Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Andrew Milburn - A Deep Dive into Modern Warfare

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Andrew Milburn is a retired Marine Corps Colonel and former Deputy Commander of Special Operations Command Central. With firsthand experience leading infantry and special operations units across every rank—including commanding the Marine Raider Regiment and spearheading a multinational task force to defeat ISIS in Iraq—Milburn offers unparalleled insights into the complexities of modern warfare. His critically acclaimed memoir, When the Tempest Gathers, delves into the challenges of leadership on the front lines, the ethical dilemmas faced in combat, and the evolving nature of irregular warfare. When the Tempest Gathers: https://a.co/d/5Fo2cM9 Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're back. We got a hell of a Monday episode for you today, so get ready to strap in. Before that, though, what makes this podcast possible? That's right, Black Rifle Coffee. Let's head over to the website, Right, Meow. Last week, I talked about the upcoming hunting season. I'm going to do the same thing, because for people like me, it starts next week, and I'm already thinking about what to pack.

So quickly, it looks like they have a fall 24 collection on this top banner, the hunt for premium spice, for those of you who like pumpkin spice. Let's click on this actual collection. So the hunting collection, apparel, outerwear, and gear. Okay. I don't know if I would hunt in any of the things in this top row, but I mean, those things are cool. And now we're talking about a little bit things you could take into the field.

So there's a Yeti, there's a Tumblr, a rambler, or a tumbler, I should say, some hats. And, okay, so a lot of this looks like apparel. I am going to point people towards again. Coming down, scrolling through the coffee roast and heading over to the gear section, I would start thinking about what can you take into the field. Are you going to take instant coffee? Do you want to take cold brew? Do you want to take something that needs to seep or steep, I should say, do you want to take something that you're going to make in the field or ready to drink those type of stuff? So in the gear section here, this is everything you need to make coffee and everything you need to drink coffee out of. Go through it at your leisure. Hunting is awesome.

Hunting without coffee is not as awesome. So head over to black rifle coffee.com. Think about it before you have to go. Don't make these orders, and I say this from personal experience, five to ten minutes after realizing you're late and then realizing you leave in three days and the shipping can't get to you anyway. So plan ahead, black rifle coffee.com.

All right, my guest today, his name is Andy Milburn. And I'm just going to read this bio, a portion of this bio, because otherwise I would mess it up. Andrew Milburn retired from the Marine Corps in 2019 as the deputy commander of Special Operations Command Central. The headquarters responsible for all U.S. Special Operations in the Middle East. As an infantry and special operations officer, he has had operational command at every rank to include leading the Marine Raider Regiment and multinational Special Operations Task Force given the mission of defeating ISIS in Iraq. Since retiring, he has written a critically acclaimed memoir when The Tempest gathers and articles for a number of publications to include, include the Atlantic, USA Today, The Hill, War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, and

task and purpose. He is on the adjunct faculty of the Joint Special Operations University and teaches classes on leadership, planning, ethics, command, and control, mission, command, risk, special operations, and irregular warfare at U.S. and British military schools. He is a co-host of the Modern War Institute's A Regular War Podcast and A Regular War Initiative. Went to law school in the UK and then came over the United States and enlisted in the Marine Corps. What not mentioned in here is that he was leading the Mozart group in Ukraine as well, which we get into over the next three hours.

Episode number 352 with Andy Milburn. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. I'm not good with electronics. I do one of few things. Turn it off and back on or just throw it away. That's all I got. Good on you for handling all of this.

Well, it didn't start like this. it started years ago with a box, maybe the size of my laptop that you can see over there, that a brand bought for me. There's no video. Two microphones that I had to have little two and a half pound plates that I would put on top of them to hold them still. And a little recording device that was maybe the size of that postcard right there. And this is probably the sixth or seventh iteration. So very, very slowly.

Yeah. But it was a one-man show for... How did you get started? Like, YouTube videos or something? Or did you have someone who... I got lucky. I got lucky. Before I started a podcast, I was introduced to Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan has a man who works for him named Jamie, who knows a little bit about this type of stuff. And I asked him a lot of questions. A little bit about, yeah. Yeah, he's a full-on, tech. technician. And then Google truly, for people I thought, oh, it must be nice. You can reach out to him. Yes, it is nice. However,

you could start anything like this on Google if you wanted to. There's not any secrets. And it's more of a choose-your-own adventure. Some people do podcasts who have only one camera. It could be a long or a wide angle. Some people do the camera switching. We have two.

I experimented with having three and then realized if you have an individual one on the guest, you almost never use the wide one unless you want to get a little artistic with it. But you don't have to do that. I know people who do podcasts on iPhones. Yeah. So it really is.

I mean, and I'm not just saying this, but I'm because I'm on your podcast, but yours has, I think it's got a really slick look, but it's a natural slick look. It's difficult to describe. So it's a very, there are no, when you watch clear at heart, at least the ones I've seen, there's, there's no kind of disruption or distraction. Oh, I just let it go. Yeah. No, I think it's good.

No, I think that's good. But it's still, you can tell, you know, I don't, my only knowledge of podcasts is as an ignorant co-host, right? But you can tell that a lot of work has gone into, or gone into the background on this. Man, I tell you what, that. A lot of experience. I would like to call it tuition payments. Experience isn't doing the wrong things. My God, I don't have a box big enough for the cables that I bought that were wrong or the boards that I bought that were wrong.

thought I needed something and I realized what I got. It's because I didn't research it enough. It didn't fit or it didn't do what I thought it was going to do. There's some volume under the curve. Yeah. And I also don't want to make it overly produced, even though I have nothing against people who do that. I just think sit down and have a conversation. Most people listen only anyway.

If you look at the actual data and I'm not sure if your podcast is the same. but the listener-only volume is many, many multiples of those that watch. Yeah. Which makes sense because you could do other things while you're just listening, which is how I consume the content. I'll do it if I'm mowing the lawn. That's right, yeah. And watching two dudes talk, actually watching them is interesting only to a certain point.

What I have found for people who, even if they're watching, it's oftentimes a sub-window on their... where they're doing work. And if they hear something that interests them, they'll actually go back and watch it. And I don't know necessarily that would be per person. But if there's something compelling that they think that whether it be an interaction or a gesture or whatever it is, then they'll actually rewind and go watch it.

So even a lot of the people watching are actually just actively listening. It's bizarre. That's a really interesting observation. And I have, yeah, and I don't know if it has any value whatsoever. Right. And it may vary according to kind of generation, right? Oh, I'm sure it does. Younger generation may be very visual.

My father, who is 76 and has the same understanding of technology as the cup of coffee you have in front of you, is YouTube only. And I tried to explain to him that there is a podcast app where he could just listen. And I mean, that flew right over his head. So. Yeah. But he is used to watch, he loves rugby. He watches YouTube all, I was going to say all day long, but that's not true because sometimes he golfs. So it's, you know, rugby in sports, but he uses that mostly on YouTube.

So that's, I think it's just what you're the most familiar with. He likes, he likes rugby? Oh, he loves rugby. He coached rugby. Did he grow up playing it? I don't think he grew up playing it. He found it in his time in the service. Oh, okay.

And he is played for, I mean, he was playing in college. I know he was playing when he met my mom. He's played for the vast majority of his life. I mean, he joined the military when he was 18. Yeah. He was in the Navy? He was in the Navy. First squadron of patrol boats to go to Vietnam, the Mark ones.

Really? Because I'm sure you've been on the Mark V. That was the last iteration that I was on. Mark ones with the first ones with the jacuzzi engines or the propulsion engines. By jacuzzi, like the ones that throw up the... There's just no propeller. It's just, you know, the induction and they spin. it out.

It's, yeah, jacuzzi. Yeah, yeah. What I just, yeah, jacuzzi is a horrible example of that. No, no, but I know what you mean. Yeah. And he said they really didn't have the design nailed and I'd like to fail at an opportunity. I've never been in May Kong Delta, but apparently there is some detritus in there, some leaves, some foliage. Yeah.

And he said oftentimes, he was a 50 cow gunner. No kidding. On the front of a mark one. He said two foot pedals and two butterflies. Job to have, though. I don't think he wore earpro because he can't hear shit. I mean, you never see it in the movies, do you? No.

He said he used to defoliate jungle with just twin 50s. Oh. Which, damn, that sounds awesome. Yeah, that's 20 years. Was that, I mean, that was early on, mid-60s? Oh, man, I don't want him to speak. I know it was in the 60s. I think so.

Yeah. I'd have to double check with him. What a great, great background. But anyway, so then it went on to playing rugby. Very interesting, because that wasn't usual in his generation of Americans, right? He was coaching the University of Santa Cruz or University of California, Santa Cruz women's rugby team. I think for the last half a decade at a minimum when he was still living in Santa Cruz. He just moved up here probably a year and a half ago.

Oh, here? DeCalpa. Yeah, he lives here. Oh, that's awesome. Successfully extracted him. Oh, that's awesome. Good on you. I made him feel like it was his choice.

You know, that's a great way to pay your father back. I mean, I'm being serious, right? He visited a bunch. We lived in Missoula when I was very young. So he's familiar with Montana. He is familiar with parts of it. We lived down in Missoula because my mom gave him an ultimatum. He was really struggling with his experience in Vietnam.

And she said, his words, he's told me this. and he's talked openly about it, so I feel comfortable talking about it. Essentially, either you need to handle your shit or I'm leaving with the kids. I don't know how they landed on Missoula, but he interfaced with the VA up here and actually some of the local tribes.

And they were doing, you know, the modern era morning routine of sauna and coal plunge. No kidding. We're talking sweat houses into the water. Yeah. In a communal setting, so rolling in. That's fascinating stuff. So he, but,

The VA wasn't referring him to that, right? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. I actually think, though, it might have been a combined program. Yeah. And that might be combined, maybe not from the VA, but people at the VA were involved with the other group or they just knew about it. Yeah.

But so we came up here for two years. And, you know, they stayed married until my mom passed. So it worked. I would say it did. Yeah. For sure. I tell you what, his generation and their, response or how they were treated coming back from war, man.

What a difference than the modern era, as I'm sure you've experienced as well. Yeah, you know, I'm a cynic about fickle, just kind of the fickleness of the American public. I mean, I God love them. That's why we all joined the military. But yes, absolutely. We were so much lucky than the Vietnam generation. But at the same time, we weren't that much luckier because what really matters, aren't the thank you for your service and all that.

It's affecting policy. It's telling you a congressman, hey, what the fuck are we doing here? You know, or asking the right questions. And during Vietnam, enough of the American population were connected to someone who was serving that it energized them to do that. But, you know, in our generation, that doesn't seem to. That doesn't seem to motivate people. same way. I wonder if it, I think the country at this point, I mean, obviously, population size

growing, you know, the government is growing at a spectacular rate as well. I don't know if it's possible to put that cart back in, or the horseback in the barn to have that level of attachment. Yeah. Or if it's even something we want as a society. I truly, I had, I was having a conversation with Tulsi Gabbard, and I didn't realize it would require a change to the Constitution, which I'm fine with. But I think those who are in a position to vote as to whether or not we go to war have to nominate a member of their family to go or they have to go. And you can't have to use adoption as your way out of that. I think it would change. I think it would change. 100% it would change their calculus. I, you know, and that's not, I'm going to sound like a

complete nerd right now. So I did philosophy at college. And I go back time to time to read Plato's Republic, which is, you know, it's kind of a seminal work, if you like, on democracy, right? And I think about, you know, I read about the kind of the obligations to the state of the fact that it becomes increasingly dangerous as you have just one segment of the population that are guardians of that state and they become separate from the culture, right? And it does concern me sometimes that we are heading that way a little bit. I'm not being, you know, I'm not being self-pidious. I love my time.

I mean, let's be honest, most of us joined the military too for selfish reasons. And it was an awesome time. And we got to serve with the best people this country produces. I don't have a moment of regret. So I'm not a woe as me. But, yes, I would like to see more of a kind of connection between, committing, I mean, today is the third anniversary, as you know, a fall of Afghanistan, right? So this topic's probably close to all of our emotions.

But yes, I would like to see a closer correlation to, you know, policy and concerns of deliberate decisions to commit blood and treasure. And, you know, a feedback loop on that, which was lacking over. for, as we know, two decades in Afghanistan. Have you seen any of the videos where they're doing the celebratory parades using all the equipment that we left behind? Yeah. Fuck. But, you know, Andy, I may not.

In fact, I was on a Middle Eastern channel being interviewed by that. And I was asked, don't you find that embarrassing? And I said, look, I, you know, it's disheartening. I don't find it embarrassing. I'm not embarrassed. by, you know, my service in Afghanistan, and no one should be, you know, we, because behind that veil, all this other shit's happening, you know, and, and what we did in the end was, it wasn't just about defeating al-Qaeda, and maybe, maybe collaterally, but in any case,

it benefited women, it benefited, you know, all kinds of people, as we know within Afghanistan, we know that because we serve that, right? And these buffoons on TV have destroyed that, but they're destroying their own people. It doesn't matter. So why should we be embarrassed by that? They're the ones who should be embarrassed. Well, I don't think you can hang on on the warfighter either. Exactly.

I mean, I hang what happened in Afghanistan on the people who dove just headlong into a plan that they could. I would have to imagine and clearly see that was going to fail. And they, oh, we made a commitment to be out by that day. Okay. Read the fucking room. it's not it's not going to go the way that we wanted to this country is going to collapse on itself look what we'd have to leave behind let's move the date you know it and the warfighter the person with the boots on the ground I think one of the biggest things a lot of people in the modern era struggle with who served over there is that feeling of either embarrassment or I wasted my time the blood and treasure like you said I think those are really there's a very real things and every time I've talked to somebody who feels that way I describe it almost in exactly the same way that you did look at the impact that we did have. And also, I mean...

Look at our intent was. And I was on the lowest rung of the tactical ladder. I wasn't making any strategic plans. I wasn't even planning operationally. I'm like... That's something you could be proud of now. But you know, like, people don't understand there's... Yeah, there's a strategic, operational, and tactical warfare.

And I'm like at the bottom rung of the bottom, as were almost everybody, you did the best that you could. And we did have an impact. You know, the two decades of women being able to actually be women and pursue edging. That, I think, will have a long-term shift in Afghanistan eventually. I think that will come full circle. But when you look at the withdrawal, I hang that on senior military leaders and the people who are in politics who made those decisions, not the people who had the boots on the ground because they didn't have any control.

Yeah, no, 100%. I think our culture in the U.S. military helped propagate that. I'm not saying that's because the culture is wrong. or not, but we have this can-do culture. It's always, I mean, can you imagine a brigade commander saying at the end of his one-year tour, you know, I don't think things are any the better. I really don't. Not if he wanted another tour.

Exactly. I could see somebody doing that, and then all of a sudden, their trajectory of their career really is going to flatten off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, of course, we have built into and the way we collect assessments on ourself. and on our own progress reflect that. So it always shows the fact that we've gone from red to green, right, on the PowerPoint slides over the course of a brigade tour.

And so our culture propagated that. I'm not blaming the individuals because I was part of that culture. I was a battalion commander who thought that I turned one part of shithole empire province into a Jeffersonian democracy, you know, in seven months. I mean, you know, I mean, I, of course. So I was part of that. I don't regret it. I'm very...

I did the best job I could. Exactly. And I tell guys, and I say this honestly after, you know, not an easy journey, but I, you know, I tell guys, hey, not a moment of your life was wasted far from it. You know, think about the people you served with. And you know what? Their lives weren't wasted either because they died, they died for something they believed in, and they died in the company of people who loved them. You know, and how many people can say that, right? And we all die in the end.

So if you're going to die, that's not a bad way to die. And that's the way I tell people who've lost friends. I don't tell the families that because it's a little bit of a kind of a worry ethos. But that's, I do tell them. I do tell families they died among people who loved them. And I'm not exaggerating. You know, that's true. For sure.

Love them honestly to a degree that may not be understood by, some of those families. Yeah, exactly. Because in some place, cases, you know, it's a replacement family. And we know all that. So the fact that Afghanistan, to a lesser extent, Iraq turned into such debacles, I don't think undercuts their sacrifice. Yes, it brings shame to the politicians and the senior military officers who basically lied or denied the truth and allowed the these things to happen. And I absolutely agree with you, getting back to your point, that, yes, there should be, there should be some sinews, some connecting file skin in the game for those who make these decisions. Do you think it's too late? Hemingway said no one should make decision

to go to war who has not fought in one. You know, I mean, that's, so deeply. You know, I mean, how can you, yeah, it's not practical, but absolutely. It's not practical, but. It's not practical, conceptually, I don't see how we would allow people who have never touched warfare to make those decisions. Yeah. Or, you know, and I'm not calling out administration to people, but, you know, the current National Security Advisor, it's still, it still just sticks in my throat when I hear him kind of dismiss the fall of Kabul as though it was a blip on the radar, you know, as though it was, And, you know, I don't want to be defined by that, he said, because that would be a stain on his Ivy League, you know, to think tank to administration career, rather than taking responsibility, partial responsibility. It wasn't his loan.

