Jocko Podcast - 171: Seek. Never Settle. Inspire. Never Complain. Rise. Never Stay Down. No Legs, No Vision, No Problem. With Matthew Bradford.

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:23 - Matthew Bradford. Life, service, and Inspiration. 1:26:19 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:31:14 - Support: How to Stay on THE PATH. 2:01:35 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 171 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.

according to the regulations and the uniform code of military justice. So help me God. And that is the oath of enlistment that is made by every U.S. military member. And the other day, I was at a charity event for America's Mighty Warriors, which is an organization that was created by Mrs. Debbie Mama. Lee the mother of Mark Lee from task unit bruiser who was the first seal killed in action in Iraq and it was a great event and it was an honor to be there and I spent some time answering questions from some of the people that had come out to the event and one of the individuals asked a question

about the fact that he had served in the Marines during the 90s during a time of peace and he didn't go into combat and he didn't go to war and he actually felt guilty about that he felt that he hadn't done enough and I told him the truth and the truth is that he had done what his country had asked him to do that's what he had done and if the country had needed him to give more then he would have given more that is what the oath of enlistment is and it's one of if not the most powerful oath that a person can give because when you take that oath if you take that oath you are putting your country above all else above your family above your future above your life above yourself and with that oath when you

take that oath if your country needs you to sacrifice You will sacrifice. And if the country needs your time, you will give it your time. And if it needs even more than that, then you will give it even more. And the good soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine, the servicemen and women who defend this nation,

they will sacrifice and they will give until they have nothing left. And it is my honor tonight to have someone on the podcast, that has sacrificed incredibly for our great nation. And yet his attitude remains completely unwavering. He drives on and sets an example for everyone. An example of pure fortitude and tenacity and one that fully represents the motto of the hollowed brotherhood.

He will always be a part of. and that's the United States Marine Corps and their proud Maxim Semper Fidelis, always faithful. Been working to make this podcast happen for a long time and tonight I am grateful to have this hero with us. A man by the name of Matthew Bradford. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on, Jocko. This is, it's something else to be sitting in front of you right now because there's been a lot of remarkable people that's been on this podcast, and it's a true honor to be here in front of you and echo and get the chance to meet you all. Yeah, and I know we've been working on making this happen for a while, so I'm glad we finally were able to get you and your family

on a plane flown out here where we can sit down and talk for a little bit and then you can get back with your family and go have some good times. Go swim in the pool and spend the week at the happiest place on Earth. Yes, indeed. And it sounds like you're going to have. good temperatures. I've given you a little heads up. It can be a little warm here in Anaheim, if you're not careful, if you come out. In the summertime, you'll get baked out there

in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the Disneyland. My pacey white skin and I'm hard-headed so I don't like putting sunscreen on. So I learned the hard way. Yeah. Well, hopefully you guys would be all right. All right. So let's just go. Let's go to the beginning, growing up what that was like growing up in Kentucky and Virginia. What was that all about? Yeah, I was born in Petersburg, Virginia where my dad, he worked at Fort Lee at the Defense Commissary Agency. And, you know, in an early age, my parents got a divorce. So I moved to live with my mom in Kentucky where all of my family's from. And even today, when people ask me where I'm from, Kentucky is just the easiest answer. And, you know, throughout my childhood, like we moved so much. I learned a lot because my mom,

she worked paycheck to paycheck. So I learned a lot about, you know, how to appreciate things and to be thankful for things and not expect the bigger things. And, you know, through this, I learned to just go outside and be with my friends and never expect, you know, a big Christmas. But I knew one thing from my mom and from my stepdad and even my family around me, the one thing they showed me and the rest of us was love. And it taught me a lot about life at an early age.

and, you know, it's through all the moving around, but, you know, in Kentucky, the one thing with Kentucky is they have a lot of their drug problems. So it's getting out and playing sports and getting away from that helped out a lot. And, you know, all of this happened in 2001, and that's when I realized as a ninth grade and as a freshman in high school

is when I felt like it was my purpose to serve this country in the military, even though I was a freshman in high school. I said in there watching, you know, know, the terrorist attacks go on in New York City and the Pentagon, and I felt like it was my time go home and nobody was on the streets, nobody was playing basketball or football or whatever the sport of the time was. Everybody was inside watching the news. And also through that, you know, my mom and my stepdad was going through some things as their own. And that's when,

thankfully, my dad stepped in. And my dad said, you're coming to live with me now. And that was the greatest decision ever because although I love Kentucky, I don't know where I'd be at the day if my dad didn't step in and, you know, pull me towards him in Virginia. And moving to Virginia after my freshman year in high school and staying there for three years, you know, living right next to an Army base and visiting the Army base daily, I got a chance to see what, what the willingness to serve, you know, the patriotism and all this stuff. And it really kind of boosts it my motive to serve more and more. So when you were in Kentucky and you were a freshman,

had you thought about the military prior to September 11th? Growing up in Kentucky, the only thing that I wanted to do was play basketball for the University of Kentucky. I mean, that's the one thing. And, you know, you'd go out on the street or you'd play video games, which then was the old school PlayStation, and you just wanted to play basketball for Kentucky.

There was nothing else. 2001 happened and that's when kind of like it got in my mind that's what I wanted to do and then during that time Black Hawk Down come out as the movie and and I just watched that over and over again and I was like I want to be a ranger I want to serve you know and and then it went from the army to I looked into the Air Force Special Forces and their their special forces is way too long because I wanted to deploy and I actually ran into the Marine Corps recruiter at Fort Lee playing basketball and he took us to Hooters and that's where he sold me was at Hooters and That's good, I guess.

It doesn't take, you know, for me, when the Marine Corps recruiting is awesome. And I heard this fact a long time ago that the Marine Corps spends the least amount of money on recruiting but has the best results because they just have their, well, they have the Marine Corps. They have the Marine Corps persona behind them, the legend of the Marine Corps. And that, I remember, you know, when I was a kid, there was a guy that I knew that was a instructor and he was older than me but you know occasionally he'd come home and I would just think well obviously that's what I'm going to do I mean there's no doubt in your mind you know you just see these human beings that are above and beyond anything you've ever really seen before and you go that's you know when you're 10 years old and you see a Marine Corps drill instructor that's a

that's a damn impressive sight that is an impressive sight especially when you see the dress blues walk into the cafeteria at school and with all the medals and the ribbons and it's like this is what I want to be and and because growing up like on my mom's side my grandpa served and and then on my dad's side a lot of his family a lot of that family served in the military and I never realized the military was you know in my future but looking back on it now because I've been asked this question if you've ever if you just think it's you know was set up for you to join the military and as many people in my family that served I kind of you know to answer the question now I thought it was my time to serve and but I mean just the Marine Corps alone it's you know

it wasn't my first choice because I just wanted to serve but I tell you what it's it was the great decision ever made my life as an 18 year old you know December of my senior year in high school going to the MEP station and you know taking that that oath and getting the date to go to boot camp to recruit training and all I had to do was just give my recruiter my diploma and then get on a bus and there I go. And surprisingly, the first day of school, the next year is when I was on a bus stepping on those yellow footprints and getting screamed at. So you decided you were going to join after September 11th, and that was your freshman year. Then you go from Kentucky to Virginia. But are you focused the whole time? Now you're just saying,

yep, I'm going in the military as soon as I get done with high school. That's where your mindset was. That was, I was a, my grades were bare minimum to average, just to stay on a sport. team and because all I knew was to my recruiter needed my diploma that was it and believe me there was some classes that I struggled with and I didn't know if I was going to give him that diploma or not but mainly English second semester my senior year that was a but it was a it was my mindset that's what I wanted to do I didn't think anything about going to college I just wanted to serve in the military yeah that's there's something I don't know you know I got I got a bunch of teenage kids. I got two daughters and one son that are teenagers all right now,

and then I got a little girl. But for kids these days, a lot of them are programmed that what you do when you get done with high school is you go to college. And that's not for everybody. It really isn't. And for me, it certainly wasn't something I wanted to do. I was like, oh, I wish I could have joined the military when I was like 13 because I would have just been such a much better person. So, all right, you, you struggle a little bit in school in English, apparently. Definitely. And what sports did you play?

I played football. I played basketball a little bit, and I pretty much played all sports, not for school-related, but Little League baseball. And then my wife likes to make fun of me, but I played high school tennis from sophomore to senior year. And I went out there. the first practice, my buddy that kind of like recruited me to come play. And the coach was like, hey, how about you two?

Just go down there and play a bunch of sophomores, just kind of get it out of our way. And I beat him 8-0-0. He got so mad. It was so funny. And like walking or walking back to the other side of the courts and hearing the other players is like, oh, my gosh, he just beat him eight-nothing. And the guy had red hair and his face was just as red as his hair. But, you know, like, junior year, I was the one-stom. seat on both singles and doubles and went pretty far in the district. And, you know, senior year

was the same. And it was just something that I enjoyed to do in the springtime. It was a, and honestly, it's very, you run so much that you got to be athletic and you got to be in shape. And that helped that a lot too, you know, with football in the fall and then tennis in the spring. And so what year did you graduate? 2005. And then you left in September of 2005, you leave for boot camp. I did. Yep. Graduated in June. And, and, and, and so what year did? And, I graduated in June. and left in September, so a couple months in between. And that's the one thing. Like in high school, there was a couple of Marines or a couple of guys that I graduated with.

We graduated on Friday, and they went to boot camp on Monday. And they're the ones that kind of helped me kind of really realize that the Marine Corps is what I wanted to do, even though it's kind of what I was focused on. When did you sign a contract at MEPs? December of 2004. Okay. So you had a little delayed entry. Delayed entry program.

Everyone else is worried about what they're going to do after high school and you're like, I'm going to party all summer long. And then I'm going to Marine Corps boot camp. How much of a shock to your system was it when you got to Marine Corps boot camp? The first three days was, I mean, it was just so much. Like, you know, of course you don't sleep at all and it's just this constant yelling and you're realizing like, what in the world did I do? Because you can only watch it on videos and when they're saying it's like,

okay, that's on a TV screen and it's not real. But it was something else getting, you know, I guess they arrange it up every time the bus goes through Parris Island. They're going to stand on the yellow footprints in the middle of the night. And, of course, that's when we got off. And I was, it was a 12 passenger van, and I was kind of in the middle seat. And I had to go through the seatbelt to get out while I'm getting yelled at. So I'm like choking myself with the seatbelt. And, you know, we get to the yellow footprints and it's like, you're standing there in a position of attention.

and it's like your calves start tightening up and you start just like, oh my gosh, what did I do? Why did I sign this paperwork? And I think the funniest thing was when we actually went on to Paras Island how this van from Virginia down to Paras Island, eight hours just joking, talking, the minute we passed the gate it just got silent. Stand by.

