Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 263 - Love, Leadership, and Apache Gunships with Lt. Col Brian Slade

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Lt. Col. Slade has held command positions in the Army and the Air Force and received the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, and fourteen combat air medals. He attended Utah State, where he earned a BA and was commissioned as an Army Aviation second lieutenant. He's also earned an MA in aviation instruction. Brian currently serves as a lieutenant colonel for Air Force Combat Search and Rescue. He is the author of "Cleared Hot," Lessons Learned about Life, Love, and Leadership While Flying the Apache Gunship in Afghanistan, which is now available.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Now, this is releasing in early December. So you have the opportunity to go and get your last minute shopping for all of your loved ones, friends, combination of the two and get it delivered. I'm looking at their site right now. Free shipping on orders over 35 bucks if you order by December 13th. Let me do a quick check. Boom.

This episode will be out on the 12th. So you'll have time. What can you get at Black Rifle Coffee. com everything coffee related plus apparel merchandise cups ways to make coffee subscriptions stickers patches bags everything that a coffee fan and a fictional would love and appreciate to find under the tree or in a stocking so stop fucking about go to black rifle coffee.com and get in your last minute shopping items now that's it my guest today for episode number 263 is lieutenant Brian Slade. He's an author of the book, Cleared Hot. Lessons learned about life, love, and leadership

while flying the Apache gunship in Afghanistan and why I believe a prepared mind can help minimize PTSD. Now, what do you think my response was when the publicist reached out and said, hey, we have somebody who could be a good fit for your show. They just wrote a book called Cleared hot. I said, stop. You don't need to tell me anything else. Our worlds have to collide. And I'm really glad that we did it was a fantastic episode we talked about everything from shit struggles in life his time flying the apache his experiences in afghanistan his experiences in the air force i'll let him explain the combination between the two post-traumatic stress post-traumatic growth uh shit divorces what he's going to do after the military fantastic episode i'm going to shut up and let brian speak for himself

episode 263 with lieutenant colonel brian slate enjoy i'm looking at danger close now we got reds everywhere michael We sure do. All right. So we were just discussing how, as you age, what is the best way to ask for a prostate check? Because when you join the military, let me tell you, they're real curious. Yeah. They're just, they're, I swear that Elon Musk calls them and asks them for advice on their tunneling project because they're just, they're in there. And then as you later on, because free fall physicals or die physicals that we had to do, sometimes you would get the doc that really wanted to check the box.

if you know what I mean. And the other one was just like, hey, how you feel it? Get the fuck out of here. I like that guy a lot better. And now we're both at a, I'm only a year behind you. What is the best way? You know, so when I was 20 and everything was tight and right, like it's supposed to be, you know, and you feel violated when it happens because, dude, it's good. Just trust me, it's good. They're more than half. I think it's a haze. It's like, yeah, here we go, you know. I do think there's an essence of them messing with you. Yeah. But as it get older and they've got that respect, hey, you've been in a while. We don't really need a sticker. finger up your butthole. They stopped doing it. And now I'm at 46. I'm getting ready to retire in March. And it probably should happen. And I'm like, hey, you know, maybe you should, maybe you should get back there. Yeah. You know, I'm not, but how do you ask for that? I think before you leave,

you just have to start like, hey, doc, did you check all the boxes? Did you get a, did you look at the backside of that physical? Maybe not a box so much. Yeah. Yeah. Box 47. Have we got and cleared that one yet. Yeah, so, yeah, I probably got to do that before I go talk to VA. That might be the most aggressive intro to any podcast we've ever done. What do you think, Michael? It's up there. It was off topic, for sure.

Definitely not in my book. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever seen that in any of the military books. Yeah, well, maybe they should write a book on it. They should. Speaking of your book. Not me. Which, as soon as, I'm assuming he was your publisher that reached out.

Publice, yeah, publicist. Publishist. Yeah. They all to RP. Yeah. somebody who was professional whose name started with the P. And they're like, you know, Brian Slade, Lieutenant Colonel. He wrote a book called Clear Hot.

I was like, tell me no more. We have to collide. Yeah. I did a Google search and I saw Cleard Hot and I was like, son of a bitch, who took my name? You know, there's actually quite a few uses of it. There's a company, I think, in Canada that uses it for coffee. There are a few other smaller. I don't even know if it's an entity or an individual.

Would they make some apparel around it? Of course, they're all, they have some tie to the military. Because it has a very specific meaning, which like we were talking before we went live. I think of the coffee could a cleared hot, I mean. Yeah. So Black Rifle makes. 15 minutes after you're cleared hot. Black Rifle makes a cleared hot blend of coffee for the podcast.

And it comes ground. And I enjoy colder coffee more than hot just because I can consume it faster. And I made a cold brew, which you let it seep overnight. And something came up so it sat there for three days. Let me just tell you. It's just pulling the caffeine out. I almost had an accident. And I advise people if they're going to do that, you should probably drink it while on the toilet.

And then if you're a Star Wars fan, right when they try to do the Kessel run and they jump into light speed, that's what it looks like for about 30 minutes as you travel. You can see the future. Yeah. And then you're just, you just. So three days is too much. One day is great. But yeah, it clears you out from top to tails. Everything's buttholes today.

It is, which is Michael's favorite. No comment. Yeah, no. Yeah, definitely an interesting start. Okay. Maybe we should even just tell people with cleared hot means. I think I've described it before on the podcast. I was a J-TAC for many years.

I describe it as that last, it's hard. I think a lot of people because of movies or TV, they think, like, oh, the aircraft is. shows up overhead and you're just like that one over there and everything just detonates, which if only can happen, but what they're cutting out is a very synchronized and choreographed exchange of information, even when it's simply like an e-cast scenario. I have never seen it where they just like roll up on station and start laying heat. Probably a good idea to know where the friendlies are at the very least. Yeah, yeah. But it's back and forth. Usually it's a nine line.

You can cut it down if it's emergency cast. But the control on the ground will eventually say, hey, you're cleared hot. And that is the way I, always viewed it was I absolve all risk and everything associated with what comes off the airframe. It's on me and no longer on the pilot. Right. Yeah. So for me, I chose the name because, well, one, as an Apache driver, that's what we're waiting for. We're trying to develop a situation and get that directive from either a J-TAC or even ourselves, right?

Oh, you guys have FACAs up there? Yeah, it's us. Okay. Is it just the backseater? Yeah, well, basically both of us can develop that however we want. It just has to meet the PID, right? And then we have to be cleared of friendlies and all that stuff. But, yeah, there are certain scenarios where we could absolutely do that.

Usually I wanted a J-TAC, though, because once again, you just said you absolved me. Yeah. Well, and we got, like, cool, laser pointers, and we can be very precise about what we're talking about. Right. But the reason I picked it is because it means you've met all the criteria to engage decisively, right? And the intent of my book is really just to tell a war story. There's lessons insidiously thrown in there. But the intent is to try to teach people how to be cleared hot on their life, right? Meet all the criteria and move forth with purpose, you know, engage decisively.

Don't sit back. And accept responsibility. Right. Which is somehow become a dirty, four-liter word, it seems to me, in modern culture. Accepting responsibility for your own thoughts and actions. Yeah. It's a big four-liter word. Yeah.

Also, you don't have to tell everybody your thoughts. You know, just because people have social media doesn't mean you have to tell me everything that you're thinking. Yeah, I don't care about your soup. I have gotten a few good soup recipes off of the internet, so I'm not going to judge that one too harshly. I guess I'm concerned less about fashion choices

and what your animals are wearing, even though there are some pretty goddamn... Funny ones. Yeah, attractive. Frenchie is wearing risque clothing, but that's also a different story. But it's interesting to, at least in my view,

watching people, especially people who have grown up with the internet, a lack of willingness or a lack of understanding of responsibility of the things that they either say do or type out there and how that can actually have real world consequence even though it happens in the ether. Yeah, 100%. The Apache, age 64, correct? Correct. Where you describe for me the difference in roles between the front and the guy in the back? Well, typically the guy in the back is primarily the pilot. You can still engage with rockets, hellfire, and gun, everything from the back.

But the front seat is designed. It has multiple multifunction displays, tactical acquisition display. Anyway, he can run all that stuff. Sorry. I'm sorry? I had a double mud burger. Anyway.

That's a good one, actually. Yeah. He looked at me weird, and I said, this doesn't happen by itself. Well, you're going to need all that monster and maybe another one. Stay awake after that thing. That's a caloric bomb. Yeah. Yeah, it was legit.

But anyway, I totally forgot what I was saying. Breaking down the responsibilities of front seat, backseat. So the guy in the front seat is usually your co-pilot. So it's kind of a progression. As you're a co-pilot, you learn all the guns and all the systems there. And as you progress and get better on the sticks or on the flight controls, you'll move back to the aircraft commander in the back seat. So both could fly if one of them was? Both can fly. And both do fly. Right. But when you're in the thick of it, generally generally generally or generally? Yeah, there you go. That was a mushroom word right there. Generally speaking,

the guy in the back is on the controls. Okay. And often the guy in the front is actually the guy talking on the radios, though. So you can delineate that's how you want. That's nice, though, because you're aggregating out the workload, which can be a lot. Right. I actually preferred to be on the radios

no matter what CETO was in, just because it helped with my essay. If I'm one talking, it just like cemented it in my head. But some guys, it's like too much, depending on what you're doing. Yeah, it was a, it's challenging being I can always speak about it from the ground perspective, but especially if you have multiple aircraft on station,

a mix of rotary and fixed wings, right? So you, fuck. Yeah. Some people are in orbit. You're racking and stacking. It's like, is there a FACA available here who wants to organize the stack for me? Yeah. And for people listening, that's Ford Air Controller A,

meaning they're in the aircraft. And they, it allows you to load share or task share. Because otherwise, you're a controller on the ground, trying to coordinate, like, where enemy forces are, where your people are, coordinating all of that, making sure, you know, the run-in is correct, selecting, or talking about the ordinance, getting the ruddererring out of the way,

so the A3-130 can lay some heat, so then the F-16 or F-18's on top. It's a lot. Yeah, an F-18 shoot right down through me one time, so they don't always get it right, too. No, well, let me just tell you, the controller on the ground, there's been a few times where I've forgotten

some very critical information. Yeah, well, it turns out you guys are human, but most of the time I was absolutely grateful to have a J-TAC, Because when I was up in North and the Hindu Kush, we didn't have J-TACs, none of that. It was just whoever's on the radio. And then I went down south to Helmand, and I got everybody's a J-Tac that you talked to. And it's just like, wow, you're giving me awesome information.

Yeah. Yeah, I tell you what, your guys' platform was one of the ones, just because they can get in so close. It was, I wouldn't say it was a tie. But the DAPs are pretty badass as well. The 160th death, because they're just, they come in right, too, and they just do a little bit of a pop-up. Or the little birds also were great. they didn't carry as much ordinance, but when the Apaches rolled in, you knew you were going to be okay. Or at least somebody else was going to get fucked up with you.

It's flying tank. You know, it's good. It's good at what it does. So question for you about that, because I was looking at the footage. You are the recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. And the footage, I didn't have a chance to watch the whole 30 minutes. Is the person that got shot in the helicopter? Yes.

This was screaming? Okay. So I had a question for you. I've never been inside of an Apache. I've heard them a bunch on the outside. It seems super, super, super loud. can you actually tell that you're getting shot at unless it bounces off or penetrates the aircraft? No. So if you're taking small arms, you're not going to feel it unless it hits something vital.

It causes a vibration or takes out a system or whatever. Well, how armored is the aircraft itself? It's geniusly designed, but here's we'll say armored is a weird word. Yeah. So what keeps me from taking bullets through my backside is literally the fuel cell, believe it or not. That's how it's designed. I'm not an engineer, but I don't feel like that's a good idea. Yeah.

No, when I was going through the class, I was like, wait a minute. So the fire goes through the, but it works. Like I would like to request a Kevlar bathtub and be installed in this immediately. Right. And you do have a Kevlar seat. In fact, the co-pilot that was shot, I mean, there's really a couple inches that a bullet can make it through. And then there's only, if his legs overhanging the seat, there's only a couple more inches that it was a magic bullet. Describe what happened because as, like, I was telling Michael we were watching the footage.

And I mean, I have been shot. It doesn't feel great. I imagine. And the guy on the radio at first, I thought he was keying up his microphone because he's like, oh, fuck. I'm telling Michael, I'm like, that's Bush. You do not key up the radio when you're saying that stuff. You can say that stuff. Don't you dare go over the radio?

And then I was like, oh, that's probably over there inner communication system. Voice activated. Okay. Yeah. And very activated at that point, right? He's screaming. Well, that's where the question comes from, because I'm thinking about it. I'm like, there's no way, unless you saw a muzzle flash, there's no way you're going to hear rounds coming near you.

No, the only thing I ever felt in the aircraft is when we got rocked by RPGs. I mean, those do's you feel. Yeah. But like even 50 Cal, if it's just ripping through the aircraft, unless it hits something vital, you don't feel like, you land and you're like, oh, there's a nice little hole there. That's wild. So what happened on that particular evening? So on that engagement, it was towards the end of my deployment. So I'd been flying for quite a while.

We'd had a lot of hairy experiences up to then. So I had stuff to draw on. But basically, we hadn't engaged yet. We were working with the ground controllers. And it wasn't a J-TAC, though. It was just a, well, not just, an infantry guy on the radio. Yeah, you're going to get what you get. Right.

And they had that acoustic locator. I don't know what you call it. Oh, for incoming rounds, you mean? Yeah. Okay. Actually, probably for mortar fire. I'm not exactly sure. It's all science.

I just say, okay. But basically they were trying to locate the azmuth of which the enemy was fired from, and they said they've acoustically located. Maybe they were saying by their ear. Maybe that was what they were talking about. It's possible. But basically they gave us an inbound asthmoth. And so we'd been orbiting waiting to get the cleared hot, if you will. And then we were cleared to engage on that azmuth. And I was rolling.

I'd actually slowed the aircraft back because I could feel it was almost, we're about ready to get that cleared hot. It's coming. It's coming. And I want this to be a turn to an inbound. I don't want to do one more circle. Yeah. So I'd slowed down to about 60 knots, which is slower than I wanted to be. You're kind of vulnerable at 60 knots. And then we got it, and I banked in.

And so I was in a pretty good bank. And then at the same time, we got hit with barrage fire. So we got hit with 50 cow, PKM, AK-47. And as you heard in the, man, that burger. It'll get you. I'll tell you, you're going to sleep great after this. As you heard in the video, he just immediately starts screaming, right? And it is over voice.

He's not key in the mic. So, you know, immediately I knew what happened. Yeah. And he even says it, fucking shot me, shot me in the leg. Yeah. But it was a little bit wild. I was like, I don't know where it went in.

Like, holy shit. Right. Right. But ironically, when that happened, that was the least important information I was getting. Because if you, if you listen to that video, you'll hear in the background in a little bitabeed-a-beat-a-rode-o-row.

