Camp Gagnon - TRUE STORY: War Hero Survives Taliban Bomb and Reveals Dark Future of America

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

🏞️ Join Camp For Free: https://camp.beehiiv.com/subscribeJoey Jones worked as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (bomb) Technician, deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan on separate tours. During his last deployment to Afghanistan, Jones was responsible for disarming and destroying more than 80 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and thousands of pounds of other unknown bulk explosives. It was during that tour he stepped on an IED, resulting in the loss of both of his legs above the knee a...

I stepped on an IED. It felt like my face had blown open from the inside out. My legs were in shreds. This path behind this building had been cleared three times by engineers. There was no physical or even presumptive evidence that there was an IED back there. My teammate picked up a piece of ordinance. He moved it out of the building and put it behind a wall, which bordered the building. I walked over to look at that piece of ordinance because I felt like it was unsafe to move.

When I took a step back on my right foot, I stepped on an IED. I went weightless, and everything was just tan. and it was all the dirt from the explosion coming up. I heard the noise in the beginning, then everything went kind of silent. The big misnomer is that you get knocked out. You don't. You only get knocked out if your head gets hit.

Otherwise, you're fully awake and you go in the shock. I flew through the air. I landed on my back. My face was basically bruised from the blast. Literally felt like my lips were about to blow open. I looked down and I could see my legs were gone. So I used my right arm, and I reached up to grab the tourniquet off my left shoulder.

And when I brought my arm up, my hand fell into my lap. And so my right forearm was severed. Both bones were cut in half. And so when I picked my arm up, my hand felled back into my lap and all this was hanging down. And we had gone through these courses. We learned because of all the flesh-eating bacteria that when something shard and burned, cut into the good flesh and then put bandages on it to try to get that out of the bloodstream quick.

So I remember thinking some Marines going to come over here and like chop my arm off. But if like I can wait until a dog gets here, he can probably save it. And then I had a punctured lung so then it got to where I couldn't breathe. So I was like, I don't know, man. don't think I'm going to make it out of this one. What do you understand about masculinity now that you didn't understand when you were 18? It's a great question. Joey, what's up, brother?

Really, really excited to talk with you today. Thank you so much for being here. A lot of stuff I want to get into. Obviously, we're going to talk about the incident that you survived on the battlefield in Afghanistan that took your legs. But I want to talk to you about just that conflict in general, what you think about the removal of troops from Afghanistan and how all that went down. I'm curious also about your philosophy.

on PTSD, why some soldiers returning from warfare better than others and your personal relationship with PTSD and how it affected you. I'm curious how the accident that you sustained changed your view on masculinity and who you are as a soldier, as a father, as a husband, and how it has impacted your relationship with manhood. But before all that, I'm really curious if you could just tell me about growing up in Georgia. What was that like? What was your father like? My dad was most marine to never serve in the Marine Corps of anybody I've ever met. Yeah. Yeah.

But he just got it from his parents? I don't know who he got it from. His parents lived next to us, and I knew him really well, but I knew him as grandparents. And my grandfather was retired by the time I came around. I think he got it from his grandfather that served in the Marine Corps in what would have been kind of between World War I and World War II in the 30s. But I've learned this in adulthood. I didn't know it growing up.

Yeah. That's who my dad was most like, who it was closest to. And so it makes a lot more sense now that I know that. But my dad was breaking block mason, and he ran a crew of vagrants, you know, guys that you have to go get out of jail on Monday to get them to work. Oh, really? And so, but he had a discipline and a regiment to him that I would not have ever had, had the Marine Corps not coming in my life.

And I think it probably came from his granddad that was a Marine. And the guys who were working for your dad, they respected him a lot? They called him dad. Really? It's a... He's one of those guys. Nnarly story. So, like, the guys that work for my dad,

I can give you example of two of them, there were maybe a half dozen over 20 years that I was around it. Tiger and Eugene. And so Tiger looked like the Scooby-Doo character Shaggy. He had, like, shaggy blonde hair. Yeah.

And he only wore cut off blue jean shorts, and he never wore shoes or a shirt. And this is like, we're in Georgia, so nine and a half months out of the year, you can get around like that. and so, but he, you know, he had a son my age, but he was like 10 years younger than my dad, maybe 15 at most. And Tiger was like one of those guys that he was kind-hearted, but he was always up to no good.

But his no-good was a good time, not hurt other people, no good. So he would live either, his mom would bounce around trailer parks and she was on disability, and he would live with her. He'd work real hard. Manual labor laying brick and block isn't easy in any way. he'd make good money because my dad paid him well, but all of his money went towards having a good time. So it was beer or drugs.

And you do enough beer or drugs, you're going to end up in jail for no other reason, just being stoned on the sidewalk. And so that man probably had more public intoxication arrest than anybody in New York. Oh, really? But it was always something stupid like that. So they'd let them out,

put them in the drunk tank and let them out, not even do paperwork on them. And so I couldn't tell you the times we had to go pick him up on Monday morning from the drunk tank. And, you know, we'd get a car on Friday, and my dad would be like, well, just keep him until Monday and we'll come get him. It's the safest place for him to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's not working until Monday. Yeah, that's right. He's just going to get him more trouble. Eugene was different. Eugene had a mean streak. And so Eugene was a small guy. Like, my dad's brothers are very big. They're like well over six foot.

I am. My dad was 5'8. Eugene was like 5'5. And so Eugene would wear cowboy boots and a trucker hat so that he had a little bit more stature. you're talking about climbing around on scaffolding or on roofs and cowboy boots just to have those heels. And he had like a pointy beard.

He was an interesting cat too. He was same thing. Never paid taxes, never had a driver's license. Just, you know. Why was he mean? What was mean about him? I think it was his size and just like there's a certain side

of poverty that is difficult. Think of like, we see it more in the form of like, like this is kind of a deeper conversation. But when you think about like gang culture in urban America, it's kind of understood that's a result of there weren't other options. And so then bad people took advantage of desperate people, and that made the desperate people mean. That's kind of where gang culture comes from. So and, you know, what J.D. Vance would call the white plight, the white version of that, the rule version of that is, you know, lack of edge.

education, but distance between you and anything else, the lack of transportation. So now your shoe leather express. You know, a lot of people call it redneck. And the way it comes to fruition like movies and culture is racism or skinheads or KKK, that kind of. But really it's more like just, you know, fighting to get what you have, stealing from other people comes in the kind of the poor neighborhoods. And so Eugene grew up in that. Does that make sense? Desperate person doing desperate things.

There you go. And people are going to be mean to you. you've got to be mean back, and if you don't learn how to rationalize. And also just, you know, low IQ. You know, not him, but being around low IQ people, parents, his parents were probably, you know, didn't need to have children. So they probably mistreated him and didn't know it. All of that, you know.

Yeah. And when you're not surrounded by people who can recognize it, you're surrounded by other people in the same thing, then you get a culture of it. And I grew up very close to that culture. Yeah. But you wouldn't say that you were in that culture. You were just around and you observed it. Observed it.

You know, there's progressions and steps to anything when it comes like a community, you know. And so my parents were, they came from that and made something better. My dad's family was probably an extra generation from it. Just as poor, but better people. I see. And smart people. Yeah, yeah. And there was, I'm assuming, like a religiosity to the family that do you think that instilled like a

moral code? Honestly, and it surprises everyone. My grandparents on my dad's side, we lived right next to him. That was my family and my dad's brothers. We weren't religious. At all. Respected it because it's so much a part of southern culture. We had a Bible that was the family tree, but none of us went to church besides my mom. Interesting. Yeah. And what do you think that was? It was just a... When you come from that poor and that rule of an area, like my grandfather was a moonshunter and a logger. And my grandmother was, I think, 10th of 12 or 9th of 11. And her dad was a Marine that was half Cherokee and a drunk and mean.

And so, like, her, my grandmother's situation didn't allow for church because it was so much turmoil. And my grandfather's situation was they lived up in the mountains and, like, church wasn't around, you know. Yeah. The church was probably the holiness church where you pet snakes, you know, he didn't want to do that. Hey, what's up guys? Sorry to interrupt this amazing program, but I need a little bit of help. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can probably see our subscriber number right down here. And if you're able to, it would mean the world if you could subscribe. That is the best way to support this show.

Because when you subscribe, I'm able to show it to potential guests or to different brands and stuff like that. And it really, really helps grow the show, get us cooler guests, have cooler conversations, and it helps everything so, so much. So if you don't mind, thank you so much. Let's get back to it. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I think there is a perception that, like, the, like, Georgia specifically is like waspy.

Like there's a difference between like Waspy white, Southern white, redneck and hillbilly. And I think people kind of look at them as all the same thing. I grew up with this like I never had, and my dad was really,

it was really important to him. He understood the difference and someone else says this and they say it well. Someone famous, I can't remember. There's a difference. It might even be Chappelle actually between being poor and broke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Chappelle. And so like my dad didn't have those words, but he understood that. And so he wouldn't allow me to call myself a redneck because that's a mentality. Yeah. That's an acceptance of negativity.

We might be poor and we might be country. Yeah. And we might be from the mountains, but we're not rednecks. Yeah. And my dad had no flair about him whatsoever. Like I buried him in brand new clothes I bought at Walmart because he was wearing them from when he had bought him there two years before, you know.

And so he had a very limited closet. Everything was functional. nothing flair about him, but he had the pride in his work. And so he understood the difference between not having a lot because you don't have the opportunity to have more and not having a lot because you don't get off your tail and work. And he always wanted to make sure people understood that he was in the latter category. In the 90s, we did all right, you know.

Yeah. What was your first job? The first job was laying brick and block with my dad. Yeah. I laid brick and block with my dad all through middle school. So I started in sixth grade, how old I think I was, what are you 11, 10 or 11 going in the 6th grade

I can't remember and so I started in the summer going into the 6th grade didn't really do it until between high school and between middle school and high school going into 9th grade and I worked every day that summer

and so like I lost like 20 pounds because I was a chubby little kid but when you're working out laying brick and block man that stuff goes away quick Yeah yeah yeah And did you have to fight growing up? Was it confrontational? No.

No. It's like, and I guess I'm speaking out both sides of my mouth a little bit, but like when I explained Eugene's situation, that was a street over from me. Right. My situation was more like you're there for each other. The kind of people we were around and made a community with. My uncle raced dirt track race cars. Oh, really?

