 2: their Navy Seals. And the irony is like there was
Speaker 2: a lot of dudes they couldn't swim, couldn't swim. So
Speaker 2: I could say, yeah, man taught the Navy Seals.
Speaker 1: How to swim.
Speaker 2: That sounded like a total ass by saying that, let's
Speaker 2: add their elevenies.
Speaker 1: You're telling these stories. I knew a couple of National
Speaker 1: Guard guys who had a really cozy gig going where
Speaker 1: every summer they'd go down to Jamaica and work with Jamaica.
Speaker 1: They have some sort of dive team, rescue dive team.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they are. Yeah, work with them
Speaker 1: every summer for a jay set like it's pretty cush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those were Those were pretty good times because we'd
Speaker 2: do a lot of water worn operations and uh, the
Speaker 2: Mediterranean is really good swimming. That's that's a great place
Speaker 2: to go. Dive, go swim, no sharks, that's a big worry.
Speaker 2: Now we'd go down in the Caribbean to do dive requall,
Speaker 2: we would out of teams, aren't Uh That do was awesome. Uh,
Speaker 2: he's still still a good friend. But he would purposely
Speaker 2: find like these coordinates of where these bunch.
Speaker 1: Of chumb the waters before they puts you in there,
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that one. So we'd go dive down.
Speaker 2: To where there's known to be a little shark neighborhoods
Speaker 2: and so it maybe sixty sixty five foot down. So
Speaker 2: going down to the bottom. Now was a civilian diver.
Speaker 2: So when I'm going down frequently, Yeah, I hadn't gone
Speaker 2: to CDQC, but I was a civilian diver from now.
Speaker 2: He and so I dove down and yeah, we'd be
Speaker 2: somewming around with those dudes. And so I got to
Speaker 2: swim with sharks, got to dive with sharks, which was terrifying,
Speaker 2: uh for the first like five minutes. And then once you
Speaker 2: kind of break that fear of it, and I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna say you don't notice him anymore, but you you
Speaker 2: pay him a little less attention. And I need to
Speaker 2: recognize that you're in there their area and they're just
Speaker 2: seeing what's going on, and uh, you know, I I
Speaker 2: think I played. I tried to play chicken with one.
Speaker 2: It was like kind of coming towards me a little bit,
Speaker 2: so I planed out. I started swimming towards him a
Speaker 2: little bit, like I thought I was a lot tougher
Speaker 2: than what that was. He didn't stop coming, So yeah,
Speaker 2: I bailed out, and uh yeah he won.
Speaker 1: I'll give it to him.
Speaker 2: But we did chump the water. We actually went out to
Speaker 2: this place called one two Bowie, one two Booie.
Speaker 1: Take the boats out.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna free dive out here. You're gonna go
Speaker 2: spearfishing my one two booie. Mind you is six thousand
Speaker 2: feet deep.
Speaker 1: This is like a collapsed volcano or something.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you, and I don't know. I mean
Speaker 2: that is terrifying, just psychologically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not for everybody.
Speaker 2: For me, it was absolutely like just knowing that it's
Speaker 2: six thousand foot deep, for whatever reason, not gonna sink
Speaker 2: to the bottom. I got fins, I got a mask,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if it's ten feet or six thousand. But
Speaker 2: the abyss just had me right, So okay, we splash in,
Speaker 2: we're swimming around, we're spearing some amberjack, you know, big amberjack.
Speaker 2: They're probably only this big, but nonetheless, so we throw
Speaker 2: them onto we're chumming the water ultimately, because we're throw
Speaker 2: them in a net that's hanging off the side of
Speaker 2: the boat and keeping them fresh. But you know, blood
Speaker 2: in the water. Now, we got some big dudes coming along.
Speaker 2: I mean I say big. They were probably seven eight
Speaker 2: foot and that was just that was uncomfortable. The first
Speaker 2: dudes I ran into were like six foot. If you
Speaker 2: had that extra couple of feet on there, that made
Speaker 2: a huge difference. So yeah, we got chased out of
Speaker 2: the water. And but we'd go do the three kse swim.
Speaker 2: You get dropped off three kilometers, you know, and you
Speaker 2: got ninety minutes and you're in your kit and you
Speaker 2: know you're out there. I know the Navy does it
Speaker 2: out there in San Diego, but uh, you know, we're
Speaker 2: doing the Caribbean, which is a lot nicer because you
Speaker 2: could see. The visibility was a lot better. You could
Speaker 2: see pretty far away those dudes were out there.
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Speaker 1: apply sea site for details. And so you spent some time.
Speaker 1: How long were you at fourth Battalion?
Speaker 2: I was just there for a year.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so they kept you busy in that year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you, uh, how did you move over to
Speaker 1: third battalion? They needed some dudes over at third Battalion
Speaker 1: needed to medical they were rotating, so I ended up
Speaker 1: on h on three six.
Speaker 2: And that was good. That was uh well, best team
Speaker 2: in fifth group actually had the trophy, so uh had
Speaker 2: that for for a while.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: From three six I went to one two and did
Speaker 2: some deployments out there in the northern region. Now then
Speaker 2: one two we were attached to nine to five. Uh well,
Speaker 2: the old ODA five five. Oh yeah, so yeah, they
Speaker 2: did the initial invasion, so we went with them, and
Speaker 2: I got to work with nine to five for quite
Speaker 2: a while for that. You know a lot of that
Speaker 2: deployment and we got into some pretty good ticks. Where
Speaker 2: was that that was in outside of masarl Sharif it
Speaker 2: was in the north, so that's like, is that herat
Speaker 2: out in that area?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, it was outside of mez Okay okay.
Speaker 1: Uh. So well, first you were with three six. Did
Speaker 1: you get sent anywhere with that team? Lebanon? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, that was your Lebanon tripp Orskotra did that Lebanon?
Speaker 1: Okay? And then one two to Afghanistan. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: were the delta on the team, I take it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what kind of stands out in your memory
Speaker 1: from that time? And what year was it that you
Speaker 1: were there?
Speaker 2: And I did that one twelve thirteen.
Speaker 1: So ben Laden has been taken out. Yeah, Like what
Speaker 1: was your conception of like what you were doing there? Why,
Speaker 1: why the team was there? You know at the time.
Speaker 2: Ever since, like the initial invasion and the reason that
Speaker 2: we went over there, in my mind, it was just
Speaker 2: full sent we have to go and do this for America.
Speaker 2: We've got to do this to protect our freedom. And
Speaker 2: it didn't matter about, you know, whether or not the
Speaker 2: leader of the largest terror of cell in the world
Speaker 2: was dead because all of them aren't dead, right, So
Speaker 2: that's still the problem. We have to finish all of it.
Speaker 2: What does finish look like?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, but then what does finish look like when no
Speaker 2: one else is standing except you know, the good guys?
Speaker 1: Which is kind of an insane objective when you think
Speaker 1: about it, right, reflect back on.
Speaker 2: That, And I'm not a lot of reflecting since then.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll get to that. But that was kind
Speaker 2: of the objective, is just keep going and keep trying
Speaker 2: to do well. We thought, man, this is God's work.
Speaker 2: You know, they're all bad guy and how we made him.
Speaker 2: We made a lot of those guys bad guys. Like
Speaker 2: I said, if you come to my house and you
Speaker 2: break in at you know whatever, two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be too happy about it.
Speaker 1: And it's like, if we weren't there, would that guy
Speaker 1: be trying to kill Americans? El Kada guy maybe, but
Speaker 1: like Taliban, dude, what the hell do they care? They know?
Speaker 2: But I'm over there and I'm in his house where
Speaker 2: his family sleeps. Yeah, it'll piss off the locals.
Speaker 1: He's got a problem with that. Yeah, And and I
Speaker 1: don't understand that at that time. At that time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what were some of your more memorable experiences from that trip? Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, that's a very good question. I've
Speaker 2: got some maybe they're not the they're not good memories.
Speaker 1: They can be good, bad, funny or whatever you want.
Speaker 1: So we got Uh.
Speaker 2: So we were QRF one night, nine to five was
Speaker 2: on a hit, and so we're sitting by the fire
Speaker 2: aircraft is sitting there ready, and uh, we've got a
Speaker 2: package for them.
Speaker 1: We're gonna bring either AMMO.
Speaker 2: Or like some med supplies, a couple of different packages.
Speaker 2: So they're gonna go do this hit. We'll call it
Speaker 2: twenty three hundred, because I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: That was the time.
Speaker 2: The hit was about twenty three fifteen. The radio crackles,
Speaker 2: these dude's like we need some help, man, they're calling
Speaker 2: in the entire package. Okay, Like, bro, you guys us
Speaker 2: got on to the objective. Like we're en route. Everything
Speaker 2: is loaded up, we spin up and airborne we go.
Speaker 2: We're there and I don't know, thirty minutes maybe a
Speaker 2: little less, but hitting the ground. I know roughly where
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 1: We all do.
Speaker 2: So we've got Now we prepared with everything we packed,
Speaker 2: We packed it all. It should have been in a truck,
Speaker 2: but we don't have a truck. We've got a uh
Speaker 2: sixty and so now it's like a selection event trying
Speaker 2: to carry all of this shit because we're on a
Speaker 2: ridge line. So we've got to go down this ridge
Speaker 2: line like because aircraft won't even get us super close
Speaker 2: because it's going to drop us off, I don't know,
Speaker 2: five six hundred meters away from the objective. So now
Speaker 2: we've got to try to haul all this stuff and
Speaker 2: teams aren't like, can he go because they're they need
Speaker 2: medic support pretty bad. So me and a couple of
Speaker 2: guys we haul asked we're heading onto the X. Everybody
Speaker 2: else is like carrying equipment.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: So I get there and one of the the Bravo
Speaker 2: on the other team, he's walking up this little ridge
Speaker 2: line where we're linking up, and he's got a dude
Speaker 2: on his shoulder, and uh, I was like hey, He's like, oh, Kenny,
Speaker 2: you're here. Yeah, Bud. He's like, hey, I got somebody
Speaker 2: for you. Okay, cool, let's put put them over here
Speaker 2: on the flat ground. So he put them on the
Speaker 2: flat ground. Oh there's we're still in this like pretty
Speaker 2: good firefight going on. And so you know those three
Speaker 2: rules as f always look cool. That's rule number one, right,
Speaker 2: always look cool. So when I heard that in the selection,
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Marls or something, you know, watch gotta have it.
Speaker 2: And then rule number two is don't get lost, no problem.
Speaker 2: I had GPS stopping as directions. Rule number three is
Speaker 2: if you get lost, so cool doing it right. I
Speaker 2: really didn't understand that concept either.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was like the slowest guy.
Speaker 2: I slipped through somehow, but I didn't understand really what
Speaker 2: all that meant. And it might mean different different things
Speaker 2: to different guys. I'll tell you what it means for me.
Speaker 2: And it was there when he gave me this guy
Speaker 2: that's missing a big chunk of his head and he's
Speaker 2: got multiple gunshot wounds on him, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this dude is not in a good situation.
Speaker 1: He's not doing well. But you're the medics, so you
Speaker 1: got to medic.
Speaker 2: And now he brings me another guy. So I'm putting
Speaker 2: this one dude's head back together. I'm running through my algorithm.
Speaker 2: I got in the bleeding stopped and put his head
Speaker 2: back together. Dude brings me another guy. Now you know
Speaker 2: it's midnight ish. I don't think we have a full
Speaker 2: moon out, so the loom is very low and you
Speaker 2: know you can't white light anything. And just right there
Speaker 2: is the village that this gunfights still happening. I got
Speaker 2: my Bravos now showed up and he's running his gun.
Speaker 2: It's kind of loud, and I got two patients putting
Speaker 2: one's head back together, and now I'll get to the
Speaker 2: other one.
Speaker 1: I'm going through my.
Speaker 2: March algorithm massive memorage airway respiration. So I get to
Speaker 2: airway and I was like, it's not doing good. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to innovate this guy. And I've done this
Speaker 2: plenty of times in the hospital, but never during a
Speaker 2: gunfight at Ridge at midnight uns. So I start to
Speaker 2: open up his mouth and it's not really opening and
Speaker 2: I was like, you know what, I'm not even going
Speaker 2: to do this one straight because of injuries. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was like, we went straight to the craik. I pull
Speaker 2: out my knife and then this jack. This is when
Speaker 2: it made sense because inside, I mean, I'm kind of
Speaker 2: freaking out, but you wouldn't know it, right, I've done
Speaker 2: this one hundred times a thousand times in training. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, look cool, right, just look calm and collected.
Speaker 2: And then all right, so I grabbed this dude's nick.
Speaker 2: I can't really see super good. So I've got a palpaid.
Speaker 2: I gotta feel the Adams apple. I gotta feel where
Speaker 2: that cartilage.
Speaker 1: Is going to be. And I was like, don't get lost.
Speaker 2: I start to make the cut, you know, I fuck
Speaker 2: get lost. THEOK, cool doing it, you know, success, success,
Speaker 2: drop the tube.
Speaker 1: Dam you know.
Speaker 2: Now I'm feeling like, oh man, I'm bad A big deal.
Speaker 2: I played it that way. Yeah, yeah, I definitely did
Speaker 2: not see that. Wasn't I a bingo card, you know,
Speaker 2: got up this morning?
Speaker 1: But there it is. We did it.
Speaker 2: Uh. And so that's where those three rules s F
Speaker 2: came in And that was kind of a memorable moment
Speaker 2: because then that carried with me for a lot of
Speaker 2: different things later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we ended up I had several.
Speaker 2: Patients that I had six patients medic on the on
Speaker 2: the team on nine to five ended up with shrapnel
Speaker 2: from grenade, through and through. He was meta fact first
Speaker 2: thing as we came in, so like it was me
Speaker 2: out there and I guess I got to learn a
Speaker 2: lot about a lot about me and a lot about
Speaker 2: the training. It really validated everything that that that soccam
Speaker 2: course is teaching. I mean, through those holes make the
Speaker 2: greatest medics in the world. I'm the biggest believer in that. Like,
Speaker 2: those guys are absolute studs. When you get out of
Speaker 2: that course. If you're able to make it through that course,
Speaker 2: very difficult first time go rate. But if you're able
Speaker 2: to make it through the course, you are for stellar.