Right. That matters more than... What does that noise mean? That means that. thing that spins that keeps you up is slowing down. Why? Because I lost an engine at the same time. How many do you have? Two. You need to get the fuck out of there. Right. And one often isn't enough to fly. Really? Well, it depends on the atmospherics. It depends on how high, hot, and heavy it is. Yeah. And how efficient you are. When you have more airspeed, like I couldn't

hover with one engine. Yeah. For an airspeed, I could fly a little bit. So that happened and the rotor slowing down and in your left hand you have what's called the collective that's what makes it go up and down yeah right and counterintuitively when your rotor slowing down you need to slam that thing down uh so you need to go down to speed up so you're gonna descend and allow the air to actually accelerate the propeller for you absolutely this is my inner pilot speaking at about 3,000 hours of flight time okay so induced in fixed wing though rotary i have i think i have 0.001 okay say, let me do a flight in a little bird up front. And he said, your controls.

And immediately said, my controls. Right. So you're almost an instructor. I was going to crash it immediately. And he immediately took it over again. And that's my limit of PIC time for it. It literally is like, your controls and my controls. I'm like that.

I would like to sit here now. Fuck this. Yeah. You fly with your mind, not your hands. If you try to fly with your hands, you're all over the place. I wasn't used to the three dimensional like all. Airplane's pretty goddamn easy. There's a little bit of, you know, of yaw to the right.

But other than that, you said it, not me. Yeah. Fixed wing guys and fight with me. When the engines fail on a fixed wing aircraft, you at least can glide. Right.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm sure some of the airframes are very difficult to fly. I feel like there's just more going on in a helicopter that you have to control. Yeah.

You got controls in both feet, both hands. Yeah. And they all work together. So you had to slam it down. So we're falling even faster and that's to get the thing spinning up. What altitude were you at

when you heard that noise? Roughly 300. If you look on the video, it has it. There's a little, you know. It's 300 over 60. And so, and in an angle.

But then we're in the angle, so I have to come out of the bank, but there's problem number two that's more important than him screaming as my flight controls are jammed. And so, unbeknownst to me at the time, his leg had been shattered. It hit him in the femur. His leg wrapped around the cyclic, which is the control of my right hand in between my legs. It wrapped around? Right. I didn't know that at the time.

And so when I went to move it, it was stiff. Well, the Apache is Boeing in all its wisdom, and honestly this is good, but designed a breakaway system. So you can break out of the mechanical linkage, which is your flight controls, and there's a backup control system, or called Bucks, and it's fly-by-wire. And it's like it's drunk driving. I mean, it's sloppy when you do it, but it works. It should work anyway. And at that point, I'd been in Bucks once or twice before in this deployment because we had a lot of crazy experiences. So I know it works, but the one thing that I hadn't experienced or really worried about is there's, it's called the one second easy on.

As soon as you break in, the fly-by wire, the backup is not supposed to take effect for one second. Is that in case it's accidental? Well, that's the thing. Up until that point, I was like, who cares about that? At that moment, I knew exactly why it existed. We were in a bank, and I had to correct to the side of the bank to break us out, which means if it took effect immediately, I probably would have snapped rolled the helicopter and landed upside down. Oh shit. Yeah.

So I remember this is all happening in like a second, right? But I remember thinking, Boeing, please work is advertised. Otherwise, we're upside down on the first one of the scenes of a crash. And bad guys are right there. Yeah. You wouldn't have to worry about that. You'd be a smoking hole in the ground. No, come on, I bounce.

And then light on fire. Then you're so fucked. Yeah, it wouldn't have been good. It would have been real bad. And so snapped it over. He screams because his leg was wrapped around it. And you can hear that. Yeah.

He's like, all of a sudden he screams again. that's because I'm snapping the, I'm snapping his leg off the cyclic. Well, and saving both your lives at the same time. Yeah, I didn't know. Later, we found a bruise on the cyclic exactly shape of the cyclic on his other leg because I slammed it over and hit him on that leg. And then, so now I can control the aircraft. We're falling and we kind of come out of it.

I don't, I don't remember exactly the altitude, but we lost about 200-something feet in that. Now I got to figure out what's going on with him. Yeah. And so I heard some portions of you talking him through it. I'm assuming you guys have tourniquets up there and that's probably what ended up getting applied. So no, he didn't have a tourniquet. Where was yours? Well, we can't even touch each other.

What if you throw it over the top? No, yeah. Reach out the door. Hang on. I feel like in this design, you guys should be able to throw snacks or turnicets at each other. You know, the only bulletproof piece of glass in that whole airframe is between us. And I don't know why that is. Fuck, that says a lot.

Yeah. Actually. Like some dude glass. like climbing out of his seat trying to get us pissed. It's like, I hate you. Yeah. So that's the only piece is between us. And there's really... I actually thought it was one

contiguous cockpit. No, it's not. And in fact, yeah, it, it, there's been, there was a lot of times like where things happened and I really would have liked to been able to talk to the guy and I couldn't. Like, we got all of our, another instance, we got an generator shot out at night. Everything went black

in the cockpit and I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't, you know, couldn't do anything. So that's separate different situation. That's when you write on a piece of paper and hold it up with a flashlight, well, also flying too. I love you, period. We are so fucked. Yeah.

Exactly. So you reing control the aircraft, and at that point it's figure out what's going on with your gunner or front seater. And then, I'm assuming, haul ass back to some higher level of care. Yeah. Well, so we head back to Bastion. We were about 30 minute flight from Bastion. And the whole time, it's, you know, talking through him and trying to figure. And the aircraft kept doing weird stuff.

He was fading pretty fast. You could tell in the audio. Yeah, he started to get dizzy. And then I started tasking him with just menial tasks. Hey, do this, do that. And, you know, try to keep. But I was, like, being all I could be too. Yeah.

The aircraft, because it was in backup controls every once in a while, give me some erratic feedback. And I'm like, oh, crap. Because it's electronic, right? So there is a hypothetical that, like, the Dukes and all those other jammers out there could screw us up just because oh, wow. It's electronic.

So I was going to have to do a rolling landing. Is that what it sounds like, just coming in like playing more like a helo? Yeah. So it's never, to that point in my knowledge, it's never been done in bucks and backup control and it's kind of sloppy. So that's all going through my head. I'm like, okay, I'm like 30 minutes out there. I'm already thinking about that piece.

I'm like, am I going to be able to roll this? I mean, we get all the way there and I crash. That's going to be embarrassing. You know. Yeah. But yeah, so there was all those kind of contingencies rolling through my head and my wingman was being awesome. You could hear him in the background just like,

relaying information. You know, I did a real quick call. Front seat or shot. I'm in Bucks. I'm flying. I didn't even get out that I'm in single engine until later. Yeah. But really all I was trying to say is I got a lot of crap going on.

You guys handle stuff, which is exactly what they did. And they just started handling stuff. And I was trying to handle my stuff. And really grateful for those guys because, I mean, they made my job a lot easier up there. And there was another Apache in the area, too. I don't know if you got to that part. And he- I skipped through it.

Yeah. So he jumps in there. He's like a CW-5, the guy that was in the area. And he's just kind of like, I call him a mentor. I don't know if he knows he was my mentor. The oldest and saltiest of the- He wasn't salty, though. He wasn't, he was just that guy that you're just like,

give me some wisdom, right? And so I heard him in the area. I'm like, Chris, I'm in bucks. And he's hurt in my front seater shot. I'm expecting some great wisdom, right? And he comes back. He's like, oh, okay, well, we'll fall on your. wing. And I was like, well, I got my wingman. He's like, he's like, okay, well, Godspeed.

And I was like, do a good job. Yeah. But to hit to his, he kept up our radios as I'm talking. And I finally threw out the diamond single engine and giving her all I got, you know, the Scotty. Yeah. Given it all I can. And and and and I'm not going. I mean, he's bleeding and I'm like, I might have to stick this thing down in the desert and and, and transload him to a Chinook or something yeah because I don't know if at this point I know he hasn't got us for moral already or he'd be done already yeah so I know that's that's we're out of the woods with that but he hears me talking to my wingman and he Chris comes in with the wisdom bomb he's like you can punch your wing stores and it's like oh yeah I'm assuming

that means drop something non-essential so you can go faster all my load my rockets and everything and that would give us some more speed probably a lighter load on the old one engine yeah yeah I'm like, there's the wisdom bomb. Yeah. And it's funny how your memory works. This happened years and years ago, and when I started write the book, I remembered it as all that stuff happened that I just explained to you, and I immediately punched the wing stores because I am that guy, right? Yeah.

Nope. Nope. That's not how it happened. Thank God for those people with that wisdom and clarity of thought. Yeah. And then, you know, gave me some more knots. And not only just that, I was on that fuzzy edge of not being able to stay. in the air. I was descending because I didn't have enough power and that made the difference to

where I can maintain level flight. I'm assuming once you got to Bastion, they had a full medical team just waiting for you guys. Absolutely on the wrong side of the highway. That actually makes sense. Why would it, why would it go correctly? It's because we explained exactly where we're going to be. And so, so how was your rolling landing? It was to die for. Yeah. It's pretty funny too. My co-pilot, by the time we got to land, he was actually cracking jokes. And you know, it's called shock. Right. But, but joke shock. Yeah. But, you know, in war, we do that, right? We find humor where, you know, other people are like, why are you joking? You're shooting things. Well, you know, it's just helps you process. It really does. It keeps your mind

focused and those kind of things. And as we're coming down, I was having him call airspeed and altitude, just give him a task. And I said, hey, you know, 100 feet over 20. I mean, he's fading. And then he finally goes, this better be the smoothest damn landing ever. I actually did skip to that portion I caught exactly saying that. Yeah. And I shut it down and she beeped, she beeps at me again. And she's like, rotor RPM low because it's shutting down. Yeah.

And it tied right back to, like, and I screw you. So I'm assuming he survived. He did. What do they do with the airframe after that? You wash it out. No, I mean like the damage that it took. Like you lost an engine. So there's a turbine engine in there that's totally fucked.

Obviously, there's holes in the aircraft in a variety of places. Like, how do you, do they just go through that thing with a fine-tooth comb and replace what they can? I mean, we came home with holes quite a bit. I mean, it wasn't, it was commonplace. And so, yeah, you go through and you try to figure out what got, what affected what and fix what you can. There's a pretty good testimony of one of the guys that worked for me. He went to pick up that aircraft once they patched it up and put another engine in it. Actually, it was just a control unit.

the engine that got blown up. So the whole engine did. I mean, it's the same thing, though, electronically was. Yeah. So they put a new Decu, digital electronic control unit on it. And then he went and he had to, he actually had to clean out all the blood because nobody, and it's been sitting there for a couple days. That's pretty rugged.

Yeah. Yeah. And he said something that's pretty powerful. He's like, as I walked up to it, you know, there was just a perfect imprint of a blood red hand, like right on it. and goes, I don't know if it's yours or his, but it was just perfect. And it just kind of like set the tone. And then as he opened up the, as he opened up the front compartment, you know, that iron metal smell of blood, just overwhelming.

And he had to, he had to wash all that out with water, took the seats, threw him away, just sat on the Kevlar on the way. Man, that's not a job that I would particularly want to have. No. Nor would I want to test fly that aircraft again after they put it back together. Well, I mean, that happens almost on a weekly basis. So you got to trust your maintainers. And our maintainers were bought in. They understood that they understood what they did.

Yeah. So it was pretty powerful with how they took it serious. How many extra pieces did you guys deploy with? Of extra helicopters? No, just like pieces that can, like, well, the decue went bad. I mean, how many of those? I mean, at some point, you know, the supply chain shortage to use the vernacular that we're facing now. I mean, you can deploy with a good amount, but shit, depending on how many holes you're coming back with.

Well, they have what's called bench stock, which is a certain amount of every single part that comes in on ISU 90, which is just a metal container. Right. What that was, not my lane, have no idea. But they also would order parts in. But for the most part, we, our aircraft would be down and they'd be right back up. So these guys were on top of it for sure. Wow. Yeah. I mean, three days later, this one was flying again. Yeah. So the same aircraft. I went back to the same spot the next day and I leveled that tree line. I appreciate that. I'm here for that for sure. You know what's cool about that is, you know how the military is kind of risk averse sometimes. Yes.

Once it catches up with the war, once the military catches up with the war, and I'm sure you know what I mean. I got off of a Chinook that flew me from Bastion to to Kandahar right after that happened. and the brigade commander was there as I got off and the battalion commander, they were both there. He gives me a big old hug. I'm not a hugger. So I just, I laugh at what that had to look like from the outside.

My arm's stiff at my side and him hugging me. Just awkward family Christmas portraits. Yeah, what's going on? Why are you touching? And he, you know, he asked me. He's like, you know, how are you doing? I said, well, I've had better days. But I'm going to go back and fix it tomorrow.

And he said, no, I think you need to stand down, right? You know how. Yeah. Most military leaders would say that, right? I probably would say that to the guy as well. And I said, sir, I have been in this country for almost a year, and we've taken it to the enemy over and over and over again. And I have never lost.

And we lost today. I need to fix that tomorrow. And it was kind of funny how he looked me in the eye and he did the little puppy head turn, right? And I was like, oh, shit, he's going to take it. tell me I can't go. He's like, okay, you be careful. And I was just like, appreciate that. Yeah. He, he, he knew I was, I was, I was okay. I mean, I wasn't okay, but I was okay. Yeah. You know, I wasn't going to go rage. I was going to go with intent. And we did. We, we leveled that whole tree line. And they were taking fire from that exact same spot again. So,

yeah, it was funny when we went back, not funny, but one funny thing when we went back, we were engaging in, and there's SAS in the area. which is for those, I mean, your audience knows who that is, right? If not, the British Special Forces. Right. We're actually Australian, depending. Yeah. So anyway, they were, I didn't even know they were there. We're talking to the infantry guys, but they're all, they're monitoring it, obviously.

And we're just, I mean, we're turning trees into toothpicks and houses. And once it, once the game's up, man, the Taliban was just like, just letting us with Dishkas and everything. And it's just, you can see it in daytime. It's a daytime, too. You can just see all the stuff coming and we're just hammering it. And, you know, it's a little personal. So, and I roll in and they, the infantry guy said, you're taking fire from a dish get in the tree line. He gave me an exact azmuth.

It just as I was rolling in, I did the inverse on that asthmuth. And it's like right, right where I just rolled out. So I look up and I literally see the muzzle flash. Like it's just a round white circle. Boom, boom. I swear the end of a dish. it looks like it's the size of the dinner plate. It's not, but it looks like it.

It wasn't at an angle, though. I mean, it was like, and I'm like, so much so I know, I lean back. Like, that's going to do, like that's going to do something, right? Yeah. Lean back in your seat. And I start shooting rockets. And first rocket goes above it. Second rocket goes right to that flash, right?

And they're area of weapons. You don't have to hit right on it. Yeah. But hit right on that flash. And it was weird. It was like this moment where I pulled that trigger and the rocket, leaves and I see it going right for that muzzle flash and I can just picture Johnny Taliban on the other side doing the exact same thing I'm doing leaning back like oh god you know like and

and and you know and then SAS pipes up on the on the radio it's like I don't know what was my call sign I'll remember he's like arrow zero zero six you were taking fire from underneath the blue top and then you hit the blue tarp and you're no longer taking disca fire God, I love the SAS. I think my favorite thing about the Brits is the mastery of the term cunt, which I have heard over official military, like fucking satcom channels, UHF, VHF, you name it. It just plies out there. It's like, it gets me every time. It's not the same word.