Of course it wasn't, but he, you know, for what happened. Do you think it's true? Why would, what would persuade him to do so? Maybe, maybe, by the way, I'm sorry, it isn't the third anniversary of the four. It's a third anniversary of the death of Abbegaia. you know, maybe if he'd had a son or nephew or known someone who'd been killed in that explosion, maybe his worldview would be totally different. But most people who graduate from Ivy League schools in this country don't serve in the military,

and in fact don't even know anyone who serves in the military. I mean, statistically, you can look that up, I mean, as far as – and that is – that's concerning, too, that there is a separation between what is perceived as the intellectual elite, that is tied to with kind of, I hate to use the term ruling class, but that's the way it works in this country, right? And those who serve in the military. Do you think it's too late to hold anybody accountable for the withdrawal? I mean, it is, so it's just past three years of the fall, I guess.

I feel like the opportunity is missed. Again, I'm not familiar with the military at the higher levels. I mean, even brigade, like that was era. I never even wanted to touch for clarity. But if you don't hold anybody accountable, you know, what does that say too? What does that say to the people who are serving? What does that say to the current leadership? What does that say for the trajectory going forward?

But also, is three years too much? Because I think, I mean, at least in the SEAL community, about every two years, the officers are going to be rolling on to their. So now they're a billet in a half past where they probably were, unless they were early on in that role when it occurred. I don't even know if it's possible. Yeah, it's such a tough question, but, you know, honestly, I, I would like to see, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying, I'd like to see justice, no, but I would like to see

a seminal work, right, widely read, so not an investigation about what did go wrong. And how? Yeah, and how, right? And that is more important to me, you know, naming names. and everything. Okay, so because there are a lot of guys who are already rewriting their part in history, a lot of the senior military officers have come out with books in the last couple of years since the fall of Afghanistan, you know, and so there's other stories out there.

So I'd like to see something come together. So, yeah, listen, you know, successive four stars did not, you know, did not do these things. I mean, you name it, everything that went wrong. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, as far as accountability and any real sense beyond that, no, no, I don't think that's practical, I think, because we're going to get caught in just the nature of political system we're in now. It's going to become political, right? Yeah. Whereas, you know, we, I suppose with our background, just want to see accountability. We don't give a shit. What administration we just want to see to include wearing our own. own uniform, right, who should have called Wolf. He should have said, hey, the emperor isn't wearing any fucking clothes.

And there were plenty of guys wearing uniform, not just four-stein rank, but I mean, you know, senior, I mean, senior officers up and down, yeah. Yeah. Who contributed to that along the way. And I separate that, kind of that deliberate type of deception from what I described earlier, which is kind of the cultural piece of looking, just noticing the things that you want to see, right? The brigade commander is saying, hey, we're improving our area. He's not, he's, you know, he's not a deceptive guy. He's not a liar. He's very channeled in his thinking, and he's a product of

his culture, our culture, which limits him in a counterinsurgency because he cannot be 100% honest, right? He could, career trajectory might suffer. But you know what I'm saying? But you know what I'm I mean, it's that anyway, it's, I worry that if that seminal document is not created, I think the biggest threat to that is what does that say to the people in the military when it comes to accountability? What does that say to a senior leader who at this point, if you're a senior leader in the military, you've been in the military a while, you understand what had happened there. and you saw people, I'm going to use the term get away with it, and nothing happened. What does that tell you moving forward?

Like, is this the expectation, do whatever the fuck you want? And it doesn't matter because nothing's going to happen. You're at a certain rank. You're a, you know, beyond reproach. That's not a path that I want military members and leaders to be on. There needs to be a book along the lines of dereliction of duty, right? McMaster's, HR McMaster, subsequently, by the way, who's just written another book, but subsequently national security advisor, but he wrote a book about Vietnam,

basically the way that the military establishments, you know, the flag officer level, contributed to, I mean, it really did contribute to disaster, Vietnam being what it was, by essentially lying to successive presidents, right? But that was, but it took a while, you know, I mean, there were all kinds of investigations. And Vietnam was a, it was a national trauma in a way that Afghanistan was not, right? I know there are going to be a lot of people here then say, what do you mean Afghanistan wasn't a trauma? Of course it was a trauma. It was a trauma for everyone who served there.

It was a trauma for everyone who wore uniform. You know, it's still, it's still a trauma. But for the nation, it was not. Vietnam was a national trauma, you know, and I think it reset thinking and people took notice and there was a push for accountability. But Afghanistan was just a blip on the radar, you know, as Sullivan said, I don't want this to define my administration, whatever. I wonder what role the draft played in that. I think 100%. Because at the national level, people realize they might be drawn into it.

That's right. Afghanistan, they're like, yeah, Bob down the street, his cousin is over there. It doesn't mean much. I think that absolutely was the difference. Yeah. Yeah, when you might potentially have skin in the game, it's interesting how much more you pay attention. Yeah, yeah. And especially, can you imagine a world in which there are no kind of, there's no room for class distinctions, right?

So there's no college deferments. There's no, I mean, no shit. You are 18. You're going into the military. So an egalitarian draft, which Vietnam wasn't necessarily, you know, a lot of her. But there were some, what's the way to put this, opportunities to escape it. Yeah, certainly, yeah. I know.

How did you find your way to the U.S.? Oh, me? Yeah. Yeah, speaking of drafts. You've lived like nine lives. Speaking, yeah, I evaded the draft the other way. So I was Yeah

To cut a long story short Actually a very short story I had a basketball scholarship And I got over here And I realized how short I was And I ended up joining them very cool Does basketball in the UK meet like soccer Means rugby?

Okay just means straight about it To make sure it's not like code for No that was absolutely A real joke Absolute bullshit No I um Yeah so I always

wanted to join the military. Don't worry, Andy. I won't make this a very lengthy story. I always wanted to join the military. I was growing up in the UK, semi-harden British Army, and then I broke my leg playing rugby at college, which happened a fair amount of times back then. It's a full contact book. Yeah. But it was a bad break, and the British Army said, hey, listen, you know, they gave me kind of 4F the lowest physical category. So I couldn't even. You know, it's basically, no, you can't even come back. You're disqualified physically. And so I was a U.S. citizen, I'm a U.S. citizen, John Ash.

Even back then? Yeah, my mother, because my mother was American. Okay, so I never, yeah, I have never been to the U.K. I mean, I've never been to the U.S., but I had this passport, which was awesome. Okay. Because it enabled me, after graduating from law school, it enabled me to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. as a private. Why not go be a lawyer?

Yeah, well, no, yeah. That was my ultimate plan, but I did have a plan. I had a five-year, I got a place in what we call the ends of court, you know, if you're going to be a court, a lawyer and call what we call a barrister in the UK. Anyway, bottom line is I had five years in which I could take a sabbatical and do something else, and they would keep my place open. That's a hell of a sabbatical. So I thought I would join the Marine Corps as a sabbatical and come back and then practice law.

Yeah, that was the plan. So a four-year enlistment fitted in fairly nicely. What year did you enlist? In 1987. Okay. So that's why I could do it in the UK. There was a U.S. Marine recruiter in London. Really?

Well, it was during the Cold War. Remember, Andy. So there were all these U.S. high schools across Europe. So in Europe, for instance, in Frankfurt and in London, you had armed forces recruiters. And you'd have kids from high schools on U.S. Air Force bases, whatever. That makes sense. Yeah, they recruit from that. So anyway, I walked into this Marine Master Sergeant's Office as a law school graduate back in 1987 and enlisted.

But no, I wrung him dry. I drove a hard bargain. and I was guaranteed infantry. Okay, anyone who's a Marine, who's listening to that, is laughing uproarously because... Is everybody guaranteed infantry? Oh, yeah. Back then, if you were in the dep, in the pool, right?

And you showed up to bootcam, and they drug tested you, and you protested... You got infantry. If you were positive, it was like, all right, we're going to give you one chance, but you no longer have this coveted, you know, whatever it is, helicopter mechanic, Billy, you are going to...

the infantry. But anyway, I thought that it was something that I had to fight for. So, you know, that was bargain chip number one. Number two, I was guaranteed PFC at a boot camp. So as I explained later to my parents, law degree, did count for something. Is PFC like an E2? Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's something. In the rank call, that's something. I'm not taking it from it. I'm just not familiar with the Marine Corps rank structure. I know. I mean, it's a totally foreign concept, you know, for instance, to Air Force guys who graduate from boot camp as E-7s with a full deck of medals.

Yeah. But, yeah, it was, yeah, you too. Anyway. So that was it. So Paris Island, which is boot camp for the United States Marine Corps, if you are east of the Mississippi, sorry, I'm not that. good with American geographies. I was trying to remember. Parasilience, where you end up, or if you happen to be enlist from Europe. Okay. And 1987 was the year that boy, George was a big hit, and the United States, I remember that because... Some people would argue he still is.

Yeah, I remember that because that was what the drill instructors associated with me, you know, Brit, as I walk in the door. Yes. Mark of there, various other things. And for me, I mean, you can imagine. I mean, you know, even for an American kid showing up a parasite, even if he's from the South, even if, you know, and I say even if he's from the South, because back then most instructors seem to be from the South, or they developed the Southern accent and this weird way of speaking that was kind of peculiar to the South and very,

very difficult to understand, right? but even the kids who were from the South were struggling to understand what the hell was being yelled at them. So you can imagine a Brit coming into that. It's just supposed to be chaos. Of course it's intentional, yeah. And I couldn't understand, you know,

I've been brought up in the UK and they were doing things like ending sentences and prepositions, like where is Melbourne at, you know, which I'm taught you never do. And so how was I to know my name was involved in that sentence? Listen.

This caused a great deal of confusion, as you can imagine. We're a bunch of savages that broke away from the homeland year ago, years ago, all right? We do shit differently over here. How did you go from enlisting in the Marine Corps to Brigade Commander? This is a, I mean, again, you've lived like nine lives. Yeah, I, you know, honestly, Andy, and this is not false modesty. I, you know, I could have been relieved when I say, oh, it's luck and all that.

I mean, seriously, it was luck. And so substantively what I mean by that is I could have been, I did things either mistakes or things, you know, not crimes, but just dumb things I did or things I didn't do that I should have. I could have been relieved by anyone's standards, probably at every rank. You know, every time I held some kind of command. I think that's true of almost everybody, though. Yeah, but not everyone understands that, right? They should, well, I think anybody who's ever served in a leadership role, specifically in the military, if they don't understand that. They don't progress as a leader.

They can't. Because it's okay, it's okay that you, that you fucked up as long as you, as long as you, okay. And I got it. That I'm holding on. I just held on by my fingernails there. I'm not going to do that again, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you wrap your arms around the mistake and you learn from it.

as opposed to my favorite leaders who ignore the fact that they're capable of making a mistake. Yeah. And then I start dreaming about things like fratricide. Well, you know, no, I'm not pausing about fratricide. I'm not saying I ever did it. I'm just saying I can understand where it had a place. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, out of pure pragmatism.

Totally. Yeah. And self-preservation. I think that, you know, I mean, seriously, you know, this isn't me just waxingly recall about leadership. The leaders that I know who have fucked up, who have become toxic leaders, that's by that, you know, I mean so bad that either they've been relieved

or in my mind, okay, it's my opinion, they should have been, because, yes, leadership's not a popularity competition. But if you get a unit, I can't speak for the seals, but Marines generally want to like the guy who's leading them. I'll tell you that's the same. Yeah. Yeah. They want to. Now, you know, and they will bitch about decisions and everything.

But in the end, they want to look for good things in him. They really do. And so if you've got a whole unit that hates a particular guy, something is wrong. I don't care. He can say this is not a popularity competition all he wants. particularly if it's among the officers, you know, and I have seen that, and I've seen that a number of times in, you know, in the Marine Corps. Yeah.

And that guy has gone on to higher things. So toxic leadership, sadly, does still work sometimes. But for those guys, yes, the unfailingly, what they, you know, they're not the sort of guy to pause and reflect. And they would regard it as weakness. And paradoxically, they are very well. weak leaders because of it. You know, they don't.

You know, my thoughts on leadership have shifted the farther I've been out of the military. I actually think, and I need to say this before I even actually go any further, the best leaders that I ever worked with and for were in the military. But so were the worst ones. And I actually think that the military environment, because of some of the restrictions on the people that you are leading, can actually facilitate. toxic leadership because you can't quit. There's punitive measures that can be levied upon you if you try to buck the horse. You're working in an environment, Marine Corps, right? Everybody's a

rifleman. You're working overseas, Afghanistan or Iraq, potentially lethal consequences, a rank-based environment. You can behave in manners in that environment. You can behave in manners in that environment where if you tried that shit in the civilian world, and I've seen this enough time now, it spins off and explodes before it gets to the point that it does in the military, because the people working for you have a choice. And I'm not saying one is causal of the other, but it's, I almost think because of that nature of the people that you are just being an iron fist on top of, because they can't do anything and can't go anywhere, you can get away with that bullshit. And also the nature of your subject population, you know, 18 to 22, they haven't

experienced leadership before. You are what they know. So if you're a shitty leader, a lot of them are thinking, okay, this must just be the way it is, or this is the way the Marine Corps is, or the Navy is. And that's the, you know, that's really one of the tragic thing, where the other tragic thing about shitty military leadership, but of course it directly, you know, results on loss of life. But the other part is it just disillusions in peacetime disillusioned so many young men and women. And retention. And yeah, and we wonder why in the Marine Corps for a while we had 30% retention rate. I can probably tell people why we had a 30, because I was a private. You know, I was a private and I went through that whole process. You know, I know it sounds very

snowflake to say dehumanizing, but it is. It's meant to be dehumanizing. But you can't do that with this generation. You know, you've got a shift. I mean, listen to me say that, but I mean it. Yeah. And it didn't really work with my generation either, by the way. You know, it. It only works inside of those constraints. Exactly. Yeah. Where you don't give them a left and right maneuverability. Yeah. I mean, what do you, you have a shitty leader over the top of you. You're two years into a four-year Marine Corps contract. You're not just going to go AWOL knowing the potential consequences of that. Exactly.

You're probably going to suck it up, do your four years get out and tell everybody how much the Marine Corps sucks or you're going to model that shitty leadership in your own life because that was your first exposure to it. And because it was a Marine Corps, that must be. Yeah. And then because of that poor modeling, when you fail in the civilian world, you're going to blame everybody else but yourself because you were modeling. And I've seen it.

I've seen it now enough times where people. just lift and shift. They try to take a pure military leadership model and drop it in a civilian organization. And it is like an atom coming apart. Electrons are just flying out into space if they get a poor leader or somebody who has toxic leadership traits. The best leaders, I think, is more about the person. If you lift and shift that person, I think they can do great things because... It's not about techniques. You're 100% right. It's about the, it's about kind of the intuitive decision making when it comes to people. The EQ?

Yeah, that you develop in the military. But you've got to, you're right, you can't apply that template to the civilian world. The thing that it teaches you is to read people, not read people in a bad way, but to. I would say connect. Connect. Exactly. That's a great word. Engage, connect with people.

And that is the skill that works in the civilian world. Not, you know, get up at five, get online, you know. Even with that skill, though, You have to round the edges in an environment where people have choice. Absolutely. Because in the military, who gives this shit while you're there? You're there. Like I was telling you on the walk over here from the coffee shop.

You know, we have 16 to 18-year-olds who might be their first job, or it's their job in the summer, or they're filling a gap, or whatever it is. You want to come over the top on that person to make their life hell? They just don't show up. Which is what would happen probably to the E2 in the Marine Corps if there wasn't punitive measures associated with them not showing up. Can you even imagine? Oh, my God.

Oh, retention would be a solid 3%. It makes your hair turn gray. But I mean, you know, the same holds true all the way back in marine history. I mean, choice has never been, you know, you don't want, you don't want to offer too much. I mean, there's the absolute truth in that, yeah. So how did it go from, like walk me through your career? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, though.

Oh, no. That was a great diversion. So I applied, I forget what the, oh, enlisted commissioning program. I reached the dizzy heights of corporal. E4? E4. Now, you may scoff, Andy. You may scoff.

No, let me tell you, seriously, in Rancourt, okay? First of all, that is, that's an Army E7. Not quite, but it is. As far as quality of life? No, not as far as quality of it. As far as responsibility in E4. Probably Navy E-9 then. I wasn't going to say that at all.

I'm only three feet away from you. Where was I hitting on this? Oh, yes. No, I mean, I'm being serious. It was the hardest rank I ever had. Really? Hardest rank because in the circumstances, what happens is you are in, you're just a, you know, a member of a fire team. I was an infantry unit, but we were on what was called barracks duties.

so we were doing security force, you know, we were guarding a Navy base because the Navy guys needed guarding by Marines. Always, at all times. Listen, I always tell people, the Marines are technically part of the Navy, but they're the men's department. Anyway, totally to struggle.