Speaker 2: I would let any aging delta work on me before
Speaker 2: a lot of these, like some of these dudes out
Speaker 2: there in the civilian world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I trust ageing deltas and did that kind of
Speaker 1: like you said that kind of like stuck with you
Speaker 1: would did you find that, you know, in times of
Speaker 1: high stress you were able to remain calm.
Speaker 2: It's certainly helped out. Even working with some of the
Speaker 2: local populace. We would do these little kind of like
Speaker 2: a medcap right, so we do medical capabilities. I would
Speaker 2: show up as the you.
Speaker 1: Know, Western doctor kind of guy, you know, and I
Speaker 1: would get all kinds of folks out there. Kids.
Speaker 2: I had a kid, and I was seeing this kid
Speaker 2: every every few days. I'd have him come back, he
Speaker 2: was burned. The story that I got was they kept change,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless you take off, like from his feet to
Speaker 2: his head, just his whole body was completely different because
Speaker 2: of just the severity of the burns.
Speaker 1: Was this scarred over or is this still open?
Speaker 2: It was some still open and a lot of it
Speaker 2: was just scarred over. And he was still trying to
Speaker 2: heal from this. This is not a sterile environment that
Speaker 2: he's not at all. Yeah, So you know, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what I've got with me? Man, This guy needs a
Speaker 2: long term burn units he needs he needs surgeries, and
Speaker 2: I can't do that right. But I do have some
Speaker 2: things that I can do. I do have some pain
Speaker 2: medications to help him get through his day, and I
Speaker 2: can wrap him up and that psychologically makes him feel better.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of curlics on this kid. But
Speaker 2: the family was very thankful and that showed gratitude enough,
Speaker 2: even though.
Speaker 1: I know that that's not what he needed. But I
Speaker 1: can't give him what he needed.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm going to do anything that I can,
Speaker 2: And I guess that made me feel that I was
Speaker 2: I was doing something good. But then who did that
Speaker 2: to this kid? Did we do that to this kid accidentally.
Speaker 1: Right in an air strike or something.
Speaker 2: Right, because we may have done that to not that kid,
Speaker 2: but somebody else. Sure when we're we were in uh,
Speaker 2: we were in a tick and we're getting after it.
Speaker 2: Everything was everything was going pretty smooth, what I thought,
Speaker 2: but he just wasn't ending. We're about nine hours into
Speaker 2: this thing. We got some support and so my Bravo
Speaker 2: is like, man, I got this three twenty, We got
Speaker 2: all these grenades, let's go, yep, let's do this. So
Speaker 2: we just we're just firing for effect because we're this one,
Speaker 2: this one group of houses. These dudes are just all
Speaker 2: over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ants in the ant hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so like, you know what, cool, We're gonna do it.
Speaker 2: So we just start lobbing grenades in there, and we
Speaker 2: get a call from let's one thirty specter and it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: you guys got a dude running around on fire down there.
Speaker 2: I found this funny.
Speaker 1: At the time, like maniacally evil funny. Yeah, nine hours
Speaker 1: into the firefight, you're not thinking totally clearly.
Speaker 2: But then like fuck, man, you know I feel like
Speaker 2: I whenever I was running my gun, I felt like
Speaker 2: I wanted to I don't know, at least be decent
Speaker 2: about it, even back then, because I saw what happens
Speaker 2: with dudes that are really injured and all that pain
Speaker 2: and all that that I'm getting to witness as the medic.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, you know what, I'm I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: be that guy, right at least I'm gonna try to
Speaker 2: do my work to the fullest extent so that they
Speaker 2: don't have to because they don't have me on that
Speaker 2: other side, or a guy like me, you know, with
Speaker 2: with fentnyl lollipops and pushing ketamine and you know, this
Speaker 2: guy's gonna suck for a couple of minutes, but then
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take care of him and you know, snow
Speaker 2: him and he's gonna be okay. Pain wise. They don't
Speaker 2: have any of that.
Speaker 1: So I ought I was a.
Speaker 2: Good human, but you know, having that mindset, but then
Speaker 2: catching Scout on fire and I was like, I don't care,
Speaker 2: Like that's funny. That came back around years later.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't at the time. It felt completely normal
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: A lot of stuff that we did that looking back,
Speaker 2: it's like that was not normal, but.
Speaker 1: We normalize that, particularly, you know, when you're a special
Speaker 1: opsky like you deploying over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: having those like repeated exposures, like you can't help but
Speaker 1: feel like this is normal for you.
Speaker 2: You get numb to it. Yeah, you get numb. Like
Speaker 2: I said, I tried to add to keep the human
Speaker 2: factor involved in it, but there are definitely times where
Speaker 2: you felt it slip away.
Speaker 1: We just we're just.
Speaker 2: Doing work and it doesn't matter, and you have to
Speaker 2: just cut that off. No emotion, You can't show emotion
Speaker 2: to everything. This was all going to come and catch
Speaker 2: up to you some point, But I tell you.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen today.
Speaker 2: You know, during this during while we're out here on
Speaker 2: this mission, none of that's happening.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think very few people even think
Speaker 1: that far ahead that you know, what are the long
Speaker 1: term repercussion.
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking that at that time either. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody was. Nobody really talked about that.
Speaker 2: And when you did have some kind of feelings, emotions, thoughts,
Speaker 2: mental health is what we're calling it now, right, nobody
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about that except one guy, and.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: There was probably a little bit of alcohol that might
Speaker 2: have gotten you know, moved around into the country that
Speaker 2: you know what might not have should have been there,
Speaker 2: but it was. And I think that that was a
Speaker 2: major contributing factor. But I did have a teammate. He
Speaker 2: was on the other team, but we were co located
Speaker 2: together and was going through some some struggles and I
Speaker 2: I found him with his nine millimeters in his mouth.
Speaker 2: That was a difficult encounter on deployment because oh shit, man,
Speaker 2: I gotta be super gentle with this, because.
Speaker 1: I could say the wrong.
Speaker 2: Thing or make the wrong move or whatever. And for fortunately, uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know a good two hours. You know, we
Speaker 2: talked earlier about you know, talk therapy, and you can
Speaker 2: go to a view, but if you talk to somebody
Speaker 2: that's you know, you're you're have done similar things right,
Speaker 2: you can probably get the point across a lot better
Speaker 2: and things can you know, a brotherhood type of thing
Speaker 2: that you can work out instead of talking to somebody
Speaker 2: that graduated a psychology degree and has never been in
Speaker 2: the military there might not shed the same insight. So
Speaker 2: I was able to work with him enough to get
Speaker 2: the gun out of his mouth, and two hours of talking,
Speaker 2: a lot of hugging, a lot of crying, a lot
Speaker 2: of all kinds of stuff that was very, very unusual
Speaker 2: for a situation like that at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unexpected because.
Speaker 2: Guys didn't really want to talk about mental health. You
Speaker 2: just you go, you work, you you do things, and then.
Speaker 1: You keep that buried. You you keep it where you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't doesn't need to come up.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about it.
Speaker 1: We don't. It's just I've heard stories over the years that, like,
Speaker 1: I really feel for some of these teams. In the story,
Speaker 1: it's always some variation of this. You know, my team
Speaker 1: sergeant got killed, my team leader got killed. The guys
Speaker 1: are hurting, but the mission continues. These teams are left
Speaker 1: out there on these little fobs to continue the mission,
Speaker 1: and stuff starts disappearing from the med cabinet. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of like what brings the whole the whole shit
Speaker 1: show starts rolling downhill, you know, as the guys come
Speaker 1: on glued over time and you can see how it happens.
Speaker 2: You know, that did happen, Not to me, not to
Speaker 2: my team. I was always very good on the accountability
Speaker 2: of our men's I'm still yet I've pushed a lot academy.
Speaker 2: I've never experienced kedemen a lot of other things, but ketamine. Never.
Speaker 2: Uh so maybe one day. But on another team, we're
Speaker 2: all going out on undeployment, you know, on several teams,
Speaker 2: all flying out together. This dude shows up.
Speaker 1: He's a medic, and he's just not looking good at all.
Speaker 1: And I can identify when a dude's been using. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what it is he's been using, but
Speaker 1: I know he's been using and he's got a problem.
Speaker 2: I didn't know the medic very well at all. You know,
Speaker 2: you guys in the down the hallway, this team's gone,
Speaker 2: this team's gone back and forth. It's like, oh man,
Speaker 2: you're the new guy here, like no, been here for
Speaker 2: three years, Like shit, I have never seen you, you know.
Speaker 2: Uh So it's kind of one of those deals. And
Speaker 2: I could tell that I was saying, you know what,
Speaker 2: this is actually good that he's going on this deployment
Speaker 2: because whatever he was doing, he needs to get away
Speaker 2: from that. Now I've got no oversight of the dude
Speaker 2: because they go on wherever the area that they're going
Speaker 2: to and.
Speaker 1: Out.
Speaker 2: He got into his medbox. So he went home, which
Speaker 2: also is not the answer, because when he got home
Speaker 2: he oded on heroin.
Speaker 1: And died. Jeez.
Speaker 2: So it's a slippery slope whether you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know the underlying circumstances, whether the guy just likes to
Speaker 2: get high, or whether it was a trauma related issue
Speaker 2: that he'd been experiencing through you know, previous deployments that
Speaker 2: he's not been able to deal with them, throw away
Speaker 2: his Special Forces career and then to start injecting heroin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's got to be some underlying issues. Definitely a situation
Speaker 2: going on. But he's not the only case. You know,
Speaker 2: for so many more, not just with heroin, but with
Speaker 2: one all types of drugs.
Speaker 1: Opiates, well, heroines and opiate but yeah, other opiates, yeah,
Speaker 1: and other drugs. All.
Speaker 2: I was not an exception to that rule.
Speaker 1: So, and what's that when you came back from some
Speaker 1: of these trips that you're kind of like self medicating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so during that time it was alcohol.
Speaker 2: As we talked about, alcohol is socially acceptable, especially in
Speaker 2: the army. Man, everybody's drinking in the in.
Speaker 1: The Army and.
Speaker 2: Team parties. You know, alcohol is always a staple. It's
Speaker 2: kind of the almost a focal point. So you get
Speaker 2: used to that just being the way that things are
Speaker 2: and that's just life.
Speaker 1: What we know but we don't.
Speaker 2: Really practice, is the fact that we have to understand
Speaker 2: that that is a depressant that will lower get all
Speaker 2: hippie woo woo now, but that lowers our vibration. Lowering
Speaker 2: that vibration allow some negative energy to come in. Now,
Speaker 2: when you got and you spend your life doing some
Speaker 2: negative energy filled stuff like going on raids and hits
Speaker 2: and you know, unliving people where there's being being in
Speaker 2: that environment where that's a thing like, some negative spirits
Speaker 2: are going to attach to you. Because now what's happening
Speaker 2: at home when you're out doing this. Now, for all guys,
Speaker 2: some guys have amazing you know, support systems back at home.
Speaker 2: Some guys don't. They come back the supports systems gone, right.
Speaker 2: This leads to a lot of divorce. This leads to
Speaker 2: a lot of you know problems. Now guys don't have
Speaker 2: their kids because of these divorced So now they're dealing
Speaker 2: with all this compound interest of guard bitch, right of trauma,
Speaker 2: not just from what they did in you know, pesh Merga,
Speaker 2: but what happened when they were gone and what they're
Speaker 2: dealing with now they're getting home, and so you turn alcohol.
Speaker 2: Turn alcohol, you lower your vibrations, you allow some negative
Speaker 2: energy to get into you, and then guys will black
Speaker 2: out right, they'll do stuff, say stuff. The next day
Speaker 2: they're like remember saying this, No, I don't. Yeah, some
Speaker 2: kind of dark spirit was in You take an over
Speaker 2: man and live in your body. And we do that.
Speaker 2: We do that for years, and that one thing leads
Speaker 2: to another. You start with the alcohol, you move on
Speaker 2: to something else, some other kind of drugs, whatever those
Speaker 2: may be. Prescription pills. Tramadol was a big one that
Speaker 2: guys really liked because that was an opioid and pain medication.
Speaker 2: Just pop that pills like a really good looking approx
Speaker 2: uh that takes the pain away. But then you become
Speaker 2: addicted to that, like you just need that to just
Speaker 2: keep on the function. And that's the same with most
Speaker 2: all of those types of opioids.
Speaker 1: And also the guys. You know again, I can feel
Speaker 1: like sympathetic for it. As a guy goes through their career,
Speaker 1: starts racking up injuries, like there's a toll on the
Speaker 1: body as well, not just the mind. And some of
Speaker 1: these guys start using steroids because they want to stay
Speaker 1: on their team. They want to stay on the game.
Speaker 1: They worked very hard to get to that position. They
Speaker 1: don't want to leave because their vertebrae are fucked up.
Speaker 2: Or when they got injured, so they need to get
Speaker 2: something to.
Speaker 1: Help them get right right, and things just continue to
Speaker 1: kind of spiral.
Speaker 2: It does, and then it happened to me. They go
Speaker 2: into these like subcultures, and motorcycle brought me into a
Speaker 2: whole new subculture, as it did with a lot of guys.
Speaker 1: When did that begin?
Speaker 2: And I got my first bike when I was eight.
Speaker 2: I've always been riding, and I've had Harley's for twenty years.