And there was, you know, and then, you know, going back, like when I, because I turned 18, my senior year in August, and I did the late entry program or I, you know, went to MEPs December and when I would come home in December and my dad was like so what'd you do and I was like I signed up for infantry in the Marine Corps and he was like you know what infantry does right and it's like I do and and this is the time like in my room I had the big Marine Corps poster with the three Marines and their dress blues I think it was the guy and the female and it was like it took up the whole wall and I was I was dedicated to the Corps then and I was so excited to raise my hand

and then go to school the next day wearing my MEPs Marine Corps T-shirt. I was like, this is it. The perfect recruit. Yeah, I started walking around with all the Marine Corps shirts. I'd go to the mall and I'd walk around. My shoulders all cocked back.

It's like, this is it. Yeah, that's awesome. I always trying to, because there's been quite a few people that have joined the military from listening to the podcast. And now, whenever I talk about this, I always try and tell them that for at least the first two weeks, they're going to hate me.

They're going to hate the military. They're going to hate boot camp. It's going to seem like the worst decision they ever made. I actually was speaking on the USS George Washington in Japan in 2009. And the sailor walked up to me. It's like, oh, I just got out the phone with my dad and tell him my Marine, and listen after hearing you speak. And I'm like, oh, gosh, you didn't give me my name, did you?

It's like, but. Yeah, check. So you go through boot camp and you get done. And you knew you were going infantry the whole time, right? I did. I knew I was infantry. And, you know, in 2005, like, I feel like we had about 70, 75 recruits in our platoon. And the majority of them were going to infantry.

And the funny thing is, sitting in our squad bay and our senior drill instructor, he was sitting in front of us talking to us up on the quarter deck. And he's like, I got one more class. I threw you all. And then once I'm done, I'm going Hawaii. And I'll never see you little, you little pukes again. and you kind of just like blow that off. It's like, okay, cool, he's going to Hawaii.

I'm more than likely at East Coast Marines, so I'm going to say at Camp Lejeune and do my time there and hopefully never run into him. But then you experience the small Marine Corps gets a lot smaller. And, you know, once we got the SOI, graduated from there, and they told us that a select few of us from Alpha Company, School of Infantry, would be going to Hawaii, be stationed with Second and Third Marines.

And a select few of us was our whole company and the company next the bravo company so they they dropped us off in hawai and you go through there and is that normal for like a whole company from s oi to go together to a battalion somewhere i didn't think so i thought you know you know in the marine courts like east of the mississippi you're pretty much going to stay all together but i thought they would kind of disperse you out through different battalions and um thankfully everybody like a lot of the guys that i went to boot camp with was in the same battalion as me in hawai so So I created that friendship and that brotherhood from the start of the Marine Corps and carried it with me along the way.

And I was glad because, you know, it's growing up in Kentucky and Virginia, I didn't want to be stationed in Lejeune or the East Coast. And, you know, they gave me this little wish list, which I don't think they even look at it. I think they just give it to you because it's a check in the box. Make you feel good. Yeah, I picked Oka Now in Camp Pendleton as my first two choices, and they pretty much put me right in the middle in Hawaii. It's split the difference. Yeah, so I always tell people a free government trip to Hawaii. I mean, I can't complain about that at all.

How was the school of infantry? It was cold in North Carolina. We were, during that time, there were so many guys going through the, through infantry school. And a lot of guys were just, like, there for a couple months, three months. And, you know, like, you go to the Chow Hall and you got, like, a 10 to 20, like a snake line of rows and rows of Marines going just trying to eat Chow. And I was so close to actually call my recruiter to go on Recruiter's assistance because I didn't know. how much longer I'd be here. And thankfully, my last name starts with a B.

And so January, I got selected and put an alpha company. And the first three weeks is just kind of learning the whole weapon systems and working on, you know, going on humps and stuff. And then the next three weeks was basically out in the field the whole time, doing infantry work and, you know, learn how to clear rooms and do a lot of mount training. And at this point, you're, did you guys all pretty much assume you're going to Iraq or Afghanistan 100%. I mean, being an infantryman in the Marine Corps,

there's a war in two countries. You must have all just realized you're 100% going. Pretty much. And that's the reason why I wanted to choose infantry because I wanted to deploy it as quickly as I possibly could. And, you know, two of my drill instructors were Purple Heart recipients from the Battle of Fallujah. And so it's like you kind of hear it from all the drill instructors

when you're going through recruit training that, you know, this is where you're going to end up. You know, you go through your school and you go through your training, but more than likely, 99% you're going to, of you are going to Iraq or Afghanistan. Were you thinking about that? Like you're on the range, you're dialing in your weapon. Are you thinking yourself, I better pay attention right now

because I might be needing this skill in a couple months when I'm overseas? I don't think it ever crossed my mind because I just did what I was told to do. You know, and when it was on the rifle range or if it was like patrolling, you know, I tried to take in as much as I possibly could and learn as I went. And, you know, the more I learned, I just, you know, I learned to not only teach myself, but also teach those around me and stuff because I didn't, you know, you only see it on the news. You don't really know what to experience. And it's funny because I tried to read the book No True Glory. Yeah.

And I couldn't really understand what Iraq was like, you know, from clearing rooms or patrolling down the streets, urban terrain. I couldn't understand that because I wasn't there. And, you know, of course, now when I read these books, I understand because I can. visualize it in my head. But, you know, then I was just doing what I was told and I was learning as I went along. And, you know, I learned what I could through School of Infantry. And then once I got to the fleet, it kind of changed a lot because we had to learn what the, with our battalion and and our squad and platoons was doing there. At the School of Infantry, did you do company-sized operations of, like clearances of villages and stuff like that? We, we did towards,

the end of School of Infantry. We had all the 11s out there and then we had the machine gunners and the mortarmen would set up and we kind of we would humvy in and we'd go in and clear a couple of homes and stuff like that but it was more of a company

level. It's hard to remember back then but it was the one thing in North Carolina where we were at training for a school of infantry it was just a lot of like machine gun fields and a lot of like pop up targets and those kind of ranges.

And then the mount town wasn't as extensive as it was once we got to the fleet and went to CACS in California. So you would say at School of Infantry, you were more working on your individual infantry skills more than like working together with a platoon or company-sized elements. I think so because a lot of times at School of Infantry, we did a lot of fire team stuff. And, you know, we did a lot of hikes every Thursday once we got back from the field. But a lot of it was like just learn weapons, learning how to shoot at pop-up targets and like moving to. targets and just kind of, um, you know, like learn, just kind of learn the whole weapons, weapons and systems and stuff. Every Marine is first and foremost a rifleman.

Yeah. And that's where you become a rifleman. Okay. So now you get assigned to two, three Marines and you're, you're heading off to Hawaii, which is, which is coming from, coming from Kentucky and then Virginia and then North Carolina. And now all of a sudden you wake up and you're in Hawaii. We were actually in the squad bay, me, a guy from Georgia and the other guy from Tennessee,

and we were listening to Craig Morgan's Redneck Yacht Club, thinking this is what we're going to do when we get to Hawaii. Of course, I think all three of us were in different companies, so we never saw each other once we got to Hawaii. But you fly in and you get there, and it's like, oh my gosh, we're in Hawaii, and we get on the bus, we get all our gear, and we get dropped off at the battalion office, and we got two of my seniors waiting on. me and he's like they're basically like pulling me to the barracks just so it's like you're all ours now it's like oh gosh and then you know you start hearing stories from like other the other guys that you know got there with me and how their their seniors are you know welcoming them into the the platoon what what month did you get there uh March March of 2006 okay and so as soon as you

get there so and those guys were just coming back from Afghanistan, right? They were. They were actually over there during Operation Red Wing. Yeah. And yeah, they were, I think they got back February of 2006. So they were just getting back from their post-deployment leave. And, you know, once we got there, it was pretty much you got to get right into another

workup. And then that workup is where you really start integrating everyone together, working in platoon size elements, working in company size elements. It was. And then that's when we kind of, they told us when we first got there, everything you learned in School of Infantry, just like lose it. Because now you're going to learn what we teach you. And, you know, from everything from just like clearing conference rooms and barracks rooms to, you know, working on patrolling up the streets in Hawaii. And that was the one bad thing about being stationed in Hawaii.

It's a great place to be stationed, but there wasn't much to do any training. And we would, I mean, we would literally patrol them down the streets at Kay Bay, K. K.O.E. Bay, Hawaii. And they had a couple old barracks. except we'd work mounts, you know, we do mount training with and with sim rounds. And, you know, we'd go to Bellows, which was like a little Air Force base, that they were starting to create like a mount town. And that's when we did a lot of our training and kind of our field work.

And now at this point, are you starting to think, and you've got guys that are just coming back from Afghanistan, are you starting to think, like, okay, now I really need to start paying attention. The reason I'm asking you these questions is because I'm trying to relate, you know, when I joined the Navy, it was 1990. There was like I guess the Gulf War was kind of on the horizon And it was gone so quick that by the time I was in buds it was over And so even when I was doing workups and stuff like I would always be thinking Like okay I need to be good at this

Because someday I might need this skill But that's a big stretch You know what I mean? Whereas once September 11th happened Every one of these young guys that was coming in it was like oh I'm probably it wasn't like someday I might might need this skill. I'm probably going to need this skill in the next couple months to save my life or my friends' lives.

Did you feel like that kind of intensity from yourself and from the other guys that were just coming back from overseas? I think so because I feel like the way they were kind of instructing us and teaching us this stuff. And they kept relaying that any minute now that we could be called up and deploy. And you start getting more serious about it. And I think my attitude changed. And it wasn't more of like joking.

around, even though I like to joke a lot, but it was, when it's time to be serious, it's time to be serious and it's time to learn, you know, and, you know, whatever weapons I was carrying around, if it's a saw or the rifle, the M16, you need to learn everything about that and you need to learn it to its T. And I think that's the one thing that I really made more attention about. And it's, but it was just like you could feel it from your seniors because they, they experienced like casualties, they experienced deaths over in Afghanistan, and they knew what combat was like and you started understanding that this is serious now this ain't you know this ain't a video game or a joke you're getting ready to go to war in you know five six seven months or even

tomorrow you never know and so everything that you need to learn here is something that you need to take serious because this is you could be had yourself in this situation when you're in combat at what point did you know where you were deploying to that you were deploying to iraq i feel like it was after cax in july we were in we were in cax from june to july of two thousand which is great months to be in the deserts in California. But I feel like once we got back there, it was pretty much like we're going to Iraq. And that was, so we're still in, is this 05 or 06?