So it's very much like that NASCAR story. My grandfather was a moonshiner. He started souping up cars, the run moonshine, from, like the Blue Ridge area down to Atlanta. And you look back in the 50s and 60s, we didn't have cell phones and computers and police cars. So there really was a culture. If you were doing anything wrong

and beat the sheriff's deputy to the county line, all they could do was try to get the other guys on the CB radio, right? So if there isn't anybody to get, they can't keep chasing you. So speed's your weapon. So speed is how they stayed out of jail. And so my grandfather learned to do that, And then when he moved to Dalton, which was a big town from where he was from,

he left the moonshound behind, drove a truck for a living, and still had that speed bug. So my dad and his two brothers all raced dirt track. Wow. Yeah. Did you ever race? No, I raced full-wheelers. Okay. And the reason why is the dirt track races were on Saturday night, and the motocross races were on Friday night.

And we all had to be there for my uncle on Saturday to help him. So I did my racing on Friday. Oh, interesting. Do you still race? No. Are you able to with your leg situation? Well, you can do anything. You won't to, right?

And, like, I could, but my hobbies now are the responsibilities of being a father. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's hard to be a dad when you're going, just peeling around corners. No, we all got... You probably be faster now, I think. Yeah, it depends on what kind. I think, do you think you could, like, shave some seconds off?

It'd be hard to do motorcross, because a motorcycle a little rope or you ride it with your legs a lot. But like, they have flat track. flat dirt track like the Harleys and stuff like that you could probably find a way to do that. Oh, hell yeah. Put you in a sidecar or something. Yeah. Yeah, they have sidecar races. Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to die. I did. Yeah, because you've had enough brushes. That's right. You know what I didn't survive bombs in Afghanistan to be taken out by Prius, so I don't even jaywalk. Yeah, that's good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're a cat, you're on like life number eight right now. That's right. Yeah, yeah. We're not, we're not pushing it anymore. That's interesting. What were you insecure about as a kid? Like, growing up, was there anything, were you

bullied for anything? Was there anything that was like that put a chip on your shoulder? You know what happened with me is that my mind and my humor and my personality developed before my body did? So I could get like the attention of the pretty girls but I couldn't get their affection. And so that was

fourth, fifth grade. Yeah, fourth, fifth grade, like I was a fat kid in elementary school, a chubby kid in in, I was a fat kid in elementary school, a chubby kid in middle school, and then like a built football player in high school. Nice.

So my body developed, but, you know, your social settings developing much earlier than that. I mean, look at, especially today, middle school kids are, I mean, they think they're grown up. Yeah. You know. And so that was the biggest and about only insecurity I had was just that kind of like physical appearance. And you know what? When it spread into you at that age, it never leaves. Oh, yeah, of course. You learn to rationalize through it, but it never leaves.

And then it doesn't help that once you start actually working out and getting diesel, the body dismorph. for you just stays. Yeah. The stronger I've gotten, the more I look at myself, and I'm like, I look bad. No, you're right. It's so fucked. It's so funny. Like, I've gone through the ups and downs of it in the last two years myself as a 37-year-old

guy that is kind of, you know, well-known in certain circles and, you know, has done the football in the Marine Corps and the recovery. And, like, I'm very secure in one sense of who I am and what I am. But, you know, there's that side of it that was there early on and never left where it's like, and it's not even like I don't have my legs anymore in security. It's, well, I can't run anymore. So like, you know, could I lose five more pounds here, that kind of thing. And, and you just eventually, you know, you got to, let it be days and not weeks of existence, right? You have a bad day, not a bad week or a bad month. Yeah, that makes sense. Now, I want to ask about

military stuff, but before that, I'm so curious, what is the dumbest question people ask you about your legs? I don't want to use the term dumb, but. Stupidest, most idiots. No, I'd say the funniest question, and it's dumb to me because I have insight. People that ask the question don't, so I get it. There's a handful of questions, and they all three or four come up all the time. The first one is, are you the same height? Damn it. Yeah.

Are you the same height? And it's like, well, here's why I'm the same height. I lost from my knees down, but the rest of my body is still like proportioned, and like I have a certain gate that doesn't change. And you need to be, your legs need to be a certain length for that gate to work. These legs are mimicking what old legs did. So within an inch or two, you're usually the same height. I heard you say to Jack Carr, you were one inch shorter.

Yeah, about right now. And that changes. I would be pissed off. Well, there have been times I've been an inch taller. And so there's a two or, there's a one or two inch variance there. And what it comes down to is when we put these legs together, we don't pull a tape measure. we raise and lower the foot until I walk well. So if I change feet, like the actual physical foot,

if I change the style, like go to a different brand, I might need to be a half-knit shorter for those feet to walk better. Oh, interesting. It's that kind of thing. What about shoes? Does the shoes affect it? So people ask me, did you get the same shoe size? It's like, yeah.

Yeah, you need that. Because I had shoes at the time that were size 10, so I stayed size 10. But does the thickness of the shoe change the gate at all? The sole in a shoe has everything. I can't walk in certain shoes. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, like a traditional dress shoe that has a heel.

It's too heavy, and the hill catches on stuff. You're using momentum. Dress shoes suck anyway. See, this is good for you. Now you're an excuse. You're like, babe, I have to wear the Air Force ones. Technology, yielding materials, influencing fashion, all came my direction. Like, for example, you know, I'd say around the time I got hurt in 2010, there were things

called jaggings. There were leggings. look like jeans. From that, now pretty much every gene company makes stretch jeans, right? So if I wore regular jeans, my legs, like the nuts and bolts,

cut the jeans. Or they, like, pull on my leg and they'll kind of push it off. These stretchy jeans, like stretchy material, athleisure clothes, are perfect for my legs. So all that came to me.

And like, now everybody wears leather tennis shoes with their suits. Yeah. So now is it kind of perfect time. It all just kind of came to me. Yeah. Okay.

What are the other dumb questions? how much of my legs cost. Okay. It's like, well, I was injured in war, so the government pays for my legs. Yeah. And I get, not everybody knows that. Ten billion dollars.

Yeah. Normally what I say is, you could tell me, because you paid for them. Oh, wow. And then the other one's like, water my legs made of. And it's like,

my answer is hopes and dreams. I don't know. I didn't go to school for that. Something plastic, something metal. What kind, I don't know. Interesting. Do you get drunk faster?

I don't drink. You don't drink at all? No. Do I get drunk faster? probably not mainly because my body weight now is not far off from where it was. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm within, you know, that part of your leg, you know, probably only weighs five or six pounds on each side. So I'm only 10 or 12 pounds away from where I was.

Makes sense. You know, when you add it all together. Yeah, I know that you're doing so much pre-workout and protein. So I've gained muscles. Compensating. The biggest physiological difference is you use your surface area to, expel heat. It's like every pore on your skin is a vent for your body. So I lost more surface area than I lost body weight, right? And so on top of that, so not only did I lose half of my legs

and all the surface area that goes with it, my right leg is skin graft. And none of that counts, right? So like half of my right leg is skin graft. Yeah. So just from the onset, if I never did anything but set in a wheelchair, I can't get rid of heat as quick as other people. Then on top of that, you add that a bunch of the surface area that's there is covered in like a real thick liner and then carbon fiber. Right. So no heat's leaving, but heat's coming in. So now my body's getting hotter and I can't expel it as quickly.

Then on top of that, you use the gravity of your legs to help your heart pump blood. So I lost a bunch of that. The blood doesn't travel as far down. So the gravity is not as much of an issue. So it doesn't help push it back up because it's a hydraulic. system, right? Interesting. Pressure system.

So now my heart pumps a little bit harder. And then I lost all those muscles and two joints, knees and ankles. So when I'm walking, I'm using one muscle group where I used to use four. So my heart works a little bit harder. So when I'm walking in the summertime, I feel like it's 200 degrees outside. And so that's the hardest part is the temperature regulation. Oh, that's, so you just run hot in general. Mm-hmm.

Oh, wow. I mean, I don't know what the temperature is. see what I'm wearing and it's not because I need to show my tattoos. It's 35 degrees in this tent right now. Yeah. Yeah. And people that don't know this watching at home, it's freezing in here. But I mean, this must cause arguments you and your wife because women are always cold.

So your wife's at a restaurant, she's freezing and you're like, babe, it's so hot. We've had so many arguments by that point. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Like certain things you just learn to give up on. Yeah. And so, like, no, that one's not been the hardest one. It causes more of an argument, not argument, but more turmoil.

at work. Because like, you know, men in the news are in a suit. So we're insulated. Women generally aren't wearing a jacket on set. And so, like, I'm already hot, plus I'm in a suit, but my female co-anchor is literally freezing. And I can't ask her to stay cold. You know, like a studio, you need to be a little bit cool anyway. But you can never be cool enough for me. Oh, that's so funny. Are there any benefits? Is there any silver line we were like, this is actually a little bit easier? Yeah, man, I'm alive. Okay, yeah.

Being alive is awesome. I know, and I know that probably sounds a little bit cheesy, but that is the benefit. The benefit is, quite frankly, the only other option there was to die. So if this is the price I pay to be alive, I mean, we'll pay that every day twice on Sunday, right? I thought you were going to say middle seat on an airplane. No, listen. Is it? Benefit, perhaps, if I'm not paying for it, I have to fly first class for my legs to fit. Oh, really?

Yeah, and I almost have to fly first row if I don't know what size airplane. That's kind of cool. That is cool. It can be costly if I'm paying for it, but if work's paying for it, it's a benefit. Interesting. Okay. And I call it VIP parking, handicapped parking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, you get that? Yeah. Best, I mean, every concert, you get to just go like handicapped parking? Yeah, I guess, you know, what, you're right. There are a lot of benefits in a sense of if you're the type of personality that will ask. You know, life gets easier. I don't wait in lines at the airport kind of thing. Do people ever feel bad for you in a way that kind of makes you feel like,

all right, I don't need to be infantilized? It's weird, man. Like, you end up in a position where you expect two polar opposite things from people all the time. You are, like myself, I'm a double above-knee amputee, bilateral above-knee. I get around probably as well as the top 5% in the 1%. in the world to have my injury. So it's easy for people to forget. And you want them to.