They use it differently, yes. Oh, it's got at least 40 different meanings. Wow. Yeah. And they also had booze in their compounds, which was always appreciated as well. Yeah. If you're if you guys are overseas and your birds don't take damage do you stay in the same aircraft or you guys just kind of hot seat on what's available? We don't we don't assign a specific aircraft if that's what you're asking.

Yeah. The maintenance kind of dictates what's available that day and then we have guys assigned to fly missions and they go to the appropriate aircraft. Do they all fly a little different? So I always look at it this way. When I snowboard. Yeah. When I first started snowboarding, you could throw any snowboard on my feet and I wouldn't feel the difference, right? but after you get pretty good

you really can feel your edges you're like oh this one's different or this one cuts better so at the beginning of my deployment I wasn't very experienced flying so they all felt the same to me by the end I could feel the difference part of that might be because we were patching them up

so some of them had a wobble or whatever but a little hitching their giddy up as you will yeah and I fly combat search and rescue now for the Air Force and definitely can feel differences in the aircraft what airframe do you fly now the Pavehawk the HH60 It's the Air Force's version of a Black Hawk. Okay.

Yeah. So I crossed over to the Air Force. I didn't know that the Air Force had 60s. Yeah, neither did I. Why did I not know that? Because they don't have a lot. I was going to say. It's just rescue.

I mean, I know obviously the Blackhawks from the Army and Seahawks, we would use the Navy's version all the time. Right. Huh. And they specifically use them for search and rescue? Yep. That's what they're for, the personal recovery mission. Interesting. We'll get to while you hopped over.

Why did you decide to join the military in the first place? Uh, it's a lot, there's a lot of reasons. I get asked that, you know. Well, chocker, as do I. Yeah. I don't actually have a good answer. So, yeah, I, mine was a mix of all kinds of things. Like, I was a, I was an adrenaline guy, like, growing up, you know, played sports, love jumping off things, doing all kinds, you know, just that kind of stuff.

Where'd you grow up? Idaho. Okay. Yeah, Mountain Home. This is kind of nostalgic coming to cut. Even though this is Montana, just this town reminds me of, like, where I grew up, you know, and I haven't been there since 95. So it was... How far is it from here?

Because Idaho, parts of Idaho, we're only a couple hours. Oh, it's clear down by Boise. It's a ways. Boise? That's about a 10. Yeah. 10 to 12. Okay.

It's a minute. But just like, you know, certain businesses that I thought went out of business years ago still work in some of these towns. Right. It's certainly a different economy. Yeah. Exactly. And lots of cowboy hats. Yeah.

But I like it. So I was patriotic. I grew up patriotic. You know, not like, you know, not crazy. but just, you know, proud to be an American. Do you have military service in your family prior to you? I do not. Well, I didn't think I did.

My grandpa actually was in the reserves. I didn't know that on my mom's side. Okay. I didn't know that until after I had joined. So, you know, I'm, I was, as far as I knew, I was the only one of my family to join. But I had a football scholarship, which got taken away because I went on a two-year church mission to Brazil.

And then I came back, I didn't have that. And I just kind of looked at things. And I was like, They're like, hey, there's this, you know, ROTC stuff. And I actually, actually before I went on that two-year thing, I enlisted in the guard because I was already looking at the ROTC and they said you could do the simultaneous membership program and it maximizes your benefits. So to say I didn't do it for benefits. There was part of it. It was part of the benefits for sure.

Well, what year did you enlist or join? In 1996. So that's the same as me. There were a lot of people joining the military looking straight up at the GI Bill. Yeah. Like I'll do four years. Yeah. I'll give it. I think for me it was a hundred bucks a month for the first year.

Yep. Which covered the GI Bill. And pre-war time, I mean, if you want, I mean, what a fantastic ladder out of economic and or socioeconomic situations. For people who had no other ability, there were a lot of people, even in the seal community, there were people who were there. They wanted to be a seal, but they were certainly using it as the springboard for something else. So I don't think that was uncommon at all. Yeah.

So that was kind of what I was looking for. We came, you know, I'm one of eight kids for a teacher salary. My parents aren't paying for it. You know, there's nothing coming there. But yeah, so that's kind of how it started. Then I got an incentive ride in a helicopter, and that's all she wrote. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I got to figure out how to get here.

So how did you get there? What's the pipeline look for you? So as I did the, like I said, simultaneous membership program. I got in the ROTC, you have to compete on an order of merit type of thing. And I did pretty well and was able to get my branch of whatever, aviation. Choice, yeah. And then I was in a guard unit that had a pass. Otherwise, if you go active duty, you kind of go on Order Merit again through flight school and whatever their needs are your base.

But I was kind of already slotted with an Apache, which I had no idea how badass that machine was. I was just like, oh, that's cool. You know, it's cool. I mean, it look awesome. Yeah. Then you get in it and you fly it and you're like, oh, this is amazing. And then you fly other aircraft. And you're like, oh.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was just completely blessed to fly that. now it's kind of a double-edged sword though. You're like, it's so awesome. But then when you realize what does it do, it makes people into little pieces.

That's what it does. So if you're doing your job and you're doing it well, that's what you're doing. Yeah. And there's plenty of YouTube video to support that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of what drove the writing of this book

is you know, you have those experiences and you think it's going to be this glamorous thing. Well, I don't know if I thought it was going to be glamorous. but I don't know what I thought it was going to be. I think people oftentimes, I think two words would work well. They think it's going to be glamorous or they romanticize it in some way. It's like the combination of those two, and I found it to be neither also. I agree.

And it was something that they hit hard, right? I don't care if you disagree with those guys and those guys are bad guys or whatever. If you kill them, you kill them. You killed those guys, right? And that is a human being, whether you want, you know, whatever. And I dealt okay with it. You know, in fact, I feel like, you know, I wasn't happy about killing, but I never hated the enemy either. And I think that's a big reason why I dealt okay with it is I actually respected them.

They've been there since 708. I don't agree with their cause, but they're convicted, you know. Yeah. We got to go home on Mid Tour. You know, they live there. They've lived there, their whole lot of that. And they're still doing it, right? And you got to think about, you know, I, my feelings on it actually mirror yours quite a bit.

There have certainly, I have hated people in my personal life a lot more than I hated the people I was fighting against with lethal consequences. And I always had a level of respect. I mean, let's be honest. We were fucking centuries ahead of them. Yeah. When it came to tactics, technology, equipment. And if you flip that on its head and you look at, you know, how would people on our country act, would they be willing to actually. put their feet on the line and stand stand up for it it's it's a heavy burden to go up against

that much of an overmatch yeah and they're out there fucking getting out and they're going toe to toe yeah and again i don't i don't agree with their philosophy or their methodology but i will respect the fact that they believe in whatever they believe in enough to put their toes up on the right and and because of that mismatch i mean for every one of our guys there's how many of their guys that are they're taking dirt naps yeah hundreds you know and that was overwhelming for me too Like, I didn't count. I didn't keep count, but it's a lot, right? And it was too much to handle for some of the guys that I flew with.

And that's really where when I got back, I was like, why? Why can some people handle it and actually be stronger because of it? You know, and actually, you know, go on in life and do other things based on the lessons learned that they did doing that. And other people are derailed so much all the way to the other end of the spectrum where, you know, you take your own life. I mean, that's this huge, huge spectrum of how people react based on the same stimulus. And so I sat down with mental health experts when I decided to write this, and that's what I wanted to figure out. I was like, are there things that we can teach? I mean, some of the stuff you're just born with, right?

I believe that. And some of it is your upbringing, right? I can't change if you came from a nuclear family or wherever you came, or what trauma you experienced as a kid. And those are factors. Those are factors. but there are things that we identified as teachable that I was doing and I didn't even realize I was doing it from other reasons. Just intuitively?

Well, like one of the principles I teach is chair flying and it's not the Harry Potter chair flying. It's a different, you know, it's basically. Talk about a visualization? Yeah, meditation, visualization and role play all put together. If they had a love child, that's chair flying, right? And I was doing that to be prepared for my engine getting shot out or, you know, any other number of other emergencies that we had,

I was doing it for that reason. What I didn't realize is when you do that, it's a process called stress inoculation, right? So you're inoculating yourself against those traumatic events because you're picturing it in a really vivid way, how you're going to react, how you're going to, how you're going to adjust the controls, how you, when you blow somebody up,

what that's gonna look like. And all those things you're doing in preparation, I was doing in preparation for the emergency, but what I was also doing was inoculating myself to that stress. So that when it actually happens, it's just like an inoculation with a virus. You know, give yourself a reconversion and then you can see it. You're better when the real one comes.

Was there anybody in your community advocating for doing that? Or is that something that you found kind of on your own? So chairflying is something they teach in flight school, but they don't teach it like I did it. I just say walk through it mentally, right? Well, I'm familiar with it from, so I have a couple typewritings in jets, and it's all about simulator time, right? And it's the same thing. They don't describe it as chair flying, but it's all what ifs.

Yeah. Like actually, you leave the simulator, terrified of the fucking airplane you're about to fly. And for people who don't know, like, I have a type rating in a G4, a Gulfstream G4. I think maybe the first day on the intro, they let me take off without any of the PFD's failing or the MFD just fucking lighting up with things in amber and red. Yeah, fire. Everything beyond that was a catastrophic explosion of the engine, like, right? after takeoff, system failures, fire, hydraulic, electronic, every flight, every landing, and then you get into the aircraft and you're like, I'm going to fucking die if I push these

throttles forward. You're in it for the first time. You're qualified to fly a golf stream. You've never actually been in a Gulfstream. And you're sitting there and all of your experience is things going catastrophically wrong. You're just like, oh God, oh God, oh God. And he pushed the throttles forward and nothing happens. Yeah.

Well, hopefully. Hopefully. But if it does, you have thought through so many. And, you know, I would, the days or it was up at flight safety up in Long Beach in its classroom. And they, you know, you have to have an understanding of the systems before you can solve the problems and how they work together. Simulator stuff. And then I'd go home and you're just sitting there, thinking yourself through all of these things. And I did find it to be.

And again, nobody was really saying, hey, this is what you should do. But, and I don't know if you manifest or it or it's just whatever reason. Like the next day, one of the things you would have thought about will happen. And you're just like, ping, bang, bang. Yeah. And you're knocking it out of the park. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's really what, when I was in flight school, I had a lot of real precautional in our landing. So when I did shut it up, put it up, it did go bad, right? It's like, ah, that's just like the simulator, right? And, you know, when I did my solo, I had a hydraulic failure, right? And I had like 11 hours in helicopter. So what I'm getting from this is never step into a flying vehicle with you ever. No, you make it back.

Yeah, but like in one piece, there's a luggage there. Most people, one piece. Yeah, just one. Yeah. One did not. Yeah. And you know, what's funny is I never chair flew that. I never chair flew only my co-pilot getting hit.

I chair flew both of us or just me. Never just him. Interesting. I mean, it would be impossible to cover all the scenarios, but still interesting. I think it's a psychological thing where I didn't want to admit that my actions could cause just him getting hurt. That's fair. And when I pulled them out of the cockpit, so they were, like I said, EMS, emergency. system was, they were on the wrong side of the runway.

So when I shut it down, they weren't there yet. And I didn't want to wait. So I popped open the canopy, unstrapped him and then forklift, you know, fork lifted him out. He was built like me. So it was, it wasn't easy. Probably better you doing that than them though, because I suspect they may not know the ins and outsuming in Apache.

It worked. And as I got him out onto the, like we call it the fab, this is just the things run alongside the canopy there. And he's sitting on it. And they got there just in time. And we lay them back. and they onto a backboard and slide him out. And his wound, just because of the way it worked out,

his wound came right in front of my eye level, big gaping hole in the bottom of his leg. And I felt like, it feels like it just stopped right there. Now, it didn't. I'm sure it didn't, but it felt like it just stopped there. And his muscles were still hanging out and twitching and blood and everything dripping. And he saw me staring at that thing.

And trying to make light of it. And I know this is what he was doing, because this is who he was. He said, you got me shot. That's awesome. And also an incredible dick move. And he was joking. I know he was joking.

Left to mark, though. That stuck with me for 10 years, or 8 years. He posted on Facebook, I think it was 8 or 10 years after that on the date. And he wasn't even in my company. I didn't know the guy super well. augmenting. Great guy, and I got to know him, but he posted on Facebook about how grateful he was that he was still alive and he mentioned me and the things that we did that day.

And I didn't realize I was carrying that you got me shot with me that whole freaking time because as soon as I read that, I burst in the tears. I was carrying that. I still like, I'm getting goosebumps right now just thinking about it. But how often do people do that? You just carry stuff. You don't even know you're putting it in your backpack. I think all the time.

Everybody. Maybe not something that heavy. I mean, we're talking about the far extreme of humid activity and exposure. Right. But I think all the time, and I think it's really light. But you and I both know, especially from people in our previous communities, that ounces can become pounds and pounds can become unbearable to certain people. Especially if they don't have the tools to figure out a way to relieve the stress.

And so, so therapeutic when they leave, when it lifts. So lightning. Yeah. Like, just holy crap. I didn't, I can, I can ballet right now. Yeah, probably slept better. Yeah. Just all kinds of stuff that I didn't even know.

And that's another reason, you know, so this, that's all, these are all the driving forces behind why I decided to put this stuff in words. So where were you 9-11? You already in the National Guard flying Apaches? I was. I, well, not in, I wasn't flying Apaches yet. because that was 2002, right? So I was in the ROTC and I was enlisted. And when that happened, like everybody that's in the military,

well, most people in the military, I was like, send me, I wanna go, let's go, let's do this. And I actually wrote a poem in there about it. I kept getting the stiff arm for years, right? Just for a couple of years. And finally I gotta go in, we deployed in 2005. In an Apache for the first time?

For the first time. How was that first deployment for you? You know, it was interesting. I was the first guy in our unit to land because I was at Avon, right? Me and two of my sergeants. So we're in a C-17 with the aircraft. And I didn't know what to think because I'd never been to war before, you know, and I was just picturing Afghanistan.

And at that time, Afghanistan was not in the news. It was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, right? And so we thought we were getting the B-team squad, and we were kind of disappointed. We're like, oh, we're just going to go flying circles. Wrong. But I didn't know. And so as we got and we land and it was early morning and in the clamshell in the back of the C-17 started open and, you know, your eyes are dark adapted and is that light just kind of bleams in. I was kind of expecting like a rancid order because I'm at war and like all these other things. And we landed at a bogram. Yeah. And it actually smelled kind of good. Yeah.