06. Okay, got it. Yeah, joined September 2005 and I was on a plane in September 2006 headed to Iraq. So that's one of the things I wanted to do in the Marine Corps, as I mentioned, was just I wanted to deploy. And I was literally in the Marine Corps a year, and I was already on a plane headed overseas. And then at what point did you know where,

where in Iraq you were going, that you were heading up to Haditha? I think we knew we were going to the Al-Anbar in a northwestern part of Iraq, but we were never told what city. I think once we got to Al-Assad and we were starting to relieve 3-3 and hear about what they went through

and where they were at is when we started really realizing, okay, this is where we're going. So it was when you actually got to, you got in countries when you realized, okay, we're going to Haditha, you knew that you were going to relieve 3-3. You probably heard a bunch of the stories.

And I mean, And so this is, so I was in, I was in Ramadi at this time, you know, from the spring of 06 until the fall of 06. So you're, we overlapped probably by about a month, maybe a little bit more of when you arrived in Iraq and you flew into Al-Assad, you said? Flew in Al-Assad, and we were there basically a day. And then while we were in Al-Sah, 3-3 was starting to pull some of their Marines out. And that's when we started interacting with them.

And they told us that they felt bad. from what we were getting ready to get involved. They lost so many Marines while they were over there. And then it's just kind of like you hear stories of other guys in our company, like basically in a firefight just to get on their fob. And, you know, once we left Al-Assad, we took, we flew up to the Haditha Dam in the middle of the night and stayed there overnight. We started loading our mags and we got in a big convoy and we drove into Aditha.

And it was, I mean, you just like you hear the story. of Haditha from 3-3, and then when 3-1 went through their stint before, and it's just while-while west. And again, you only see it on TV. You never expect to be walking the same streets and, you know, this stuff going on. But, you know, the first time we went out on patrol, it was nerve-wracking. It was nerve-wracking. It was like you do this in training so much, and you feel like you do it so well.

But now that you're in a situation where it's like, oh, gosh, you know, I got to look here, I got to look here, I got to look up, I got to look down. And what was your position in the platoon? That was a point, man. Oh, get some. And it was, it was fun, you know. I think after the first firefight is when, like, you kind of like, okay, I can do this. This is good.

I'm motivated now, you know, and I was that guy. I remember one time we got in a firefighting before we went on patrol, I was like, gosh, I'm ready to get some. I'm ready to get a firefight, you know. And I didn't know my squad leader heard this, but after we got in like a two or three hour-long firefight, We're walking back onto the fob, and he yells at me, Bradford. And I'm like, what? He's like, I'm going to kill you. I'm like, what did I do now?

You know, it's like we all come back alive. You know, I felt like that was a good thing. But it was, you know, it's funny, the first firefight we got into, we were in the palm groves. And we were walking along this compound wall and these, these little trees, they're no bigger than, they're no wider than a softball. And then there was one no wider than a baseball. And they opened up from our left. And so me and my team leader jumped back. behind the one that's the size of a softball.

And he's like, hey, Bradford, get over there behind that tree. And I'm like, well, crap, that one's smaller than this one, you know. And then our corpsman, who was a, he was a junior corpsman. He had the shotgun for breaching. And he laid off a round. And I don't, I'm pretty sure he didn't hit the guy, but the boom scared him. And he took off. And it was just, and of course, the same day in the Marine Corps, it's just,

our comms went out. And so the stuff that we got was kind of, crap. So it's like here we are in the middle of the palm groves after a firefight and we don't have no cons. We're shooting up smoke and trying to get somebody to come down there and help us, you know. So where were you guys living in Haditha? There was a fob in the middle of town that we were, that we stayed at. That was our home. It was right in the Iraqis houses. Was it a, was it a platoon size element in there or a company size element in there? It was a company. The way that our battalion was split up, the battalion commander and the headquarters was more

more in the dam, Haditha Dam, and then Haditha was the main AO because it was the largest city and that's where our company was, Echo Company, and we had golf company to the south of us in Hawklandia and then across the river in Barwana was Fox Company and weapons company would basically go from from A.O. to A.O. and about three months into the deployment, our battalion commander and the headquarters detachment would come and they actually set up shop in Haditha with us. the Iraqi army left our fob. And, you know, we had, we, yeah, there was, it was a company element, and we pretty much ran, you know, the fourth platoon, would work more with the Iraqi police,

the Iraqi army, and then the one platoon was basically set up for mobile, and the other platoons would rotate back and forth between posts and patrol. So it was, I forgot how many days on, we would be off on post duty, and then you just kind of rotate back and forth. And when we were in Haditha, our mobile unit got. hit so hard that they had to change out and another platoon had to take over just because of the snipers, the indirects, IEDs, just we lost so many guys and throughout that whole deployment the whole battalion lost 23 Marines and I think Echo Company lost nine Marines and a majority

I think I think all of them were within the first two or three months not to mention the Purple Heart recipients that we got from that deployment. And when you were you guys doing most of you guys were doing almost all foot patrol out of the fob? We were a foot patrol, every patrol. And I actually felt safe for walking the streets than I did in the vehicle. And I mean, we'd get in the back of a seven ton and they're launching grenades over the seven ton trying to blow us up. And, you know, the one time that we were in a patrol with the Iraqi army, we were in the old green humvies with no up armor. And me and my friend was sitting in the back seat was like, good luck.

I love you, brother. Because if this something happens right now, then we're screwed. Yeah, the old Humvees aren't going to take an idea hit very well. No, not at all. And it was like I loved being over there. You know, we're talking about serving this country. And, you know, the one time that we're in Iraq, it's like we had one big screen TV in our chow hall, but we were never in a chow hall. We lived in an Iraqi house, and it was just our platoon.

And you were away from the news. You're away from society. everything going on, it was just you and your brothers. And that's the one thing like today I miss more than anything. It's just being around those guys and you see them open up. And, you know, when your Marine brother gets killed or wounded, you see the emotion that it's like you're there for him, you know, when he comes to you.

And those are the things that I miss more about the Marine Corps. And, you know, unfortunately living in Kentucky today, it's like you're not around a Marine Corps base. And you're, you know, I get to see. see my friends. I don't know, once a year it seems like. And a lot of the guys in my platoon, I haven't even seen since my injury. The, the, well, how long would you guys go out patrol for?

Like, what would you guys patrol for a couple hours? Would you guys find an objective and then head that way and then check it out and then come back? Did you have an objective? Were you just doing presence patrols? What was that all about? We were doing a lot of meet and greets, present patrols, ID patrols. We'd go out for two or three hours.

sometimes we'd actually go out and set up a patrol base in the middle of town and just stay there for a couple of nights and run patrols out of the patrol base. Later on the deployment, our company commander kind of made it an objective to set up patrol bases throughout the town. We had one in North Haditha and one in south and then one out in kind of the, I guess that would be the western part of Heditha, which we'd basically would have engineers come in and they'd build like little fobs out of these houses. actually spent Christmas of 2006 on the patrol base up in North Aditha and it was sitting there on the roof in the middle of the night eating cold turkey and ham you know and Merry Christmas bro. And it's so funny because it's like they told us it's like oh you're going to have Christmas off. It's like yeah, nah, that didn't last very long because here we were on patrol going up to North Aditha. But it was it was fun. I enjoyed it. And you know, one of the some of the cool things that we did there, we were, we had a, they believed there was a, a, a

cache in one of the islands, and there was no bridge, nothing to get to the island. And the only way to get there was to take river rafts. And I'm not going to lie, that was the one time I felt like I was a Navy SEAL going down near Frady's River on a river raft. But it was in the middle of the night, and they had a 240 on the front of it, and they would, you know, pick us up from the bridge, and we would ride up right to the island. And we actually dug in, dug in and stayed there overnight. and I believe that was Thanksgiving in 2006.

So that was a happy holidays once a game. So like looking back now on the holidays on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's like I just look back on those two moments of my life. It's like sleeping on a cold island because people look at Iraq and think it's warm all the time, but it's pretty cold over there in the winter months. And then of course Christmas time sitting on the roof. And how often were you guys getting indirect fire into your fob? Were they hitting you guys with mortars a lot?

We got mortared about every day about five o'clock, you know, chowel time. And one of the times, like we had a, I don't know, it was like a hill. It was like a big sand hill in the middle of our fall. We had a couple of posts up on top of it. And I was actually, we were on post duty and they was like, Bradford, won't you bring these batteries up to post five, which is at the end of it. And so I take a battery to it and I'm walking down. And going down this is very steep. And while I'm halfway down, they start dropping mortars on us.

And it's like, I'm thinking to myself, it's like, should I go back to the post? or should I run? And like I take off sprinting down the hill. Thankfully I didn't like roll all the way down. And my team leader like when I run in there, I was like, where's breath? And I'm like sitting there like gasping for air because I just like sprinted across the, you know, down this big hill. But yeah, we got a we got mortared about every afternoon.

And thankfully they their mortar sucked because they missed. And one of the times we were actually very lucky. We were in our fob. We were in our house. and we were all kicked back on our bunk beds. And my really good friend, my best friend, actually, was working on the hot air tank or whatever it was outside. And they dropped a mortar like 30 feet behind our house. And when that thing hit, we just automatically went to our gear because it sounded like it went right through the middle of our house.

And he ended up taking shrapnel in the leg. And thankfully, that was it. And that's when I realized that, you know, I had to have many friends that got killed when I was over there. but I wasn't, you know, right there listening to them scream as they put a tourniquet on. And that's when I realized that this is real, you know, and not only, it's like this guy is, like, fighting to put a tourniquet on. And he's my best friend. He was my roommate when I was in Hawaii.

And it really killed me. Thankfully, that he didn't lose a leg. He'd come back in a couple of weeks, and he was sitting there showing us pieces of shrapnel and telling us that he went down to Alisaw and had some ice cream. And it's like, you know, forget the way I felt about it. you know, but, but it's, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the scary moments bring together the true brothers, you know, and the fellowship. And then how long was it, was it, was it, January, um, is when you got injured?

January 18, 2007 and we were, you know, four months into a deployment. We started kind of, you know, you could start hearing a little scuttle butt about the Advon coming in, you know, we're getting ready to start heading out. you know, the other units coming in. And I actually was speaking through my uncle on the phone that day, you know, and we rarely got to call home. And I was selling, I was like, you know, the deployment's going well. You know, they're starting to talk about other guys coming in, you know,

and hung up the phone because we had to go to a brief. And the brief was the patrol. And, you know, unfortunately, I don't remember any of this part right here. I remember all the way up to, like, the last minute walking down the street. And as I was walking point, I look out in front of me, you know, we're walking along a road alongside the Paralo, or Euphrates River. It was called Park Place, and we were coming up past this compound wall into this opening with a bunch of palm trees. And I see a white bag leaned up against the palm tree about 30 yards off to my right.