You don't want to be defined by something you didn't mean to have to begin with. And as a man and raised the way I was, I don't want to take up less space in the room than another man. You know what I mean? That's why I don't use a wheelchair. And not to say that's how it should be,

but naturally that's how it happens. My buddy, my best friend's 5'5, and he'll tell you when he walks in a room, sometimes people don't even notice. It's a human nature thing. So like on one hand, I want people to treat me the exact same way. On the other hand, if they ask me to do something, it's hard for me to do. I'm like, what the hell?

Don't you know I don't have legs? So like, you know, I'm constantly in this like duality of mindset. And you have to be self-aware because you can't change your nature. You have to be self-aware so that you don't get into a position where you're treating people badly. Yeah. Yeah, the psychological component seems like it would be tricky to navigate because there's nothing to prepare you for it. Like, I have a buddy Lucas who's got cerebral palsy. He's a funny comedian, but the cerebral palsy is bound in an electric wheelchair.

And he just has all these stories of people just coming up to him like in the middle of a crosswalk and like praying for him. Yeah. And he's like, hey, I appreciate the prayers, but I'm kind of busy. Yeah. I got stuff to do. I'm trying to go to a comedy show. I'm trying to go flirt with this girl. I don't need you to be praying for me right in this exact moment.

So it's kind of like infanticizing. On the other hand, it's kind of like you appreciate it. So I'm curious, is that happening you that people come up to you and be like. All the time. And it's like, hey, thanks. but also... Yeah, you know, for me it's compounded

by the fact that I do work in television and so like only about half the country would watch me but of them, several of them do. And so when somebody comes up to me in the airport

and I'm in an airport a couple of times a week, before they get to me, I don't know if they're coming because they want to talk about my legs because they see them a veteran and want to say thank you for your service or because they know me from television.

So that adds a certain amount of like stress just to be out in public because if I were never on television, I'd still have people coming up to me a lot because they would want to ask about my legs or tell me about how they had a knee replacement or ask me if I knew Corporal John Smith, who was also a Marine. And so, you know, people in small towns or just people in civilian life don't, you know, like, and the way I explained is, I understand this is, I wouldn't say this, this is how I understand. It's like, this is your first time seeing these legs. I've seen

them every day for 12, 14 years. Like, it's not exciting to me. I'm not a, offended that it's exciting to you, but the third person that stopped me in 10 feet at the airport, like I'm exhausted now. Yeah. And so, like, what I love is the whole AirPod movement has moved all the way back to, like, giant headphones. And I have those so that if I, if I'm, if I know I'm not in the personality to give people a smile, I can pretend like I don't hear them.

Yeah. Because I'd rather ignore them to be rude to them. Yeah, of course, of course. Because you also understand where they're coming from. You're like, ugh. I don't, they're not doing anything wrong. they just don't know where I'm coming from, which is I can't have this conversation 25 times a day

and be a sane human. Yeah. And so it's a, you know, you have to have days that you dedicate to putting up with it and giving people a smile. Because if 25 people come up to me, probably 15 of them are people that watch me on TV, and that's why.

And the other 10 are just curious, and they care. And they don't know that their care and concern is coming out as, you know, emasculating or patronizing. They don't mean. it that way. And so you just have to have that patience. I mean, the biggest positive of these legs

to answer that question you asked 10 minutes ago is that I've learned a level of patience, I think very few people get to. That's really cool. Yeah. That's really, really cool. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024. And it's time to talk about something important. When you are

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go to for the people.com slash gagnon. That's correct. F-O-R-the-people.com slash gagnon. Or dial pound That's pound 529 from your cell phone. That's for the people, F-O-R-the-people.com slash gagnon or dial pound-law pound-529 from your cell phone. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. So to the military,

what was the allure initially for you to join? And what did you hope to do or achieve interpersonally? It was probably more selfish than not for me in the beginning. So my path to the Marine Corps is, Probably not as unique as I would like. I guess we're all uniquely the same, right? So I grew up, like I said, laying brick and block from my dad in this town, Dalton, Georgia. And if you don't know anything about it, that's where all the flooring is made.

It used to be carpet. Now they make whatever flooring you have in your house was made there. I mean, that's the place where it's made. The natural resources is there to lend themselves to it, and they developed technology and workforce. So growing up, you did one of three things. You rather made carpet, made places that made carpet. in the case of my dad, houses of the people that owned the places. Or you drove carpet places.

You're a truck driver. So you're like, you're either in a carpet mill, construction, or truck driving. And everyone was touching the supply chain. Yes, sure, that's it. And so I was working, I got out of high school at 17, so I kind of had a bonus year. Like, before I turned 18 and had to make real decisions. Tried college. I got a promotion at work.

And so I dropped out of college, take the money. And I was working in a carpet mill because I didn't want to keep laying brick and block because that shit was tough. And so my two best friends both had dads that were career in military. And they both knew they were going to military one way or the other, but neither of them jumped right in it. One of them went to college, like away. And the other one kind of stayed and worked construction with me and was kind of filling

out the Marine Corps recruiter. And so I had no intent of leaving my hometown. Like that scared me to death. My dad didn't cross to Mississippi until I flew him to Hawaii in 2000. six. So like I had a little bit of that. I didn't have an adventure in me. And so I got finagled into talking to the Marine Corps recruiter because my best friend was talking to him. We were together all the time. And longer story short, I probably joined the Marine Corps because I had a boss at that carpet mill that was a Vietnam vet. And he grabbed me one day because I was late coming in work and

I told him I was talking to the Marine Corps recruiter. And he drove me around and he told me, He drove me around this huge carpet mill and told me what everybody made and how long they had been there. And at the time I was making like $12 an hour. He was in charge the whole place. He made like $25 an hour, maybe not even that much.

And he's like, do you want to work in this building for the rest of your life for $10 an hour, for $10 more an hour? And you know what? I did not give him credit until recently. I don't know if I just forgot that

but recently my memory was jarred on that or I realized how impactful that was. I mean, that's beautiful perspective, like for him to give that to you. Yeah, he told me not to come back to work. Wow. Yeah, he said, don't come back here. And did he ever say why? Do you think he saw something in you where he was like, oh, you can do something different than this?

That was it. Like, not to get too in the weeds, you know, but like I worked second shift. So like the main shift is the day shift, and I worked in the evenings and night. And I was there as a supplemental guy. And my department would have a task that we would get on Monday that had to be done by Friday. Well, I work for my dad. I mean, my dad, laying brick and block, you don't take breaks. Like, you work hard.

And so eventually the first shift guys would come to me on Wednesday and be like, we don't have any work left for this week because you work too hard. And if you don't tone that down, you're going to be in trouble because I'm threatening their job then. Oh, wow. And, like, I was the only white guy in there. It was all mostly Mexicans. Like, we had immigration before immigration was cool before it was a hot topic. Yeah.

And, like, great people. But, like, they understood what I didn't. you can work harder, you're not going to get paid anymore. Right. This is the job. Do the job, you know. And so they taught me a lesson in themselves, but he saw that. He knew that. Like, he saw that I had a work ethic that I didn't mean to have. I came by it honestly. It wasn't like I was trying to show out. I just didn't know you could work

any less. And he knew the Marine Corps would be a place I'd thrive. Because the Marine Corps, unlike the other three services, values physical fitness and work ethic above proficiency or anything else. And did you enjoy boot camp as soon as you got in? No, I didn't know if I could make it through it. Nobody in my family other than my great-grandfather was a Marine. And so my idea of the Marine Corps was like full metal jacket. I'm like, I hope I survived boot camp because not everybody in that movie did, you know.

And so like all I knew is my mom thought Marines brainwashed you to be cold-blooded killers. And my dad thought Marines like basically pushed you to the brink of death. So that's all I knew, you know. And so I went into boot camp thinking, man, I hope I can hack it. And then little I know, like, working for my dad playing football, set me up for great success, but it took me half a boot camp to realize that. And because there's a psychological element that they play into. They want you to think you can't do it so that you become somebody different.

Once I figured it out, I loved it. And like, you know, by the time boot camp was over with, I just wanted more food, but I was enjoying it. And then why explosives? Why was that a type of work that you were drawn to? Another, like, longer story than it should be. The Marine Corps, unlike the other services, you can't join the Marine Corps to be a bomb tech. You become EOD, explosive order disposal, or bomb tech, by what we call lateral moves. So you've been in, and the prerequisites the Marine Corps has that no other service has.

They want you to be 21 years old. They want you to be an E5, a rank of sergeant. And so they want you to be eligible for re-enlistment. So you re-enlist into EOD. you don't come into EOD. The Marine Corps does it for a couple of reasons. One reason is that the job is called a critical skills job. So it's like it's one of the few MOSs that kind of operates on an island.

Nobody in Marine EOD started any other way than as a sergeant going through OD school. So we don't have commissioned officers. We don't have sergeant majors that come from other jobs. That's one reason. The other reason is the Marine Corps small and they don't have a big budget. and they have to pay the Navy and Air Force to send you through EOD school and they're not going to spend that kind of money

unless they know you're going to pass. So they want you to prove yourself before they send you over there. And so it was great. I went into EOD because I didn't know anything about the Marine Corps. I joined the Marine Corps as a radio communications technician and I legitimately thought that meant

I was going to operate the radio next to the colonel while we're calling in fire support. That's what I thought it was. That makes sense. A radio communications. communications technician opens up radios in a sterible environment and, like, changes resistors and, you know, circuit cards. And I'm like, number one, I didn't think Marines did this kind of stuff at all.

Number two, I certainly didn't think that was the Marine Corps I was signing up for. And so I very early on started raising my hand for other opportunities. And the Marine Corps is great about that. Because it's so small, you have to go do another job eventually. like even if it's for a small period of time. So I volunteered to go guard nuke subs at Pearl Harbor. I volunteered to coach Marines on the rifle range. I worked in the galley of a ship for three months flipping pancakes,

like anything other than being in that sterile environment working on radios. So eventually it got to the point to where it was like, I had to go learn something else because I didn't know how to do that job anymore. And EOD was kind of thrown in front of me and I loved it. Oh, really? Yeah, I did a... What did you like about it? mostly the Marine Corps is great for young men who need left and right lateral limits like

it babysits you as a term we use like it's very strict your haircut is very strict your uniform is very strict how you dress during the time of war there's a discrepancy on how important those like outward appearance things are like really you care about my haircut what about did I know how to shoot my gun so the perspective the Marine Corps would be, well, you can do both because of discipline. They don't care about your hair. They care about you having enough discipline to get your hair cut. EOD's an outlier for that. The job is so dangerous. And just by the nature of we have explosives. Generally, we're not near all the rest of the Marines on a base.

