Jocko Podcast - 168: More Important Lessons on War, Leadership, and Life, w/ SEAL Master Chief, Jason Gardner, Pt.2

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:14 - Jason Gardner, cont. 2:33:13 - Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:59:32 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 168 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Beowulf spoke. Wise, sir, do not grieve. It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death.

When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark. So arise, my lord, and let us immediately set forth on the trail of this troll dam. I guarantee you, she will not get away. Not to dens underground nor upland groves nor the ocean floor. shall have nowhere to flee to. Endure your troubles today. Bear up and be the man I expect you to be. And there is some more Beowulf to start this podcast.

And it's an interesting note that Beowulf, the poem, started not as a written poem, but a poem passed on as a story from generation to generation of the pagan Anglo-Saxon. warrior people. It was part of their oral history and their oral tradition. And that's basically what we're doing here. Capturing stories from our modern day warrior people, which we are continuing with today during part two of my brother Jason Gardner. Part one was the last podcast, number 167. So if you haven't listened to that one, just stop listening to this one right now.

back and listen to 167 and then when you get done with that you can come back and hear the rest of it and if you have listen to 167 then here we go we're gonna start kind of where we left off what's up jason not much happy to be here check so we left off yesterday you had basically you'd stayed at team three you're gonna do an ops tour an ops task unit ops tour but then you made senior chief and then that's where we left off so you get done With that, and where'd you go? Seal Team 7? Went over to the Senior Enlisted Academy and knocked that out because that is basically a prerequisite for making E9,

but it's difficult to get away from NSW for that long. How long is that course? That one was six weeks. There's two of them. There's another one that's three months, and it's just trying to cram that in is difficult. So it made sense to go then, and then they popped me over for a troop senior enlisted advisor

over at SEAL Team 7. And so for people that don't know what that means, you're going into a task unit, your task, did you guys have a two platoon task unit, or was it three? It was two. Check. And that means, explain your position of senior enlisted advisor in a SEAL task unit. So there are two SEAL platoons,

which are the two maneuver elements, and then over the top of the SEAL platoons, there was myself, I was a senior chief at the time, and then there was a lieutenant commander at the time. who was the task unit commander. It was the same position that you had in the T.U. Bruce. And then you were the senior enlisted guy in there.

And I was actually looking at one of my old briefs, leadership briefs from the teams. And I don't know if you remember this, because I haven't, I don't do it when I do it for civilians now, but I used to do the roles and responsibilities of everyone inside the task unit and be like, okay, this is what the task unit

should be doing. This is what the senior enlisted guy should be doing. And a key word there is, this is what a platoon chief should be doing. And this is what a platoon commander should be doing. One of the keywords there is should be because there's a lot of leeway depending on personalities and what skill sets people have. And sometimes people are capable of doing a part of someone else's job, but they're maybe not so great at doing something they should be doing. So you've got to figure that out inside of a platoon.

Now, I used to say that when you take a platoon, if you take a platoon, you've got to get to like, you could pick a number. Like you've got to get to a level 10 with the top four leadership, meaning the LPO, the assistant platoon commander, the platoon commander. and the platoon chief. Those, they have to have a number equal to 10. Like, you can't have a bunch of guys that are ones because that's only a four. But if you have a chief, that's an eight, well, then cool.

It doesn't really matter that the platoon commander's not that great or the platoon commander's a one or whatever. And that's fine. Sometimes you're going to get some guys that are really good at something. Sometimes there's people that aren't. And as long as you have some good leadership in there, you'll be all right.

And that's what I realized when I was running trade at. You just basically need. You need one leader, one person that knows how to lead things, and everything will be fine. But you actually should have two people that know how to lead things. So that way if something happens to the number one guy, and then they can kind of communicate and they can talk to each other and they can bounce stuff off and they'll just be like infinitely better. But yeah, it's always a little bit different in every task unit. And, well, that was great because that roles and responsibilities brief that you gave, like at the time,

the T.U. Task unit leadership going through the unit level training was new. And it was kind of a new position all the way together. So it wasn't really well defined. I was really like, where the hell is my role here? So that was really helpful. And I think what you and your troop SEA did is you kind of define, because you guys participated in training. And not all the troops, troop commanders and troop SEA. were going out to every ULT block. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then now you guys did everything. And then after that, that was the standard. Everybody set that standard, and it's a good standard to have. Yeah. Yeah, and I was lucky because my first deployment to Iraq,

I had a task unit commander and a task unit SEA. And we both are friends with both those guys. And they really, I was watching what they were doing going, okay, that seems to work pretty well, you know, just looking at how they interacted with me. and they set a good example, and I kind of just took that when I came back and that's the position I put myself into

was kind of mimicking what those two guys had done. And they were really well-balanced, you know, not micro- and they're just good, just really good leaders, you know? And so I just, okay, that was cool. That worked. And so that's what I did. And then luckily, I got to go through workup and then go to Ramadi, so I kind of knew how it, you know,

I carved that out and there it was. And then I wrote the roles and responsibilities because believe me, when I was, when I first took over trade at, there would be all kinds of ways, sway lay things going on with guys not having any idea what they should not be doing. Because everyone was just going, what should I do? Like you said, it was a new position, a relatively new position. I mean, we had tasking at commanders back in the day, but it was, they would be completely detached. And they'd show up, hey, I'm an 03 or 0.4. I'm in charge of you. And everyone would be like, okay, that sounds cool, whatever.

Who's this guy? Yeah, and you wouldn't see him until deployment. Yeah, yeah. And then now the new thing was you're like there from day one, which was really cool how we evolved that way. Yeah. Yeah, no. And it's as it should be. So you get there and form up your platoons and start going through training.

Yeah, we start doing workup. And so, you know, the task unit commander, he had a lot of experience. All the platoon leadership had a lot of experience, too. So it was, I would say it was stacked. We had great all the way down to like some of our E5s had deployments to Iraq. They had good experience. So it looked like, you know, hey, this is, everything's going to be easy. And then we started, started ULT, went out to the land warfare block, which has really always been where I have a soft spot in my heart because it's hard.

it's dirty and it's mean but you know we train out there in the desert we were we gone through the first two weeks of the land warfare block which is doing our immediate action drills a lot of our range work our demo all that stuff and then we were coming into the phase the last week which is the field final training exercises and so we're we're in this big classroom and we're getting the brief on you know a feedback on the brief that we'd just given for our first operation. And after that, the, your,

your land warfare senior enlisted advisor came in and he's like, hey, everybody to listen up. Every task unit that's come through here before you guys has had a blue on blue during this training. So you need to be really aware of your blue horse picture. And, and so I'm like,

I'm rolling my eyes. And my internal dialogue I'm like, oh my gosh, what a bunch of clowns. Are you kidding me? Everybody shot each other. That is never going to happen to us. You know, I'm like, heck, I used to run land warfare training when I was at a training cell at a team, and this just isn't that hard.

There's no way we're going to shoot each other. Okay. Like, let's just go four hours later. It is just mass pandemonium. We went in, we hit a target. Things kind of were going really smooth. And then all of a sudden everything fell apart. We had like, I think we had seven down guys that we were tracking.

And then, but that we couldn't even get clear word because everybody was talking on the radio. At the same time, we were trying to break off the target. There was no organization. There were guys all over the high ground around us. I remember real specifically one of the fire teams pointing up to a mountain that was just to our left saying, hey, do we have friendlies up there? And someone else saying, no, we don't have anybody, you know, and looking in a battle map, no, we don't have anybody up there. And then that fire team wiped out what was our sniper element. So we had a whole fire team just wipe out, you know, our four-man sniper element, trying to come down high ground with a down man of their own.

And so we made it to the extract, dragging all our bodies out of order, everybody talking, get back to the camp, realize we're missing a piece of sensitive equipment. And then in the debrief, we discovered that we'd had this heinous blue-on-blue, and, you know, a fire team had pretty much wiped out another fire team. And we're just like, oh, man. So we pushed guys back out to the field to find a gear that we lost. And thank goodness they found it before we get to stop training to find that gear. And then, you know, we did, by no fault of my own,

we did a really healthy assessment of what you guys as the training attachment had put us through. And instead of going, whoa, you know, blaming you guys are making excuses. are like, okay, let's make a list and we knocked out like four things that we messed up, the worst four things that we messed up, and then how we were going to fix them. Like, okay, well, this down man thing, we don't have it right. We'd better start carrying stretchers in the field. And then we're going to stick, each fire team is going to have a pair of bag. So when a guy gets killed, we're taking all of sensitive stuff off of him so we can move him easy.

We put him in the parag so we don't lose it. okay that's done all right um guys we get everyone's got to stop talking on the radio at the same time we got to get some comms disciplines we ran some drills uh we ran drills on how we were going to get head counts um and you know then we then we did the drills on um how are we going to identify each other in the dark as soon as they're bullets without you know with no coms. And so we laid that out. And like, hey, everybody, here's where, you know,

we carry the, the BS17 panel. It's like everyone's going to have that in your left shoulder pocket, the little three foot ones down. So that's during daytime. At nighttime, we're going to use our strobes. And, you know, at the time, and even today, I'll tell you what. If I was going out today and I was worried about the enemy having,

night vision, I would be more worried about, and this is me personally, and I don't want to argue this with anybody, and you can hit me up, about my own guy shooting me because they can shoot and they have big guns than the enemy seeing my stroke. So that was something that panned out later. So we did that. I thought we did it in a real healthy way. We kind of, we were really cutting corners with our rehearsals because we don't get graded on our rehearsals. We get, grade in on a brief. So all the effort goes into the brief, but the brief doesn't stick with you mentally until you go out and rehearse it. And so we're like, hey, here's the way we're going to do our, you know, our head counts. And we would do head counts by fire team. Someone would say head count

and then fire team six is up, five's up, four's up, three's up, two's up, one's up. Like, okay, we go out rehearse it and we get to fire team three and the guy would be spacing it. And we're like, hey, fire team three. And okay. And we get to the point where that was just second nature. And then to the point where everybody, because we got decentralized command going on now, when we're moving off target, Fire Team 6 knows a head count is coming. And they just kick it off and it just rolls through and there's no issues.

So we got that done. We did our next FTX. We did considerably better. But you guys ramped up the pressure. and then we had other issues. And we're like, okay, hey, when we get all mixed up, we got to be able to reorganize without sounding like a high school cafeteria.

So then I think the next thing we punched into was our reorg perimeters in the dark and we would go out and just mix everybody up and go, boom. Someone will pass the hand signal for a perimeter and then we would go get it and get reorged and hit it up like that. And what I really

enjoyed about the training and I told people who came through it later was that it was like it was super challenging and it was like going to a haunted house and like I enjoy going to haunted houses because I like to go through and something startles me and I'm not really happy that something like a guy popping out with a chainsaw or whatever startles me and so I'll go through it then I'll assess how I reacted and I'll go next time, let's do something new. But it's completely new and unexpected. And you guys continued to turn that dial up of completely new and unexpected. And that panned out to work out so well for us because we had the right attitude about it.

And later on, when I moved in that position, when you talk about that later, I could see a healthy way to deal with that and the not healthy way to deal with it. And a healthy way is always owning it and taking responsibility. And then it just, it was so much fun. We'd be done. We'd be covered in sweat. Everybody was yelling. And it was a great experience. And then we just, we took that.

And then other blocks of training. And the most intense for leadership is definitely land warfare. And then Salk, which is our urban training. And we just got hammered there too. And then it's paintball. and a bunch of other stuff. But that was great. One other thing, like when you did your roles

and responsibilities, you didn't really define a position for the troop senior enlisted advisor because in that, you're just like, hey, you're not really going to be the assault lead or anything else like that. Because honestly, like you've said, four could run an assault. Yeah, the thing I used to say is,

is the senior enlisted advisor is the action arm for the tasking commander. So there's going to be things that are going to need to be made happen. And that's the guy that's going to make it happen. So, oh, we got a building that's got a problem or we got a position that needs support or we got a wounded guy. Like in the Army and the Marine Corps, their SOP is who runs a Kazavac. It's the senior enlisted guy because that's the guy that goes, oh, he has the experience to make this happen under a massively stressful situation. So my word to the senior enlisted guys is like, you're the action arm. This the task unit commander can't make things happen.

He's got to look at what else is going on. He's got to figure out what the next step is going to be. He's talking, getting information. He's passing information. All that stuff is going to. He can't take time to go clear an extra building or set up a security perimeter on this ridge. Like, he can't do that.

That's the senior enlisted guy that goes, hey boss. And obviously, he's saying, hey, boss, if you want to get out of here, here's what I'm going to make happen. I'm going to go set a perimeter over here. I'm going to put gunners up on that high ground. And then you guys can, peel through here and that's where we'll leave. And the TU commander goes, awesome. Yes, execute. So that's, that to me has always been the best way to utilize the senior

enlisted because if you put the senior enlisted actually in charge of something, well, guess what they're doing? They're doing that thing. And then when something else goes sideways, who's, who's going to handle that now? And it all seems to happen in a seam. Yeah. So it's like, it's going to be the most complicated thing too, right? The thing that's hard to handle is the thing that you didn't plan for. And so if you don't have, it's just like, it's just like you don't want to commit your reserves, right? You don't want to commit your reserves in a situation where you don't have to. Well, you don't want to, you're, as a T.U. Commander, you have one guy as like the reserve. You have reserve brain power. And your reserve brain power is your, is your

SEA. Because if something goes wrong, you can't get on it, but you need the most experienced tactically savvy guy to go and handle whatever it is, which you may not even know how to handle, but you just know that you've got, you know, enemy approaching on a road from the north. You're You're getting Intel. You're getting fed information. Hey, there's enemy approaching on the road from the north. Hey, Senior, get it taken care of. And then Senior goes, I got it.

It goes and handles it. And that's basically how we executed. And what was, what's really interesting is that over comms and guys would, the thing comms would be up and a lot of times comms go down. But over comms, the word would be like, hey, we're leaving. Break down your security. And then you're waiting for a call and waiting for a call. waiting for a call and then I'd have to run over there and say it looking at someone

actually say it and then they're like oh and and for some reason they're they're they're hearing it in their headset and uh um it just it ain't happening and you just got to go guys get they get jammed up you know and that hourglass is just turning and turning and you got to go you know hit them to get things moving get that processor moving and going again And then sometimes just your presence there. And what, you know, talking about yelling, you're not yelling at them, but like, hey, boom, get the 60 gunner down. Let's go. We're moving this way.

Hey, get that wounded man over there. The stretch ditch the stretcher. We're done. Go. And then hustling everybody up and just trying to keep everything moving around. And I'll say this now. Everything that we faced in combat was. easier than the stuff we faced in training because you'd put the screws on us so hard that we

were like, oh, okay, we've seen something pretty dang close to this before. So when a guy stepped on an IED and lost his legs that we didn't experience in training, but everybody dealt with it in a professional way, and of course, that was a horrible situation, but that was not something that we were new to. We were like, oh, okay, we've done it down men. We've had this situation. You know, we had a couple of guys get pretty severely wounded. And it was a factor in their pain, but it was no factor in how we fought and how we dealt with the situation. There were a couple times that we came ludicrously close to Blue on Blues, but because we had, we had, you'd reinforced everything in training.