And as I, you know, it looked like that was a suspicious idol. And I turned around and tell my team leader to my left, he was on the other side of the road, and I turned around and tell everybody behind me. And the minute I turned back around and I looked down, and there was a stitch that ran perpendicular to the road. and I see the wires going inside the pipe underneath the road and I was standing right on top of the pipe and I mean in a matter of seconds it exploded and sitting shrapnel into both my eyes

and that was the last thing I ever saw was that white bag in those wires and you know is just laying there conscious like hearing everything going on around me my squad leader calling in QRF and you know just and I actually had the litter kit in my pack so it's like they had to figure that out

and then the whole time I was trying to stand up, you know, had my left leg was, it was blown off. Like, I didn't have a left leg. My right leg was severely damaged. And, but it just felt, like, people always ask me, like, what were you feeling when this was all going on? And it went so quick that I don't even think I had a chance to feel anything. Like, I literally went from, like, walking down the patrol, seeing something suspicious to laying on the ground looking in darkness.

And I didn't know if that was it, if I didn't know if I was dead. And, you know, it just, you know, it just. hearing voices around me, they put me in the kit and they take me into a compound. And, you know, as we're waiting on QRF to get there, you know, my buddies, look, they're sitting holding my hand talking to me because, you know, out of our squad, we probably got into the most fire fights out of our whole company. But as we left the fob with 12 Marines, we'd always come back with 12 Marines. We let the enemy know that if you're going to mess with us, we're going to give you everything we got more. And this is the first time that we suffered any kind of

casualty and laying there, you know, basically fighting for my life. And they're holding my hands talking to me. They didn't think I would make it out of there. And as QRF shows up, they put me in the back of a Humvee. And the last voice I heard was, as I mentioned earlier, the small Marine Corps was from my senior drill instructor who was a platoon sergeant in the same company, said, Bratford, you'll be fine. And then I passed out. I didn't know if that was it. I didn't know if I was truly dead now. That was the end. I felt like I was only 20 years old then. I felt like that was the end of my life. And those are the last words I heard. And, you know, I woke up three weeks later from a coma, you know, and this is when I realized that what I truly love to do,

that my true purpose in life was to serve this country, wearing the uniform, and it was taken from me. Like, here I am in the United States, while my brothers are over there in Iraq, fighting right now. I felt like a coward. Like they would try to, they would call me when they could and I wouldn't want to talk to them on the phone. Like I would always tell them with some kind of excuse that I'm sleeping or I'm doing something just so I didn't have to talk to them because I felt like I let them down. And that, it killed me. And then once my dad told me that I lost my legs, that was the worst thing in the world. Then I just wanted to die. Like the guilt, the depression, I didn't want to live a life anymore.

And I always told him, like when he told me that I was, I felt like my legs were like a lizard's tail, you know? It's like they'll grow back. Like you see it on the news all the time, but you never expect it to happen to yourself. And here I am. I didn't care nothing about the vision. I just wanted my legs back.

Because it was tough those first two or three weeks after getting out of ICU. Like I wouldn't eat nothing. I was so skinny. I could barely lift my head up off the bed. and the hospital band that they gave me would go all the way up to my bicep pretty much because I just wouldn't want to eat. I wanted to die.

Like the nurses hated me. Like one of the nurses coming at like two in the morning and I finally got some sleep and she kept poking me around with the needle and I literally called her a stupid idiot. I'm like, and she wasn't my nurse no more and I felt so bad, but, you know, it just, I felt like my husband.

whole life was taken from me just from stepping in that bomb. You know, I knew what could happen to me and my whole point of being deployed was I'm either going to come home with my brothers, I'm going to come home in a body bag. There's no in the middle. And here I am now down this whole dark path, this new road, you know, as a 20-year-old, how in the world am I going to live my life now? Like I got, I don't even know what a blind guy with no legs can do. At what point did you realize that that you weren't going to be able to see anymore? It was pretty much March 2nd, I believe, was my last surgery, that they tried to kind of like give me some vision back.

And nothing come back from that. And, you know, about the time March 2nd got there, I was still positive and upbeat, and I was moving around a lot more, starting to gain weight. And, but, you know, it's, they told me that they can do the surgery, but then they also told me that it's not, you know, a high percentage that you're going to get

vision back at all, you know, and they started kind of like talking about, you know, just live in life visually impaired. And, but it was, it was tough. It was, it wasn't, you know, and to me, the, the vision didn't bother me much at all. It was losing my legs. And, you know, the Marine Corps, you know, it's, joining the Marine Corps in 2004 was the great decision in my life for the reasons like this right now, because it was the Marine Corps that was there, each and every day in my hospital room talking to me and helping me understand that this road that I'm getting ready to go down,

you know, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And not only talking about my deployment or talking about the Marine Corps, but just talking about life and coming in there joking around with me and because, you know, looking back on it now, like I'm truly fortunate and blessed to be here today because the amount of blood I lost

was a body's worth of blood. my left leg was taken from me. I have a piece of my small intestines taken out. You know, shrapnel went through both my eyes. And, you know, it's just, it's truly a blessing. Now, that's obviously a big transition of calling it a blessing and calling where you're at right now a blessing from when you first, you know, realized your situation

and you're saying, hey, you wanted to die. I mean, that's as bad as it gets. What do you think it was that made you start to realize, you know what? All right, here's my new situation and I'm going to get after it. The Marines that would come in to visit me, they kept reiterating that I was a Marine. The nurses, the corpsmen, even though I would fight it, they never gave up on me and they still pushed and challenged me. and I think that was the one thing that made me realize that this is just a new challenge for me. You know, the one thing in the Marine Corps is to adapt and overcome.

I'm going to have to learn to adapt to these injuries and overcome it. And that's one thing that helped me realize that there's life outside those hospital doors because at that time when I was going through depression and guilt, there was two roads I could have went down. You know, the self-pity, the drugs, alcoholism, suicide. But I didn't want to go down that road. I didn't want to be another statistic. I want to go down the road of happiness and living my life to the fullest

and proving people wrong. People tell me I can't do something that I'm going to go out and do it. I want to be that blind guy with no legs, proving people wrong, you know? And that's what I always told people when I first got hurt. I was like, anything you can do, I can do.

I might do it differently, but it's going to get done. And during that time, with that Marine coming in that hospital room, this is when I realized in my mind that this is what I want to do. I want to put myself in his position. I want to help out other severely wounded warriors, Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen.

And I begin creating these goals and these, you know, so a lot of them broad. The one broad one was staying in the Marine Corps. And, you know, but I realized that I need to do these little goals first. I need to learn to get out of my hospital bed. I need to go from my hospital bed to my wheelchair. And I need to learn to eat. And the once I started realizing this and I started putting my mind in the right direction, then I started getting off medications.

I started getting off pain pills, and I started getting more weight on my body. And I was injured on January 18th. I was in Bethesda on January 21st, and by March 21st, I was headed to the Polytraum Center in Richmond, Virginia, where I would focus more on physical therapy and occupational therapy. So it's like, you know, I was young and I healed quicker. But once I got into my mind that I could do this, then I didn't need, I didn't want anybody slowing me down. And, you know, I went through the polytrauma center and I was there for two months.

And by June 29th of 2007, I was sent up on my prostate legs for the first time. You know, one of the things that I talk about, when I talk to vets is I always tell them, you know, people say, how do we get through this? And I always say, you've got to find a new mission. And because, you know, you've had this mission, whatever that mission was,

whether whatever service branch you were in wherever you were fighting you had a mission and it makes your life very clear and simple because what you do every day is you try and accomplish the mission and when i when i hear you talking about that it's like it's exactly that you were in a situation you had a mission boom you get blown up now you don't have a mission anymore and now when you get you wake up in bethesta you're you're in this situation you go oh i don't i don't i'm depressed i've I don't want to live anymore. And then someone comes in and says, hey, you could help. And then all of a sudden, boom, you have a new mission.

And as soon as you get that new mission, you go, yes, I can. Oh, and by the way, you don't think I'm going to be able to walk? You don't think I'm going to be able to defend for myself? Watch this. And, you know, looking back now, January 18, 2007, I felt like that was the day that the Lord above looked down on me. He didn't want me to go to heaven yet. And he gave me, he put me on a new patrol in life. As you mentioned, mission.

And that was to share my story and inspire others by living my life to the fullest and beyond my own bare minimal. And I feel like that, I feel like that was my new mission in life. That, you know, we're all brought on this earth to serve in some kind of purpose, some mission. And, you know, sharing my story and going out doing things that I'm doing to do. today is inspiring and motivating others, not those who were injured in combat, but people who are living, you know, a civilian life today. And it truly inspires and motivates me to continue doing what I'm doing because I know that I'm inspiring somebody along the way. And I always tell people, if I could inspire and motivate one person a day, then that's a job well done for me.

And that's what I'm left on this earth to do. And I love it, you know, it's just this is what I've been given and I might as well accept it and move on, you know, improvise, something that we're always learning the Marine Corps. And, you know, when I do speaking engagements, I focus on a lot of things in the Marine Corps that I learned like adapt and overcome. And, you know, the next one is lead by example, which you know a lot about, I'm sure. And then the next one's never quit. And through it all, through those three, attitude is everything. If you walk into any situation with a positive attitude, that's the first step to success. If you think about something negatively, then you're never going to accomplish anything.

So when I was laying in that hospital bed, there was no negative thoughts, you know, and I had guys, one of the Marines who were actually, was wounded two months before me, lost the leg in Haditha, would come in day and a night, and he would also kind of tell me, it's like, all right, this is what's going to go on. You know, you're going to get a prosthetic. It's going to be a long, you know, the rehab's intense. but this is it, you know, but put one foot in front of the next. And that's what I kept living life with.

And when I was trying to learn how to walk in 2007, I was a, as a double MPT, you tend to a scissor walk, one foot in front of the next, and you pretty much trip over yourself and you look like an idiot. But with vision, I was going from the right wall to the left wall. And my physical therapist stopped me and was like, Matt, just stop, just walk. Put one foot in front of the next. And I look back on that now, and that's how we live. each and every day. It's like we never know what tomorrow's going to hold or next week. We just got to

worry about right now in the present. And that's how I live my life right now. And I never know what that next step's going to be, but I'm going to take that step forward. You know, and, you know, I might walk around with two prosthetic legs and look darkness in the, you know, the face every day. But I'll tell you one thing. My toes are pointed forward and my vision on life is 2020. And that's what I tell people today and it's a I love it I love it and it's you know it's the adrenaline the motivation to do things when you can't see and it hurts when you run into things too so so so the attitude of just walk that's that's a that's a beautiful attitude to have just walk quit quit all this other stuff just get up walk how hard was the transition from the bed to the wheelchair to the to the to the

prosthetics to walk and to moving on the prosthetics. It really, I think getting used to the prosthetics was, you know, basically getting my legs used to wearing prosthetics. And that was the hardest thing because, like, I would go to therapy every day and I would put them on and I'd walk around in therapy, but then I'd go right back to the wheelchair. And I'd really never, never wore them more than a couple hours a day just because I'd swore in therapy until I went to the blind school in Chicago. And this gave me the opportunity where I had no chance to go back to my room and take them off.