And there's a certain cowboy element, whether you like it or not, so it's like, even when we're not at war, I'm going out on the bombing range and walking down on that 155, you just shot out of a cannon. And I've got the knowledge and know-how that I'm going to be able to render it safe without it blowing me up. And so there's a certain cavalierness to it that I think during the time of war is even more so, because now we're taking apart IEDs. And I loved the fact that most of the EOD techs I met called each other by their first name, not because they didn't respect rank, but because if you have to be a sergeant to go into EOD

and you let it move into it, you might have a sergeant that's been in the Marine Corps for five years, working alongside a sergeant that's been in the Marine Corps for 13 years. One of them has done three deployments as in EOD tech. the other one has done none. They are not peers. So basically what happens is you can have the inverse of that to where someone that you're a higher rank than, or someone has a higher rank than you,

doesn't know as much as you do. So to find that respect, we just go by first names. That's cool. You're a team member or a team leader. That's what matters. I just loved all of that. And lastly, honestly, the culture of it's what I fell in love with, the job itself is pretty awesome too.

Like the thrill of the actual, like, the technical components of it? No, you can't call it thrill. Like, you've got to beat that out of your mind because we do get addicted to the adrenaline. Like, if you went to first DOD company in 2009 before we deployed, everybody had a street bike or a dirt bike or they were skydiving. Right. Like, they had to get that adrenaline. They didn't know it. We weren't self-aware in any way.

Yeah. But that was the truth of it. You just slowly put the dots together. Like, wait, everyone in here has no risk aversion? I deployed March instead of May because my roommate got paralyzed on a dirt bite track. No way. Because I did get back into racing and it didn't work out well. And so, like, you don't get addicted to the thrill because you're not allowed to acknowledge the thrill.

Because if you acknowledge the thrill, if you focus on the thrill, you're chasing the thrill. So, for example, most of the bombs I took apart, I took apart by hand. not because I didn't want to use a robot or I didn't want to use some of the other techniques we have to get away from the bomb before we work on it because the situation dictated in Afghanistan that almost everything was an immediate action which an immediate action means it's in front of you work on it with your hands

manual approach so you don't want people doing that on purpose you don't want people choosing to leave the robot behind and go up and doing it by hand because they enjoy doing it They're cocky. Right, or ego or whatever other component. Because, you know, at best you kill yourself. At worst, you kill somebody else.

And then you make it hard for the guys to survive the next bomb. Yeah. So then after your first EOD deployment, within six days, you're actually working on explosives. Yeah, it wasn't the plan, but that's how it went down. Yeah, what would be a traditional trajectory and why was yours different? The traditional trajectory of an EOD tech in the Marine Corps. because each service gets to handle it differently, is that we work on three-man teams.

And this is, you know, we fought a war for 20 years, right? So this is something that developed over those 20 years. Your first deployment, you're the number three guy. You stay in the truck, because for the first 10 years or in Iraq, where we had infrastructure and trucks could go places, and you build explosive charges, drive the robot. Then your next deployment, you're the second guy. You're the P2, the assistant team leader.

And you're helping communicate to the other Marines around, You're talking directly with the team leader on what he sees. You're helping make decisions at the truck. And maybe towards halfway through the deployment, you start walking down. And then your third deployment, you're the team leader, and you're the guy walking down. And so you're talking two or three deployments into it before you're taking apart bombs by hand. In my case, when we went to Afghanistan in late 2008 when we shifted the troops to Afghanistan, people don't realize it was a completely different war.

It wasn't the same word at all. Iraq had roads and bridges and trucks. Afghanistan had fields of poppy, opium like you were talking about. So we were on foot all the time. Plus, in Iraq we could take six EOD techs, two, three-man teams, do a firehouse rotation where they had 24 hours on, 24 hours off. That one three-man team that was on duty could go 50 miles in any direction to respond. In Afghanistan, we were on foot, and we had to be.

a lot more Marines. We integrated a two-man team with every Marine company. So we went from 30 EOD Texan area to 80. And so two things happened. One, we were inundated with IEDs. We were around them a lot more because there were more of us. And two, we were face to face with them. We weren't using robots and trucks. And so for me, the reason why I worked on IEDs so soon in my deployment is that the methods of the bad guys, put us in a position to where if you find it, you work it. Because the act of me being near the IED and walking away from it so my team leader could walk down to it, the chances of one of us stepping on another IED was much higher.

So you just had to be ready. Wow. And can you explain the nature of Afghan IEDs and why they were different than historically other IEDs, maybe in Iraq or in the 90s? Have you ever – I can give you a couple examples, I hope they work. Have you ever taken apart a flashlight? Yeah. Like you get at the dollar store.

It's a plastic casing. It's got two batteries in it. That's what we call a loop circuit. So you took electricity and made a circle. In one spot of that circle, you put a switch. And another spot of that circle, you put a light bulb. And in another spot of that circle, you put power. So when you run those into a circuit, that's your circle.

And that's how you get light and a light bulb. Well, the battery stays the same, right? The switch stays the same. Rather than a light bulb, now you've got a blasting cap and explosives. that's an Afghan IED. Very simple. You've got a power source. You've got a switch, which is normally a pressure plate that the victim operates, and you've got your main charge.

It's closed within itself. The only thing that's going to disrupt it is if it's taken apart. But you can't have signal disrupted. You can't have other forms of initiation that are disrupted or that you're dependent upon. So the Afghan IEDs were more effective because they were simpler, so they were more consistent. Like the more we do to something, have you ever played the game in Mousetrap? Yeah, yeah. So the more things you add to that chain of events, the less likely for it to work.

The more points of error. IEDs are the same way. In Iraq, they had access to materials so they could do a photo cell so that, you know, they could have it work either way. Like a switch either opens or closes, right? So they could put a photo cell to where when the sun came down, it set it off. They could put a photo cell to where when you moved to rock and sunlight, hit it, it went off.

They could use radio communication, IR, you know, like the motion detectors. But the more of that you used, the more chance of it going bad. In Afghanistan, they were so much more simpler that they functioned as designed more often. And in our job, we're counting on them

making a mistake. That's how we win. Because we can do everything right. And if they know what we're going to do, they can just configure the IED to where us doing what we're supposed to do is what kills us. For example, in the beginning of my deployment, all the IEDs had parts

of metal in them. They used stove pipe as a container. They used metal pads as a switch. And they learned they could use the carbon rods inside desal batteries. They would conduct electricity, but they wouldn't have a metallic signature.

So they used the thinest copper wire they could make and carbon rods, and they could make their switches that way. So the metal detectors will use didn't work anymore. It's a chess game that way. And then how quickly into your first deployment did someone get injured from an IED? Let me, I'm trying to think in day. So I landed in Afghanistan, you do about six days of, I want to say assimilation,

acclimat, you acclimatize for six days. There's a word there. I'm just not conjuring. Like literally to the geography. Yeah, to the humidity, the altitude, all of it. Like they give you five or six days to get your body right, because sometimes people like their bodies react. And then they send you to where you're going to work.

And when you get there, there's an EOD team. They were waiting to leave, and you work alongside them for about a week. And then it's all you. In that week of working alongside them was when the first truck got hit, and that was behind us. So, yeah, I was there for 10 to 15 days before we had an IED hit. And then it was for the rest of the deployment. And then were you administering aid in any capacity to those guys? Thankfully, you know, they were inside of a truck.

and so they all had concussions but none of them had to be medevaced but what we do because we are EOD if they find a bomb they call us in and we go down and take it apart if a bomb goes off we're the first ones there because we have to do what's called a post-blast analysis

because what we're doing is every time we take a bomb apart or respond to a bomb that goes off we're documenting all the materials the configuration the type of explosive all of that information goes back to a central place from all the EOD teams and they can scatter plot bomb makers that way by the materials they're using

and the way they're making bombs. Because we have our battle lines drawn. They don't use our battle lines. They use their own. And if we can identify an area that a bomb maker's working out of, well, it's just like the FBI looking for a criminal, if here's a circle of bombs,

the bomb maker's probably somewhere in the middle of that circle. Interesting. So you can start actually placing the pins on a map, so to speak. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's interesting. So post-blast is really important. happened, the first thing we did was got the guys out of the truck. The next thing we did was at a post-blast analysis on the bomb that just went off. Interesting. Now, at this point, you've

already disassembled and neutralized an IED. You've seen trucks explode and guys get injured from an IED. I know that you obviously have a higher risk tolerance than the average person, but internally, is there anything happening within you as you're going to sleep on those first couple weeks being like, holy shit, this is realer than I had anticipated? It's kind of the opposite. So the first few months of it, I just got more and more addicted to the job. I loved it.

Because the IDs I saw go off weren't killing people. They weren't hitting EOD techs. They were hitting grunts that didn't know what we knew about the bombs. So those things didn't heighten my fear of the bombs because they didn't challenge

my knowledge. It's like a boxer that's never lost a match. He doesn't know what getting knocked out is. He doesn't fear it until he gets knocked out. Right. And if anything, getting punched in the face, gives you more confidence because you're like, oh, I can walk through these. That's exactly right. And so what eventually happened was a few months into the deployment. You know, I worked up with 28 guys in my platoon, like they had almost a year work up with them. They were in my platoon every single day. They were my brothers. And then when we got to Afghanistan, we were broken into two-man

teams and sent all over the place. So it was a very different experience than most people, most units get. And so my brothers, the guys I had worked up with and knew well, and I was reading their reports every night and they were reading mine from miles away, two of them got hit in two different places on the same day. One of them was killed and one lost his legs. That's when it was real. That was the day that it went from, I can't wait until my next one to I hope I survived my next one. That was the day it went from, you know, I hope there are more IEDs because I like doing this job to I'm okay if there isn't another one. And it's not cowardice. It's just perspective. Yeah, of course. You can actually feel what the potential outcome could be. You can see what happens if things go wrong. I tell the story every now and in.