Because we'd mitigated those blue-on-blues bloodlessly in training, we didn't have them on the battlefield. Yeah. Well, it was, I mean, for me coming into that role, coming home, I was, I was, I was, I was pretty emotionally connected to the fact that I wanted you guys to be ready. And just, you know, like the whole down down man thing, like, it's not easy to carry a down man. especially not easy when the guy helps you and he kind of, it's in training and he kind of jumps up on your shoulder and puts his hand in that right spot on your back to stabilize himself. And all those little things that they do to help each other out, it's like, it's not that easy. It sucks. And the blue on blue thing, and I remember, a task unit, your task unit

included would have a blue on blue. And I'd bring them into the office and everyone in the chain of command would sign like a safety violation. And I would tell everyone, I'd say, listen I'm not doing this degrading you because the person in this room that's had a real blue-on-blue where people got killed is me and I the one thing I don't want is for it to happen to you so there's so much driving me just to try and make it as realistic as possible and then you know you get the kick-ass team guys that are running all the training man once you give those guys the direction they're just going to go and And that's just, you know, so I mean, I'd show up for the training sites and the guys would be so amped to make the training awesome.

And, you know, the amount of effort that, the amount of effort that guys would put in to make the training realistic was crazy. I mean, some of those out at land warfare, some of the demolitions that would get set up, they would take them three, four days. They'd stay out on the training, on a site for three or four days, setting demo up everywhere. So there's stuff blowing up and catching on fire. Just smoke everywhere. Total, total mayhem. And, you know, there's only, this is the thing, when you're training, there's only so much you can do to simulate combat because what you can't do, there's a line that you cannot cross.

You can't shoot people. You can't do it. You can't wound your men in training. And so that line can never get crossed. And so what can you do to get it as close to that line as pop? possible and the laser system that we had and the explosives and then all just unleashing all that chaos and mayhem and I was lucky that I got to experience that on the battlefield and come home and be like bro and you know you mentioned it quickly like your attitude towards it is what the winning task unit attitude always was because it's really easy to go through that was bullshit you had a bunch of guys set up on that hill like yeah you don't think al-Qaeda's going to set up on that hill like yeah you don't think al-Qaeda's going to set it people up on a hill you don't think the moge is going to set people in a spider hole in the middle of a compound you don't think by the way all that stuff we got it from actual

after actions reports so the fact that you and your your task unit instead of looking at everyone else as to why you didn't do a good job you looked at yourselves and said okay what can we actually do better how about we actually try and improve some things how about we pick three four things we try and do those things better and then you do those things better and you're right because and you know this from working in training you're you already know what's going to happen like you can see you you put a guy here you put a bad guy over here you put a bad guy over there you've got a terrain feature like this you know what's going to happen and you watch it unfold and then you also know that if the leadership can make some good calls

it's going to be no factor if the if the platoons have good standard operating procedures it'll be no factor but if they're not and the leadership starts to fall apart I mean everything falls apart And that thing you just said about the fire team, I used to tell the task you to commanders this. I used to say, imagine you got your fire teams out there. Imagine if each one of your fire teams was doing something good that was moving you in the direction that you wanted them to move. Just imagine if that happened. And what happens when that occurs is the leader doesn't actually have to say barely anything other than we're getting out of here. And as soon as everyone, we're heading south.

We're getting out of here going to our old rally point. As soon as everyone knows that, they just make it happen. And to you, Commander, you can do whatever he wants to do because the fire team leaders are going to make things happen themselves. And the opposite of that is there's no possible way you can control all these people if you have to tell them everything that you want them to do. You can't say, hey, you can't talk to all those people at the same time. You can't know what the vantage point, the best vantage point for a 60 gunner is going to be on that little no-old.

You can't do it. That guy has to understand what it is that is wanted from him and why it's important for him to do it. And then once you know, is that, boom, he makes it happen. Yeah. And then I think it was my T-U commander that you're talking about when you said that you didn't. Initially, you weren't sure if quiet guys could lead because he wasn't, he's not a loud guy. Like, I'm a loud guy. Yeah.

His personality is different. He's not super loud. but he was direct, clear, and concise, and he did a fantastic, I really enjoyed working with him. Yeah, and he's a good example of that. I mean, he's not the guy specifically I'm talking about, but he's a guy that was, you know, especially like the little things you were just barking out, put a 60 over there, put that stretcher away, we're leaving it, get that wounded man.

Those things, if you're not loud, they just don't get heard. And so with your task unit commander, I noticed that and was kind of like, hey, man, you know, you need to get louder. And what he did was this, you know, get, hey, you know, he's pretty loud. My stupid SEA standing over all those tattoos on his arm, he might not be the smartest dude in the world, but he's loud. And when he tells you, hey, tell him to put that stretch away, whatever, then you or whoever in your task, he starts barking out the orders and it happens, you know. And so, yeah, he did a great job of that.

and had the same attitude as you, because he was experienced. You know, that was another cool thing. You know, I'd get guys that were coming through training more experience than me. And the good steel leaders would come through that training, be like, oh, that was awesome, man. Yeah, you just kicked our ass. Thank you. We're going to try and do better. What did you see?

Like, they would just want feedback, just want suggestions. And then you'd get other guys coming through that it was everyone else's fault. And the training wasn't real. It's not realistic to get hit from three sides. Really? Why is that? Where do you see that in the Geneva Convention that you're not allowed to ambush from three sides? And that attitude never turned out well.

It just never, it's zero, zero percent of turning out well. Of, hey, the training is unrealistic. The training is this. The training is that. Like, no, actually, just do the SOPs. Step up and lead. And everything works. And that was the other amazing thing is you'd see the same problem.

and once the task unit got good, you couldn't even stop them. No. Because it's 40 guys against four or five. As you know, the training guys are, it's like four or five guys out there shooting them up. Uh-huh. So. Yeah, I mean, when you're running those scenarios, you can't bring your guys back to life, which you can remotely do fast enough to apply a decent amount of pressure to win that

troop has just gotten up on step. And then then everybody is so happy. Yeah, yeah. You can't you, you're right. You can't reset people. You can't reset the op for quick enough because the, because when you get a seal troop that's just in straight, aggressive murder mode and going hard. Every little thing they see.

They're assaulting. It's awesome. It's a beautiful thing to see. Yeah. So now, were you, you guys, were you guys planning to go? to Afghanistan during that workup? I don't think you were, were you? We were slated to go to Basra.

And so we were going to be going down to southern Iraq and working out of there. And then the request for forces popped up that they were asking for a seal troop back in Afghanistan. And I think on the numbered seal teams had been out of Afghanistan since somewhere around 2005. So there had been no.

presence whatsoever for numbered seal teams in Afghanistan in a while. This is 2009. So initially there was, it popped up and then it was confirmed and then like over the Christmas holiday they said, okay, hey, we're going to send my troop is going to be the troop to Afghanistan. What that looked like, no one knew. You're going to Afghanistan because there's a deployment order. that has to get signed to go anywhere that's got to be signed by the secretary of your defense right and ours to deploy a troop to a sealed troop to Afghanistan was in the book it hadn't been signed yet

and so myself the task unit commander and one of the OICs who deployed with you we did a pre-deployment site survey and you know I think it was like in February we went oh and usually on a PD pre-deployment site survey or pre-pdDSS you go over you see what's going on then you come back we went over there and I stayed me and a CB chief came with me who was who was gonna set up our birthing and stuff with one of our support or or all four of us went and then he and I never came back from that pre-deployment site survey we just stayed there so yeah so going into you know in an awkward situation where we're going over there they were

We're working for the Army, SF, and they don't even know what they're going to do with us. A lot of them didn't want us because they'd had bad experiences, unfortunately, with SEALs before. And so what I did, and I kind of tore a page out of your book. I didn't know this is what you guys did, but this is what I did is I usually wear my hair like this. I went ahead and got high and tight to shift over to look a little bit more like the Army does. because it's just another way to establish rapport, and I don't care about my hair. I just don't.

And so when we got there, the first place we went was to the Siege of Sotif, which is the 06 that's running everything there. And I went into the Sergeant Major's office, was a senior officer, I went in his office and stood at, I introduced myself and stood at parade rest, and he looked up from his desk and stared at me. And I mean, you know, I got a clean uniform on. I got a high and tight.

And he goes, I have never seen a seal like you before. And I kept it real professional with him. And then he's like, hey, we don't know where we're going to put you. We don't know what we're going to do with you guys. We're working through that. You guys have got to go ahead and brief the colonel at the time. So we worked up a brief for the colonel. And my task unit commander went in and had a meeting with him.

And he was, he was a pretty fired up type of guy. And he asked, he asked the T.U. commander like, hey, what do you need? What do you need from me? And the boss told him, hey, I, we need this sect have to sign, sign our line item to get us to deploy here. And a week later, that happened. And it's in order where the set deaf is supposed to sign stuff and ours was like ninth back and he went straight to our line item and signed it. So that colonel, we made a good impression on him.

He had some poll obviously and made an impression moving forward. So then we were looking at, well, okay, where are we going to go? We still didn't know where we were going to go. And we talked to the, we had a briefing. with the general and he explained, hey, I don't have enough partner forces for all of my SF ODA teams that are here because normally we're working by with and through. And he goes, so you guys are going to go on whatever con-op is hot and plus up my ODAs, you are going to atright the Taliban and deny them freedom of movement. And I thought, hallelujah.

Yeah, it doesn't get any better than that. It doesn't. And then we moved down to Camp Brown. And third group was running the Special Operations Task Force West down there. And we got there and I met with a senior analyst advisor there and he's like, hey, we really don't. We don't know where we're going to put you guys. We don't have any space for you here. And we just stayed good, you know.

And we established a relationship with him and the commander there and the XO and the ops guys. And then two days later, the Sergeant Major takes me out. And he's like, hey, you see this big tent? They have this big tent right inside the gate. And he goes, this is where we were doing all our vehicle maintenance. And he goes, we're getting ready to move those guys over to another yard. You guys can have this. And so that was awesome.

We were basically like initially where we were the unwanted, you know, in-laws showing up for Christmas, like Randy Quaid and Christmas story. And then now we were like, hey, old college buddies that had come into town. And third group was just so good to us. There was absolutely no parochialism whatsoever. And that was just a great experience working with them across the board. So how did you, when did you start putting together? How did you say, okay, this is what we're going to do? How'd that come about when you guys?

They just told us. There's like, here's what, here's, we laid out, here's our capabilities. And there's like, well, here's how we'd like to use you. And we said, Roger that. Where can we help? We never came in and said, hey, this is, you know, this is what we do. And we come in and do this X, Y, and Z because they're targeting and their whole, their whole philosophy was completely different than what they did in Iraq.

In Iraq, we were very personality based. and NSW as a whole, we were reduced to personality-based targeting. They're more about disruption. They're like, hey, Taliban's over here in freedom movement. We're going to go do stuff over there, and then they're going to have to come fight us, and then it's going to slow them down, you know, everywhere they're going to work.

Hey, they're funding this war with opium. So are we going to burn down opium fields and punish the farmer, or do we wait to the Taliban, collects the opium up into one spot, and then go destroy it. And that's the kind of stuff that we would do. We would go to the opium. Caches after the poor farmer who doesn't have a choice about what he's growing is harvested,

that they moved it to one spot, and then we pop in, destroy all their opium, stay there for a couple days and fight them and then leave. So that was good. But our attitude was like, how can we help? Where can we help you? And they just gave us work. And it was great. And you guys had some pretty crazy ops.

Yeah, I would say like, so the first op, we had the Advon crew that was there, and we went out with 3116 in their commandos, and they had an op where they went in and took a bazaar, which is like a strip mall, basically, where they were facilitating wanted a bunch of opium, went in, held that, destroyed all the opium for a day, and then fought everybody that came at us. So we went out on that operation with them, and it was good. It was a lot of fun. And then that got them used to us and what we brought to the table. And that was an op that was setting up in a concept of operations called Siege Engine. And that was like, I think, the first frag order under it. And they would do a concept operation

like, hey, here's what we want to do with this stuff. And this siege engine was basically hammering the opium in the Helmand River Valley. And it culminated with the last frag order and was when we went into Helmand in, or we went to Helmand into Marja, which is like at the heart of the Taliban. It was a Taliban-controlled town. Coalition forces had never been inside of it. A year later, it was 2010 or 11, the Marines went in there and cleared it. and it was a huge fire, huge firefight.

Prior to us going in there of this operation, and it was when I say we, it was us, the Afghan commandos, an SF ODA, and the OAB above them. I think that gets OAB, right? Yep. So that detachment above them, and we just plus them up. And their OAB commander was equal rank to our task unit commander rank,

but like my boss, was just like he didn't push back. He was like, hey, what do you need me to do? And that OAB commander really appreciated that relationship that he didn't have to, you know, bump heads. Big ego battle over. I want to be in this position. Exactly.

Or I want to make this call. So coalition forces had never been inside of Marja. They tried to go close to us and just gotten shot out. We choppered into a bizarre. which was we took the corner of four blocks and a pretty huge area where there was a ridiculous amount of opium consolidated they were refining opium into heroin and make an iED improvised explicit devices all kind of stuff there in the middle of their town we went in there at night we stayed there for four days and just just got after it wholesale

Yeah, I think there was 8,000 pounds of opium that we destroyed. It was a big operation. There was the DEA was involved. There were FBI agents there. It was a huge crew, and it was good to go. And some of the lessons learned from there is that's okay. So like the first day, I was in one of the blocking positions there, and we were taking fire basically from the east into the south

because the way the different positions, it was kind of like across, the way it crossed out. So when we were taking fire from the south, you had to be aware that like, hey, I can't see them, but my bullets can see them in that way there's a bunch of guys. And so we took fire from a tree line that was probably 50 yards from the compound that we were holding. And I was up on a rooftop with another guy,

And then I saw like four guys walking around in camis. And we were getting ready to light them up. But they were wearing the stuff the commandos were wearing. Like, hey, we got guys moving down here. We need a headcount. Who's got the Afghani commandos? Because these guys look just like them. And then they came back with, oh, hey, we got everybody.

No one's outside of our position. And then so we were getting right. I'm like, don't shoot. Don't shoot. And then we called again. They confirmed again. no one's outside our position. Then finally, 20 minutes later, they're like, oh, wait, we had some guys walk out to go to,

I don't know what they're doing. If they're going to the bathroom or what they were screwing around doing, but we could have just completely lit them up. Yeah. We used a lot of 50 Cal on that. We had the air support. We had everything from Huey's to B1 bombers overhead all day long. Bombs were falling. that the Taliban was absolutely furious

that we'd come into this strongholder theirs, captured this much, you know, all the opium. There was somewhere like 800 pounds of refined heroin. And the heroin was like packaged in these bags that were like this big. And they had like a scorpion on it. And it said like 2008, you know, it had like a label. Little marketing branding.

A marketing like, you know, made here in Afghanistan or whatever. And so it was a huge affront to them that we were there. So after like the first two days, we basically killed off every local fighter. And then they started bringing guys up from Pakistan. And then it got kind of lively because the local fighters knew every piece of dead space. But the guys from Pakistan weren't really familiar with the areas. So they would be bumbling in the open, look in the other direction. Like, oh, ha ha, ba bum bum, get them. you know we I think the third morning this

we got up and there's no fighting we're like well when's it gonna because it gets just like you get to setting your watch by you're like okay sun's up and uh we should start getting some shooting by now and there's nothing and there's nothing and so

we radioed up to the to the headquarters we're like hey what what is going on did they quit and they're just laughing his hysterically on the radio and they were able to tell this and I can't describe to you how but The guy who had the keys to the armory where they were storing all their weapons They couldn't find him probably because we bombed him over the night and they couldn't get into the armory To get their stuff to come us attack us That new guy's gonna get a beat down isn't it? Yeah

But uh It was just an audacious operation that worked out great. Did you guys take any casualties during that time? Or did the Afghans or did the Army? Yeah. So we had a rocket hit the compound over next to mine and our dog handler and one of our corpsmen got fracked. The corpsman, the fragged knocked a tooth out and then launched stuck in his tongue. So he's real lucky at his tooth slowed down the momentum.