Speaker 2: And everybody knows about all these you know, high and
Speaker 2: one percent clubs, you know there, They got movies about
Speaker 2: them and TV shows and documentaries, Hell's Angels, Outlaws from Hagan's,
Speaker 2: and those helped kind of spawn other clubs that a
Speaker 2: lot of veterans are involved in. And you go around
Speaker 2: to these military bases, there are a few other kind
Speaker 2: of big clubs that will also feed into those big
Speaker 2: one percenter clubs. Now, a one percenter club is going
Speaker 2: to run the whole like whatever territory. So if your
Speaker 2: club is in that territory, you answer to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to wear the you gotta be
Speaker 1: subservient to whoever the big daddy is in that region.
Speaker 2: And there are military veterans active and retired that will prospect.
Speaker 2: They will go through six months a year, sometimes longer
Speaker 2: depending on the club, to earn that three piece patch
Speaker 2: to go ride their motorcycle along with a bunch of
Speaker 2: other dudes wearing that patch. Yeah, it's not quite Sons
Speaker 2: of Anarchy, but it sometimes it's not too far off
Speaker 2: from that. Depends on how deep some of these guys can.
Speaker 2: Military organizations are involved in some of that, which then
Speaker 2: spawns into a lot more alcohol use, drug use, which
Speaker 2: in the micro community they like speed, those dudes like methan, phatamines, cocaine.
Speaker 2: Not to saying all the veterans organizations that ride motorcycles
Speaker 2: are doing that. What I'm saying is that you get
Speaker 2: you might get some exposure, a lot more exposure when
Speaker 2: you're around that type of culture than you would just
Speaker 2: being in the military.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And a lot of guys do get get exposed to
Speaker 2: that and then end up going down some of those.
Speaker 1: Routes and the MC's I've been told, like really love
Speaker 1: these guys because you've been trained to use weapons, explosives,
Speaker 1: you have all kinds of like counter surveillance training, you
Speaker 1: know how to like spot undercover cops and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So like military or do you think military
Speaker 1: guys are like specifically sought after by some of these
Speaker 1: motorcycle clubs. They're looked into.
Speaker 2: And another one of the reasons is because they're also
Speaker 2: easily or more easy to be vetted. An example is
Speaker 2: if you're in one of these one percenter clubs, you're
Speaker 2: not gonna come from a law enforcement background. That's you
Speaker 2: have to hang around these clubs just as like a
Speaker 2: random dude a friend. It starts to get to know
Speaker 2: these guys that might last for a year two years, well.
Speaker 1: They call them like hang arounds or something around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then from there they might ask you, you know,
Speaker 2: if you wanted to step up and participate more.
Speaker 1: They might allow you to then be.
Speaker 2: Become a prospect or probate, and you might do that
Speaker 2: for a year two years before you can become a
Speaker 2: full patch member. That's a whole vetting process. They're vetting you,
Speaker 2: you're vetting them.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not gonna if you're a military at least
Speaker 2: you're they know a lot more about you. You you
Speaker 2: come in qualified, you come in with not just that
Speaker 2: background knowledge, but also it's easy to know that you're
Speaker 2: not a cop.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah, the police aren't going to put you
Speaker 1: in the military, so you can infiltrate a biker gang,
Speaker 1: right yeah.
Speaker 2: And there was some guys that did go towards the
Speaker 2: one percent route from the military, in the Outlaws and
Speaker 2: in that was Angels.
Speaker 1: After some of those trips with nine to five, I mean,
Speaker 1: were you still in fifth group after that or were
Speaker 1: you moving on to Swick? Then I went over to Swick, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to the Delta committee, gotcha. So what was
Speaker 1: it like becoming an eighteen Delta instructor?
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, it's pretty cool job, I guess,
Speaker 2: because you know, the first time you go through the
Speaker 2: medic course as a student, you're just trying to survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, looking through paper tube forget it.
Speaker 2: You're you were taking thirty maybe right, you learned something
Speaker 2: and you dump it because there's so.
Speaker 1: Much more You've got to learn this next week, and
Speaker 1: then it's just.
Speaker 2: Over and over and over again. I want you get
Speaker 2: out to the later phases of the course. The trauma phases,
Speaker 2: the hands on actually doing you know, life saving skills
Speaker 2: on on people, and also on we were using Cape
Speaker 2: Rine's goats. Those are the types of skills that stick
Speaker 2: with you, and you know those are That's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun to me, not working on the goats.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I like animals, I don't like people. I didn't It
Speaker 2: wasn't my favorite part.
Speaker 1: I think every eighteen delta student hates goats by the
Speaker 1: time they get out of that course.
Speaker 2: If you try to feed it, Tommy and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: throw up.
Speaker 1: I can't stand the smell.
Speaker 2: It's just that I don't know PTSD and my old
Speaker 2: factory nerve is gonna That was awesome, But to answer
Speaker 2: your question, it actually started to get watered down during
Speaker 2: my second half of the tenure. The reason being is
Speaker 2: because there's a standard with everything across the board, whether
Speaker 2: that was Ranger School, whether and you know whatever.
Speaker 1: We can have that conversation.
Speaker 2: About what actually happened, you know, did the standards change
Speaker 2: or things just get looked at differently. We were getting
Speaker 2: looked at differently. A guy, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2: A guy came through the course that his faith was Muslim,
Speaker 2: and he was fasting, and we had a ubr our
Speaker 2: upper body round robina, so I'm not familiar with that.
Speaker 2: You have to do like bench press, it's like your
Speaker 2: body weight or eighty percent of your body weight. How
Speaker 2: many times can you do it? You gotta do like
Speaker 2: a minimum of like four or five. It's super low
Speaker 2: stand You have to be able to do like three
Speaker 2: pull ups. You have to be able to like hang
Speaker 2: from the bar and then put your ankles up above
Speaker 2: your head and do like four of those, like to
Speaker 2: get a basic score, you know.
Speaker 1: And then of course guys are getting like twenty five.
Speaker 2: And then you go to the dip barn. You gotta
Speaker 2: get like eight dips. Dudes knock out forty or whatever.
Speaker 2: We had this guy, he was Muslim, he's fasting, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't even get the bare minimum of any of them.
Speaker 2: And then it ends with the five mall run in
Speaker 2: forty minutes. He failed every single event. Not only that,
Speaker 2: he failed the PT test that was given like two
Speaker 2: weeks after that, he failed like three written tests. He
Speaker 2: failed like two or three of the hands on versions,
Speaker 2: and it was, hey.
Speaker 1: You gotta recycle this guy. You got to give him
Speaker 1: another chance. You got to give him.
Speaker 2: Another chance, because now we started shifting over to being
Speaker 2: a little bit more I don't know if you want
Speaker 2: to use the word woke, but things were changing.
Speaker 1: I mean, this might be a little controversial, but it's
Speaker 1: been said that when there are people going through the
Speaker 1: Q course who have unique language abilities, that they get
Speaker 1: pushed through no matter how poorly they do some of
Speaker 1: the tests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then you know what, maybe that was a portion
Speaker 2: of it, and I would have said, you know, I
Speaker 2: one hundred percent agree, But then it didn't stop there.
Speaker 2: That was just the catalyst to then every other dude
Speaker 2: that couldn't make it and it's dangerous was oh no,
Speaker 2: we're getting another chance, another shot, give this guy another opportunity.
Speaker 2: And that just became the norm almost to be like,
Speaker 2: you can't fail a guy. So so what did that
Speaker 2: look like when we were getting briefed by this two
Speaker 2: star that comes out and he said, look, you guys
Speaker 2: are green brace A small group of was me and
Speaker 2: maybe four or five other cadre and he had a
Speaker 2: captain audience. There we are, and he's like, you're here
Speaker 2: to train these guys because as a Green Beret you
Speaker 2: go overseas and then their target language. You're going to
Speaker 2: train them to be just like you. And you're telling
Speaker 2: me you can't do that with Americans that are motivated
Speaker 2: that want to do this so well, I mean, no,
Speaker 2: you got a point. But of course there's definitely two
Speaker 2: different standards of training. I'm not going to create an
Speaker 2: American Army green beret right with an Afghan.
Speaker 1: National Army guy.
Speaker 2: But that's you know, it's not gonna happen. But that
Speaker 2: was kind of the message that was floated to all
Speaker 2: of Swick for a period of time and the Delta course.
Speaker 2: You know, medicine it's not for everybody. Just because you
Speaker 2: are not a good medic doesn't mean you can't go
Speaker 2: be a Charlie Echo Bravo, Like, there's other opportunities for you,
Speaker 2: but maybe medicine is not going to be it. If
Speaker 2: I don't want you working on my family, you know,
Speaker 2: I like, if you come to my house like you're
Speaker 2: the guy, I'm like, fuck, I don't want that. If
Speaker 2: you're looking a little iffy on the go, then maybe yeah,
Speaker 2: then I'm like, I'm I'm not going to pass you right,
Speaker 2: Like there's a standard, you know, I could be pretty lenient.
Speaker 1: I know, we you know, we need some guys out there.
Speaker 1: We're not producing these you know, mass producing soft because
Speaker 1: we're not supposed to.
Speaker 2: But it did get a lot more lenient. And you know,
Speaker 2: I can't say that that was like the worst thing,
Speaker 2: because I feel like we learned from it. Uh, A
Speaker 2: lot of folks got slipped through the cracks, and I
Speaker 2: think now things are changing. I mean, we could see
Speaker 2: a lot of changes that are being made with this administration,
Speaker 2: specifically speaking on the ideology of military training and what
Speaker 2: our standard regulations are for the troops.
Speaker 1: I think that's gotten a lot better. What was kind
Speaker 1: of like your perception of like why this was happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like when that general came and told
Speaker 1: you that, like did he really have like an ideological
Speaker 1: belief or was this more like like a mandate from
Speaker 1: d OD that like you need to produce more green berets.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the what the deal was.
Speaker 2: But yeah, what's being fed at the Pentagon and what
Speaker 2: we're getting fed is probably two different messages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Most likely it is the we're going to violate the
Speaker 2: rule that says, you know, soft is not going to
Speaker 2: be mass produced. I think that one kind of they
Speaker 2: wanted to put that one out the window. And the
Speaker 2: other part of it was that I don't know who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe oere bullet that they they came with science, and
Speaker 2: I say the oe Are bullet because somebody for their
Speaker 2: oe are bullet.
Speaker 1: We should explain to people. An officer evaluation report is
Speaker 1: how military officers are evaluated.
Speaker 2: They're going to get promoted based on how well it's
Speaker 2: like their you know, their annual.
Speaker 1: Review.
Speaker 2: You know, you get your annual review, and there's this
Speaker 2: their officer evaluation is their annual review. What did you
Speaker 2: do over this last year? Did you increase safety by
Speaker 2: twenty two percent? Did you, you know, increase the readiness
Speaker 2: of this organization by thirty eight percent? And everything's got
Speaker 2: to have a quantitative value. Uh And if so, if
Speaker 2: you look better than your peers, then you're going to
Speaker 2: get that next promotion. And those promotions end up into
Speaker 2: political promotions at a point. Sure, you know after around
Speaker 2: four oh five, now it's all political. But with that,
Speaker 2: somebody fed them all this science that their so the
Speaker 2: science said that if they make it through the selection phase,
Speaker 2: then they are going to move forward. But this is
Speaker 2: the training portion of this. They've already been selected, right,
Speaker 2: this is the training portion. Now I can say that,
Speaker 2: you know what if they don't want to get rid
Speaker 2: of them, you know, out of the eighteen delta course, Like,
Speaker 2: that's a big problem because the medic piece of that
Speaker 2: is you we're training these dudes to be the amateur
Speaker 2: t move doctors and surgeons out in the field, so
Speaker 2: you really need to have your stuff squared away. But
Speaker 2: this spread to small unit tactics, It's spread into the
Speaker 2: other committees, and it's not just affecting the medics, it's
Speaker 2: affecting everything. Like, these guys get selected, they're now going
Speaker 2: to get trained. So you go from you know, selection
Speaker 2: is you throw the numbers around thirty percent, maybe pass rate.
Speaker 2: You know, let's just say thirty percent. You go to
Speaker 2: the Q course, it's like it's fifty fifty sixty percent.
Speaker 2: They want that. Like now these guys.
Speaker 1: Are like ninety ninety five percent. You're going to push
Speaker 1: these cats through. Oh we are mass produced soft. I
Speaker 1: don't know, pick your poison.
Speaker 2: But by the time I wasn't a fan of it,
Speaker 2: because you know, I made it, so I got mine.
Speaker 2: So now I need to be this tab protector.
Speaker 1: How uh yeah, I was gonna ask, you know, you
Speaker 1: became the NCOI C of the Delta Course out there,
Speaker 1: how did you kind of deal with this situation?
Speaker 2: So that place is a well, it's a museum for one.
Speaker 2: By that, I mean we got politicians, every oh fro star,
Speaker 2: everybody that's gonna have anything, congress, whatever. These folks are
Speaker 2: all gonna come to the Delta Course, right, So it's
Speaker 2: a dog and pony show. Maybe not every week, but
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 1: Three times a month.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have distinguished guests and visitors. So we've got
Speaker 2: TVs up there playing our our video on. We've got
Speaker 2: a band an instructor damn near that stands outside of
Speaker 2: each section of the classrooms with like a banner hanging
Speaker 2: up of his section and what he's doing to give
Speaker 2: his two minute brief as I walk them all down
Speaker 2: through each in every phase. Because the first six months
Speaker 2: five six months, you're in classrooms and you're knocking out
Speaker 2: like just physician level anatomy and physiology, just really getting into.
Speaker 1: The weeds with diseases. And it is.
Speaker 2: The second half of the course when things get what
Speaker 2: students would consider a lot more interesting. That's when you're
Speaker 2: working with you're working with moulaws, you're working with trauma,
Speaker 2: you're working with mannequins a lot of it, and then
Speaker 2: you're working with live tissue. So you're outside doing a
Speaker 2: lot of work and you know, wearing your kit and
Speaker 2: doing medicine that way, and you know, sweating and beat
Speaker 2: out there twelve hours just doing all these repetitions over
Speaker 2: and over and over again. So guys really get a
Speaker 2: lot out of that.
Speaker 1: But then the very last.