So we got told about Perkins first. He was killed. And that bothered me. But then this guy, Dave Lines, that I knew a little bit more, lost his legs. And I didn't rationalize it consciously. But we got told about Perkins. We went out, worked a call, came back, and got told about Dave, I believe it's how it went.

but I know I heard about Dave second. And the next thing I did without any thought whatsoever, and I p-tied a lot, is I put the tennis shoes I had at our home base on, and I went out and ran. And I literally ran until there were blisters on my feet. And I loved running. That's why I had tennis shoes in Afghanistan. But the truth is I probably was starting to accept the fact

that my fate might mean I don't come home with my legs. So I wanted to go out and use them as much as I could. And you internalize things, and it comes out however it comes out. But there was a moment where, you know, before I deployed to Afghanistan, the night before I left my house, I lived with three women. And they were all close friends. And my friend April roommate, we were just talking. And I literally said the words, if I, you know, she's like, what if something happens? I said, well, if I lose my legs, I'd just soon die.

And that changes the moment you lose your legs, you know. And it changes the moment you hear about your. buddy losing his legs. Like, then you get a different perspective. Wow. So when you're disassembling your next IED after seeing one of your buddies lose their legs, is there a different psychological component? Are you able to quell that that anxiety? I think going out and running for like an hour and a half was me letting that go so that I could wake up the next thing and do the job. Wow. It didn't affect even how much I enjoyed the job. I still enjoyed taking bombs apart for the rest of that deployment. Like I enjoyed the act of doing it right up until I stepped on one

myself and woke up in the hospital. Yeah. And I can tell you, as a 37-year-old man with two kids, I don't know I have the courage, and that courage isn't the right word. I don't know I would be able to go and do the job right now. I don't know if it's because I got blown up doing it, or if it's because I've got kids and I didn't have that responsibility then.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's tricky. I mean, I understand how kids can really shake and change your risk tolerance. I mean, everyone I know, I ride motorcycles. Everyone I know that has motorcycles, the second they have kids, they're like, yeah, it's cool to look at. You know, it's nice to have in the garage. I don't need to ride as much. I mean, my dad rode motorcycles for years. The second you had is like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like a couple kids, he was like, all right, I got a, I got a chill. Well, it's like, you know, I tried to get my skydivers certificate or license before we deployed. So I jumped three or four times, and it was like you had to jump 15 or 25 times to get certified so that you could do that. And, and so. And so. And so. So I ended up deploying in March instead of Macea, I got cut short. But the one thing I heard Ever Scott Aver say was eventually you're going to have a bad shoot.

Like, it might be your first jump, or it might be your hundredth, or your thousandth. Eventually, you're going to have to pull and use your backup. That's just part of it. That's why you learned to do it. Motorcycle is the same way. I don't know anybody who really rides motorcycles. It's never wrecked a motorcycle. They just survived and they kept riding.

It's a matter of when. Yeah. You dress for the slide, not to ride. That's right. So can you take me to August of the faithful day when the events actually transpired and kind of just go through the beats of that? Yeah. So we – it's so funny. Last week I had a reunion with my platoon, those 28 guys, 11 of them.

That's the first time I'd seen most of them since I was in Afghanistan. We were stationed on the West Coast, and most of them were West Coast people. I'm a Georgia guy. I recovered in D.C. and stayed out here on the East Coast. And so I've communicated with them, that and seen him in person. And so it's funny you asked this because I've relived it in the last week much more than I have ever. We got into Afghanistan in 2010 and we were in southern called Helmand. And so what was happening there was growing poppy.

In Iraq, you heard of the green zone is like the safe area around Baghdad. In Afghanistan, the term green zone meant literally like when you looked at it on a map, what was green? And it followed rivers and canals where water could go because it's a desert. And so we were working, the 28 of us were scattered along the Helmand River, which comes down and kind of hooks. And when it hooks into the west, off to the east is a village in the desert called Safar Bazar. And as a tactic, we'd left it alone because it wasn't near the poppy, so it wasn't a part of our mission, which was to eradicate the poppy and take that funding away from the Taliban more than anything. The Taliban understood we weren't there, so they started using it as a place to traffic bad things and bad. bad people. A lot of bomb components were stockpiled and made there. So from the beginning of my

deployment, we knew there was a chance we'd have to go take Safar Bazaar. We didn't want to have to because we presumed it would be fortified and defended because it was important to them. As the deployment went on, I think the Taliban understood that we might come and they started to spread their resources a little bit, but Safar Bazar stayed important enough that in August of my deployment, we had to go take the town. And so the plan was to be kind of, kind of fast and light, which is a Marine Corps thing. So originally we weren't even going to have this many, but we ended up with about 250 Marines, maybe not even that much, maybe 200 Marines.

And to support them, we took six EOD techs, which are three different teams. And so my team just ended up being the main effort. Another team was put on top of a hilltop to get Overwatch, and they cleared the hill in a circular pattern, like a spiral. another team was dropped off in the middle of the town and they cleared their way out of it so we'd have a medivac route so no matter where we were

we could get out to a helicopter we were put in the northeast corner of the town and cleared diagonally across it streets first and then buildings and so as we got through the side of the canal that we were on as we cleared the town on the streets the next day we started clearing the buildings

and on August 6, 2010 this guy, Corporal Greer, who was a Marine engineer. And for those that don't know, like an engineer, traditionally, they helped clear minefields. They also became a part of our detection expertise. So they learned to use ground penetrating radars, stuff like that. They were more conventional ordinance, but they helped in the work of clearing explosive threats.

And so we'd send out engineers to find them, and then we'd come and take them apart once they found them. And so a marine engineer named Corporal Greer found bomb components in a building in the town that we were about to clear. So he came and got me that morning, August 6, 2010, said, look, I don't know what all this stuff is, but you guys do. So you come check it out. It was literally across the street, kind of the irony of it all, is it was the building next door for the whole time we were there. And longer story short, I stepped on an IED that this path behind this building had been cleared three times by engineers. years. There was no physical or even presumptive evidence that there was an IED back there because

they had been through, found some, cleared it. And my teammate picked up a piece of ordinance that Greer found. He moved it out of the building and put it behind a wall, which bordered the building. I walked over to look at that piece of ordinance because I felt like it was unsafe to move and I wanted to see based on my experience in EOD school. And when I went over there, look at it, when I took a step back on my right foot, I stepped on an IED. and the components that we could find with the mail detector were tucked up under that wall because they understood we used mail detectors. So they had hit it from our tactics, and that's why I stepped on it.

Damn. And so immediately you stepped on what is the initial feeling? It's just blast. It's kind of crazy. Like, I... First of all, I'm still batting a thousand, right? Like, the last one I just bunted. You know what I mean?

So, like, I'm still taking apart all the IEDs, right? That one just blew up. So the way I went down, I stepped on the IED, and I went weightless, and my eyes were still open, and everything was just tan. And it was all the dirt from the explosion coming up. I was weightless because I was flying through the air. I heard the noise in the beginning, then everything went kind of silent. I don't remember much noise. The big misnomer is that you get knocked out.

You don't. You only get knocked out if your head gets hit. Otherwise, you're fully awake, and you go in the shock. Well, my head didn't get into it. the bomb was underneath me and I was wearing a helmet. I flew through the air. I landed on my back probably. I couldn't give you an estimate on distance, but yards away.

And Daniel Greer was to my right side, and now he's way down in front of me. And in my mind, I'm thinking, how did he get way down there? But he didn't. I got way up here because it blew me uphill, kind of. So I landed on my back, and I'm looking downhill through my body. And I see Greer on his belly looking back at me, but he's not missing any parts or anything. It's like he's knocked out. I'll look at my body, and the first thing I noticed before I even see my legs is it felt like my face had blown open from the inside out.

And I guess all the overpressure had penetrated my body and busted cells or vessels, and my face was basically bruised from the blast. And so I say this joke all the time, like it felt like a full syringe on my lips, like, because, you know, all the lip filler, because it literally felt like my lips were about to blow open, like there was fluid in them. My eyes started the swell shut, the flesh around my eyes and my face because I was looking down when I stepped on it. Thankfully, I had protective glasses on, but my face just started the swell, so it was getting hard to see, and I didn't know that that was why. So I thought my face was blown off. And so I was worried about that, but I wasn't too worried about it because I was still alive. I looked down and I could see my legs were gone, but things don't get cut clean. so it's like it's not like from the knee down was gone.

It's just from the knee down wasn't worth saving anymore. So I could see parts and pieces, but my boots weren't there anymore. That much of it had been gone, but my legs were in shreds. And so my first thought was to grab a tourniquet. And so we wear tourniquets on our shoulders and our hips because you're going to need them for your limbs so you can't have them out there because they'll go fine with what you need them for. And so I reached up.

My left arm was twisted around behind me. I couldn't move it, couldn't feel it, couldn't see it. I wasn't sure if it was there. So I used my right arm, and I reached up to grab the tourniquet off my left shoulder. And when I brought my arm up, my hand fell into my lap. And so what had happened was the bomb was on my right side. When I stepped, when I took the step right, the bomb was offset to the right. It hit the right side hardest and threw me like a loop.

And so my right forearm was severed all the way to the muscle on the back. Both bones were cut in half and all the muscle. And so all this was kind of hanging down, actually. This was blown open and cut. And so when I picked my arm up, my hand felled back into my lap and all this was hanging down. And I remember thinking, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but I remember thinking to myself like, shit. Like I wasn't worried about my legs, but when I saw it was an arm, I was like, you know, number one, I knew you need that to get around. But number two, I was still very single.

And it was like, you know, my legs weren't much right home to mom about anyway, you know. But that's how much, you know, in split second I went from, if I lose my legs, I just soon died, to can I just at least keep both arms? You know, like you talk about humbled, like I was humbled. And so I reached my arm up and my hand stayed in my lap. And we had gone through these courses where they take pigs because the anatomy of a pig is the most similar to a human, more than bear, more than anything you'd think, monkeys anything. The placement of the organs, the size of the organs in a pig is most similar to a full-grown human. So we do a combat medic course where we do render first age and triage to pigs that are chemically comatosed but physically alive. And so we learn in that because of all the flesh-eating bacteria that when something's charred and burned,

cut into the good flesh and then put bandages on it to try to get that out of the bloodstream quick. So I remember thinking some Marines going to come over here and like chop my arm off. But if like I can wait until a dog gets here, he can probably save it. So I took my arm and I threw it on my belly like thinking I was hiding it. Well, I don't, I can't get to my other arm. And then I had a punctured lung so then it got to where I couldn't breathe. So I was like, I don't know, man. I don't think I'm going to make it out of this one. And finally a Marine gets to me and he's young. He hadn't been in country very long. This is the first major thing. he's trying to put turniquets on and he's just not doing a good job.