So I had to wear them from seven in the morning to five at night. And that's helped me strengthen up my legs and the calluses on my legs get used to wearing prosthetics. And once I got back from the blind school, six months there, I was pretty much on my legs from sunrise to sunset. And that was – but, you know, through setting these goals early on in my rehab, like, you know, listening in the Marine Corps was the one thing that I wanted to do. And so learning how to walk, I focused on that more than my blindness because I knew learning life, you know, in the dark would be a lot easier with legs. And that helped out so much because I tried to maneuver around in a wheelchair being blind and a long cane and all this stuff. And I just kept running into more

things. But once I got on my legs and I started using a long cane and started walking around and, you know, it really helped out a lot. So like the... That's like the ultimate form of prioritized and execute. Like, yeah, you know what? Okay, I can't see, but I can't walk. The number one thing I'm going to do is learn how to walk. That's what you did.

And that's the one thing like, you know, it's... You said get from the hospital bed to the wheelchair to the prosthetics and then go to the blind school, knock that out. And once I'm at the blind school, I'm learning everything from computer to independent living. And that's a six-month school going to the blind school? The first program is six months. And that's basically learning to live being visually impaired. And you go back for computers, and they've got so many different programs now.

But I went there for basically from July to December just because I incorporated computers and with my program as well. And so I spent from July to December in Chicago. So I experienced the cold weather there. But, you know, I learned everything from, you know, checking emails to Braille to, to, taking a subway and train all the way downtown Chicago and circling a block and even built a birdhouse when I was in Chicago. And I don't know about you, but a table saw scared me when I had vision, trying to cut a piece of board with no vision.

That's a little intimidating there, but I didn't lose a finger, thankfully. Yeah, you know, that's another thing that I'm hearing about what you're saying. And it's like the way, and this is something you hear all the time, but the way that you're describing it is people say, oh, you know, you're going to get your big goal. You know, you got your big goal in the future. But what you have to do is you have to set up these little goals along the way to get you there that are pointing in the right direction. So your big goal is you wanted to stay in the Marine Corps, be able to reenlist in order to

be able to do that. You had to be able to walk. You had to be able to function. And so you just had to fight through these little things every single day. to make progress and it's funny because you know the way I've honestly described this before is like it's like shooting when you're looking you know you got your target that's far off in the distance 400 meters away if you stare at that thing your vision's going to get blurry and you'll lose track of it so you have to focus on the front site you this front site focus that's what you do and that the the thing in the background you know it kind of fades a little bit but you know it's there and then what happens is occasionally and so it's the same thing with your goals right you have your long-term goal but That thing's so far away sometimes. It gets blurry. And so what you do is you focus on some little thing that's right in front of you that you can do.

And then that brings you a little bit closer to the goal. But occasionally, those little things that are short term, you're doing them day after day after day after day. They start to grind on you. And you say, you know what? Forget it. I don't even want to do this today. And that's when you have to look up once again at your long-term goal and say, wait a second. I'm moving in that direction.

I'm trying to get there. But to hear you describe these little things. And by the way, you're throwing them out there like it's no big deal. Like, oh, I just was, I went from the bed to the wheelchair to the, to the, to the prosthetics. Then I went to the blind school. And the next thing, you know, I'm making bird cages, bird feeders. And like, I'm, I mean, the small effort or the small task that took immense effort along the way. But, you know, from my perspective, what I see is you made each and every one of those things a mission.

Like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Okay, I can do that now? Cool. I'm going to do this. And these are small little progressive. steps, but you're making them and you're making them every day. Every day you get up and you just walk, walk forward. And that's the one thing with being in the Marine Corps and has really helped

me out along this way is, you know, being organized and getting in that routine where, you know, you wake up each and every day, it's like, okay, I'm going to knock this out. This is my goal for the day. And, you know, bettering myself was one of the goals because I knew that I couldn't get nothing done in this life if I didn't better myself first. And, you know, through the early days of my recovery, getting off pain pills was one of the first things that I wanted to do as well. And it's been 12 years since I last take a pain pill. And that's, you know, and it's, I didn't, I didn't want my life to, you know, revert back to pain pills and just, you know, I feel a little bit of pain, then then I'm going to, like, go take a pill. And, you know, I replace that with staying busy,

staying active, going to the gym, working out, and it really helped out a lot. I didn't just, you know, if I felt like if I got pain, then I'm going to go give it some pain, you know, and that's, and it's the one thing, and it's just, you know, through it, through it all, I've learned along the way is, like, people told me I couldn't do something or I can't do it. Why do you want to stay in the Marine Corps? You make so much more money outside of the Marine Corps. I'm like, well, I didn't join the Marine Corps for money, you know, and that's, I use that as motivation, and it guided me along this way.

And, you know, I just pretty much just like, whatever. You know, you think that for yourself, but I know what my mission in life is. And I kept a positive attitude, and people saw that. And, you know, once I got back from the blind school in 2009, I started getting out doing these events. And the first event I actually did was something I opened my mouth up to my physical therapist and forgot all about until, like, two months before. It was the baton death march in 2009. And he walked up to him and he was like, oh, Matt, you're going to do the baton death march this year, right?

You said last year, and I'm like, oh, crap. And, you know, I walked out and I did 10 miles and 8 hours. And that was the first, like, I was proud of doing 10 miles and 8 hours, but that was the first event, first hike that I ever fell out of that I quit on. So for people that don't know, the baton death march is an event that they do out here. And it's 26 miles, right? It is. And you've got to bring a, you got to wear a ruck. some people yeah i just wear camelback

but they do well explain explain what the baton death march is obviously it's to commemorate or to to remember the folks that were actually on the real baton death march but what is one that they do here this year actually was their 30th annual baton memorial death march in white sands new mexico when i did in 2009

it's a 26 point two long or mile long marathon and then they also have a 14 mile honorary and um the the 26.2 miles actually up a mountain and down a mountain and it's it's intense because you're walking through the sands and a part of it is this loose sand pit and it's a you know it's a good test especially for people of prosthetics and you know and your kind of endurance and see how far you can go and when I signed up in 2009 I walked 10 miles out in eight hours and I was like all right that's pretty proud, you know, I just got hurt two years ago. But then, again, like I quit. And that really bugged me. And I used that as motivation. And it humbled me knowing that, you know, I was a

good runner before. I never quit on any hikes. Like, I would always finish. And then it realized that, okay, I'm not who I am before. So I got to learn this way now, you know, and not everything's as easy as it used to be. But once I finished, like I told the lady, I told my therapist, and I was like, once I'm done, I'm putting my medical board, and I'm going for my reenlistment package. And I was like, all right, 10 miles in. And that was in March of 2009 and basically August of 2009, I got my, you know, my ratings back, of course, 100%. And I chose to go through the EPLD program extended, but permanent limited duty. And that took all the way till April, of the end of March of 2010.

And actually today, April 1st was the day that I was promoted to corporal. And with a battalion commander that called me when I was in San Antonio was like, hey, congratulations, you're getting promoted to corporal. And I was like, sir, is this an April Fool's joke? You know, it's like, and it's a... But on April 7th, 2010, I re-enlisted.

I raised my right hand and got a chance to stay in the Marine Corps for a few more years. And that was the great... thing ever right there. Yeah, no, that's the reason why I started off today reading that oath, because for you to be doing that in the condition you were in, having already sacrificed and saying, you know what, I got more to give and I'm going to give it. And that's the one thing, like when I mentioned lead by example, one of my therapists told me, you know, as I go to therapy every day and I put my legs on, I stand up, I walk out, you know, just I do my own thing. And he's like,

Matt, you don't ever, you won't see this, of course. And you will never realize this. But every day when you walk in here, you sit down and you put your prosthetics on and get up and walk out, people will stare at you and people will look at you. And that's the right thing to lead by example. You know, it's like if you wake up each and every day and you do it the right way, then people will follow, you know, and I've learned now it's like from living my life, it's just to wake up and continue doing the right thing, then people will follow. And, you know, it's, it's something that I focus a lot on. It's not being an intense yelling leader, but it's just doing the the right way. And that's something that I've done along the way. And of course, in therapy,

if you're in the Marine and you're an Army guy on the ground, then you don't want that Marine up there walking. It's like, I need to beat this guy. And then you also ended up going to college, right? I did. And what year did you start college? I started in 2011 at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Once I re-enlisted, they asked me where I wanted to go. I don't want to go to the Wooner Warrior Battalion, East Camp, Virginia, because I realized my I could help out more there. And I got there. And in 2011, I went on a closure trip back to Iraq,

and that's when I realized that I joined the Marine Corps to deploy. And I can't deploy now, but I could still share my story. And I don't have to share my story wearing the uniform. Is it the Marine Corps that takes you on the closure trip? It was a nonprofit, Troops First Foundation. And actually, the episode that I went on, 60 Minutes aired it in 2011. So it's on YouTube. too. But a nice plug.

Well, watch it then. But I learned a lot about my time in the Marine Corps, and the one thing with being a Marine is you're always a Marine. And that's a title I get to take to my grave. And when I'm 85 years old, I can look at my great-grandkids and be like, I served in the United States of Marine Corps. And during that time, we were starting a family, and I was getting ready to take college classes.

So the one thing that I'm very fortunate about is everything through life, like each step, each chapter, it comes right after the next one. Like, I never have a time to sit down and think about what's next. And, you know, I got out in 2012, and we moved right back to Kentucky, and I started taking college classes. And, you know, my brilliant, an amazing wife, you know, while we're trying to figure out where we're going to live, she's like, your dream school is University of Kentucky. So let's move back to there, and you can go to school there and graduate there.

And I started taking classes there in 2014. May of 2017, I walked across the stage at Rupp Arena and got my diploma in media arts and history. And it's, you know, not only a Marine for life, but a wildcat for life. And I feel, I feel a little strange being the, you know, the 30-year-old, like, kid, you know, partying like a 10-year-old there when the basketball team won or something like that, you know. I'm just that old creepy dude over there now and not the youngster anymore. But it was fun to go back and take college classes and everything that I learned that I should have learned in high school. I'm loving college now when I spoke at a child development center a couple of months ago.