And then it almost sounds like you're in the mountains. And then it kept going down and it looked like it does out here. I know. And I was like, what the heck? Strikingly beautiful. It is beautiful. What is going on? And so then I'm flying over those mountains. I'm like, I could snow. That's a great line. You know, and like, over here is it, you know, I could snowboard. And really what, it painted a point, picture of perspective for me because then we get called out of that. We get called out of that beauty, that vision right there. We get called down into the fight and do a tick. And immediately, the mood changes where you got the guy on the radio who's hunkered down. You can hear the gunfire in the background. He's like, we need immediate suppression. We're taking effective fire.

Please, on the 3-200 meters. Yeah, we got you. This is what we do. We're going to roll in. We're going to do this. Now, we're all in the gunfight. And that's all we see is the gunfight. And we're sitting there just focused on the gunfight. And that's our world. That's all we see at that point. But in Afghanistan or anywhere in the world, you're in that gunfight. Those mountains are still there. They never changed. They're still beautiful. They're right behind us. In fact, we're flying in them, they're still there. They never went anywhere. And that gunfight is all we see. And we feel like that's our world, but that's the finite, not the infinite. The infinite is that mountain. And if you bug up above higher than that, go to 30,000 feet. See the curvature. It's beautiful every

direction, right? Yeah, see the whole Himalayan range. And then I thought about it a little bit more. I was like, go to space. I haven't been there, but go to space. And you see the earth. And it's literally a celestial being, right? Some people that argue with you about that. Well, it's a celestial. Most of them work with Michael at EPS. There's apparently a bunch of flat-earthers there. Okay, well, I think it's round. As do I.

I actually haven't asked Michael. Michael, flat around. Personally, I would say round. I thought he was going to say something bullshit like, I don't know, somewhere in between the two. Yeah, yeah. More oblong. We're not describing your... Yeah.

I mean, I'm not sure either, but I think it's round. Yeah. But if you look at it that way, there's no direction, right? It's beautiful. And it just is. Yeah. And that's the infinite reality. Beauty just is.

That's the perspective you have to keep in the back of your head when you're in the gunfight. And that's what I, you know, I try to tell people like, that's a lesson I learned from Afghanistan. Like, how do you keep that image in the back of your head while you're in the gunfight? Because you're going to have gun fights, like metaphorically or real or whatever. You're going to have gun fights. How do you keep that perspective in the back of your head? Man, I don't know if you can do both at the same time. but I think it's critical that you can return to that headspace.

For me, when things became kinetic, I was very, the term we would use is front side focus, and I was 100% drawn into what was happening right in front of my face. But I do think that ability to go back to that longer lens and that greater objective viewpoint is absolutely essential. I don't know if you could have, I don't know, for me, I can only speak for me. I don't know if I could have both simultaneously. To me, it depends on the intensity. Anytime there's a break in that intensity, even like, you're coming this way, roll out.

Even there, I can go, all right, we'll get something out of this, right? Or there's a lesson here. Or there's an opportunity here. That's, you know, you're talking kinetic. Now we're now in our world's here where we're in gun fights, whatever that is, a difficult time. I think we can always take a pause and be like, okay, the mountains are still there. Yeah.

Right? They're still there. And if we look backwards in our life, our greatest gains have always, I'll bet money on it. Your greatest gains have almost always come from obstacles or trials or trauma. The things I care about the most are the ones that I've worked the hardest for or suffered the most metaphor you would want to use to actually achieve. And the things that seem, I mean, if you look at them in the grand scheme of things, when you look back on your life, the things that will be the most meaningless are the ones that were given to you for free. Absolutely. So if you understand that, you look backwards and you just play that forward when you're in the middle of something, some shit, you're like,

this is an opportunity. I don't know what's coming on the other side, but there's something good. There's something good. So I feel like you can see it in the middle, but not, like you said, not when you're absent. Some people might be able to.

I just think for me wasn't able to maintain both of those perspectives at the same time. Yeah, I think that would be a whole level of, of whatever, because when you're, like you said, when it's right in front of you, you kind of do have to be focused. I mean, it's a choice.

You don't have to be. It can get a little sloppy. So how was your first exposure to combat? How did that impact you? My first exposure to combat, we almost got shot out of the air. I had been in the country for about a month and a half or so, and I'd only done ring routes, which was just, you know, escorting. Supply routes, essentially, yeah.

Yeah, getting little debby's to fobs, right? That's what we're doing. Fuck, they're tasty. Yeah. They'll kill you faster than bullets. I mean, slower than bullets, but they'll kill you. 100%. Yeah.

And, you know, we had a forward detachment at Jalalabad. And I was at Bogram still for a little while. And Jalalabad kept saying, man, we're getting into it. And I didn't know what that meant because I wasn't there. And my commander said, he was getting some emails and there was some other things that we needed to deal with at Jalalabad. And so he said, hey, I want to make you the detachment commander out there, just go out there and fix these things and, you know, figure out what's going on. And so I went out there. And, you know, one of the issues that we had is we had these salty warrants that were to,

talking about, right? These are the guys, these are our mentors. These guys that taught us how to fly. They're the ones that have the institutional knowledge of how to fly an aircraft and teach young guys how to do it. But they don't have any combat experience. Neither do we. Nobody did at that point. Right. So as just, I don't know what you want to, I don't know why, but the young guys seem to get in the fights more. And it might have been just coincidence. I don't know. But at that point, you have this knowledge achieved out of the natural order of things. Yeah. And then you have this struggle of giving and receiving information that's valid for adjusting your tactics, techniques, and procedures, right? Because you got valid information, but it's coming from the inexperienced guys.

Yeah, but it's being pressure tested in real time. I know exactly what you're talking about. There have been drastic TTPs, or what you're talking about, tactics, techniques, and procedures that have changed in the SEAL community in my time in. And it was interesting. There were people who were, you know, to go even a step back, when 9-11 kicked off. the most senior seals in the seal community had zero combat. Right.

And after, you know, your first Iraq or Afghanistan deployment, those senior seals are probably going to be in a C2, a command and control position. They might be in the talk. They might be in the jock. New guys on their first deployment are fucking getting some. And like you said, it's this weird juxtaposition because pre-9-11 in the seal teams, it was 100% based around how long you had been in the community. You're a new guy.

What do you think about this? Oh, yeah? Shut the fuck up. I was just joking. Go get back in your Connix box that I'm going to lock you in for four hours. Yes. Yes. Then brand new guys, you know, in air quotes, because of the amount of time in comparison to the senior personnel are getting pressure tested.

Our TTPs are getting pressure tested in the field and they're coming back with valid critiques. I wouldn't say complaints, but valid critiques about, hey, we need around this corner. We need to round this edge. We need to chase this. and change what we're doing based off what we're seeing on the battlefield. Some of the senior leaders will be the best way to say this. Some receive that information better than others. Yeah.

It's the most polite way that I can say. No, absolutely. Yeah. And that was the battle we were having. And we had to get everybody on the same page. Well, right after I got there, you asked my first combat experience where I interacted with the enemy. And we, I was still a co-pilot.

I made aircraft commander on this deployment. it like shortly after this actually but so I was in the front seat and I flew with an experienced guy cw for Doug early who was actually on loan to us from the 82nd and that he did have some combat experience so I love that I was flying with this guy right I'm like he's he's done this right and he's been doing it recently with in jbat so we we launched and we checked in with Titan 1-1 I remember the calls I don't remember all the call signs but I remember my first right we all remember our first um and so he comes in and he's like we're taking fire. And usually when we roll in, they just stop taking fire because the abidabas put their heads down, right?

Or run. Yeah. They're like, we're done. We're done fighting. We'll fight tomorrow. Yeah. But these guys did it. And it was daytime, though.

And so it was really hard to see. They didn't have tracers. And muzzle flash, I hadn't really honed my eye into picking muzzle flash in the daytime because it's almost like really quick, right? Yeah, or you can see like the kickup of the dust. It's real hard to see.

Yeah. And I didn't know what I was looking for yet. And so they're like, oh, we're taking fire from all these different places. And Doug's trying to find it. And I'm trying to find it. And I'm all excited because it's the first time I'm actually,

They actually didn't just run away. I'm like, oh, I got to, you know, I'm antsy. And as we roll over this, the area where we think they are, Doug gets more and more aggressive. He gets lower and slower and he's trying to, I mean, he is poking the bear big time. Like, where are these guys at? And there was this shelf.

We were in like a steep canyon, and the friendlies were on one side, and we were looking on the opposite side because that's where we thought they were taking fire from. And there was a shelf that was about 300 feet up from the canyon floor that we were over. And just as we came over that shelf, so now we're about 300 feet above the ground, we get rocked by an RPG, like, picked up and thrown. It was, it just, it reverberated through my guts and just, you know, and pieces like when you're driving down the freeway and the rocks hit your, that's what's hitting.

And we are falling. And I'm like, I just remember thinking, first engagement, and I lose. This sucks. War is the worst. And I can see the rock we're going to crash on. I'm like, my head right there. That is where they'll find not only my face, but my asshole. But together.

Yeah. Right. Kissing. What's the last thing that goes to your head? Your butthole. Yes. But, you know, and honestly, I was going, hey, what if I survive? Okay, because we're going to crash.

We're going to crash. We're going to crash. I was foregone conclusion. I was like, we're crashing. If I survive, I got to get dug out of the back. I got to get a phone. I was going through my head. And then we fly out of it.

And I'm like, what happened is that RPG had just disturbed all the air below us. It blew up underneath us. Didn't hit us directly. It was either hit the cliff next to us or airbursts below us. I don't know. Yeah. And so we had no good air. So we're spinning into rotten air, if you will.

Yeah. And we're falling. And then Doug, like a champion, reduces collective, push forward cyclic, gets us into clean air and flies out like a superhero, right? And then adjust his scarf. Yes. And it's war, too, 80-meter glasses? He's like upside down and air medals are hitting them in the fan. Like, like, and I just, yes, we got this kid.

Yeah, settled down, young one. Yeah, and I didn't say anything. In fact, Doug was the one that was cussing. I mean, he was, oh shit, motherfucker. I just was like, you know, like that. Nobody can cuss like a warrant. Well, that's true. That's true.

And he was just going on. Mastery of the English language. But he knew what was going on. Yeah. He was cussing, but he knew we were going to fly out. I was guh. And like, that's where we're going to land upside down. And when we came out of it and we flew up, I was like, so that's what that feels like.

Right. And that was a phrase that I used in my PLs in Rucker. Anytime something weird, crazy happened, I would take a deep breath and go, so that's what that feels like. I said that. He later pointed out. I was like, what was that? I was like, it's just something I do. And so we rolled back in.

And finally I started seeing muzzle flashes. We started engaging. I'm like, I got it. They're muzzle flashes. And then shoot them, you know? Yeah. And so he starts shooting. And as dumb as this may sound, we did the exact same thing in the exact same spot with the exact same result.

No way. Rocked a second time. This time, big rocks hit the canopy. I thought it was pieces of us. The first time it picked us up and dumped us forward. This time it picked us up and dumped us sideways. And I was like, here we go in. And I'm looking.

But now I got like 10 minutes. old wisdom. So I'm like looking at the instruments. I'm like, oh, we're still flying. So we fall, slice down, and he brings us back out again. But there was a lot of lessons to be learned on that first engagement. That is a compressed timeline to learn those lessons. And it did. And the whole book, I'm going back and forth between being too aggressive, not aggressive enough, too stupid, not, I mean, most of the things I, I, that are lessons are like, I was dumb. Look at, look how dumb I was. Let's learn from this. Like, I made it, but look how dumb I was. Yeah, you made it by luck. Right. Which I say that straight up. There's, there's a lot of luck. There's a lot of luck.

There is, in my old job, too. You know, I think the danger or risk is treating it like it's a tactic or relying on it, which is a mistake. That's exactly what. There's a maneuver in there. I call the pretzel maneuver. We were in the middle of an ambush, air ambush. Meaning they tried to draw you guys in and then just hammer you? And they did. And they did. And they did and we should have both taken dirt naps. And we did it 100% the wrong way. And we laid hate and we won big time. But wrong. Yeah.

The wrong way. Yeah, I bet you if you repeated that, you know, 10 times, you'd probably lose nine. Nine and a half, 9.9.9 out of 10. It was, it was such a crazy. It was, we had just done the biggest aerosol in Afghanistan history at Musa Kalae and taken that city. but all the bad guys pushed south, right? Because we gave them, you know, how they do that. Here's your avenue if you want to run away, right?

Yeah. And so I decided, in all my wisdom, let's fly right up that. That's what we do. Like Apache, you're supposed to kick the hornet's nest and swat the hornets. We know where the hornets are. Let's go kick that nest. Pretty dumb. Once again, dumb.

But we get a call from one of the fobs, and they say, hey, we want you to go check out this thing, this bongo truck, which for those listening in bongo trucks like if a little minivan in a flatbed had a love child there's your bongo truck we called them jinga trucks yeah same thing they're just like shrink ray this little with just crazy amounts of like chains

and flare pieces hanging off of them see I don't know because I never got that close I just blew them up oh dude I used to ride them or we would get stuck behind him my first appointment to afghanistan we're driving around at high luxus completely unarmored fucking Toyota highlux

I wish they sold him in the United States fantastic vehicle I love high luxes But we would just be like get right in the mix with the old janga trucks driving downtown Kabul, heading out to the outstation. I wouldn't be caught dead in an unarmed vehicle. You know, 2010 was my last appointment there. I wouldn't even go on a road. Like, no, hard pass.

Yeah. Don't feel like getting vaporized. Yeah, that's so balzy. Yeah. But they said, hey, we'll check out this thing. So we went over there. I didn't see anything. And I was just about to call it in.

Hey, nothing significant to report. And all of a sudden I see all this muzzle flash coming up at us. So I said, never mind engaging. But blah, blah, blah. and start engage. And my wingman, I expect him to fall right in on me. And he does. And I roll out.

And as I roll out, I'm thinking we're just going to continue to engage on this. And I see recoilless rifle coming right at him. So I tell him to break. And it was, I mean, it was on target. Like a lot of these guys are, you know, spray and prey, deep guys. That was on target. He breaks. And honestly, if it didn't break right then, I think it would have hit him for sure.

So he rolls out and abbreviates his turn. And I roll in on what he did. And then as he rolls on me, he's like, break. He tells me to break. Same thing. I roll, same thing. Break. Break.

Break. We are taking effective, recoilless, 50 cowl from multiple poos all around us. We can't even get two iterations of a gun track before we have to break. And, I mean, there's a point where he's like, he keys the mic and he goes, oh, RPG. Right. And I teased him about it later. And I was like, what's this? RPG.

Gee, you know, it goes, it went through your, it went through your rotor disk. He's like, there's no way it didn't. He goes, I saw it go right through your rotor disk. Meaning it passed through the arc of the blade and missed, holy shit. It missed the blades. And I was like, no, no way. It was a perspective and everything. But then I did the math.

I got all nerdy on it. It can. It's possible. I mean, wow. It's actually. Theoretically, I'm sure, but that is the freaking golden BB right there. It's actually more possible to miss than hit. But if it did hit, you.

Your rotor blades, you guys are cooked. Yes. Because that's what took down extortion. I actually was able to do a podcast with the investigating officer, General Hotmarker. And I had thought that the RPG had gone up inside of the back of the Chinook. And apparently it had struck one of the rear rotor blades. And then it just fucking came apart.