And then the dog handler got hit in the back. there were several of the army guys that got straight up shot and then here's the awesome part like the um i feel like their call sign was Pedro but it was air force medevac and as soon as they heard that we were troops in contact they lifted up and they would just be loitering real close to the firefight and then like as soon as that that missed report came over and like hey we got a a guy down, they came in. And it would be, like, I would be watching going, we're going to get that helicopter shot down.

And they would just come in. They had a mini, the door gunner had a mini gun. And they would just land, right? Like on top of the guy, in the middle of the firefight, we don't care. And like, I would just, I was so proud. I could just be crying because it's such an awesome thing to see because there's complete disregard for their own personal safety,

and they're just waiting to jump in there and get guys. So luckily, on that operation, no one was lost, and then everybody was, the guys that were shot were all recovered from their wounds. And what kind of damage did you guys do to the enemy? Significant. I think it was pretty significant. I mean, there was just a huge amount of drugs and their equipment and things that we destroyed.

And then it just had to hurt them psychologically that they thought that that was, they had complete freedom of movement and then all of a sudden we came in and stayed there and just did the meat stomp on them for four days. And you guys weren't only doing urban situations. You guys were going into other scenarios where you were like digging in on hillsides and whatnot too, right?

Right. So later on, you know, that saying, take the high ground or it will take you. because all of our operations, I think we only did, we did two, 23 total operations on that thing. Most of them were multi-day. And so there were only two that we were in and out in the same cycle of darkness. And typically, you know, we would do terrain studies and we're like, hey, we got to defend these positions. And so when we had a compound that were like, here's the compound, this is the compound that we're going to take and hold.

where's the high ground around it and then we need to get elements up on that high ground as well there were also there was there were two like time sensitive targets where we came in as a quick reaction force where other elements where there's another coalition soft element and SF element that got an assaulted

in a valley and they had to strong point to build because they'd been hit in this valley, and then we came in on the high ground during the night, and then the next morning, because most times the Taliban didn't fight at night because we had the advantage. The next morning, when the Taliban assaulted them, we were on the high ground behind them

and laid the hammer down, and then we're able to get stuff to those guys were able to get out that day. Yeah, so we were taking high ground positions quite, you know, when it may be. sense. There's one operation we were on where there what really wasn't any high ground. And so there were some, there were like the furthest we could clear away from the compound that we were holding was 30 yards. And then it was a dense like green zone and a wall. People

could completely creep up. So we had guys go, you know, we identified that. We're like, okay, what are we going to do? And then someone's like, hey, we can put, well, let's go put pop flares out there. You know? And so, you know, that's like going back to Vietnam stuff. But guys went out and placed those and then boom. You know, once the bullets started flying and the troops in contact, the tick, as we say in the vernacular,

started to really get up to speed. And then all of a sudden you're like, like, oh, those pop flares are going off. Okay. Start pumping 40 months. Mike, Mike over there or whatever. And, yeah, it was, it was cool. There's one of the stories we have back in Marja.

The guys brought the ALGL, which is like this 40 millimeter chain gun. And then it has this, the new one has like a computer mount that goes on the top. And so you look at the screen and then you put the little cursor on. on what your target is, okay? And then it lases it and then gives you an elevation correction based on the ballistics for the 40 millimeter. And then you raise it up,

you depress the lever, and then just boop, boop, boop, boop. So there was guys in a tree line that were shooting at our guys and they had set this thing up and basically it's a 40 millimeter sniper rifle. and they had the uh uh like a predator was overhead watching giving them feedback on the fire so they shoot at these guys in this tree line

and then they ask the predator for a battle damage assessment and the predator comes back with two EKIA which enemy killed in action one ran away on fire oh that's good And what about I know you told me a story one time about you guys weren't in the high ground There was somebody like across the valley That had a little elevation on you And you guys were digging in and digging in and digging in

Sandbag sandbag sandbag as much as you could Yeah so there was one of the operations We were in Swallycott and that this was one of the places That was bad enough where they actually came at us at night So we did our insert Helos dropped us off and we're in our perimeter

getting ready to start our offset patrol in to hit these confounds we get when PKM and two RPGs just come zipping overhead. And luckily we had whenever we got inserted, we always had Apaches that escorted us in. They went over and started

hammering these guys. They wound up getting, I'm going to kill like 30 people. And what had happened was as it turned out, we were offset from a target, but we're offset was put us right next to where some other a bunch of other Taliban guys happened to be and they thought we were coming to get them so they maneuvered then when we we did our offset patrol got to our

target guys came at us in the dark uh we could see him coming from the high ground we laid a fire team pushed out shot them right when they came around the corner completely no factor and then uh you know just 30 when they got within they came around a corner 30 yards away from two AW gunners who just cut them down. And then one of those guys, I think later, we figured out was probably some big wig with the Taliban. So we took that compound and we took the high ground immediately behind it. But it was in a mountain range. So there was always going to be high ground around our high ground. The next day, once they figured out where we were at, and then they got on all the high ground around us, and then they just brought it. And I can

So where we were at on that high ground, it was like the ground was too hard to dig. We always brought 10 empty sandbags per guy so that you could fill them up and make defensive positions. We couldn't fill sandbags up because it was like trying to dig in your parking lot. So we just stacked all the rocks we could stack around us. And then they kicked this thing off with a barrage of RPGs and then just a steady stream of PKM fire, which is, you know, their belt-fed machine gun.

And I remember laying flat on my chest and there's like eight inches above my head. And by the way, I'm not, I took my body armor off because I was, oh, it's hot. I'm going to take my body armor off and my helmet. And then I'm like, oh, I got my helmet back on. And I snaked into my body armor. Everybody did.

And then these, the bullets are hitting the rocks, steadily 8 inches above my head. And the gunner is he's 1100 yards away. And he's just basically, you know, almost. Lobbing him in. Because I'd been shooting it. We'd been shooting at the guy a little bit. And we just couldn't, he kept sliding behind a rock.

And it was too windy to get him. And we had, I think we had a Reaper overhead. But in the middle of the day in Afghanistan, when the rocks are 90 degrees, and a person's 90 degrees, it's worthless. They can't see people. And the Afghanis are not sitting out in the open worry and kill them. So I was like, and at the moment, I wasn't scared, but I'm like, okay, I'm getting ready to get shot.

And I'm getting ready to die by the sword. This is what I get. And that was it. And then our SATCOM radio antenna got shot and got knocked over. And so now we had no comms. to get air support because we desperately needed to get some more air in. And then my boss, I don't know how he got shot,

he didn't get shot, but the TU commander is like, all right, and he just got up there and fixed the antenna and was hitting it. Well, down in the compound, our guys just started lobbing mortars and we had the, they started using the delayed fuses so they were detonating 25,

meters above the ground which which lays down an impressive frag pattern and tamped things down a bit and then we just got hammered and hammered and we're like oh this is not going to be good um like 15 minutes later they're like hey we got some air to you and it's not it's not like we weren't without air cover because we did have a reaper and i think a predator showed up too but they're just limited So two French jets showed up. And a lot of the coalition forces will be difficult with you sometimes when you're calling for air support and argue with you. And I'm not sure that these guys would have argued with us, but we just said, hey, there were two main ridge lines that we were taking heavy fire from. And we said, give us a show force flight is where they'll fly real low over those ridge lines and see if it pushes their heads down.

and they came in right over both ridge lines and that tamped it down because they got down and then a little while later that slowed things down and it was more manageable now for us we'd get our heads up and start to shoot back a little bit

then the B1 bomber shows up and they've got bombs to waste and they gave us four 500 pound bombs on each ridge line airbring at 100 yard increments, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, and then that hammered them a bit. Then we were able to isolate some of the other guys. Use our organic weapons to hammer the other guys.

And then we were like, man, this place is bad. The next day, so we were supposed to extract that night. And we were like, hey, when's our extract? Oh, and at two in the afternoon on the high ground position, we ran out of water and it was 114 degrees. So there's no shade, there's no water, it's just a massive suck fest. And nothing's come until it gets dark. So we just waited.

The heloes came in after dark, kicked out pallets of water and ammo to resupply us. And they're like, by the way, you're staying for another 24 hours. Because what we didn't know is that us being there was having a huge effect on the whole battle space. and some other elements were able to adjust their position and some of the Afghan surrogate forces were able to get a whole bunch of stuff done. But when we got that over the radio, I was like, oh, we're gonna stay here.

Don't they know that we almost got hammered? Like this is the first time, up until then we always had the upper hand. They weren't really worried about getting, like just getting overrun. And in this point, there was a real fear any second now, we're going to get overrun. And then they're like, you're staying for another day.

And I remember talking to my two platoon chiefs. I'm like, hey, we're staying here for another day. And you're going to push out and clear this stuff. And we're going to reinforce this position. And here's what we're going to do. And then they took a deep breath. And they're like, okay, Roger that. And we stayed another day.

And the next day, we got into it. They threw it, came at us pretty hard again, but then we had a little bit more air support. We had developed a relationship with the 82nd Airborne Combat Air Brigade their Apache helicopters, which are like tanks in the air. They lived right down the road from us. And so we would have barbecues with them. And we would run a range and have them over,

and then they would come shoot at the range and we'd stand around them bullshit. They broke their sleep, So this is really important for pilots. They have got to have a X amount of rest before they can fly. And they do not break their sleep cycle lightly. They broke their sleep cycle to come support us. And then they put themselves at risk where, like the Afghans don't like helicopters.

So when a helicopter shows up, they'll sink. They flew low on purpose because they'll go, oh, that helicopter's low. I think I can hit it. And then they can't resist. They come out. and then these guys would just hammer them. And they came in the next night and that was awesome. Yeah, so I was still at Tradeout while all this was going on.

And I remember I would get emails from you, from your task unit commander as well. And we were just be talking about, you know, like, hey, this is what's going on. And I remember I was signing the emails back to you guys as the spiritual advice. visor for T.U. Triad. I was there in spirit, dude. Yeah. And we, and yeah, we were, we were hitting back up to you because there's a lot of, there's a lot of massaging and stuff that has to get done. You know, we got, like, I was looking at a picture in the hallway the other day, and it's that, that classic picture with the yellow smoke, and Mikey's there, and Seth's right behind him. And I never really studied everyone's gear, but I looked at Seth, and Seth's,

got the enhanced battle rifle, which is the M14 that just in, you know, the situation it was. It didn't work for our lasers and our sights. So these guys up at Warcom fixed it up so you could use it and have 762 on the battlefield, and you guys all had that. And we got there right away and they were just getting ready to field the scar heavy. And we got them to field it first overseas, which is not what they let. like to field it first everyone trains with it we got them to field it overseas that was awesome because all of our guys had you know 173 grains of democracy and justice flying out there so when you when we

would take when we take an app when we take a compound right take clear and clear compound hold a compound the afghanis would they were used to 5-5-6 so they would know like okay it's pretty windy today and I'm out at 500 yards. It's not likely you're going to hit me with your 500, your 5, 5, 6 round. So they would be like kind of out in the open and we would just kill them. And then then that that circle would go out. And our guys were regularly getting guys at 5, 6, 7, 800 yards.

And these are just not the scar heavy. So here's what they did. most of our snipers took the night force three by five to 15 scope that was on our um that's our that's our 25s which that that gun had some issues and and would jam a lot and then just put them on their scars and that's what they patrolled with so they would have it all the way down in three and a half power so if you're patrolling you can just swing it up it's got a low magnification so you have both eyes open you can shoot and then they can put the bipods out and hit stuff far out and and those things were in freaking valuable.

And it just brought a whole new dynamic to the battlefield. And, you know, the scar had some problems. It's not a direct impingement thing where the gas doesn't go all the way back as a gas piston like the M14 did. They told us don't lube those. And guys would still lube them, and then it would jam up and they're like,

this gun sucks. I'm like, well, I hope you lubed your gas piston. and yeah, I put a lot of loop on it. I'm like, don't do that. Don't do that. So that worked great. And that was awesome that we were able to get that over there. And the common ore at the time basically gave us whatever we wanted and asked for.

The support we got from Group 1 was incredible. Now, you guys didn't really take that many. I mean, no one got killed, right? No one got killed. How many guys got wounded? Two guys got wounded with Frag. You know, we had a couple concussion injuries where guys got knocked out, and it's hard to quantify how serious that is.

And then on our turnover operation, when SEAL Team 1 came to relieve us, is when Dan Knoastin got hit by that IED and lost both his legs. And that, I mean, horrible event. And thank goodness, we're just like there's so many things that lined up to save Dan's life because we'd been inserted for an offset patrol, went in there, got in there, secured the bazaar, and then we push guys up to high ground like we always do, except for the Taliban suspected, you know, oh, well, if they come to take it, they mined the entire high ground. So as that element was pushing up, there was an explosion, and then there was quiet.

And then T.U. Commander gets on the radio, hey, was that a controlled debt? And the OIC, who deployed with you, came back, and he's like, it was not a controlled debt, and we've got some wounded. And we're like, okay, work through it. Get on the SACCOM. the 47s that had dropped us off it was an SOP for them to have a flight surgeon on one of their birds

and so they hadn't made it all the way to back base or it may have been that they lawyered around for a little bit that could have been too so they were right there and there were surgical stuff right there because Dan's wounds

were absolutely horrible And then once the EOD guy started, once that happened, and it was lucky because the charge went low order, so if it'd gone high order, it would have killed like six guys. He discovers that they're in a minefield, basically. His metal detector is getting overrun, so he's got a bayonet or a big screwdriver,

and he's probing the way out in front of the guys so they could get Dan out and onto the Madovac that later got him back. How long had you been on the ground for? Like a matter of 10, 15 minutes? No. We did like an, we did an offset. So we patrolled in for like three or four clicks.

So it was a little, it wasn't a couple hours, but it was inside of an hour. That's why I'm not sure how long was 47s were loitering or if they were on their way back and they were able to turn them around. but they were back quick and they had that surgeon on there, which I think really made the difference for Dan.

You know, now he's, the guy's running marathons. I haven't run a marathon let yet. I feel like such a loser. And he's competed in the Olympics a couple times right now? He got a gold in the Paralympics, right? There you go. Yeah. Yeah, he's awesome, awesome guy.

Yeah, that was, that was devastating, devastating. I remember we got word back that, you know, one of the guys and we just assumed it was one of your guys actually because I don't think we even knew the turnover that, you know, the turnover was taking place. I assumed it was one of your guys.

But, you know, and then I heard it was Dan. And I remember the first phone call that I got and I was like, is he going to live? Oh, yeah. And at this point, they were like, Yes, he is. Because, I mean, I know it was like touch and go.