Speaker 2: Phase, the third phase of trauma three, that was that
Speaker 2: was my favorite. That was the that was my baby,
Speaker 2: if you will. Like I said, when I was a student,
Speaker 2: we really didn't have a final training exercise. It was
Speaker 2: kind of really watered down. It wasn't I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like I got anything out of it. Hell, I didn't
Speaker 2: even really wasn't even sure, like are we doing this
Speaker 2: right now? I was like, are we in the FTX?
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden it's done like ten minutes later,
Speaker 2: So like, man, this seems to change. So we built
Speaker 2: a really good FTX. Three days, seventy two hours straight,
Speaker 2: no sleep, just go. We had a day crew of
Speaker 2: night crew of cadre twelve hour shifts and just punishing
Speaker 2: these guys and still failing them. You get to the
Speaker 2: last thing, the FTX, and a guy doesn't do the job,
Speaker 2: he fails. You know, well that one didn't fly. We
Speaker 2: got away with about six months. But after a while
Speaker 2: they're like, no more failing at the FTX, all right.
Speaker 2: So we built a one hundred acre compound. Like the
Speaker 2: contract was in order as I was showing up to
Speaker 2: be a cadre out there, and so we got the
Speaker 2: contract to go build this like one hundred acre type
Speaker 2: of I could build villages, classrooms. I put Black Hall
Speaker 2: helicopter frames out there, some tank stuff, and there's a river,
Speaker 2: built little warehouses and really a great training area so
Speaker 2: that guys can do drama.
Speaker 1: Medicine.
Speaker 2: We work with paintball guns, so we did have a
Speaker 2: little bit of kind of you know, love fire stuff
Speaker 2: while you're doing medicine, and you know, we have pneumatic
Speaker 2: machine guns with a lot of smoke. Really try to
Speaker 2: generate a good type of experience where you're doing a
Speaker 2: lot of care underfire.
Speaker 1: So it was a month long program.
Speaker 2: Out there and followed by that seventy two hour FTX
Speaker 2: and it was it was great. It was super fun
Speaker 2: and and guys just they loved it because you're really
Speaker 2: out there just playing army, do the job. And we
Speaker 2: had side.
Speaker 1: By sides, and you guys are out there just screaming
Speaker 1: around on these things and and loading casualties in them
Speaker 1: and practicing in the back of humbs while we're driving
Speaker 1: around and doing medicine.
Speaker 2: So guys got so much out of this at the end.
Speaker 2: So I was like for the instructors, like, man, we
Speaker 2: need to build you guys like a logo, a team shirt.
Speaker 2: We have a team shirt for this place. It was yeah, logo,
Speaker 2: team shirt. I sit around and I'm building one. I'm
Speaker 2: not a graphic art kind of guy. I can't draw
Speaker 2: a stick figure and I think I'm using power Point
Speaker 2: is how I was assembling this thing. And I've built
Speaker 2: this logo. It was a skull, because everything's gonna have
Speaker 2: a skull.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, come on.
Speaker 2: We had a Navy, We had seals, and we had
Speaker 2: SIDC Special Operations, Independent Duty Gorman, we have boat guys, gotcha,
Speaker 2: And so the skull has got to have a paddle
Speaker 2: that runs through it, and then green bray. We gotta
Speaker 2: have cross arrows. Okay, we're gonna take one of those
Speaker 2: arrows out and put a tri dent because we got seals. Man,
Speaker 2: it's all coming together. And then we got a let's
Speaker 2: trauma three because they're the ones building this logo, so
Speaker 2: we'll put a row numeral three on the skull. And
Speaker 2: there was thirteen active duty instructors that were teaching this course,
Speaker 2: so everybody gets a star. So this thirteen stars wrapped
Speaker 2: around this row ma numeral three, which I guess mirrored
Speaker 2: some other type of logo not intended at the time.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: That became a kind of viral at the school. Shirts, hoodies, hats,
Speaker 2: water bottles, all kinds of stuff for team fund was
Speaker 2: running rampant, It was doing fantastic. There was even an
Speaker 2: online store setup for this.
Speaker 1: And then it became a little controversial.
Speaker 2: Did become a little controversial, So then we'll fast forward,
Speaker 2: I don't know seven eight years January sixth.
Speaker 1: Happened.
Speaker 2: Apparently a similar logo I don't think it was exactly
Speaker 2: this one, but I don't know was seen in that
Speaker 2: area ended up turning into a safety stand down for
Speaker 2: that schoolhouse, and it ended up on the internet and websites.
Speaker 2: Special operations school uses extremist logo and they had it
Speaker 2: so wrong, they had it incredibly wrong. But nonetheless, there
Speaker 2: we go. That logo became famous.
Speaker 1: But a swick that shut you guys down. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: did it have to be redesigned or what happened with that?
Speaker 1: It just got? It got.
Speaker 2: You can't use it at all.
Speaker 1: It was. It's gone or is it? Because it's still
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they fought back, Actually, the guys at the school
Speaker 2: else fought back and they they've kind of kept it
Speaker 2: in a lot of areas off that grid, but it
Speaker 2: still thrives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're wearing it on their T shirts underneath their
Speaker 1: it is Acus or whatever the hell they have. Now.
Speaker 2: The fun thing about it is my son used to
Speaker 2: wear that. You know, as a kid growing up, he
Speaker 2: had the water bottle, you know, a hat. He didn't
Speaker 2: really know much about what it was. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like kind of the the cool logo for the
Speaker 2: Special Rations Combat Metic School. So he grows up and
Speaker 2: goes to be an Army ranger and goes to that school.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I got to show up during the FTX
Speaker 2: and run that lane. That was probably one of my
Speaker 2: more proudest moments that I had was being able to
Speaker 2: because you know, you go through something, you know, like
Speaker 2: that school anything, you have a.
Speaker 1: Little bit of home field advantage here too. Having built
Speaker 1: the course. I think a lot of people gave him
Speaker 1: shit going through that course.
Speaker 2: He passed everything on his own. I had no influence
Speaker 2: on not that I could. I mean that that's like
Speaker 2: either doing it or not. And everybody's there witnessing, so uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I couldn't persuade anybody on anything if I
Speaker 2: wanted to. But uh, you know, you go through any
Speaker 2: kind of you know, the the eighteen Delta course, going
Speaker 2: through the Q course. You know Navy seals go going
Speaker 2: through buds, whatever those things are. That's a significant time.
Speaker 2: That's a significant event to be able to have your son,
Speaker 2: you know, go through It's pretty that same thing walking
Speaker 2: down those same halls and doing everything that you got
Speaker 2: to do. You know that is that's cool.
Speaker 1: And after your swift time, you went on to be
Speaker 1: a team sergeant.
Speaker 2: So I went back to uh, I went back to
Speaker 2: group and immediately deployed again. We went back to.
Speaker 1: That time.
Speaker 2: I went to Ghost which was also in Lebanon. Oh
Speaker 2: no kidding, okay, yeah, I lived there or was a
Speaker 2: year and a half. No ship off and on, just
Speaker 2: so that your team was really going back and forth.
Speaker 1: You love that in Syria. Oh you did Syria too,
Speaker 1: What was your impression of Syria? That's a ship hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a short stint of just training some
Speaker 2: dudes that that was kind of it was anti climactic.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, you guys weren't like on the front line.
Speaker 2: Now, we really didn't get to do anything cool. You know,
Speaker 2: what we consider cool. What we consider cool is what
Speaker 2: you know, when you're call of duty, you know, like
Speaker 2: when we're living that that's cool, right, And when you're
Speaker 2: just out there doing day to day jay sat stuff essentially, yeah,
Speaker 2: right right, that's not cool. So yeah, I went and
Speaker 2: did did some more training out there in uh in
Speaker 2: ghost stuff. And yeah, I did another five or six
Speaker 2: months out there, and and I was offered, hey, you
Speaker 2: want to be a teams aren't in Syria on another rotation.
Speaker 2: I'm at twenty two years at this point, like the
Speaker 2: war at this point is twenty nineteen. It's all done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: starting to feel it, you know. I had a couple
Speaker 2: of hard landings ate a charge had.
Speaker 1: Had some other.
Speaker 2: Underlying factors of some explosions that I won't really get
Speaker 2: into that. I got some hardware in the Leg four,
Speaker 2: but the my body was just not really cooperating, you know,
Speaker 2: because at this point I'm in my early forties and
Speaker 2: any guys on there are just still studs. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: can hold my own, but I'm like, I think it's
Speaker 2: about that time because I thought that I was mentally ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah I wasn't, and all those years like eventually just
Speaker 2: all hit me at once and during the transition that
Speaker 2: was the That was a challenging time, but it was
Speaker 2: one like, oh, I'm already committed to my XVIIL.
Speaker 1: So what was your plan when you got out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there wasn't one. Everybody says, have a plan, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know the plan. The plan for a lot of
Speaker 1: guys that don't have a plan.
Speaker 2: Is go contract. Yeah, because well that's still there. They're
Speaker 2: still paying good money. So yeah, it turns out that
Speaker 2: that also started to dry up, and all that money
Speaker 2: started to kind of not be the big money that
Speaker 2: it was, and it became like, well, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's worth it to go over there anymore and and
Speaker 2: do this for what you guys are offering, So it's
Speaker 2: time to change that plan. Riding motorcycles a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were telling me that kind of like to
Speaker 1: keep that kind of adrenaline level. Yeah, and it's starting
Speaker 1: to get a little out of control. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was riding with one of those with a club that.
Speaker 1: The FBI would be interested in.
Speaker 2: They would be they would be Yeah in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Uh, they all that area. And I was very tight
Speaker 1: with one of the members that.
Speaker 2: Was he was an enforcer in the region for them,
Speaker 2: And that's where I started finding some adrenaline, feeling like I.
Speaker 1: Had something to do, like I had a team again,
Speaker 1: isn't It wasn't. The Hell's Angels started by World War
Speaker 1: Two veterans mostly fun fact and interesting like connection there
Speaker 1: isn't there.
Speaker 2: So the the Hell's Angels, the Outlaws, peg As among
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of there's four or big ones, but
Speaker 2: there are one percenter club. So after World War Two,
Speaker 2: a bunch of dudes, because you know that Allies sent
Speaker 2: a lot of Harley Davidson's over and so guys were
Speaker 2: riding those and know that was something that you got
Speaker 2: around on. Well, they also got good at fixing them, right.
Speaker 2: So then when the war was over with that, there's
Speaker 2: a surplus of these motorcycles. You can get a relatively
Speaker 2: cheap everybody knows how to work on them, you know,
Speaker 2: throw a gallon of gas in there.
Speaker 1: And off you go. So a lot of guys got
Speaker 1: into that.
Speaker 2: You know, culture is just a way of riding the
Speaker 2: motorcycles around and then what you ride with your buddies. Well,
Speaker 2: a bunch of guys were doing this together, and you
Speaker 2: have in California, Hollister, California, the American Motorcycle Association would
Speaker 2: do this annual event. All these people come from all over,
Speaker 2: you know, ride their motorcycles. It was a week long deal.
Speaker 2: It might be some drag races.
Speaker 1: And stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Well, then you know, if me and you were riding together,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, we're gonna show up. We're gonna wear
Speaker 2: the same jacket, you know, same color looking, We're gonna
Speaker 2: have a uniform. We got to look the same. Everybody
Speaker 2: the same same. Well, there was a bomber squadron called
Speaker 2: Dalla's Angels, so they adopted their bomber squadron name and
Speaker 2: then used that. Now they might not have followed all
Speaker 2: the rules that the American Motorcycle Association had in the
Speaker 2: store for their week long celebration for their bike week
Speaker 2: or whatever. In Hollister, some people didn't care. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: fuck your rules whatever. Nine to nine percent of bikers
Speaker 2: are you know, good dudes, follow the rules whatever. There's
Speaker 2: one percent that don't care. And were that one percent
Speaker 2: so they adopted that they were that is a diamond
Speaker 2: patch on their cut and they take this very seriously.
Speaker 2: Now that you've got veterans, motorcycle clubs like motorcycle clubs
Speaker 2: that veterans belong to that when it says MC motorcycle
Speaker 2: club like, they've prospected to get that, which means that
Speaker 2: they've been doing a lot of work for it could
Speaker 2: be four or five months, could be over a year
Speaker 2: to be able to earn the privilege to war that
Speaker 2: entire three piece patch. And those clubs that they belong
Speaker 2: to say most I don't want to lump everything in
Speaker 2: and speaking in absolutes, but are going to belong to
Speaker 2: an area I gots in real estate, and that real
Speaker 2: estate isn't owned by that one percenter club, and that
Speaker 2: comes with responsibilities. Each organization has got different responsibilities to
Speaker 2: what that might be. But yeah, but it gives this,
Speaker 2: like I was saying earlier, it gives guys an opportunity
Speaker 2: to get into things that they shouldn't get into, whether
Speaker 2: that's more alcohol, drugs, or being involved in some type
Speaker 2: of you know, organized crime, whatever that might look like.
Speaker 1: And it happens. You mentioned earlier that you know, it's
Speaker 1: a subculture, and it is kind of interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: Special Forces in of itself is sort of a subculture
Speaker 1: in the military. But then there's this parallel subculture where
Speaker 1: now that you're a different uniform and there's a different
Speaker 1: selection process and you belong to this other thing.
Speaker 2: It gets better. You got Special Forces guys, we already
Speaker 2: said that, you know, we're kind of our own brotherhood.
Speaker 2: You know SF guys, you know they they're belonging to
Speaker 2: one club and you got another SF guy belonging to
Speaker 2: this club. Oh yeah, and now there's this this rift
Speaker 2: fistfight riff even worse? Does that carry seeing SF guys whearing?
Speaker 2: Oh that's they got a different color jacket? Jump dudes,
Speaker 2: a SF dudes. Because they're wearing that color jacket. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh your third group, I'm seventh group. I'm you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to fight for what? And does they do that?
