Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - The Ranger Account of Takur Ghar | Josh Walker & Chris Cunningham | Ep. 471

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Josh Walker spent 24 years in uniform. He started as a young team leader in 1st Ranger Battalion, left for Florida State and ROTC, then came back as a signal officer and went on to serve in 7th and 3rd Special Forces Groups, logging close to three years in Afghanistan. Chris Cunningham was working as a chef in Vermont when his brother told him not to sign anything that didn't say Ranger. He listened, and served 22 and a half years. In March 2002, both were part of the Ranger quick reaction force sent to Takur Ghar. Neither had been in a firefight. Josh's helicopter, Razor 01, was supposedly headed to a refueling point. It was shot down on the mountaintop instead. Chris's element on Razor 02 landed below and climbed for more than two hours through deep snow, under mortar fire, to reach them. They walk me through the assault on the bunkers, a Hellfire that had to prove itself before anyone trusted it, the wait for exfil, and washing a friend's blood off his rifle before the younger Rangers got back to camp. I also asked why Rangers so rarely tell these stories and about the importance of people knowing the names of those that didn't come home.  Today's Sponsors:  Mars Men: For a limited time, listeners get 50% off for life plus Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at https://www.Mengotomars.com Surefire:  https://www.surefire.com/

Okay, got the red smoke. So the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. I think I have two questions to kick it off. The first one is we talked about this early on in the section just talking about Anaconda. And I wanted to reinforce this. And it was the inexperience of everybody involved on the seal site, even though they were at a tier one unit. I'd have been shocked if anybody had actually seen any combat, sustained combat,

especially something like this. Does that hold true for the Ranger? regiment as well as far as real world experience the people that you were with were the vast majority of them on their first combat rotation i think that was a vast majority of everybody that was even involved in that mission to include uh your gpf that were you know not located in the same area but similar you know offset for operation anacondot during that that time frame uh i think that was the first real mission outside of you know some of the smaller stuff that was going on throughout the theater yeah

Yeah, I mean, we really hadn't done too much all the way up to that point. You know, the closest we got was when we first landed in Afghanistan, the SEALs took the General Daly's Armourable to go do a night wrecky, right? Yeah. As soon as we landed there and that was the closest we ever got and we didn't even get outside the wire, the British went and got them. And I guess the second question, maybe to start it off, I know how this story is told in the SEAL community

or where maybe it holds its station for a lot of people. Where does this story in the Rangers' participation sit in the Ranger Regiment world? How is it talked about? What kind of place does it hold in the legacy and lore of Rangers? You know, I can't speak for Ranger Regiment. Yeah. And anecdotally, even in your experience, in your time in or post, how do people talk about it?

Is it considered successful? Is it a catastrophe? I mean, there's a catastrophic loss of life, obviously. Is it a massive lessons learned? All of a combination of all of those things? Well, I'm going to say it was kind of, it was a success because we didn't leave anybody up there. Yeah. Got everybody off the mountain.

We lost really good dudes in the process. Rangers and everybody else. Yeah. Success. I guess we made it happen. It worked. Is it a story that is still told and talked about? Do you guys have any idea of that in the modern Ranger World Regiment? You know, I think it was about four years ago. We all went back to Savannah for a reunion. Eric Stebner put together a reunion there at 175, I think at the 20 year. And some other dudes came.

I think some of the guys from 160th and some other folks had came in. I couldn't tell you who all was there. It was so crowded. What we did for the regiment at that time was the battalion commander hosted a basically a leadership roundtable. And we had the opportunity to tell the story to all, you know, the young NCOs that are there now and shared that story with them. And then we had about a one-hour question-answer session.

And then that night, you know, we were still on station there, you know, in Savannah. And so we all went out downtown and, you know, some of the Rangers had joined us and things like that. What kind of questions did they ask you? Who? Mainly it was, you know, our leaders that were on the ground there talking about, you know, what we did there and what led up to the mission. But also, I guess, thinking back, you know, it was kind of cool. I got to meet the guy who essentially does my job now back then. You know, this specialist sawgunner from same platoon, same squad.

It was really cool to be able to actually meet him, sit next to him, you know, and just be a part of that again, essentially. That's cool. It was great. Can we go back to your question about, like, the impact that I've made on Reds? Yeah. I think initially, I think it made a very significant impact. I think it made a very significant impact across, you know, the entire Special Operations community, across the entire United States and, you know, even our forward deployed folks. But I think where it kind of probably has gotten lost is the fact of look at how many missions that have been pulled off by people in the community now. And I'm accrediting everybody, every one of the tiers in the special operations community, the, the, the, the work that they've done both in Afghanistan, Iraq, later on in Syria, and then some of the other stuff that we just can't talk about on this forum, right?

Some of the great work that they're still doing today, like right now, real time. I think it got lost in there. I mean, if you go, if you go to the wall at J-Soc and you look at the wall and you look at the wall there, look how many names are up there that are account for how many folks that come out to Task Force Ranger. There's a lot. I've been there. Yeah, and it's, I mean, I'm not saying that anybody did any more work or better work. I mean, it's all God's work to me.

But I think when you really look at the burden that's felt across the community, I think if you look at the size of the Ranger Regiment and you look at the amount of Rangers that have lost their lives in combat, you can tell by just standing in front of that wall that they get on the business end of it sometimes on the receiving end. Building on that, you said something right before we went live, and that is that you haven't read a stitch of anything since you've been out, knowing that they are participating at that level. How come you haven't read anything? That's a good question.

I've never really thought about it. For me, personally, it's kind of a tough day. Like, your question earlier was like how much combat had we seen before that? None. Like I had never seen combat. The closest I got was through, you know, day and night, live fire exercise, prepping all the way from 98 until we rolled out in 01. Let's not forget our excellent BFA training. Yeah, right? Yeah. But I never had. And none of us had until that day. And so, I don't know, even to this day when I meet young individuals that want to go. serve and then they always wanted to like everybody's always so eager to say hey yeah i hope to

experience combat one day and i'm like always because i got out went to rc and that's what i said i said careful what you ask for because you just might get it and then you know i ended up going back in as an officer i'd tell some of my peers careful because what you think you want to see is also followed by you know the following night you're writing letters you're the guy responsible writing letters and making phone calls to moms and dads to have that tough conversation after they've been notified. And, you know, when you meet those Gold Star families, that's that side of it sucks. Yeah.

Were you guys together that day and night? Or did you, I know there was obviously a helicopter that landed right there and another one that offset. Where were you guys in relationship to those? Oh, yeah. So Josh was on Chalk 1. So they were the first one up there. And we were in Chalk 2. Okay.

So we had to actually climb up. to where those boys were fighting. What did you guys think? And I'm basing this question off of the very recent conversation I had with Mitch and Brian. Where did you think as Chalk One that you were going to be landing? What information did you have in the back of the helicopter? What did you think you were stepping out into? That's a good question.

I thought I was going to a FARP site to Prepo. Hold on. And then that's where you landed? And that's where we landed. I knew at some point we'd lost comms with... Do you want to explain what a FARP is before? It's a Ford Air refueling point. It's fuel blivots that are in the middle of nowhere

where a guy hooks up a gas hose. We got to the FARP later on. Yeah, we did. I mean, the night. You did accomplish your primary emissions. They reversed the order on the way that that was supposed to roll out. Do you think that was the vast majority on Chalk 1? That's where they thought they were.

were going. Everybody. Yeah, we thought we were going somewhere to pre-stage into, like, we didn't, we didn't know we were going back to the X, where we, you know, we had basically inherently, well, we thought when we got on the aircraft was a dust one missing U.S. soldier. Were you guys planning on disembarking the aircraft at the FARP, or were you going to stay on where they refueled? To be honest with you, it would have been probably whatever came over with the radio is,

what the security posture would have been if there, but was not expecting. to, I mean, we rehearsed the way that we rolled out the aircraft with those of us that were still able to move. Yeah. I mean, that's how we exit the aircraft. We're rolling out going left and right. And, you know, we've been rehearsing before while we were in stateside for CISR missions. How about chalk two? What did you guys get briefed on?

Yeah, it was the same thing. I mean, you know, we thought, you know, me being a corporal back then, I thought I was just going to get off the bird, sit in security, put the guy in the, on the helicopter and then fly away. So you knew, did you, were you guys under the impression that somebody was missing, that somebody was wounded? All we had gotten was that, at the time we didn't know the name, but we later found out it was Roberts, that NIL had fallen out of an aircraft. But all we had known was an individual had fallen out of an aircraft

in that we needed to stand up Cesar. And so at that time, you know, they all woke us up. We went out, they pulled up gun trucks to escort us down to the airfield, and then we went down to the airfield. and when we got down the airfield, we didn't have control of it. I say us, our task force didn't have any control of any of the aircraft that were down there. Because they were being held at a higher echelon for the larger Anaconda operation that was going on. And so they were actually moving us from sets of aircraft down the airfield.

And I remember telling Matt Commons, he just looked at me and I just started laughing. He's like, what's going on, Sergeant? I was like, this is a fucking shit show. He's like, what do you mean? I was like, these dudes won't let us on this aircraft. I was like this like we're missing a dude right now and we're over here arguing about whose aircraft is what. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, initially it was just going to be one bird.

I remember me and my team later, George, were actually on your bird for a minute there. And then the, you know, weapon squad leader is like, no, you need a, you need a machine gun. So they got me and George off and they put Anderson on there and Gillum on the bird instead. And then we actually, I think we actually drove back to the tents. And then turned right around and came right back. And you guys were already on the, you know, blade spinning on the flight line and jumped on a bird and went. How far separated were Chalk 1 and 2 time-wise? Did Chalk 1 depart by itself?

Did you guys leave in a flight of two? I couldn't. Yes, I think we flew together. Okay. When you're, you know, when the sun was coming up, I could still look out the bubble and see. Okay. I was wondering if there was a substantial amount of time separated between the two, Chalka. But at a certain point, I think, I don't know if it come across one of the old whiteboards passed through,

but we'd gotten word that we'd lost comp with the trailbird. Oh, excellent. Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah, the same whiteboard was being passed around with us. You know, the only one guy had a headset and write the grease pen and send it around what's going on. And I remember we landing in Gardez and a Navy SEAL jumped on. and then we picked up and kept going. But I knew there was no comms,

like that we didn't know where the other bird was, essentially. So when you guys touched down up there, you, in your mind, thought it were you going to be at a fart. Today's episode is brought to you by Mars Men. If you're a dude out there who is getting older, which, spoiler alert, is all of us, pay attention here for a second. Ladies, I don't mean to leave you out,

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out. After you purchase, they're going to ask you, where you heard about them, please support the show and let them know that I sent you. Back to the show. So at that point, I'd probably say, I don't know how many minutes out. I can tell something to do. I can tell something to changed in the aircraft just the general posture like i mean because initially rolling out i mean it's like most aircraft i mean might catch 30 minute catnap depending on where we're flying to right i can't stay awake in helicopters oh it's you know you rack out it's let me if people knew how loud it was in there that you could actually sleep in that it's it's kind of entertaining but yeah caught a little cat in that but then like we knew like we started getting up at elevation and

we were flying through the mountains and not over them at a certain point i could tell by the posture by the door gunners that something in our situation had changed. Like just the level of alertness by the right-side doorgunner. Like he was up on his gun. And then at that point, like it's, you know, you start looking around. It's like, okay, like start bumping dudes, make sure everybody is awake. And then that's a couple minutes later. That's when we flared.

So since you thought you were going to be landing at a FARP, I'm going to assume that anything beyond exiting the aircraft, there probably wasn't a plan for. You guys were going to get off and then figure out a plan from there. Yep. Okay. Walk me through touching down. I'm assuming you guys started taking fire before you touched down. Yeah.

So we came around, came around the top of the mountain top. And at that point, the helicopter flared. And then as we discussed earlier, You could tell the posture had changed. And then about that time, like, no sooner than we flared, I mean, to me, it felt like it was immediate. I don't know, maybe we're up there for 30 seconds. I don't know. But then just bullets started ripping through the side of the aircraft.