But then the first person that I don't remember who it was, was like, yes, he's stable, he's going to live. And I was like, then we're good to go. And I just remember thinking, thank God he's going to make it, you know. Yeah. The like on like the second or third op, we were there. Our guys were doing an op with it. And we always had Afghani commandos with us because they were the partner force of the O. D.A.'s we were doing. And one of them stepped on a mine and it blew both his legs off and part of

his arm. And one of our guys got cut in the face with his femur. And then there were some issues where when they were putting, all of our tourniquets were failing because it had a plastic windlass that was going. And so the one guy that got hit and they got cut in the face with his femur and it messed him up mentally for a little bit and I didn't know what to say to him so I didn't say anything to him and I you know what I wish I had because I've come to a conclusion now with a lot of this pain that everybody carries around that it's it's a poison you carry inside of you and if you talk about it it it lets it out and then then it's kind of detoxing you a little bit and so like I don't know you know if you're listening to this and you're in a situation if someone's gone something

through horrible and you don't know what to say say something just sit down there and and just talk with them about it you know ask how they're doing see if they can get it off their chest because it helps yeah i the same thing we had guys they got like i had one guy that got shot in the chest plate and got shot through the um camel back on his back those are two different operations too i mean like so what does that do to you when you're thinking how close was i to just getting killed twice, you know, in two different scenarios. And for sure, I think, you know, if you don't, and what is, you know, what do we do in the teams?

Like, make a joke about everything. Everything's a big joke, which probably helps in some cases. I think it does. But yeah, let, let, let, you definitely got to, if you get the opportunity to talk to people about what's going on. And what I think it does is even more than like, well, I'm sure, I don't know, because I'm not a psychologist, but. Okay, there's the idea that you're like letting this stuff out, right?

I'm going to let this stuff out. There's also the idea that when you talk about something, you articulate what you're thinking and you have to like put it into words that somehow they become a thing that you can manage. Yes, it makes complete sense. So like when you don't talk about it, it's just like you have a conversation with somebody about whatever. You want to debate with somebody about some subject.

If you never debated about it before, you're going to be at a disadvantage because you don't really understand all the ins and out. But when you actually talk to someone about it, then you say, oh, here's a point that I can make here and here's a point that I can make there. If you don't talk about this stuff, it's just sitting in there and it doesn't get any better.

You don't understand it any better. But when you talk, like we were talking on the last podcast, how when you teach something, you understand it more because you have to detach from it to look at it from the outside. Well, if I explain something to you, I'm explaining it to myself. You know, I'm explaining it to myself too. And I told you this yesterday, you know, when I had Tom Fife on the podcast who was in World War II Korea and Vietnam and got a Purple Heart and all those.

And I asked him, I asked him some question about losing guys when he was a battalion commander in Vietnam. 60 years ago, I didn't say that part about like, you know, what was, you know, what was, how did you guys handle casualties or something like that? And I don't know what the question was. But here he is this, you know, Army Colonel, retired Army Colonel, and he's talking about the guys that he lost 60 years ago, and he got choked up. And I remember looking at him and I'm thinking to myself, okay, this is the way I'm always going to feel about the guys that I lost.

It's never going to go away. And like just hearing him talk about it and seeing that reaction, I was like, okay. And that's what I tell all my bros now. I'm like, hey, you're always going to feel that way. Like it's just here's a guy that was in World War II, Korean V. He got a purple heart in all those and he gets choked up talking about the guys that he lost in Vietnam and Korean World War II, but you know, I specifically asked him about Vietnam. So when you talk about these things, I think you get some kind of handle on them because you have to articulate them in such a way that you can then it's like what, you have to name your enemy, right?

You have to name your enemy, they say. If you don't name the enemy, then how are you going to fight them? Well, it's the same thing. When you actually say, hey, you know, I really feel bad about this or whatever. or I think I could have done this better, or I think I made a mistake, or I wish we wouldn't, or whatever it is that you're thinking,

you know, whatever survivor's guilt, whatever that thing is that you have when you say it, you get to look at it. You get to look at it from the outside and go, okay, yeah, I'm explaining this to Jason, and I'm telling him what I'm thinking. And then while I'm explaining it to you,

I'm explaining it to myself is what's happening. And that's why I think talking about it, not only is it get it out, but it gets you a handle on it somewhat. Yeah, the process of it coming out of your mouth and then back into your ears or maybe letting different parts of your brain adjust and deal with it.

But, yeah. Check. What else? So you come home from Afghanistan. So like, and here's another thing I want to talk about too. And you brought this up in the book you were covering in the last couple podcasts. about fear.

I'm like, once that first bullet goes by or it just like, everything shuts down and you just go to what you're supposed to do and then you do it. It's like in the moment, all emotion goes away. There's no fear. But then afterwards and before is when you have the fear. Like, I would lay in my bed there and I would completely would picture. notification going on for my wife. Like I could see the guys in blues driving out to my house.

Or, you know, okay, this is a good chance that I'm going to get severely maimed. And I could picture myself sitting in a wheelchair outside of, you know, the paddock that I have my horses in. And I can't even ride them anymore. And, you know, now I'm getting emotional about that. It's odd to me, but that's weird how, how it, you know, when you're in the moment, you're not afraid. Later on, when you're thinking about it is when you start to freak out about it a little bit. There's no doubt, and this has been confirmed over and over and over again, that the waiting is the worst. That's just, you're just anticipating.

And then once you're going, you're going and you got stuff to do. And I was never in situations where I like didn't have anything to do and there was right things happening where I was like well The few times I've been mortared where I'm like sitting there waiting for a mortar to either hit me or not hit me That sucked a lot But it wasn't yeah there wasn't like it wasn't like an hour though Yeah, you know it's like fom Okay, we got about 30 seconds. I don't know maybe a minute before we find out where it's gonna be be at. But I also think that, you know, if you're scared of dying, it's going to be real

nightmare all the time, I think. Yeah. And like, like, like I said, that one point in a swellicot where I'm like, okay, I'm going to get, this is what I get. It was just, was there was not fear. It was just an acceptance. I'm going to get shot here pretty soon. I wonder how bad it's going to hurt or burn or whatever it is and it's like all right that's going to happen okay now later on you think about it um there's one other thing i think on an earlier podcast people were asking a question about if you had a routine because i had a really definite routine that i went through prior to going out in afghanistan and it wasn't like anything religious but i i'd sit down i'd be in my room And, you know, we'd have everything but, like, well, we had everything in our room,

but we had a ready room and all that. So Iris had sent me this CD from this country singer, Core Blund. I'd put that on, and then the first thing I'd go through is I'd change out every battery in all of my gear, because you got like your belt or headsets, your nods, all that stuff's getting new batteries. Then I would go through and look at all my battle maps, clean out the ones from the last one, get my new battle maps for this one study them then i would always always always carry 24 hours worth of water with me and then pack out my food then i would go get fresh batteries for my radios then i would

go through all of my gear strip it down put it back together for anything that i any special gear and equipment i needed for that op there was uh uh later on i like to carry you a 60 power spotting scope because I was spending a lot of time on high ground. Make sure that was all clean up. Make sure that my radio was charged with crypto. All that stuff. It would take me like two hours to go through that whole process. And then we would go outside.

We would do our comms checks together and go out and get on the helicopters and get after it. And so that routine right there is like so good. Because if you had all that stuff ready and you just sat there for two, hours, that would not be fun. No. No, and I mean, you got to go, you got to check everything three or four times. Yeah. I remember riding with a guy on a ride in.

It's like, because a battery died on his nods in the middle of the, you know, when he's driving on a convoy, I'm like, good grief. Yeah. You didn't put a fresh one in? That costs like 90 cents, dude. My, my first deployment to Iraq, we were doing that and we stopped. We stopped changing batteries for every op, like after a week. because the ops were like an hour long.

Yeah. And all of a sudden we realized we were going to run out of batteries. Like we just didn't have enough batteries. So we just went to like, hey, carry an extra battery. And if, you know, if it dies, then whatever. Change it. Yeah, ours were always all night. Yeah, you guys were going out all night, isolated.

You know, we were 10 feet from our Humvees or whatever, 20 yards from our Humvees. You have a big stack of batteries in there. It didn't matter. It's totally different scenario. Yeah, I think that I would always be super busy with doing. stupid, you know, officer stuff, whatever, before you know, getting this brief, checking in with this guy, whatever, doing all that stuff. And I would just get all ready.

And it seems like I would work up until I got into Humvee. Yeah. And that's what I TU commander did too. And it was hard on him because he would go on the op already on arrest deficit. Yeah. And then when you're going to stay out there for two days, eventually, you know, he's got to go down. but we figured out like he would pass it off to one of the other OICs to be the GFC

because he didn't want me to be the guy talking to the JTAC about what's a drop. He had more sense than that. Well, I would be pretty liberal. There's a picture of me and Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. Yeah, good deal, Dave. And it's in downtown Ramadi. I think it's on the roof of Cop Falcon.

and we're both just completely asleep, sitting there just asleep. Yeah. And the same thing, because when I'd go out, a lot of times I'd been awake in, you know, all of us would be awake for a long time.

So you get in the field and you're like, cool, I can sleep now. And that was like, okay, so that was like one of the hardest things as a leader is like you get there, you get in the O.P. And everybody wants to stay awake. And that means we're all going to hit the wall

in like six hours. So it's, you got to like go. and say, hey, you four guys, get in there, and I need you to take sleep, so you're ready to bump out on these security positions or these fighting positions or whatever it is because it's coming.

Yeah. Everyone's just going to hit the wall at the same time, and you're all asleep. So tired. All right, so that's a, was that the last op you did? It was with Dan? Was that the very last op, or did you do a couple more? I don't remember.

It was pretty close to the last op, because one of our platoons had already redeployed at that point. You know, in leadership, you're the first one there and the last one to go, so we didn't go until the last bird. But I think that was our, if it wasn't one our last one, it was our second to last one. It was coming home from this deployment any different than coming home from your other deployments? Yeah. I've been there for eight months, and it was the month.

most kinetic deployment of my career. So, yeah, they, and NSW started doing the third location decompression stop, where they're like, hey, before you get home, we want you to sit down and blow off some steam and sit down with, you know, a psych and talk to the psych a little bit. and our redeployment flight kept getting bumped so we redeployed like I think

eight days later than we were supposed to and every day it was like hey the bird's gonna go tomorrow get up muster they're like nope maybe tomorrow and we did that for eight days in a row

finally we got on it and it was getting so long I was really angry I'm like just let us go home and they held their ground and I'm really glad that they you know, held their ground because when we got to the other location and you started drinking, I was just a frigging idiot.

Drink way too much. But I needed it. I needed to blow off some steam and stuff. And it was good to have the other guys to talk to and to be somewhere where, you know, my loved ones didn't have to see me being just a complete buffoon. And then, you know, and then I got home. and yeah that that it took a lot so so I live kind of at the time was living in east county San Diego and the area I live in is really similar to areas of Afghanistan so I would

find myself in my yard you know and I was back and constantly scanning the high ground and doing a technique called ballooning and that's where you know I'm here and then I'll sidestep here and then I'll backstep here. It's so like you just making it difficult if a sniper's aiming at you that you're hoping that he's squeezing the trigger as you're stepping to the side and you're going to step out of his crosshairs doing stuff like that. And then, you know, when you go eight months and every stressor that you have is a fighter flight, full-brown stressor,

whether it's the enemy shooting you or indirect fire coming in, it's hard for your body to come back and then differentiate between somebody not agreeing with you on something you just said or anything else. My sleep was completely jacked up based on us operating a lot at night. And I've always had issues with my sleep. So on the deployment, I'd started taking ambient and they were giving it to me. And so I was having difficulty sleeping. without that. And then, you know, I think it was the first night or second night I was home. The dog

started barking and I kept a gun on the nightstand, which is just just an SOP. Now it's in a safe because I have kids. But dogs are barking. I roll out of bed, grab the gun and I'm at the ready waiting. Just like, oh, okay. And then Iris, you know, rolls out of bed and she or looks up and sees me standing there naked holding a gun next to the bed, breathing heavy, scanning both the entrances. And she's just like, oh, wow, what came back? And, you know, I didn't get a chance to talk about my wife and where I met her, but she was a Wrangler on a ranch that we go to a lot for training when I met her. And she's just, just hard, a good, good, good partner, soulmate. And and she's been extremely patient and put up with a lot of stuff that most women wouldn't have.

And when I came back, I was drinking heavily. And mainly, you know, as I assess my drinking issues, it was because I was so wound up that it would be four beers as to where I could get myself back to where everybody else walks around in their day of life where they're just calm. because I was just like, and that's just a factor from one is not sleeping, and then the other one is just coming back from a deployment like that. It takes you a while to decelerate when people are shooting at you

and all these horrible things are happening, and then now you're back in society, but you're not really, or you're back here in the U.S., but you're not really, you're not all the way back. and so and my temper was like a millisecond fuse we'll get mad about stupid stuff and all kinds of stuff and finally she said to me she said you know hey baby you're not you're not the same guy you were when you left and uh i really want you to talk to somebody and so immediately i got on the phone I called up the psych and I started seeing the psych and talking through a lot of the stuff

that I had going on and started working at getting better. And it's a long process. And it was helpful to talk to those guys. To say that you have PTSD and is somehow maybe admitting a weakness. And I don't know if it's, you know, how do you define PTSD? For me, it's like, okay, well, if I'm in a crowd, I'd get hyper alert. And when I came back from this woman, I was hyper alert all the time. And adrenaline, just a constant steady drip of adrenaline going in.

And that's why I was kind of drinking heavily to calm down. You know, and then the vicious cycle I got into at the Ambien, and then my sleep been jacked up and then inflammation and all the other health issues that came with that. So that was like kind of the first step. The second step was at this time I came over to the training detachment and, you know, 2010 and was now running the land warfare section for you. And Doc Parsley, Kirk Parsley was our diving medical officer group one. And he's a seal later on went and got his, you know, doctorate and became a doctor.

he kind of at that point was discovering that all these health issues that we were dealing with were revolved heavily around sleep and so he was able to help me like get off the Ambien start doing stuff to take you know natural things to get my sleep back in order did you ever do the sleep study did he put you on the three he didn't but I did a sleep study later and And I have sleep apnea. And so I've got a CPAP machine that I sleep with for that. And that helps. But, you know, sleep and diet or a lynchpin, like sleep diet and exercise.

There's three pillars of good health probably. Is there a fourth pillar? Probably like hypnosis or I don't know. Those are the big three, I would say. And getting that sleep fixed up helped my mental state a huge bit and it helped my physical state. I was in terrible shape at the time. I had a lot of different joint pains and ailments. And so that was good. You know, I was taking melatonin and he goes, how much melatonin do you take? I'm like, oh, I'm taking six milligrams. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, you need,

your body is going to not make its own. And ideally, you get to the point where you're not even taken, you know, like some magnesium at night to help you calm down. And so that, that's started me on the path and that I was really glad because otherwise I know guys that can't sleep without Ambien and I don't think that they're really they're not really getting into the sleep and it's just it's not good and that this time you were working at trade out mm-hmm came back and took over the the land warfare uh senior enlisted role there as it should be yeah that's that was my dream usually guys don't ask to go to Nyland and and I was like hey please send me out there. This is what I like. And that was good to go. You know, it's really interesting.

And we talked about this earlier. As we applied pressure to the different troops, we would see troops that were loaded with superstars. They had so much raw talent, but then they didn't own their mistakes. And they were just terrible. They'd be terrible. And we're like, what, I know you guys are good to go, what is going on here?