Okay, where were we? You were guarding Navy guys. No, no, no, no, before that. You were walking me through you had made. Corporal was a hardest job. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so you go from just being, like, the junior guy.

his junior guy because I'm meritoriously promoted, which was, you know, I had appeared before us a board. You don't choose to appear before a board. You've got a sergeant major who goes, hey, get that fucking Milburn. He's got the strange accent. They're going to think he's bright, you know, clean him up, put him in uniform, get him in front of the board because we need a win. You know, I need a guy to make NCO of the court. So Milburn does all that. He gets fed the questions beforehand. Plus, you go up there. Is there a statute of limitations? on this. Plus, you had already graduated law school. They don't, like, they're loading the gun up. They're just, like, loading the gun up and pointing you in the right direction.

Exactly. Hey, this kid just recently graduated boot camp, but he's, my boy's wicked smart. Anyway, so I was like NCO, you know, I was, whatever it was, last corporal of the quarter, so I ultimately got NCO. Well, you can imagine how the older, you know, the guys who've been in the unit for like two years feel to have now, this, now they're in middle. Melbourne's fire team. And they've been in the unit for 18 months and Melbourne just arrived, you know, the other day. So, and you are right where the rubber meets the road, as you know, as an NGO. I mean, there's no, you can't fall back on authority. You, I mean, it's you. You're making the sausage. Yeah. And so that was really hard, really hard. And, and I fucked up, you know, a couple of

times badly and could have, you know, could have been demoted from corporal for that. But nevertheless, I learned from it and nothing since. No leadership task has been quite difficult is that. Because, you know, there's, look, I mean, there's always, as you go up the NCO ranks, there's always, there's kind of more infrastructure around you and have more. But there was very raw because I was working with the guys who I had been, to just a, you know, a few days before. Wow, that's a tough transition.

Yeah. Yeah, especially the newer guy. So how many years did you do enlisted? Four? No, it's two and a half. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah. So I made corporate arms, sorry. And then I went to OCS after that.

So OCS was kind of like boot camp all over again, but it's much more, you know, physical. But to me, OCS was fun after boot camp, you know, it was. Because the physical part was actually, you know, it's an ass kicker, but it's actually fun. It was, whereas boot camp, it's just really slow and boring. And I, you know how it is when you get used to kind of boot camp or that mentality. It becomes a little bit easier to laugh it off. So, yeah, OCS was totally different experience. went into went through the infantry officer course which is um in quoneco

Virginia it's about a 12 week course really by the way I really really good school you know guy and I there's not just me saying guys who've been through lots of other schools who've gone through the marine infantry officer course I learned I learned a ton there I mean I there's stuff that I learned in that course they still think about and it's not just about suffering, although there was plenty of that, you know, I mean, it was, because it was, you probably remember this. I mean, it was like post-Fietnam mentality was still, you're just going to make people suffer and they all, there's some intrinsic value in suffering, right? Just make them really fucking cold and hungry for days on end and they'll come out of that much better leaders.

It's interesting you mentioned that. I mean, I was raised in my initial training in the SEAL community on Vietnam specific tactics. I mean, the first boots I ever got issued, jungle boots with the little holes on the inside to train water. But the people who were training me, they were even probably a generation away. So the people who, the people who trained me, the generation that trained them likely was trained by people with direct experience from Vietnam. So the Vietnam era people understood when we're in how the suffering came in. but if you think about it from a school perspective, then you go one generation away and you teach that to the next school.

Oh, it just becomes intrinsically valuable. But you forget why. Why? Because the real life lesson is, so the first generation still can go talk to those guys. And they can answer that why. Why do we do this? But that wasn't my cohort of instructors. Then there was another one from the second generation to the third.

And this still wasn't my cohort of instructors. And at that point, I think there's less touchpoint. Then there's the fourth generation of instructors, which were the ones that instructed me. Yeah, and the equity of the day, the currency of the day was suffering. Yeah. And I bet this is a hypothesis that a lot of them would struggle, if not be able to actually articulate where, when and why that suffering came in on those things. It just became the metric that was important. I'll tell you why I agree with you just from personal experience because I compare

you know I'm not that old but when I went through infantry training as a private 1987 88 so our you know our company gunny and above we're all Vietnam veterans right I mean yeah you know I mean all our stuff interiors with Vietnam veterans most of the lot of the instructors yeah and at the tail end though they're probably very very senior. Yeah. And I remember actually, you know, I remember lots of, I mean, suffering at IOC, but I do remember them sharing that. The Y. And the Y. I do remember that because I remember, I just have good memories of those dudes. When those people leave, the Y is gone. Yeah. But the suffering remains. That kind of was my experience when I went on to the infantry officer

course with the Marine Corps. Now you've got guys who were trained or, you know, trained by Vietnam. guys. And there was a lot of that. Yeah. It was. And that cycle will repeat itself in the modern day military now that the sustained conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are gone. Do you think? Well, I mean, I talk with a few guys who are still in. And the people in my cohort are timing out. Like most of the people who served when I, I've been out now for 11 years. And I did 17 when I was in. Even the people that I trained are now in senior roles, both enlisted and officer. Post-combat? Post-combat, yeah.

And now the operational temple... How is that... I'm sorry, how's that affecting the community? I mean, what are you thoughts generally? Well, the direct combat knowledge and experience is decreasing. And I think, much like after Vietnam, I think probably the sharpest that the blade ever was was probably towards the tail end of the conflict,

when they were able to evolve and refine. But the farther you are away from pulling the knife out of the sheath, you know, I think some of the lessons are lost. I don't think it's intentional. But I think you lose a little bit of that tactical edge. And then, I mean, I look at the SEAL community after 9-11. If I'm being objectively honest, we won because we were centuries ahead of the enemies we were fighting. Not because we were amazing tacticians, because we were training on Vietnam skill sets.

you know, jungle warfare in, you know, J-bad and A-bad? Not exactly the same thing. Like, what do you mean I have to go up there? And this is the appropriate angle for the fucking there. I'm like, I didn't train any of this. Yeah. But we learned, right? We learned and we adapted.

And I would say. Thankfully, slowly. I mean, for us. Same here. But at a velocity faster than the people that we, we were fighting. Yeah. We had so many immense advantages over the top of them. But I'd say the middle of those conflicts were probably the sharpest. And I think if that's the execution of your job, the less you get to do that job, I think the blade doles a little bit. Yeah. I think the military

is still incredibly capable. I agree. And then they'll be, I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say eventually at some point in time, they'll get pressed again. And they'll probably have a little bit of time of picking up speed. And they're going to be okay. I think that's just kind of the way that it goes. I think it goes in peaks and valleys. Yeah. Yeah, in between all those, you know, I know it sounds an old foggy thing to say, but all those lessons kind of get lost along the way.

It's funny because it's hard to imagine a military that does not deploy to combat. And I think, you know, because that was so much of our experience, so it takes kind of a totally different mindset to imagine that. And yeah, I think, you know, I just think, here's why I think it matters. And it's not that I think, oh, we should always be at war to ensure that we have that experience.

But the reason why that gap and matters is when we went to, you know, I talked about, we both talked about the fact, the legacy of Vietnam, the fact that, you know, even your generation, which is after mine, kind of grew up the lessons of Vietnam. And then, you know, from Marine Infantry perspective, we go to OIF one, right? the march up. And yes, we've had a smattering of training in urban shit and, you know,

convoy stuff. But still, most of our training has been out in rural urban environment doing all this light infantry stuff. And that is the war we expect and want. And we have dreadful problems. You know, I can tell you from experience. Enter Ramadi, 2005, 2006. Yeah. I mean, all the way through, all the way through. And, And then, but then we do adapt and our training pipeline gets better and our focus gets much, much better. And just the quality of the, not the quality of the Marine Infantryman. You know, it's just, you know, the way his situational awareness on the ground gets better and better towards the end of the conflict. But it doesn't matter really anyway because of all

the policy decisions that we've, you know, we've talked about. But yes, we did adapt. It was a long, painful process and it didn't need to be that painful. And that's my concern. It isn't, I'm an old fogie going, oh, we need always to have combat veterans. It is. I get it. That's good. We're having a lapse between wars, but I hope someone is not just keeping lessons alive, but really taking a hard look at what's happening in places like Ukraine now, you know, or Gaza, for instance. Indeed. Well, I want to definitely talk about Ukraine because I know you spent some time over there, but keep walking me through your military career. Yeah, yeah.

Fascinated by this Marine Corps journey. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Which I keep making details. Anyway, so I go through the infantry office, of course, and I join second battalion 9th Marines out in Okinawa, right? This is the only battalion, the only battalion that has not gone to the Gulf War. Now, I know you're a kid during the Gulf War, you know, but I was a fresh-faced second.

lieutenant and that was our one chance to go to war right yeah and almost or so you thought at the time I thought and you know every other like three of us in a clioc class of 30 end up in this battalion so 10% of us just miss out on the war totally and we think our lives are over I mean you can imagine and I mean I hate to say it but it these guys I mean they they would put seals to shame as far as seriously the whole, to include the officers. I mean, it was, they run out of ammunition. I'm joking about that, Andy. I don't care.

No, I mean, discipline-wise. Oh, I get it. The Marines are always hard on. Yeah. But I'm saying they, but they, because of poor leadership, they, they'd had a what-the-fuck attitude because they didn't go to war and they'd had to give up their ammunition and they were on Okinawa. So instead of doing anything, even trying to train, they had just stopped and stopped and

started drinking. I'm not exaggerating. It's traditionally a great recipe. Yeah, to include the officers. And so, you know, you've got three fresh face face second lieutenants show up in this battalion, you know, and I take over my platoon. You know, you can imagine the platoon's at the end. They're at the end of a deployment that was supposed to be six months and it's on month 14. And they're watching all the homecomings and everything. And they haven't seen their. their families and now they've got this brand new second lieutenant. Hey man, you know, my name is Andy Milver. We're going to train hard. No, I mean, I hope I was a little more empathetic than that. But it was a tough time to join a to join a battalion for sure. But fortunately things got better

after that. Anyway, fast forward, next deployment, same battalion, totally different, totally different, different battalion commander, different company commanders. Now we're part of a MU, which is Marine Expeditionary Unit back then, our special operations capable. And we did the first landing in Mogadishu, Somalia, in December 1992, at the beginning of, what was it called, Restore Hope. Most people would probably know it from Black Hawk Down. Yeah, yeah.

Beginning of Black Hawk Down is probably a better way to describe it. More people will know what we're talking about. Restore Hope. So, funnily enough, so Black Hawk Down occurred in, October of 93, right? This is December of 92. So it's about roughly 10 months before. We land and mortgage issues, I mean, there's fighting going on, but it's not, it's not aimed at us. And so most of the battalion launches out of, you know, out of Mogadishu, they go to a place called Baidoa and it's a big, it's big news, you know, it's, I mean, you can still look

up on YouTube, there's 15th Muley lands, blah, blah, blah, and they leave one platoon behind in Mogadishu, and that was my platoon. It was the mortar platoon, right? Because you don't need mortars in a humanitarian mission. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. So there we are. And then, of course, things start going really bad in Mogadishu, and it's just my platoon are the only infantry guys. There's all the muse, you know, the cooks and the odds and sards. And so we are, we're out patrolling the streets on along what was then called the green line between Marty, who, who was used to be the president of Somalia, and his chief opponent, a guy named Farah Adide, Farah Muhammad Idid, whose name, obviously you remember from Black Hawk Down, right?

That was their objective from Black Hawk Down, yeah. So, I mean, this sounds crazy now, right? I'm not exaggerating. In fact, my platoon was still friends on Facebook and everything, and they still remember this because it was so strange. You can imagine this platoon, we're about 60 guys, and we're walking, we're trying to keep peace on the green line between these two warlords, and the rest of the MU, all the supporting assets, actually they did leave a section of Cobras behind, which was a lifesaver for us, are on this big kind of humanitarian trek out to Bidoa, but things are turning rapidly to shit in market issue.

And we end up as December, like the 22nd of 1992, we end up in a firefight with IDD's guys. And we kill three of them. And it's just, and we managed to make it back to the port. We are our own QRF. I mean, that's how much of the bootstrap thing this is. It's like, you know, we want patrolers out. They bump, you know, they get bumped by these guys. And it was definitely, I was with that patrol.

So I know it was legit. You know, these guys pointed Dishka towards us, and we've already been taking incoming, and it was unusual back then to open fire, but it was a clear decision for me. Yeah. So we opened fire, got the Dishka, gunner, and got the driver, and one other dude, apparently. You know, we just, anyway, we can make it back to the port and call it in and all that. It's a big deal. You know, it made the papers here, the front cover of the L.A. Times.

Oh, wow. You know, you name it. But so what happens? They're like, okay, hey, Andy, we, you know, we need you to come over to the port. And also we've got Lieutenant Colonel So-and-so come out. He's an MP detachment head. I'm like, MPs, I don't even know what the fuck are the MPs doing here. Apparently there's.

So they're coming over to question my guys. I'm not kidding you. Take their weapons. Yeah, they were going to do ballistics and everything. And I go to the airfield and I'm getting questioned about the shooting because they've got a report from an NGO that we'd killed three civilians. I mean, this is all absolutely, you know, this is all, again, you can look at it, kind of reading the papers. And it didn't help, by the way, where this is in the LA Times. This is how dumb I was.

I mean, it's just a lieutenant thing to say. The LA Times guy said to me, well, you know, the first guy, I don't know how they knew this, but the first guy was shot wasn't the driver or the gunner. This is how, you know, cluding they were on rules of engagement. It wasn't the driver or the gunner. It was the passenger in the front seat. And I was thinking, how the hell did they know that? And the guy said, how do you, can you explain that?

I said, well, yeah, I'm from England, so we drive on the other side. It's all there. It's absolutely there in print. Anyway. That's amazing, especially if they make you read that in like a neutral tone of voice at a court martial. Oh, my God. Anyway, can you imagine now with the internet, I would have been gone.

You know what I'm saying. But I couldn't think of anything else to say. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But the point is the focus of rules of engagement at that point, for us, our subsequent experience of Iraq and Afghanistan just seems crazy. But that's the way it was because it was the beginning of a humanitarian operation. We didn't think that way. And so subsequently, even when it comes to Black Hawk down and you see all the critiques about NVGs and this and that, you know, you kind of can understand that complacency.

I'm not justifying it. It was more than complacency. It was a constrained environment. It was very constrained. But anyway, so I'm in the airfield answering these questions and I couldn't, everything had happened in such a rush. I could remember opening fire. I didn't actually give the order to open fire. I opened fire because that's what happens.

Which is going to be the order. Hey man, open fire on three. Also, if your boss is shooting, you're probably pretty good to shoot. Exactly. So that's what happened. So, you know, my saw gun I picked up and his gun jammed, which may have been a good thing. But anyway, I could remember shooting and I could remember what I was shooting at, but I couldn't remember the trigger. I couldn't, isn't that weird.

And I couldn't remember exactly. I could remember, you know, the guys were definitely armed. I knew that, but I couldn't remember specifically the Dishka being pointed around towards us, why I pulled the trigger. So I was talking in general terms, hey, they were armed, blah, blah, bar. I thought they were a threat. We'd been taking incoming rounds, all of which was true, but not enough to satisfy the rules of engagement for them back then. Because they were incredible, right?

So you, for instance, I mean, we had to, my platoon had to return weapons to guys who we had to, disarmed. So you had to, you had to really draw a correlation between incoming and the guys you were, you know, you're shooting up. Where's the inherent right to self-defense in this? Hostile act, hostile intent. Well, exactly. I, I, you know, and the, and things shifted a little bit here, but remember this was, I'm not justifying anything. It was a very different, weird, um, but it was a, it taught me some hard lessons too, because there I am. Now I'm, now I'm second-guessing myself. I mean, you know, when this, when things, something like that first happens to you, it is such a rush of, of energy, you know, it's not necessarily fear or anything. It's just overwhelming.

Yeah, it's overwhelming. And I'm pretty sure that blocked out, you know, part of my memory afterwards when I was trying to remember. I knew, you know, I knew confidently that I'd made a right decision. I just couldn't articulate it. Right. In terms that satisfied them. What was the time between the shooting in your interview? It was same day. I think, and somebody can obviously double check me on this, but even in most police shootings, they intentionally have a period of time in between the event and the shooting in and of itself. For what you're articulating, like the data is resoundingly back. Yeah.

That that stuff happens. There's auditory exclusion. There's memory exclusion. The combination of those things. Yeah, if it's your first time pulling the trigger on something that is not an E-type. silhouette, it's emotional. Like, yeah. And, and you know, funnily enough, too, I've noticed even subsequently and you probably, I don't know if you've seen the same thing, but in combat situations

afterwards when you're describing what happens, someone who was there at the same time and you're talking through it may have seen something completely different. And they're still telling the truth. Yeah, and you're both telling the truth. And it's still freshen your minds and yet because it it tunnels your vision so much that some things will totally pass you by and other things will really stand well you know i mean i'm not telling you anything you don't know but i've been in a ars where there's say there's four people in a room and they all describe what happened differently and they all 100% believe and are telling their truth about what happened yeah it's uh i mean our jobs were weird man no i mean

It's true. They asked us to do some weird shit. Yeah. There's a lot going on in those moments. Yeah. And I think it's safe to say I have less processing power between my ears than the average man. So you can get overwhelmed in your hard drive. But the interesting thing is, so now we know that.