Speaker 1: Does that stuff that rift kind of carry into the
Speaker 1: workplace sometimes, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2: Some of the committees that the qualification course has are
Speaker 2: good examples of this.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna die any of these out at all.
Speaker 1: I mean in a few cases I know exactly.
Speaker 2: But there's a couple of committees where like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: worked together, and but you're wearing that color and I'm
Speaker 2: wearing this color, and that's a problem. And it bleeds over,
Speaker 2: certainly bleeds over.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's wild, isn't it. Yeah? It sub subcultures.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's beyond me. And I was involved
Speaker 2: in it for quite a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you're willing to talk about it,
Speaker 1: I mean, how deep did you go? Uh? So?
Speaker 2: I I was in a traditional MC. By that, I
Speaker 2: mean we followed all the protocols for a motorcycle club.
Speaker 2: We held what's called church. It's meetings. It's gonna be
Speaker 2: like a skiff phones outside. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: some some things. It's very organized, just like an e MC.
Speaker 2: There's a structure. You've got officer rankings, president, vice president
Speaker 2: type of thing. You pay dues. You have a clubhouse.
Speaker 2: In that clubhouse, is you know, going to have a bar,
Speaker 2: living room, areas for guys to sleep in.
Speaker 1: So, uh, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's welping, welcoming, it's inviting two guys that have left
Speaker 2: the team life.
Speaker 1: And it's like, all right.
Speaker 2: Now what a new teamhouse is a whole new teamhouse.
Speaker 2: And whether that's just for our club, it's like that
Speaker 2: for all clubs. It's it's a teamhouse. Whether you're you've
Speaker 2: been a civilian or whatever, and you get involved in
Speaker 2: one of these things, that is what that that does
Speaker 2: provide that for you and guys need that. Guys like
Speaker 2: that and their motorcycle enthusiasts, so it gives them something
Speaker 2: to to go. They rob motorcycles, They plan poker runs, fundraisers,
Speaker 2: different events to keep going. And that's how it all started.
Speaker 2: And then I started getting a little bit deeper into it,
Speaker 2: and I started going, uh, because you meet with other
Speaker 2: clubs at events parlays. One club might have a hosting
Speaker 2: an event at their at their house. All the other
Speaker 2: clubs in the area will go there and support this club.
Speaker 2: Now you've got dudes, whether they're range regiments got a club.
Speaker 2: You know, SF's got a club. Just army veterans or
Speaker 2: military veterans in general have a club civilians are all
Speaker 2: mixed in to some of these civilians in general have
Speaker 2: some of their clubs and then these one percenter clubs,
Speaker 2: and you get them all in one area. Just like anything.
Speaker 2: Guys start talking. Now you have to do this sometimes weekly.
Speaker 2: So you're doing this every week on bike night or
Speaker 2: you're going to and a like a local bar. That
Speaker 2: one percenter club is going to say, Hey, this week's
Speaker 2: bike week Bike night is going to be at this
Speaker 2: specific bar, and if you fly your colors in this area,
Speaker 2: you're going to be there. Okay, So they got some
Speaker 2: other random grown man telling us where.
Speaker 1: To be and you're prospecting at this point. Oh even
Speaker 1: when you're a club at that one percenter club says hey,
Speaker 1: your club is and if they tell you to come
Speaker 1: be the dorman all night, like you have to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, oh yeah, they don't tell you to do it.
Speaker 1: You just do it.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of like being like the new guy
Speaker 2: on a team, like day one. It's just things that
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 1: So then I started with the a one.
Speaker 2: Percenter club in Tennessee, and I was I got in
Speaker 2: pretty deep with those guys. I was at the clubhouse
Speaker 2: a lot until the sun came up a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it ended up on a bike night.
Speaker 2: And so there was this one percenter club that was
Speaker 2: a different one percenter club that was moving into this area.
Speaker 2: Turf war. We can't have that. So riding motorcycles at
Speaker 2: one hundred miles an hour, because that's how you ride
Speaker 2: them when you're in this club, up and down the
Speaker 2: streets looking for these guys, going to these different bars,
Speaker 2: looking for these dudes that are encroaching on your territory.
Speaker 2: Then one specific bike night, I had to, let's just say,
Speaker 2: I had to go out of town for something else,
Speaker 2: so I wasn't I wasn't with them on bike night.
Speaker 1: I was doing something else.
Speaker 2: And the dude that I spent all that time with,
Speaker 2: I lived at that clubhouse for so many times. He's
Speaker 2: stayed in my house so many times. He gets involved
Speaker 2: in a double homicide on the rival arrival, because that's
Speaker 2: what you have to do. That's what's ingrained as you
Speaker 2: wear in that diamond like, that's.
Speaker 1: That's what you do. And now.
Speaker 2: He ends up riding off, gets picked up.
Speaker 1: And this might have happened at eight o'clock at night ish.
Speaker 2: The mayor was inside eating dinner. The mayor of Clarksville.
Speaker 2: This's happened in Clarksville, Tennessee. He was inside that restaurant
Speaker 2: that had happened at eating dinner. Not that that really
Speaker 2: made much more of a difference. It didn't help, did
Speaker 2: not help, not keeping that one quiet, not sweeping anything
Speaker 2: under that rug. I get a call at I don't know,
Speaker 2: eleven twelve o'clock.
Speaker 1: Was this the steakhouse over by the male yep? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that one.
Speaker 2: So I get a call late at night and it
Speaker 2: was a detective the arresting team. So they didn't take
Speaker 2: this dude to the jail like the Cumberland County jail.
Speaker 2: There was some weird, unmarked warehouse style holding place that
Speaker 2: was nowhere near the jail, like the other side of town.
Speaker 1: That's weird, super weird.
Speaker 2: And I get a call and they're like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: can you come and pick pick up your boy? And
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not a I'm not wearing that color,
Speaker 2: Like that's not so how would you guys associate me
Speaker 2: with that? So now that's not a good situation. I'm like, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna come down and get him. So I go
Speaker 2: down and get him. He's in a tievex suit. Somebody
Speaker 2: just get even weirder Annibal Lecter. I don't know what's
Speaker 2: happening at this point. The detectives like big air, like
Speaker 2: this is interesting. Take him to his his clubse like, hey, dude,
Speaker 2: you don't need to go get a burner phone and
Speaker 2: you know, go chill out somewhere. So dude goes and
Speaker 2: I was like, man, you need to be in and
Speaker 2: out of this house. I think I told him seven minutes.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I just picked seven minutes, like randomly.
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, you got like.
Speaker 2: Seven minutes to get your shit out of the house. Man,
Speaker 2: get out of here. And then you're gonna go to
Speaker 2: this spot, get a burner phone. You're gonna go over
Speaker 2: to this area for the safe house. And he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, cool, and then he's like and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: meet you there, take a different route. So he did that.
Speaker 2: About twenty minutes later, that house got raided and everybody
Speaker 2: that was in there was face down, got the handcuffs on.
Speaker 2: So hey, my seven minute thing actually worked.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 2: They'd already let him go so it didn't matter. But anyway,
Speaker 2: so off we go.
Speaker 1: He's in a he's hanging out at some chick's house.
Speaker 1: And then he calls me up a few.
Speaker 2: Days later he's like, hey, man, I think I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I might need to go.
Speaker 1: I can tell me what you want to do, man,
Speaker 1: so't whatever if you need out.
Speaker 2: Deputy or sheriff, detective whoever. Calls me like the next
Speaker 2: day after that and was like, hey, I need you
Speaker 2: to bring your boy in.
Speaker 1: Okay? Cool. So I can't believe they just let him
Speaker 1: walk out after the double homicide.
Speaker 2: Let him walk out? Now took him back in? He
Speaker 2: just did.
Speaker 1: That's been six years. Oh he just got out.
Speaker 2: He just got out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: The dudes drew down on him first.
Speaker 1: He was So there's an argument of self defense.
Speaker 2: We had talked about how some former military guys go
Speaker 2: as far as.
Speaker 1: You know, one Percenter clubs.
Speaker 2: That was a former military guy that had gone. Matter
Speaker 2: of fact, a Seventh Group guy was. Turns out to
Speaker 2: be the president of Hell's Angels in Faybville. He died
Speaker 2: a few years ago. Turns out when that funeral happened,
Speaker 2: Oh you got to know, because it happened to Fabville.
Speaker 2: Every agency, the entire alphabet was out there. I mean
Speaker 2: the Greek alphabet was out there everybody taking pictures of
Speaker 2: every dude like a mafia funeral that showed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, yeah, that's crazy. So what happened with your
Speaker 1: motorcycle buddy after you brought him back into the sketchy warehouse?
Speaker 1: So I'm doing videos? I had asked him.
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, look, can we have no press
Speaker 2: because I'm involved in this thing now right. I was saying,
Speaker 2: I don't want any press being there. Can you guys
Speaker 2: at least try to? And they're like, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: We have a thirty forty minute conversation with the dude
Speaker 2: standing outside of my truck. As I'm dropping him off.
Speaker 2: He was complimenting on how good we made the double
Speaker 2: doors at the clubhouse, because I we got doors from
Speaker 2: the post office, like these giant steel doors, and had
Speaker 2: a great security system on this thing. Had cameras all over,
Speaker 2: and the bartender had all of his because bartender's gonna
Speaker 2: be a prospect, He's got all the cameras up there
Speaker 2: to look at. So you can see three sixty around
Speaker 2: the house and there'll be two or three guys just
Speaker 2: watching cameras at all times, and the whether it's the
Speaker 2: atf whatever. They were, like, dude, you guys did a
Speaker 2: really good job putting up those It was like, there's
Speaker 2: there's a bitch get in that house.
Speaker 1: Man. So I spelt I wasn't an engineer at Charlie.
Speaker 2: But it would be good. Uh so, And they were,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to mention some of the
Speaker 2: things that were they were involved in uh on this show,
Speaker 2: but they were involved in some things that I knew, like, all.
Speaker 1: Right, this is oll listed activities. This is not.
Speaker 2: I didn't learn, like, you know, my lesson quickly, but
Speaker 2: I eventually learned my lesson. I was like, this is
Speaker 2: not not working out. And at this time, now I
Speaker 2: had transitioned, I'm out of the military and I'm a civilian.
Speaker 1: I was like, I need I need to X Phil.
Speaker 2: So I go back to brag because at a house
Speaker 2: out there still and I'm still riding with my club
Speaker 2: out there, who lives right down street from the Hells Angels.
Speaker 1: And I just did not see.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm I'm gonna end up in the
Speaker 2: same situations. So I decided to I was gonna get
Speaker 2: out of that culture all together and move to Florida,
Speaker 2: where I actually hung up the helmet completely and got
Speaker 2: away from the motorcycles all together.
Speaker 1: I sold them all, but still kind of chasing that
Speaker 1: high right. Oh yeah, like you made the trip over
Speaker 1: to Ukraine when that popped off.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, what was I thinking?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was allegedly I was telling myself, you know, it
Speaker 2: was the money, but in hindsight, it wasn't even that
Speaker 2: much money. So I was wanting to do it to
Speaker 2: feel relevant. I think that's the best way to describe.
Speaker 1: To use your skills and your training. I wanted to
Speaker 1: feel relevant, and.
Speaker 2: It was an ego thing I think also, and like
Speaker 2: I've got the opportunity to do this, and let's let's
Speaker 2: see how.
Speaker 1: Far I can push it.
Speaker 2: That's a whole different situation when nobody's coming, there's no QRF,
Speaker 2: nobody is coming. I don't speak that language. It's me
Speaker 2: and I've got a terp and I've got a high
Speaker 2: lux that I rented this right out like twenty miles
Speaker 2: across the border that's not even supposed to be that
Speaker 2: far east because I had to sneak in Robin Sage
Speaker 2: style from Poland.
Speaker 1: That was crazy. I ended up.
Speaker 2: So there's this long line about five.
Speaker 1: Miles to get into the border.
Speaker 2: So we land in Poland and then we go close
Speaker 2: to the border, like an hour outside of the border
Speaker 2: to Ukraine, and we've got this.
Speaker 1: Like we've got this like augmentee that's going to.
Speaker 2: Help us get across the border.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We got some random dude that was a very odd
Speaker 2: situation because he was supposed to be at this link
Speaker 2: up point at let's say two pm. So we're out
Speaker 2: there at like one pm, like on Overwatch, because I
Speaker 2: want to see when this guy comes in, is he
Speaker 2: being followed, is it just him? What is the situation
Speaker 2: really like at like two thirty, nohing nothing. I was like,
Speaker 2: what three o'clock. Three thirty rolls around? Almost a couple
Speaker 2: hours it passed. Calling this guy he finally answers. He's like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I'll send ye the driver will be there
Speaker 2: in five minutes. There was a van. It has been
Speaker 2: sitting there since before we got there. Some dude comes
Speaker 2: over and gets in the van and I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, this is already not looking good. Well now
Speaker 2: he wants to bring this lady with her car and
Speaker 2: that we're gonna they're gonna take us to the front
Speaker 2: of the line. I was like, none of this is
Speaker 2: adding up.
Speaker 1: Man, sounds legit. This is super not sketchy. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do it right, and we do. So.
Speaker 2: The border is backed up five miles or so. It
Speaker 2: might take three days to get into there. We just
Speaker 2: going up to the front of the line. This lady
Speaker 2: had a stolen car. Now I'm going to be in
Speaker 2: like this international crime syndicate was stolen cars trying to
Speaker 2: get smuggled into Ukraine, and like nothing's coming in. I
Speaker 2: got some med stuff because like I'm coming over and
Speaker 2: I'm bringing medicine like AMA trauma gear and everything. Find
Speaker 2: a dude like ten twelve vehicles back in a sprinter van,
Speaker 2: a Mercedes Sprinter like nice and newer one. I went
Speaker 2: up to him and I was like, hey, man, I
Speaker 2: need you to get me across this border. I don't
Speaker 2: think he spoke English. I don't think he he understood
Speaker 2: what I meant. He just kind of looked around, opened
Speaker 2: up the van. No, there's another red flag right that
Speaker 2: I've created. And I was like, yep, we're going in
Speaker 2: jump in the back of some random strangers sprinter van. No,
Speaker 2: it's one of these vans that it's like it's a
Speaker 2: free candy van.