And the kids asked me, it was like, what do you think of school? I'm like, you know, I wasn't the greatest of students in high school. But I'd tell you what, I loved college. I loved going back and reading books. I love to read now. and it just expands my mind and my knowledge on things. And it's, you know, it's good going down and setting down with people and you could share stories on different things and not just something about the military, but you could talk

about this and this. And, you know, it's, it was fun. So do you, I want to just kind of jump back to your workouts a little bit. And I know you post some of your workouts on Twitter and stuff, some little shots sometimes. You posted one the other day of you pushing a sled. He said you're pushing a sled all the way out to California. Legit. Do you wake up every day?

Is that the first thing you do is trying to get your workout in? I try to, I prefer working out in the morning, but now with traveling and, you know, catching up hours at work, I had to do evening workouts, which I hate doing evening work. So I'm ready to get home and take my legs off. But those are the, those are the, I work out in the evening. I tried to get them in as much as I possibly can. I love to work out. And if not, then I'll just do it at home. I got some dumbbells and curls.

I'll do curls there. But, you know, throughout the day, I'm like constantly on my legs, walking around, you know, doing some cardio. But, you know, I love taking shots at you there, Jocko on Twitter, you know. And that's a, I think one of the tweets I actually mentioned to you, I was like, you do the squat and I'll do the pushing the sled. But, you know, it's like even through, even through train. My trainer, it's funny because I joke with him all the time. I'm like, his name's Josh. And I'm like, you're just here to walk me from machine to machine.

All right, I'll tell you what I want to work out today. And like, it would get to the point where I'm getting bored doing pull-ups. Put some chains on me. And I'll do some pull-ups with some chains on me and something like that. I'll do some push-ups or I'll get to the bench press and do some chains on the bench press. And it's like just something else to challenge it instead of sticking to the same old thing, you know, everyday thing. and it's a and you know a personal best on the bench press couple weeks ago at 260 I'm proud of that and then course pushing the sled and um but now it's like you know I've learned doing the I do Spartan races

and marathons and I've done a marathon and I did a marathon and I forgot what year it was but I didn't work out or get back on the bike for a whole year and after doing the next marathon I was so sore for like a week and I realized like if I stay active in the gym and work out then I'm not as sore and um so like I news flash yeah stay in the gym and it's a so it's like I'll work out as much as I possibly can because it's like I never know what what you know this the organization I do a lot of these events with like sometimes they'll just call me I'm like hey you want to do a Spartan race in two weeks it's like uh sure you know and and you know through and let me start let me start drinking some water now and but and you know it's like through this

It's like each year I try to find something new to do. And for some weird reason, this year, I was like, I got on a stationary bike because my goal is to, in July, I'm going to bike from Seattle to Portland. It's like a 203-mile two-day event. And then my ultimate goal in August is the bike across Kentucky on a tandem bike. And so I got on a stationary bike in January for the first time I got on any kind of bike in 20 years. and I'm like, holy smokes, this is weird. And it's like my left leg, like the above the knee side, like it didn't work so well on pedaling.

So I just took it off and started pedaling on my right leg. And the most I've done was 7.5 miles and 26 minutes. And I went to my trainer and I looked at my wife and I'm like, this is the one thing that I feel like I'm doing normal, you know? I feel like I can keep up with somebody with legs. And so I really enjoyed that. And I'm looking forward to it. But, you know, like last year I climbed Mount Rainier or half a Mount Rainier.

and this year I'm going to go out and summit it hopefully in July so that is anything I can do to really like challenge myself and always I always tell my prosthetist I'm like any like I got the X3 on my left leg which is like the best of the best

and I'm like my goal in life is to break this leg it's like if I could break it then that's a check in the box and you know and and the baton death march you went back at that thing right I attacked that two weeks ago

and I don't know if you know what it feels like to run into a train but that's what I felt like Monday afternoon but it was the 2009 really like I mentioned it humbled me and it motivated me you know for the next 10 years it's like everything I'm going to do

I'm going to focus on this right here like I went into the baton in 2009 and then my prosthetics wasn't as good or advanced as they are now so when I went out there two weeks ago I knocked it out 14 miles. I knocked out eight miles and we stepped off at 6.56 and by 1120 I hit the eight mile marker. They gave me a 45 minute mile pace and I was knocked out a mile in 25 minutes.

And it was, I don't know if it was my knee was hurting or just the whole fact that I'm getting ready to cross the finish line. But it was like, I would get a little emotional. I'm like, man, this is really happening, you know, and to go out and walk this far. two prosthetics and I tell you one thing the miles are a lot longer when you can't see that's for sure and but um it was it was fun you know and I was I was out of my legs for about a week actually this last Tuesday is the first time I put my legs on for the first time so it's a but you know is that because you just trash the skin my left leg had a couple of little rub spots on it and so my wife she took a picture and sent my prosthesis and then she become my nurse and

But not to mention this Saturday, I just walked 3.65 miles in a, like, they call it. It's a run the bluegrass in Lexington. And my wife, she sent me a text, and she was like, hey, I think about walking this. You can get in your wheelchair and I'll push you. I'm like, I'm not going to get a metal sitting in a wheelchair. I'm going to either going to walk it or I'm not going to do it, okay? And so we signed up for the 3.65 miles, and we will finish that in an hour and 23 minutes. And for some weird reason, I think walking might be my thing this year, too.

But I had to get you out and do a race with us. Come and get it. Hey. I've been looking into the, what's the Navy Civil obstacle course? Oh, the, well, you mean the one that's in Coronado, the actual obstacle course? Oh, no, no, not that one. I'm not that advanced yet, no. I'm a Marine. Is it the Bonafrog or Bone Frog or?

Oh, the Bone Frog, yeah, yeah. So I've been looking into that. Right on. Well, I'm sure those guys will hook you up if you want to go and get after it. Yeah, I'm not big on the water and stuff there, but, you know. We'll do everything else. That might not be a great combination if you don't like the water too much because I'm sure they put some water into that. Yeah, that's a, yeah, that's a, no.

Hey, what was that, what was that closure trip, you know, speaking about emotional, if I had to be emotional going to Iraq again. It was the whole, when it was mentioned to me in 2011, the only image in my mind that kept popping up is like either a Black Hawk going down or C-130 or something happening because it's like I walked away. Actually, I was medevoked out of that country, you know, from my injuries. So it's like I had no good image of that country at all. And it was nerve-wracking. It was even more nerve-wracking being around like the Iraqi security forces. You know, they're clearing rooms and doing mount training.

And here we stand with no weapons or anything. Like when I was in Iraq, no Iraqis had rifles or AKs. And so that really kind of, it made me. worried a lot, but I think one of the coolest moments that really helped me understand it was we were meeting the Iraqi security forces, and they were all walking up, shaking our hands in, you know, good uniforms. And they had a patch, and one of the guys took his patch off and put it on my flag jacket and gave me a big hug.

And I'm like, you know what, this is it, one team, one fight here, you know, and there's bad people all over this world, but there's a lot more good people in this world, too. And I think, and it really, it made the trip as we were flying back home. We were going over Iceland. And the pilot brought back this little letter. And he gave it to my buddy and my buddy read it to him and said, U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden. And I was like, you know what, that's the perfect closure to a closure trip.

Because like we all joined the military after 2001 to go after him, you know, to kill him. and knowing that this happened on my closure trip, it honestly, like, it honestly gave me, it got me emotional. I was just ready to go homeby with my family. And that capped it off pretty well. And I will say when I was in Iraq in 2006, Saddam Hussein was killed. So Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, you know, so it's like, why not? But, you know what?

Like I got so much out of that closure trip, I learned a lot about my life and what the next step in my life is. But like I mentioned earlier, when I went back to Afghanistan in 2017, never been to Afghanistan before my life, but I felt like I got more out of that closure trip because going to Iraq in 2011, I was still in the Marine Corps,

wearing the uniform every day. In Afghanistan, I haven't put the uniform on in five years, and to put the uniform back on and go around and speak to soldiers about my Marine Corps career and be around the military again, truly made me miss it more than anything in the world. And, you know, the brothers that I met in the Marine Corps and in the military alone,

like, they're forever going to be there. You know, no matter where you live at in this country, they're always going to be there for you. And knowing that the, you know, the name tag across your chest, United States of America, that means more to me than anything in this world. And if I was called back to serve this country again and again, knowing the risk, and what could happen to me, then I'd go back and do it all over again because these last 12 years have been truly amazing. And I've done things that I would never thought I could do, and I've done it differently. And like through the journaling, through the adversity,

and it's just, it's inspired and motivated me to come along the way. And, you know, and it's, it's a life I love to live. And even in the dark, but I know one day it will come and there will be light in my eyes, you know, and I'll be able to open my eyes and see every day. But for right now, I'm going to live my life to the fullest. That's incredible. Do you, do you ever, you know, I'll hear from people all the time, oh, I don't feel like doing this today. I don't feel like doing, I don't want to work out today. I don't want to, I don't want to get up and do my job today. You know, does that, when you hear that kind of thing, what are your thoughts on that? I know for me personally when I wake up and I don't feel like doing something then I try to or if I feel like I'm in a down mood then I try to keep that in the house like I don't want to go out into public because I don't want people to see that like when I go out in public I want them to see happy Matt you know positive but hearing people like just it's hard to hear people complain about things these days you know and because you know I know what Iraq looked like and I'm you know I was in Afghanistan.

understand and you know I know what happened to me and I know where I was 12 years ago and what I had to do to overcome that you know and it's just some people just when they feel like they can't do it they just get down in the dumps and they give up and really it's like you got to learn to battle through those adversities and you know at the end of the day when you put your head down in the pillow and close your eyes you wake up to a new day you know and a new day with new challenges but you've got to learn to overcome those challenges because in life it's a mountain you're going to to continue to climb up a mountain and it's never going to flatten out you're constantly going to go over any you know obstacles boulders whatever is in your way and the only way to go over it is to climb it it's not to find the easy way around or turn around and quit you know and you got to learn to just overcome things and and honestly never give up never quit yep i mean i clearly you represent that to the fullest so what are you doing right now in terms i know you got a job what's that all about? So it's funny how I got this job

because my last year at UK I had to go for an internship and the internship that I was going for was at where I go hunting at and I was like okay I'll do that but then like people kept tagging me on Facebook

about this Wounded Warrior Fellowship position that was opening up and it was like Matt you should try this out and I contacted one of my friends and he was like yeah just show up at our office on this date and you could intern with us and then we'll talk about the position.