But back then we didn't. So when the MPs are questioning my guys and they've all got different stories. They probably thought you guys were lying. Yeah. They thought that they were lying. And there's the platoon commander like, fuck man. You open fire lieutenant. And you're telling me your car remember, well, yeah, I mean, they were bad guys.

They had weapons and blah, blah, blah, and we had been coming rounds. He's just heating up the frying pan to cook your ass. Yeah. But anyway, I'll tell you what saved me. Absolutely 100% true. This AP photographer had been following our patrol. And I didn't, you know, obviously I didn't know. And he'd stopped at this intersection when we started to take fire.

and then he had everything on film. And for some reason, he had it on like a fast frame when it came to this point when I'd opened fire. I mean, this is amazing. I mean, I think it's amazing because it showed, it showed the guy with the Dishka swinging it around towards us. And then it showed, you know, clearly that we were shooting. Yeah.

And it was just like then. And so that was it. And this guy, you know, came forward. and that was it. They, you know, they let me go back. But it really shook me up. And it shook my platoon up, too. You know, they were like, hey, sir, what the fuck, man?

You know, what was that about? Fast forward to 2004 in Afghanistan, and somebody comes out of a pistol and you empty an AC 130 in the village. I know. And you get an army commendation medal. Yeah, you Winchester out in AC 130 because a dude had an office pop out in the backyard. They're like, does anybody want to talk to me about this? Okay, I guess not. Well, things changed, you know, things changed in Somalia, too.

I mean, obviously, so the course, and that was not, you know, that was, things didn't get better after that. I would like to say, oh, yeah, they really learned. No, they got worse, actually. I mean, there was a brief period where they were better. I think it coincided with the rest of our tour. But then two weeks after we left, because the Pakistanis, we turned over to the Pakistanis, two weeks after we left, they went into search a place called Radio Mogadishu, which was, in our area. It was about, it was maybe two or three blocks from the Hotel Olympia

where the Black Hawk down incident took place. So the same kind of area. Anyway, so the Pakistanis go in and they lose something like 40 guys. I mean, like 40 KIA. Like 40 KIA. Holy shit. I mean, they lose like essentially a whole company along with casualties and everything. and I'm thinking, what the fuck happened? Well, they'd, I mean, we'd searched Radio Mogadishu many times, and I was familiar with them. We knew they were kind of bad guys, but we never, we just found old AKs. But I can picture what happened.

They actually went into the compound, and the Smalley's had laid an ambush and was shooting down on them, and they just couldn't get out. They were trapped in there, yeah. And, of course, they didn't have, I mean, we, you know, we would never have gone into the compound. I would have had overwatch. Yeah, for sure.

You know, but that happened before Black Hawk down, right? But it didn't really receive. I mean, it was a tiny paragraph in the USA today. I happened to know about it, of course, because, you know, I knew about the Pakistanis. But it was, you know, when what happened happened, there were things leading up to it. And those guys weren't dumb. ID's guys, as they showed, you know, because the Pakistanis were fairly professional soldiers. So for them to have lost that many guys in one incident shows that, you know, what they're up against were, I mean, they were fairly, fairly sophisticated.

When did you guys rip out of that deployment? Because you said it happened and you said October of 193. Yeah, yeah. So we were out of there, I want to say, end of April. Okay. Yeah. So a good. Damn, that's only six months from. that had to been a tough news cycle. Yeah, it was actually. I mean, it was very, very tough, yeah. So there was a Marine unit that went out afterwards to, you know, to kind of help close down shop.

And I wanted to get, you know, get on that unit. I couldn't, I mean, I know it's the same in your community. It isn't it ridiculous. You look back and you think, oh, I've got to get, you know, I've done all this training. I need to do something. thing about it, right? I need to actually exercise it. Yeah, that fear of missing out is... Oh my God. I actually watched people, some of the most unhappy people I saw, you know,

post-9-11, say a West Coast team would get a deployment and they'd have an incredibly kinetic deployment. And you'd see sometimes people from the East Coast, I guess I would describe it as chasing the dragon. They'd put it into Switch to go to the other team. And they'd get in on that cycle, but the next time that deployment... The op tempo would change. They'd go to Guam or something. Or they'd go to Europe. And then that team that they had left, or another East Coast team, would have an incredibly

kinetic deployment, so they'd come back. And they just oftentimes missed it, and they were so unhappy. It's a really weird thing to want and wish for and desire for. And having said that, it makes total and absolute sense to me at the same time. Of course it does. Fiscally You know But I mean

It becomes problematic As we know For all kinds of reasons When you've got to You know It comes to point where You've got to protect people Against themselves

Right Yeah And that's not any thing Yeah I was going to say We both at the same time One of the hardest things to do perhaps Yeah

I mean I never did it I mean I never You know No I'm being wise After the event I've learned far more I think Not far more

but as much about leadership since getting out of the rank hall, just on reflection, honestly, as I did going through the ranks. I'm sorry, I keep diverting us. No, it's good. I actually think you need that distance away from the event to make a little bit more sense of it. Yeah. I think you can unpack it more with a little bit of distance and perhaps a greater context. Yeah, I think absolutely. Yeah, that is very true. It's, you know, the kind of the last five years I had in the rain call, I was in some kind of command. I mean, for, so there was never any period of time when I was off to horse.

It was such an awful thing to say. And you do need time off to horse. You need time to reflect to really, I think, get better. I mean, you do get better in every leadership position I held, honestly. I could look back a year. I would look back a year and go, oh my God, I can't believe I did that, you know? And you always, and that's, I think that's healthy. And then everyone's like, oh, man, I'm not ready to turn over.

I'm just starting to get the feel of this, you know, as though it really matters to the unit at all. So in 92, when you guys were there, you were either right at your five-year sabbatical or passed it. Where did this decision come into? Wow, yeah. So that was a really tough call, actually. No, it wasn't at all. So, yeah, exactly. I hit, you know, I hit the five-year mark.

And I just decided, by then I was a lieutenant. I was, yeah, I was a lieutenant. It goes second lieutenant, first lieutenant captain, right? Yeah, I was a second lieutenant. And I loved it. And I thought, I didn't know what sort of Marine officer I was going to be, but I suspected I was going to be a better Marine officer than a lawyer. I've got no way of proving that either way.

But my time at law school was never wasted because I was given every single fucking investigation that came down the line from the time. You don't tell people that you studied in school. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we got back from Somalia and the 90s were so boring. You came in. 96. You came in 96? Yeah.

Really? You don't look that old. 64. I'm joking. Yeah, no. So I'm trying to do the math. No, that doesn't like that. Yeah.

96. Okay, yes. I got a good five years of pre-9-A. Oh, yeah. Deeply. My first deployment was to Okinawa. I'm kidding. First time I ever left the country as a seal.

You know, I go through Buds in 97, started in January of 97, graduated in August. They made the horrible decision. to send my entire Bud's class to airborne school at Fort Benning. Did they really? Oh my God. Can you tell me about that? That's awesome. Just imagine being an instructor at a school where the vast majority of students, you're

an army instructor and an army school. And almost everybody is just super happy to be there and you can control them. And then these fucking idiots show up who regardless of what you tell them to do, don't care. And the 10 pushups that's a punishment is like fucking laughable. because in third phase you're doing 50 pushups at a time every time they drop you down. Not that they're great pushups, but that's what you're doing.

You're at least counting to 50. Let's leave it at that. So they send our whole class, which I don't know if there's a good way to do. Actually, there is a good way now. Now the Navy does their own static line and football course. They can deal with their own garbage. But man, what an absolute nightmare it must have been for the instructors.

So we go basic. Then I went back to the West Coast. But that's such a square peg in a round hall. It was just a requirement. Because Airborne school crams one week of training into three weeks, right? Oh, I'd say crams like two days of training into three weeks. I think that Navy course is five days, which I believe is two days too long. But, yeah, so we go there.

And then from there, my class split up East Coast guys, one of East West Coe guys. We went through some additional training, got into my first platoon, got my tried. Yeah, I went overseas and Guam. Second deployment. It came back to the whole 18-month workup. And then, yeah, it went from Japan the first time to Guam the second time. And came home from that. And then 9-11 occurred and then I screened to go out to the East Coast.

But yeah, a good five years of pre-9-11 time. And I'm actually thankful for it because it gave me an appreciation and an understanding. Because I saw the trajectory and I listened to the, God, what would be the angst of people who had joined when it was highly kinetic and were feeling it. slip out of their fingers. Or they joined when it was already waning away from the community and the frustration. Oh, you mean later in your career? Later in my career. Yeah. Yeah.

It was trending back towards what we experienced in the 90s. Yeah. And it was driving people fucking nuts. Post-2014. Yeah. It was driving people nuts. And even in the sale community, I'd say even before that, it was just trending in that direction and people didn't like it.

And I'd remind like, hey, man, for the first five years that I was in, like, combat was not an option. The only way you measured how much of a man you were is what you lifted in the gym and how much alcohol you could throw down your face. Yeah, how true. Especially for those in Guam or Okinawa back then. What else is there to do?

Exactly, yeah. I had no choice. What else was I to do? Yeah, and then, you know, post-9-11 hits, like, oh, holy shit. A different ballgame. And then quickly, the realization that, you know, we had been looking in the rear view mirror,

I think, a little bit too much when it came to tactics. you know, the techniques and procedures. And like I said, I mean, if I'm being honest, I don't know to fast forward it. And I'm not super up to speed on, say, the capabilities of the Chinese military or North Korean military or maybe even going against Hamas or Ukraine or Russia. I don't know how we would have fared against a modern enemy's capability. It would have been a lot more bloody, I think, on our side. We evolved quickly after 9-11, but it was a watershed moment for sure.

Yeah. And that's a, you know, that's honestly, I mean, we talked about the 90s and it was a, it was kind of a soul-destroying time, honestly, to be in the military because... We just fought each other. Yeah. You know, it's funny you should say that, actually. Well, we were all fighting for budget. Yeah.

But, yes, unfortunately, when the battalion was with an Okinawa involved, physically fighting with... 100%. That's what we did too. So, I mean, you know, it's all good introduction as lieutenant. But yeah, so it was kind of a soul-destroying time. But then fast forward, you know, you think, yes, 9-11, we all say it changed our lives. And it sounds like a cliche, but it is so dramatically true for those of us who are in the military. I mean, so much so that, you know, the saying, the past is another country.

Well, the me and everything I did before 9-11 seems like another country. It seems like another person to me, you know, and I can't, that's not for better or for worse. I don't know, but it's just like this big divider came down, right? And everything after that was very different. Where did your career take you after 9-11? Yeah, so I was with an infantry unit during the initial, you know, the march up to Baghdad, 7th Marines. Where did you guys stage? Oh, my God.

Was it Commando? Depends. So we were out in R-R, A-R-A-R, Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Saudi Arabia? Mm-hmm. No, no, no. They were in...

They were all over the place. I was just curious. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's where we happened to stay together. Oh, I see. Okay, no, no, no. We're in, uh, we're in, uh, we're in Kuwait. Okay.

I was just remembering the name of the camp. I thought, you didn't think of it. No, that's where we were. I mean, I couldn't find it on a map if I had to because, you know, we're just flying C-17s and C-5s like, okay, this is where we are. Yeah. Yeah, it was, uh, I mean, a complete shithole where, wherever it was, and we thought that Iraq must be better.

How little did we know, of course? It was not. Yeah. Yeah, you know, but I mean, uh, I, of course, now, yes, it would retrospect, the Iraq, the invasion of Iraq seems like a mistake. But I'm not here again to ring my hands because at the time, you know, in good conscience, we did what we thought was, you know. I mean, it wasn't just simply that we were following orders. We believed in it. I mean, everyone I did, we believed in it.

I think it's the most accurate thing we can say because I believed in it too, but I wanted to believe in it too. You're right, Andy. I wanted to believe in it too. Yeah. And, and, um... I believe in it less at this stage of my life. I'm with you. Yeah. I'm with you. I just try and think back to that time, you know, so I'm not... What do all soldiers want? Yeah. They want war, and it's ridiculous because they don't know what the fuck it is. And I don't think they can understand the lifelong cascading potential consequences. And by the time you learn those. Yeah. You might be in the throes of it.

Yeah. That's a really, yeah. No, that's so true. So true, Andy. That, you know, that it's kind of, again, I'm not ringing my hands, but when I think back and I think about that person, too, that I was going, oh, my God, I want to go.

You know, I can't believe that. I find it hard to recognize myself in that person. You know what I'm saying? I mean, exactly what you're saying. I mean, but that, but that, that was me. Yes, that was all of us. And I'm not, you know, I'm not ashamed of that. And we shouldn't be. I mean, that was our profession. That's what we were brought up to do. And if things went sour, subsequently, it wasn't, you know, honestly, it wasn't our fault. I mean, we did. Anyway. Yeah. Blah bar. Anyway, so I was, yeah, the march-ups. And then subsequently, I returned to, oh, here, so of potential interest, After 7th Marines, I went to this unit. I'm laughing because some Marine Corps comes up with the most ridiculous names.

Get this. All right. I swear to God, this is true. And a lot of Marines listening, well, hopefully some people would recognize, the Coalition and Special Warfare Center, all right? It existed in Quantico. I know this because I was sent there. My oldest said, I'm like, what the fuck is the Coalition and Special Warfare Center?

I was like, no, I know. I know. I'm like, the Maricopa was doing black arms. I didn't know. I'm not violating any security rules here because, no, it was, I don't know. Someone thought this was a cool name for a unit that had a really cool mission, actually. We were, because Marine Corps didn't have a special operations command back then. So what we were doing, we would set up training teams to go around the world, mostly South America at the time, to Colombia, but also Peru and Argentina, which is really cool.

place. Almost like a fid team doing foreign and turns to perform in general defense. Yeah. So they would focus on military skills and also riverine skills. I mean, they're great missions. And also, oddly enough, we were sending guys to Ukraine. It was a partnership for peace program. I forget what it was called.

Marsok had to have arrived shortly after that. No, this, Marsok arrived in 2006. Okay. A couple years later. So I'm talking about immediately, so I'm talking about like 2003. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, all right. So were there grumblings of Marsoc yet in the Marine Corps? Well, there was, there was a Marine Special Operations debt, remember called Debt One, that deployed to, it deployed with the Seals, as a matter of fact, to Belot in Iraq and my friends who are on that debt are going to kill me. I'm trying to remember what year. I want to say 05, 06.

So there was, yes, preceding, I'm sorry it was before then. Yes, there was a, it was called Debt One. It was supposed to be the nucleus of a marine component within Special Operations Command, right? Why I say that wasn't Marsok is because there was a gap in time. So I totally messed up the time before any. anyone calls in about that. It must have been earlier. It must have been earlier on in the war.

Okay. Maybe 2004-to-5. I don't know if I ever read that term. Yeah, it was debt one. And I'm trying to think of the seals involved. One of them became, oh, Lumpkin, the guy who became ASD Solic was on the seal side with that. Okay. With that debt.

Anyway, that was really the first kind of, attempt at Marine Special Operations. Yeah, and for people listening, you meant to understand, Special Operations Command in the Army, you have, you know, Rangers, Green Berets, Navy's got the SEALs, SWIC, Air Force, PJ, CCT. Yeah, the Marine Corps just didn't have a component inside of that umbrella. Yeah, we didn't.

And so when we formed Debt One, it was because Rumsfeld said, hey, the Marine Corps, you were going to have a Special Operations component. And I forget who the Commandant was at the time, doesn't matter, but he said, well, you know, we kind of like are all kind of special operations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Rumsfeld said, no, shut up. It's not what we're talking about.

You better shit me. You better shit me a special operations component, right? And so, so that was debt one. And what they did is they took, they took guys from Force Recorn. Yeah. It was all volunteers. Actually, there's a really good book that's just coming out about it by a guy named John Daly. It's called Tough Rugged Bastards.

I bet they were. Yeah, John's a good friend of mine actually. So there's a plug for his book. But anyway, so after Rumsfeld was fired, which I think was 06. If only Michael was here, that shit up. I can't remember. Anyway. You better be enjoying your Italian vacation.

Anyway, dead one, so debt one was disbanded. They did, you know, I think they did one deployment. They did, you know, really good job working out of Balaab with SEALs doing targeted raids, but a bunch of stuff too. And they did, you know, they came back with rave reviews from not just, I mean, from the conventional community to. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't because the experiment didn't work. it was kind of a political thing without the political force of Rumsfeld behind getting the Marine call to shit a Special Operations component.

I think it kind of went away. And then I don't know what the impetus was coming back in 06, and I may have messed this up. Maybe it was, but that's when Marine Special Operations Command was actually stood up. But in the meantime, I'd been, so my battalion command was as a, Oh, first of all, yeah, so with Coalition Special Warfare Center, we were doing MTTs in Colombia. I mean, that was pretty cool. I mean, this was, you know, from about 2000 up through, we stopped doing them, I think, around 2004. I mean, it was a great mission for the Marines involved in it.