Many gun goes hot. And then we're just up there floating. As rounds are ripping through, you know, we start to go into a kind of like, I call it like a belly flop with the aircraft. the aircraft goes down. My understanding later on is, you know, the exterior had been hit with an RPG. And then, benignance to others, this another RPG came through the window. At this point, the door gunner's dead. And we hit the ground.

We all... Where were you in the bird? Fourth man back on the stack on the left side. Okay. So I had Ray to Polly on point, who was my squad leader at the time. and then we'd actually gotten our teams had gotten flip-flopped when we went to get on the aircraft. So I had Brad Crose and Matt Commons in front of me

because we'd reversed loaded up. And then beside me I had Anthony Maselli and a couple other guys. As soon as we hit the ground, it was like everybody was trying to get unhooked and unsnapped. It's funny. A lot of folks don't really care about safety, but we'd always in regiment. We were always adamant, even if we were shoving 60 dudes on an aircraft,

probably five over what we were supposed to. Everybody snapped in, and it was always a pain in the butt to get unhooked. So we all eventually got unhooked as rounds are getting, you know, still coming through the side of the aircraft. We get to our feet and it's like, go, go, go, go. Ray goes out the aircraft, and we're all going. Matt and Brad are in front of me. Before I even get to the 10.

Matt takes one and he's he's laying on the ramp of the aircraft and Brad just nose dives straight into the snow off in front of me. And initially I just naturally, he and I were really close. I went down and grabbed him and kind of flipped him over and Ray told me, hey, we're still taking fire. I need you. And so at that point, I just kind of dropped what I was doing with him and piled over to what would be my left side coming out of the side of the aircraft and started of just engaging any type of rock outcroppings. I mean, it couldn't really see anybody specifically, but I knew we were still taking heavy fire at that time.

Josh. And that's the time, yeah. Hold that thing up, because I don't know if the camera angle can catch that. Yeah. So, interesting story about that. That happened on the exit of the aircraft. You can kind of see inside how it was dented in there. I'd probably say six more inches,

and I'd taken it through the front of the melon. I don't know what that was from if it was through another round or shrapnel from their RPG that was in there. Interesting. I never knew that this happened until me and him

were pulling 6 o'clock security off the tail of the aircraft probably about an hour before it got dark. And he goes, hey, you're all right? They dropped a 500 pounder that didn't hit target later on and we'll probably get to that.

And then Aaron Cannon came over the radio and wanted to know if we were were good. And then he looks at me and he's like, are you sure you're all right, man? Like, you got hit in the helmet. And I was like, what? And I took it off and looked at it. And it wasn't from the 500 pounder that went a little short. Yeah. But I had never known all day that, you know, there's a lot of people that got hit that day that never really got killed, too. You know, Ray, we found a, Ray found a, AK round embedded into his lower back plate.

Marselly Saw was hit five times, I think, four to five times. was non-functioning. They actually found it on a dude walking off of an objective sometime later. And that's how the U.S. actually recovered that saw because it was actually left behind on the eggs. Was combat what you thought it was going to be like? Hmm. I guess no. The situation you were thrown into, I'm not aware of many training scenarios that model that.

So you got a bolus shot, no pun intended, I guess, right out of the get-go on that. It wasn't what I was really expecting for my first firefight. Yeah. I think there was a lot of depth. Maybe can we ease our way into this? Yeah, yeah. Maybe some long-distant engagement where we just get a little comfortable, arcing some stuff. Yeah.

Holy cow. Yeah. So that's for people watching, that's a plate up there on the TV. That is speckled. Do you guys know who's plate that is? Can you think, do you guess? Pilot. Gregs.

That's Gregs. Yeah. Calvart. Greg Calvards. That is. insane. He's right side, right side front. You know, you're talking about earlier that I, I made a statement that I, I had, I don't really watch much of it and I don't read my, none of it. I did watch the, we started watching the, uh, section that you sent me. I didn't realize how bad even he was while we were up there because we were, I mean, at the time I was just a team. leader with with no dudes at this point. I mean, I knew I knew the pilots were all shot up, but I didn't.

Until probably three hours before now, I didn't realize that. I knew they were shot bad, but like I didn't know the severity and where some of those wounds were until I actually watched some of the other previous work on this. That's a recurring theme. And I don't mean that negatively. There's a lot. And again, I asked not to see the information before Mitch and Brian came up. And there's a lot of, and even just listening to some of the communications.

There's a lot of not intentionally compartmentalized information, but there are some massive gaps in knowledge overlap in the plan, in what is going on on the ground, what people thought, what people knew. It seems to be a repeating narrative around this operation. And maybe that is because I think for most people, this was their first bolus exposure to combat. But you're not the first person today to have, I have had the same realization many times. talking with mission, Brian. Yeah, I bet. Where are you in this? So this is all happening

on top of this mountain. What are you guys doing? You're probably still in flight. Yeah, we're probably, I don't know, either at Gardas or, you know, moving towards the mountain. You know, I'm sitting all the way up by the door gunner. The seal is right here, and everybody's out that way.

Towards the back of the aircraft. and yeah we're in flight and it's kind of crazy I thought I was going to be landing in the desert and I start seeing snow and we start climbing I'm like well I guess we're going up and then

you know the whiteboard came around and by that time there was 2 KAA on the whiteboard they were already reporting that wow I don't know what the timeline looks like back then but it was a long time ago

but yeah, I remember 2KIA. I think in reality it probably was five. Yeah, we just didn't know. But that's what we got. How did that change the mood of the helicopter? Do you see that impacting people as the white board made its way around? Oh, yeah. We were ready to go.

We wanted to go get with the boys wherever they are. For sure. Yeah, and so we were flying up. And, you know, normally land, we didn't. We just spun the bird around and jumped off into the snow and landed and the snow came up. And we're like, wow, this is pretty deep and pretty steep. And, you know, once you get out the bird, you got to send insecurity. So I was trying to have muscles for the snow to get our bearings.

Leaders are doing leader things. I remember that seal was like, all right, come on, let's go. we're going to go get our get my guys and we're like no i'm like go talk to the squad leader i think he i think he did i think he wanted to uh canon or one of the leaders and i can see him going we're going up there so he walked off by himself towards wherever the seals were do you know who this is andy no i just assume he had fantastic hair um he had weird it was vic hider okay yeah i know vic not well but i know vick Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, we started climbing.

I'm assuming at this point, are you guys able to pick up radio comms coming from the mountaintop? Are you guys able to hear externally? Obviously, the gunfire, the things going on up there? I know Aaron's making some kind of contact. But those guys were in the thick of ship. Yeah. Could you hear it from where you were? Well, you could see jets flying over. Yeah. Stuff like that. Okay.

way up there. I think a lot of folks failed to realize, like, those of us that probably retired here more recently, the comm suites that we have as an individual and every individual in the special operation community, back that up 25 years. Yeah. Not every, like, you go to Ranger Regiment now and every kid's got probably $30,000 worth of comms kid on him. Yeah. Back then we had a little shit icon radio.

And then, you know, team leaders had. an old saber and squad leaders had sabers and invitters. Yeah. Yeah. Modern air you can touch across any network you want to, which is amazing. It's crazy and it's awesome. But it is important, I think, to remember back looking 20 plus years in the rearview mirror, the technological capability there, it goes right along the lines of the combat experience. It was, it's at its inception of the evolution.

Yeah. So you guys land. Yeah. And obviously, no, you're probably going to be making. We're going wherever the guns are. For sure. So we're climbing. We climbed for a good while.

You know, trying to maintain 360 security, but try to get up there as fast as we can. And we had a 240 gunner with an AG. We was carrying a lot of weight. And he had to climb, I don't know, how far, like 2,000 feet? That's what we climbed? About, yeah. Yeah. Just over, actually.

Yeah. And it was pretty much snow. which is great. Because, you know, when stuff starts exploding around you, then it's all kind of, it muffles it, it takes the shrap mow. I don't know. We were climbing.

There's some shrubs up there, some rocks. And then I think we got mortared or something. Something blew up close by. It's probably about 50 meters. I don't know. It was off to the right or whatever. And it wasn't any. I've never never had a mortar or whatever that was just hearing that that it cutting the air and then landing in the snow and making a muffled explosion

So we started hauling butt even faster At one point like we needed to get up there. I know I know the squad leader was talking with the squad leader to Polly on top there and he was going to receive us as are coming up I think we got mortared again off to the right or off to the left this time. And, you know, if you do anything with mortars, you know that's bracketing. So I thought they were bracketing us. And then the next one came even closer.

And then I thought we were going to start getting hit. So we all got down into rocks and we were getting ready for fire for effect. And it didn't come. I guess they probably started mortaring you guys at that point. Maybe they were shifting up. I think may have happened during that time frame was because we were taking mortars. And I had the exact same experience that Connie did. I was laying next to Nate Self and mortar around landed.

I can't remember if the first one came in off the six or the nose, but one came off the tail. And then one came off the farther up on the nose. And then another one landed in front of us. And I remember telling, you know, Captain Self at the time, I was like, We got to move. Yes, we got to move. And he looks at me and goes, Josh, where do you think we're going to go with all these people? Like, we can't move.

Like, we can't move all these casualties out of here. And about that time, what I think it happened was they put three or four on top of us and then reoriented their mortar, the rounds down onto, you know, the QRF that was coming up the hill. If I'm not mistaken, I think at some point somebody probably got a 500-pounder. put on top of that mortar team, and that's why the mortars actually eventually stopped, was... Yeah. Chalk 2 didn't shoot around yet from all I know.

At this time, Tr, you referred to them as the QRF, even though you guys were part of the QRF as well, too. Our QRF to the QRF. Were you guys able to do anything other than establish a perimeter and do your best to shoot back until Chalk 2 got there? Because you took a massive amount of casualties right off the jump. So we were there, and it wasn't very long after we were there.

Like, our perimeter wasn't even in front of the aircraft. The nose of the aircraft was pushing forward. And then to the right side of the aircraft, you can kind of see that rock outcropping there. There was the only thing really sticking out in the snow at the time. And that's where, you know, preponderance of us were, except for who was off the tail of the aircraft. But at one point, we'd made it, the leadership team had made a decision to try to push up to the top of that hill and take out that bunker complex. Correct me if I'm wrong with that would be right there.

Yes, sir. Okay. And the decision was made to take that out. And it was going to be myself and I think as Anthony Maselli and Ray DePolly. We got probably halfway up that hill, you know, and similar experience to what, you know, Cunningham and his element was expressed at the time. It was at least a minimum knee deep snow. Yeah.

And we all think that we're fit. and we all thought that we were fit going into combat. Things change when you start getting at that elevation. You know, you take four or five steps and you think that you're trying to like run and move quickly and then you're quickly out of breath. Like I'd never operated to that elevation in my entire life. How close did you get to that bunker complex? I'd probably say about halfway there. What did it look like?

For us at the time, all it looked like was a traditional, well, a non-standard like porthole. that's all you could really make out of it at the time. But Porto, like they stacked a bunch of rocks. Yeah, like it was like the rocks and the trees and it was kind of built into the side of it. It was almost like a almost like a perfect spot for like naturally I probably wouldn't have a bunker facing that away. So I think it was just more like more of their underground system that they had up there on the ridge line and had built in there over the years. No necessarily. We call it a bunker.

But I don't know. It was like in the traditional sense of like how we would build one in the U.S. But I think it was just like a security position for them. So you guys sounds like you were just doing your best to hold your own until Chalk 2. The QRF's QRF made its way up. Which position or which direction did you guys approach from on this picture? Yeah. So this is a great photo here.

So here's the nose of the bird facing that way. So I guess we came up from this area. up here, or maybe it was here. Maybe it was this way. But there was all kinds of military crest. You couldn't see over stuff because you're still going up. Yep. So I don't know.

Right around here when we crested that, that's where you could see the bird down. And you could see casualties and stuff like that. I think it's, let me just ask something here. Just the time that's going by. Are you going to say it into the microphone? Do you recall, I'll say it in the microphone. Do you recall, I mean, we know how long it took you. Do you recall how long it took you guys to get up the mountain?