And it's because things aren't clean cut. Like I was split on my right leg all the way up to my hip. So he doesn't know where to put the tourniquet. It's messy. And finally I realized he's struggling. So it's like, hey man, just say the Lord's Prayer with me, you know. And so we kind of tried to do that, realize neither one of us knew it. I think we ended up saying a Pledge of Allegiance.

It was horrible. And like, you know, I can't help but make jokes. I don't know how much humor was involved in the moment. but I think I was, I've always been able to see the dark humor in things. And so finally, I realized I was kind of calming him down because he was freaking out because he didn't know what to do. And I knew. I had a dock with me.

Like, he'd get his, you know, he'd die before he wouldn't get there to me. Like, a dock would get to me eventually. But as finally more Marines got there, they went past me and got Daniel on a stretcher and took him out first. And so the whole deal about triage, like the only rule is you take the worst first unless the worst isn't going to make it. And so Daniel looked like he was just knocked out. And I'm like, well, they're taking the dude that's knocked out first.

I'm done for. And I wasn't being selfish, but I was accepting my fate. Eventually my eyes swelled shut. They put me on a stretcher. They got me out there. They got some morphine in me. And they knocked me out as they were working on me. And so we had this big metal box on the back of a truck that was sealed.

And it was stainless steel. and it was an actual operating room on the back of a truck that we brought with us in anticipation of casualties. So I was the first guy to break the seal. They put me in there, and I ended up, my eyes swelled shut, and they knocked me out while it was in there. So the last thing I remember in that day, I lived through stepping on the bomb,

someone coming on the battlefield and taking care of me, put me on a stretcher. From a stretcher, they put me in a truck. That truck drove out into a safe area, then they put me into this trauma bay and waited on a helicopter to get there and worked on me. And I remember the docs talking to me, several people working on me, nobody acting like I was going to die, me the whole time thinking I was moments away. Then they knocked me out.

And then I didn't experience anything else until two days later when they woke me back up. And what is that sensation of waking up like? You know, I remember the incident vividly. I didn't have dreams. I didn't walk into a light. I don't remember the being knocked out part at all. So I go from the battlefield to a nurse in Launstall, Germany, standing there as they take the tube out of my throat

because they had fixed my lung, but they had to intubate me to do it. So they wake you up as they take the tube out of your throat because now you've got to breathe on your own. Now, it's my opinion. You know, I can hold my breath for like three minutes in the Marine Corps. I feel like they should take the tube out first and then wake you up, you know, because it is scarier than stepping on a bomb,

to have all this stuff just come out of your body and then you're taking a breath. But that was the most impactful part of what you would call my story was that hour after they woke me up. So they woke me up and the first thing I asked was where's Greer? Because that was the last thing I saw

was him walking by me. I didn't put any thought into it. I'm not saying I was selfless. I'm sure I was very concerned about myself. But that was the last thing I saw. So where's Greer? He was the guy standing beside me. I was responsible for him.

and the nurse looked at me and, you know, I said, where's Greer and I couldn't talk? So she wet my lips with water on a sponge. They wouldn't let me drink. I don't know why. I guess it had something to do with, I have no idea why. They wouldn't let me drink water. So she wet my lips

until everything got wet enough in my mouth for me to talk. So I tried to say where's where it wouldn't come out. And then finally when I got it out, I think she figured out what I was trying to say even before I could say it. And she kind of just went through the motions of like she set the cup down. She picked up a rag. got it wet, wipe my forehead off.

And the second time I said, Where's Greer? She just looked at me and smiled and said, don't worry, hon, you're going to walk again. And it's puzzling in that, like, just retelling it. And you're like, what do you mean? Yeah, okay, but where's Greer, you know? But in that moment, my attention went from Where's Greer to seeing my body, and I had tubes coming out of the bottom

of what was left of my legs. both of my arms, my right arm had pieces of metal drilled into it all over because they were with an X fixture they call a halo device. My left arm was sitting on a pad. My fingers, my hands, like everything looked like they were blown out from the end and it had a cast on it or some sort of bandage, I guess, at that point. None of my limbs were intact. I've got, you know, a patch over here where I was, where I had a tube.

I've got catheters. and if I would have not heard her say, don't worry, hon, you're going to walk again, I would not have thought for a minute I would be able to recover. And I think she knew that. And the truth is, Daniel Greer was two or three rooms down and his family was there to take him off life support.

The wall that the bomb was partially buried under flew over and hit Daniel on the head and took his brain activity away. And I think she knew that if I'd have heard where Greer was rather than you're going to walk again, I could have been on a very different path right now. Wow. Yeah. Do they get trained in how to bring people out of like these, like sedations? I'm sure. There were doctors in there when they first did it. She's the only person I interacted with or remember. But once they got me stable, they left. And I don't remember asking any questions during

that time because I was just trying to assess. So I'm sure that's a part of it. It's my opinion. just seen it so many times. I mean, it was, we were taking pretty heavy casualties at that point. Yeah. And that was the funneled stop, right? Like, no matter where you are in Afghanistan, you're going to Launstool, and from there you're going to Walter Reed, and from there you may go to Balboa or San Antonio, but Walter Reed is the first stop. So the nurses and doctors at Launstool and Walter Reed saw all of us for a period of time. And so it's a 20-year war. If she was a civilian, I don't know. She could have been there all 20 years, you know. And so she knew what I needed to hear. Wow. I mean, you're in such a psychologically fragile and impressionable moment.

Yeah. And had you heard, oh, the other person you were with didn't make it. I mean, what that does to your psyche is profound. Especially for me, because the culture of EOD is that you're responsible for a life limit property of those around you. That your only job is to stop this bomb from killing and hurting people and things. So your job isn't to take the bomb apart. We don't call it disarming. We call it rendering safe. Whatever action or direction you take with the piece of ordinance or the bomb on the ground, the goal is to render this situation safe.

That's the focus, not to disassemble, disarm, or blow up. Those are all tools we have. Those are all actions we can take. but the end goal is to render this safe. And so the responsibility I had for Greer was as intense in that moment as it ever was. And I don't know if she understood that, but I'm glad that she acted the way she did because it was intensified with the idea that he was my responsibility. And eventually that same day, a chaplain came in, and they told me what was going on with Greer.

and I don't remember as vividly how I reacted to that. I mean, I think by that point I was just in a little bit of a fog, I guess, the pain meds. Once they wake you up, they change your medication. So I went from whatever they were using to keep me knocked out to... I eventually was on ketamine, fentanyl, and then dilauded. Wow. And so by the end of the day, by the time they told me the worst news, they had me, you know, cooked again. Yeah, you were dubbed up. Yeah. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick

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Now let's get back to the show. Wow. And how did the experience change your relationship with mind and body? Like for many people, I think they see them as one thing. And they go, I am my body, my mind resides inside of it and like mind, body, spirit. are all sort of working in unison. But then as soon as the body component is sort of taken away, simultaneously while the mental component is affected but then progressing in its own right,

you know, you're going back and taking classes, you're going to school. Like psychologically you're developing it sort of a different way. Do you now have a different relationship with your mind and body than you did before? I don't think I do. Part of it might just be pure vanity. Like, once I knew I was going to keep my right arm, it didn't work, though. So it took me three months to get the nerves to work again. And it wasn't guaranteed, but like basically all the nerves have been severed,

and they stapled them down and let them grow back together. Well, if you know about spinal injuries, the majority of people that are paralyzed are physically intact. Swelling compressed their spine, and their brain goes, we can't communicate down there anymore. Let's not try. And so maybe not a majority, but a large number of people that are paralyzed have an intact spinal cord. That swelling could last for 20 years or it could last for 20 days. It's different for everybody. And that's why they put them into rehab as quick as possible.

Because if there is a chance to regain, it's going to be early. Or at least the consistency is going to matter. So it's the same thing with my hand. Like my hand, I had no feeling and no movement in my hand. And so I spent three months just making my mind believe that my hand could move. So rather than a severing of my mind and body, it was more closely connected than ever because I had to use my mind to retrain my body. and so there wasn't a moment or a feeling of insecurity and the injury and what I'd lost

and you know I think God had videotape to prove it there was an actual revelation like there's a I'm on tape within the first week of getting the Walter Reed saying I didn't lose my legs I was given a second chance at life I always point that out because in the job I do now it'd be easy for me to come up with a tagline like that but that was like days after you know that I was like days after you know, completely unadulterated, 24-year-old Marine from Georgia without having never read the classics or thought and culture. That was just how I saw it. And so in my recovery even, it wasn't what I'd lost. It was always on, what am I regaining today? I got injured August 6, 2010. I started walking on full-length prosthetics in February 2011.

And if I could have done it in January, I would have. Like your body has to heal. And so I had great support. The culture in the hospitals were you guys are young, you can heal. Let's go get you as much of your life back as we can. The positive reassurance was there. And it's tough, man, because I have people write me every single day saying, my son was in a car wreck, you lost a leg, would you talk to him?

I have cancer. I lost my feet. Could we talk? I don't know your strong. I don't know your situation. I was treated like a hero from day one. I was given Walter Reed and Bethesda and culturally sound,

financially supported facilities to regain my independence. I don't know what it's like to do it in a small town at a hospital that you're the only one there like you. And I point that out every time I speak to a crowd, listen, I appreciate the fact that you, I appreciate the fact that you have a reverence for me for having gone through this.

But if I'm talking to an audience of 100 people, somebody in that room has cancer, is living with a disease that's going to take their life, is getting their house foreclosed on. Like, the adversity that strikes their life, you know, I look at it like I got the best situation for the type of adversity that came into mind. Do you think that your mentality could apply

to people that have suffered in different ways? I certainly hope so. I really do, in two ways. So I do public speaking, but my goal at the end of that is for people to know what they can get through. And probably more importantly, for people to know that they have a responsibility to help people get through it. What worked for me most was the support I had. And so I want people going through things in small towns that feel like they have a community supporting them. It's a large part of why I am involved in my day job of politics,

because I want to fight for the life and breath of, communities all over this country. That sense of community you can't get on a cell phone or two states away. It is the people that you have to walk past to do the things you have to do. That's your community. And I want people to be inspired to take ownership of their community, to be there for people when their house burns down, or they're injured in a car wreck, or they come home from war, or they lose a child, or they go through a divorce. You know, I want people to be inspired to be there for each other because eventually we're all going to need it. and if everybody's there in some way,

there's nothing any of us can't get through. And I experienced that myself. Are you familiar with Sebastian Younger? I am. Not to the point that I could quote a theory, but... Yeah. I spoke with him a little bit. He made the documentary of Strepo.