And then we would see troops that necessarily did not have a whole lot of raw talent, but they were very humble. And they were, they kept their, their op plan super simple. And they would just, they would be the troops that, that, like, we couldn't, the opt for just couldn't, our opposition forces couldn't keep up with them. That's just a fact. And it's over and over and over and over again. and again and again and the people that it's interesting too because you might think well if you're

not humble then you're going to be cocky and if you're cocky with the training guys then they're going to be more judgmental and they're going to push you harder and they're going to jump on everything that mistake you make it's not like that it's like it's so clear that when a when a troop was humble, they would fix themselves and fix the problems and the mistakes that they made. And when they weren't, you know, you get four or five guys, six, seven guys in a troop that are cocky and arrogant. And not only are they not owning their own mistakes, but they're blaming everyone else inside their own troop. It just turns, it's so horrible to watch. It's, it's horrible to watch because they're at each other's throats. They're blaming each other for everything.

and no one's taking ownership. It's just a total nightmare. And it has nothing to do. It's like even completely objectively looking at a troop. You just watch them fall apart because someone doesn't say, hey, you know what? Maybe we should just work together and try and do better, which is essentially all you need to do is say, wait a second.

It took us 12 minutes. The trade guy's timed us on getting our headcount, leaving that building. It took us 12 minutes. And in that 12 minutes, we took form. more casualties. Maybe we should look at how we're getting our head counts. Whatever, just whatever little thing. And if you're an arrogant person, you just, and then guess what, then you end up with a bunch of new guys that are all arrogant, because they're all just imitating you. You know, they're all

imitating the senior guys. There's not a new guy that checks into a team, goes, you know what? My chief seems a little bit arrogant. I'm going to be more humble. That doesn't happen. No, you're a new guy. You're like, I'm going to act like my platoon chief. That's what I'm. I'm going to do. And that's what you do. And you end up with a whole whole task unit of just people that don't want to say that they did anything wrong. And again, it was just horrible to see because it'd be guys that were all over. I mean, guys, we know everyone, you know, know everyone on the West Coast. You know every guy. Like they're our friends. And you're like, bro, no. And it was so hard. That was the hardest part of the job was, was having to, you know, you're looking

at your friend and saying, bro, man, I'm not like, you're not, I'm not just saying this. You guys are doing really, really bad. And you need to fix some of this stuff or it's, you're not going to get through it. You're going to get reloaded. Yeah. And that was the worst part of the job, in my opinion. Absolutely. And then it's super tricky just to be able to debrief these guys and do it in a manner where

you don't sound condescending. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, God, I love that job. I would go out there. I had my little voice recorder, and I would sit there, and I would take all my notes in the voice recorder

because you can't write while you're, all this stuff's going on. And sometimes I would just record the guys as they're freaking out, total panic, screaming at everyone. I'd just record them. And I'd get back, and I'd be like, hey, man, okay, when you guys got strong point into that building,

what were you thinking you wanted everyone to do? He's like, they just needed to move. And I go, okay, let me do it. Let me just play what you were saying. And you'd press play on the recorder. And the guy would be like, and you couldn't even understand him. Couldn't even understand him.

And I'd be like, man, bro, this isn't just like, this isn't just me. And there's some guys that didn't like me, you know, or whatever. It's like, it's not just me. I like you, actually. I think you seem like a good dude. I'm just saying, like, these mistakes are bad.

And they're not just made up, man. No. They're not just like, I'm not just making it up. You guys ran to the. target and the whole task unit ran to the wrong target. You're in charge of the assault and you ran to the wrong target and everyone followed you and that just, you know, you didn't, you didn't do what you were supposed to do. That's not good. And I'm not just saying this because I want to be cool. I'm saying this because it's not good. Yeah. It's just, it was crazy. And the great opportunity

of that is it was a non-stop experiment to where you could watch how guys organize themselves and how their organization structure responded to pressure. And you could see like, oh, well, these guys are using decentralized command and we can put all the dang pressure we have to bear short of killing every other guy and they can still function. Or these guys have over-centralized their command or there just isn't any and I can put a fraction of pressure. and then it just cracks everywhere and falls out.

And that's cool. That, I mean, again, I learned so much from the several years that I was doing that, by I could see the personality traits that guys were exhibiting as they came through there and then how they were organized functionally and what worked and what didn't. Yeah. And the other, and I just said a bunch of negative. stuff about how much it sucked, but it was so awesome. You'd get these studs, these young, seal, beasts, E-5s that would just be like, I'm taking

this element, we're moving. And you'd like, I love this guy. And I just, they would just be awesome. And so you'd see that all the time too, of course. Yeah. And so that was what made it so cool. And yes, it's the ultimate leadership laboratory to experience from the outside, from the instructor cadre perspective.

of we're going to put 28 platoons through this little problem. It's the same problem. And the only difference is, and you could say there's some difference in the guys, but they're really not. There's actually like the seals in the platoon, they're good, they're solid, they're fine. There's a couple knuckleheads.

There's a couple of great guys. There's guys in the middle. But that's not the difference. The difference is so blatantly clear, the leadership, that you just get to see that over and over, and over again. So it's awesome.

Yep. How long did you stay there for? Those are three years. And then what came next? You made Master Chief and then wrapped up your time at TradeNet. And then it was time to go over to Team 5. Check. I went over to Team 5 and the way the progression is you do a slot as the operations Master Chief.

And then the next cycle were built on a two-year cycle. you would fleet up to become the command master chief. And operations is just, it is a crazy job because you are responsible for every single moving part that the SEAL team does. So you're looking at what all nine platoons are doing for training. You're involved with where everybody is going to deploy. All the gear they got, all the ammo that they order,

Anything in between outside, you're dealing with all the other commands. And then so halfway through our workup, the ISIL went and took Mosul and then deployed. They split up how the team was organized so that that kind of threw a wrench into how we were deploying. we had to come up with a plan to possibly deploy half of the team during unit level training. And it was busy, but then it was a fantastic experience because basically learn how to do everything. And then every time, so working with like, if someone came to me and they complained to me about our admin department. And then I would go to admin and like, hey, what's going on here? And then I would find out that like, we'll have to blame.

And sometimes all of it lies with the guy complaining about it. Or, hey, this other unit over here, they're not doing this right. And then I just go over and talk to them and find out that, hey, they've got some issues I don't know about that we could help them out with. Or we're not doing everything correctly. And so I got, I took that stuff that I learned from, you know, like Danny, Danny, Carol and Steve Hines and Montyree Sison and started to apply it outside of just a platoon level, but to a command level and a relationship level. And it worked out great.

We got a lot of stuff done. And, yeah, I'm rambling a little bit, but there you have. That stuff every time there was, every time there was a complaint, this isn't doing the right, they suck at this. I dig into it. And there are a couple times I didn't dig into it, and then I'd wind up with egg in my face. And now I just dig into everything. I take what someone tells me, like, somebody gets in trouble over the weekend. And it's like, okay, this is what we heard right now.

The first story is never the real story. And then let's just, hey, we don't have to make a call now. Let's wait and let things develop and find out what the real facts are before we do something knee-jerk that we can't take back. and sometimes it winds out that it's worse and sometimes it winds out than it's better. I remember one of the things I heard a general say

on the deployment that I was on later on, he says he's not going to make a decision until he has to. They're like, hey, we want to do this? And he goes, do I need to make that decision today? No. Okay, then I'm not going to. Because he can let more facts come in.

He can deal with more stuff which made sense. That was General Nagata, which was the Soxent commander when that stuff went on and he was, I've never met him personally, but he believed in real flat communications. So when he sent out an email,

there'd be like eight, a couple hundred people ced on it. And he, because there's a tendency for people on staffs to use the flag officer. they're working for, they're using them like the Wizard of Oz, right? They're like, oh, the general just said this. And then you're like, well, I saw his email and that's not what he said. In fact, let me forward you the email and highlight it and everyone else will be CCed and no one does that.

But there's, I've seen it happen a lot of times with other leadership who don't use flat comms where people below them will start saying this guy says this or this guy says that and start doing a little bit of manipulation to maneuver whatever their agenda is or just get things going the way they want to do. But one thing I heard you know, just to catch on that, don't make a decision until you have to. And there's a weird dichotomy in that because, you know, there's plenty of quotes that are the opposite of that, which is, you know, a good, well, like we said, a good plan right now is better than a great plan executed tomorrow or whatever. Or, you know, you've got to be decisive. the reality is

there's and I've I say this a lot which is if I know that we're if we get we get in tell that there's bad guys in this building in this town somewhere and they're like we want you to go hit it that doesn't mean it's like okay okay I decide right now

okay yes we're going to go hit it we load up the vehicles and we start driving and we drive there and hit it no we actually go okay well let's let the information develop and we'll start planning so I made a decision the decision was to start planning the decision is to go hit the target and then it's like okay

well now it's night time we have a good plan but we're not sure we haven't confirmed the intel okay well let's drive to a forward operating base and get staged right so we've still flexed

I've decided to do that but we haven't decided to go hit the thing but we're still prepared to if we need to we've moved in the right direction and then we get you know intel that well we don't know but a vehicle arrived at this person's house and we think it might be him.

Okay, well, let's push to a staging point, right? We still haven't decided to hit it, but we've moved in that direction. And this happens with businesses, too, where there's something unfolding, a new market, right? Hey, this new market might open up. Okay. Let's invest all of our money into this new market right now. No, that's not a good move. What you do is, okay, let's find out, let's invest a little bit of money and find out how big that market really is.

Okay, cool. We do a little study. Oh, it turns out that that market does look pretty big. Okay, let's do a little research and see what it would take for us to push into that market. Okay, cool. And so you're moving in the right direction, but you're not just jumping in with this decisiveness to say, okay, I've seen all I need to see. I've decided that we're just going to go all in right now. That doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes.

There's other times where it's like, guess what? We're standing in a hallway or we're standing in the street and we're getting shot at. we're going to get into a building. That's what we're going to do. Like there's no, we're not going to think about. We're not going to move towards the building. No, we're going in the building because right now out here we're going to die. So, yes, be decisive in those situations.

Be decisive when you have to be decisive. But if you don't have to make a decision, the big decision right now, and you can make a series of smaller decisions, iterative decisions that move you towards what you think decision you will have to make, then go that route. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you guys deploy to, and this is when you guys get into Mosul. No, that's a following deployment.

Okay. So what did you guys do on this deployment? I went to the command split up, so the CO and the command master chief were up in Iraq, and then I was at another spot, non-disclosed location, on a crisis response element with the XO. And that was six months. That was six. Well, we did five months.

Because at the time, they said you have to be front door to front door in six months. And because you can't predict the airflow, we did a five and a half month deployment. And then that was a big eye opener too because on that deployment, I was going to an embassy once a week. How'd the boys handle it? I mean, just. They did good. We had guys kind of spread out in different spots, and there was a big operation that went on there that one of the National Mission Force did, and our guys participated in it. And it was a good, like, shooting deal.

Nothing happened up in Iraq. I think it was frustrating for them. And then by the nature of how everything was, there was a really slow strike process. So when our guys could see like a vehicle born IED driving towards Iraqi counterparts to blow them up, it would take 20 minutes to get clearance to drop a bomb on it. And only 15 minutes to drive there. And like five minutes to drive there. So they just watch it happen live on TV and they're like ah ah.

So that that aspect of it was frustrating and there wasn't a real clear decision made on what was going to happen at that point so there wasn't it was I don't know the guys up there didn't do much but just spin spin spin spin which is really difficult and like hey get ready oh never mind hey get ready oh never mind and uh um yeah that that was uh that was good so it was a good deployment overall it was a good experience for me to kind of like because I was the senior enlisted guy where I was at And so that was great. And came back from that, and we did our change of command, and then I've leaded up to be the command master chief.

And you don't really know who you're going to get paired up with when you're in that leadership role because there's a commanding officer and a commanding master chief. And as it happened, I got paired up with a guy that was just awesome. and I'd known forever. And the two of us are a lot alike personality-wise, which we went to a couple of leadership seminars and you're like, you guys are almost the same person. So, hey, here's what you're going to have to watch out for

because both of you are really blunt. And, yeah, I really won the lottery. It was a real pleasure working for him. He was a fantastic leader, and what he did really well, specifically was he communicated a lot. So he's, he always speaking with his,

his ex-o, his ops officer, myself, and then the task unit commanders, he spoke with all, once a week, he would have a meeting with them, once a week,

you know, and he was all the way down to the platoon, oh, I see, and he did it in a manner where he wasn't stepping on other people's toes. And there was never any,

there was never any, any guessing on where he was coming from or what he expected and everybody knew that he cared about them was was his first priority and then the mission came after that so that was really good but hey you know what if you if you if you messed up he don't hold you accountable he he he give give you a written counseling and he did that for some of his guys who just did some shady stuff and they're good dudes and he's like okay well hey you know hopefully this stops here and did does a written counseling so so that was good but uh yeah again it's the same message that we talked about on the lost podcast which is just knowing where you stand absolutely having predictability

and no when when you know a guy's got a reputation like oh if you step out of line you're going to get formal written counseling, that tightens people up immediately. Whereas if you think, oh, this guy's kind of a pushover, guess what you do? You cause more trouble and you cause more problems. Yeah, you really do. And it was like, there was always an escalation with it, but it was it was straightforward. And then everybody always understood like, hey, I'm, I'm not mad at you. These are just the standards we have here. And you did this. Here's the consequences of that. You know, we need you to fix yourself. I'm rooting for you to fix you. fix yourself. I'm not mad at you. And then let's just move forward from here.

Got back from that deployment. And then I got back in February. You started this podcast in December. Iris had started listening to it. And then like I said, podcast six is when I started listening to it. And then I was caught up within a week because I was able to do it my longer commute. And then just you talk about, I wish I had this. I I had the luxury of having this when I was in a really important leadership position. Threefold as a husband, as a father, and as a seal, right? And those, the priorities are almost always the sameer. It's weighted heavily husband, father, seal.

And so all the stuff that is discussed here through all these lessons from these books and all that, it can take and apply to every stinking aspect of my life. And I did it. And like the hardest thing for me was to really get introspective and honest with myself about what my shortfalls were. And it's not something that you can do overnight. It's not like I can get a shot and get inoculated. It's something that is water tortured in.

And then I just growing so much from it. And like I'm going to, you know, the like starting with the the dang sea of machetes season of the machetes right that was like the first really dark podcast and I was driving I was wincing listening to that I'm like why did he do that to me um but then I appreciated how good I had it right then then then and so now as those those podcasts are so dang necessary to understand how evil I could because I could I could completely go down any of those roads. And then once you understand it, that's in your heart.

You can control it, but then you can appreciate how good you have it. And you've got that, like the episode that you did on the Miley Massacre. I had to pull my car over because I was crying because I was so ashamed that this, I was just like, can't this story be about somebody else and not? Americans and then later on when I when guys make chief and I talked to you about this I'm like hey when my guys make chief we have we have to put them through all this training a lot of the training I don't think is good one of the things I did for him is like hey we're going to listen to these three podcasts and Miley was one of them the other

one was steal my soldiers hearts which was an awesome podcast and awesome lessons and they're all awesome lessons but it was all good because because the guys listened to it, and we'd have discussions. And then, you know, you came in and we VTC'd and talked to them. And that was such good stuff. But going down that road and then being in all these different situations at the executive levels of leaderships in the SEAL teams,

and I could see in real time, I'm like, oh, okay, this is, this is, yeah, my face is getting flushed and I'm a little emotionally attached to this idea. my fists are clenched. What did he say? He told me to breathe. All right. And then I come back and like, oh, or someone said something and I disagree with them.