It took a minute. It was over two hours. Oh, geez, yeah. It seemed shorter than that. Yeah. And you forgot a story about some plates. You can tell it or not tell it. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we were trying to get up there and we're wearing those plates. And, you know, squelaires like, I don't want to speak from them because I just remembered hey, you can huck it if you want, if you want to lose weight. So some guys did. Some guys took a plate out and hooked it. I kept mine in because I wanted to protect this area. Yeah. The reason I even brought that up is just because, again,

these guys are up there hanging it out for two hours. Yeah. Living in that world, they're living in, these guys are moving as fast as they possibly can, but it's not like it was 10 minutes. So it felt shorter than two hours for you. Yeah. How long did it feel for you?

Yeah, it was, well, at first we didn't know that they were coming. You know, there was that element of disconnect there before they'd put down and, you know, the decision was made to put down because how long, I mean, I guess I'll ask you, you've probably seen the official timeline from the time that we went down, what was the time span between the time that Razor Zero One crashes to the time that, zero two get put down. No, no, the time they get put down to get off the back of the aircraft to start their two-hour journey. We have the timeline.

I don't have it memorized, but I think it was something like an hour afterward. Yeah, so now we're talking. So we've been on the ground for three hours at that point. By time we conducted Laco. Are you guys under sustained fire that entire time? Are you guys, do you even have minimum force to try really maneuvering? Are you just holding your own and trying to deal with your kids? casualties. We were holding our own in dealing with the casualties in that in that attempt to move up

towards the bunker. The decision was made by the leadership on the ground there of uh, and it was the right decision, realized that if we took casualties going up there to secure and push our perimeter out, if we lost one or two casualties, you've now lost, you know, 50% of your able body fighting force outside of the ground force commander at the time. How well could you identify where they were shooting at you from? Or was it, I mean, you know what I mean? There was the mortars being an indirect aspect of this. Were you able to, because, I mean, again, I'm used to just thinking through the lens of,

oh, it was obviously at nighttime and we're using night vision goggles. They're going into a pocket at this point. This is a different story. Were you able to pretty visibly see them maneuvering or shooting at you guys? We couldn't see anything on the other side. of the ridge line, but what they would do is they would sporadically come up and shoot at us from what we call the bunker side. The bunker one, yeah.

It wouldn't be consistent. It was very inconsistent. I think any time we would start moving around, they would start putting more rounds down on our end. I'm willing to assess, you know, hindsight being 2020, they probably, you know, they have the higher ground. They can see over where sometimes when you're looking up, you can't. see what it is. You come over the crest, you see us moving, which was probably had a lot to do with when they would put fires down. What do you guys, we call these pictures? Yeah. Yeah. Is that, uh, is that, who's guns at? That was, uh, that's probably Mark's gun. Is this up on the mountain top or is, okay. Tell us who Mark is, um, Mark, Mark Anderson was our, uh, 240 gunner. He was,

the gun team leader for the gun team that was in Razor 01. He got shot and he never made it out of the aircraft that day. Is the tree that you can see just over the carrying handle? Is that the bunker one? Or was he laying fire down on that ridge line that goes, it slopes down to the right? It's hard to tell context of where the photo is, what is aiming at. I think it's facing. I think it's facing off the tail of the aircraft.

Okay. Yeah, because. Those mountains were behind us. Yeah. I don't know how obvious this is, but do you see what's next to the gun? The brass? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the mini guns. I mean, we're not even to that point yet, but mini guns, they couldn't shoot. So Brian Wilson, he was one of the crew for the bird. That dude was an A, you know, A, B, essentially. He was running link all the way to the guns. Later on, you know, once we, you know, took everything. thing during the counterattack. How did you feel when you saw some friendly forces peeking their head up coming your way?

It felt really good. I'll just assume that every Ranger platoon has the same level of camaraderie that we did. But, I mean, you could go back to, you know, our platoon traveled everywhere together. At least what I would say is the young NCOs and below. the younger NCOs and below the E5s and all the privates. Like we all, like on the weekends, we were all probably at the same bars and same locations. They're pretty tight. Some of our leadership were a little bit older and maybe married.

But it's, I ended up spending 24 years of service in. I've never been in another unit where the camaraderie is at the same level is what it was when I was in Ranger Regiment. I think that really molded me into kind of who I am today and molded me into the type of leadership that I demonstrate even in my civilian job now. Yeah. I mean, Christmas parties, I mean, Thanksgiving would be maybe out of me and Stemner and Jason Rale. We all live in the same house. We come on over if you don't have a place to go, and that's how it was.

And then we'd all go downtown and meet up together. You know, and we have privates in the range of retaliation. So if your private doesn't have somewhere to go, no questions asked. He doesn't have an option. He's coming over and having, you know, holiday dinner with the dudes that on his left and right. Okay, so you probably have that emotional reaction when you see each other. Chalk 2 at this point probably still hasn't fired around yet.

Or maybe as they've gotten closer they did, but you guys link up and, I mean, probably order of business number one is to establish a plan and figure out what it is you guys were going to do. Sure. How did that go? Well, you know, moving, Moving up there, Stedner was on point, I'm pretty sure, the whole time. Breaking trail for us through that. That must have sucked.

And then actually making Linkup, I remember seeing the Pauley as we're moving by, and we're moving up. We can see the bird, we're moving up, and we can see guys behind the rock. You can see the PL. And I remember walking up past the CCP, which was right out the back of the bird. That's a Kazerti collection point. Yeah. Yeah. And there was, you know, there was guys that were down there.

But there was somebody who was just like sitting on sitting back. And he didn't look, he looked able-bodied. I'm like, what are you doing? He was like, oh, my knee hurts. I'm like, what? I just remember walking by and like, okay, whatever. And he wasn't a ranger. He was somebody.

Anyways. And then I remember from, I'm not sure what the team leaders do, but we trained so much that you kind of know base of fire maneuver. So I moved up and P.L. had me come right by him. So I'm sitting there and, you know, the rest of the squads off to the left as a maneuver. I see George just, we're all kind of crammed together. They're actually. Yeah, behind the rock.

Yeah, we were pretty tight. Yeah, there wasn't, like, there wasn't much room. Yeah. Because we'd kind of held our ground there throughout the day. The farthest point forward was a rock outcropping that, I mean, if you probably ran a major tape major, it probably was less than 25 yards. You know, it's directly to the right. Like, I mean, look right straight into the, you know, where the door gun are, like, where the doorgun would be sitting on the aircraft. When did you guys finally start maneuvering on and take that bunker complex?

I think the trigger point was a hellfire. I think that's what You know, they're having a hellfire come in And that was a trigger point Once it goes off Base of fire maneuver Yep So team leaders do leader things and move their people

And everybody else is battered drill 1 alpha Just get after it Yeah Yeah People don't think Navy guys know that shit Well it's good Omar said battle drill number 5 Is that correct

Nobody's going to hear you Because you're not talking into the microphone Omar said battle derail number 5 Is that correct There was a bunch of battle drills. Okay. I'm saying that in our interview with battle drill number. Standard fire and maneuver is battle drill one alpha in the FN.

Enter and clear trench that was in there too. Okay. There's a bunch. Yeah. But it was, yeah, when that, I'm pretty sure the first hellfire flew over it didn't even hit. I can't remember. You probably talked to those people. Yeah.

It was either Gabe or Kevin or the combination of the two. they weren't, if you remember, they had to figure out, they weren't even sure this was armed. This is how, this is early days of predators. Yeah, we didn't know that, like, I remember earlier on with the Predator Reservation, I remember Nate Self asking the guy that had comms with the gunship or the pred,

if it was weapons hot. And the controller at the time was like, I don't know. Because if, you know, if you recall, like, nobody knew back then. that predators had, you know, two rockets on them. Yeah. Yeah, old gin one.

Yeah. But to finish out that story and see if this jogs your memory, but they weren't sure what it had on it. They weren't sure if they trusted it, so they made it do kind of a test round. And so that's what that's, the first one that didn't hit. The second one went right. We were supposed to go. We interviewed, after we sat down with you guys, we interviewed the predator pilots,

and he told us that story. Yeah. Because they were first. We were like, we want to help, man. We have hellfire. I was like, tell us where to shoot it. and Gabe and or Kevin, or the combination of the two, just didn't trust this thing like it wasn't going to come in on their position.

Like, show us what you can do first. Yeah. Okay. So that was with the 16 that was on station also, because they did some gun runs for us before Chalk 2 got to us. And it was, they got waved off a couple times because you're talking, and we're going to get a gun strafe that's designed for air-to-air combat,

and we're going to put that in front of you at 75 yards. So I remember them waving, I specifically remember him calling that gun, well, that platform off because he didn't like the approach angle. And, you know, I mean, that wasn't the last time that I had gun runs that close to me, and I remember the next time that I had him that close to me,

I jumped down into a turret and was like, WTF, the team leader that I was rolling with at that time. And he's like, hey, yeah, it's good. It's like, all right, man. The test firing of the hellfire again, is it possible to overstate the inexperience of the military at that point from a kinetic? Like, we have two, but we really have one

because we're going to go ahead and test fire this. In a real world, absolutely everything is going wrong. Yeah, two is one, one is none. Yeah, well, that first one landed, you know, directly in front of us in between us and the bunker, the first rocket when they did that one. Yeah. Maybe it's good they did a test fire then, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that first one flying over didn't give me confidence in it because I was like, wow, they should have hit something.

But when the second one went off and it blew up, you know, the pick up and everybody's ready to go. and all I can see is a tree and maybe a porthole something up there and I just start shooting at that, suppressing it. Before you get into the, what I think we're headed to is the assault of the top of the mountain. Are you aware, because as you rightly pointed out, you guys are the QRF, you guys are QRFing them,

are you aware that there's another element over the side of the mountain anywhere? the Mako team that had bonded off, Brit and his team. And maybe your answers are different. Yeah. I knew there was, but I didn't know where. And wherever that seal was going down, it looked like he was going down. So I'm like, he's not going to be.

Oh, yeah. Where is Vic in all of this? Well, let him finish his answer and I'll submit some. So earlier on, we did not know. And then as we were putting on fires and pulling basically localized security, it did come over the net. And then it's when Nate Self had told us, hey, watch what you're doing. We have friendlies on the backside, which will, for those of us that at the, what I call the rock outcropping, we have friendlies, sill element over to your right side.

So, you know, anything that we're doing over that way, be cognizant of whatever comes off the back end to what you're doing because we have friendlies down there. Because, again, this is not comical, but it, you guys might appreciate the comedy here. they called the QRF of you guys you guys came in now you need a QRF now they're QRFing you it's

it's ridiculous yeah when did Vic depart if you remember in his story yeah he walked off he said he walked on the bird once he walked on the bird

yeah of Gardez yeah there was this is a longer story there was a leadership change in Gardez and AFO again it's we'll talk about that maybe another time but Vic Heider comes on your bird because he has some awareness of what's happening

yeah it doesn't sound like you guys really knew who he was or what he was doing there I thought he was supposed to be there and when you guys landed you know over in this vicinity getting ready to make the climb he saw and I think you guys did too he saw the makeo element you guys are probably wondering who were they and why do they even matter? He knew who they were. And so what didn't happen was something like, hey, I need a couple guys

to go, Q or F, the guys that were actually all here for. And that just never happened. And then you guys are hearing, rightly so, what's happening up top. And like, well, that's where we're going. Yeah. Anyway, where did it go? He went straight to the MAKO Elment.

That's its own story. Solo mission to the makeup element. Yes. Okay. and look there's there's vix in some of these books he's not painted in good light I'm not even going to go into it but okay I will just say this he was a sight for sore eyes for that maco element when he got to them because they were running long batteries they had two wounded yep turbo's got his leg shot off and so

even one more person mattered oh yeah okay yeah I mean he had a mission that day and you know yeah canon was leading our other mission I mean that's That's where he was going. I guarantee you that's where he was going when he got on that aircraft. And then Aaron Cannon was going to lead your guys is Razor Zero 2 to us. And it's, you know, yeah, it's cool with me. All right. So talk me about the assault uphill.