And Columbia was still, you know, it was still a happening place. I mean, it was, I mean, it wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan, but it was an operational kind of deployment. And then, and then we got told, hey, you need to stand up at school to train advisors for the Marine Corps, right? Because that is, so this is after the initial invasion. And I think that, you know, I mean, I think that I'm not here to like bang my chest about the Marine Corps, but I think the Marine Corps is pretty prescient in this. So think about this. This was early on the wall. And someone in the Marine Corps figured out, okay, we've got to learn, we could enable Iraqis to do what we've been doing.

And the way to do that our ticket out of here is to train a shitload of advisors. But in typical Marine Corps fashion, someone identified a very important mission and attached zero resources to it. So instead it was a phone call. I'm not kidding you. It was a phone call, you know, from headquarters Marine Corps down to. My boss, my boss in a little office in Quantico to tell them to, hey, stand up a school for advisors. You have zero instructors and money. Yeah, no instructors, no money.

So, you know, we got our first, and I'll never forget this. And when are our first advisors arriving? What we didn't realize is they'd already released a message, you know, like a month before. And they said, well, they're already arriving in Quantico. We'll just redirect them to you. When are they arriving? Monday. It's like Wednesday. Yeah. So, you know, fortunately, I mean, it was a relatively small group, 30 guys, but I'm still kind of cringe when I think about this because this was such a, this was such an out on the edge mission back then to be an advisor with the Iraqis. You look back now through the lens. Oh, my God. The staple of Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh, my God. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they were hanging out there. You know, I mean, living in places like Taji, hundreds of Iraqis around.

them, not, you know, base security provided, you know, mostly by Iraqis, I mean, you know, in a very volatile time. Man. And so, you know, what they got, though, was five days of instruction from us before going, and that totally prepared them for this hazardous mission. What could they not do after five days? Exactly. I mean, I feel like it's...

Classroom instruction. I feel like the training was robust, complete in every way possible, covered all contingencies. So I still cringe. You know, but for some of those guys, they're still friends of mine. Yeah. Because we, you know, we rapidly, what we did is we started the next crop of, people we had coming in, we identified what they needed. We were getting calls back from Iraq for particular, you know,

hey, teach them driving. Everyone needs to be a driver. Everyone needs kind of these basic skills, right? That would be second nature to us now, but weren't necessarily back then. You know, the higher level of medical training that every single guy on a mid team needs to have much higher than the average infantryman, right? Because he's teaching indage and he's going to have to really punch above his weight in a mass casualty. Yeah, and they're out of the front leading edge too. Exactly. So, you know, and there's other qualities too, as you know, that being a good Marine soldier doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be a good.

advisor working with Indich. Totally agree. And those two, even if you were a good instructor. And so in addition to the training piece, we found ourselves also having to do kind of an assessment because we were getting calls from the field saying, you know, we would estimate about the guys who were going out. We thought we were already doing some screening, you know, but we were still getting guys going out there who the teams were saying, hey, this guy cannot be.

around Iraqis, right? That's true. Yeah. It takes a special kind of person to do that job. Yeah, I mean, I don't mean that he hates Arabs or anything like that. I just mean he's very much, this guy is very much a Marine, Sergeant Rock, A to B type guy, and then nuances of trying to get someone from a different culture to do things that you need him to do on his way of doing things. By with and through is not the tool for everybody.

It's like Sergeant Rock. Yeah, exactly. For sure. And so you said you did your brigade command at that time period? No, battalion command. Okay, battalion command. Yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry, fast forward, yeah.

So we said anyway, advisor score. I did one tour as an advisor during the Battle of Fallujah, which was a nightmare, not necessarily because it was the Battle of Fallujah. That was part of it. But just leading, it's not that. they were Iraqis, but leading soldiers who were not highly motivated and didn't feel confident, I think is the best way to put it, to be in that situation at that time. With some reason, I might add, you know, they weren't well equipped and they weren't fucking paid and they hadn't

been trained well. So we can derogate, you know, and talk about, because I had a lot of shipping talked about the Iraqis during Flujer afterwards. And I know having served with them, it was tough. I mean, as an advisor, no exaggeration, there'd be two of us in a company, and before they would go into our house, they had to follow an American. Okay, so, I mean, now they would go in, if you were going to go in first, they would put Iraqi right behind you, but they were not going to go in first through the door. Really? So when there's only two Americans, that's a lot of doors. That's a lot of door, and that's a, and in the early days of Fallujah, you know, we weren't, I mean, you know, I hate to say it was a very kind of Marine Corps approach, but our approach was very, very basic, right?

I mean, you know, you think about it. We're in the 21st century, and yet we still have dudes kicking through a door where we know there's a one in five charts, you know, of, of Muge being in there waiting for him, right? We were doing that shit, too, to begin with. Like I said, we are, our tactics evolved rapidly. And one of the first tactics that shifted was the, I don't know, of course, speak about it broadly because this is one of the more sensitive TTPs, but the structure around approaching and clearing compounds and structures. Yeah, we were doing it the way we were because that's the way that we were taught. There was no real good connect the dots to why do we do this. This is what talked to me by this guy and was taught to him by that guy and talked to him by that guy.

And this is the way we've always done it. It wasn't the best. Certainly. Yeah. And I think back, when we talk about preparation for war and training all of that and training for the last war, and now I think back and I think how ill-equipped we were for Fallujah, I'll explain very quickly what I mean by that. So if you take, and I know this because I live through many life cycles, several life cycles

of the Marine Infantry Battalion, in the course of one year, your battalion, Like, well, as a individual Marine, you would probably spend three days, three to five days of mount training, maybe. You know, I mean. And there's military operations in urban terrain, which is what we're talking about, approaching and clearing structures in an urban environment. That's right. You know, I mean, one way now. A.k.a. Fallujah. Remember, I'm talking about prior to the war, right?

And the rest of the time, I mean, you're doing a lot of live fire. You're doing a lot of fire and maneuvering and doing this other shit. because there were only so many combat towns. You know, there's only like typically back then there would be one mount, you know, one combat town per base. And it was a, I mean, how often did a company get to books? It wasn't that no one cared, didn't care about it. It was a question of resourcing.

And then you go from that, right, into Fallujah, which is very, very pure urban, the hardest urban fight. The U.S. troops have been involved in since waste. city in 1968. And, you know, there are things that's, and by the way, I felt it so I'd received a great amount of urban training because I'd been lucky enough to be with the battalion that had gone through an urban warrior exercise, it was called, it was around 2000 where we had Israeli instructors come in.

We had an abandoned Air Force base housing area to practice in. We had sim munitions. I mean, it was a great. So I felt very well trained when it came to, you know, urban training. It doesn't mean flujer was easy for me at all. What I mean is, in fact, the opposite, you know, I found a couple of things. One is that you are so much at a disadvantage when you enter that building. And that's why I talk about it being crazy in the 21st century

was sending flesh and blood through an open door. You know, I mean, of course, to you and me and everyone, most people listening, that's, well, no shit, Milburn. But that's what we did again and a fucking again. And like our hair was in fire. And as soon as we do that, we lose all the technological advantages that we have. And now we are basically at a disadvantage to our enemy who is static in a dark position. Back then, our NVGs didn't work very well inside.

They didn't fucking work without light. So you didn't go in with MVGs on. So you are... Ours worked a little better. You were blind. Well, of course, yeah. It's like being underwater. Totally.

So you went in and you were blind. And yet they've got, now they've got an open aperture and they've got, you know, daylight and they've, you know, they've got a target. I mean, we were at a disadvantage every single time. And it's crazy the way we did that. Agreed. And it was only, you know, after the first week in the battle where the rules of engagement relaxed enough for us to prep. buildings that where Mojj had been seen you know there was a point where he had to take fire blah blah blah so you know listen I'm this is me ringing my hands about it for Lujia was a formative

experience it was just certainly a hard I think a hardest slog than it needed to have been let me put it that way and I and so I'm not moaning about it I'm saying let's just learn from it you know rather than learn what we did in Fallujah let's learn what we should have done in flujia what we should be doing now because that was a long time ago. Yeah. Where'd your career take you after that deployment? Yeah, so my battalion command was first battalion, third Marines. All right.

It's a regular infantry battalion, not that we had any, you know, the battalion sent. And our deployment was to karma in Iraq, in Anbar province, those of you not familiar with karma. it's kind of a very sickly ironic name for a when I use the term shithole I feel like I'm derogating shitholes but karma was you know I mean we always say that about anywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan but karma just felt evil it was you know you can ask Marines who went through that place and it was it gave you it gave you a weird feeling it was a lot of hatred in that town for us um And so about two weeks, by the way, the battalion command, it was awesome.

I had, I had, I'm not exaggerating, I had 650 brand new Marines joined the battalion in January. We were going to deploy in August. They joined me from the school of infantry, 18-year-olds, you know, 18 to 20-year-olds coming out to, okay. And so you can imagine just trying to keep them out of trouble in Hawaii, but training them up for that mission and that period of time. And I was just really lucky. I had just superb company commanders and awesome squad leaders. But we couldn't waste time, you know.

But anyway, so about two weeks before deployment, I fly out to karma because our sister battalion, second battalion, third marines is out there. And Max Gallier, a friend of mine is their battalion commander. And so he shows me around the area. And it's actually been pretty quiet for them. It's miraculous, you know, everyone's thinking. What time of year?

It was July. Okay. Yeah. But it had been quiet for most of his deployment. He'd lost a few guys, but nothing like previous battalions. And so everyone thought, you know, wow, you guys, two three has really kind of settled the place. This gets back to our discussion about thinking that we've really solved problems in counterinsurgency.

And anyway, so I, you know, as I was, I spent about a week with Max and I'm getting ready to leave. I'm sitting across the table with him. We're just going through notes. And he goes, hey, man, you need to stay another couple of days because I got this big meeting with all the shakes, right? And we finally got this one dude on board, Sheikh Mishan, blah, blah, blah. and I really think this is a turning point, you know, and getting karma turned away from Al-Qaeda. And I would have loved to because there was no way.

I mean, this would have been my chance to meet all the local leaders in one group. I just didn't want to. But my battalion was starting, it was just beginning the pre-deployment validation exercise in 29 Palms. It was a big deal. And so, Mojave Viper, and I couldn't be away from that. so I, you know, I said, hey, I can't make it, man. Took off. By the time I landed, Max was dead.

He, so the meeting had gone ahead. Suicide bomber had walked in, detonated, killed Max. His company commander had made his soror major, double amputee. He killed 20 of the local leaders and badly. there's other Marines, there's about nine other Marines killed two in the blast and 20 local leaders. I mean, it was just a devastating, devastating incident for everyone. I mean, think about it, the trust thing between Marines and the local leaders, how did this guy get in here, who was not at the meeting? You know, there's two, a guy, shakes didn't show up, blah, blah, blah.

Marines are really angry, you know, feel betrayed. The shakes, of course, the surviving ones think somehow Marines are involved because, you know, it's just so, so all of this is escalating. And then there's this undercurrent of fear of, you know, what's going to happen next. And so my, the regimental commander called me and said, hey, I need you, you know, I need you to get the battalion out here early and replace, you know, Max's battalion because the morale is in the shitter. Yeah. Yeah. And things, I think things are about to kick off. So bottom line is we did a very compressed turnover with a battalion that was, you know, whose morale was in the shitter. And there was some internal tensions in that battalion too. That had to do with Max's style of leadership.

It's interesting discussion. I won't get into detail, but, you know, Max, Max was a very kind of marine, the way that we were taught to be leaders, very, you know, A to B, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he was a very compassionate dude, too. He really was, but he didn't suffer fools gladly, I suppose, is how the British put in. And there was some internal tensions within the battalion. Honestly, when all said and done, Max, you know, I'm not just saying this because Max is gone,

but, you know, I think Max did a superb job under really tough conditions. And leadership under those conditions is a really hard thing. And we are not necessarily the person that we think that we, the way we appear to people isn't the person that we necessarily think we are under those conditions. What I mean is I know, you know, I'm sure that I've appeared as an asshole for a period of time to people. And that's just the way it is sometimes.

You know, there's no getting around it unless you are some kind of sense. saint. Anyway. If you're some kind of saint, you're probably not in the military in karma. Yeah. So anyway, but my only point in mentioning all that is that there was this internal friction within the battalion aside from this sense of external threat that had just kind of really, it's difficult to see in a Marine Infantry Battalion that, you know, that that level because I'd known them. They were our sister battalion, but it was a lesson to me of how things can just cascade very, very quickly.

It's probably a good thing you guys got them out of there early. Yeah. Because the desire for revenge is strong too. The desire for revenge and then they have the opportunity for it. That's right. You combine those two things and things start getting written in the newspaper and making, you know, global news that don't make the Marine Corps or the United States. States look well at all. And having said that, I totally understand where they're coming from,

having felt that same desire for revenge myself. Yeah, 100%. I mean, there was one, you know, and by the way, that deployment actually was surprisingly quiet. I lost the Marine, you know, and that's a Marine too many, but those, you know, guys who remember Anbar Province during that time know that that was a very, that was a light price to pay, and most battalions paid much higher price than that. And I can't explain, you know, how, I can't explain why that happened, why we were, you know, we, um, one thing I don't attribute it to is my leadership. I think it was, there were undercurrents here. I think they're often undercurrents in counterinsurgency. We don't know, we never know how much we have fact.

But we were fortunate. What rank were you at the battalion commander? Is that 04? That's 05, yeah. 05, okay. So let's see, we got captain. What do you got? The gold oak leaf for you guys, is that?

That's major. That's major. So you were lieutenant colonel. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, anyway, so that... What do you guys have to have to have such fucking different rank structures?

Yeah, it's pretty easy. Hey, you know, just on your point about the effect of fear or the connection of fear to anger, you know, it seems obvious on a very individual level. You remember playground fights, you know, where you may want to de-escalate and then someone hits you and you're like, ah, you know. And that's kind of the collective feeling, right? And that's the hard role that leadership has to play in defusing that really hard. role, especially when you're feeling that anger yourself. Yeah.

And that's when you really earn your, you know, you either earn your commission or you put it down the shitter. Agreed. And that's why, you know, to sermonize, that's why I have such short shrift for leaders who are involved in law of armed conflict violations and have some excuse about number of deployments or this or that or blah, blah. It's like, fuck, man, that is, that's why you're in that. position, dude, the United States military. I agree. Okay, so Lieutenant Colonel, did you

battalion commander? Where'd your career take you after that? Yeah, so fast for a couple of boring billet as a planner in Europe planning defense of Israel, oddly enough. But I came back as a brigade or regimental commander for the Marine Special Operations Regiment, as it was called then. Is this an 06? This was an 06, yeah. Fuck yeah. So, which was awesome. I mean, it was absolutely awesome.

And by the way, M-Saw is an old term. Now it's the Marine Raider Regiment. And I don't know how much your listeners officially know about Maasaw, the Marine Raider Regiment. I don't know either. Yeah. But, yeah, Marsok is the smallest of, of socom's components, all told, you know, about 2,200 people.

You know, that's civilian employees, odds, odds, and everything in the headquarters. I think number of operators hovers around the 1,000 mark. Of course, I'm dated here, but it may have gone out, but not a lot, right? So, you know, it's a fraction even of the seal community. Yeah, the seal community hovers at like 2,000 to 2,500. They've constantly, but again, I mean, that's not that much bigger. And that's a slow growth over time. Yeah.

Where is Morrisock based? It is based in Camp Lejeune. No, outside Camp Lejeune. Did it start off at Pendleton? There was a battalion in Pendleton. Yeah. It was a beautiful location, the first Marine Raider Battalion. Okay.

And then when I had the regiment, yeah, there was one battalion on the West Coast, two battalions in in Camley Shune. And each battalion focused on a region. So first battalion focused on Pacific. Second was on third. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, third was on Africa. I'm missing this off. Anyway, say second on the Pacific. It doesn't matter. Like I said, we're dated and shit between the two of this. Anyway, it's all, no, it's all changed anyway. But now all three of them are together in a place called Stone Bay just outside Camber Shoe. All right. Yeah, that was, I mean, that was, that was a really good, it was just a great command for a

number of reasons. So it was a difficult one too, constantly being challenged because then I don't know what the demographic is now, but then the demographic within Marssock, the average, the average master operator was a 32-year-old E7. Really? Yeah. So we had a really senior. That's a good thing. Senior, senior, senior community then. Okay, so now that's what the master guns told me at the time. So it might have been bullshunding. But you could see it. It was very senior. But at the same time, very questioning, you know, everything. Bob, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so. Well, that's the role of the enlisted, is to question the role of the officer. Now, when you've got every single,

No, I think that's healthy, but it's a different leadership, right? It is. So when you have, when you've got a battalion of 18 to 20-year-olds who, you know, they've wanted to be a Marine since they saw Sands of Iwo Jima or whatever kids watch now, you know, to motivate them to becoming a Marine, I mean, you're dealing with, it's a very different population. And I think it infers on you an even greater responsibility because they are more manageable. 100% Much more. Now, in Mawsoc, you had the other side, you know, you had guys who are,

each one of them was a seasoned leader. Yeah. You know, the most junior guys were back then sergeants, but fairly senior sergeants. Or they were captains, you know, on the officer side. It's a tough role, leading an experienced group like that. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it was good. I really enjoyed it.