And I just ran headlong into, you know, a billbox. I'm like, that did not work out well. Maybe I can learn to finesse it. And then it worked out great because our, I think we did. The feedback I've gotten anyway is that we did really good at the team. and we dealt well with a lot of other people. And so that is a huge degree for myself was having the podcast to learn these things

in military history and then being able just to be introspective and improve on my life as whole. And then having these discussions with my, because she listens to the podcast all the time and we discuss it and it's just been good for us across the board. You know, when we deployed on that deployment, and that's during the deployment

when we did the clearance into Mosul, we had one platoon that went to an area and they were working under the conventional Marine. Well, it was all, we were all working for the conventionals. The conventional forces in Iraq in 2000, 16, 17, they were the main effort we were in support of. And then our guys went to a location where they inherited a pretty toxic relationship. And they took some of the lessons that you talked about.

And they went in, they're humble. They said, hey, how can we help? What can we do? Oh, hey, when are your, when do you have, when are your normal battle rhythm meetings? We want to send a representative there so we make sure we're doing everything right. We're getting the word and all that. and they really leaned into it, they turned that relationship around

in a matter of a month, completely around. And then they were in an area of Iraq out west that was not, there wasn't a lot going on out there at the time, but that colonel was so impressed with them and liked them. He bent over backwards to make sure that he could get them outside the wire

so that they could get after it. And we were able to get it. get them outside the wire. And at the end of deployment, all five of our platoons had been in combat. They were the last ones, the fifth platoon that hadn't, and then they got the opportunity to really mix it up on two operations.

And it was 100% because of that colonel liked them as people and trusted them and wanted to see them do well. He wanted to celebrate it. And when people don't like you, they want to see, they'll walk across the street to see you get screwed over. relationships are stronger than the chain of command. Absolutely. And they had written in there, I love this because I copied this, on their whiteboard in their,

their joint operator, their jock they had at the top in all caps, relationships equal mission success. So when one of their E5s went over and talked to a Marine Corps E5, they were really cool with them. They didn't manage their own security like the Marines did security around their camp. They would bring dinner out to the guys that were standing watch at night. Just like it was awesome. And then everybody, there was a real sense of teamwork and stuff out there.

So that was good. But you guys did some real tough fighting inside of Mosul. Yeah. Now our platoons that were up north, you know, when they kicked off the liberation of Mosul, which was the biggest military operation since the invasion of Iraq. And there were, I believe, three different main lines of approach going towards the city and ISIS pretty much controlled everything on the outside. Guys, the first couple days of that, there were semi-trucks that were loaded with explosives,

vehicle-borne IEDs that was a semi. Like, I don't think, you know, outside of the Moab, we don't have a one. bomb that's carrying that much stuff coming at them. And that's where, you know, EOD chief Fein was killed on the first couple days when our guys had gotten into an area. They were, they were partnered up with the Peshmerga, which are the, who are the guys that, Kurds, yeah. So they're partnered up with them and they were pressing into an area and they got into an area that was just too laden with IEDs and they were having to back up their their Matt V, the truck they were driving in and Jason had the door open so he could make

sure that he was in the same tire tracks of that he'd just driven over. Unfortunately, they'd driven over a crush plate once it crushed it halfway. They hit the rest of the cross plate and it was a daisy chains of explosives. It went off. A bunch of it hit him right in the face. It was a fairly horrible experience for our guys that were there because he was still breathing. Biologically, he was alive for like the hour that they were with him

before they could finally get a medevac to him. That was too hot. The medevac wouldn't come in. So they had to offload him off the truck, get him in the back of a pickup truck, and then drive through all this heavy fire and a lot more IEDs to get them on on board the MEDAWAC and then, you know, then he expired. And it's the worst case scenario, period. And it's something that we drilled.

We started drilling, we call it a Keko drill for when you lose a guy back on the strand. and we would do full-blown drills like, okay, here's what we need to do to cover down on that so that we're ready. And I'm a little bit superstitious. I think if we practiced to do something a whole bunch of times, it's not going to happen. And then it happened, but luckily it's something that we, it's not lucky that it happened, but it's something that we drilled. And more so, we had like a book because there's an incredible about emotion,

everybody wants everyone gets excited they all want to do stuff and so there it's sometimes you can do there's too much that you can do and you can confuse the situation so we we just opened up we had the keko book we opened it up and like our admin guy is like hey what step one and he goes down he goes all right we need to do this what step two we need to do this there's no way we would remember that we went through it went through the steps one of the things that that I was pretty adamant about is because I had a good idea

although I haven't experienced it directly about what my guys had gone through that were there with him and I wanted to get a a psych out to just help them unpack some of the stuff they went through before the end of deployment so he could do two

things. He could get out there and help him unpack what they were, you know, what they went through, and then he built up some rapport. So at the end of deployment on the next stop, they had some rapport with them. So the group sent the guy out now, this is like three weeks after this happened, because the best thing to do is to do something. And the guy stayed busy because there was a freaking war to fight. But then, when stuff tapered down for them and now like, oh, there's downtime. Hey, guess what? The Sykes coming out and he's going to hang out there.

And you don't need to speak with him, but he's available. And typically, he'll get out there. He puts a thing up, hey, he wants to speak with it. No one signs it. But then he's just there. And at lunchtime, a guy hits him up. And then later on, another guy hits him up. And, yeah.

and the guys went through and there was heavy fighting up until the day that we redeploy. Team 7 basically came in and we're doing turnover ops and going out and doing stuff there in Mosul. We had just, there was a little bit of a law when Eastern Mosul was finally cleared. And then there was a big reassessment on moving over to the other side of the river. but it was busy and it was pretty good I mean we had a couple of vehicle-borne IEDs that got within 100 yards of our guys before they were able to kill him with and then the drivers got like a kill switch on him so when he dies it gets released it gets released and detonates and there was no shortage of, I think there was at least like seven or eight of these things coming at us a day.

And then they'd been prepping for months. So they were laid in all across Mosul. There was a garage underground that had a V-bit in it. And so as the front line moved closer, all of a sudden this car would just drive out and drive right into the Iraqis and blow them up. And there's no time to hit it with a hellfire or stop it or whatever. and they had them coming pretty quick. Yeah, you know, going back to the casualty plan,

you were giving me a, well, it's a hard time, but you were harassing me saying, like, when are you going to write your protocol book? Because I talk about, you know, how you've got to have protocol for certain situations that are, like you said, things that are real emotional, things that are moving real quick, things that you know you need to be thinking about,

but you won't be able to think clearly about when they're actually going on. And that's what you're talking about. You know, you guys put together a protocol to follow. And the Navy has one and the teams have one. But, you know, you've got to look at it and actually understand what it means. You can't just open up a book that you've never looked at before.

So, but that protocol idea for your life is definitely a powerful thing, whether, especially for things that are going to be emotional and rough to go through. If you have a good protocol, Commence the protocol step one and and you also talked about the guys continuing to be busy and that's absolutely true If you're gonna sit around and if you're gonna sit around you're just gonna think about the the horrible event you just went through And that's not gonna go well because you're not ready to deal with it

So get back to work work let it settle a little bit and then you'll you know you'll you'll you'll you'll have to deal with it later But you do have to deal with it at some point Yeah I know that like one of the times that I got to go out to the to the to the to basically the flot with our guys who were going advise and assist and they would be about three blocks back or four blocks back from the front lines the civilians that lived in Mosul would just move away from where the fighting was and then just kind of mingle around just outside of it and then go back to their houses so we were at this one location where the guys were providing support to the Iraqi CTS and we had

snipers up on rooftops who were able to see all the way to the front lines and take shots and then we were also using mortars pretty heavily we got some 80 ones in that are just frigging awesome so two things are so one thing and another story right after this so there's all these civilians around which a little nerve-wracking because who's who right and there are a bunch of kids there were some kids right next to living in the building next to uh with their families next to where our trucks were parked and uh they were really nice kids and they spoke pretty clear english and they wanted candy and stuff so we were chatting with them a little bit and and messing around and then so we were there all day and then in the evening a bunch more kids

came out there's a whole group of kids and i don't know if they'd just come in the area or was the evening and they just wanted to come out and play and so there's a We were in this area where there weren't a lot of buildings, so we were right in the middle of this big field, so we could see anything coming. And the kids were all playing, and then a salvo of 120s came in. And so 120 millimeter moors, boom, boom!

And they basically kind of bracketed us, but then where one of them landed, was right where those stinking, those poor kids were. And I looked over there, and I saw this beautiful little girl hopping away in the smoke, and she's missing a leg. And then I saw a guy run out and snatch up a little body, and he's just wailing. I thought, you know, I thought about my kids at home

and what those people are going through and how awful it must be. And now we just got to redouble our efforts to stop this freaking crap that was going on with ISIL because it is just so unsat. Because little kids are little kids or little kids, you know, wherever they're from or whatever, you know. And to see innocence shattered like that was rough.

But that's part about, you know, knowing the darkness and what does that do? That makes me appreciate my kids more. and then never pass up an opportunity to hug them or tell them I love them or anything like that. Yeah, and those kind of stories right there. You know, I pretty regularly have to explain to people that there are evil human beings in the world. that those people that drop those mortars, they don't care about those kids at all.

And I heard other stories from guys coming back from Mosul after you were there where one of the biggest risks that was going on was the guys doing the EOD job. Well, what does the EOD guy do? He dismantles bombs. Well, they do that in the lowest possible risk way that they can, which often means if they find, or if they find an I.E.

of some kind. What do they do? They just blow it up in place. They send a robot over there and detonate the thing and just blow it up. And that makes your job a lot less risky. Well, what was happening over there, it was suicide bombers. Okay, so what do you do with a suicide bomber? Well, what you do with a suicide bomber that comes up that's wearing a suicide vest, you shoot them and you kill them. And that makes your job pretty easy because then you can then, once you get a dead person with a bomb on their chest, you can send a robot over there and blow up the mom. Well, what happened and what the some of these stories I got told was that these ISIS was putting these suicide vests on little kids. And so you can't shoot the little kid and you

don't want the little kid to get detonated. And it was one of the riskiest things that they had to do. And you know, that's, and again, that's what that's the kind of thing that that, you know, there's like there's a lot i'm not saying america is a perfect place because it is not but that kind of when you hear a story like that and you know that there's a some random eOD guy with a wife and kids at home and whatever else he's got going on and he puts all that on the line to try and help some little iraqi kid from getting blown up that's say what you want about America, but that right there is America.

We went out to the, well, the guys were going out to the flood every day. I got an opportunity to go out with them another time when they were right on the edge of Mosul going into it, and the building that they were occupying was a school. And one thing I noticed

as I was walking through the buildings of the school is that on the wall, of the school, like, okay, inside the classrooms, had all the Disney princesses, Dora the Explorer, all the stuff that our kids enjoy, so it's twofold. There's a thought like, oh, our Western culture and lifestyle is going to get overrun, negative.

Because Western culture, on the whole, while you said it's not perfect, is still the best thing going, and it is completely contagious. And even over there in Iraq and a school that was controlled by ISIL, their little kids are looking at the Disney princesses and Dora the Explorer

and, you know, that stuff, Western things because it's good, it's appealing. Yeah. And that gave me a tremendous amount of hope. Yeah, that's... In just our culture and way of life moving forward. That's the whole idea of months ago when I had said that, oh, you want to solve the problem in North Korea? Give those people iPhones so they can start watching YouTube because you watch a couple of YouTube videos and you look around at your, you know, barren neighborhood where you're eating like water with salt and it is your dinner.

And you watch a YouTube video of people eating steaks and McDonald's and Subway. And you think yourself, something's not right here. And it's not going to take real long before those people say, look, we're doing this wrong. And you probably heard that story about Gorbachev when Gorbachev came to America and went in, have you heard this story? No. Gorbachev came to America from the Soviet Union and he went into like a vons or whatever supermarket he went into. And he went into the cereal aisle and saw that there was 390 different kinds of cereal in there. and he realized that they needed to stop what they were doing

because you know how many different types of cereal there was in the Soviet Union? One. You know, that's it. And when you try and control everything, it doesn't work. And actually, I remember you calling me up one day. You're like, hey, this, he was like, I was listening this podcast. This applies to everything because it's the same with government. I'm like, yes, it is.

You can't control everything. If one person tries to make all the decisions, it doesn't work. I was actually going to read this Thomas Sull chunk from when I last time I had Jordan Peterson on because he lays out this thing about how the government trying to control the pricing of some kind of pelt, some kind of pelt. And if the government raises the prices, every hunter goes and goes and gets all these pelt's and then turns them into the government. And then the government, what do they have now? An excess of pelts.

And so now what do they do with them all? They don't do anything because there's nothing to do with them because they aren't needed. And this whole cycle unfolds where things just don't work with centralized command. Yeah. And things like Dora the Explorer and the Disney princesses and Thomas the Tank Engine and all these Mikey and the drive. Dragons. These things are going to spread. And those evil bastards, what do they do to try and stop it?

You know, what do they do? They try and control anything, any form of freedom, and especially freedom of speech, you know, controlling the internet, all those things. And it's disturbing to see. But I believe that like in Jurassic Park, Echo, movie reference. My dad was in that movie, by the way. Was he really? Yeah.

He's like one of the first guys to appear on the screen. He just walks past. He's an extra. Still, still. He's in there. In that movie, I think the line is life will find a way, right? Yep. Life will find a way?

Yes. That's what happens. That's what happens. I think so. You know, with all these, these folks will remember. Those folks in Mosul, they'll remember that. They'll remember who gave them freedom. And, by the way, it was Iraqi troops, which was amazing.

to hear their Iraqi troops fighting hard and sacrificing because in Ramadi was pretty rough to get the Iraqi troops to take lead and when they would take lead the insurgents would be waiting for them and would deal heavy blows to those guys and it was a nightmare to watch but it's it's awesome that they stepped up and they did the house-to-house clearance were they heavily supported by coalition forces by Americans and firepower and all that yeah but guess what I mean how how many people did they lose At one point, we thought we were going to lose our entire partner force. When they first kicked it off, they were losing 15 to 20 guys a day.

And we did the math. We're like, at this rate, and it was because our strike process was really slow and it hadn't gotten decentralized yet, that was fixed later. But we're like, okay, at this rate, in three weeks, these guys, where our entire partner force is going to be gone. Yeah. And what's really impressive is that we lost a battalion in Ramadi. They deserted.

And they had shown up. They did a couple operations. They took some casualties and they left. And so for those guys, when you were in Mosul, to take massive casualties and stick it out, that shows you that how much, that's just leaps. And it's incomparable to what it was like before. It was there.

CT, their counterterrorism unit, which is their like premier, yeah, basically tier one. Yeah. They were all really, really good to go dialed in. And it was just the fighting was so brutal. They were losing guys heavily. Yeah. And the other funny thing, somebody put this on social media the other day,

and it was like Jocko Willink predicts the future or something like that because I was on with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan's like, you know, what do you do about these ISIS guys? And how could you ever defeat them? And I was like, if you gave the ISIS problem to like a Marine Corps second lieutenant and said like, hey, figure out a plan on how to beat these guys, they could do it. It's like there's a bunch of bad guys surround them and move through and kill them all. That's what we're going to do. And he's like, yeah, that actually did happen. And that is what happened.

Yeah. And it was beautiful. And the amount of attrition that took place was awesome. Yeah. And for those people that think that you can't kill an idea, they're wrong. You know, and then there was some of the stuff where ISIL had gotten so hysterical with some, there was a video, there was one of those, you know, I do those horrible videos. And it was something happened over in Syria and they released a video where they, you know,

they killed like nine guys, but they were from the local area. And then I guess the tribe was like, hey, can we have the bodies back of our guys you just killed? And they're like, no. So the next day, a suicide bomber walks into the ISIL headquarters in that area from that tribe, which the way the tribalism works, they're willing to do that. And boom, clacked off killed like 30 people. They just, you know, and I think there's one or two people that are kind of hardwired,

maybe to do that out of a thousand. And they have to do these videos. knows and force people to do that stuff because it's not in their nature. It certainly isn't in mind. That's another big misconception. It's like, oh, they're just willing to die. No, they're getting coerced and forced into those situations. You know, that's what's actually happening.