So from my sight picture, I guess, P.L. He's like, hey, once that hellfire goes off, I want you to start rocking and rolling on that port hall right there and say those words, but that's just my words. So as soon as it went off, I start shooting. Other people started shooting. We even had to think the 240 was up. Yeah, we had a machine gun and then me and I think somebody with a 249

we're putting some rounds on the port while you guys were maneuvering to the left side of it to come around to fling it. Once I saw like Stepner and Ascano and Jonas get to the military crest where it just looks like daylight, they set in and then we hauled up to military crest and as soon as we got to that military crest I could see there's like a freaking dishgo over there there's some kind of mortar or something I don't know and then there's bunker stuff and probably a trench or it was a trench eventually but but yeah then we just start shooting at that wasn't too many enemy I was shooting at just known unlikely um yeah yeah and And there was, you know, Ascano, he was our grenadier. So he was like the arm and distance on that thing. Maybe, I don't know if it was actual grenades or if it was the 40 mic mic, but you could hear the 40 mic like thump come out and go right off.

So 14 meters is arm distance. So it was like, thump. It was pretty close. He was shooting him. Yeah. Then we push up and get to the diska. And then we went into the trench. And there's bodies and went over, made sure they're dead.

As we're moving through, went into the trench. And then we're just trying to figure out the limit of advance, essentially. And leaders are doing things behind us. But I remember pushing and getting to a limit of advance, essentially. They don't go further. There was cover. And essentially took the top there at that point. I don't think we're making too much contact at that point.

I was going to ask you what happened to the enemy contact once you were able to secure that. When they say take the top, would that encompass the bunker two position as well? Yes. Okay. Is that what the Dishka was? Yeah, I remember pushing past all that bunker. You got to the Dishka, then you're... Dishka, Bunker 2?

No, Dishka is beyond Bunker 2. Okay. Yeah. The mountain was going down. Okay. Dysia was in position. Why they thought this was important to put that O.P. up there in the first place was there might be a gun emplacement. They can affect the battle below in the valley. So it was on the far side looking over the valley, ready to take down any aircraft.

Yeah. How many hours had you been on the ground? Would you estimate by that point? When they got there? No, when you finally secured the top of the mountain. Four? Maybe five? Yeah, it's all right.

It seems like it went pretty quick. Once we pushed past and got to pass the CCP, got to the PL, how long was that? I mean, I seemed it was like pretty quick. Yeah, once you guys got there, the decision to push forward with you guys was almost instantaneous. Like, Nate had wanted to do it and then pull us back because of the security posture. Yeah. In our interviews with you guys a few years ago, I believe Aaron said, something about it was the mad minute and pretty much as soon as you guys got up there within a few

minutes you guys are pushing up yeah it seemed pretty quick yeah yeah once they got over the top i mean it was pretty quick too after that we you came back down through picked me up and we we went down and we picked up six o'clock security and pushed our perimeter down yeah i don't know maybe 50 60 yards south and telegraphed i'm sorry to interrupt like even before that i remember squad leaders identifying i remember hearing hey There's another American up here. It wasn't. That wasn't Roberts.

I remember hearing that and looking back, which you're not supposed to do in security, but like looking back. Oh, so you're talking about you had already pushed past that position. Yeah. And you heard that you had bypassed an American. Yeah. What was your first thought when you heard that? Oh, no. I guess moved around it.

No, I knew that there probably was an American up there. That's what our whole mission was. Go get whoever it was. but I remember hearing there's another one up here while we are still in that L.O.A. That limited of advance. Yeah. Pulling security.

And I know squad leaders were doing things. They were trying to identify stuff. And I think guys went into the bunker and went down into some commonway stuff. I don't know. I don't know. You guys are doing stuff back there. I was just going to make sure they're safe.

What was happening from your P.O.V. Were you anywhere near where the bodies were discovered? No, I didn't. And I wasn't part of the recovery team because it was after they pushed up and cleared, you know, the bunker system, that's when we, you know, the collective, the Ranger Element found Roberts and then found Chapman also. And that's, you know, he's discussing the comms that were being had with regards to that. Probably up until that point, we probably didn't really fully understand that there were two up there. Yeah. as shooters.

You know, maybe the leaders did, but... Yeah. Well, that would be an important piece of information that I feel like they probably would have passed if they would have known. Right. To the shooters. Yeah.

That bunker complex one, what did they find in that? I know that the bodies of Roberts and Chapman were found close to that. Do you know if they found anything else in there? It wasn't my focus. Okay. Yeah, you read the LAA.

Mine either. You know, we did discover later on. It was some of the gear had been rat-fucked. Yeah. By the Taliban and had kind of been split up. And then we ended up finding, I don't remember who it was. Somebody found, I think, a piece of some of Roberts maybe gear down on the, well, I would consider the four or five o'clock area in another area where enemy personnel had been located at one point.

Yeah. Do we have that picture? of his gear? What camera was this picture taken on? This is like the old school scroll with your thumb. Tell the story of these cameras. What are these pictures are coming from? Do you know?

It's for squad, I don't know. First squad. Somebody had clearly a old probably Kodak manual. The modusables, you know, notorious for all types of pictures that you'll find on one of those cameras. For sure. Definitely don't leave it around.

Don't leave in a team room. Or don't put it on a, your Ranger buddies wedding table. Yeah. You're going to get a, yeah, your fair share of those. At what point did you guys shift mentality-wise from we have to assault and clear this to it's secure and then you have to start dealing with the totality of the situation that you are, that you are in? I know that once got the LOA, they started doing leader stuff behind us.

we wanted to they wanted us to do a larger perimeter essentially encompass the CCP which was down by the bird yep um the bird um and there's all these spurs

coming down and going up that we had to get avenues of approach so in fires that we had to cover yep so they're like you guys go cover the bowl which is um I guess there's a ball. It seemed like a ball down in here.

Yeah. And then the mountains went up to like 14, whatever they were. 14. 12 something. 12. They were high, higher than us. Because this is 10, call it 105, 104, 69 or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, I also remember that while all this was going on, there were numerous platforms on station that were dropping casts in surrounding areas. To this day, I probably don't know who was really controlling all of it. Probably using different types of ISAR pods and feeding into the jock and somebody else was probably making those decisions on those drops. But we could see them from the top of the ridge line of just, you know, 500-pounders dropping in the distance. And then you see a cloud of smoke coming off from the adjacent ridge lines and stuff.

So to this day, I'll probably never know how many really true enemy personnel were not necessarily on the ridge with us, but like in the surrounding areas. Yeah. Yeah, when we pushed out the, like, security, like, there was cover over. For me, there was cover in the bunker and, you know, in the trench and stuff like that. When we pushed out into that bowl, there was just like a little, little six-inch little granite sandbag, essentially, to fire behind, I guess. and then my team later, George, was over here and Josh was over here on a team leader

and then we had Ascano further up the ridge watching that. Is, if it's okay Andy, is there anything more to say on finding Neil Roberts and finding John Chapman? Is there anything, is there more of that story? Did you resolve that on top of the mountain at some point in the next few hours or?

I can't speak to the, I can't speak to the, That wasn't my mission part of what I was there to do. I know it was around the time that we, you know, Coney and I and George and Ascano had pushed down to the 6 o'clock, that we were reconciledting the entire, remembering that the CCP off the tail of the aircraft was also our 6 o'clock security. So, I mean, you know, I kind of say that in light. now, but it was our, almost our, like, you know, we did have one further element to

the six o'clock, but outside of that, that, like, completely exposed over there until we had moved after the objective area got cleared at the top. At that point, we're starting to move the casualties up to the top. I say us. It was who all was up there, Steadner, LeFriends, Harper, Cannon, Nate and DePaul. and we were down there pulling 6 o'clock and they were moving the they were moving the casualties up and that's when jason got shot yeah that was a little bit later i think like we we already started they already started a countertuck at that point yeah like i remember sitting there and probably about 150 meters away on a little spur there's portholes out there um do you remember them launching RPGs through the porthole not even aiming at us he was firing off randomly yeah

And they're just zipping. And one of them skipped between us, which was thankfully, that was great. But snow was there, so it was nice. But that thing went flying somewhere. Somebody put, we were able to get Cass put onto those ridge lines. But the first one was, wasn't on target. It was, I think it landed right in front of me and you. And I remember Aaron Cannon coming over the net and asking if we were all right on the six.

I remember the two of us looked at each other and like, you're all right? Yeah, I'm all right. And that's when he's like, hey, dude, what happened to your helmet? And I was like, what are you talking about? And I remember he's like, take it off and look at it. Didn't want to take it off, right? I just had another cast platform drop something danger close on us that was not supposed to be danger close.

So I take it off and I look at it. And I was like, oh, holy shit. And I just put it back on and snap it back up. Yeah. And you can catch over the, can we should. show them a video. I assume you guys have seen this before and maybe we even we showed it to you, but if not, I think it's worth showing Andy this and having a conversation. While that's up on the screen, though, where's that from? Do you guys recall this picture? I think that's like probably a kid, like below the bunkers, like probably on the backside.

This is down by the, I think was the mosque. Is that right? By the mosque? That's the first time I've heard that reference. Probably off the rock outcropping. four o'clock off the bird, nose of the bird. Yeah. Yeah. So that is Neil's helmet. That is Neil's saw.

So as you said, his gear was all over the place. I think you guys also know, and we've talked about this earlier today. You know, his pants were on one of the, you know, someone took his Gortex pants. Yeah. So is an M4Mag in there too? Yeah. Can you play, you know what's a video I'm talking about with Stubner? While we're waiting for that, I remember that dude

All you could see was his blanket flying behind him He'd go get more RPGs, come run back, send another one It was crazy It's a solid picture from the Kodak cam Yeah Don't forget, too, you had to take these to like Walgreens To get them They're like, what's this?

Yeah, never mind Long story Yeah Really long story Have you guys seen this before? Before we even hit play? I don't know maybe.

It's a very quick clip. Oh yeah. They're moving to CCP. So yeah, we were up over here. So what's happening in terms of counterattack? Yeah. Spiratic machine gunfire. And as Kenny said,

occasionally lobbing RPG rounds at us for the fun of it. Yeah. And why were you moving to CCP? Like, you're supposed to move it to a secure location. It wasn't secure where it was at to protect the casualties and let the medics do their thing. And you got to also,

I think part of Nate's rationale with that also was, I don't know that we could have painted any bigger target on anything to shoot at from 12,000 or 10,000 feet on the next ridge line over. If you're bringing reinforcements on the enemy side, what do we shoot at or what are we looking for? Just go start throwing things at that big black helicopter to be sitting on the side of the mountain there.

and that's where you're going to engage. And that's what they were doing, right? Like, that's from the far. So we heard some stories about this when we sat down with the, you know, all of you. Can you pull up the next video that is describing the situation? We want to get your reaction because I don't think you've seen this. I've never seen this. I don't remember seeing this.

Yeah, I've never seen that video. You guys recognize that guy, right? Yeah, Harper. Yeah. He's out there. in California with you guys. The gorilla. In the middle of moving the casualties,

the machine gun team opens up, Stabner jumps behind this rock to get out of the machine gun. The coat of fire coming from the machine gun right towards Stepner and this casualty. And Stubner's initial instinct was like, jump behind the rock, and he quickly realizes the casualty stuck in the open. And the only way to get it,

get this casually out is to stand up and go out there and move this 200-pound guy uphill to pull behind the rock so it's probably about a 30-second process that stettner just said well I'm going to do it expose himself to a shaming on fire pulling pulling get some high the rock it it was it was miraculous from this time till till now I have accumulated 27 deployments in combat zones overseas and I still haven't seen anything

more selfless than that. What do you think? I mean, I kind of knew he did that. I've never heard the squad leader talk about it. I know he had to all those guys were doing it, but

Debra had to do it a lot more. They seemed like he really made a decision. And that, you know, those people were, everybody's shooting for him so he can do that thing. And he probably felt safe enough to go do it. Or he just didn't go shit. I'm going to get the guy being put him behind a rock. I feel like it was more of the latter.