And I show up on the first day at our office, and everybody's like, who are you? I'm like, and then he ended up getting kind of in trouble for this. But it was a, so I interned there and then went through the interview in June and basically was hired on the spot. And I've been working with the congressional office for two years doing veterans outreach. You know, I do some casework with veterans, but truly it's just getting out of the district and being around veterans

and kind of letting them know what kind of legislative, The bills are out there that could affect them both positive and negatively. I mean, there's so much out there that they need to know about. And it's been truly a joy, you know, getting to work with a lot of Vietnam veterans. And, you know, these are some of the happiest guys that I've ever met in my life for what they had to go through, you know. And just hearing them walk up to me and be like, because I've had them come just to our office in tears just to, like, to shake my hand or get a hug from me and stuff like that, going through, you know, heart problems or whatever and they're like you know what just being here and seeing you and what you've gone through that it motivates me to continue doing what i'm doing because you're inspiring me

and it brings tears to my eyes because it's like you know it's as a veteran you know veterans serving veterans we need to look out for our own it doesn't matter if it's a job or not but you know the suicide right right now is sad and you know we got to learn to reach out and be with each other because we're the only ones that trust and the only ones that will open up to each other. other. And that's the one thing that I've really, you know, I've tried at first, which is very hard to keep my personal life from my work side. But, you know, these, it's, when you sit down and you talk to a veteran and you share what you went through and they share what they went through and you kind of come together and you talk about things and you, you know at the end of the day that you're

helping them out just as much as they're helping you out. It truly means the world and it's, it knows that you know veterans serving veterans we need to stick together yeah there's there's no doubt and you're doing all that and you're also raising three kids three kids three amazing kids actually and uh you know my wife and i we're april 7th to be our 7th wedding anniversary so we're uh but you know it's through it all the one thing that if i could teach anybody in life it's teaching those kids that you know challenges are going to come but you've got to find a way to you know you're life isn't easy, life's hard. And if they could look at me and look at what I've gone through and what I continue to do today

and use that as motivation to better themselves and better their lives and understand that, yes, I might have failed this test, but you know what, I'm going to go home and I'm going to get in the book. And I'm going to get an A on this next one, then that's all that matters. And, you know, to talk about them a little bit, Nolan, who's 15, he'll turn 16 in a couple weeks. A couple years ago, he had a birthday party. And there was this girl in his class or in his school that had no arms and no legs. And he didn't know her, but he went up to her and gave her a birthday. He invited her to his birthday.

And he come home and told me and Amanda that. And that truly brought tears to her eyes because it's like they get it. You know, when I was their age, if I saw a kid that was in, you know, a special wed class, I didn't walk up and try to talk to them. You know, I felt like they were different than me, and I stayed away from that. But, you know, knowing that he walked up to a girl with no arms and no legs and was, you know, invited her to his birthday party, truly brought tears to our eyes because it's like, again, he gets it. He's growing up.

He's a man right now, you know, and Emma, she is just as mature as she is so helpful and caring and compassionate. And Layla is the same thing. You know, she's seven years old right now, but it's the cutest. thing in the world is to hear her get around her friends and tell her stories about how I got heard. You know, somehow the bad guys blew my legs off and killed me and she told her teacher that. And I can only imagine what her teacher thought when I walked in the classroom, you know, but it's just, you know, they're always there. If I need them, they're there to help out. And, you know, to my wife, I mean, she's truly amazing. She has a job herself, but she stops everything

she can to get me to work, me to an event, me to a speaking engagement, to wherever, to get the three kids to wherever they need to go. Our two girls are in horseback riding lessons right now. And still she finds time to work out, twice a day, actually. She, you know, nine to two job. And it's, you know, she does dinner, laundry, everything. And then she still crawls in bed by eight o'clock at night. I mean, you know, if there's a motivation in my life and there's a true hero for me to look up to, it's her because she's truly amazing. And I couldn't ask for a better wife and a better, you know, friend, best friend, role model, mentor. And, you know, if there's any award out there to give to her, then I mean, I would, I would be up for it. And I'd be

the first one to sign on to it. Well, that's awesome. It sounds like you, uh, sounds like you found the perfect, the perfect girl for you. She is. And, you know, throughout all this, it's, you know, The hardest thing is to set back and like appreciate it. And the one thing that I truly don't, like, I always cross, if I cross the finish line, I always look to see what's next. I don't sit back and enjoy it. And she's there to kind of like, to honestly humble me a little bit. And to set back and like, let me remember what I went through to get to where I am today.

And without her, I don't know if I could live this life right now. And, you know, it's always talk about it. It's a tough road. You know, I am blind. I have bad days. And some days I don't want to wake up and go on. But I tell you, every day, you know, or every night I pray that maybe one day I'll wake up and I'll be able to see my wife and my kids. And when I wake up, I still look at darkness.

And then I go through my morning routine and I still grab my prosthetic legs and I put them on. So I'm constantly reminded of January 18, 2007. and I use that motivation to go on and love my family and love my kids and go out and do these extraordinary things because I'm never going to let that guy who pushed that button and blew me up defeat me, even though I don't know where he's at right now. He's never going to get the sense of relief that he defeated me that day. And while I'm going through these bad moments,

I mean, nothing soothes the soul and makes the heart feel so much better than hearing your 7-year-old daughter walk into you and say, hey, Daddy, I love you. All right, man. I don't even know if I have anything I'd say after that, man. That's just, that's awesome. Yeah, man, I think we're good. I think we're good.

I think that's a good place to stop. Man, it's just awesome to sit here and talk to you and, you know, hear your story. I know Echo's got a couple things to cover. What do you got, Echo? Sure. A few things. I always think about this, too. Like, you know how, Matt, you're saying,

like, you can choose to kind of go down two paths, right? So, and this picture starts to get kind of painted in my head when I hear, like, these cool stories. So, like, I don't know. You know, like, if you're, it's going to be a bad analogy, but bear with you. We all know you're good. Yeah. We all know you're good at bad analogies. Bear with me here.

So let's say, you're, you know, if you're going to be a bad analogy. So, you know, it's going to be a bad analogy. You're trying to, I don't know, like let's say you have an ant problem, right? You mean like little bugs, ants? Okay. Not like my aunt. No, no, no, no, no, not the cat. Okay.

So let's say you have an ant problem, right? So it's, it's you against the ants, right? So let's say you say, okay, I'm going to set out these traps for the, let's not ants, let's say mice. Let's say mice. I was going to say if you got ant traps, you know. So there's a mouse trap. Let's say you put a mousetrap out for your. a mouse problem.

And then, you know, someone or a mouse comes and gets caught in the trap. Yeah. You don't kill it, though. You were trying to kill all the mice, right? Okay. You don't kill the mouse. The mouse, like somehow, you mess it up, though. But the mouse gets away.

So not only did you not kill the, and then the mouse now goes, recovers, and now teaches all other mice how to get past mouse traps. Okay. Your mouse trap kind of worked against you. So like just like when Matt said, oh yeah, that guy who pressed the button to, you know, to blow up the bomb, you get me, he did the opposite of what he was trying to do. See what I'm saying? Oh, I see what you're saying. It's actually a good analogy.

I'll get it for that one. Not saying that Matt is a mouse. I'm not saying that. But I'm just saying, you know, conceptually. But he has the will and fortitude and the lessons. Yes. Most important. So the guy who made the bomb kind of screwed himself.

Yeah. You know what I mean? In this big way. I'm saying. Yeah. And it's, you know, kind of, it's hard to say that you just call me a mouse, but, you know, it's like at the end of the day, it's like, you know, I look back at all together just being a Marine, you know, and never quit, never quit on my brothers and never quitting on the situation it's given to me. And I'll use, you know, the amputations and the blindness and all this stuff stacked against me as motivation, you know, and every now and then it, like, steers its ugly head. but, you know, thankfully for my wife, my family,

and, you know, the mindset and mentality that I have right now and the friends that I've surrounded myself with that, you know, I kind of push it back and, you know, kick its butt. Yes, sir. Indeed, speaking of kick and butt. Yes. What do you got for us?

On the path. Matt's on the path. He's been on the path. Matt, have you tried Jiu-Git-T-T-T-T-T-U yet? If you could teach a blind guy with no-legs jihitsu, then I'm all for it. Yes. Well, I've definitely taught blind guys jiu-jitsu, and I've definitely taught guys with no legs

Jiu-Jitsu. Well, just put them together now. So guess what? I think you might find it easier than the baton death march. Yes, sir, you will. Yeah, no, man, you can definitely, you can train jih Tzu all day long. Ryan Job, you know, one of my guys who is blinded

and I trained with him, and he wrestled too in high school, so he had some background. But, yeah, you can, there's people that competitively, yeah, that compete with no vision. and the no legs thing, well, you just learn Jiu-Jitsu's adaptable.

Yeah. So you can adapt it as you are quite good at. Well, you know my hashtag, no legs, no vision, no problem. So there you go. Anything out there, I'll do it. Actually, some jiu-jitsu training we used to do,

they say close your eyes. When you train, you start back to back. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, once you have contact with a guy, yep. Like, being able to see them isn't that much of an advantage. I sometimes close my eyes just because.

So, yeah, the thing with grappling is, you learn, well, you learn to know what the other person is doing by feel. And you don't really need, because you can't see, what are you going to see anyways? You see like their armpit or whatever. You see their, yeah, so you don't get to see much anyways. Yeah. The friend I told you about that, that's trapped on his leg in Iraq, I got a video of him and I grappling. And it's harder because like I could put them in a headlock, but, you know, my legs, I can't do much with that. but they have a video of me like tapping him out

because he's like bright red. It's like, well, now a million people are going to want to see that video. Yeah, yeah. It's a funny video. He's going to be mad. Yeah, I mean, that's the part you kind of miss is like the look of defeat on, you know, on his face or whatever.

You have to imagine that part. Oh, I'm letting him know the rest of the day and then I also sent the picture to everybody that we started with. So it's out there. So you'll roll right into. That's the jih jihers. And plus you're a good athlete. You got them tennis skills.

My wife's going to use. My wife's going to love you said that. But yes, on the path, very good. Jiu-Jitsu. So when you're doing Jiu-Jitsu, on this path that we're all on, by the way. You're going to need a ghee. You don't want a ghee if you do ghee, which I recommend, by the way. Origin ghee.

This is where you get your geese at. OriginMain.com. Geh-rash guard. There's other stuff on there. But as far as geese go, that's where you get them. All Made in America. America, by the way, Jocco. Yeah, that's the big thing.

So, little town, up in Maine, and all the industry was taken away from this town, and we're bringing it back. We got a factory up there. We got, I think we got, but we got a bunch of people working in the factory, and they're all craftsmen, craftsmen and crafts women. That's people.