Speaker 1: There's no windows. It's a pedophile van.
Speaker 2: It's the Seer van. Yeah, and I put myself into
Speaker 2: this seer van to break across the border to go
Speaker 2: to a war, and I felt wildly un comfortable with that.
Speaker 2: I was like, man, this is actually I feel good
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: We get across the border.
Speaker 1: Jack, we get across the border two three miles, three
Speaker 1: miles top, this thing breaks down.
Speaker 2: Now we're riding in the back. It's me and two
Speaker 2: guys that I went with. Now because when we get
Speaker 2: to where we're going, we're gonna split up and go
Speaker 2: our subways. So it's me and two other guys from
Speaker 2: in the back of this thing. Can't see anything, have
Speaker 2: no idea, you know what's But we weren't back there
Speaker 2: along because as soon as we got across that border,
Speaker 2: a few miles into it, the the van breaks down.
Speaker 1: So here we go. We pop out, like what's the situation? Man?
Speaker 2: Another dude just comes rolling up. They strap a little
Speaker 2: toe strap on this thing, and now we're just getting
Speaker 2: towed down the road by time.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty five Nissan pickup truck that's on its last
Speaker 2: leg towing us where the dudes gotta like ride the
Speaker 2: brakes so you don't hit the towing vehicle in front
Speaker 2: of you. So we go, I don't know, eight nine,
Speaker 2: ten miles down the road, getting smuggled in this thing. Finally,
Speaker 2: like we hop out and at the because there was
Speaker 2: a rental car place spot I don't have fifteen miles
Speaker 2: or so on the other side of the border, and
Speaker 2: we go and rent three vehicles, three high luxes, and
Speaker 2: we each like high five and we go link up
Speaker 2: with an interpreter, each of us, and we go off
Speaker 2: into the wild.
Speaker 1: Now Ukraine is.
Speaker 2: It's huge, so it's not as big as the US,
Speaker 2: but it's big as of several states. So it's several hours,
Speaker 2: like a couple of days even to drive from the
Speaker 2: from the west to the east. And actually our west
Speaker 2: is like really nice. The landscaping, the greenery, rolling hills,
Speaker 2: beautiful rests, the activity was all normal. They became a
Speaker 2: phase line and when you cross that phase line, it
Speaker 2: was like it went from one to the other immediately,
Speaker 2: and it was like communist Russia looking definitely, the vehicles,
Speaker 2: the people, what they were wearing. And then it got
Speaker 2: into the most war torn looking areas and Karkiev, and
Speaker 2: so that's where we started operating out of so me
Speaker 2: and my turp we linked up with some just random
Speaker 2: indigenous force Ukrainian Army dudes, like, hey, we're here, man,
Speaker 2: you guys want some training and they're like yeah, and
Speaker 2: pretty much that's kind of how it went. Shake some
Speaker 2: hands and started teaching medicine to these dudes, and they're like,
Speaker 2: we're going out on mission, and I was like, awesome,
Speaker 2: let me hear the mission brief. I'm gonna go with
Speaker 2: you because I got this GoPro we're about to start
Speaker 2: or a new Blackwater, all right.
Speaker 1: So the mission goes like.
Speaker 2: This, it's like six dudes and then me, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go with them, and they're gonna go take on an
Speaker 2: entire Russian infantry unit, complete with two tanks they've got
Speaker 2: I don't know all the weapons, and it's like forty
Speaker 2: dudes and there's the six of us and me I
Speaker 2: was like, no, we're not doing that. It was an
Speaker 2: issue we kind of got into like a thing, and
Speaker 2: I'm just a new guy showing up there and I
Speaker 2: wasn't doing it to be a dick. I was like,
Speaker 2: now that's suicide, right, man, Like you guys are going
Speaker 2: to die. And I was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: go on that one with you, and I'd strongly advise
Speaker 2: you not to go because you're not going to come
Speaker 2: back from that.
Speaker 1: I'm just being being honest with you. And so a
Speaker 1: few of the guys were like, this guy's saying that
Speaker 1: man and you know his resume, We're gonna stick with
Speaker 1: this guy.
Speaker 2: And a couple of dudes were kind of angry about
Speaker 2: it and they wanted to go talk to the colonel
Speaker 2: about it. The colonel comes down, it was like, no,
Speaker 2: we need to go, dude. You do you understand this
Speaker 2: mission planning situation? They don't. And they were also kind
Speaker 2: of in a desperate situation and which I completely appreciate,
Speaker 2: but I am not in a desperate situation. So I
Speaker 2: did my best to keep them from going, and they
Speaker 2: didn't go. Now, there were some other ones that we
Speaker 2: did go, and I sat in a ditch with tank
Speaker 2: rounds smacking, getting dirt.
Speaker 1: Blown on me.
Speaker 2: And then I remember I was going out to this
Speaker 2: one unit. It was like eight dudes on this outpost
Speaker 2: we had gotten there are like, hey man, these dudes
Speaker 2: out there like really need help, and you know, they're
Speaker 2: taking casualties.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go out there and help with these guys.
Speaker 2: So me and Minter we go out. We got like
Speaker 2: a grid cord and to drop to us, and we
Speaker 2: go out there and it's a school now in a
Speaker 2: village completely desolate. Nobody's there at all. The school has
Speaker 2: been shelled a dozen times. All the houses got some
Speaker 2: kind of watar rounds in them, and then there's this
Speaker 2: little outpost and then there's this an area kind of
Speaker 2: like a basement, you know, you could go under a bunker.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, all right, so you park. I parked
Speaker 2: under some trees next to the school because up until now,
Speaker 2: I've been fighting the Iraq Afghanistan, and we were accustomed
Speaker 2: to a certain style of fighting and that's kind of
Speaker 2: ingrained in US. Drone warfare wasn't part of that, right
Speaker 2: and it is now. So we're going to add this
Speaker 2: to the menu. And so now it's a lot more
Speaker 2: variables in a country I've got zero familiarity with, with
Speaker 2: a language that I don't know, with now new fighting
Speaker 2: techniques that I'm not accustomed to, and I don't have
Speaker 2: any team, and if anything, happens. I don't have a
Speaker 2: support I don't have a UA sixty coming in, I
Speaker 2: don't have a QRF, I don't have anything. So I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is bold and maybe not smart. We're gonna do
Speaker 2: it right. So I'm parking under trees because I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: I got to outsmart the drones because drones can't see
Speaker 2: your truck under a tree.
Speaker 1: So that i'd cover the truck up with branches.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, we were getting in it.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: I'm out there and I'm trying to set up all
Speaker 2: my stuff to make me a little clinic because we're
Speaker 2: going out on hits, So setting me up in aress,
Speaker 2: I was like, I know we're gonna take injuries, some casualties,
Speaker 2: so I want to be prepared.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The casualty is about to be me. So I'm going
Speaker 2: out to the truck and that's when the drink the
Speaker 2: drone saw me because I'm out and it's kind of
Speaker 2: a field and to get to the truck was about
Speaker 2: fifty meters or so, and that fifty meters was enough
Speaker 2: for that drone. I couldn't hear the drone or see
Speaker 2: the drone, but it had to have been up there
Speaker 2: because I heard a tank round. Have you ever heard
Speaker 2: a tank ground?
Speaker 1: Not a close range like that?
Speaker 2: It was like a maybe a click to clicks, which
Speaker 2: is close range for a tank, right, yeah. I never
Speaker 2: I'd never heard it on the receiving side until that day.
Speaker 2: And oh, that's a very it's a that sound. You'll
Speaker 2: know it if you ever get shot by a tank,
Speaker 2: you will know what that sound is without ever having
Speaker 2: the preparatory command of that.
Speaker 1: Uh. And I was like, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2: I just hit the ground and to get as flat
Speaker 2: as possible and from me to that microwave you got
Speaker 2: there about six meters away was a little little outpost
Speaker 2: that I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: It got leveled and I was like, son of them.
Speaker 2: So I get up and I sprint the you know,
Speaker 2: short ten meters or whatever to get back into the bunker.
Speaker 1: And I went down there.
Speaker 2: And they just started drilling it and I got it
Speaker 2: on go bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah that sucked, man. So this was like right on
Speaker 1: the front lines obviously. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: right on the order.
Speaker 2: Then I got caught up by uh, Good Morning America.
Speaker 2: Oh no shit, yeah, ABC World News tonight because I
Speaker 2: said there's three of us. One dude stayed in the
Speaker 2: back and he's coordinating because well, we've got to got
Speaker 2: to get some viewership on this. But we're going to
Speaker 2: start a militia, right we're getting funded by I still
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you who exactly it was, uh, none of
Speaker 2: the three of us that were out there doing it,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you that. So they caught up
Speaker 2: with some some news organizations and some some journalists and
Speaker 2: ABC World News, ABC World, Good Morning America, ABC World News,
Speaker 2: and you know, they wanted.
Speaker 1: So I went back linked up with those guys and
Speaker 1: got to go do some footage for them. And then
Speaker 1: all of this was not blurred or anything.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if I became one of the
Speaker 2: most wanted out there. So it was just the irony
Speaker 2: is everywhere that I lived was leveled. Not while I
Speaker 2: was there. I escaped that place. I escaped death. I'd
Speaker 2: say more times in a few months that I was
Speaker 2: in Ukraine than I did in all the other deployments,
Speaker 2: almost combined. Not I mean, there was definitely situations, but
Speaker 2: this one was just just hit after hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the enemy has drones and ballistic missiles and.
Speaker 2: And I've got like no friends out there at all,
Speaker 2: but it was.
Speaker 1: What ended up making you decide to leave.
Speaker 2: When I went, so I kind of I fell back
Speaker 2: to like almost as far as I could to be
Speaker 2: in like a safe zone. The hotels were great. They
Speaker 2: were like fifteen dollars a night, so I was staying
Speaker 2: and these are like decent hotels. And then just being
Speaker 2: in there, like you almost want to feel okay, cool,
Speaker 2: I'm safe, I.
Speaker 1: Can kind of relax. Nope, nope.
Speaker 2: Rockets are coming in and they're hitting a block away
Speaker 2: and it's just like, man, I'm gonna be laying here
Speaker 2: and sleeping and I'm gonna get hit by a rocket.
Speaker 2: And I've gotten you all the footage. I sent everything
Speaker 2: that I could to you know doing this, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, unless you're gonna up the any of that
Speaker 2: funding that while while I'm here like we're done. I
Speaker 2: got you everything that you need, I think to get started.
Speaker 2: Uh So yeah, a few months and I was like
Speaker 2: I'm done, Like this team trained on Ukraine, uh sound
Speaker 2: to bounce and did, jumped on a train and went
Speaker 2: back to Poland. And then now guys are starting to
Speaker 2: show up and there's more like uh, you know, retired
Speaker 2: guys and then organizations are starting to happen, and I
Speaker 2: was like, good luck fellas, I'm going to the house
Speaker 2: and not coming back.
Speaker 1: And so when you did get back to the United States,
Speaker 1: you started doing executive protection work, you started teaching UH
Speaker 1: medic classes essentially to fire departments, and I want to
Speaker 1: get into this whole other you know, part of your
Speaker 1: story that outwardly you're doing really well at this point, right,
Speaker 1: you know, getting jobs, making money, everything's going good, but
Speaker 1: internally you're having problems still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, we discussed being you know, you
Speaker 2: get out and want to be a contractor because there's
Speaker 2: all this money. Because we're in the military, you don't
Speaker 2: make money and everybody wants to make money, but we
Speaker 2: don't do that job for the money. So it was
Speaker 2: I was able to find very lucrative careers or training
Speaker 2: opportunities within my career field, which was teaching medicine. And
Speaker 2: you can you can certainly do very well for yourself
Speaker 2: being being you know, going out and teaching medicine on
Speaker 2: government contract levels very well.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing that because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to stay kind of involved in medicine and
Speaker 1: again just try to stay relevant and it's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to make some good coin. Uh, all that was happening,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't happening for me in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So then I was offered, hey do you do security?
Speaker 2: I was like, why not? You know, what kind of
Speaker 2: money are you talking about? Same money working down in
Speaker 2: South Florida? Is that they were going to we're paying
Speaker 2: me over in Ukraine, which like contractor money, And I
Speaker 2: was like, man, this there was some specific types of clients.
Speaker 2: So then I got to work with a lot of
Speaker 2: ultra networth clients, some famous and some infamous clients, clients
Speaker 2: that have laundered billions of dollars through countries that we
Speaker 2: are currently in conflict with. That's a whole nother situation
Speaker 2: with what that recently came out two weeks ago, the
Speaker 2: news and how that, you know, let's not get into
Speaker 2: that one. But yeah, so executive protection, I got to
Speaker 2: work with a lot of really good, a lot of
Speaker 2: fun clients, got to see some some things that I
Speaker 2: might not ordinarily get to see, and I got certainly
Speaker 2: got to see a lot of people that I would
Speaker 2: not ordinarily get to meet. But that was kind of boring.
Speaker 2: I think really the biggest thing was to avoid that
Speaker 2: I felt and it needed to be filled. I wasn't
Speaker 2: involved in any kind of motorcycle stuff, you know, no
Speaker 2: team stuff, no shootouts anymore. Ukraine was kind of a bust.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's still alcohol that's still a good one,
Speaker 2: you know, tequila that'll never let you down. Yeah, unfortunately
Speaker 2: it does every single time. It took a few thousand
Speaker 2: times of trial and error to learn that it's never
Speaker 2: gonna work out.
Speaker 1: And in the.
Speaker 2: Motorcycle world also led me to some substance abuse, and
Speaker 2: that doesn't work out. No matter how how empty your feeling,
Speaker 2: that is not going to be what fills the void.