Yeah, probably. It's an interesting perspective coming from somebody of Harper's caliber, right? you look at the career that Harper had and I still remember what Harper came to Ranger Regiment after. Is that the man we're talking on those? Yeah, Harper, Wilmuth right there. He was a squad leader at the time. He, the term we used was import.

He was an import that came into Ranger Battalion as an E5 which if you don't grow up in a Ranger Battalion, that's a, they don't necessarily roll out the red carpet for you. You're coming there. You're taking another guy's job. possibly that's in the running to become a team leader. And then, you know, Harper excelled why he was in Range Regiment. And then we all know the career that Harper had after that.

So for him to hear somebody like Harper say that after the number of deployments and the units that he worked with that were at a higher echelon, higher tier than what Ranger Regiment is in itself, you know, for the following 20 years. It's impressive. It's very impressive. It's very impressive. It says a lot about what Eric's actions were that day. Stevener was in port too, wasn't he?

Yeah, he started off in the old guard. Yeah. So you guys know Eric were supposed to be here and had to pull out. So I've talked to him. We sent him these videos. If it's okay, I want to call him. And spend a few minutes just talking to him and have him explain what we just watched and how he felt about it. Does he know you're going to call him?

He does know. Has he heard Harper say that? No, we just sent him. turn. Okay. Interesting. That's the first time I'd ever seen that.

I hope he calls these on the shitter. Nice echo of the bathroom, you know. Eric, you were on Andy's podcast right now, and everyone can hear you on speaker. All right. I guess I have to behave then. Yeah.

We sent you these videos just a bit ago. Did you watch them? Yeah, I did. I watched them. And had you ever, did you ever know Harper, you know, had those feelings or had made those comments? No clue that he did.

Okay. What did you, can you describe what's happening in that, that first shot from the predator? In that clip, that would have been, I would say, towards the end of moving the casualties, as you could see, were, there weren't many, there weren't any like at the rear rear ramp of the helicopter and that's kind of where casualties were somewhere um so that clip would have been in the end towards the end of moving casualties but when i was about done while i was done put it like that right um well you know i think what we wanted to do here is

i think the main motivation here was to have you hear what harper had to say about you which we all thought was pretty cool. So you should feel good about it. Yeah, thanks. All right. You guys want to say anything to Eric? You guys want to call them later? Yeah, we'll call you later, brother.

Good hearing from you, brother. All right, right. I hope you guys are enjoying it. Thanks for the call. Yep, hang in there. Today's episode is brought to you by Surefire. This is your daily reminder that half of every day occurs in low-light situations. Of course, that doesn't apply if you're at the crazy northern latitudes or southern

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Back to the show. He makes it sound like it's just another day at the office. The most badass ones always do. So like, whatevs? I didn't have anything else to do. You know, had some time on my hands. Just run through enemy fire to save other people. Yeah.

Who made this? Did we make this? Okay. Okay. Yeah, I mean, this is when we even adjusted, like, security at that point. I remember we moved around a little bit. Yeah. pushed up. So if that was one of the last casualties to be moved, once we got everything cleared from there, all the casualties were pushed up to the top top, or what we considered the top top up there.

We pulled, we clapped six o'clock down to the, to put it in front of the nose of the aircraft. Yeah. Because at that point, I was over off the other, we'd all picked up and moved up to the other side of the ridge line. Yeah. And they're still dropping stuff kind of close. at least it felt close. How'd you guys eventually end up getting off of there? So it was interesting. Throughout the entire day,

there was a feeling that they were going to send an aircraft to come get us, right? Like if we could just get, if we could just get what we considered, you know, that HLZ secured, you know, Uncle Sugar would send a couple more aircraft to come get us. Yeah. And so once we got it secured, you know, we started asking the questions, hey, or I say we did, you know, our leadership team, you know, Nate and Cannon and and Ray and those folks started, you know, sending it up, hey, when's X-Fill coming? When's X-Fill coming?

There's also the long-living debate of if they could have got us off sooner, maybe Jason would still be here. I don't know. Was Jason the last one to be wounded and killed? Yes. How was he wounded? So he was actually with Eric. It's too bad Eric wasn't here to talk about this.

But he was with Eric. When they were moving casualties up, we were taking machine gun fire from the tail of the aircraft from the next ridge line over. As Cunningham was talking about earlier, we were taking RPG and, you know, what we considered probably PKK fire at the time. And he took a round just under the plate.

Never from the stories that Eric told about it. I never even realized that it happened until probably later on. And he told Eric that he was hit. And, you know, Eric went in and checked him out and was like, there's no blood. Eric and I were just talking about this last week when I talked to him. He's like, man, I still remember it. He's like, hey, man, I'm hit. And he's like, I don't have any blood.

You have no blood anywhere. And that's, you know, they found the hole. Yeah. You know, we got them packaged up and moved him up to the top of the hill with everybody else. Yeah. know there was another person named coming him up there until I heard the medic working on him. Well, we, and after we spoke to you guys, we interviewed a person by the name of Brian Burlingame,

and he was the medical officer back at Bogram. And if you, I think you guys even alluded to it, there was a little bit of shuffling at the helicopters, who's going. There was an Air Force component, a PJ. Jay and I think Jason, I think there were four of them, and there was questions about if they're coming or not. And Brian Burlingame told us that he said, Jason, you have to go on this. And, you know, of course, not knowing how this was going to end for him, but, yeah, you know, there was, there's a scenario in which he doesn't even go to the mountain. Right.

It was kind of a last-minute call. I'm sure he did a lot while he was there. Yeah. Was there a time while you guys were up there where you started processing the totality of what you had lived through and the loss of your friends? Um, I really, it wasn't, for me, it was cold. I wasn't really hungry, but people, somebody gave me a frozen piece of an MRI. I'm like, I guess I'll eat it. Were you dressed for the desert you thought you were landing in?

Yeah. That's excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Summer boots. Summer boots. Summer boots. Lighter in the snow, though, you know.

So pros and cons. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't really focused on that because that's what, you know, leaders, they're doing their thing. And there's medics there. They're doing that. I guess on the bird flying up when I knew there was two KAA, I knew that had to be Rangers. I didn't know, but I figured it was, you know, I didn't know.

who was. I figured it's probably Macelli. The only person that can kill Micelli is Macelli. Yeah. But, yeah, that really just got me pissed off, really, I guess. And I guess more focused. And then being up there, it wasn't until fucking waiting for the bird to finally come. And we are collapsed all the way down, you know, not the butt, trying to keep it other warm while pulling security that I guess it was just I mean there's a lot going on

you know it's you can't really focus on that I guess how old were you at the time shit man I don't need no old I am now what is your driver's lessons say 79 you're 47 46 I don't know that's 25 whatever I'm not gonna 21 it's very young yeah 21 yeah yeah I remember being there freezing at night and knowing that the bird was coming eventually and looking down the mountain and watching, you know. Operation Anaconda?

Yeah. I'd seeing RPGs getting shot down at them. You see little villages way the hell down there and they're maneuvering. They're doing things down there. I was like, well, now they're doing stuff, I guess. How about you? Did it ever land with you?

Because in the moments, right? Yeah. In the moment, you kind of just get the, fog, right? For me, it didn't really, the severity of what had happened, didn't really catch up to me till after we got back. Cunningham and I both went out on the first aircraft. I still remember the 64 escorts coming in to the Chinooks to come in to get us when that first one came in and then it actually didn't get the six o'clock of the aircraft pointing the right direction. So we had to move all the litteres. around to the other side. And I'm just like, can we not just lift this aircraft up and turn it to 180? Yeah. Let's look at the work distribution here.

Yeah. But yeah, I still, like, to this day, I still remember the feeling of, like, seeing that 64 coming over the ridge line with my nods on. And then, like, I kind of got a chill that ran through my body. It was like, okay, they're going to get us out of here now. Because we've been talking about it all day, like I said before, hey, we just get the objective clear they're going to send two aircraft, they're going to come pick us up. They're going to pick us up. The reality is we got another full operation going on. At some point during

Operation Anaconda, you know, we lost a green beret down there, you know, on the other side of the objective area or they're on. The reality is aircraft are expensive. And so our soft personnel and, you know, we had a skeer. Let's wait till dark. It's a call that was made. probably would have had to make the same call if I was in leadership position, although I wanted off the X. I mean, it was the right decision at the time. But for me, when it really hit me was Cunningham and I left on the first chalk with some of the casualties. Oh, I was second.

Second. Who's dark? Moselli. Moselli went with me. We landed in Bogram and after we went to the Farp site and then I got off at the Farp site. And then I went to get, I got off at the Farp. site to see what was going on there because me and messeli were the only two rangers and then uh i remember um i went to the dude on the tail of the aircraft one of the crew chief and was like hey look

do not leave me here i said i'm getting off this aircraft to go touch base with somebody on the ground here to see what's going on here and see what's next because we didn't know what was next all we knew we were getting off of here and we landed at a farpsite so i ran down to a bunch of aircraft trying to look for somebody in charge i went over to uh c-130 and they were dealing with some casualties in there from another incident. And I ran back to the aircraft, and we ended up getting on an aircraft. And we flew back with, Masseli was down there waiting for me. And we got on an aircraft and flew back with some Brits that had spun up for something.

And I just remember sitting on that aircraft, me and Misselli, and just like everybody's, I felt like everybody was staring at me the whole time. And then we landed in Bogram. nobody there to pick us up. We walk back to it. We walk back to... From the flight line. From the flight line.

Walk back. And I just walked back and I don't even really remember where I went at that point. Because I came through the Brit hangar, because the Brit hangar was across the street from the task force to in hangar. I walked through the Brit hangar and walked out past their security dude, turned left down the dirt road, back in Boggroom before they turned it in to Disney. walked down the walk through the gate at the ranger sill camp and just walked over to my hooch and then when i still remember when ray got back because um i had matt's 203 and when matt got

shot and killed i didn't have his 203 on the objective initially but then somebody gave it to me and gave me some 203 rounds at a certain point during uh the time on the objective area yeah uh but matt had laid there bleeding on his 203 three and the rest of our ranger element was by the time the people to come back to a camp were only the people from the objective area because they took the rest that they had taken the rest of our rangers and moved them into a posture for QRF for everything else that was going on so there was nobody in our from the mountaintop to another QRF posture no no no no the rangers that weren't on the objective area i was going to say so like the rest there was no one else

they could have yeah no no the rest of the rangers that weren't on Razor 0102. Got you. It moved them into a posture to pre-stage them for everything else that was getting hard. That makes a lot more sense. And so the first Rangers back to camp

were the Rangers from the objective area. And I still remember I still remember Ray walking in and I was sitting next to my bunk and I had Matt's 203 propped up against

you know, little table thing that we had next to our cots there and I remember Ray told me, I was like, hey man, you got to get that cleaned up before everybody else gets here. And it was all the blood that was just caked on the side of this 203. And I remember walking to the shower tent and hanging it across the sink and washing Matt's blood off of it so that the privates in our platoon that were close to him didn't have to see that when they came back. And I remember somebody walking in and I'm just in there washing blood off of a gun.

I mean, that's the only way you could do it back then. It was 2002. Watched it off and brought it back and, you know, pretending like it's just another gun. Yeah. Did your elements slowly start trickling back to that area? Yeah. Yeah.

How was that when you guys were finally able to reconnect your back inside of the wire? Yeah, like the first Chinook came in, and it was like first quad, and I think they went and picked up the seals too and all the casualties. And then the same. second bird came in and that was all the KIAs and equipment and stuff like that.

So that was our bird moving all that. And it was kind of, it's funny because me and George did something very similar once we, we landed in Gardez or someplace. And we got off, they were like, come on, Rangers, get it back on. And I pull that mic with you. Oh, you're good. You can turn sideways, just pull it with you. Pulling a Mitch.

Yeah. Yeah. Easy. Trust me. You're not pulling a Mitch. I mean, a dozen times reminding him at this point. Need better mics. Yeah.

We, you know, we landed in bargain. It was pitch black out. There was people there with vehicles. There was people there ready to pick us up. It sucks that you had to freaking walk off, walk by yourself. But, and we went back there, and I just remember cleaning up. But I really, I don't know, it's kind of lost in the sauce until the morning. I knew, like, I was a corporal saganer, so that means like you're the next in line to be a team leader.