Like you said, sure, is there one out of a thousand that's like so brainwashed that they're like, yes, I'm going to go be a margar? Sure, there is some of those. But most of them are, hey, if you don't do this, we're going to kill your whole family. So which one do you want? And the guys go, yeah, okay, go ahead, kill my whole family. And I'm talking about the situation, too, where they've got, they got like a guy strapped to a post with the thing on. And then they tell someone, go stab them. And the guy, no one wants to do that.

You know, like they were doing what the Japanese were doing in World War, too. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Hey, go hack off some heads for training today. Go kill some poor Chinese farmer. Yeah. Go. And no one wants to do.

Most people don't want to do that. And that's like, in their situation, too, a lot of those people are like, I don't want anything to do with this. No. Well, you've got to do it, or the result is we're going to kill your family. And then they just get into a situation where they're doing it. And it's not good. Anyhow, on a positive note, like on that deployment, I clean my dang diet up as a result is, you know, Peter Atia being on this podcast, and now I'm listening to Peter Atia's podcast and keeping

smart on my health and started doing basically, I did pretty strict. There's a couple weeks where I ate nothing but eggs and sardines. And man, that is boring. Oh, but I found, you know, my inflation went away. I dropped pounds and I was getting in good shape. And then I started experimenting with the intermittent fasting, which is something that I'm still doing now. And that's good stuff.

Did you start that during deployment before deployment? On the deployment, I'm like, hey, okay, I'm going to quit eating sugar. Because you'd mention sugar's bad for you, and I never really paid attention to it. Because I think you mentioned it before. Sugar is bad, and then I'm like, okay, I'm like, hey, I'm going to stop eating sugar, and I was eating big salads and stuff like that.

And there was a guy that I was deployed with that's really smart on this stuff. And he's like, well, hey, if you're, if you stopped eating sugar, then you need to quit eating that yogurt and that milk's got a lot of sugar. And guess what? that fruit has got a lot of sugar in it. So man, then I started looking at labels, getting smart, picked up a book, read it on basically, you know, how I eat now is roundabout a paleo thing. Like I try to avoid grains and carbohydrates and stuff that's processed.

I'm laughing because the other day you're like, you know, I mean, you're like, yeah, you know, I stay that way. But then you're like, but if I go to someone's house and they say like, hey, Do you want a piece of bread or whatever? Yeah, I eat it. Yeah. Because there's another aspect to that. I don't want to be the vegan guy who is like, hey, you know what?

I'm better than you because I'm a vegan. I'm better than you diet. Yeah. And so it's like really uncool if someone offers you food to say no. Yeah. So that's something I weigh out. If it's like, oh, okay, I go over to your. house and we're having pieces of dinner that's what I'm going to eat because I can afford to

eat a piece of pizza or you're not going to die yeah and then you just got to watch out for the slippery slope oh yeah because because it is I say no to bread all the time you know no I'm good and then like you said if it's someone hey if it's a if it's a situation that unfolds where it's like oh, I'm going to look like, I'm going to be bringing attention to myself is really what it boils down to. I'm going to make everyone talk to me about me and my little thing.

It's like, no, I'm not that important. I'm just some dude who like is weird. So I'm not going to make a big thing out of that. Yeah. And bread's handy. I mean, you can eat some meat without getting your fingers all dirty. Yeah, no, it's, it is, it is handy. And the lettuce wraps.

while good in theory. And actually, have you had someone make a burger? I had one the other day. It was an iceberg. I said, I asked for like lettuce on the burger. And it was iceberg lettuce. Mm-hmm.

Cut in like basically in half. So it was big, two big giant chunks and it worked really well. Oh, that's great. I was pretty, because normally it's like, oh, they give you that one big piece of lettuce. That's all wilted by the time it gets you.

You can't pick that thing up. It's not happening. You actually got to use a fork and knife to eat a, burger, which in its own right is kind of disturbing. Right. If we're eating burgers and we're using a fork and knife, we don't respect that. I mean, that's just not something that we're doing. But all of a sudden, we are if we got wilted lettuce on the situation.

Yeah. And so you started, so you cleaned up your diet. What did you weigh when you went on deployment? 193 pounds and I'm 5 foot six. And then what did you weigh when you got home? I think I was 165. How did you feel mentally? Way better.

Yeah. And Doc Parsley had already cleaned up your sleep habits. So you were basically getting on step. Right. As I've been on step probably for two years. And, you know, it sleeps like anything else. It's just got to be disciplined with it. I don't get up at 4.30 in the morning.

I get up around 5.30 or 6. But I'm really careful that, like, you know, the lights are all out. Because for me, even stupid little lights will wake me up. and it's quiet and all that. And then I got one of those weighted blankets, which is pretty cool. You must have told my wife about that, or Iris did, because we have a weighted blanket now, too. It's not on my side of the bed. It's just on her side of the bed.

Yeah, they're not cool in the summertime because they're too hot. Oh, yeah, yeah. But, man, I just go to sleep and sleep. I don't wake up at all until the next morning. You know, like normally you wake up a couple times during the night, and I think you just get under there and you feel all safe. from you're like, oh, feel like I'm in the womb. You got the weighted blanket, you got the CPAP machine. You're just keeping it real.

Yeah. One of our mutual friends that has a CPAP machine and his wife was like, you know, when you mask comes off, you know, I'm trying to wake you up so you can put it back on. And he's like, don't, you know, don't. Just leave me alone. And she's like, well, what if your mask comes off

and then you stop breathing? And he's like, just let me die. So that's good. So you come home from that deployment. Yeah. And then what did you do when you got back? I went over to trade at and became the command master chief there. And then started, you know, preparing.

Making sure all the fundamentals that you'd stayed in place were still there. And they were still there. The guys were just really hard and doing a good job. And then that was it overrunning unit level training and seeing that. And then working myself out of a job, getting the guy that's my replacement set up to take my job. And here's the deal. Like as I leave Naval Special Warfare, they are so good to go.

And I see the younger guys now that are coming up at every level. level, the people like to complain about the millennials. And I really don't see any issue with them because they're doing good. And when I measure myself against who they are when I was their age, they're way better. I'm like, oh, my goodness. Biggest problem I have with millennials right now is I look at them. I'm like, how are you so much bigger and stronger and smarter than I ever was when I was 22?

Come on. I told you this. The other day, I roll in here and I hear some like guys training over on like another mat. And I look over there and they're clearly young frogmen. And there's six of them. And they're all dripping with sweat because they've been getting after it hard. And they all look like they're yoked and just ready to go start just killing people. And I'm like, what's up, fellas?

Yeah. Like, we're getting ready to go to land warfare. I said, legit. I was just so happy. Yeah. And it just, yeah, you're right. These guys in the teams right now and in the military at large. If you're going in the military, you're doing it for a reason.

You know, when you and I joined, there wasn't a war going on. We were hoping there would be. But you're going to now, like, you know what's up. You know what you're doing. You know what you're stepping into. And now, retirement, you're good to go? I think so. I'm really excited.

But 30 years is a long enough time to where I'm like, oh, I'm ready to go. Yeah, my locker. The hardest part is that, like, I'm glad that you're going with a feeling like, hey, things are good to go. Yeah. Because the hardest part is you start thinking that you, like, that you are so critical. And now like, oh, what? And it's like, no, there's 10 guys that are just as good as me, better than me.

And they're all going to get in there. They're going to do a better job than I could have ever done. And then the other thing is like when you hear some rumor or whatever about something going sideways and you get, you get all freaked out because you want to be like back where you can help. and you got guys going on deployment. Like if something, it's just like that, you have to, it's just hard to let go. And I mean, I'm not saying you're going to be able to let it go, but it's hard to not just think about it the same all the time.

Like, it's hard to, it's hard to come to grips with the fact that you're not in the teams anymore. That's all it is. Yeah. And then that's what, that's, I mean, I'm super appreciative that I'm getting to work with Esselon front because the work that the best thing, about being in the teams is the peer group.

And so I'm trading right into the same peer group of just a bunch of awesome people and then getting to go. And I really enjoyed like a third of my career was at CL Team 5, the other third of it was at Trade Ed. And I really, really enjoy working with people, teaching, passing stuff on, learning. I'm always learning. And that's, I'm super excited about it.

Yeah, it's like I said, once you get over the fact, and I'll give you a little heads up. Have you cleaned out your locker yet? It's like 80% done. Okay, yeah. That last 20% sucks. That's the worst part. For me, loading that stuff into my van and knowing and then your access card doesn't work anymore. It's just like game over and you just drive out. And, you know, especially for guys like you and me and, you know, you even 10, I mean, I was in for 20 years. You were in for 30. But, I mean, how many memories do you have at the SEAL Team 1 grinder? At the SEAL Team 3 grinder, at the trade at building? It's like my whole life is right there. And, you know, when you're leaving, you're just, it's, it sucks.

Yeah, it's going to be, it's scary. Because all those memories are there, but, man, they're good memories. And I know that if I pick up the phone, guys will answer. And, uh, yeah. You know, when, uh, when Fackety died, like, um, last year and I was like, what I felt like, all that, yeah, I just felt like all that memory, all that memory that he had of us is gone. Like that he had of me and all my little run and mates that I used to run around with. We were all team one guys.

And we were all, like, he had these images of us and knew us when we were little kids. and kept us out of trouble and all that stuff. And I'm thinking all those things, which he had a perspective that only he could have. I was like, oh, those are all gone. And that was a crappy feeling of just, damn, why does that have to go? I never got him on the podcast either, which is a freaking shame. Yeah.

But the good thing is, like you said, we're still all just kicking it. Yeah. And I mean, really, it's like just this naval special warfare or any organization or team. We're just in that for that little time. And then it's shaped us way more than we shaped it. We had our influence and it'll just keep on going. And that's what, that's like there's a piece of us that's never, ever, ever going to die. As long as this country's around or are there guys doing frogman stuff, there will be a little piece that it gave.

us and we gave it there moving forward yeah yeah that's good to go it's about as good as it gets about as good against I think that's probably a good spot and we might both be retired echo Charles but we're not done yet in fact we're just getting warmed up plenty of fighting albeit in a different way sure that is left to do and we're gonna do it you got any suggestions on how we can stay in the fight see in the fight and on the big time yeah first thing you jih Tzu right a little bit more direct relationship to the expression fight jiu jih Tzu you're not doing it do it for many benefits that we always talk about not gonna go too deep into it I wanted to because I was

thinking about it you know some people don't call a jiu jitsu match or jiu jiu jitzu training or what they don't fight some people do some people don't so this is what I kind of discovered or realized that if other types of fighters or martial arts practitioners, they tend to not call Jiu-Jitsu a fight. You know, like, oh, no, it's not a fight. You know, it's a match or it's a whatever. And then you have the totalitarian kind of attitude, which is like, hey, anything that you're struggling against another person or another force, it's a fight.

Even for you going to the grocery store and looking for a certain kind of spaghetti sauce is a fight. It's a struggle. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes, especially when I'm doing it for somebody else. It's another element. And the last, that's the way I look at it. If you and I roll and we go hard, is that a fight?

That's a fight for you. Well, okay. So because I look at it in that way. Anything that I'm struggling against another person or force or in your case, another person and force, it's a fight. So that, you know, with you, that's essentially a good example. Unless fighting all our way. Total war. Total war. Total war. It's good to exercise that in our lives. That whole book, Psychology for the Fighting Man, it's just so good. But just starting off with total war and you start to view your life through the aspect of just total war.

Yeah. Oh, because now we're taking it to the next level. This, this workout, I'm going to be total war. Yeah. This person that's trying to get somebody, somebody hit me up on, uh, social media today said said he was getting emotionally blackmailed. He said, what would you do? I was like, I'm not getting emotionally blackmailed. No factor. Stifling your emotions. Yeah, I'm going to say, well, you're not because, well, it's like, you don't even have

emotions. So how can you blackmail his song person? So, yeah, I mean, but it makes sense. I don't know, though, because what, emotions sometimes can be more, you know, more of a thing. Yeah, yeah. For certain people, you know, that's kind of everything. Yeah, for sure. Unless you...

If you have no emotions, well, then you're going to have real problems. Yeah, it's like me trying to... But you can learn... But you should learn to control your emotions. And one thing that can help you learn to control your emotions is... Jiu-Jitsu. Jiu-Jitsu. Because it's an exercise in prepping for All Out War in life.

Very good, direct. Anyway, when we're doing Jiu-Jitsu, we need a Ghi and Rashguards. That's essentially the uniform. Uniforms for the Jiu-Jitsu. And you get that at... The best ones, anyway, at origin. OriginMain.com, that's where you get it.

It's in Farmington, Maine, all made in America. Yeah. Which is not a small deal. Not a small deal at all. You can say, oh, whatever. No, it's a big deal. And what's awesome about speaking of America is going up to Farmington, Maine, and seeing a factory with 40 people working in it.

Craftsmen making stuff here. bringing back a town, right? Bringing back an industry. That's what we're doing here. Movement, check. Yeah. Guise, rash cards. Other clothes, joggers, athletic gear.

Apparently jeans from what I hear. Yeah, yeah, you don't know about those yet. American denim. And then we got supplements. Yeah. Jason Gardner, talk to me about origin jaco supplements coming at you live. Yeah. I am on the.

Joint Warfare two in the morning two at night, krill oil every morning, and I am on the mulk train. I am on the mulk train. You know when I want to have some dessert? And I'm like, you know what? Almond milk. And then a scoop of the mint chip milk,

hit that with a stick blender. It satiates me. And then every morning in my coffee, I got a scoop of the vanilla milk. Actually, now that you know the video, you made with Tim, Tim Ford, where he's like, probiotics. That was Jason. Jason was like, you know, I wasn't sure if I was going to get that stuff.

But then I saw it had probiotics. It's real. I'm all laughing. I was like probiotics. Yeah, yeah. Because that's what you need. Have you seen that video before? I did.

Did you know that was you? Yeah, I pretty much figured it. I'm like, hey, that guy's me. He got it all in his mustache when he gobbles it down. That's exactly. I was on the site. Look, I'm not going to look at this moke. I'm like, man.

So first of all, it said keto compliance. on there. I'm like, oh, good to go. Because a lot of the protein stuff is loaded with sugar. And then I saw probiotics. I'm like, okay, I'm done. Here's the issue. It's either loaded with sugar or it tastes horrible. Because even you put

whatever artificial sweeteners taste horrible except for one, the one that we use. Which is not artificial. It's actually from nature itself. Yeah, monk fruit. So yeah, you can get all those from

OriginMain.com and and I also realize that you haven't tried the warrior kids strawberry milk yet. I'm gonna get that to you Awesome you're gonna get nuts bro. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. So get some of that check. It's true also Jocko has a store as we all know by now. It's called Jocco store. So you go to jocco store.com. This is where you can get your shirts more rash guards trucker hats Flexfit hats we're doing both Do we know which one sells more? They're even. Really? Are you just making that up? They were even when I checked.

When did you check? This is like such a scam. No, no, no. He's so untruthful. Nothing he just had to be made. Eddie says much soever. Dude, I got kids, bro. I was a bit around, man.