And then what happened, was that became, remember in 2014 when the Islamic State reared its ugly head in Iraq and took Mosul, June of 2014. And a special operations task force was sent out after that. And I may have got the dates a little bit wrong, but I believe they got out there in 2015. It was sourced out of, I want to say, fifth group, and then they turned over to, but it's augmented by seals too. And some and again, some of your listeners,

I'm sure who remember the details more. But anyway, bottom line is that the Islamic State was within 30 kilometers, all right? By the time they'd come down through Ramadi, right? All the places we bled over, Ramadi and Fallujah, they were 30 kilometers away from Baghdad, all right? And that was like beginning of 2015,

And around that time, I was told, hey, you're going to now turn over the regiment and you're going to take over a combined special operations task force, deploy them to Iraq, and the counter ISIS deployment deploying the following January. Okay, so January of 2016. So I had about six months. but this task force didn't exist. And I couldn't take the regiment because there's only one Marine Special Operations Regiment. But the nucleus had to be Marine Special Operations dudes. So it's just a nightmare putting this thing together.

I mean, it was just in typical marine fashion. You know, I mean, this is the United States' pitch for special operations against the Islamic State in Iraq. And I'm like, dude, can you lend me a drone, you know, or can you give me five guys just, I was like, fuck. I am not exaggerating. Anyone who's trying to remember that Seger Sotiv,

we'll remember that is kind of the case. So anyway, we did get together at Seager Sotiv headquarters, and actually it was a damn good one. And here's a strange thing. Maybe half of them were soft, but even the ones we had who were soft didn't have a lot of experience you know except for my master guns that's a nine right e9

yeah and then I had super had a great Mark Murphy God bless him a seal former dev group guy was like the master chief yeah I'm just smiling because he's a funny dude my if Mark's listening if you know and please

tell him I love him. Anyway, where was I? Yeah. But other than that, just not very experienced at all. But they were motivated as hell

and their steep learning curve. And when I say non-soft, most of the non-soft guys were Marines. Yeah. You know, so the cool thing was for the soft guys, it was kind of a, hey, even though these guys aren't soft,

they still can think some kind of way we do, you know. There was on my planning teams and stuff like that. I think because they were fairly junior and because they're fairly inexperienced, they didn't bring a template to this fight and this fight was totally different.

And they came up with some brilliant ideas. By the way, I brought in, you know, I had an Australian, I had a couple of Brits who were on the planning team, who bought a completely different perspective too. For sure. So anyway. How was it for you in your career?

I mean, at some point in the ascension of an officer, your feet go from the battlefield to the, I'm going to call it the boardroom. Did you enjoy that transition? Or did you enjoy your time on the battlefield more? I, you know, this sounds like me trying to be a kind of commander rock guy. But no, I always, always felt happier in operational. roles. I think that's the case for most people.

I, you know, if I can, yeah, I just talk freely about something that happened that, but sometimes I could be negative and I could compound mentalize before, you know, most people know me know this, but before my last deployment, this went counter to the Islamic state, I lost my daughter in a, in a traffic accident. I deployed I deployed and by the way General Votel who had

Socom at the time I was super gracious sent you know sent me a really nice note as soon as it almost you know right after happened and he'd heard and also came to Fort Bragg while we were doing pre-deployment training and I know he won't mind me saying this

you know and said hey Andy you can no one's going to think the worst of you if you step down. And the reason why I went ahead and did it wasn't because I thought, hey, no one else can do this. It's because I couldn't imagine not having that sense of purpose at that time. But the problem was I kicked it down the road, and I'm getting to answer your question, right? And it combined with kind of my going from the battlefield to staff job

as chief of staff at Special Operations Command Central. And I don't know, you know, I don't think this affected my work or anything. Who knows? But I spiraled hard. You know, I think a combination of things maybe turning over. It wasn't turning over operation. It wasn't a lot of things. It was Kayla's death.

But it was probably emphasized by every. everything else by the fact that I'd kick the can down the road, compound ventilize for six months. What choice would you make if we had a time machine and you could go back? I don't think I'd made any different choice. Really? Yeah. In fact, I had the choice two months into deployment. You know, one night, I just couldn't sleep.

I mean, I went through, you know, and those, for your listeners, you lost a child. And I think any parent can probably imagine, you know, you get through periods where you just feel as though you're drowning. And so I, you know, in the middle of the night, I was thinking, I'm not sleeping. I'm probably not going to be making good decisions. I've just, you know, I can't, it's really selfish if I remain here. In the morning, I'll just, I'll call my boss. He's a two-star soft, Korean beret, and just tell him I quit. Now, can you imagine I'm a Marine?

right the first time a Marine has been put in command of a special operations type of siege or soative and when I say siege or soda people know I mean an 06 level command so it's a it's kind of a big deal you know it's a huge deal and then you know how it is I mean being a Marine I mean to go and say I quit but that's how much pain I was in and then that was about 2 o'clock in okay and then I'm not making this story up about 3.30 someone's pounding on my door. It's my officer, Chef Buffer, and he's like, he's through, we've got a Trident in a tick. I mean, we've got a... Troops in contact. Somebody's in a gunfight. Yeah, it's a seal. It's a seal unit basically in,

yeah, in direct contact with the Islamic State, which we weren't supposed to be doing anyway. But that's not... I'm sure it was, you know. Accidental. But anyway, so like, okay, and, and it was actually pretty serious. They were, you know, it looked like they were getting cut off. And what happened was they were legitimately, you know, on their way from A to B to meet up with a Peshmerga unit. The Islamic State had broken through the line in the night, which they did from time to time.

And they'd laid, you know, basically laid an ambush. And they'd almost, they triggered the ambush too early, you know, otherwise they'd have gone. But they triggered it too early, but now they were in the danger of enveloping the, you know, you could see all this from drone footage. I mean, you could see it was really weird. You could see the ISIS dudes had these fucking, I'm not exaggerating, armored vehicles. And people remember this, you know, rolling around on the flank. I mean, it was pretty scary. And then trying to, you know, there we are trying to vector in a QRF at night,

which, you know, a different unit. The QRF was a Marine Special Operations team. So, I mean, different SOPs, I mean, just haven't trained together. It's dark, under contact. I mean, these things are not easy. I mean, at the best of times. And you're trying to coordinate it without being, you know, the 50-mile screwdriver trying to enable that coordination and the link up, all right,

and prevent blue on blue. And the same time, you know, keeping the Islamic State dudes out by bringing in airstrikes. So we're trying to do all of this. And anyway, it gets light, and we get the team out of that. You know, everything's good. And they, you know, the Peshmoa counterattack, they drive the Islamic State back. So it's a, it's a story that ends well. But, you know, I wander out and it's like broad daylight.

And then I'm thinking, you know, I can't, I can't quit. You know, I can't. And again, it wasn't like, oh, no, I can do this. It's just, I've got to. role here. I feel as though I'm doing things. I mean, you remember that, right? Yeah. I mean, that, just that, that feeling that you're doing something that in this case was probably, it makes you feel guilty about thinking about your own suffering. Exactly. Yeah. Did, uh, did Charles Keating die on that deployment while you guys were there? He did. He did.

He was a good kid. I put him through training. Did you really? I did. Yeah. Yeah, it, uh, I saw him at his going away party, uh, that his OIC. had for him up at their house. I don't know if maybe had made its word back to you, but his OIC ended up taking his own life not too long ago. No, I did not know that. Yeah, Bobby took his life. Oh, my God.

Yeah. He was the CEO of Seal 101 at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just over a year ago. I just can't. I mean, I know it. He had just, he had just,

He had just rolled into the chair at SEAL Team 1. He had just become the CEO. I know, I mean, I know, I'm sad that my sister took her life. So I know one of the things people always say is, oh, I can't imagine. But I really can't imagine that, right? I mean, not, not with Bobby. I would have, I would have put almost every penny that I have been the case. I was shocked to hear it.

Anyway, I'm sorry, totally. Yes, sadly that's. Yeah. And by the way, the compound was named after him. Yeah. And by the way, that particular mission I've written about in my book. And I'm not saying that Keating's life could have been saved. That would have been an awful thing to imply in the book.

That's not. but trying to get evacuation aircraft in, trying to get control of CAS was a struggle, not because of the Islamic State, but because of my conventional army headquarters. Sometimes the worst enemy are the people that you were working with. I ran into that same team in Yemen a few years later, before I wrote that part in the book and sat down on them.

I said, hey, before I write this, I just want to make sure this is how you remember it. Yeah. And that's, you know, they said, yeah, that's what we heard on the, you know, on the net and everything. What I heard about Keating's injury, I don't know if any Medivac platform would have had time. Nothing. No, no, no. In fact, I say so in my book, too. No, I mean, unless that had happened on an operating table, I don't think you would have had a chance.

100%. Yeah. And it's really important everyone understands that. But at the same time, just as a procedural issue, the fact that we were having such a hard time getting done what we had done says something about, I'm not criticizing people. The point is that command relations out there didn't necessarily work. Sometimes you need soft to have independent.

I mean, you really need to really. Because one of the things we value in soft is their ability to innovate and think and move and do the right thing, right? Yeah. Okay. So putting them subordinates to a conventional chain of command doesn't always work, especially when it's the soft guys who are the only guys who have the permissions to do things on the ground. That's why the J-Soc model works a little better. 100%. Because you have the ecosystem.

That's 100%. Yeah, God bless them. Yeah. And that's not, you know. Everybody works for us. But at the other end of the soft food chain, you know, there's like, yeah. And look, it's, yeah, anyway, you're right, but nothing could have. But my concern at the time was also about preventing that happening again.

Yeah, of course. Which I was confident afterwards, honestly, that it wouldn't. There was a significant discussion with, in fairness, with a three-star. I'm sure you were respectful of the entire time. And he about, oh, I had to be, yes. You know, by then I'd learned that's the way to get your point across, you know. Sometimes. I wish I had learned that lesson completely.

Occasionally, the teapot boileth over with me. in meetings like that. Sometimes I just couldn't sit on it. I'm so glad. I'm always glad to meet someone like that because, no, my kids will tell you that I'm full of shit that I'm always boiling over.

Of course, with your kids, it's a little different because you're so emotionally. I mean, you can't. And they're designed to chew on your bones. Children feast on the bones of their parents. I can see myself like the part of me, the sliver of me,

that knows about leadership, looking at me outside and just horrified about some of the things that I say and do as a father. And I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. We're just talking about being professional in the meetings with three stars versus... Yeah. You know what I learned the hard way is when any flag officer asks somebody relatively junior what they think,

they're not actually asking what you think. because occasionally I would tell them. And I would either get asked to leave, in which case I shortly had a meeting with my boss right after that, or just not get invited back. Even in the sales. Well, only in mixed company. Say we were part of a larger group, and I saw something being planned or spoken about that I consider to be slightly idiotic and a risk to somebody. And they would say, hey, what do you think?

And I would say I think that's galactically fucking stupid. I would be asked to leave and then meet with my boss shortly thereafter and not go to the joint meetings anymore. I mentioned that. So that was your secret. God. I mean, I've heard people literally advocate for, well, let's seize the low ground and fight up. I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, I don't know anything. But that's fucking stupid.

And unless you're going to come with us, I don't think we should do this. that. Yeah. Time for you to leave the room. Like, fuck. Well, it's funny, yeah. So, yeah, it's funny you should mention that very quickly. So the conventional army division that we were kind of working for, we were supporting

in Iraq, they were all about this bridge crossing that they insisted that the Iraqis had to do in order to get to Mosul. It's true. The Iraqis did have to cross the river. but there were ways that the Iraqis could have done it their Iraqi way. You know, they knew about all these little areas. Surprisingly enough. Yeah. If the U.S. guys had just listened to them, but no, it's got to be a bridge crossing

because that's what the U.S. Army does. So they plan this massive bridge crossing was smoke and, you know, I mean, Sosa, if you guys watching are geeks enough to remember this, right? Suppression and then, you know, you've got, So, like, massive amounts of a high explosive directed at absolutely nothing just on the opposite bank. But it's the show, it's kind of acoustic suppression. Totally. Yeah.

Anyway, so all of this, right, is supposed to be the Iraqi army briefing the upcoming operation, right, which is valley something not Valley Forge, but is, I forget what it's called. but instead it's kind of the US guys talking them through with an interpreter and at the end the US Division Commander says to the senior Iraqi three star right he goes so what do you think and the guy goes we're gonna die in English and I was I promise you that's true I was in the audience and I thought I was going to pee myself I was laughing so hard I mean, how do you control that? But, you know, that's just kind of, that's where we go wrong, right? Yeah.

We mirror image and T. Lawrence said this century over a century ago, you know, it's better their way than we try and impose ours, you know, even if their way seems imperfect. And they would have found a way to get across that river, you know, and get up on ISIS without this ridiculous bridge crossing operation. Anyway. It is what it is. How many years were you in at that point? 06.

I mean, you've got to be close to 20 right there. Yeah, yeah. So when I deployed, I was 28 years. Damn. And then how much after that until you got out? I got out. I'm sorry, 29 years when I deployed. Yeah, I got out at 31 years.

Okay. So the last, my last two years, I was at Special Operations Command Central in Tampa. Why 31? You did, I'm assuming you were knocking on flag at that point. No, I was, well, maybe knocking, but no one answered. Yeah. On the trajectory headed in that general direction, yeah. Oh, yo.

Is anyone home? Yeah. I think I kind of got the, you know, I got the hint. never really had a mentor in the Marine Corps, you know, to make, I mean, probably for obvious reasons, because I'm just, but. But at 31, can you kind of just put your papers in? Were you signing obligations at that point? Are you kind of just serving a year at a time? How does that work? Oh, no, you mean, why not 30? Oh, no, I'm just, you know, I'm curious at, I'm especially at the officer level, are you, are you, are you kind of just? No, no, you can't. So, you're, you're, you're,

commission, first of all, you, if, you know, I started off with a reserve commission, so I had to get back then with Cordette augmented. It was basically validated. You compete against everyone else of the reserve commission. So blah, blah, blah. But once you are, once you've got like an active duty commission, then it really depends. You only get forced out based on your rank and years of service. Like a higher tenure. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, by the time you make, By the time you make major, you know you can make it to 20, I want to say. I'm going to screw this up. But anyway, my point is that...

You'll probably add another five for every rank after that. Yeah. Yeah. If you're going to pick up Lieutenant Colonel, you can probably make it to 25. Yeah, you've got a Lieutenant Colonel. And as you've got to make Colonel or be selected for Colonel by year 26. Okay. And so you were forced out, you know, at each rank if you don't make that.

I could have stayed in and had another two looks at General. But, you know, frankly, I don't think I was competitive. I mean, and I'm no problem with that. I don't think I should have been competitive, actually. What year did you get out? 2019 March. Okay. Not that long ago.

Yeah. Yeah, not that long ago. Well, you've been busy since. We haven't even touched on, what should we call it, your adventure in Ukraine? How the fuck did you end up in Ukraine? Okay. So I went out there working for task and purpose. Okay, task and purpose.

Oh, no, you were a freelance. Yes, I was a freelance. Like the media company? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm laughing because they may regret this and I'll tell you why. Anyway, hey, listen, they were good to me.

Task and purpose were awesome to me. What were you hired to do? So just, well, I wasn't really hired. I had an agreement with the editor there, a guy named Pauls Roda, who's a great guy. And he goes, okay, you're a freelance, which means that we will pay your fare and you write just for us. But if anything happens, you're a freelance, you know. How did you find your way into journalism? I mean, obviously you wrote a book.

I suspect you enjoyed writing. I had written a number of articles, and I had written a couple of articles for task and purpose. Okay. And I'd known Paul because of those articles. And so I pitched to him, and I said, hey, if you pay my way to Ukraine, you give me a press, you know, you give me press credentials, and you pay me for each article, you know, I will do this. We're cooking with gas, yeah, far away. And so that was the agreement, which was awesome. And so, but by that time all this came through, it was pretty late.

And it looked like Kiev was going to fall. So I didn't know whether it was worth even heading for Kiev. But that was my goal. So anyway, I managed to. I got to Warsaw and linked up with two Ukrainian intelligence officers, all right, who are heading back into. I know it sounds like a movie. No, it's true.

Back into Ukraine, I don't know what they were doing in Poland, anyway. Females. And that's important, not that they were females, but that I linked up with them, because there weren't a lot of people going the other way. There was a huge flood of people coming out. And so people going the other way, it looked kind of strange. But anyway, so cut a long story short, we got into, we got across the border to Lviv and then up into, I got up into Kiev. But by then it was, yeah, it was mid, I'm going to say mid-March.

And so the Russians were on basically three sides of Kiev. In fact, the road that I'd come along, it was one of the main, the only main road that you could come into Kiev at the time. And they were shelling the outskirts and that their infantry had into the northern suburbs of Kiev. And it really looked, do you remember in the news, everyone was like, fuck man, Kiev's going to fall.