So the next day, I guess, that's when they told me I was going to take Croce's team, which is super huge shoes to fill. Because he was amazing, amazing human. Did they get you guys all together for a debrief after this? Yeah. Yeah, they brought us in together initially. there was, I don't even remember what was rain out of that building across the, yeah, somebody else had used that for something. Maybe it was the General for Bones suite or something.

You used to do Bible study in it. Yeah, there was an open area for Bible study in there, wouldn't there? Yeah, that's where we did our area, but immediately following that next day, I remember the chaplain sat us all down, or he didn't sit us all down, but he came to us and sat with us. And I, for me, I was, like, focused. I wasn't really, I didn't really want to talk about stuff. I just wanted to be ready for this team, you know?

I got to be ready to lead them. So it was a lot. Later on, I remember we had a mission that later on where we, what was it? I remember getting spun up for that one mission. It was like a week later or later. And we actually got on the birds. And that would be my first team, my first mission as a team leader,

and I was on the PLs bird with first squad. And we were going to go. And then the rotor blade stopped. It was like, damn. We were all kind of amped up, ready to do our job again. It was interesting, though, during that time frame because, you know, we'd gotten there.

just after Christmas before the new year. And there wasn't anything, like, there wasn't really much of anything going on. Operation Andaconda was the first kickoff a spring offensive. You know, you had, you know, an element from division that had come in. You know, they're ready to get after it.

Elements from Tenth Mountain were already leaving. Like, going back pre-infill, I remember being pissed off over in our task force area because we didn't get invited to Operation Anaconda. That's even the most entertaining thing. You feel left out. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because I, you know,

I was very junior leader at the time, you know, young E5 sergeant at the time. And, you know, all I wanted to do was go get my gun on because that's what, you know, Ranger Regiment had raised me to do. And then here we got a GPF element down the road, getting to go on a multi-day op. Later on, you know, in life, you know, I got to talk to some of our senior leaders. And what I learned was we had some great leadership that was over us.

And the bottom line is we weren't going to go do bullshit missions. Like, we were here for specific mission. And that's what these Rangers are here to do. And at the time, you know, being kind of, you know, a junior guy, like all I saw was other getting to go do some stuff and then I'm sitting down here waiting for the green light for something else and it's like you could be using us this is what the army's built us for yeah and unfortunately right before that mission we were down in Kandahar as a platoon and we were doing we got all the pitoon lie fire yeah and we were is this Tarnack yeah we went out to Tarnack and that was like we were pushing it I remember I The first sergeant was there. The battalion commander were there. We were doing our final, our culminating exercise.

And there was this giant horse corral. And first squad, our third squad breached. The minewall obstacle. First squad went up, explosive breach. I went in, got a footh. And me and my squad leader, Wilmuth, threw a grenades in. I was local support by fire with my saw. and he was directed my fires

and then second squad would assault over and take it and I remember moving through getting down on the ground and we were we were weapon squad was prepping, doing everything they were doing, they were doing good things too but I remember shooting and seeing the boys

come over and go into the first stable and you know we had targets set up in there and I was shooting at the door and Stemmer gives me a signal and then I shift to the next one went in and then George and they comes out

and Stemner was hauling butt he was going wicked fast and there wasn't a Joe behind him so I'm like oh God don't go in there because I'm shooting right in there and I knew he was going to stop because I was as a saw

and you can see tracers so I just kept the rounds going right through the door or the opening and I knew as soon as someone touched his back he was going to go so somebody was coming out

so I just transitioned to the next target and they went in and I'm focused over here. Somebody jumped on my back. And it wasn't my squad leader sitting right here directing fires. He's like, hey, how'd you know when?

And it was my battalion commander. He was like, how do you know when to shift? I said, it looked like he was ready to go. He's all right, keep it up. I was like, yeah, it was good. Don't bother me when I'm working. Yeah, it was great. Ask me that question later, dude.

It was really good timing to get that training, you know, re-blue ourselves, I guess. and go right into that. Because even Third Squad was still down there and Canada with the Toon Sergeant. Like it was right after that. Do you guys, do you guys remember a story about Omar? Randy Pasner told us a story

about him going for some rounds? Does this ring a bell? No. He was a 240 gun, right? Our Omar. Yes. Oh, not the Omar. Okay.

Yeah. I'll give you the quick, version. It's going to be, you know, in the series you guys see. But, um, very similar to Stedbner. You know, Randy tells this story like, I can't believe what I'm witnessing here. And Omar's making a run for rounds. And he says something like, I just hope he comes back. Because what he was, you know, running across to go get those rounds. And I forget who he was bringing it to. The reason I bring it up is something you said earlier. Um, you said, I think it was something about you weren't, you didn't realize.

that Greg Calvert, your pilot, was having the experience he was having up front. And Ray and Matt LaFriends connected me with General Thomas, Tony Thomas. And so we had a couple

conversations that were really productive. Good. And he said something similar. He watched some things that we sent him. We just wanted his opinion on it. And he said something,

basically the same thing you said. I just, I don't think I understood, you know, some of the more some of the details some of the heroics that um that happened up there so after that first experience i remember that first time i got shot at i didn't realize i was getting shot at which is probably not awesome yeah but the next day we went back and looked at the helicopters and there was 27 holes in the helicopter and guys must have been reaching up to scratch their ass and a bullet.

I don't think we could have loaded the people back in there and not had somebody injured. But I do remember in that moment thinking, if this is how we're going to do this every day, I don't know how long my career is going to last in special operations. Did you guys have any of those thoughts about the long-term occupation after that horrendous first combat experience? No. That's actually the answer I expected from you.

You're like, no, I just wanted more. I didn't want more. Like the first time I re-enlisted is because I was having fun. Yeah. Second time I re-enlisted is I didn't want people to go without me. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. How long did you spend in the military? 22 and a half years. How long have you been out now? May 21. Okay. So five and a half years. Looking back,

on your career. How do you feel better now as an older man? Oh, it was really good. I got to develop a lot of leaders to take my spot and to lead others. I got to meet amazing people that, you know, those are my brothers, you know, and sisters. I got some sisters out there, too. Yeah, it's good. And I got some families. I got a lot of families, which sucks.

But you got to be there for the families. How did you work through a process or whatever word you would want to use all of the experiences you had in those 22 years? So in regards to like families or just everything? All of it. The career in special operations, looking back on it. now is kind of in a way defined by its exposure to trauma. And I don't, you know,

a lot of people use that word flippantly. And I'm not talking about having your hand on a table and being smashed. Right. Yeah, yeah. You're exposed to things that a lot of people, what you guys live through on that mountup? I mean, what fraction of a percentage of a humanity will ever experience or be put

into a situation like that. In my opinion, that leaves a fingerprint on you. Oh, yeah. And you can dull the fingerprint, but you can never wipe it off. I'm just curious, did you, after your career in 22 years,

did you during that time, did you intentionally try to go back and rework through some of the things that you experienced? Or do you think, there's no right or wrong answer to this because I know people who can naturally as who they are, they're more tolerant to things like that

and more tolerant to stress. And then I know other people, I'm sure you guys know the same thing. You can have three people online, you have an experience, and it impacts them all incredibly differently. I get what you're saying. Yeah.

I'm just curious after those 22 years, years or during that time period, did you just keep working as hard as you could? Or did you ever put any effort into going back and processing or working through the stuff that you experienced? Yeah, definitely. I mean, initially, just from this one, this one, when we got back, you know, I didn't have a wife. I didn't, I had a girlfriend, but she didn't know I left.

So I didn't have one when I can't come. That's how that's generally going to go. But I, but there is. There's Gold Star families there. And, you know, we knew them from, because, like, our families were tight. Like, we would go to Anderson's. We'd go to Matt's. We did so much together.

So just seeing them, being there, because they went through it, too. They just did it back here, you know. So being there for them, you know, you always think you can do more, you know, looking back. But you got to keep going, too, you know. And, you know, I've been in a lot of units and done a lot. So I got, unfortunately, a lot of families. And you just got to be there. If they show up, you show up type thing.

But with the Joe's, it's like, the way Chaplin, very next, like, immediately happened right afterward. He put us together, you know, that's the right thing to do. And they do it, for sure, you know? Critical. I don't know what they call it. It's changed, I'm sure. Yeah.

But like immediately after you sit down and talk, because you think about like, we're learning about stuff now, how long ago was it, right? But if you sit down and talk about it right afterwards, right? I'm seeing my sight picture, you know, what I'm doing from this angle, right? There's all these other people doing stuff, right?

And shit happens, bad stuff happens, right? and you think you could have done something. No, you're doing everything you could do at the time. You're doing everything you can do. And somebody does something, you're like, what the heck? Oh, why'd they do that? And you're like, I could have, whatever. Like, you didn't.

You did everything you could do. You know, you pushed, you got to whatever limit or you're just like, I'm going to, this is where I'm most effective. I'm not going to push further because I need to be, this is my, area. These people need me to do this, just like I need them to do that. You know, and people are going to do crazy stuff, and they're going to run out and do crazy things, and all you can do is help support them, you know? Yeah. How about for you? I guess hit me with a series of questions because you asked

them like six questions. I just, it's been fascinating for me, talking to guys after they've gotten out with some time away from their experience. And the impact of their experience, it morphs over time as they go through more chapters of their life, right, in different seasons of their life and a little bit more distance from it. Some guys will say, yeah, I work through it in the moment. And the reality is you can see in them that they didn't and they're almost destroyed by what they were experienced. Some people will say the same thing. And again, because of their natural resilience, they become a better,

version of themselves because of what they saw and now they want to have a positive impact on the world, you know, as two polar examples. I'm just curious when you look back on your career, did you ever have moments where you got to just a boiling point or the totality of what you were exposed to was starting to have an impact on your life? And if so, how did you work your way through it? I think what you run into is I think you run into two types of people. you have folks that have the ability to compartmentalize it, which some might argue that's borderline sociopath, that an individual that can go on a 90-day rotation into a theater

and see the type of experiences that we've just discussed in this forum, and they'll be able to walk back in, get off an aircraft in Savannah, Georgia, go turn in your weapons, and then go into town and sit next to normal. people and have a beer like nothing happened and then you have other folks that maybe when they experience that they kind of struggle with it i think that's what you see is there almost becomes those that stay it becomes what i would consider an addiction um i don't really classify like a lot of people will call it like some type of adrenaline high or something like that but i i think it's i think it's more of a of a being driven and feeling like you have a purpose. And then within that,

there's an element of personal power that comes along with that and having the ability to do these things. And you're no longer possibly doing them for your government, you're doing them for the guys on your left and your right. I mean, I had a break in service after the first rotation in with Ranger Battalion. I was in college. And when the Rock War kicked off, I had a hard time staying on campus and looking at folks when I was at Florida State. Like, to me, I was like, these kids have no clue what's going on in the rest of the world right now. And I had a hard time coping with that for a while. But knowing that I was coming back in.

And I remember, you know, telling Brad Crows' mom, Sheila that I was, I said, I think I'm going to quit school. And I think I'm going to go back in. And she was like, Josh, please don't do that. Like, I just ask where you just at least make your decision and finish college. And at the time I was enrolled in ROTC and my intentions were to come back in as an officer. And, you know, I did have a lot of personal guilt at that time during that phase of the war that we were in because all my good buddies were over there. And the ones that weren't over there in uniform, they all ended up going and flipping, getting a lot of them become defense contractors. And not the kind of defense contractors.

They're just sitting at the gate, you know, the ones that. are running patrol with no back support. Yeah, same job, no. Same job. No bad signal. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it became an identity on who I was.