I didn't watch it and I didn't read it. But I'm familiar with his work. I can imagine it's pretty raw, so I don't know. I feel like you lived it in a lot of ways. So I don't know if it would be necessarily as impactful. for you to watch. Is he ostensibly credited with the post-traumatic growth? Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm curious what you think of that. He basically posits this theory that PTSD is significant, not necessarily because of the trauma that's experienced in war, but because of what's lost when you return back into American society. That within a platoon, you have really, really strong community. There's a ton of competence within your job. You are the best person in the best role at that time.

And then lastly, you have a major sense of purpose, whether that's supporting your family, supporting your country, making money, all of the above. And then you return back to a society where you're kind of socially fragmented. And you're doing a job that you don't really give a shit about that you're not even that good at. And lastly, you don't really have any real existential meaning in your life. And that even people that are seeing non-combat positions returning back to a society facing those three pieces of adversity, that ultimately is what is the cause of a lot of PTSD. I think that he is very much in the right lane. I think that because, I mean, most of his work came out close to 10 years ago now. And so we've had a chance to learn a lot about post-war.

Post-war, you can't think of the right word for it, but showing of how things maturate. So what was PTSD in 2010? What does it become for this guy in 2024? I also might be bastardizing his theory. No, you're not. I've worked in this field aside from politics for a long time through nonprofits that provide treatment. And he's right in the sense of culturally, I take PTSD out of it. The challenges that military members struggle with the most, like, for example, a lot of people want to hire military guys and gals because they think they're natural-born leaders.

When the truth is, they're the most competent and loyal followers. Not everybody gets to be a leader. Marine Corps culture says everybody leads, but some of it's leading from the bottom. You're not always the person in power. And so you can't put a military guy, especially one that's deployed, in a cubicle, and say, well, I don't have to check on him. He's a self-starter. He's going to make it happen.

He's going to inspire those around him if you don't check on him again until February, or until Friday. If he starts on Monday and you don't talk to him all week. And the reason why is all he's ever known, hopefully. hopefully, are leaders that expect something of him and check in on him and make sure he's doing it right and show him the way. And eventually, he's doing their job so they can go to a different job. And so the turnover ratio for military members for the longest time, it's pretty consistent now, they could get a job easy, but they couldn't keep it because they didn't have leadership where they worked. They didn't have culture where they worked.

Most importantly, and you hit on it, they didn't have a mission where they worked. And so for the longest time, I tried to inspire leaders to create mission in their workplace. My buddy Luke gave me a great example. He worked. He's 100% disabled, but he's physically able to work. He worked at a packaging facility when he first got out of the Marine Corps just to have a job. He didn't need the money. He needed the job.

Literally his job was to pick up a box here, take it over, and put it there so they can go into a truck. All right. When it hit 5 o'clock, everybody around him, whatever they were doing right there in that moment, they just stopped. So if they're walking halfway across the floor with a box, they're going to take it back and put it on the conveyor belt, you know, or set it down on the floor where they are, we'll pick it up tomorrow. And he couldn't do that.

He had to take that box. You know, there's three more boxes here. I've got 10 minutes. Let me finish this job. And we got to talking, and I realized, like, what he understood was in those boxes were things people needed. And if they got on the truck tonight,

they got to them tomorrow. But if they get on the truck tomorrow, they get to them the next day. And the person that owned that place ran that place, didn't understand culture and mission. That's all it would have took. I believe 90% of those people would have been bought into a mission if they'd understood that. And so that's what Luke needed, so he quit that job.

He needed mission. He needed a culture. And that's tough. PTSD is an amalgam of a lot of things, in my opinion. A lot of it is pre-service trauma. And one thing you hit on, you know, paraphrasing Sebastian, that I believe is very much true, is that when you're in the military, the culture. of it and the expectation of it create left and right lateral limits. You can't drink and drive

because if you get a DUI, you're going to have the book thrown at you and you're not going to get to do this job anymore. You're not going to get to be a part of that mission. You can't, you know, be self-destructive because you have to be physically healthy to do this job to complete the mission. You can't, you know, whatever it is. You have left or not lateral limits. Now we get in trouble and act stupid all the time, but for the most part we keep it in check. And so if you were mistreated by your parents or had a bad relationship with your father or whatever it is that that was broke inside you and in your childhood you turn 18 you join the military and you're in such a regimented culture with left and right lateral limits that the opportunity for that thing to rear

its ugly head isn't there the moment you step out of it those limits are gone it's free again and so a lot of what is interpreted is PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder It isn't by nomenclature wrong, but the traumatic experience is oriented in the wrong spot. The traumatic experience isn't the war. It's the getting out. It isn't the things that you were conditioned for. It's the thing that you were not conditioned for. That's what's traumatic about it is that you don't know how to respond to it.

I saw a lot of people lose their legs and lose their life. I was told that's what I was going to see. That makes sense to me. I don't like it, but it didn't disrupt my nature. having my best friend kill himself when I was trying to get him help on St. Patrick's Day in 2011 or 12 rock my entire world. I didn't expect it. I didn't see it coming. I couldn't do anything to help it. So the post-traumatic stress symptoms that arrive post-deployment are a lot of times because a lot of guys for a long time got out after their worst deployment, got out after the last appointment. It didn't stay in for 10 more years and at least had a mission but not combat.

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author, public speaker, and sharing your story and helping, you know, veterans. and then obviously political work, all of those things, I feel like, have kind of created that community and that mission for you. Is that a fair characterization? I think so. I mean, my community started a very small family,

and then the second one over top of that's this EOD Marine Corps community. I think a lot of it was going all the way back to my dad, who was a workaholic. It was expected. If you're in a family as a man, you provide and protect. So I had that responsibility. And I found out about my son, because I'm a Marine and had a very intimate 24-hour relationship.

I found out that I had a son, thankfully with someone that was actually from my hometown, even though it didn't happen there. I found out that her son was mine when he was three months old. I didn't meet him until he was five months old, and then I went to Afghanistan. Or actually younger than that, it's four months old when I met him. I got blown up two weeks after his first birthday. So I was coming home to the responsibilities. I still had to be a son.

I still had to be a dad. And those things were so important to me that I think much of my ability to weather to storm was being of value, having value, feeling like I was valuable in some way. And that has always been important to me. And I can't tell you why. I'm sure it has something to do with childhood. And so what I do today is try to bring value in people's lives through advocating for something in politics I believe in, through,

being the guy that gets to speak for a part of the country that isn't always represented, through giving veterans an opportunity to get attention because I'm a peacock and I want people to look at me, but they don't, so I can deflect that over to them. So if I get invited to go do something cool and I bring four buddies with me, I'm really only doing it because I get to bring my four buddies with me because it's my tenth time doing it, but it's their first. And so having the opportunity to leverage myself, if it means longer days or more flights, or a little bit of pain, but to leverage myself to bring value to other people's lives, helps me compensate for the fact I can't climb a ladder,

I can't ride a motorcycle on two wheels, I can't run down the driveway with my kid, I can't take the box of heavy stuff upstairs in my own house, like there are things I can't do that I feel like I should do. So I've got to orient that desire to be a value in service somewhere else. What do you understand about masculinity now that you didn't understand when you were 18? it's a great question. I've got a great answer, but I'm trying to put it in the right words.

My understanding of masculinity came into full perspective when I had my son. Because then it was no longer about what people saw me as and what example I was setting for him and what he needed to be. I think that age and experience has absolutely no substitute. But I also feel like I grew up quick. And so I had my dad, my uncle Jeff, my uncle Troy, my grandfather, my papal, Edgar, all within sight of my front door. I live with my dad, but two uncles lived across the street.

My grandfather lived next door. I had a varied understanding of masculinity because I had four father figures. My dad was, like my dad's perspective was he didn't really have anything to do with me until I was old enough to go to work with him. It doesn't mean like he didn't, you know, when I say he didn't have anything do with me, like he went to work. and when he came home, he ate and went to sleep. We went on vacations, and he played with me and stuff, but we didn't have a close relationship at all until I could go to work with him. My grandfather was retired.

I saw him every day all day, and I went what we call lofering with him to visit his friends in a 1970 Chevrolet pickup. My uncle, Jeff raised dirt track. He was the fun uncle, you know. He was going to go do something fun. He'd take me with him. And so I understood at an early age the necessity to be fun and vulnerable. and strict and, you know, kind,

and all these things that may not be directly attributed to masculinity, but are so important. You know, the essence of masculinity, in my opinion, is that you have the physical tools to provide and protect. How you do that, whether it's talking for a living or cutting down trees, that's not necessarily the embodiment of masculinity. That's just an avenue. I think, you know, and I'm trying to make sure I do it.

this in a way that doesn't interject politics that it may or may not believe, because I want to answer it honestly for anybody that hears it. The key to masculinity is that the masculine in the situation has the armor to take the arrows. Doesn't mean that they can't be vulnerable and doesn't mean that the feminine in the situation is less tough. Just the responsibility falls. And so my understanding of masculinity kind of is built on this family. foundation to provide and protect. But in my life and experience, I've learned that there are multiple versions of that that I probably didn't know existed when I was 18.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great answer. I'm curious, as far as your relationship with your wife, I know you've known her for a long time. Really long time. And you guys originally met in high school, dated, and then you got deployed for the first time. And then you guys kind of, or I guess you went to boot camp for the first time. I graduated high school in 2004, and she was in for another year. And in her senior year, she broke up with me.

and that was 2005. And then we didn't talk for years. And then we got back together after I got injured, like days after I got injured, because we started just talking as friends on my deployment. So we spent about five and a half years between dating for several years in high school and then getting back together.

And how did your injury impact your relationship for better or for worse? Well, there wasn't a relationship before the injury. So it's kind of a hard question to answer. The truth is we had to learn how to date after we got engaged and married because so much of our relationship was predicated on my recovery. And she was happy to be there, but, you know, it wasn't a courtship. It wasn't a let's get to know each other again. It was a we have latent feelings for each other because we were each other's first and we had a very mature relationship for our age.

I mean, even in high school, we would sleep at each other's house in the same bed. And so we had this very mature relationship before we were. It didn't work out because high school kids don't know what they're doing. But there was something still there. We don't know what. I'd been through having a son I didn't mean to have and losing my legs. She had been through a rough engagement and breakup. And we both just needed somebody to talk to.