For sure. Yeah. So I was there. I wrote three or four articles for task and purpose. I don't know how good a journalist I was. but then I got caught up in the story because I just been to you know I've been to Ukraine

just less than two years before and and I been involved you know two or three times just training first of all they're just the regular Marines and then later they're soft guys and I ran into a soft Colonel in Kiev

I didn't know him but he's his friend of a friend and he said hey can you help us train people in a hurry and he said what's going on basically is the army is fighting you know trying to hold the Russians

off in the east but we've got nothing covering Kiev you know which is true you can look it up I mean and so except the territorial forces the reserve guys who were putting in it. I may be exaggerating. I think maybe there was a battalion or two, you know, of active duty guys, but for the most part, it was reserved battalions being thrown together. And it was, it was literally, hey, they were, I mean, you could see people lining up

in Kiev, for instance, outside the opera house, and they were handing out AK-47s. Yeah, I've seen these videos. You know, I mean, it was just like, go and defend your neighborhood. There's some red dawn shit. It was crazy. I mean, I, I, I, I, I remember running into a family who were on their way to, up north, to, they'd come back to get weapons and they were going back to defend their neighborhood. You know, I'm not kidding, your mother, father and their son, he was an adult son, he was 18, but then, I'm like, you know, I just can't imagine what that, what that feels like. Anyway, so this colonel said, um, look, we've got, you know, we, we, we, we need to put together some kind of training course because we can't just hand out weapons. You know, because this is going to be our defense, right? We've got to make sure. And so drop in the ocean, I mean, but it began with very small thing.

We got together maybe half a dozen guys, I think, four of whom were former Marines and a couple of Brits or former military guys. I mean, they're all legit. And we put together a training course. And it was a five-day training course. And so what do you do in five days when you take an IT worker or a student and you're going to train them to fight the Russians? I mean, it's not like, hey, you may do this or you're going to go into another school. It's like, what do you teach them in five days?

And that was a constant kind of pressure on us of trying to get feedback. So to begin with, it was weapons training because they were. horrible with weapons and it was you know I mean it's just like point in the right direction and all of that and some basic you know ATGM training anti-tank got a missile training they didn't

you know those guys didn't have access to the javelin you know which got all the unfortunate yeah all the it's my favorite weapon system yeah but they did oh yeah great but they did have an integer I think it's called this trigger so we taught them you know we had

We had a guy who could teach him on that as is a Ukrainian, American. I love the javelin enough that that little dog that fits in that cage, which is that many Doxhoon is named javelin. I love it, yeah. It's my favorite weapon system. God, that thing's, it just fuck shit up. Yeah, I was, you know, I was denied, back in 2004, they were, you know, relatively rare,

commodities in the Marine Corps and I had a very smart marine attached to to my mitt who was a javelin gunner and he came with you know the system and yes and wanted to use it against uh well it happened to be a mosque minaret but a legit target because we've been taking fire from it and uh we were you know we were turned down because of ROE but also i suspect the 70 000 you know of I always found it was better to just shoot them and then report back over the radio afterwards. But remember, if I remember, I'm a Marine. Well, later, you know what, it's funny enough,

less later on the same tour, I started to do the same thing. Yeah. And I think that's actually a really, Andy, that's a great discussion, isn't it? You know, I mean, I've written about it. At what point do you start disobeying orders? You know, at what point, you know. We weren't constrained in that way.

You know, the theater, R. The first time I ever let one off the chain was in Afghanistan in 2010. And it was that a guy who was clearly tactically observing us with an icon, yeah, an icon radio. We could see the lobs. We could see that it was the person. We could hear him. We could hear what he was saying.

He was like 1,800 yards. We didn't have a weapon system that could reach out and get him. And I didn't, I mean, that to me satisfies my ROE. And so I let the thing off the chain. They made me read it back twice. to the talk in Kandahar, because I think they were a little bit confused by, you know, one enemy insurgent engaged with a shovel. So I read it back.

Hey, a threat's a threat. Indeed. Yeah. And I'd rather deal with that threat than him rallying all his little fucking friends. Yeah. Who come crawling out of the woodwork. No, I mean, I'm laughing. But, I mean, seriously, as long as, you know, you can justify it in terms of collateral damage,

the expense is not a factor. No. I mean, it shouldn't be a factor, right? It ended firefights. Exactly, yeah. And so, yeah, exactly, the psychological effect alone. It was huge. Yeah. So how long were you in Ukraine? Yeah, for a year. So anyway, yeah, so fast forward, we're training these guys. By the way, I just tell you a very funny story, I think, from that time. We had this one kid who was awful with the weapons. He just kept flagging. He was flagging. He was flagging. everyone. And so, and the problem is we would try and get everyone to go live fire, but the thing is when we, we would pick a range. And I'm laughing, but it wasn't funny at the time. He picked a range

and, you know, after the first firing detail, we'd start to get incoming rounds because there were like spotters or people would hear or who knows what, but, you know, I mean, there was a definitely not coincidence. So it's kind of a two-way range, which isn't what we needed. Not the best first exposure for people. Yeah, so it was an unusual system. So people started saying, units started saying, no, you can't use that fucking range because we don't want incoming.

That's a true story. I bet. And so, but that curtailed our ability to allow people to shoot. So this one guy got through without even shooting his weapon, goes up to fight the Russians. He comes back later for kind of this refresher training because they're like, go in this time, learn more about learning how to shoot a weapon.

And we, you know, when I'm talking to him, he said, how did it go? He goes, yeah, really cool, cool. And we said, you went up there without a weapon. He goes, yeah, my platoon commander was like, no, I don't trust you. But he goes, but he gave me a bag of grenades. He gave me a bag of grenades. And he's like, he showed me how to throw out, and he's like, there's nothing to it. And so he goes, just as soon as we run into him, I mean, that close,

as soon as we run into him, just start fucking lobbing. And that's what he does. And he was like, man, that was awesome. Awesome. To a degree, I bet it was. So here's this guy who's killed. I don't know how many Russians being in direct combat, but never fired a weapon. You know, I think that was probably an unusual story. I wonder if they let him kept the bag. I don't know. A little souvenir.

I don't know. And I can't even tell you how he panned out as, you know, weapons handler, but it probably doesn't matter. I mean, this kid was a huge morale booster. But anyway. So you were over there in a training capacity then? Well, we did that, but then what we did too was, no, we weren't fighting. No, if that's your, no, no, absolutely not fighting. We were training, and the other thing is we were pulling civilians out of the areas under Russian bombardment. So, for instance, from the outset of the war, you know, obviously Dombas has been where the heaviest fighting has been. From the outset of the war, Zelensky and, you know, the governors of Le Hansk and Dernetsk have both ordered evacuations.

But the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian, I mean, the Ukrainian government can't do that. So these civilians were stuck still are as a percentage of them in these towns that are just getting fucking ravaged by the Russians. I mean, every single building, I'm not exaggerating. not just some damage too, but, you know, decimated. I mean, severely damaged almost. How does the U.S. military or the government view a very senior U.S. military, you know, prior military officer over there doing those type of things? God, that's a really good question, yeah.

I mean, who did you actually, I mean, who, the structure, like, who are you working for? Who do you report to? It seems like it's murky, that maybe the whole thing over there is murky. I don't know. Yeah, but I think it's murky in the sense that, no, I didn't, you know, I didn't have a chain, chain of command. Yeah. I think it's, I think it appears murky than it actually was, you know, the truth.

The truth was exactly, you know, it's a kind of a bootstraps thing that came up. We've focused on training, then we focused on evacuations. What we became, I think, certainly in the Russian blogger's eyes, were a number of things to include everything from organ harvesters to a serious threat to them, which is, you know, ridiculous. Yeah. Well, the information you were providing could become a serious threat to them, but that's different than you guys yourselves. 100%. Out there on the front lines. That's exactly right.

Yeah. We were, and I was, you know, from time to time, we'd have guys, and I understand this. saying, hey, Andy, we need to carry weapons, you know. But the point is weapons put us in a different category. You're a combatant. Now, if you're an American in Ukraine now carrying a weapon, exactly. But not only that, now you're a liability, because every time you come to a checkpoint, you know, you've got Ukrainian kids who are jumpy, you know, you're just ramping up your own threat. I think sometimes we as Americans think, hey, that's our protection. I think in the soft community we're a little more mature about that because sometimes we realize trust of

vintage is our protection. Sometimes a low-vis options better. Exactly, yeah. God, you're over there for a year. What do you wish people knew about what was going on over there that has just seemed to be lost? Because I think most people, to include myself, other than conversations like this with you, it's like something off of the phone or, you know, a TV or a laptop.

Yeah. And I can totally understand in the modern era. how people are losing more and more faith in what they see on those devices. Because depending on where you look, the same topic, two completely different viewpoints. Like, where the fuck is objective truth in this? Or is there no more objective truth in 2024? I don't know. I get their frustration.

But I don't think, I mean, very few people actually have spent the time over there. And again, it's through your experience, but I'm fascinated to hear my thoughts. You know, I still feel pretty emotionally involved in a sense because I find myself trying to avoid thinking about it because the truth is there is no happy outcome to this story. And I think, you know, behind the scenes, it's easy to paint, say, the Russians as villains, now they'll bear with me, Of course, you know, I'm not talking about Putin.

I'm talking about the soldiers on the ground. But they are suffering, you know, at tremendous cost too. You know, these are human beings on both sides, you know, who are and the best, you know, I'd argue on the Ukrainian side, the best that country has had to, you know, offer. All the men and women who have flocked to the colors have already done so. and that is the other thing I think you know you asked me what do what should people understand yes you know there's a lot of talk about the lethality of modern war transparency of the battlefield what does that mean it means that for the poor bloody infantry the 21st century warfare as as you know as exercised in ukraine is is like a nightmare no one has seen not even not even in the 20th century

These drone videos? Holy. It is beyond comprehension and nothing in, I think, even historical comparison, you know, bears comparison. I mean, people can challenge me on that. But I really do think, even if I'm just talking about the psychological, the fear exactly with FPV drones, you know, the nearest I can think is the Stuka dive bomber, right, in the

certainly in the opening stages during the blitzkrieg of the Second World War was supposed to have a paralyzing effect and the Germans supposedly put whistles on the wings and so just the sound of this thing coming down

just terrified the Allies so much that the Germans were claiming that the French or what are the British broken ran just hearing that sound right so I think you know there's a correlation there to yeah the videos i've seen of humans being chased down by these drones or surrendering to

drones or you know dropping grenades or ordinance with a pinpoint it's unbelievable to see the rapidity that that is evolving yeah yeah with a stucca you know or threats from the air or man you could hide you know you could go under uh you know you could get her in the bunker or something. I know, these things are chasing them in. But these, exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's no, that's why, and I don't know how they work this out, but, you know,

apparently from 90, from initial visual acquisition, it's a 90% hit rate. I mean, that's scary, you know, and it's, so a terrifying threat. Yeah. Because you can, yeah, artillery is scary, but you can hear artillery. Indirect fire is probably the worst. It was my least favorite. You can hear those drills coming. Yeah.

I mean, from a psychological operation, I'd be flying those things up there all the time. Just keeping them constantly in that state of fear. Man, you're going to go back? No, no, no. No, I, um, so I, I, you know, I, the reason why I left, I mean, the Mozart group fell apart.

My, my partner sued me. me. That's all that's fun. Yeah, which, you know, I mean, it's been dismissed, but it was a story that at the time was very painful. He sued me, I think, with the antenna just removing me from the Mozart group. But the thing is that the Mozart group fell apart because it was really, he was a necessary evil for us.

He was an American, but he was embedded in Ukraine. And so he knew the ropes and everything. Sadly, he was a former Marine. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. I probably owe him my life because I think we left just in time. You know, it was bad enough when we were out there. I know of four people who worked for us

who stayed behind, who've been killed. You know, I couldn't tell you what percentage that is of people, you know. But I know of four who've been killed, that seems to me a lot. since, you know, and I can say that the Motsar group in the year that we were there saved, you know, we trained thousands of Ukrainians. We, you know, we saved hundreds of civilians, all of this stuff, you know, is stuff that we know.

But we didn't lose anyone. And that last part, I think, is more and more important to me, the more I think about that whole experience. Yeah. Because it's such a fucked up war, and there's so much needless loss coming out of it. And what we did was just a drop in the ocean. How do you foresee it ending?

Sadly, I see it ending in some, some pros in conflict pending during negotiations, or at least that's what I thought. Okay, I'm going to hedge until three days ago when I heard Zelensky talk on Ukrainian Independence Day and he said, because before the key thing was this, right, if he was going to compromise on any four of the areas that the Russians currently occupy within Ukraine, then perhaps there were grounds for

negotiation. If he was not going to compromise and he was going to say, no, this war would continue until we have evicted every Russian boot from Ukrainian soil, then there's no room for negotiation. Well, that is, that last part is exactly what he said. So I was going to say that there be some kind of frozen conflict. But what scares me now is a worse prospect, which is just an indefinite churning inferno, because I can't see an end to it. Yeah, unless outside pressure. outside pressure, something happens to Putin or internal pressure within Ukraine. You know, if it's going to be internal pressure, it's going to be within Ukraine because, obviously, it's a democracy.

Putin kind of does what Putin wants to do, it seems like. Man. Sorry, I wish I'd be more optimistic, but. Well, I mean, I'd rather ask somebody who's actually been over there and experienced as opposed to a talking head on fucking TV who probably couldn't find Ukraine on a map. save their life. Oh, I want to be a talking head on TV. I don't think you do.

I don't think you do. I've done some TV spots. And again, it's one of those things where people have to be careful what they ask me, because I'll just tell them what I actually think. And I'm not afraid to say, I don't know, because if you ask me something outside of my wheelhouse of knowledge and experience, which for clarity is almost fucking everything, I'll say, I don't know. And I'm not looking for, they ask you to break down a really complex topic in 60 seconds.

Yeah. It's hard. And I just, I don't know if it services anybody the way they wanted to. That's why I like these longer term conversations. My God, go as deep as you want to go. Like get a, get a multi-terabyte hard drive and just hit, hit record on that fucker. See how long it wants to go. How old are you now?

61. 61. You did 31 years in the Marine Corps. I'm going to attack a year on to that for Ukraine, 32. So over half of your life in a profession of arms. what do you want to do with the rest of it? Gosh, that's a tough question. Do you feel 61?

No. No. I'm like, yeah, it was like, you know, I had to, yeah, let me start there because I'm not, because the second part, I'm not, I'm not sure. The answer is, yeah, to continue working in some capacity, you know, blah, blah, blah, that make towards something that makes sense, right? The sense of purpose, I guess. Yes, I need that.

What was the other part? Oh, yeah, how do I feel? Except for my memory. No. I just don't keep going. Hey, what was I talking about? No, I swear to God, I'm just drinking everyday water. Yeah.

It's something about Montana water. Yeah, I don't feel like, I'm 46 and I don't feel a day over, well, I was going to say 18, but I feel definitely older than that. We'll call it 25. Yeah. What do you attribute it to? being an idiot no seriously no i mean have you always felt felt that good i mean i asked my dad he's 76 do you feel 76 he's like no i didn't realize that i was ever going to he's like i knew people

were 76 when i was your age but it seemed obscure um so i think everybody has that i think if you constantly challenge yourself and try to learn new things i think it keeps you young between your ears. Are you a pretty upbeat person? Would you say, do you see yourself as pretty upbeat? You would have to ask a variety of people. I would say, I would consider myself to be a realist. Some people might consider that to be a pessimist.

Upbeat. Man, I feel like I am more neutral than anything. Like, not flat line, but I don't get very high highs and very low lows. What was it, what was the darkest night of your soul? The darkest night of my soul. I would say there were two. One was the night that I got home from saying goodbye to my mother when she was dying from cancer, knowing that I wasn't going to be with her when she died.

And the last, you know, I'm in the process of finishing a book. And in the last chapter, it's not a seal book. I don't tell it. There's zero war stories in there. and it's more about trying to help people keep their head above water. And in an essence, you know, I care deeply about winning, but the older I get, I care more about how I win than winning itself. And sometimes at this point in my life, I'm willing to not win to save who I see in the mirror. It's more important to me than the outcome itself.

And the world that I came from and the same world you came from, winning was all that mattered. And I went overseas in 2010. My mom got diagnosed with cancer about two weeks before I left. And it was her second time. At first I thought I had been saying for years, it was non-smoker's lung cancer. My sister corrected me. She had cervical cancer to begin with. Got a surgery.

Then I got a call. I was at sniper school. And she had first been diagnosed the whole nine, the hysterectomy, chemo, radiation therapy. outlived everybody in her cancer survivor group. And as it went on, you know, they start checking your body for cancer less and less frequently. It metastasized.