Speaker 2: As an atheist, church was out of the question. So I,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just needed something. I hated myself
Speaker 2: all these things that I you know, think that i'd done.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a lot that I did that
Speaker 2: I haven't mentioned that made me hate myself, But I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand that that's what it was. I was angry.
Speaker 1: At what. I don't know, anything, this.
Speaker 2: That doesn't matter, that's going to just piss me off.
Speaker 2: Anxiety kind of depressed states for what and not to
Speaker 2: sound like a complete but I will sound like a
Speaker 2: total asshole. But when I was driving a new Lamborghini
Speaker 2: and it wasn't making you happy, it wasn't making me happy,
Speaker 2: I was like, Man, I still feel dead inside. I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't even know what to do about
Speaker 2: all this, Like why am I so angry? Why am
Speaker 2: I pissed off of the world?
Speaker 1: What is wrong?
Speaker 2: Why am I drinking myself into an oblivion? Not like
Speaker 2: every day, not even every week, but hell, who knows.
Speaker 2: If I have two drinks, I'm probably gonna have twelve.
Speaker 2: And if I have twelve, who knows who you're gonna meet,
Speaker 2: Because it's not this guy right here. You're gonna meet
Speaker 2: somebody else, probably not gonna like him, And I'm damn
Speaker 2: sure not gonna like him the next day. So I
Speaker 2: need to figure out how to get over that.
Speaker 1: What was kind of the turning point.
Speaker 2: Definitely the bottom of a bottle of casamigos. It was
Speaker 2: the next day when it's one of those you wake
Speaker 2: up and you're like, where am I Okay, I'm in
Speaker 2: my house?
Speaker 1: Good?
Speaker 2: Holy shit? What happened? What did I do? How did
Speaker 2: I get home?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man?
Speaker 2: One of those I probably made some you know, comments
Speaker 2: and stuff the night before, but not the detrimental, and
Speaker 2: I had an uber take me home. But the point
Speaker 2: was that I'd had too many of those nights. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and every time I have one of those, I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: I'm done.
Speaker 1: I can't drink anymore.
Speaker 2: Uh, that's just I can't do this, whether it's that
Speaker 2: or going on a you know, a cocaine bender.
Speaker 1: Just I can't do that again.
Speaker 2: Until the next time. And then you're like, all right,
Speaker 2: all right, that I can't do that again. How many
Speaker 2: times does that need to happen?
Speaker 1: I mean, as we both know that kills a lot
Speaker 1: of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, damn near killed me, you know, I say, you know,
Speaker 2: you crate Afghanistan during the during their peak times were
Speaker 2: some of the most dangerous places in the world.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: I would walked along the edge during a lot of
Speaker 2: those times. I stayed on that edge a lot longer.
Speaker 2: Just in my regular life with drugs and alcohol, I
Speaker 2: should have died more during the activities that I was
Speaker 2: doing in that state versus being at war at war,
Speaker 2: So what was it? A deciding factor? Is just one
Speaker 2: day I said I had today, it's got to be
Speaker 2: the last day. And the next part was like, okay,
Speaker 2: how do I do that and it's from podcasts. Oh
Speaker 2: really Yeah, you know, podcasts have given a platform to
Speaker 2: talk about things that you don't get to hear all
Speaker 2: the time. Right twenty years ago, you know, you know
Speaker 2: you're not hearing this conversation. Yeah, so twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: I'm not hearing Joe Rogan, Sean Ryan, a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys that have these guests on, and they get
Speaker 2: to talk about all kinds of great stuff, specifically psychedelic medicine.
Speaker 2: So I've done my share of party drugs, have had
Speaker 2: a good time psychedelics. That's not something not doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if anything, you're like kind of predisposed against it
Speaker 1: at this point, I would imagine, yeah, yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: like I don't do that.
Speaker 2: But I've been hearing so much about it from these
Speaker 2: guys on podcasts and how it's helping veterans. I was
Speaker 2: offered it years.
Speaker 1: Ago, and I I was like, no, that's not for me.
Speaker 1: Like hippies that it's probably like worth pointing out to people,
Speaker 1: like from everything I've been told, like the plant medicine
Speaker 1: is not a drug, Like there's no situation where like
Speaker 1: you and I are going to sit here and like
Speaker 1: do Hyahuasco. Like trip balls in the in this office.
Speaker 1: That's not what it's about, and that's not how people
Speaker 1: use it.
Speaker 2: Never Yeah, but yet I kind of that was still
Speaker 2: kind of the stigma that I had even up until
Speaker 2: that point, and I was like, you know what, but
Speaker 2: I got to try something. So I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2: I don't know how, where who? So I used the Internet.
Speaker 1: This is where it begins.
Speaker 2: So like, you know, shaman near me? So I know
Speaker 2: there's no shaman down near me in South Florida until
Speaker 2: there is. Yeah, It's popping up everywhere. So I decided
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go to Mexico. And I found a guy
Speaker 2: down there on the Internet and I show up. Now,
Speaker 2: mind you, I'm already kind of sketchy about this whole situation,
Speaker 2: but as we've learned from my previous Ukraine sketchy, you
Speaker 2: know what we're gonna let's just do it. Let's sketchy.
Speaker 2: It is the more fun and better it's gonna be.
Speaker 2: And I end up down this long dirt road and
Speaker 2: it's some like house. I was like, am I at
Speaker 2: a house? I'm picturing some type of sanctuary, like a
Speaker 2: some type of rehab recovery center type of thing, and
Speaker 2: they've got this big ceremonial space and I'm in a
Speaker 2: dude's house and I was like okay, and this guy
Speaker 2: comes walking out in like jeans and a T shirt
Speaker 2: and a local guy from the area, and I was like,
Speaker 2: he's like Kenny. I was like, oh, all right, so
Speaker 2: I'm in the right spot. And I was like, but
Speaker 2: you know you things. You made me feel a little
Speaker 2: bit more less comfortable and he's like, no, man, it's okay. Everything,
Speaker 2: We're good. Like, okay, well, then I'm gonna park my car.
Speaker 2: Let's get started. Uh So, actually, your next door had
Speaker 2: this little cabana that he had me live in and
Speaker 2: I got to stay out there with him for five
Speaker 2: days and he feed me all times of all types
Speaker 2: of good food, you.
Speaker 1: Know, healthy stuff, keeping my body clean.
Speaker 2: And he said he's gonna start me out with this
Speaker 2: cleansing called combo. Okay. I didn't know anything really about combo.
Speaker 2: I researched the psychedelic treatment that I was coming down for,
Speaker 2: and I figured I knew quite a bit of enough
Speaker 2: about it to go through with it. I don't know
Speaker 2: what this combo is. So he was like, you're gonna
Speaker 2: drink a.
Speaker 1: Lot of water. It's like a gallon of water.
Speaker 2: So I drink a gallon of water. Now in mind,
Speaker 2: I got there, like we'll call it on a Tuesday,
Speaker 2: and it just kind of got settled in, and then
Speaker 2: Wednesday we started all the process. So I drank this
Speaker 2: gallon of water. Now he's gonna take this vine and
Speaker 2: burn the vine, and he's gonna get me on my
Speaker 2: shoulder and he's just making a little cigarette tight burns.
Speaker 2: So I've got small open wounds in my shoulders. And
Speaker 2: then I lift my arms up so that he can
Speaker 2: pour this powder it's frog toxin into these open wounds
Speaker 2: and spray them with water. Now this dude doesn't use
Speaker 2: this a measuring tool or anything. He's just eyeball in this,
Speaker 2: just jumping it out. And I was like, I mean,
Speaker 2: is it supposed to be that much? And it turns out, uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think I got more than I
Speaker 2: needed because instantly I say anything, about two minutes into it,
Speaker 2: I can feel myself turning another shade of green, and
Speaker 2: I'm starting to just like wanting to just turn inside out.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like I was gonna die Jack. I
Speaker 2: wanted to die because it was it was painful. The
Speaker 2: nausea was just horrible.
Speaker 1: And I'm describing this. Nobody's gonna want.
Speaker 2: To do combo after I explained it to him, So, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, your experience may vary. But I just felt
Speaker 2: deathly ill, and he kept telling me drink more water,
Speaker 2: drink more water, so trying, I physically can't drink any water.
Speaker 2: And then it finally starts to come up. Now it's
Speaker 2: about five minutes or so until it starts to get
Speaker 2: to the peak, and that peak lasts for about ten
Speaker 2: minutes or so, and then you start to come back down.
Speaker 2: Those ten minutes were an eternity, but I got up
Speaker 2: things that I was holding on to from two thousand
Speaker 2: and four. I didn't understand why.
Speaker 1: I was doing this.
Speaker 2: I do a lot better now. You've had a gut
Speaker 2: feeling before. So your gut is telling you things, whether
Speaker 2: that's because it's your second brain, whether it's just the
Speaker 2: data stored in there, memory trauma. That's how you get
Speaker 2: these feelings. It stores stuff in there that you don't want.
Speaker 2: And this purging ceremony, you have to drink all the
Speaker 2: water so you have something to purge out. But it
Speaker 2: helps the cleansing of that biome so that you can
Speaker 2: start fresh and that you can accept the medicine. So
Speaker 2: once I was done violently throwing up green orange, I
Speaker 2: don't know. It was just a kaleidoscope of of garbage
Speaker 2: in there, just of evil that I was getting up
Speaker 2: from forever. He was like, all right, you know we're
Speaker 2: gonna the next ceremony will be in about two hours.
Speaker 2: I haven't done anything psychedelic at all. I just did
Speaker 2: this and I felt like I had just been in
Speaker 2: a fight with a couple of like heavyweights and I
Speaker 2: lost badly. And I was like, man, I'm done with everything.
Speaker 2: Like I think we're good, I'm healed.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm not doing anything anymore.
Speaker 2: And he's like, why are you here And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm here because I need to fix something in myself.
Speaker 2: He's like, then you're gonna stay and work and I
Speaker 2: was like yeah, I mean he just called me out
Speaker 2: on that, so I can't say no, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna stay here and work. And I went and rested
Speaker 2: for about two hours.
Speaker 1: He called me back for my next ceremony.
Speaker 2: Which is arguably one the world's most powerful psychedelic it's
Speaker 2: called five DMT. It's the frog or the toad. It's
Speaker 2: the Sonoran desert toad, and he excreets toxin, went scraped
Speaker 2: and dried in the sun. You could smoke this. I
Speaker 2: don't know who figured this out, but it's I don't know.
Speaker 2: It definitely changes lives. So I'm sitting at the dude's
Speaker 2: house and you take three hits of this third hit
Speaker 2: is a breakthrough hit. So you take a big hit,
Speaker 2: you let it out, and immediately another big one, let
Speaker 2: it out, and hopefully you can get the third because
Speaker 2: you're already going completely incoherent. Oh, you are catapulted into
Speaker 2: the ether in milliseconds. Now what do I mean by that?
Speaker 2: So the English language is difficult to it doesn't have
Speaker 2: the words to describe what you're in there. I will
Speaker 2: first tell you that I was dead, and I knew
Speaker 2: it instantly. I was like, Ah, he didn't measure this
Speaker 2: out enough. I owe deed, I'm dead. Wow, that's a
Speaker 2: real disappointment that I went to Mexico and go deed
Speaker 2: on drugs and that this is going to be a
Speaker 2: difficult one for, you know, to explain. Now, last it
Speaker 2: about thirty seconds and then I became at peace with it,
Speaker 2: and I became at peace with it and I just
Speaker 2: let go. And when I did, it was the most
Speaker 2: profoundly beautiful experience that words can't describe that I've ever had.
Speaker 2: And I say that because it was so intense with
Speaker 2: just the overwhelming amount of love. And people say that
Speaker 2: God is love.
Speaker 1: I've been around the world and I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff evil, and I'm like, God is not love.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I was a pretty devout atheist the Bible.
Speaker 1: None of that makes sense.
Speaker 2: But when you have no body anymore because you physically
Speaker 2: you think it's gone because you can't see it. Because
Speaker 2: everything that's in your reality right now, you know where
Speaker 2: you're at on a couch, I'm in this chair. I
Speaker 2: can identify a lot of things. But when all of
Speaker 2: this is completely gone and it is something completely different,
Speaker 2: and then you have no concept of time or self,
Speaker 2: what do you have as a landmark to.
Speaker 1: Lie like a disembodied consciousness.
Speaker 2: All of those landmarks are gone. Therefore you feel like
Speaker 2: you cease to exist because you don't exist in this anymore.
Speaker 2: And because time is now gone, you don't know if
Speaker 2: you're coming back. And this is so profound. You've never
Speaker 2: experienced anything like this before that, like you're convinced that, okay,
Speaker 2: you've moved to another whatever the next thing is after death.
Speaker 2: And so once I was convinced that, Yep, there it is.
Speaker 2: I've died and I've moved on, and I felt that
Speaker 2: overwhelming love the ten minutes that I was in that
Speaker 2: roughly because it's very short, very short.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Both of these are like ten to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So dimethyl trip to mean is very fast
Speaker 2: acting when smoked, but very short half life. And that
Speaker 2: ten minutes when I came out of it, I just
Speaker 2: cried tears of joy, tiers of emotional.
Speaker 1: Overload.
Speaker 2: All of the things that I have, all of the
Speaker 2: things that I've built throughout my entire life, every memory
Speaker 2: that I've had, and every memory that I've forgotten. You
Speaker 2: never have forgotten it. You have just put up a block,
Speaker 2: right right, So, conversations that you've had, the way somebody
Speaker 2: has treated you, the way that you treated other people,
Speaker 2: You've built walls into your brain that have prevented you
Speaker 2: because if you hold onto that memory, that's going to
Speaker 2: affect you. So we put up that wall and we
Speaker 2: forget about that, but it's still there. That is our
Speaker 2: ego or our default mode network. And this completely eliminates
Speaker 2: the default mode network. It's called ego death. That's why
Speaker 2: you think you're died, because.