And you kind of see that with folks. I think a lot of friends and family have a hard time gripping with it and don't understand it. They almost think something's wrong with you. But I think that I think what it is, what they don't understand is you have more of a purpose than they've probably ever been able to see in the past or even can can even process within their mind when you start seeing the relationships of i mean i haven't seen this dude in five years you know first thing i do is give him a hug when i end up at the airport when when i found out his uber was 20 minutes out i was like hey dude look to my wife i was like changed the gps we're going to pick and cunning up at the airport you know and like

that's like a lot of folks have family across the united states and cousins and things like that i think a lot of us in the military yeah that these relationships even relationships that we building forums like this. Like it's, there's a different type of camaraderie that you can't even replace with being family sometimes and I think a lot of folks

have a hard time understanding it. Yeah. I guess can I keep going with that? Like when I got out of the military, when I was getting out, all these sergeant majors were like, hey, Chris, you need to go talk to, you know, talk to people,

you know, start working through this stuff. I'm like, oh, I'm fine, I'm good, you know. And when I got, when I was getting out of the army, my wife was the one that was just like, you are going to talk to somebody. Well, this isn't happening. The real OIC stepped in.

Yeah. And I did. And I went and went to the VA and I've heard all these horror stories. So I was just like, I don't want to take drugs. I don't want this. She's like, we're just going to talk. I'm like, okay. And I just sat and talked with this person I didn't know and talked to talk through stuff like this and talk through other stuff.

you know and it was really good and we went to a group where it was people that act like actual combat veterans not just went and deployed and stuff like that and they we sat through this great you know initially we're all just like sniffing each other but like who is this guy for clarity we're talking about metaphorically we do some odd things in the military but this is a metaphor yeah but we even had a marine Vietnam a platoon sergeant that was a part of this group that guy anyways I'm sure he's incredibly politically correct yeah oh yeah yeah

Bill anyways anyways oh I shouldn't say his name anyways there's a lot of bills out there yeah he's still yeah anyways but just sitting there talking through stuff initially we weren't taking it serious and then like halfway through this 13 week like just meeting once a week type thing and working through words that we just

don't understand you know like shame and guilt and understand standing these things like what we do to ourselves how the body keeps the score as a book about that probably in here hopefully um i think that's the title of it um but it was so good i came to so many realizations uh within myself you know who i am now and you know processing so the stuff i did back then but then also i we're getting off topic we're not there's no topic oh okay But, man, it was so great. Seeing that Marine, you know, E5, I mean, sorry, sergeant,

platoon sergeant from Vietnam, just seeing, you know, he wasn't saying anything. And then eventually, but just getting to that point towards the end, you just see his shoulders drop. He's like, he can actually talk. You know, this guy's Vietnam. There's a chance that that's the first time he's ever been able to put his shoulders down like that, too. And I say that my dad's a Vietnam veteran.

The stories he has, let's be honest, our generation was treated a hell of a lot differently than theirs when we came home to a degree that is sickening in some senses. Yeah. His stories are about guys that he knew that just disappeared into the mountains. Not that they were, I'm sure some of them were ending their life, but they would just go decide to live alone because they didn't have a place where they felt like they could talk about it.

And they didn't want to. Right. So it's a beautiful thing that you guys were able to find that. Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys wish that people knew about this particular operation? I mean, I don't know where the name Roberts Ridge originated from. And obviously there was, he lost his life on that ridge. He was the person that fell out of the helicopter.

But I think it's important to remember, what was the total time? 13 minutes versus 13 hours, something like that? Well, they had two inserts. But yeah, the second insert was, you know, around 11 and a half minutes before they went over the east side. Point being, what you guys have talked about what you just, and I'm not trying to compare experiences and I'm not into competitive suffering and hardship and any of those things.

But the vast majority of what happened on that mountaintop actually came from you guys. What do you wish people knew about it? Yeah, I think it's something greater than what just happened here on this day, right? Like, for some people, it's a story. For me, it's the shittiest day. my life, right? But I think more importantly, like, for me, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like, you go to the wall at J-Soc, you go to the wall at YSoc. You go to the wall at Usa-Soc. I think a Ranger Regiment in itself doesn't get the credit that it deserves for all the

hard shit that it does for this country. Why do you think that is? I think because they don't talk about it. I think there's a, I think there's a. And I'm not saying one way is better than the other, but there's very strict, you don't talk about it. You don't, I mean, I can't even think of anybody from Ranger Regiment that's written a book over the last 25 years that's like a top seller in a story. But I can tell you that wall at J-Soc is full of those names, right? How did you guys hear about the Ranger Regiment? What inspired both of you to go down that pathway? A funny story for me is

I had went into a recruiter's office to try to become a military police officer and yeah the number of stories I've heard like this where I wanted to go to be a Marine but he was at lunch so I was a Navy diver or something Yeah it was interesting the recruiter had showed me a couple

videos of some Ranger promo videos but you know I'm talking mid-90s genre some you know some dudes coming out of swamps and stuff some shit that you'll never really do in Ranger Regiment. It looks awesome, though. But yeah, it looks cool. I'm still waiting for a couple of those schools

that he told me I was going to get. It can be face paint. But I had actually, he said, hey, what do you think about this? I was like, all right, that can be an option. But my original intentions were to become a military police officer and go back home and be a law enforcement back home. And then when I got down the MEPs,

I had a bit of a record when I was a kid. Nothing significant, but I'd gotten into a little bit of trouble. And it was still on my record and it hadn't been expunged. even though I was of age at this time. And they wouldn't, the Department of Army would not allow me to become a military police officer. And so I basically told the recruiters at MEPs to call my recruiter in time to come get me. I was 21 when I joined.

So I was a little bit older, had a college degree and some things like that. And was working for, you know, had a successful job at a Fortune 500 company. And so I was like, yeah, I called my recruiter in time to come get me. And they were kind of irritated with me. and they brought him in there, and they were trying to get me to become. They were trying to get me to come. They're like, what are you doing now?

I said, I work for General Motors. You know, work at the corporate headquarters of Delco Remy. They're like, hey, how would you like to do that from the Army? I was like, I'm making good money doing this, you know, and I have a full-time job lined up as soon as I graduate. And then he had said, well, hey, we talked about you going to Ranger Regiment. Like, if I can get your Ranger Regiment contract, would you do that? And I was like, yeah, let's do that.

And that's how I ended up in Ranger Regiment. Okay. So almost a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. Chris, that much yourself? Yeah, I was a chef at my brother-in-law's restaurant, and I wanted to get out of Vermont. And both my older brothers were in the military. And I told my brother Tim, he's like, Chris, you know,

you need to go be a Ranger. And don't sign anything unless it says Ranger and I didn't. So, yeah. The reason I asked that question is if you were to ask Chennai's era of team guy. Did you ever read the book Men with Green Faces? No, I was aware of the book later on. Thank you for completely fucking up my example. You could have just lied and gone along with it, right? Point is, I would agree with you that the books in publicity is a razor blade.

It can cut in both directions, but it can also inspire the next generation. The first thing, when I heard the term seal from my father, who was not a seal, he was a, on the first squadron of patrol boats in Vietnam in the Brownwater Navy. He had two foot pedals and 50 cows up front and about and used as an insertion and extraction platform. But the first thing I did is I went and found the book Men with Green Faces, which led me to everything that I could find at that time, which didn't end up being the reality because it was Vietnam base and we could have never forecast 9-11. But if, if, and again, it can, it and go way too far.

And I would say on the seal side, it has gone way too far. Some of the publicity, I don't think, was asked for. Some of it was thrust upon the community, and I think that's hard to deal with. But how are those legacies and legends going to continue if people are told not to talk about them? And I'm not saying exploit them. There's a difference between being a silent professional and a quiet professional. How do you perpetuate those legends? legacies if nobody hears about them.

Yeah, I think that's a very important fact, which in Usasaw is actually trying to do, but has been historically trying to do a better job of that for the Army side. You asked him, like, had I known what Rangers were? I did. I grew up reading, like, Charlie's Rangers and some other Ler stuff. Like, that's the kind of books I read as a kid. I grew up.

My dad was in Vietnam. So some level of volume of work existed, yeah. Yeah. But like, if you would have asked me 15 years ago to come on here or 20 years ago, I'd have told you to kick rocks. I mean, that's rude, but. Yeah. I would have told you kick rocks. I would have been like, I really, you know, would have been very professional about, hey, look, like, I really appreciate it. What would have been your worry?

What's that? We just don't talk about it, right? Like, you just go do your job. It's your job. We don't come home and talk about work. It just wasn't like it's a more of a quiet professional type environment. I get that. This is a tough question to ask, but I'll ask it. The friends that you guys lost on the mountaintop that day, do you want people to know their names?

Absolutely. And that's why I'm here now. I was going to say, how does that happen? That is the shift for people like me. I'm a little bit older now, more mature about the situation and the legacy. You know, I'm raising a son and four daughters right now. And it's very important to me that they're brought up in this country the way on the end of the values that I see, not necessarily the direction this country may be going sometimes. So you're still deep in combat just for clarity?

Because I heard you say one son and four daughters. Yes. Wow. You may want to look at reenlisting and going on extended deployants. Well, if they can get me one of those exosuits. I'd be back. Wow. You went, what do they call that from the frying pan into the pot or whatever?

Yeah. But you bring up a great point. I think it is important. I think more people should take part in things like this, should write about it. It's possible to maintain and perpetuate the legacy properly without exposing anything sensitive about the job itself. Yeah.

I think a lot of it, though, I think a lot of it goes to like there's certain stuff that is just for the warrior, you know, and your brothers and sisters that are there with you. And I think that's okay. Because they're not going to understand that stuff. Not everything should be for public consumption. I've been doing this now for nine years, and I have found ways to talk around anything that might be even remotely sensitive.

And I just avoid topics exactly what you're talking about. Things, A, that I don't have the vocabulary to describe, but I still have been able to find a way to help people at least tell those stories because I can't tell them. It sucks that there aren't stories about this. I have learned more about this operation. And again, the people who spent magnitudes of order, longer time on this mountain in the last 24 hours than I did my entire time when I was in the military.

Well, this will be of interest of you. I was a signal officer when I came back in the Army. My first time was with the 112th Special Officer. operation, single battalion, and then I only did 12 months there, and then volunteered to go to seventh group, knowing that seventh group, I went to one seven seven, and we were doing back-to-back rotations on the schedule there. I didn't want people to know when I got the seventh group that I was on, on the ridge. Why?

For me personally, I didn't want them to know because I didn't want them to judge me for what I'd done in the past, and I wanted them to judge me for what I was doing moving forward. And I still kind of viewed it as like something of the past of like it was a rough day for me, you know, and it was a rough day for all of us. And it kind of took me a long time to kind of understand that and kind of grow and mature as, you know, a father, a soldier and things like that. Before I even flew out here, like I did tell people that I was coming. but historically when I had we'd come out to California and I'd went up to New York

in the past to do an interview I was supposed to go with Canon and it ended up just being me by myself but I historically hadn't I wouldn't tell nobody I was going I'd just tell them I had to take a couple of days off What was the feedback you got when you told them? People were very interested, right?

They're very interested. They want to know the story but also like when people also know that to the point of your question people want to know if I don't tell anybody about it then I don't have to share it and I think that those times when I was experiencing that I don't think I was ready to share it

that's fair yeah people have people have been telling war stories long before we all showed up here I mean since the beginning of time and I think how I might answer the question you had is, you know, what's the intent behind telling this story? I think that's what matters. Because there will be more war stories.

I mean, maybe, you know, we'll be replaced by drones here soon. But until that happens, there's going to be war stories here and there. And not just with our country with the rest of the world. And I do believe intent matters, you know. Also, if the arena is dominated by voices from one area over the other, It creates a void where even if there is no animosity, people will assume that there is. They will fill it with bullshit that doesn't exist. And sometimes that ends up becoming real.

This story case and point, you know, we were talking a little bit about this the other day. There's a version of taking the high road too far, which results in what you just said. If you don't say a word, the public will begin to fill the space and to begin to create mythology and you know because I'll ask the question how come there's so many seal stories and no ranger ones and then somebody will say oh i heard that they don't like each other and then somebody also say oh yeah they're actually they don't work well together and that's why the seal guys are just trying to drown out and none of this shit is true right but they're only you know what i mean that's the void that gets filled with the bullshit of the internet and then somehow that stuff ends up

then people buy into it and then it perpetuates itself and then we're living in a fucking self-licking ice cream cone. Sure. Yeah. What Chris? Are you having that? Like growing up, I didn't like the seals in the Army. Was it because we're better?