And that's all we did. We just started talking while I was on deployment. I needed somebody other than my mom because, I mean, you know, moms can be that way. And she needed somebody other than her parents that had their own opinions about what she should do in life. And so when she came up, basically what happened was before I went on this out that I knew it was going to be difficult.

I said, hey, you know, we've been hanging out on the phone, talking. When I get back to California, would you want to come visit me? I'd pay for you to come out. And that was kind of like the first signal of anything romantic whatsoever. It had just been conversations.

She's like, yeah, that sounds great. So when I got blown up, when I woke up in Germany, the first phone call I made because the only number I could remember was her parents. I called and I said, hey, I'm not going to California anymore, but if you want to come to D.C., I'll be there. And she'd already learned about losing my legs, the whole town had where I'm from by then. And so she came up just because I asked her to, and she just fell into this role of being the primary

person helping me out, along with my mom, and then eventually I asked my mom to go back home and let Meg stay there. And so it was such a non-romance-oriented relationship. that by the time we got married because, you know, we had been together and we're doing things, getting married was the obvious next step. We hadn't only spent that time dating. And so, you know, I'd love to say it's been sunshine and rainbows, but it hasn't. And so you just either decide you're going to work through it or give up. And we both just felt like there was way too much collateral there to give it away. Wow. How'd you propose?

That's a fun story. So I met my wife in high school. And, I met her the way most kids in our area meet, like my buddy was dating her friend and they came over while my buddy was at my house. Now, I knew she was for years before. I knew she was since middle school, but she didn't know who I was. And so I met her,

she met me at my house. And just the silly way high school kids flirt, we'd all taken her shoes off or hanging out in my room. And she had these brand new white shoes and my house was like surrounded by mud because we had just moved into this house. for we hadn't planted grass yet. And so out the window on the other side of the house

was the air-condition unit. And so I grabbed her shoe, and maybe I was just trying to get her in a different room, I don't know. And I ran over this other window, and I'm like, I'm going to drop it into the mud. She's like, you better not. And like, I'm thinking I know the air-condition unit's there, so it's not going to get muddy.

I'm like, I will if you don't, give me a kiss or something like that. So finally, like, she didn't do it, and I dropped it, thinking I was being sly and I was going to drop it on this air-conditioning unit. Well, you know, like physics matter, and so I do drop a rubber sold shoe onto an air-condition unit, and it bounces into the mud. So, like, me meeting her was I ruined her brand-new pair of shoes, you know?

And so years later, her birthday fell on Easter, and we had been back together for a couple of years. And so I went and bought the shoes like she had on that day, and I put an engagement ring in an Easter egg, and I put it next to that air-conditioned unit. And so that's how I proposed. That's fine. It sounds cool now.

When I did it, I felt stupid. When I did it, I'm like, this is way silly, you know, but it was fun. Did the removal of the troops from Afghanistan affect you differently, considering what you had sacrificed? It didn't affect me differently than other people that served there. And let me tell you why. The biggest sacrifice that affected me in Afghanistan wasn't losing my legs. It was losing my friends. Daniel Greer died when I stepped on an ID.

My mentor and closest friend, Floyd Holly, died covering my job when I got taken out. Two weeks, three weeks later, the end of August, he came up. He was the guy on the hill. So they brought him down to the main effort where I was at, and he got killed by an ID I would have been working on. And so the way it went down in Afghanistan was difficult. I'd already understood how it was going to happen. And we knew when we were there in 2010, we were leaving all of our stuff.

Like, we knew that. That was the intent. That had always been the plan. And the fact that nobody owns up to it cracks me up. But we knew when we were there in 2010, we weren't bringing these, you know, 50-ton trucks back or this ammunition that had been there for 20 years. Now, did we think we were leaving as much as we did and as sophisticated as stuff

as we did? No, that wasn't the plan. But overall, we knew that we were going to leave a bunch of stuff there, hopefully in the hands of the Afghan army. But by the time it happened, by the time the Afghanistan withdrawal happened the way it did, most of us that followed this stuff

understood that was what was going to happen. But to have it happen with more people dying, to have it happen with my buddy Lee Bowden on base there, and having suffered through multiple combat deployments, taking bombs apart, and this being the thing he's really struggling with to this day, to have it happen that way,

Really, my first reaction was to be as objective as possible because I was hosting TV news at the time. It happened. So my first reaction, being on Fox News, knowing that a lot of pro-military people are tuning in to us, was to remain objective and allow our viewers to soak in the story and make what they decided of it. That lasted for about a day because it was visceral.

It was uncontrollable. It wasn't anger, it was hurt and disappointment. Why did I have to lose my legs? Why did Floyd have to die? Why did Daniel have to die? Why did that even have to happen? And then if you pointed that same telescope further back to your rock, it makes even less sense. And so it's difficult, you know.

You have to believe, if you want sanity, that a lot of good came from it, you may choose to believe that the government knows more than you do, and there was strategy there that they don't get to tell you, and that could very well be the case. Don't know that it's my belief, but I respect that thought process. But you really just, you've got to find your own way to reconcile it. And the best way to reconcile it is life isn't fair, and I raised my right hand to join the Marine Corps while that war was going on.

That's, you know, that's the best. I didn't join the Marine Corps because Bush was president. I didn't get out because Obama was president. Those were tertiary, circumstantial parts of it. And so I don't let my Marine Corps time or my time in war be defined by this president and decisions he made. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's just I get a little frustrated. I have a lot of family that are currently active military.

Because I just look at some of these conflicts. And on one hand, I love my country and I love being American and I love America. And I love the military. And on the other hand, I look at the casualties and the outcome from these types of conflicts. And I don't know. I get discouraged sometimes. Sure. Seeing the outcome going, ah, what did we get from this?

And your case is like the most drastic, the most extreme, I guess. I mean, short of losing your life is like, I've served in this place for however long. I gave so much sacrifice and we didn't get anything substantial or anything tangible, I guess, in a significant way. When it comes to, did we gain from it? Certainly we gained from it. Are we safer today because of it?

Maybe. For me, it's less worrying about, was it worth it, and more about did it have to be as painful as it was? Did it have to last as long as it did? Yeah. You know, just because of the job I once had

and the intelligence I've been privy to, we got a lot stronger in our defense having fought that war. But now we've got this cultural shift that may take some of that away. Our military is not as culturally strong as it's ever been. That's for sure. It seems to be saying it's in search of a stronger culture, but the effect, regardless of motive,

is that it is not a strong culture. And that's what matters. For the longest time, the most important thing for me, as far as what did we gain by the war we fought, was that we showed the world that no matter what, if you hurt us, there's a generation of Americans that will volunteer to defend or make it right. And that certainly was the case in 2001. My concern is that with every passing year that war continued on without any direction or compass, that statement got less true. And now my concern is that with the access to information that young people have,

but the lack of life experience to know what to do with it, there are all types of ways to arrive at conclusions honestly, but those not be honest conclusions. Like there's Antifa, there's, you know, proud boys, there's these groups of young people that are driven by a hate or a dislike of something rather than a love of something. If you love something that I don't love,

and we're on the opposite sides of politics, for it, I don't hate you for it. I appreciate the fact you're passionate about something. But if you hate something I love, well, now I hate you. And if we can't figure that out like among ourselves, I don't know that we're going to respond to the next 9-11 that way. Now, first of all, I hope there isn't the next 9-11, but, you know, you always anticipate the worst and hope for the best, you know, plan for the worst and live for the best, you know.

So if something like that strikes our country again, do we have that in us anymore? I believe we do. I have more faith in Gen Z than probably anybody I work with because I have one in my house. And I know what they're capable of. And I know that a lot of what they got was a bad lot, not bad character. But it does take culture to build people and to get Asian experience to arrive at the right conclusions. And, you know, if you tell people that some of these things, aren't true that I believe to be true long enough, they'll believe it.

Yeah. Now, I know you've got to run. One last thing I want to ask before you get. Walk. I know you got to scoot out of here, okay? But the last thing I'm curious about, are you optimistic about the future of America, given all of the conflicts that are happening around the world and sort of our public-facing persona to the other leaders of the world?

Heck yeah, I am. Yeah, listen. Being optimistic is the easiest thing in the world. You're being asked to give an opinion on something that has yet to happen. If it's yet to happen, it could happen any way you could think of it. So out of just blindness, I'm optimistic. On top of that, I've read enough history to know that we think this is the worst that's ever been because we're living it. But I remember when if you wanted to run this country, there was a good chance you were going to be shot and killed.

right? Our parents lived that in the 60s. I have read about when, I can't say I remember the 60s, but I remember learning about, I remember learning about when you were in this country and you were black, you didn't have rights. You had to work on a plantation. Between those two things, before we were ever a superpower, there was a half a decade to where if you had extra steel, you had to go turn it in because it was needed to make bombs and tanks so we could win a world war that could mean our ultimate destruction. And people were on food rations in this country

so that that war could be won. When our backs against the wall, I believe we perform our best as human beings and as a country, the biggest problem we have right now is that we're kind of spoiled. And we have to look for things to be passionate about. Unfortunately, we're landing on things

that maybe are more resolved than some people think they are. We're landing on differences that are more nuanced. I mean, if you're looking for fairness, like, you know, let me know when you find it. Fairness doesn't exist in this life. And so if your cause is fairness, you're always going to be unhappy. But if your cause is opportunity, if your cause is give me a chance, if your cause is what can I do for somebody else, I mean, those are the things I believe in.

And I think those are still very much in this. Yeah. Well, that makes me happy. That genuinely, I like your perspective. I tend to be optimistic about the future of things, but especially the way the media and social media works, the cynicism can kind of bleed through and pierces a lot sharper than the optimism. So I appreciate you sharing that, brother. Thank you so much for coming here today and spending time with me and answer my dumb questions. Well, this is a really, really impressive place to walk into and sit down with a microphone.

So thanks for having me. Of course, man. I really appreciate it. Your book, I'm really excited to get into Unbroken Bonds of Battle by Triple. Jay? Yeah, very few things that we talked about today are in that book. That book's about other people that are impactful to my life. So there's a lot left there to learn. I think it would be a great supplement to this conversation. Everyone should go check it out. Thank you so much, brother. I appreciate you, man. Let's do this again soon.