Speaker 1: You have.
Speaker 2: My heart's still beating, my lungs are still filling with air.
Speaker 2: But the Kenny that I was before I took that
Speaker 2: DMT is no longer here.
Speaker 1: He's dead.
Speaker 2: And I was able to come out the other side
Speaker 2: a completely different person. And everyone that knows me will
Speaker 2: tell you the same thing.
Speaker 1: Is that because you were able to let go of
Speaker 1: some of these past experiences or did they feel reconciled
Speaker 1: like what was sort of that process?
Speaker 2: Like forgiveness, really absolute and total forgiveness. This brought me
Speaker 2: to faith because I sat with God and I felt
Speaker 2: the love and nothing compares to it, nothing and the
Speaker 2: words can't remotely I'm using a stick figure to talk
Speaker 2: about the Sistine Chapel. You just can't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: And that feeling then opened up my consciousness and opened
Speaker 2: up it gave me a big peek behind the curtain
Speaker 2: so that I could understand what else is going on
Speaker 2: right out there and how little do I actually know?
Speaker 2: And I know nothing, but I do know now that
Speaker 2: there's so much more, and I've seen it. I can't
Speaker 2: tell you about it because I don't. It's like having
Speaker 2: a very vivid dream. As soon as you wake up,
Speaker 2: you're like something like an alligator was chased me.
Speaker 1: But then I was on the top of the building.
Speaker 2: But it was so vivid fifteen minutes ago. It's like
Speaker 2: that I knew everything, but now I don't.
Speaker 1: And there was like one more step in this journey,
Speaker 1: wasn't there that he had you do?
Speaker 2: So after that the next night was ayahuasca. So Ayahuasca,
Speaker 2: just like the five meo DMT is DMT so. Ayahuasca
Speaker 2: is an ancient brew. It's been used for over fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred years and it's a Peruvian Colombian jungle medicine. It
Speaker 2: grows in the Amazon. It's a plant that it's actually
Speaker 2: two plants, so it contains it. There's a Chakrouna leaf
Speaker 2: is primarily the leaf that's used in the making of ayahuasca.
Speaker 2: The chacrona leaf is rich with DMT dimethyl trip. To
Speaker 2: mean if you were to ingest dimethyl trip, I mean
Speaker 2: you just eat the leaf. Nothing's gonna happen because your
Speaker 2: body has got monoamine oxidase. That monoamine oxidase breaks down
Speaker 2: the DMT before it can do any psychoactive effect on it.
Speaker 2: So then you have to combine that with a vine. Now,
Speaker 2: the banisterius cappy vine is also grown locally to Peru,
Speaker 2: and you chop down a section of that and beat
Speaker 2: that into submission, and then you put apoll of leaves
Speaker 2: and some of the vine and you boil that for
Speaker 2: twelve to twenty four hours and it comes out with
Speaker 2: it as a te Now, when you ingest about a
Speaker 2: shot like the shot glass, you will start to feel
Speaker 2: some effects in about an hour the second shot glass.
Speaker 2: That's when things get interesting. That's when things get a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Ayahuasca is.
Speaker 2: Unlike iba gain, which is now what we're pushing for
Speaker 2: psychedelic research. It was just signed a few months ago
Speaker 2: into legislation to advance the research on that. That's got
Speaker 2: some cardiac difficulties. It can put a little bit of
Speaker 2: strain on your heart, and you know, you're pushing fifty
Speaker 2: guys in their early fifties.
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable doing that.
Speaker 2: It requires doctors, nurses, a whole staff. Ayahuasca is much safer,
Speaker 2: a lot safer. So this is done in the jungle setting. Now,
Speaker 2: when I did ayahuasca with that shaman, it wasn't Ata's
Speaker 2: house because this is not something.
Speaker 1: That you do like.
Speaker 2: You know, if I come over your house, we can
Speaker 2: smoke a little week and watch some TV. That's cool.
Speaker 2: You're not going to do that with an ayahuasca. This
Speaker 2: is not It's not a party drug at all. This
Speaker 2: is structured. People think this very seriously. Weeks ahead of time,
Speaker 2: with a proper diet and take not eating red meat,
Speaker 2: substaining from sex, no alcohol, social media, staying away from
Speaker 2: that stuff for a few days. You really put fourth
Speaker 2: all of this energy into respecting the medicine. And then
Speaker 2: when you go down to the jungle where I went,
Speaker 2: We went deep into the jungle and it's just you
Speaker 2: and the shaman and the fire and the jungle, and
Speaker 2: then this medicine will talk to you. Now, ayahuasca is
Speaker 2: gonna last for about four to six hours, so when
Speaker 2: you could buy that vine in there that's got the
Speaker 2: monominoxidase inhibitor will allow you to do that. So what
Speaker 2: I brought for you today is the ayahuasca vine.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, thank you and so what is this.
Speaker 2: So that is the vine that it's an actual vine
Speaker 2: that's lacquered. But that vine, you would take a section
Speaker 2: maybe about three feet, and you would take a wooden
Speaker 2: mallet and you will beat that, make it all nice
Speaker 2: and flat, and you will put it in a big
Speaker 2: giant tub of boiling water with a big pile of
Speaker 2: the chikuna leaf. That is what keeps the body from okay,
Speaker 2: breaking down the DMT.
Speaker 1: So that's the difference between the first time you're smoking
Speaker 1: d MT the second time you're ingesting.
Speaker 2: It correct where you're drinking it, it's different. You have
Speaker 2: to have the vine attached to it so that it can.
Speaker 1: The body breaking right. Right. Yeah, and people have a
Speaker 1: lot of similar results. Results may vary, but they're all
Speaker 1: very similar, similar experiences. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I've I've worked with over sixty veterans just this year.
Speaker 2: We've I've worked with some high ranking veterans. I've worked
Speaker 2: with veterans with severe alcohol problems. I've worked with guys
Speaker 2: that have been going to the VA and they can
Speaker 2: put on a laundry list of medications to include Zoloft
Speaker 2: two hundred milligrams. It's like the must ill prescribed daily
Speaker 2: you get on two hundred milligrams a day for a
Speaker 2: few years, that's your daily regiment. I have taken guys
Speaker 2: on a structured retreat, two nights of ayahuasca ceremony with
Speaker 2: several other things in a four day weekend, and no
Speaker 2: longer on those types of medications. They take cannabis for
Speaker 2: anxiety and sleep. They don't do that anymore. Their gummies
Speaker 2: are gone. Guys that were drinking nearly every day, no drinking.
Speaker 2: I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since, not since
Speaker 2: my first ceremony.
Speaker 1: I haven't touched.
Speaker 2: And I've done I do ceremonies with I take guys
Speaker 2: down through the jungle because you know I said, I
Speaker 2: went down to Mexico. I looked up a guy on
Speaker 2: the internet. So since then, I've done a lot more research.
Speaker 2: I've gone shaman hopping, and I've found some amazing proving
Speaker 2: shamans that I've been working with repeatedly over and over.
Speaker 2: I've got a beautiful sanctuary in Guatemala, up near Antigua
Speaker 2: by Vulcan de Fuego. It's the most active volcano. Yes,
Speaker 2: active is about fifteen times a day that volcano is
Speaker 2: going to go off and we're at the base of it,
Speaker 2: out of lava reach, but that's pretty intense. So you're
Speaker 2: in the jungle at the base of active volcano. It's
Speaker 2: two am, and ayahuasca is showing you all this love
Speaker 2: and Mother Nature is showing Mother Nature's showing you all
Speaker 2: the power. It doesn't get any better than that.
Speaker 1: And this is way point six.
Speaker 2: Now, way point six. I decided that I wasn't the.
Speaker 1: Only one that needed some kind of help.
Speaker 2: And people aren't going to just look look up on
Speaker 2: the internet and find a random dude that's going to
Speaker 2: serve them, you know, plant medicine and feel comfortable doing that.
Speaker 2: So I thought it was a good idea for me
Speaker 2: to help guys and be the liaison for that. Right
Speaker 2: And I say, hey, Jack, you know he's struggling you.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this. Hey man, I'm working with plant Medicine.
Speaker 2: Are you available next month? Man, I'm gonna take you
Speaker 2: down there with me, and you're gonna feel a lot
Speaker 2: more comfortable if we approach it that way, right then,
Speaker 2: you just right, So then I'll take a small group
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna take you down there. I'm gonna put
Speaker 2: you through the whole retreat I'm going to do it
Speaker 2: with you, and that's how we're going to do things.
Speaker 2: And yeah, speaking of which you want to go.
Speaker 1: I think I ought to at this point, Like I've
Speaker 1: talked to so many veterans that have been through the
Speaker 1: process and speak so highly of it, like, probably I
Speaker 1: should give it a shot myself.
Speaker 2: I don't put as much energy into the things that
Speaker 2: shouldn't bother me like I used to. I used to,
Speaker 2: and that would give me anxiety, right, and then that.
Speaker 1: Would you feel more focused? It would upset me.
Speaker 2: I would get angry, and yeah, this like those things
Speaker 2: don't matter. I've seen what matters, and you can't unsee it.
Speaker 2: Although I can't describe it to you, I can't unsee it.
Speaker 2: That's weird, I get it. But it's the most profound
Speaker 2: thing that ever happened to me. And I just want
Speaker 2: to share it.
Speaker 1: With the world. And you know, speaking of which, where
Speaker 1: people where can people go to find a Way point six?
Speaker 2: So waypoint the number six dot com?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's easy enough.
Speaker 2: Waypoints six dot com And uh yeah, they can go
Speaker 2: on there and and send out an email and usually
Speaker 2: it's gonna be me calling.
Speaker 1: And you've been doing this like once a month.
Speaker 2: You're saying, I've been going at times twice a month. Okay,
Speaker 2: but yeah, at least every month.
Speaker 1: So you're in demand.
Speaker 2: We uh, yeah, we're we're pretty booked up at least
Speaker 2: for a couple of months out, but which is sometimes like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll run an extra one this month because.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to call.
Speaker 2: Out any other organizations on your show. I applied to
Speaker 2: an organization. This is why I went on the internet
Speaker 2: and found my own guy. Because I applied to an organization,
Speaker 2: nobody got back to me. I get it like a
Speaker 2: day or two or three or a week. So I
Speaker 2: found my own guy. I went, I handled myself.
Speaker 1: I went.
Speaker 2: I found another guy later, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this shaman is the best, this sanctuary is great.
Speaker 1: Moving in, we're gonna start working, and started getting into
Speaker 1: a kind of a rhythm and already taken somebody down there.
Speaker 2: And then that organization finally messaged me like it's been
Speaker 2: a few months. Not only did I self medicate right right,
Speaker 2: but I found the beauty in it and I found
Speaker 2: how amazing it was with my results. I've been taking
Speaker 2: guys down there to get this for themselves, and they
Speaker 2: were like, oh, man, that's terrific, you know, great, But
Speaker 2: that was the old ideas, Like they didn't even contact
Speaker 2: me for such a long time, and then when they did,
Speaker 2: before I actually came out and told them it was
Speaker 2: going to be thousands of dollars and I had to
Speaker 2: do it, you know, like, hey, we can do it
Speaker 2: next month. It's gonna be thousands of dollars. But if
Speaker 2: you wait, you know, we might be able to get
Speaker 2: it sponsored. So then I've been reaching out.
Speaker 1: I understand that they're maybe busy. Right, this is the
Speaker 1: same complaint that we have had of veterans affairs, that
Speaker 1: you're on this wait list for nine months, and during
Speaker 1: that time period, the guy's self medicating and doing stuff
Speaker 1: that's gonna hurt, if not kill himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I wanted to make my effort to be
Speaker 2: I want to contact you immediately, like if you send
Speaker 2: a message, if you're on the website and you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: more information apply. I want to get back with you
Speaker 2: within like a day or two. And then I want
Speaker 2: to be able to get you somewhere. Let's do it
Speaker 2: like in a month or within the month. Here's the
Speaker 2: next available one. If I get too many people, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna run another one. I don't want guys waiting for
Speaker 2: months on end. And then another thing that I wanted
Speaker 2: to do slightly differently is that a lot of these
Speaker 2: organizations that are working with psychedelic medicine, which thank goodness,
Speaker 2: there's so many of them that are out there, and
Speaker 2: then it's becoming so much more you know, mainstream, that
Speaker 2: it gives veterans lots of opportunities to do that. There's
Speaker 2: so many of these places catering specifically to special operations,
Speaker 2: which great. You know, I did a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I was a special operations guy. All my friends were
Speaker 1: you know, soft guys.
Speaker 2: But they're not the only ones that are in the
Speaker 2: mental fight. There's a lot of guys that are, you know,
Speaker 2: Marines in Fallujah. It's not special operations. Those dudes were
Speaker 2: just out there kicking in every single door as dudes
Speaker 2: in the regular military units, whether that's tenth Mountain, one
Speaker 2: hundred and first and the eighty second whatever, and they're
Speaker 2: getting bona by IDs, they're taking RPGs, they're getting shot, they're.
Speaker 1: In there doing it.
Speaker 2: They're in the mix, but they don't get the same
Speaker 2: kind of credibility because they're not a soft unit guy.
Speaker 2: So we wanted to we wanted to get away from
Speaker 2: that and open this up to all veterans that need it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not Coast Guard, all veterans.
Speaker 1: So, uh well, thank you for sharing your story, sorry
Speaker 1: with us, Kenny and setting this whole thing up boy
Speaker 1: point six and find out here to do this interview. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot to think about. Is there anything else
Speaker 1: that you want to talk about before we get going tonight?
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I think that's it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about a lot and you got me Well, like
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, maybe you've got to go and
Speaker 1: experience it. From here you can describe it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just gotta go. You go with an open
Speaker 2: mind and an open heart, and you'll come back and
Speaker 2: you'll move differently.
Speaker 1: Everyone out there, thank you for joining us tonight and
Speaker 1: we will see all of you next week. Thank you.