So it was cervical cancer that metastasized into her lungs. It was not long, uh, non-smoker's lung cancer. And she got diagnosed right before I left. I came home from 2010, uh, uh,

on a red cross message. I had been in good communication with my sister. She's the one who initiated it. And I made it. it back to my mom within about 48 hours of leaving Afghanistan. But literally the day before I got on the airplane, we were on an objective. And this was just the course of my life. I showed a javelin at three dudes. Fucking vaporized them in an overwatch position. Earlier in that day, it shot a dude with my 300 windbag, literally got off the helicopter, turned my shit in, and the next thing I know I'm back in San

Diego, driving up to see my mom. She lived for a short period of time after that. But with was a frail person of herself, but I literally, but she, she, she recognized you and everything. She recognized me, but I was not emotionally capable of, in my mind, and what, what hangs with me the worst is that I wasn't emotionally capable of being the son that I wanted to be. Dude, I was just in that binary mindset. I was just so used to action, reaction. The first time I saw in the hospital, and so my dad and my sister, and I don't know if this is a good, thing or a bad thing. They were with her as she slowly declined. And I think that might have been harder for them to see that difference. I saw her before I left and then right before her death.

So a huge stark difference in the person that I had left. First thing that went through my mind is I walked into the hospital room. The absolute first thing. It's not her. No, she's dead. Meaning I know she was going to die. And my sister, I remember my sister and my dad maybe holding on to a little bit of hope, I had none. But like, and it's not, it wasn't a conscious thought that I had, but I distinctly remember walking through the threshold of that door. And she was kind of laying up in bed and just the first thought that came through my mind was she's dead. And it wasn't, there was no accompanying emotional escalation or de-escalation with that, which is exactly the way it was for me overseas when it comes to those, its reaction, action, reaction. You know, it just,

for me, it took me a while. I would describe this, and I can only speak for myself. It always took me a while for me to find my humanity again to come back to the pace of just regular life because I was so focused on becoming ruthlessly efficient at my decision-making process overseas and stripped away my humanity. And I look back and that's,

I actually am going to end the book with the word of caution that anything can be taken to. far, even a desire to win. That mind space or headspace of being overseas and everything becomes binary and you strip everything away, it can put you in a place and I've seen people do it in a civilian world where they strip everything in a way and they win, but at what cost? They have everything, but they have nothing. Yeah, cost of everything. That's important ultimately. So that was the toughest one. One of the toughest ones for me was that.

I would say the second darkest moment of my life was actually up in British Columbia, sitting on a log, looking out over a lake on a hunting trip, coming to the realization that when I came home, I needed to leave my marriage. That was fucking rough. That was a depth and sounding of my character and soul probably more than anything else. Had this been something that you just thought about for a while? I think my ex-wife and I would agree we probably could have done it 10 years before. But I would say those are the two.

How did you act on that? I got home and I left. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in the following 24 months were probably the most difficult times of my life. How old were your kids at the time? Oh, let's see. So 16, no, 15, 13, and 11 at rough ages. So. But whatever, you know, whatever voice told you also, you know, it was implicit in that advice was, hey, you can't wait. You know, there's never a good time, right?

You know what the hardest thing was for me? Getting over the, the, the, idea that only I was putting on myself that I was quitting because that was the only thing that fucking mattered for the 17 years previously in my life. It can be taken too far. I mean, there are things you need to give up on. Like, how about an abusive relationship? And I'm not saying that about that particular relationship. But, you know, the seal ethos will never quit. We'll never give up. Maybe there's some times where you should. can be taken too far. It can become a set of handcuffs

and the most gnarly thing about it is you put them on yourself. Any one of those effortsms, you know, the mission then the men, you know, which is another damaging one because sometimes the men...

But it can empower people to do things beyond what they think is capable and it can ruin your fucking life. It truly a double-edged sword. But very, I mean, I mean, the way, and I'm not putting words in your mouth, but the way you describe it, all right? So, you know, I said, with the two darkest periods of your soul, it's interesting, neither really had anything to do with combat. Oh, I love killing people.

And the second. But the second one, you know, I don't if you'd agree, took a tremendous amount of courage, perhaps more, you know, different, obviously different type of courage. but perhaps even more courage. Combat didn't bother me. You know, I deeply respect somebody that is willing to fight to their death for something they believe in. I don't have to believe what you're believing in, but I respect the person that is willing to do that. And the act of taking somebody's life is it's not a trivial thing. But I think so few people are ever in a competitive environment.

And this is a really gross, not meaning like disgusting, but a broad way of describing a competitive environment where consequences could be, could not be more. And you're stepping into that environment and you're winning. And I don't expect people to understand that. But I think that's, I think it's a sentiment that applies to a lot of people. Yeah, very much. So I think, I know this is going to sound for a new age, right? But I think, you know, if you talk about kind of centers of energy, you know, like the competitiveness and everything.

Yeah. Is like your third energy center up. It's rooted from your gut, right? And the one above that is love. It's compassion, empathy and all of that. Well, which of those is the Marine, you know, where is your energy likely to stop in an organization like the Marine Corps, right? What's going to get you, which energy center is going to get you promoted in the head? It's not the love one.

It's that, you know, that competitiveness and it's not. But something is lost in the process. I think this is kind of what you're getting to when you came back, you know, and switching from combat. is what is lost in that process. I do believe is the love and compassion piece. I think it can be found, but I think to be truly, to increase your odds of survival,

again, just my opinion, to increase your odds of survival to the highest point, you have to dial down some of that stuff. But I think, not only can you dial it back, I actually think my military experience has allowed me to dial it

farther than I was able to absent it. Because you can control. Because I've seen. I mean, I feel like I can love more deeply than I was able to prior than my military experience because I have seen loss and suffering and anguish and I understand it. And I think it provides a context that you can value those things more. I feel like I've always been an emotional. person. I think it's given me more empathy. I honestly think it might have raised my EQ a little bit. And I have no data to support any of this. And maybe I'm completely out of my mind. But I feel like those experiences in combat helped me find a better version of myself. But it wasn't by ignoring all the other bullshit that comes with it. I mean, there's a, there's a heavy weight to carry in a backpack for that shit as well. And it's kind of, I don't like the term, I understand post-traumatic stress. I understand post-traumatic stress disorder. I wish we put more of an emphasis on post-traumatic growth, the person that you can become after

working your way through those things. I don't think it has to destroy you. No, I think that you have to find meaning in it. You know, remember our discussion about the, you know, when I talked about giving meaning to our service regardless, you know, in Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of the latter turning into a shit show, right? Still being proud of that service. Well, I believe that, but it's also a an important component of our mental health, right? A collective mental health. Because if you lose that and you look at the most significant thing you've done in your life as being regarded as a failure or something to be embarrassed about,

then that is, yeah, that's going to be huge. Well, I think it's also dangerous for people to look at their small sphere of influence, especially lower on the tactical rung and apply that to the overall strategic affair that may have happened. I mean, again, I wasn't being consulted for any of these meetings that occurred. And thank God, because I would have had no good plans other than to say, hey, guys, this doesn't seem like it's working out. Maybe we should change our plan. I think you have to focus on the impact that you personally made and detach a little bit from the way that the overall operation is viewed.

Because I had direct impact on one. And I don't feel like I had any impact on the other. Yeah. I think it's a healthier place to maybe live in that world. as opposed to only looking at this global or national level that truly the people with their boots on the ground, they had no impact on that. Yeah.

So, I don't know. Or maybe I'm fucking crazy. No, I... It's hard to say, Andy. Andy, I've cut. Yeah, I've cut. If you brought me on to argue with you, I'm the wrong guy, actually. No, I'm a fan.

Well, tell me about your book. Okay. So this may seem very unmarine-like to write a book. But remember I talked about, you know, kind of this isn't me making an excuse for running a book. I'm very glad that I did. But I talked about when I came back from my deployment, the counter-Islamic state deployment in 2016.

And that's really when losing Kayla hit me. And then you pile in all the other stuff that's happening, right? My marriage wasn't going well. I was changing jobs, blah, blah, blah, going to a staff job. I had been an operational dude, you know, so down tempo, it's all converging. And I feel, you know, not like I'm losing it, but I'm struggling. And I'm in an important, you know, the chief of staff position. And, you know, so I can't, I mean, I've got to front up and I've got to do a good job.

I mean, and it's, it's. it's getting harder for me to, to complementalize. So I've always enjoyed writing, and I started just writing thinking, okay, I'm just going to, I'm just going to write, you know, this isn't like some doomsay thing. I'm just going to, although I'd write, you know, maybe my kids would be interested, blah, blah, blah, blah. Could be just cathartic. Yeah. And then I was doing that.

I was really enjoying it because I was going through notebooks I had and everything, and it was, and it was exactly that it was cathartic. And years before now, I remember talking to a guy who'd been a Marine advisor in Vietnam in 1973 during the offensive. And anyway, he'd had really bad experiences there. And he told me, yeah, I came back and had what, you know, I now realize, was awful PTSD, awful. You know, my wife made me sleep in a different room. And he said, then I started writing, and it all went away.

And it's so weird, you know, he was writing. He wrote, not his memoir, he wrote about the battles he'd been in from his story. I mean, he's now well-known, I mean, in Marine Circles, author. But I remember that. And it had the same cathartic effect for me. You know, I think, I mean, it happens to me to be, to be, to be, to be. be writing, but there's a common thread here because I've met other guys who've struggled and found some creative outlet.

Yeah. And, and found it. It's a steam release on a pressure valve. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Whatever it may be. Yeah. You know, even if it seems like a dummy, even if it's tinkering with a car engine or, but

something that you... If it lets out everything that you have jam packed down with a pressure grinder. Yeah. Who cares? So when I was writing, it was the one thing I focused on. And I love doing that. And, you know, I was writing like 2,000 words a day. Bam.

Two to three thousand words. So, you know, in space of a couple of months, I had kind of the makings of a manuscript. I found a publisher. And that, you know, that was it. When I tell you, when it came out, it was less exciting than I thought. Really? Yeah. I mean, I thought, I realized that writing it, again, the whole process of writing was really what I enjoyed doing.

Yeah. Which is, which is, you know, I mean, which is good. I'm writing another book right now. And I'm finding the same kind of therapeutic sense of just being able to lose yourself in it. But anyway, so I wrote, so the book came out, yeah, and it came out right before COVID. paperback version just came out this last year. It won the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Best Biography Award. Hell yeah. So at least the institution has embraced it. And it's, you know, it seems to have had fairly good reviews. People tell me they enjoy reading it.

I suspect you're going to be writing for a long time. 32 years of service in that profession. Yeah. And men in general, God, we're so good. at dealing with our feelings and just not stuffing them down deep. Yeah, I know. And if I came across this being like a master of, you know, all these problems, no, but I've learned. Yeah. I'm certainly, to your point, you know, you're talking about what makes you feel younger.

Don't worry, I'm not going to extend this. But I'm, I'm better grounded. Yeah. You know, more spiritually grounded. I don't mean, you know, I'm not a religious person, but I mean spiritual. I know exactly what you mean. And that's important to me now, especially having lost ones. We've all lost people.

Yeah. And as we continue to lose people to things like suicide, if you and I and, you know, we're not spiritually grounded, then it's, I mean, there needs to be some ballast, right? And I want other people to see and hear about those that don't have the ballast to begin with, but they can find it. Yeah. it's one of the things I wish more people specifically men would do is be more comfortable talking about not always having their shit together and having to struggle and work through the darkest moments of their soul. I think the worst thing, and I think COVID really highlighted this, is that isolation is fucking dangerous.

100%. Yeah. And that's why guys struggle. Of course, when they get out of the military. Well, they move away from their brotherhood. The biggest form of isolation. Yeah. Well, and then you pair it with at least the seal pastime, which is alcohol consumption and really good decisions get made. The Marines never do that. I mean, well, good decisions. They never do that.

I still, to this day, you know, never in doctrine did they say you had to drink? And there was very conflicting messages. On Fridays, we would hear from the exo, hey. don't drink and drive. And then I shit you not. In the next sentence, he would say, Monster Mash PT, Run, Run, run, swim, run, followed by mandatory kegger and the grinder.

Mandatory kegher. I'm like, hey man, I drove here. Like, yeah. But also, presumably there are non-drinkers, right? Yeah, but then there's like, hey, new guys, you better be the last ones here. I'm like, what message are we really trying to send? That kind of surprises me a little bit.

You know, I thought the seals were like, you know, my body is my temple. Well, when you're 19 or 20 years old, I think you can just eat garbage and still have a temple. That's exactly, yeah. It just was always weird to me. You know, and they wonder why later on people struggle with those things. Yeah. I mean, fuck, it's deeply, deeply ingrained in the culture.

Even later in your career, Andy? I was not like that later in my career because I enjoyed it. No, I don't mean you, but do you think the culture remained like that? I think they were doing the best they could to shift it, but I think it was much more, I know aircraft carriers are not actually driven by a wheel anymore, but I feel like even if you were to spin on the old wheel, it'd be a really long time to move at a few degrees.

I do think they were doing their best, but it takes a long time for that, even though it's a small community, for an entire culture to shift. I think it's moving in the right direction. I mean, the running joke and the SEAL team's when I got in is you couldn't make chief unless you had a DUI. So you're not going to make E-7 unless you get one alcohol-related incident.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it was like in the Marine Corps, certainly in the 80s, was like that. Post-9-11 is like, hey, you want the fastest way out of the SEAL teams? Get an ARI. Yeah. You know, we talk about changing our lives. I mean, certainly, certainly when you think about the uptick and professionalism, I can only speak about my service in the Marine Corps.

Yeah. It was like night and day. You do everything in your life better when you're not shit-faced all the time. I know this through thorough and robust testing. Funnily enough. Where can people get your book? Amazon. Amazon's pretty the best place to get it.

Is there a better spot for authors? Like, is there at one spot where if they pick it up, it rewards you more? Oh, if there is, please let me know. I'm at lousy businessmen. No, but I mean, yeah, I mean, Amazon's the easiest. They package it and send it. Do you do social media? I do, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. I'm at Andy Milburn 8 on Twitter. Was seven taken? Yeah, I guess. I can remember. Isn't that frightening? I can't remember. I can't remember.

I can post my... my Insta, my other social media stuff on that. And then the podcast. When do you reach the original? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the Team House podcast, but it specifically eyes on. All right. So if you look on the Team House podcast, every week, you're going to have two types of

podcast. You're going to have, like, you know, today we have Eddie Stumpf, American Warrior, mystic, sage, healer. All these things. All these things. Martial artist and poet. Yeah. Hobbiest martial artist.

Yeah. So that's live stream. You've been on those, right? Yeah. I mean, those are fun. And back in the day when we could do this, and before I got trashed by a left-wing journalist, for appearing on the team house

and drinking whiskey rather heavily with both of them. Anyway, since then, yeah, up to that point, yeah, it used to involve people appearing there in drinking. Yeah, it is what it is. But the discussions were good. Yeah. But, you know, to your point, yeah, back to your point, not to lengthen a conversation,

but it's fascinating what he said about, yeah, alcohol culture, because absolutely the same in the Marine Corps. Yeah. 80s, 90s, and honestly, in practice throughout the war. Yeah. And a legacy of very heavy drinking, I know, among veterans, even among soft guys. Yeah.

You know, and again, the data is back on that. It's, you know, a central nervous system depresent. It's an attitude. Awful. Yeah. I mean, oh, yeah. And I'm not here to tell people how to live their lives. And, you know, I had a glass of wine with my wife the other night at dinner.

I'm not, I don't know. I try not to do things in extreme. You know, I'm a little bit more down the middle of the road. And I also, unfortunately, I don't have an addictive personality. I can put alcohol down forever or years and it doesn't bother me. And I could also drink socially and it doesn't, you know, I can manage that as well too. And I know not everybody can. But yeah, things are a little bit easier when you're not shit-faced or hungover.

Yeah. I, you know, on that, I mean, I happen, I don't drink. And it wasn't, no, I don't have some like, tremendous fall from grace. story and it's nothing to do with the fact that I was portrayed on the gray zone in drinking on the team house when I got back from Ukraine I just realized I was drinking for the wrong reasons you know I was I was drinking to get to sleep or to suppress anxiety and I wasn't enjoying it and then I was waking up feeling worse you know so I had a direct correlation between drinking and my anxiety the next morning.

And once I've made that correlation, stopping drinking was, it was a really easy decision. You know, it was like... Well, you identified your wife. Yeah. And so I stopped. And that was 18 months ago, and I feel great. But it doesn't bother me for a moment. People, you know, I love going out and around people who are partying.

You know, I don't just, I don't choose to do that, but I have just as much fun, probably more. Dude, what do you want to close it out with? I think we're well over three hours. I have no idea. Oh, man, are we? Sorry about that. I don't care.

It's a great conversation. Yeah, that was great. That was super conversation. No, I think, I don't think that's really anything else. Yeah, exactly. Podcast, please do watch. Yeah, you've got that, that sort of podcast, the kind of celebrity appearance on live stream,

and then you've got eyes on. which is kind of a current affairs update on, hey, here's what's going on. We have various guests on that show, too. Sweet. All right on, man. Thank you for making the trial out. It was great, my great pleasure.

Awesome, man. Appreciate it.