You're done. Yeah. You're done at that point. So, yeah, we went back and forth on that thing. And it felt like for an hour, but it was probably five, ten minutes. And there was so much AK40 from the surface. that we, it looked like popcorn. Just popcorn popping everywhere.

And I just, we were just fighting, fighting, and we are just destroying everything. Like, we are unleashing everything. Yeah. It got to the point where I'm like, I'm Winchester. And he's in, and he's like, me, I'm almost Winchester too. I'm like, never mind, we got hellfires. So we were, we were using hellfires on soft squishies

because that's what we had. And I appreciate that. My favorite weapon system, my last point in 2010, was a javelin missile, which I use as an anti-personnel weapon. And it fucking works. Let me just tell you. There's not a lot left, but it works. Yeah.

And then we got out of there. And, you know, it would have been easy to pat yourself on the back. But after it sunk in, dude, we were in a killbox. You should have broke contact and fight that thing from the outside in, not from the inside out. That was bad. Sounds like you guys were doing laps inside of that kill box. Absolutely. That's 100% what we were doing.

Not recommended. And staying in it. Like just staying in. And I asked him, I said, hey, did you ever think about breaking? contact and he goes no I was just trying to make sure they didn't shoot you down and I was like I was just trying to make sure they didn't shoot you down wow and and honestly I you know I had to thank him I was like either one of us without each other would have been dead yeah 100% wow so how many deployments did you end up doing is an Apache driver just the one it was 23 months long

and that's a really long time yeah it wasn't all in Afghanistan a little over a year in Afghanistan. And then I said, that's enough. I need to save my marriage. And I transitioned over the Air Force, where they do three to four-month deployments. Unbeknownst to me, I transitioned over to the combat search and rescue during the busiest time of their history, where they were doing three on, three off, three on, three-off, three-off, three-on-three-on-three-off. But it still seemed like a break, relatively speaking, you know.

Was it difficult for you to go Army to Air Force? It wasn't. And I just applied and I thought I didn't realize there was like a board, but they like, okay, guys got a thousand hours in the helmet. We'll take him. Yeah. And I didn't know. They're like, congratulations.

You got picked. Usually dissimilar aircraft don't get picked. Meaning the not having no experience in the 60? Yeah, because you got a lot of Black Hawk drivers in the Army, right? Oh, for sure. Tons. And there's a lot of them applying, but they didn't have the combat hours that I did. And so, so they took me.

You know, that's what he told me anyway. How do that feel? Switching from, like you said, an airframe that is essentially a flying tank. I mean, you got fucking armament strapped to anything that can actually hold it to, again, I don't know if I've actually seen an Air Force 60, but I'll assume it's like a Navy one or an Army one. You got doorgunners, but it's a substantially different payload, if you will. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we have 50 cows at the biggest and mini guns at the smallest, or I guess you could use a saw. It's a smaller. But, yeah, so it was like flying. on a black hole at first. Because I had so much essay in the Apache. You had the HDU helmet, helmet display. Oh, is that the one that slaves it to the gun?

Yeah, right over your eyeball. And that also has all kinds of information, attitude, torque, all that stuff's right there. Yeah. So I can be basically at 120 degree bank and know what everything's going on because it's in my eye. That's crazy. Whereas in the paywalk, they were still, at now we're just now getting glass. Steam gauges? They were.

They were. Now, like we literally, this is my last hurrah. I went and learned the new version of the helicopter. Yeah. And I taught it. I've been teaching it at Nellis. It's the whiskey, their whiskey version. And it has glass cockpit.

First rescue one with the glass cockpit. But so I went from glass cockpit, everything in the appendix. Talk about an analog six-pack? Yeah. Get some. Yeah. I was like, what did I do? And my first appointment, we went to Iraq.

And it was like literally, we would just preposition for HVTs. And we were like third string, go get them. Like, obviously, you know, like, you have your own birds. We would roll with a full 160th package. Right. And they're going to, if one goes down, they're going to help each other out. They're not going to wait for us to come get them. And I kept saying, I was like, why are we here?

Like, they're not going to say, oh, let's get the Air Force guys in here. They have their own. Right? I wouldn't. I wouldn't wait. I was on Target in Iraq and I watched a 47 to sling load a little bird out. Yeah. They didn't call for help.

They're like, whatever. Just fucking drop the stress. Lock it in. I was like, oh, that's awesome. Yes. And they should. The guys would get, no, this is our job. I'm like, no, man.

They were already on Target surfing around. They're right there, man. They should totally do it. So I sat there that whole deployment. I was like, man, I know that my last deployment was crazy, but maybe I made a bad decision because this is boring as can be. Yeah. And then I went to Afghanistan again, and we did casualty evacuation.

And we were doing like up to 10 missions a day. I just landing into hot LZs, picking up guys that are blown up and all kinds of crazy stuff. And I'm like, okay, I'm good. How is that up front not having the ability to shoot back? Oh, it was so unnerving at first. I was like, oh, I see them. I see him. Yeah.

Like there was one time we landed in LZ and I see the guy in the tree line. I had to get my M4. And if you didn't have a door. So I'm like, I'm going to shoot them with my M4 because I don't have, I don't have the ability to do these other things. Luckily, the security perimeter got him before I did. But, but it was, I know, I'm trying to unsling my M4 to shoot out the door. It's just, it was a different.

I don't think people understand the balls it takes on some of those Metavac, Casavac platforms to come in on some of these HLZs. Where straight up, you're telling them like, hey, it's going to be sporty. Yeah. on the way in while you're on the ground. Speed is a tactic. Yeah, and on the way out. I mean, that's essentially what they would do, yeah.

Like, that was an abbreviated flare. I don't know if those landing gear work anymore. I'm here for it. So, yeah. So I had several of those situations. One in the, one in the Apache. We were taking guys in and out of the waterper valley. Are you familiar with water propeller?

It's just up past Abad, take a right, and then a left. Okay. I'm very familiar with Abad, Jabad, that area. I'm sure I'd recognize it. Yeah. So, I mean, I left and then right. I said it backwards. But they were taking, early in the day, we get called in there.

Guys taking an extreme fire. They had a fallen angel and then two significantly wounded. And the dust off guy that I was flying with was balls hanging out the door. Like, he's, I'm going in. I'm like, let us, dude, there's, I can see the LZ and dirt kicking up in it before you even get there. So he had a helicopter from himself and another one for his balls. Right. Yes.

I'm just like, dude. And I was like, give us a second. And so, like, we shut, we know, we shut them down, and then comes in and gets the guys in. And then later, and the, on our way out, the commander said, hey, we are black on ammo. It was like, can you relay? And I was like, yeah, I'll get you a speedball. This is, you're in a bad situation. I wanted to stay there.

I couldn't, but I had to escort them back, right? And so I relayed that. And we go all day. We do a couple of admissions. It's been like seven hours. We get called back to that same location. And this time, same thing. I don't remember.

There was a couple of KIAs. And, I mean, it was a bad day. for those guys. Roll in there. Same thing. This time I brought another Apache with us because I wanted to do some stuff. Yeah. And so we did that. And on our way out, Abel calls and says, this is the same iron 16th is here this morning? I said, yeah. And he goes, we never got a resupply. So they'd been there all day, black on ammo and water. And I was pissed. I was so pissed. I was like, dude, I swear I ran that up. and I will get I'll stay on this till you get you get your stuff so I went to abad and I was just I was furious man I was furious at every like I was just like you know those armchair you know all this stuff you know just just just just focus in all my energy in all the wrong places because I can't change that right and I was like so I got on the on the phone with abad and said what's going on with this and and they said as soon as they can get anybody there's 45 minutes I'm like dude they're literally taking like seven dudes out of there and they are pinned down right now and he just said that that the Taliban knows that they're black on them.

And they're pinching them in. And there's a big contingent out there too. Like it's not one of these little like 10 men guys. It's like the whole mountain side. And I'm like, what am I? And so what are we going to do? And so finally I just said, just do you guys have rounds?

He's like, yeah, we've been loading magazines all day because since you guys said that, so stick them in our saddlebags. So we stuck them in, you know, Apache's not a utility helicopter, but we have these like little saddlebag compartments. Oh, the only like the little pylons to stick out? Yep.

There's not a lot of room in there, but you can stick a lot of 30 rounds. magazines. Yeah, so they bought us garbage bags of magazines. And I'm flying with this guy named Brett Brown, who's like literally a CW4 warrant officer who flies literally with a cigar, not lit, but he always has this. I mean, he's out of a movie, right? And he's energetic as hell.

Probably ask God on behind the controls. Yeah, let's get this, you know what? And he got busted down to co-pilot because of some, I don't know, for some others. Probably if we're doing something fucking awesome. 100%. He was the air show guy. But they said, the battalion commander sent him up to us and said he's not to fly anymore. And I said, send him to me.

He'll sit in my front. He's definitely going to fly because he's got great hands. Why the heck would we not use him? And it's just stupid. We were short pilots. This guy's a great pilot. I'm a new aircraft commander. I'll take an experienced guy in the front seat.

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. So it was just a good decision making, if I do say so myself. But I did follow it up with a real bad decision here in a minute. And so we put all that stuff in and, you know, we're power limited, like big time power limited. Like, we don't have the power margins that the Blackhawks have to land because we're all loaded with ordinance and all this other stuff. And we're both looking at it. We're like, I don't know if we can land there or not.

We can, well, that's right, you know. And there's aerodynamic efficiencies with the closer you get to the ground and if you're above a certain airspeed. So my idea was I was going to come right down this spur, stay as close to the treetops as possible. using that cushion and then as I slow get lower enough to trade those efficiencies and hopefully not crash.

Yeah, what could go wrong? Yeah, nothing. And that's what we came up with. I mean, that's what I came up with. He did not... He had no say in this way. Well, we were already... So we had to...

We had already had to request two extensions on this day because we're at like 10 plus hours and now we have to go into our third which goes up to the All-American Six, which is the two-star of the A.O. And it's like, We routed that up and I told them, I was like, hey, Brett, I think we might get this extension, but we're doing this either way, right?

He goes, yeah, we're doing this either way. It's like, what's you got to do? He's already a co-pilot. I'll be busted down a co-pilot, too. So we roll in there with our other wingman, and I told him what I was going to do, and he's like, you're going to do? Because he just came in late. Like, I had him dispatched to me because the other one went with the dust off back to Bogram. So he rolls in, I give him a real quick, hey, this is what we're going to do.

And he's like, okay, well, we'll shoot. We'll cover you, I guess. know. And have fun with that. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like as soon as we could that spur is covered in Taliban. I was like so as soon as we pass then, they're going to shoot up our backside. So I need you to like lay 30 right behind us on our way down. He's like, okay. So as we're coming down, they didn't wait until I passed. It was coming up. It was coming up on our way down. You could see it coming through the tree lines. I was like, oh, this is this might have been a really bad idea. And this is where I didn't, I wasn't smart. Why the hell was I flying? I was flying. I had a

CW4 in the front seat and I was flying this graduate level, whatever maneuver, which I had no business doing. I just didn't even think about it. But it should have been him. And I shoot him out for it later. I was like, why didn't you take the controls, dummy? You know, but, but we land and we hit hard. It was like, boom. Knocked the wind out of me. And like, oh, crap, did I break the air? craft. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and put down that in the maintenance log. We need to check out the struts on the landing gear. I mean, we hit hard. And Brett goes, ugly. That's what he said. Like, just like that, ugly, but we're alive, right? And that's what he said. And I call these guys, and they come out of the tree line. And I am telling you, I've never seen people more maligned. Their camel was just streaked with sweat. They were like, you know, gorillas in the, just coming out. Zombie, zombie apocalypse. Not so tired, they weren't afraid. Like dirt kicking up in the LZ and they're just walking towards us. I'm like, oh gosh, these guys have had a rough day.

They get to the helicopter. They can't figure out how to open the thing. It's like, have you ever watched 2001 Space Office? Yeah, when they touch the monolith and they start like, who, who, who, who. And, you know, they can't figure it out. And I'm like, oh, man. I was like, Brett, they can't get it. I got to go out and open them.

He goes, oh, hell no, I got this. So he jumps out. cigar in his mouth and he's running around like just like a crazy person and he he pops open he starts hand the bags rip so he has to hand out and they they make a bucket brigade up to the guys that get to the tree line and they immediately lock and load and start returning fire which I'm sure was a relief on their part for sure they have ammunition now and and I'm just like dude clock is ticking I can see rounds hitting the LZ they are definitely hitting this bird and they were we found holes multiple holes when we land later.

And it's just at the same time, I'm like, I'm looking at my engine page, waiting for something to go red, and I look at at Brett, who's just a 50-year-old guy, like a messed-up kid in a candy shop is what I'd say in the book. Because literally it's like an Oprah Winfrey giveaway. You get ammo and you get ammo and you get ammo.

And he's just grinning. And he's got a cigar in his mouth. And then he runs around the front of the aircraft and a round hits right between his legs. like pooh right there and he stops and I yelled I'm like blah you know like I can't hear me he looks up at me and gives me two thumbs up with a cigar in his mouth and then continues around and I was just like what a stud you know and I'm like what if he gets hit you know what am I going to do then and finally he gets done and he gets back in the aircraft and we swing up off of

that thing and we just destroyed that mountain side afterwards but how long do you think you're on the ground for um two years I was going to say probably like a minute and a half but it probably felt like a decade we probably were almost 10 minutes because because those things kept ripping and i Steve beach was a guy was overhead i'm like Steve keep laying hate buddy we are going to be down for a minute and you could i could feel it on the ground like it's weird because in you're in the air you don't get that yeah but when i was on the ground i could you know i'm like oh this is what it feels like when you're on the ground you know and uh god that's gnarly but yeah so we planted that thing pretty hard but

I should have let him learn. I just like the cigar aspect. I got to throw it in there, right? Yeah, because he had it. Why wouldn't he have? It actually makes a story so much better. I put a picture of him in the book with the cigar there because it's just his persona. So how did the stress, you were saying, you know, that there were issues in the aviation community from just the stress of the occupation?

How did that manifest itself? I don't think that's unique to the aviation community, but I obviously was able to acutely aware of it in the aviation community. And it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. I mean, I rolled out to jab at what I said was like a month and a half. And we had a guy out there who had been out there since the start. And they'd been getting into engagements. And I won't say his name just because, but he was a senior warrant. And when I rolled out there, he probably lost 40 pounds in that month and a half.

I mean, his belt had a chokehold on his waist. And that's the only thing that was keeping his pants from falling down. and I was like hey they're losing some weight he's like nope he was in denial complete denial no sir don't think I lost any weight like you looked at a mirror because you've lost a lot of weight

it was chain smoking never smoked before well I didn't know it that he smoked apparently he had years and years before but picked it back up picked it back up push come to you know I knew something was there but I was trying to take over the debt and figure things out but I

you know make a metal note I got to figure out what's going on here. And it started talk around and everything. It turned out he got into an engagement where they were going pretty low, pretty slow and out of the tree line on a cliff edge, two kids with AK-47s. Kids with AK-47s aim at him and he takes him out, right? And probably, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 16, somewhere in there.