It was because it seemed like, you know, we were going to do stuff. Here's the most classic joke. You ready for this? What? Do you know what all Army guys and SEALs have in common? Oh, there's a lot. What? They both wanted to be SEALs.

I was not. It was not. I pulled that shit on green braids. I do that with firefighters and cops. Like, do not. You know, when you asked me if I read men with green faces, and of course I fucked up your... Completely.

Just like, where is this... You know, Battle Drill 1 Alpha, fail. But what I will say is... Because I'm two or three years ahead of you in this whole game. But when I was growing up, you know, I'm probably 10 years older than you guys, something like that. There was...

There were on Navy SEAL stories. The stories I heard growing up were about Greenbraes, John Wayne, John Rambo, Chuck Norris and Delta Force. The movie with Charlie Sheen came out after I joined. The documentary? Yep. No. So, you know, these stories, they shift. You know, the SEAL team's got some high profile ops in the bank.

The public spotlight shifted over to these guys. but it'll shift back to something else. We'll run our course. It'll go back to Cagg or over to the Rangers or to whatever. That balance will come quicker if we can figure out a way to give equal voice and they feel empowered to want to tell those stories. Because you can't get blood out of a turnip. You know.

That's an old thing. Is it? Yeah. I'm wise now. My grandfather is 50. Yeah, it wasn't until like learning about. you know, like I read it in a book, you know, I was so pissed off at Seals. I was really angry at him.

But it wasn't. Did you ever encounter one up into that point? Not really. No. Perfect. No. I deeply appreciate that headspace. It wasn't until I learned about, you know, I mean, these guys are, and I've matured,

I'm like, these guys are fucking put, they're just like us can put somewhere to go do something. If I had heard from my dad, if he had said grain bray instead of, of seal to be honest with you it was the idea of the job i think i randomly fell into the fact that i grew up in a family that had a navy tie you know what i mean i look back now i appreciate my pre-9-11 service because i got to see how utterly ridiculous we were because we fought each other because we needed relevance and budget and then in our off time of course what do we do we talk shit about every other branch of the military yeah then we get thrust into things like this and you realize the communities are defined by their similarities and not by their differences.

And I have worked at this point with every, I say this, every time Rangers come up when I'm talking on the show. Like, they're the most badass dudes that I've ever worked with. Like, you ask them to stay on a corner until the corner doesn't exist. Roger that and they will be there. And Green Berets. And I didn't get to work with the Marsaugh guys. So it's not that I don't have equal amount of respect from them. I just don't have any data point.

with that. But it's interesting now as the mature theaters of war have wound down, as operational tempo is winding down, I'm watching it go back trending towards the pre-9-11.

Let's pick and hand each other apart. And what you forget is when you get to a place like this, none of that shit matters. I'm going to add on to Go for it. Just to go to this, right?

Like, I... All these guys fucking went through this same shit with us. Some of them were fucking way above us. Some of them were there before us. Some of them came to get us. You know? And we don't fucking know each other. Which really...

Like, we were all shared that same fucking spot. Oh, go ahead. And, you know, I got to meet Robert's son, who was a baby when this happened. He was a grown man when I met him. I didn't meet him for all those years until he was a grown man. So his son got what happened from his seal buddies, you know, they let him know. but we weren't part of that you know maybe we were but you know that kid probably had some questions for us too you know right there's a there are healthy levels of a spree decor and then

there are and there's a toxic toxic version of it yeah and um I think leadership has to pay attention to making sure it stays in that healthy competitive space and doesn't turn turn into, you know, fuck those guys and we don't want to work with those guys. Yeah. And I hope that stops. And a lot of it's happening in the social media realm. Yeah. There's a whole industry and podcast that tries to pit one unit against the other unit.

And unfortunately, it works sometimes. There's leadership, you know, probably in every branch in every unit, talking shit about the other guys, teaching the young guys to dislike these guys. And this is what's so fucked up about these guys and vice versa. It needs to stop. It should stop. I mean, I think, you know, I grew up in Ranger, started off my career in Ranger Regiment and then never really left UsaSach

except for spent some time in the Guard while I was going to college and then went straight back to Yusufat. It's interesting, though, because it's not just department. Department to Department. It goes on Intra Department too, right? Like, everybody's competing for the same resources. Like these things happen within the Department of Army. You know, you have multiple elements of the special operations community

and they're all fighting over the same resources. So that conversation, like, I think you're at the knell in head. It comes down to the leadership doing the right thing and make sure that we all understand that we're all supporting the greater mission. Chris, tell me if you agree with this. I think I have a theory here because what I've understood about this story is, And you spoke to it a few minutes ago. After this happened, you guys never sat down with Red Squadron and hashed it out and had a, you know, I think what I understand, you tell me if I'm correct, you guys had your own internal AAR.

But there was no joint AAR saying, let's talk about this. Pilots, Rangers, Seals, whomever else, Air Force, what the hell just happened? Yeah. And so when you don't do that, I think you're just inviting. That's the void. It's a different version of the way. You're inviting these divides. You're inviting this cancer to grow.

And when you have these pivotal moments in war, I think there needs to be an extra effort to say, let's not let this fester for the next 25 years. Let's get everyone together, hash this out. They can agree to disagree, but let's at least have them talk to each other. Yeah. And that's on the leadership, you know, not just yours, on the SEAL's leadership, on everyone's leadership, at that moment, what didn't happen was the real A R that was supposed to happen Yeah I know the regiment

This is part of their legacy You know Privat or privates are taught this when they're becoming rangers You know or they know it before they get there Whatever What was the highest award that was given to a ranger that day Silver Star I mean I've never sat at an awards board

but that is fucking ridiculously low. That's the way it works. Doesn't mean it's right. What? Like, I don't put anything into the awards. To be honest, we didn't want them. We didn't want our awards. Like, for us, all of us, like, this was even,

I'm talking pre the debate that, you know, you're bringing up now. We didn't want them for us, for me. when I found out that we were all, what they were putting us all in for at the time, doesn't bring them back. Yeah. Just, just, just, it's not supposed to, though.

It's not supposed to. And I understand the importance on why it is important now, but at the time, you know, reflecting on at the time. Yeah. Like, okay, cool. It almost becomes the conversation of, uh, why does he get this or he get that?

That conversation is, had by civilians who don't understand any of this either. This ties into the void as well. Why are there two Medal of Honor for these particular units up here at a different tier? Why so much lower? If you know what I'm not that I'm not diminishing a Silver Star by any stretch. It's too down from the Medal of Honor. But you know what I mean?

That gap, that delta creates an unknown as well, which again can be filled in that void by things that are not true, but then become true because they're perpetuated for long enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting as you bring up the conversation awards, even separate from outside of this. I end up spending just under 36 months in Afghanistan over, you know, my term of service. And I saw it time and time again. People sitting on awards panels, I was even asked because I had a valorous award when I was in Third Special Forces Group to sit on a panel. And it was very interesting. how some of those panels went down. Yeah. Can you say more? Well, it's just...

Let me know if I'm getting close. Yeah. The military award system got tied to the rank system as well in competitive advancement. And I saw this specifically on our side of the house. If somebody who fills a leadership role is awarded a certain award, not to use that word twice in the same sentence. and the next person to fill that billet and the next rotation does not equal that they are no longer equal when it comes to advancement cycles. And that shouldn't be the case. And I'm not going to display the examples that I have personally seen, but I have seen awards guidance directly violated.

Like specifically you should not be allowed to apply this award or give this award for anything other than direct actions in combat. based off of a leadership role to ensure that their competitiveness and advancement boards were maintained. And the second that you do that, it devalues everything else that these things mean to everybody else. Is it close? Yeah, it is. But then you also, not everybody that sits on the panel of a awards group are on that panel because they have a previous valorous award. So then you get into the geopolitics of it. Yeah.

Some of it. And I've seen people get awarded valorous awards because of the unit or demographic that they were, and I worked, we'll just say, next to men that were doing something very similar that it wasn't even drawn up. Yeah. And that's what crumbles the entire system. Yeah. Because whether you're sitting on the board or not, if you think that the people around you, once that award is given, don't realize what's going on, you're not living in the real world. Yeah.

Okay. And I'm not diminishing anything that anybody had done on any one of those panels that I sat on. Yeah. It was just there was a... It's not as pure as people would hope it would be. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it.

I would say, I think the awards process is generally good. Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree with that. I don't want to make, I don't want to have anyone believe that we think it's just a complete shit show and it's a mess. I think most of the time it does the right thing. But it's an imperfect system. It's ran by humans. And every once in a while they get one of these wrong. I mean, case and point, every year

we read in the paper, such and such gets an upgrade from Vietnam or posthumously from, you know, they find out new things. And so if that's happening, it means they can also misawad somebody in the present. Sure. It's an imperfect system. Yep. Did we miss anything, Mitch? Do you guys think we did? I appreciate this opportunity to be able to be here, you know, for the guys that were up there and their families. Be here for Eric. This is Eric's seat.

You know, when I came here, when you reached out to me, like, My greatest, I was just like I don't want to bring discredit. Just like hosted by a seal, D-bag. Yeah. To what happened up here, what the boys did. I didn't want to speak for guys up there. That's why I spoke for my sight picture. There were some amazing people that were up there,

and they did really amazing things. They still are doing them. And I know they did it. That's all that matters to me. Are you guys going to have a 25-year reunion? Because it's coming up. Eric, start planning that now. Anything to close it out with, Josh?

Yeah, I appreciate this opportunity, going back to some of your previous questions on why and how. I may have dealt with some of these things in the past. I think you brought up a very good point. I think it comes down to maturity as we start to grow older. When I first got out of Range Regiment, I enrolled in school. I was in college classes, like literally three weeks later.

It was super healthy, by the way. Yeah, it was. But interesting thing that I knew was I was going to struggle. Not that academically. What I figured out was college is kind of joke. If you can just show up and do what you're told. And growing up on Rage Regiment, like you said before, hey hold that wall.

Okay. I can go to college class and hold that wall. But one of the first classes I took was a stress management class. And that was deliberate. It was a mandatory health class. I just got it knocked out of the way because I knew over time that I was going to have some problems. And so one of the things I learned through there and then through an old World War II vet that I'd met through a girl that I dated years ago, I called him by his last name. in his rank when he got out of service in World War II,

and the rest of the family used to get upset with me when I would do that. You're getting grandpa fired up, and he'd come tell me about all the people he'd killed during World War II. And it kind of bothered the rest of the family. But for me, I knew he needed that because what's important is that you need to talk about it

to get through it and not compartmentalize it, but talk about it and share those. experiences because there's a lot of things that folks can learn from the great stuff that we did and the mistakes that we made more importantly so if i could challenge anybody that would be out there kind of struggle with trying to figure it out especially after they get out a lot of people struggle when they get out um don't never have the same purpose that you had while you were in but you need to go find something else to be passionate about and probably throw your family on the top of that list and then from there work your way down because after 24

years of service there was a lot of family getting neglected not deliberately it wasn't it was just it was just nature of the beast of what you signed up for job suffers last yeah yeah yeah yeah appreciate it thank you Mitch thanks guys that was awesome it was thank you for taking the time to share that it's uh you know honestly maybe closing thoughts like i want people to know these names I want people to understand and know the legacy of specifically the community that you guys came from. But I can't tell those stories. But anybody who's put in the time and the work and the effort and the sacrifice, they deserve to have their names told. There's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

People can argue for as long as they want to about that. But we need willing participants to be able to share these stories. Otherwise, they're only going to be known by an incredibly small group of people. Whereas things like this, anybody listening to this who isn't inspired by that, also maybe on the sociopathic scale, or just like national defense level, autism perhaps, it's hard to say. But, you know, I mean, without that, it should inspire you. It should cause people to question what they believe in, what they're willing to fight for, what they stand for, all of those things. But the person has to be willing to participate in that as well, too. So it's a discussion for the communities to have.

Do you want the legacy to live only inside of that community, or do you want it to inspire as many people as humanly possible and potentially inspire those people to join and continue that legacy and drive it forward? Yeah, that's a good point. Thanks, chance.