You can't look at me and say it's equal. That's so, just don't lie to me, dude. It doesn't work. I'm like, smell it. How about this? I'll check it. We'll get back to you. That's cool.

Yeah. And we're good. Now we're good. Now we're good. Now there's no factor. I'm good. Here's the thing. They're not trying to look at me and tell me something that you don't know.

At the end of the day. At the end of the day. It doesn't even matter. Because look, what if I'm like, hey, I like flex fit? Oh, but the trucker had. See, this is, now we're trying to deflect. Change subject. We're not talking about that.

I want the flex. I want the flexible. I want the flex fit. Cool. Get what you want. Tell me the truth. That's what I'm saying. Well, I'll report back.

How about that? Is that cool? Anyway, hoodies, like I said, , women stuff on there. If you want to represent while we We are on the path That's where you can get the stuff to represent You can also get some

Jock white tea You can get it from Wherever, yeah It's because it tastes good And it's awesome for you And it gives you an 8,000 pound deadlift Which is not You know, light

Something Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet Otherwise Echo is going to keep telling you to subscribe He's going to invade your dreams And tell you to subscribe Whoever you people are that haven't subscribed yet You're crazy This is 168 podcast

This is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of listening But you didn't click subscribe We got issues with you So just subscribe Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast Trying to tee up a couple more right now To get them out there to all of you So get some of that

And then also YouTube We have a YouTube channel if you want to check that out. It's starring Echoes videos. It's starring the video version of this podcast. That's right. Well, who made that? Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, so it's starring Echo Charles's videos. So check out that. You see what Jason Gardner looks like. So that's something. You're definitely going to want to see what Jason Gardner looks like. No. Does you think Jason, okay, and people please let me know. Does Jason Gardner look how he sounds?

I think so. Yeah, I think so. You think so? Well, the thing is I've, I, I, I saw you and didn't hear you. A lot of people in this sense, is going to be the opposite. I think you probably, I think you probably look how you sound. I think, but it's hard for me to make that judgment because I know you. That's true.

I kind of, I got to find that picture. I'll post a picture of you and me. age whatever, 2019. Yeah. And we both were completely insane. So you guys went in at the same time? No, he went in a few years before me.

A few years before and then we ran over into each other overseas and just really hit it off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What else? Psychological warfare. Yes. What that is.

I used to go into this old deep, get mad every single time. This is the one that broke me. This is the one where I was like, bro, we're not doing this whole support thing anymore. We're done doing it. We're done. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not going to listen to you. It's not happening.

I was going to go Joe Roganstown just record it afterwards by myself somewhere. You can just be quiet. No, the proof is going to be in the pudding. Jason Gardner, you know what psychological warfare is? It is. Actually, you know what? It's not because Jason Gardens is in the game deep in the game. Yeah.

So, you know, for him to know what psychological warfare is, it isn't a big stretch. It's not going to be very surprising. Yeah. So for the people who don't know what it is, this is what it is. It's an album with tracks, Jocco, Jack. The thing you got to remember about this, this whole segment of us just sitting around and talking for the quote unquote supports, which it barely is, right? It's more just like a session of, but it was because when we got done with some podcast early on, it was like being drugged through like the emotional.

freaking hell. And you get done and you don't want to just go home. Like you want to just like, okay, let's, you know, it's like my, my youngest daughter. She'll, if she sees something scary or whatever, or, you know, she'll say, like, can we watch something funny? Yeah. You know, just. And so that's what this actually is, is, hey, okay, we're to talk about people getting

killed, people getting blown up, people getting butchered. real people, by the way. And when we get done with that, we're going to lighten it up a little bit so we can carry on. We're not going to forget about it, but we're going to have a little bit of levity

towards the end. That's what this originally was. Somehow you ended up just saying the same thing over and over again. I felt like I was getting good at saying it. You see what I'm saying? So what I did was I did lose sight of some things. Yeah.

But we're back. And, you know, I'm going to explain what psychological warfare is for the people don't know. It's an album with tracks, jocco tracks, talking about how you can overcome certain moments of weakness on the path. Boom, that's pretty concise, right? Cool.

Boom, there it is. Next. On it.com. Okay, so on it. Good company. This is where I get kettlebells. Home gym? Home gym?

No home gym yet? No, I just moved. Oh, yeah. I'm ready to build it. Oh, yeah. Boom. You don't have one right now. Just got the rings, boom.

Oh, so my, that's the, that's the original thing that you need to get. Right. That's the first thing you need to get. Yeah. I didn't used to think that. I used to think it was a pull-up bar, but I changed my mind. Rings. Yeah, because you could do more versatility.

Yeah, because rings are a pull-up bar. Yes, they are. And they're also a dip bar. And they're also a ring push-up bar. Yeah? Oh, yeah. Big time. It's a thing.

I got my rings from Onet. Anyway, on it. Aton.com, you can get kettlebells rings. What? Battle ropes. Those maces, those crazy maces do work out with that. Man, you'd be. You'd be in the game big time.

Anyway, a lot of good stuff on there. Go there onet.com slash jaco. We got some books too. We got some books like Mikey and the Dragons, which, you know, I think might be the best kid's book ever written. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.

I read this other one. That was really good. Oh, The Warrior Kid. Mike and the Dragons, check it out. It is going to help kids overcome fear. And it's an entertaining story. And it's got awesome drawings in it. And it rhymes.

Yeah, I just shipped one out to my buddy on the East Coast. And he's got little ones. And he hit me up yesterday on text. He goes, you know, bro, I just read that to my kids because three hours ahead of us. They loved it. That book is awesome. Thank you. I have people that, this is odd, but I have people that, and I have people that say,

I get a, got a tears in my eyes when I was reading, the letter to his son. You know, that can be kind of heavy. Oh, yeah. So when I made that original short video about it, whatever, yeah, I should, I think I said this right, I showed it to my brother, and he's like, he's like, man, I'm kind of like tearing up.

I don't know why. Like, what? And we're watching the video, you know, on the TV. And it's not like it's a super sad thing, but it just, it's like, I guess it's like so like real, you know, like, these are things you kind of got to deal with and now you've got to take on this courage kind of thing. And it's like, I don't know. Two boys.

Yeah, funny. So check out that. Check out the Warrior Kid books, Way the Warrior Kid and Mikey or and Mark's Mission. Somebody asked me, people sometimes ask questions that center around themselves. They're asking you a question, but, so somebody asked me a question.

It said, two words. What is the theme of Way of the Warrior Kid? Oh, in two words? That was the question. So now this person, Just wanted me to say, like, sum up this book in two words. And this was a mandate.

It wasn't like, hey, man, could you kind of give you a... It was like, two words. So I was like, cool. You know what I said? It's actually really easy. What is the underlying theme of the way of the Warrior Kid series? The underlying theme is this. Warrior Kid.

There you go. I'm like, there you go. It's like, you want your kids to be warriors. What does that mean? Does that mean you want them to join the military and go fight? No. It means you want to be warriors. It's a whole thing, which actually gets explained in there.

All out war, man. That's the Warrior Kid Books. Discipline equals freedom, field manual. I've signed a lot of those for your people. Yeah. I bought like 10 of them and had you sign them to a bunch of guys and sent them out. They love them. It helps people out.

Yeah. And then I've had guys. In the last year, lose somebody, like have someone in a family or friend die. And then I'm like, okay, go look at this page, you know? Yeah. Where you describe how to deal with it. Yeah. I actually had to use that page myself.

And hopefully you don't have to use that page. But there's other things that go on in your life that can steer you off the path. And there's other pages in that book that will keep you on the path. This one goes, Freedom Field Manual. Extreme ownership. Everything Jason was talking about, what we did at trade debt, everything that we tried to teach to the seals that we're going to go overseas, it's in the book Extreme Ownership.

It's in the book The Dicotomy of Leadership. They're both in there. You were showing me your notes the other day, Jason, from when I in-briefed your troop, it's like, oh, here's your notes. You sent me a little picture. What do they say? They say, cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute, decentralized command.

That was, I don't know, 12 years ago or something like that, 10 years ago, same word coming out, same word, hasn't changed. Learn those. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership. Echon front, that is our leadership consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership and every organization has problems,

all kinds of problems, all kinds of problems, and every single one of those problems is a leadership problem. That's what's going to fix it, is fixing leadership. That's what we do. It's me. It's Laif Babin, J.P. Dinell, Dave Burke, Flynn, Cochran,

Mike Sorrelli, Mike Baima. And does this make you a new guy? You're a new guy at Eshelon Front, bro. Yay. And our latest member, I won't call him a new guy, because it really does matter. You went to buds before me, right? So that's like a real thing.

thing like I'm a new guy. Yeah, apparently. Nothing I'd ever say. Yeah. Anyways, our latest, um, Jason Gardner, who you've just listened to for five hours

is also on the team. And if you want help with your organization and your leadership inside your organization, go to ashlonfront.com. Also, we have the muster. The muster is a Leadership Conference

Gathering Magical It actually It's just muster It is a muster That's what it is We're all going to get together We talk about leadership

Get granular And delve into Leadership From a lot of different angles May 23rd and 24th In Chicago September 19th and 20th In Denver December 4th and 5th in Sydney Extreme Ownership.com

I haven't posted about this yet Just the muster in general I haven't posted at all when I post it's a lot of stuff it sells so if you want to go all I'm saying is if you want to go

register now go to echelonfront.com actually go to extreme ownership.com and that's where you can register to come to the muster in one of those locations we will see you there

EF online interactive leadership training starting to see the cool feedback from people on that So, EF online. It is EFonline.com. We have leadership training, courses, online, interactive. What else?

What other verbs or adjectives to describe? Interactive, engaging. Engaging. What, name your adventure. Choose your own adventure. There's some choose your own adventure scenarios that you have to unfold. Yeah.

And we're updating it and adding different content to it monthly, so it's going to continue to grow and educate both you and us as we all learn to become better leaders if you want in on that. I went through that obviously to make the video. And coincidentally, a few, like a month, maybe a month and a half before, I went through an online training for CPR. Okay. Okay.

So the online training for CPR, well, CPR, you can. got to do the physical thing too, you know, for the certification, whatever. But there's an online training part of it. So, you know, and not too bad. Not too bad. The online thing, you know, I really went through it, kind of committed myself to it. Not as long or whatever, but, you know, kind of. So I went through and I was like, cool, good.

But there were tangible things that I'm, you know, you could have done this a little bit more different to actual, actually get the training, quote unquote, training that someone, you know, might need whatever. So, you know, a few months later, I do. I go through the EF online and I'm thinking to myself when I think back on the CPR, this is what they should have did with the CPR thing. Granted, the CPR one, it could tell was a lot older. It wasn't quite as contemporary. So I'm not really blaming them, but that's the way I really saw it. I was like, okay, this is good.

This will give you like the training training. It'll allow you to make mistakes on an online training or do the wrong thing and then get corrected. Say, hey, you did this, you know, kind of. Well, that's one of the things that worried me. but because you remember the Navy like Navy course you'd take on something that was online yep and it would be horrible and boring and everyone just copy each other and just click through the things to get it done and you don't take anything away from it that was my fear how does this if we if we don't do this right but then as soon as I started looking at the technology and the

things you could do and the way you could make it engaging it's it's I don't want to say it's better but if you're sitting in a if you're sitting at the muster and I say something and you're like wow and you go to write that down and then you hear me say this tail end of something else and you missed it you can't press rewind right right rewatch it you can't press pause and be like that was a really good point I know how I can apply that to my world and just write down how to handle something you can't do that at the muster yeah on online oh let me rewatch that oh oh jockle and laif just did a role play on dealing with uh someone in the office I actually need to deal with a person like that.

How should I? I'm going to watch that again. I'm going to see those little maneuvers take place. So that's what we did. And we realize that we just don't have the reach for the demand that's out there for echelon front. We appreciate the demand. And we want to satisfy the demand.

So that is eFonline.com. If you want to get fully engaged in our leadership training, that's it. And of course we have EF Overwatch, where we're taking all these experienced leaders that have been in combat for the last couple decades and as they move into the civilian sector, placing them into jobs where they can help lead organizations using the experience they have

and their understanding of the principles that we talk about at Escalon Front in the book Extreme Ownership and on this podcast, go to eFoverwatch.com where they're standing by, for you, by the way. Take it. And if you got done or get done listening to this three hours of conversation and you want to continue it further, it wasn't enough.

And you're not sure what to do. Well, then that's cool because you can actually get in touch with us and have little mini micro conversations with us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram and on dasha shavishab walkie boi boy ha echo is at ecu-charles I am at at jaco willink and Jason has multiple handles go

Jason n Gardner on Twitter Jason dot n.garner on Instagram and Jason N. Gardner on Facebook you're going to have fun with Twitter I'm just going to let you know because Twitter is the

place for somebody with little one-liners to hang out and participate and throw one-liners out into the world and make people laugh or make people think and it's just, it's pretty fun. It's, remember, you ever feel like the Terminator robot,

do you ever feel like that? No. I do sometimes. And one of the ways that I feel that is when I'm having a conversation with someone and I see little one-liners, of what I could say. And sometimes, I mean, if I'm answering questions for a client,

I'll be like, okay, here's, like, as soon as they're asking me, I'm seeing little possible answers of how they fit in their world and does it make sense to them. And I've got all this, and then I just kind of choose one and go. And when I'm having, but I remember that in, like, when I was a school child, I was a little kid going to school, especially like around, what grade is, fifth, sixth, and seventh grade. How old are you?

No, fourth is nine. Like 11, 12, 13, right? Yes, yes, indeed. It was like every single comment or statement that a school teacher made was just a prime setup to knock it out of the park with a one-liner from the back row.

You know what I'm saying? I would just be sitting there and going, oh, I would be so tempted to have to bite my tongue all day long as much as I could. Because when you're 12 years old, you can only hold it in for so long before it just comes out. And then, so anyways, you're going to like Twitter because you can use your little one-liners, which you are very, very good at. And they're always, like I said, they're always very educational or humorous.

Or they at least make you think. So you'll have fun with that. And don't feed the trolls. And don't feed the Russian bots. No. That's my new thing. Be careful. Don't click on.

Anything. Yeah, don't click on anything. Check. All right, Echo. Anything else? No. Awesome. Jason.

Yeah, I'd like to thank my parents, Jim and Cookie Gardner, for all your unconditional love and support over the years. My sister Ari, who's a blue belt into Jiu-Jitsu. How'd you get into Jiu-Jitsu? What? How'd you get a J-Git-Sut. Listen to the podcast. Listen to the podcast, immediately found a J-Jitsu place up there in San Clementi and started training.

And then my brother Thaddeus, who's attached. Tattoo artist tattoos up in San Clemente at San Clemente Tattoo. If you're going to get some ink, go see him if you're local. And thanks to everybody else and thanks to all the frogmen out there, past, present and future, get some. Hell yeah. And we always thank everyone in uniform that protects us at home and abroad from the evil that we talked about today. and that includes obviously our military personnel, police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, border patrol, all the first responders. And also, thanks to all of those that did serve and that have done their part as veterans for our great nation.

like my brother here master chief Jason Gardner Thanks for your service Thanks for coming on And of course I'm looking forward to another bunch of good years together Thanks for everything bro And to everyone else that's listening I'll go back to Bayawolf

For every one of us living in this world Means waiting for an end Let whoever can win glory before death. So endure your troubles today. Bear up and be the man I expect you to be. Our ancestors lived and that's how they died. So let us do the same. Arise, set forth and get after it.

This is Jason Gardner and Echo and Jocko.