Adolescence. Yeah. He had kids that age. right and I just think it you know it's all on how we digest this stuff right we the thing about trauma is it has power it has has immense power which is why it can be a millstone around your neck and hang you down or it can be a cornerstone to a foundation of a better version of you has that power either way it's just where you put that weight right and and you know we don't always know where to put that weight or

or how to put it in the right place. And, you know, I saw people wearing it around their neck and he was one of them. And, you know, and then when I started writing this book, I started interviewing more and more guys and I saw that there was definitely guys putting that weight in different places. And some guys were better for it, you know,

and some guys were, you know, some guys even took their lives. Now, the guys that have taken their lives weren't any of my Apache guys. Actually, I've had some guys take their lives in the rescue community. Ironically, or I don't know if you want to say ironically, that's not the right word, but interestingly, none of the Apache guys had taken their lives.

There were some guys definitely negatively affected, but in the rescue community, I've had a couple. And, you know, I almost feel like, I think, like, not that it, I can imagine the weight in somebody's head. Let's say they're a rest of, rescue pilot, but they get there late. You know what I mean? Like the burden that you put on yourself for what you weren't able to do would probably be harder than the kinetic actions taken, which are oftentimes in a response to action being taken against you. It's very binary.

Yeah. Threat, engaged threat. Like it's not, you're not doing, you know, calculus, at least in my experience, even on the ground. You have even less time to do that type of math. So it's very binary. And you fall back in a train. I see a threat. I engage as threat and you can kind of move on. You have the rest of your life to think about it. but some people deal with it in healthy ways and some people don't, but it, I can, that actually makes sense to me in the rescue community.

I almost feel like that would be a heavier burden. And I don't have the vocabular to describe why I feel that way, but intuitively it makes sense. I know for me, it was, it was almost like a full circle thing because we wouldn't just pick up, you know, we wouldn't just pick up our guys. Yeah. You know, we would pick up kids that had a leg blown off

because of Apache or, you know, women or what, because they fight with their families. We know this, right? Well, yeah, and war is a blunt object, too. It just is. I think people would like it to be a scalpel. I would like it to be a scalpel. Of course.

It's not. No, especially when you're wielding that instrument of death. I mean, it flings some loud, big ordinance. Yeah. Right? So I have no doubt I killed kids. Like, obviously not my intent, but I know what happened. And I know that there's probably these type of kids that we're picking up where kids,

I caused that too in my previous mission set. So for me, it kind of came full circle. And it was a little powerful that way. I see a kid coming. And there was missions where we picked up and they said it was Apache shrapnel. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I did this too. Yeah. And so that was powerful.

But it's all about accepting life for what it is. And it's not always, I mean, you sometimes. you have to be in the ugly. And sometimes you're part of the ugly, but the ugly doesn't have to be in you. It doesn't have to remain in you, right? You just have to accept that that's part of what you're doing. And life's not all rainbows, right?

So you can use it as a lesson, as a learning experience, and it's something to foundational, or it can just bury you, you know. How did the aviation community is far too broad, the regiment that you were with, how did they keep tabs on people? from post-traumatic stress perspective. I have no idea.

I mean, just... Do you remember them having any, like, overt, uh, basically forcing the conversation on people? And I asked that because it was a topic that wasn't talked about very much in the SEAL community earlier on. And I, as I was transitioning out in 2013, they were making, they were making a lot of changes, which I think were steps in the right direction from a much more holistic of you, involving families in, uh, counseling in events, pre-informed.

post-deployment, third location decompressions. They were doing a much better job, but that didn't exist earlier on. Yeah, I think for the most part, we are moving in the right direction. Now, when we got, so I was part of a guard unit at this point. I've been active duty ever since this deployment that's in the chronicle of the book. Because I got back, I did Operation Jump Start, and then I rolled into the Air Force. So ever since I've been active duty, but I was part of a guard unit. And as a guard unit, we went to Fort Seal before we actually went home.

And we went through this demode process. And it's all a blur. I, like, I forgot we even did that. Like, when I talked to the guys were like, oh, yeah, I remember when we all had to stand at attention in that gym and they, and they did one, the Rockets ring blare, and boom, and everybody dropped and you're like, flinched and everything. And I was like, I don't remember that at all, right?

I just remember getting home. That's it. So to answer your question, I know they did something. I vaguely remember them saying, do you need to talk to a chaplain? And I was like... Well, here's the thing, though. I remember being asked that question, too.

But here was my choices. Do you feel like you need to talk to a chaplain? Do you want to go home? Right. And that's exactly where it was. I'll take go home for a thousand, Alex. B. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You're going to have the goat on the box, the chaplain, or you're home. I'll take home. Yeah. Every time. Yeah. And then obviously I'll just push my feelings down because I'm a man and then drown him with

alcohol. What could possibly go wrong? Which is the recipe for cookies, I think. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, it's... But we are getting better. And the thing, I think we're doing a lot better.

The conversations out there, we're talking about it right here. Like, the conversation is open. It's not stigmatized as much as it used to be. But I also feel like I don't like the messaging of if you go to war, you experience significant trauma. It's a foregone conclusion. You're going to be a shell of who you were. Yeah, it's the broken toy narrative is what I call. call it. And you hear, you hear people who talk about that. And then what, what I think is even

more damaging is that you see people playing that character. And I'm not saying that war, my, my theory on war for years now has been if you touch war, it's going to touch you back. And I wish that people would put as much emphasis on post-traumatic growth as they do post-traumatic stress because I feel like I am a I feel like I am a better person because of the experiences that I had. And I there are, I can't say that I struggle with things that happened overseas, but there are things that will be with me forever. You know, part of you.

Talking about that guy who, you know, adolescents who, you know, are going to aim a weapon at you. And by every military law and regulation, you are fucking clear to engage. If you see a hostile act, hostile intent, you can engage. First time I ever fired my rifle in combat. I was on a roof and I had climbed up with a buddy and I hopped over a wall and I was holding security, rooftop security for a small ground element as they were coming through and they were making clearance on a variety of buildings. I was just up there, you know, just kind of watching windows doors and making sure that everything was good.

The buddy I had climbed up with had actually gotten into essentially a grappling match. Summertime. Guys are sleeping on the roof. guy, here's ladder, hit side of roof and we come up and my buddy was like, I'm going up first. It was just, he had been there longer than me. So my choices were okay and okay. So we go up under the roof and he, the guy like jumps up and he's covered in a mosquito net. I still think I laughed as I went by because I just watched my buddy just grab him and go over.

I was like, ha, ha, go over. And as soon as the last of the people made entry, I heard something behind. me and I turn around and there is, if this is the courtyard, I was looking over, there was another courtyard that was like over here and I'm on this wall. And there's a stairway that came up the far wall that got to the roof section because these were actually, they were both the same size and the wall between the two was here. And the guy on the cot was right here, but there was a stairway that came up that would have allowed him to access the higher ground. Turn around and I see a guy running up to the roof with the AK& and I just start shooting. Shoot, shoot, shoot the first time I'd ever shot

at something that was in paper, didn't know exactly what was going to happen. That person ended up falling backwards and was kind of rocking at the bottom of the stairs with the weapon right in front. Shot him a few more times. Like, holy shit in my head. I remember that just happened.

And then I started hearing wailing in the courtyard. And it was his mother because he probably, probably was 13. And he had hurt his dad on the roof struggling with somebody. And he probably did exactly what I would have done in that situation. He ran up.

And his mom started running out. And one of the few words that I understood in that language which was Dresh, which means stop. And if she had taken probably one or two more steps towards that AK, I would have dumped her too. But I have kids, 14, 17, and 19. And I have thought about my kids and that kid

probably every single day since that happened. Am I a better person because of that situation? I don't know. Does it change the way that I think about the world? Does it change the way that I view people in the way that they make decisions somewhat? But it's a part of me, I'll never be able to put that down.

But I still think I am better those situations and all the other ones that occurred. I still think I am better because of it because of the growth that I got on the other side of that. And I never had a like a template to follow. I just blindly kind of found my way and tried to be honest about it and tried to talk to people about it and never hide behind like the bullshit of like, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a pretty big deal. and basically a war hero and nothing I did that bothered me. And because I know some, I don't know some people who were like that far on the extreme, but people who seem to think that what we were asked to do was normal

and that it's not going to change your trajectory. And it has scrambled some of their eggs to the point where they decided that putting a gun in their mouth was the best call. It's, uh, and it's wild. I mean, it's a wild experience that I don't have the vocabulary to explain to people who haven't felt it or seen it themselves.

But I can say with 100% certainty that it made me a better person. I think it allows me to love at a deeper level, to appreciate at a deeper level, and I don't know why. I 100% agree with you. And that's what I think is available to most people who've experienced that. It's just a matter of how you digest it like we were talking about. And I think what you hit the nail on the head a little bit there.

You just talked about it. It's ugly. You say it's ugly. If this happened today, this happened today. If that, you know, it's not unlike your work, our work was our work. It's like going to the bank. I'm going to talk to you, like a guy that works at the bank's going to talk to his wife about what happened to the bank. It's even more important to talk about what happened today at the rooftop. Yeah. Right. Because that's impactful. And if it's going to become

post-traumatic stress growth, which is what I hammer on too. It has to be talked about. It has to be talked about is something that what is what it is. It was ugly. It sucks that it happened, but it's part of what happened. And it's an element in the foundation that makes you you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild to think that those experiences in those places can have such a long lasting impact on who you become. And then some, to me, you know, talking to people about post-traumatic stress, it's hard, if not impossible to describe because I've been in rooms or in places with people and we all experience the same thing, but the outcome was so different.

So I have no explanation as to why it was a vector for somebody to veer their life off course. Because maybe it was there. Fuck, I don't know, nuclear family. Maybe they're a beat every day. I'd have no idea, but that stuff 100% lays the foundation for what you're able to tolerate.

And I don't know, it's wild. Yeah, I will say, there's definitely things we cannot affect, right? Their background, all that kind of stuff, we cannot affect. But I truly believe that we're not broken. We're just misappropriated at times. We have tools within us that can turn that into a superpower.

It's just a matter of understanding the utilization of those tools, right? When did you come to that opinion? Really just talking to a lot of mental health professionals and really kind of seeing how people can turn it around. And people that were at the point of doing what we're talking about. Yeah, killing themselves. Yeah. They didn't have to like change anything.

They just had to accept that it happened, right? They had to accept that it's part of who they were. And they had to accept that they are whole as they are. It's just where are you going to put that? Are you going to put it as that weight like I was talking about? Are you going to put it as a foundation? And once they figure out how to Tetris that thing, right, then just like in Tetris, like that things start to disappear.

And the weight starts to go down. And I've seen that happen with people that have digested this way, differently than I have, right? And, and it's powerful. It's powerful. And, and it's not just military. I mean, trauma is trauma. Pain is pain.

Like, how people experience it is similar. I, in the book, I talk about how my relationship with my ex-wife was actually more traumatic than killing people often. That is insane that you just said that because I, I was married for 19 years and 11 months. And I was talking about this on a recent episode. I think it was the Friday episode that came out today. I'm never going to blame by the demise of my marriage on the military, but I'm also never going to say that the requirements of my occupation didn't have a hand in that as well.

But as far as the feeling of how I felt about myself when I looked in the mirror, when I was in the trenches, if you will, of my divorce. It lasted almost two years and it was quite contentious in the relationship with my ex-wife is not a good one. And that's it's not saying that in a negative way, saying it's her fault or mine. We probably were never the right people for each other to begin with. And now there is just this fucking gap in between us. He might as well try to broad jump the Grand Canyon and have an axe fight in the middle, I guess, would be the most accurate description of what it would be. Which I think is in the next Olympics, by the way.

God, I'd be, I'd be tuning in for that. I'd pay-per-view that shit. But in the middle of it, I have never had. more self-doubt, negative thoughts about myself, like the lowest feeling of self-worth. That process was so much worse than looking myself in the mirror after making decisions in very limited amount of time to end other people's lives.

It was like apples and bowling balls. It wasn't even remotely close. Yeah, I can totally relate, and I think a lot of guys can. And that also lends power to the people that are here that never do see war. And they're like, I've heard people like, I've never had trauma like you've had trauma. I don't know that.

I don't know that that's true. They probably never experienced military and first responder trauma, I would say, is a lot more in the kinetic nature. Like you're going to see, you're going to see a lot more damage to human beings than I think. And I'm glad that most people don't experience that because it ain't like the movies. No. To say it doesn't smell good. It doesn't look good. And you'll remember it for the rest of your life.

But it's a type of trauma. Right. You know, and spoiler alert here, I am not a doctor. But I think that trauma, you know, maybe it comes from abuse from when you were young. Does your brain and body really know the difference between seeing somebody being totally mangled or being the recipient of abuse? I don't know at the end of the day. And I think it's probably a bad thing to try to balance. Well, my trauma is worse than your trauma.

Trauma is trauma. There's just different types of trauma. Yeah. Pain is pain. And how you digest is how you digest it. I used to judge, you know, I think a lot of us do, like, we called them Fobits, the guys that never left the fob, right? Well, that's what they're called. Yeah.

Oh, that's their names. Yeah. And we actually called them exactly the same thing. Right. And, you know, they had IDF and they get PTSD from that. And we're like, oh, come on, man. IDF is indirect fire. Right.

And, you know, at first I would do that. And then after a while, I'm like, maybe that did traumatize him. I watched it happen to, I'll speak about super broadly, but in my last appointment we had, guy who was out there to support us from the comm's perspective. And we would get mortared and we would get rocketed. And it sucks. I actually hate being on the receiving end of mortar fire. He's like, well, I don't know.

Yeah. Where's it going to be? Is it going to be over the wall by two kilometers or is it going to be in the chow hall? Or is it going to be right where I am? Scramble the dude's brains and didn't really bother me that much because I would run to a fighting position and see if I could identify what was coming from and start fucking fighting back in the other direction. But that's what I was trained to do. Yeah. through years of, you know, chair flying and thinking about what I was going to do.

And then years of experience actually in a combat environment. Who the fuck am I to judge a guy who was there to largely make sure that we had secure communications the whole time. And at no point in time did he probably think that that was going to happen. And the impact that it has, it's like I have no judgment of that whatsoever. Yeah. Well, and your training and his training are significantly different. And your training is refining. Like that weeds out people.

Oh, yeah. by design. That would be the radio communicator. He would have got probably weeded out. And that's fine. That's not like a dish on him. That's just we have different types of wiring. You know,

I had one time, you've been to Cannes Hart, correct? Yes, so you know that big. Sweet Timmy Horton's there. Yes, right by Timmy Ho's,

that big field, right? I was crossing that field. And IDF, I was like, yeah, IDF, whatever. You know, it happens.

And they're like, d'n, the sign's going on. I'm like, everybody's running. I just... Half the time the damn sirens worse. And I was literally, I was just complacent at this point. I'm like, I was walking.

And I, just like out of the movie, I literally heard it. It was one of the few that I heard, and it landed about 15 feet in front of me. Boom! Into that dirt, it didn't... Oh, low order? Didn't explode. And it, like, spun. I heard it spin off.

It was like, I don't know what it was, 1-5 or something, but... And went through, like, three of those buildings. buildings that are on that boardwalk. And I was like, huh. Hopefully didn't get the TGI Fridays. I was like, I guess it's not my time because if that thing would have blew. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. 15 feet. Oh, you're cooked. And how crazy would that have been too? Like, I'm in the Apache all the time doing all this stuff and then he get taken out by Timi Hose. Right. I mean, you got to get your latte in.

And I did have a donut. I had it in my hand. Why would you not? I had it in my hand. Yeah. Fuck. Carpe Diem, dude. You got to seize the day.

Yeah. It is a wild experience. When did you start thinking you were going to write a book? So it was an interesting experience. I didn't initially get that distinguished flying cross. It was something that happened, and I was attached to the 82nd, and then I went back and I became an Air Force and all that stuff. Anyway, I was in the Air Force, and lo and behold, that video that you were looking at

shows up in a talk that I'm in, and guys were watching it, and then, you know, screaming and everything. And they're talking about how to stay calm under pressure and everything. and the commander, my commander at the time, said, hey, you were an Apache driver, you know that guy? Funny that you ask, sir. And I was like, yeah, I know him. And he's like, yeah, what's his name?

I was like, listen to a little closer. And he's like, that was you? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And he's like, whoa, you know, he's like, what did you get for that? And I'll be honest, Air Force is a lot more about decorations than at least my experience in the Army. It's just a lot more whatever. I was like, oh, they put in a DSE, but I was attached to the 82nd, never, never came to fruition. So he's like, what?

No, I'm going to fix that, right? And I was like, no, it's no big deal. Don't worry about it. It'd been eight years. Yeah. Been eight years at this point. And he's like, who was your brigade commander? And I told him, it was Kelly Thomas.

He's like, I know Kelly Thomas. I was like, of course you do. Why would you not? Which was, you know, it's kind of random. He was a former army guy as well. So I guess it's not that random. But he reached out to him, called him, said, hey, you remember this incident? He's like, yeah, absolutely.

You realize you didn't get anything? Yeah, I did not realize that. It was like, let's fix it. Well, I guess after eight years, it's got to go through a senator, right? Probably some statute of limitation. That's probably not the right word, but similar concept. Something. So they went through the late Orrin Hatch, Utah, and since it's a senator, it's got to be a big deal, right?

Because that's how they do things. Yeah. And so he's like, you got your- Well, they would never want recognition for somebody else's achievements. Yeah. Because we're talking about politicians. They are so transparent, and they are in it for their constituents. Can we do this in a covert office somewhere?

Here's my PO box. Maybe you could just mail it to me. Yeah, no, they gave me like three choices. And I don't remember. They were all like completely. Shit. Yeah. So I have my son at this point.

He's three years old. And he's huge into sports. And one of the choices was the halftime of a jazz game. Right. It's like, okay, I'll do that. So the halftime of the jazz game, I walked out there with Orrin Hatch, who's tall by the way. And old. He was really old. I mean, he's passed away since. But like, as he walked, I was like, don't fall. Like, I thought he was going to fall. And as I walked out, they started reading

the citation. And I'd been there for the first half up to that point. And there had been cheers and jazz were actually winning. So it was pretty loud. But when they started reading that citation, everybody stood up and it was the loudest had been that whole time. It was so loud. I couldn't hear the citation and they didn't know me you know it wasn't for what it wasn't for that incident it wasn't for for brian slade it was for what i represented at that moment right and of course you know you get you get a lot of pride welling up when that happens but what it hit me is like i had a lot of experiences like this i mean this one got a distinguished fine cross but there were tons any any one of those things could have depends on the visibility of what it is right for sure

And I was like, but there were, who cares about that? What, what I care. There were, there were lessons that have learned, I learned from each of those things that have formed who I am, have formed how I see things, how I've formed how I can approach obstacles. And I used those lessons. And then it hit me. I was like, you're a selfish bastard.

Like, you haven't really shared any of those lessons, except for with your immediate, your immediate men that you're working with or for or they're working for you. And I was like, I got to do something with this. And I didn't know book. I didn't know if that's what, at the time, I didn't know what that was. But people have been telling me I should write a book since I was a kid because I had that crazy stuff happened my whole life. And finally, I was like, oh, maybe I'll, maybe I'll do the book.

Now, the book is phase one. I'm building a curriculum and a training and all those kind of things. This is just to get the word out there and kind of like spark interest. But, but yeah, that's why. That's, I mean, eight years after that is when I actually started it. So where'd you start? Where did I start at the beginning? Well, like, what do you mean?

Like, you have lessons. You have things that people can learn from. Where did you begin the process? Like, where did you want to start the process? I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but where does it begin for you? So I give a little bit of background. I moved out when I was 15, you know, there's just, and I played sport. I played football.

There were certain lessons I learned in football, learning these other things that that I applied moving forward into, into the military and even into, into these combat scenarios and and they just developed like like the lessons that I learned grew upon each other as as extreme searching extreme situations dictated and you know the more extreme the situation the more poignant the lesson right and so I started basically given that background in like the first three or four chapters and then I just jump into that first deployment which is Apaches and it was over a year of and it was just call it good luck bad luck they called me Magneto for a reason. Like, like, I just, like, I don't know if that's a good call side of house. No, I don't think it is, but like, I, I call it good luck because I'm still here.

But I did get into it a lot. And part of that was because of the way I flew and not, some of it was ill-advised, right? But I learned from that, you know. And, and all those lessons, there are combat lessons that are that are they're galvanized in extreme situations absolutely apply to lives here yeah they can apply to lives here and and to guys that yet to go over guys that already have been over i mean it's just you can apply them in so many different ways and it's so yeah i just kind of went through that whole thing and i didn't want it to be overly didactic so i'm not like super instructional and it's not a self-help book if you will it's a war story that sneaks in lessons and then at the end I kind of I kind of like put a capstone on it

how'd you know you were done writing it I don't know I don't even know if I am to be honest I don't be tough right like it's like and the end oh fuck I forgot to put that chapter in right well there was 44 engagements that we did that I that me and the co-author Mike Hirsch said this could be a chapter right and that's a lot of chapters yes this is the book's already almost 400 pages Right. And so we cut out. I mean, there's like 18 engagements. So you have two more books in the work.

I don't know if we'll write it about that, but I could see something with rescue because there's a whole other set of lessons, a whole different mission set, a whole different like I was the leader in charge in the Army and the Air Force. I wasn't. So it was a different perspective, right? I had to go back to being, you know, a supporting role, if you will. Yeah. At first I thought I'd be excited about that. And then after a while, I'm like, oh, this kind of sucks. You know, and the Air Force was so different than the Army. You know, for the reasons I crossed over the Air Force, they held true, but, like, I was probably a better fit for the Army, my personality. But I'm grateful for the Air. I always say I didn't join the Air Force to begin with for all the reasons I crossed over for eventually. Like, when I was young, I was like, ah, they're staying four-star hotels.

I was supposed to be on a week, you know. Build the airfield last, so they have to do the barracks first. Yeah. which actually is a sound policy. Because they'll give you more money for the runway. They may not give you more running for the barracks. That's true. Yeah.

But then later I was like, oh, they stand for a hotel. Yeah, okay. But it was a different, it was a whole other batch of lesson. So if there's another book, that's where it's going to be probably. But I don't know. I don't know. We'll see how this goes and we'll see how the curriculum develops. And I'm getting ready to retire in March.

I was just going to ask you, man, how does it feel? Staring at the sun going down. And you know pretty soon it's going to hit the horizon. On a career, not obviously anything else. I'm excited. I'm so grateful for, you know, I got 27 years in now. And I'm grateful for the experience. There's things, and you know, that you just can't explain

to anybody. Experiences that you just can't get in any other way. And I'm grateful for those, and I have no desire to have them again. Is that how you knew it was time to get out? I've been to the point where I didn't want to deploy again, I was willing to for probably six or seven years now. Yeah. And I've been an instructor, you know, that's really all I do is teach the next generation,

which is fun. I can find fulfillment in that and pass lessons and all that kind of stuff. I kind of stepped out of the leadership climbing thing several years ago when I became a single father. Because I have full custody of my son. That's very rare. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 50-50, I would.

I mean, God. Another thing about the divorce process, man. It's rough. It's rough. And you're going to be lucky to get 50-50. Yeah. I mean, obviously my situation was such that it worked out that way. Yeah.

And I'm grateful for it, you know. But I had to step, I had to take several steps backwards to be there for my son, which I do not regret in any way. How old do you know? He's 10. He's 10. So it starts being a really awesome age. He, yeah. He's a super athlete too, so I can get in, I could get on board with all that.

See, that's amazing. I mean, God, I don't know if this happened to you, but. So my oldest now is 19 and I'm like, okay, like, we're going to have a kid. But like, nothing really is changing about my body. So I guess I'm kind of here. And then the baby's born and just looking at him like, you're so boring. You don't talk to me. You just shit in your pants.

Yeah. I have to clean that. You want your mom. You're moderately tolerating me. It's like, I throw a ball to play catch and it bounces off of you or like rolls by. I'm like, you're just the worst. And obviously, I'm just joking. But I didn't find, I have loved my kids unconditionally since the day they were born.

And I still remember holding my 19-year-old son, like, for the very first time and giving him a sponge bath. And it's crazy to see now. He actually has like a full jihadist beard and had buzzed his head over the summer and he refuses to get a haircut so he looks like a freaking porcupine. It's hard to describe. But God, it got fun as they got older. Right around 10. My son's like, dad, we need motorcycles. I'm like, go say that in front of your mom and make sure I'm there because we'll go get them.

No, he's had a motorcycle since he was six. Yeah. Because any whiskey throttle incidents? Because it is just me. Yeah. I did the whiskey throttle in front of him and scared the crap out of him. So, yeah. My middle son, first day he ever owned a motorcycle, the last thing I saw of him is he was laying out completely flat, holding onto the handlebars, legs out behind him, over hill into a bush.

I'm just like, let go. Scared the shit out of him. Probably me more than him because in my back of my mind, I was like, I'm going to have to answer for this from his mom. Yeah. No, I got a brand new KTM and it wasn't sprung. I mean, my girth units are such that it needs to be re sprung. Yeah. Right.

And I was just going to do some clutch stuff. I just barely got it. And then decided to open it up and, and my son watched it. He got so pissed at me. Because I made him put his whole exoskeleton. Oh, for sure. Everything on.

You're probably out there. Flip Flops and a hat on backwards. I had a helmet. That was it. That was it. But, I mean, I looked like that double mud burger that I just ate. That's what I looked like coming back. And he's like, he was mad at me.

He's like, you didn't put your stuff on. You could have. it died. And it was just like, listen, this is how this works. You do as I say, not as I do. I'm like, what lesson do we learn from your bloody dad? Yeah, for sure. You think you miss flying when you get out?

I think I will. I think I will. Do you have any desire to pursue it in the civilian sector? A little bit, but every time I think about it, I'm like, it's not like I'm going to fly like I fly. No. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, you could.

Your license would be very short lived. And it would break the helicopter. Like, they're just not. They're not meant to do what we're doing, right? No. So what I love about the military helicopters is just the capability. I mean, you're in a cliff and you're just, you know, and I don't, you can't do that in an A-star, you know. I mean, you can, maybe once.

One time, one time. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know the repeatability of that maneuver, but you can do it once. Yeah. But I am getting older, so maybe I would, maybe I would like the more subdued flying. I don't know. I don't think you would like taking clients in an A-star to like peaks where they could go snowboard in the powder. Yeah. And I just watch them.

I got super lucky one time and got to go heli-skiing, heli-boarding. It wasn't an A-star. And it was so cool. But listening to you talk about all the stuff that you've done in a helicopter, you'd be like doing touch and goes up. They're just like, huh? What do we do on? Oh, okay. Get out.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I could see doing EMS maybe or fire support. I think I could enjoy that. But the thing is, I don't want to do it full time. I'm just like, hey, can I do it like one week a month? You know, I got... There might be a place for that. So there's an organization up here called Two Bear Aviation that is actually free.

It's, they do rescues in Idaho as well. No cost to the people there. But from my understanding, they have a pretty goddamn capable helicopter. And they're doing like long lines, winching type stuff. lip landings, you know, an essence of kind of the flying that you used to do. Yeah. Yeah.

So that kind of thing I think I could get into. I mean, I got other things that I'm doing, but part of me is like, you're going to have an it. You can't scratch. So you might, I might need a part-time gig. Shooting hogs out of a helicopter in Texas looks fun too.

Yeah, but if you're going to do that, promise me you're not going to fly it at the same time. Because I could see you like taking the bolts off the door. And they don't have doors. Okay. That shows you my level of understanding and trying to need. fly this fucking thing with like your legs on the finger majigger and then you had your

collective on the other hand and come and cross body well so like it's funny I know a guy that does that down there and I was like how what do I have to do to be able to do exactly what you just said my god so we used to do it when we're you know kids with coyotes in the in the truck you know yeah just a hey there's a few more controls you need to

you know maintain your water setup thinking of that did you guys ever fuck with each other in those helicopters and I don't know maybe just apply a little bit of rudder pressure and because I mean I wouldn't be able to help myself You mean when that guy's taking a leak or something? No, and you're just flying along and you're like, hmm, maybe I'll just start pushing on this pedal here a little bit to see how long it takes them to recognize it. Oh, yeah.

I do it all the time. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Especially new guys. And see how long, you know, they'll get like real long. Maybe just rotate on it a little bit, you know. They'll get real quiet.

You're like, how long until they say something? Yeah. And they're like, oh, you go. What's happening? You know, they're like, am I doing this? That's what I'm talking about. That's the type of Tom Fooler that I'm. here for. Yeah. Or like if we take somebody in the back, so I didn't get to take anybody in the back

with Apache. It's just me and another pilot. But like with these, we get a, you know, with the PAPOC, we get a fly people. And, you know, we'll say Delta Charlie, which means dump the collective, right? So like if a guy. Is this a zero G move? Yeah. Like you just, the guy's just like eating a sandwich or whatever in the back and they'll say Delta Charlie and I'll just, foo! And so the sandwich floats and they're like, you know. Yeah. I went on a backseat ride in an F-18 and that pilot absolutely just whipped my ass. Yeah. They were doing, it was because I was a J-TAC, and it was a great experience because I got

to see what they see, which just tell you is a little bit different than only being able to see the walls of a compound. Like, why can you not see me? Yeah. Clearly in this compound, like, oh, you can see 80 square miles. All right. Let's talk on big to small here. Yeah.

And then they, so they were doing simulated cast runs. And then they were doing missile evasions. I wasn't ready for that. I felt sick for three days. Yeah. It was, I didn't eat the day before. I got some very good beta. Like, hey, I don't know what they're going to be doing, but don't eat because I had, like, mask off just like,

oh, ha. Shoving it back on. I'm like, this is the worst. But, like, legit seasick feeling for, like, three days. I haven't experienced it. I really would like to eat before I'm done. And I'm actually been kind of, like, throwing some feelers out there because there's a lot of jet guys there at Nellis.

But it's, well, I think the person up front doesn't get that feeling. It's being in the back and not knowing. which direction it's going to come. The pilot described it as basically your inner ear trying to catch up. And that's where the nausea comes from. Yeah. Because I was certainly testing the structural stability of the inside of the cockpit with my helmet. Dang.

Like, son of a bitch. It was the worst. It was the absolute worst. Yeah, what are you going to, so you have your curriculum. You have the book. What else are you going to focus on post-military? Are you going to stay in the Vegas area? No, I'm not.

My whole family lives in Utah. I bought... Is that your phone, Michael? What is that? It's not mine. Is it mine? That's yours. That's an alarm.

I have it on silent. Sorry, guys. I don't care. Where the hell is it? We could edit that up, but we're not going to. Follow the noise. Found it. Oh, sweet.

Old school flip phone. Well, it's not an old school flip phone. Oh, is that an Android? Yeah. Do you just not like good technology, or what's the deal with that? No, I just wanted something smaller in my pocket, so to speak. Yeah. I've heard that one before.

Yeah. actually yeah never mind all right so what are you going to do post military um so i've always dealt with i've always flipped i like i've always flipped homes throughout my whole military career so i have like real estate stuff ventures that i'm doing but honestly this is my passion i i don't have to work you know with the retirement and the real estate stuff um that's a great place to be man you can i worked the only job i ever wanted to have was military. And then I remember when I got my DD-214 and I was driving off base,

thinking, huh, I really didn't think out anything beyond this particular day. And we're here. Well, and fortunately, I had been double-dip in and working for a strength additioning company on the weekends. So I, you know, I had a pretty seamless off-ramp. But I went from, you know, working from the government to working for somebody else. And I did some contract stuff in the skydive space, again, working for somebody else. And let me tell you, where you have arrived at, the ability to kind of do what you want to do because you want to do it and not on somebody else's parameters is amazing. Yeah, I'm on it.

That's why I was just having this discussion with somebody the other day and they're like, well, you can make money here and you can make money there. You've got your finger and your hand in here. And I was like, yeah, I can. I don't have to though. Yeah. So if I want to, I can do those things. But honestly, this is, this is it.

This is what I want to do. Like our, our, uh, credo for rescue is that others may live. And that's what we do, like, or try to make sure others live. And I find a lot of job satisfaction in that, but that's about to be gone in that sense. And it was my mom that pointed it out. She's like, your whole career, you've tried to save people physically. Now you're going to try to save them mentally and emotionally. And it's not that, like, I'm not trying to be a savior or anything.

It's just there's experiences that can help. Yeah. Right. And I'm far from perfect, you know, and. Absolutely. a path, it's really easy to get lost. I feel, I feel really fortunate. I totally stumbled my way through my post-military career. Like I said, working for a strength of conditioning company pursued the pilot route, you know, got all, I just, just over 3,000 hours, a bunch of type ratings and flew charter for a bit.

It's like, you know, the bigger the airplane, the bigger the suitcase. And I'm traveling on other people's holidays as opposed to my own. It was just, it was too hit and miss. And I'll be a professional skydiver for a bit. Oh, I'll start doing some public speaking along the way. You know, you meet Rogan. He's like, you should start a podcast. I'm like, oh, okay, whatever. And I'm starting a podcast. And it might seem to people as if I had some grand plan, but I'm telling you right now, I didn't have a path.

And I kind of stumbled my way along. And that's not the path I would recommend for people. If you have an architecture or a structure that you could follow and learn from other people's mistakes, I mean, I'm glad that I am at where I am at. And, you know, the ups and downs that came with that and the mistakes and all those things. again, I'm the product of all those things, but, man, follow the path that's out there. I always thought there was like a part of buds that said, this is how you make it in the civilian world. Because all the Navy SEALs seem to figure it out. Well, you know why they figured out, I've thought about this and I've had conversations with people from the community.

A lot of guys get out and they're just really wildly entrepreneurial. And they'll fail and they don't give a fuck. And if you look back at what the training actually is, it's just constant problem. thrown at you. Yeah. And they worry less about how you solve the problem and more about the fact that it does get solved. And they'll have days where they reward certain behavior and then punish the same ones the

next day. So it's intentionally chaotic. And what you learn is, I'm just going to do what I need to do. And if the in state is good one day, awesome. And if it's bad one day, guess what? I'm going to use that as motivation and fuel in the fire for the next day. So it's a career field. And I look at the more advanced training.

Like we would go and we would do, you know, urban terrain, you know, even using helicopters. And we're like, okay, we're going to have people come from the ground and a vehicle assault force and a helicopter assault force and we're going to do all this stuff. And it's just problem solving. Right. And then we'll do a hit and they completely reset the city. And you set the same, you come back and you hit the same city, but it's completely different. So what do you have to do?

It's fucking figure it out on the fly. Right. And that, if you get enough time in that pool, it seeps into you. And you realize that it's just, you know, there is no such thing as a loss until you actually surrender and you. give up. So that's a very applicable skill set. It is. Yeah.

It takes time though. Yeah. And again, you know, we were talking about this a little bit. I don't, it's almost seems as if the opposite is being taught. I mean, I think that there is so much to be gained by going headlong into adversity, pursuing things that are difficult, taking the time to analyze for yourself. Like, well, what are the things that scare me? And why am I scared about?

Why do I have anxiety about public speaking? You know what? I wonder if I'd be a better person if I got up in front of an audience and actually tackled that fear until I identified something else. And the answer for me has always been, yeah. But in the modern era, I hear your phone ringing. It's fine. You can't try to hide it from me. It's not ringing.

It's buzzing. Those are different. It's true. I have Michael amplify that. So it's super loud. You want to be able to hear me talking. Actually, neither of us know how to do that. So don't worry.

But it's, in the modern society, it's like, well, just, you know, don't go too far. You know, don't be toxic in your seeking out of adversity. I don't know. I don't know if that's the path to where we want to be. I agree. What does that book, Two Hard Things or Too Difficult Things or something? I can't even. I'd read both of those.

It's, I think it's written by a Green Beret. I would read it less now. I mean, it was written by a seal, I think. Oh, I would definitely read. Top Ten, of course. Probably has fantastic hair. No, but it's so true. I mean, just what we talked about earlier, look back.

Where are your biggest gains? It's after you get tested, right? And you can test yourself. It doesn't mean it has to be this natural catastrophe that happens your life. Set a goal. Will you be better off? And I hope people understand this. The more you test yourself willingly, the better you will respond to test that you have no control over.

And that can be as simple as, you know, it's fun. Jock was a good friend of mine. And he posts a picture of his watch. It's like 4.30 every day. It's like, cool, psycho. And people have told him this right to his face. I'm like, how many naps do you take every day? Because he's like 74.

Is he really that old? Yeah. He's going to turn 75 this year. Wow. I just made that up. I have no idea. Okay. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to spread it. It's about the delivery. Yeah. But people confuse what he's doing. He is showing what discipline has done for him. Not everybody can wake up at 430, but you could set a time that is somewhere more reasonable. maybe 6.30 and get up and choose to do disciplined things.

Like that's the example that he is setting. You don't actually have to replicate exactly what it is that they're doing. But by doing that and these micro-stressers, you're so much more prepared for the bullshit that the world's going to throw at you. Well, and you kind of get to where you're excited for a challenge, right? Because you start seeking it actually. Because you see what comes on the other side of it. You're like, and it's difficult.

Awesome. What's going to happen? Something's going to happen. Some good's going to happen. This has been an uphill battle for me because I, did what the military said, like keep zero SEO, basically. I don't have an internet footprint at least prior to three months ago. I didn't until I got out either. And so it was more in the infancy of all this stuff exploding. But yeah, it's a tool, but it's not real either. You know, it's neither social nor media. Right. By any stretch. But it is a tool. But it is a tool,

and it is a pool that people are swimming in. And if you want to, you can use it exactly as that. I think, I think it's easy to forget that you're seeing a curated view of other people's lives as opposed to the reality. What's crazy to me is like, so like if you're doing a book like this or you're doing something and you want to get it out there, that's the tool of choice right now is that tool. And so like literally, I didn't have an Instagram. I had zero Instagram account. I had no LinkedIn. I had a Facebook, but it was just like posting antics of my kid with friends and family. And so that's been an uphill climb.

And that's part of the reason why I've enjoyed doing things like this because this gets, this gets the, word out there without me having to get all crazy on the social media. Yeah, which is what you want to avoid at all costs. Right. Yeah, there's some people out there who are notable for all the wrong reasons. I actually, you know, I don't know the Kardashians at all. I wish they had far less influence. I'll say that. It's a plight way to say it. No, I agree. I've actually met them. Really? I've heard they're tiny. They are so tiny. Yeah. So you know the one that's the giant? No. So, okay. There was one that I called the giant. giant. I can't remember her name. You know.

Michael knows. You're a huge Kardashian fan. Huge Kardashian fan. Let me look it up. Yeah. So she looks so much bigger than the other sisters. I was security, I was doing a it was a volunteer thing for one of the big music events in Las Vegas and the money would go

to, you know, our more MWR fund. Yeah. Right? And so they saw me and they're like, hey, big guy. You can do the VIP thing, right? So that's where all the VIPs and they were VIPs for Kanye West's part of it. He seems totally sane, by the way.

Yeah, completely. Yeah. Very lucid thoughts. Basically. Coherent thought process. He's basically a therapist. Um, yeah. So they walked through, mom looks like Frankenstein.

Yeah. Like legit, like holy crap. Like her face has been cut so many times. It's yeah, whatever. So she walks by. And then Kim, the most famous one, but dunk a dunk whole, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

She's like four foot nothing both ways. And so she walks by it. And then the giant, who's not a giant? Michael, who's the giant? I think it's Kendall Jenner? No. No, I'll know it if I hear it. It starts with a...

I'm not finding it. Chloe. Chloe. Is it? Yeah. She walks, and this is be, I guess she's had a lot of work done since, but she walked by at that point and I was like, oh, totally normal looking woman. Like pretty woman, right?

But it's just, you know, it just goes to show that that's the media. all those things that yeah it's not real you know it's it's not real and it sets an expectation that is impossible yeah good example the fucking liver king which i don't want to talk about too much because everybody is talking about it but and i and i don't know much i've seen one thing i has he's all natural wink wink yeah uh and just got busted for not being all natural and and literally doing the circuit trying to promote like these are my tenants and i have never touched of stuff and I never will. And I had been asked about it a few times. It had to come up. It's like,

listen, is it statistically possible that he could look like that without those drugs? Yes, but he would absolutely be the anomaly. And what he is doing is he is selling the anomaly as the norm. Right. Which is the same thing, those people that are on that pedestal, like the work, the teams of people that they have to make them look like everything is curated. They always have something to sell and it's this unrealistic expectation if you do all these things then you can be like me but you're not being fucking honest about all the things that have to happen to make you look like you and do those things and that's my issue with well i don't like the influence of the Kardashians because i believe like they could literally end the world for some reason i haven't really

put together how the math on how that works but shit like the liver king you know if people want to take supplements cool but just fucking be honest that's what drives me the most crazy about that yeah i don't know much about. I saw one thing where he's eating just raw meat and I was like, oh, interesting. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Raw meat and then chicken and a syringe in his ass called Windstrel. So it is what it is. Have you figured out where you're going to, how is your content, your continued content beyond the book? Well, I do have a, I do have a web page. But the continued content, like I said, we're developing a curriculum. It's actually going to be accredited. So where will people find it eventually? It'll be on the web page once I get out of that. Okay. So I'm going to give you

marketing 101 here. Put it out there. What is the web page? www. www. clearedhot. dot info. All right. Listen,

fucker. That's way too close to www. www. clearthoddhotpodcast.com. I am going to sue you for that idea address. Did you know that clearedhot.com is taken and not even used? It's owned by a German butt plug company. No, it's owned by...

I just made that up too. Your face was awesome, though. David Delzell is his name because I've tried to reach out to him. And I've read I've tried to hit him on every single thing he has it forward it to a blog that he doesn't even use and I'm like dude just just give me your freaking I will find him before you do you probably will I gave up fucking lord over you I would be like hey check out what I got you want this I'm not gonna use it you can't have it because I just shut it down forever God that's such a good website yeah yeah he took it all right it doesn't even it forwards to a different one since now people are totally confused about what what we're talking about, what is your website? www. cleared hot. Dot info.

Not.com. dot info. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yes. And where's the best place for people to find your book? They can get it there or they can get it on Amazon.

Is there a benefit to one or the other for you? Not real. At this point, no. Okay. No. And then your social media handle. I'm Brian Slade at everything. So Brian Slade Insta, Brian Slade on LinkedIn and Brian Slade on Facebook.

Which one are you the most active one? Probably LinkedIn right now. Instom's still trying to figure out. Me too. It's been years and, yeah. I don't get it. It's the Wild West. Yeah.

Post pictures of what you eat. I think it'll trend or get a Frenchie and take pictures of those. I have no idea what to do on there, honestly. And I'm on, I didn't know this, but I'm on TikTok somehow. I think my son signed me up. That's probably not good. I think a lot of the math has come back and data that basically the Chinese know everything about you now. Right.

It's not even my account, but it's connected. I don't know. Oh, you're completely fucked. I'm so screwed. Yeah. Kim Jong-un is like. rolling through your feed right now. Yes.

Yes. Dude, what do you want to close out with? That was a fantastic episode. Honestly, I'm grateful to be on here. I'm grateful to talk about this stuff. I think, like we talked about, the narrative is changing. Like, it is shifting and it's becoming more healthy. But at the same time, we do need to do difficult things.

I like that you hit on that. So run head strong into like, if you're, anybody who's listening to this, that feels like they got something that they need to deal with. Whether you do it through my book or some other book or whatever or just through a team or community, do it. Just get it out there, turn stuff on its head, make it be a support, not a not a weight. That's awesome, man.

Well, you got to promise me you'll come back on once you guys have that continuing content. Of course. Curriculum, I should say. I want to come in the summer though. Okay. Well, I thought you said it was snowboard. Go get out.

Yeah, totally. But I want to see what this place looks like in the summer because isn't there like this but with no snow but isn't there like some real cool thing that you can go do in the summer up here that's that's what they were seeing at the hotel they're like most people come here in a summer to go see glacial national park yeah so i want to go do that it got weird in covid you're going to have to have you experienced this michael do you ever go to the park no but uh they do a lottery system now and they only release a certain amount of tickets per day it's dumb make sure you do your research on montana got crazy now well not montana glacial national park and it might even be just the National Park Service itself managing that, but they limit, you have to get a ticket for a particular day. I think they used to be able to get a pass and you could go in as much as you wanted.

Yeah, I think they stopped doing that. Yeah, now it's very specific. So just make sure you do your research on it. Yeah, and I would have bought a snowboard. I just didn't plan this out very well. Yeah. Well, they rent all that stuff up there. Yeah, I could go rent it tomorrow.

Cool. I could do that. All right, man. I'll let you get out here. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Yep.