That's a lot of them are female. Because a lot of them are female. And, you know, they're making all this. stuff so it's great to see that we're trying to make America make again did you just is that just now I shot that to Pete my brother Pete I was like hey we're gonna make America make again because that's what we're trying to do yeah we're trying to make America make well it's totally happening I mean we got what denim American denim being made yeah not the kind that's the plans for the future and which is good by the way plans for the future good but that's not a future

plan that's we like future plans but we really like actual this is happening bringing dinner back yeah yeah yeah think about it american genes or made or created in america created here invented here and all of a sudden they're getting made overseas and these and there's no americans that are making me anymore well there are now yeah there are now in a factory in farmington main oh yeah that's what we're doing yes origin main.com go there gie rash guards denim joggers all kinds of cool stuff yeah and supplements of course yeah oh yeah so I'm back man I twisted my knee out doing jiu-jitsu yeah like the kind of popped out pop

back in yeah they do that they're skinny yes but they're loose too strangely strangely actually my knees are so loose again with the knees I know but my knees are so loose that I like sprained it one time so I went to the orthopedic surgery you know check it out he was like oh yeah you blew your ACL I was like since I really did blow my ACL 10 to 12 to like 15 years earlier my other side I knew that my knees were loose because the guy the doctor at that time was like hey you have real like I don't know long legaments I don't know see I know that sounds funny like long legaments I know but that's what he said yeah anyway so I was like hey are you sure he just didn't say you

had two of it anyway he said is yeah you have loose like ligaments or whatever but this is how you know this one is blown out and this one is not because when you pull it the one that's not blown out boom it has a tight like cord at the end of it where it just stops anyway so my current orthopedic surgeon I told him that he was like okay that's good that you told me that so he tries the other one and like he's like oh yeah they're the same like so it's probably not blown out but hey MRI anyway MRI boom anyway back to my story so they pop out right that's their thing I twist them wrong, they'll pop out.

Sometimes it'll pop out so much that it'll like kind of make the cartilage swell on the outside. So it takes a few days until I can bend them all away. And I'm pretty flexible, by the way. On the last, once I did that, double dose joint warfare and krill oil, four days back in the game. That's quick. Yes. That's quick. Plus we get the milk.

Yes. Additional protein. Yep. Additional protein. We got the discipline go. and the discipline. And we got the Warrior Kid Mulk. I got to get you some Warrior Kid Mulk for your kids, Matt.

Toughen them up, huh? So what it is is like, do your kids like chocolate milk? They do. Do they like, do you ever have strawberry chocolate? Well, what is that? Strawberry milk. Yeah. Do you ever have that one?

My Layla, seven-year-old, she loves strawberry milk. Okay. So unfortunately, the milk, the strawberry milk that you have to give your kids is horrible for them, even though it tastes delicious. I guess, well, there is like some protein in it, right? There's some nutritional value because it does have some protein because there's milk in it. Yeah. But you're also ladening them with sugar, which is not good for them.

No. And addictive by the way. So, yeah, and it's addictive. So we solved this problem and we made Warrior Kid Mulk. It tastes delicious. I'm telling you, it tastes like, I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but it tastes like the Nestle's quick strawberry milk. You know what I'm talking about? It tastes like it's that good.

I'm not kidding. Layla will be all over this. this stuff she will be stoked if they like strawberry yeah yeah yeah so we'll get you some of that and anyone else out there that wants to raise it war your kids that doesn't want to give your kid a bunch of actual poison sugar actual poison well yeah and here's the thing about sugar too and try read a little thing about this but i've noticed this so you know how like um when you're they're like little babies or whatever you'll give them like i don't know all kinds of stuff right and let's say you give them formula, but the formula is kind of

sweetened, right? So it's like it's sweetened so they'll like it, so they'll eat it. Oh, yeah. But if you don't give them any sweet stuff, even when they grow up, they'll like, they'll only eat normal stuff, like unsweetened stuff, you know? So I'll use myself as a small example.

One else, young. My parent, you know, the, you know, like the fruit, not fruit punch, but like an orange juice concentrate. When you make orange juice, you put orange juice concentrate, and then you get, um, water. Yes. Yes, water. Yes. all in. But how you do it is you go, it's like a 12 ounce concentrate.

Yeah. We'll say. We'll say. I think it's 12 ounces. Put the concentrate in. And then you fill that same 12 ounce container that the concentrate was in with water four times. Okay.

Right. Little did I know it was really three times. That's how much you're supposed to. That's the recommend it. But my mom always did the four times. She was trying to save money too. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what would have been to my family. Well, she was like, hey. throwing six in there. Nonetheless, I was used to it. I was totally used to it. So then later on when I found out in high school, by the way, that it was really three.

I was like, bro, I can't do the three. It's way too sweet. Yeah, your mom. See what I'm saying? Saved money and made you more healthy. Way to go, mama. There you go. The right path.

Yeah, see? She puts you on the right path for sure. So think about that. And when you think about that, think about this. Jocco has a store. It's called Jocko's store. So when you're on the path, you want to represent. Wow.

being on the path that's where you go you can get your t-shirts discipline equals freedom good good shirt oh the new one on the new the new good shirt yeah yeah with less of less of my head on it yeah it is weird especially after a while when like you know you look in the mirror and it's like good yeah i get the message but you got to see jocco's face or whatever and you know sometimes you're not in the mood for that you just get the other one do you sell your t-shirts anywhere matt they're at my website okay and uh we're in the process of getting right now He's got the cotton shirts, but we're working on workout shirts as well.

And that's Matthew Bradford.com? Matthew dash Bradford. That's right. I was going to correct myself, Matthew dash bradford. The dash. Yeah, they're on there as well. And you can also go on there and request speaking engagements as well and book me. But yeah, the shirts are there and hashtag on the front of them.

And the hashtag on the front is no vision, no legs, no problem. No legs, no vision, no problem. Oh, that's right, I have to prioritize. Yeah, yeah. It's a different. It's hilarious hearing people just go after the hashtag. It's like no sight, no legs, no vision. It's like, no eyes.

It's like, well, first of all, I got one eye, at least. The other one's the prosthetic, but, yeah, it's, you know, that's something I come up with like a couple years ago, like doing an event and it's like, you know what, it just kind of stuck, and next thing you know, here we go. It's like, no legs, no vision, no problem. And those, the workouts, you're talking about what do you what like a dry fit kind of situation and what kind of like a dry

fit but then also the discipline equals freedom t-shirt the what the material you all use oh yeah let's like I really like that material because I feel like when I work out I get good numbers and I got the discipline equals freedom t-shirt on so oh yeah just like a lot of little action door on little placebo yeah well you know it's one of those things right it's like what do you Call it armoring up. Wait, let me ask you this. If the placebo is works, is it really a placebo? Because that's, you know, we could debate that later.

I don't want to do it right now. Matt's got to make, I don't want to give Matt's whole vacation. We want to get somebody else in here for that one. Echo's going to start telling the story about like Kool-Aid or something. Mixing it up. How much water goes in there. Maybe, maybe. Anyway, you want to represent on the path, jocco store.com.

You see something you like get something. How's this? How's this? Yes. Lightweight hoodies. Oh, they're in. Oh, I know.

They're in. They're up. They're representative of quality. Yeah. Little dash of fashion. Oh, I'm going to say is, see, Matt, you're probably down. So he's wearing a lightweight situation right now. He's living in Kentucky.

Yeah, exactly right. There's more often you're going to need that in Kentucky. But if you remain, you're not going to need that lightweight hoodie. What? All right. Well, I'm going to be a merchant camp. I'm going to bring one. I'm going to wear one.

How about that? Emerging camp. Emerging. Yeah, the immersion camp. The origin of immersion camp. We haven't talked about that because it's almost sold out. Go to Orsonmain.com. I know.

Go to origin main. com if you want to go to that. Jiu Jitza. If you want to come to that mat, let me know. All right. When is it again? It's in August. All right.

It's fun. We do Jiu Jitsu. 24 hours a day. And you did that last year as well, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did it.

We rocked it. It was a good time. Jaka White tea. You can get that as well. if you can't deadlift 8,000 pounds, you might want to order it quickly. Because if you drink jocco white tea, there's a 100% scientific guarantee

that you'll be able to deadlift a minimum of 8,000 pounds. Some people are coming in higher than that, which is fine. Not a placebo at all. No, no, it's 100%. You can subscribe to this podcast. Because Echo thinks that you've listened to 171 podcast and maybe you haven't hit subscribe yet. That's what Echo thinks.

And unfortunately for me, there's more to it than that. No, Echo was proven right. Because then a bunch of people, when I made fun of you for that, a bunch of people rallied to your defense. Yeah, man. Have you noticed that? There's a whole little group that will rally to your defense. You know why?

Because I have a good point sometimes. Not all the time. Not all that. I understand. I understand. Come on. Subscribe. Oh, also don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast.

We just released a couple more episodes. Stories from Uncle Jake. Yeah, those stories are good, man. I love those stories. I'm going to publish a book with those stories, by the way. Good idea. Yeah, I know it's a big shocker. Don't forget the Warrior Kids soap from Irish Oaks Ranch.

Actually, it's not for kids. It's soap made by a kid, but it's not for kids. It's for humans in general that need to stay clean. Stay clean. Yes. Also, YouTube, if you are interested in the video version of this podcast, you want to see what Matt looks like. Oh, boy. Let's see what Jocko looks like if you don't know.

And yeah, I was explaining to Matt. I'll explain to everyone. As everyone knows, Echo does not sound like he looks like. You know, we all know that Echo sounds, I'm just going to say it. Echo sounds skinny and weak. Thank you for that.

I don't mean that in a bad way. Hey, no offense, but echo sounds. My kids always make fun of that. No offense, but. Right. I'm going to say something very offensive. So I was explaining to Matt, I'm like, listen, bro, most people when they see Echo and they meet him, they go, oh, okay, cool. They think to themselves, oh, he's not, he's not, he doesn't look like the way he sounds.

So I had to say, Matt, I know you can't see Echo, but he doesn't look the way he sounds. Matt was like, okay, cool, thanks. Because otherwise, no, he's, you know, he might have said something like, you know, maybe if you're trying to put on weight, like maybe Echo needs to. Oh, right. Just by the sound of your voice. I was like you maybe need to do some squats. When I was in the hospital, I had like a color. Every time I would make fun of somebody,

and they would be in the room and I didn't know that. Then they'd be like, blue, blue, blue. It's like, get my mind off of like what I was going to say. I'm like, oh, okay. Why are you saying to color right now? Oh, that's good. Yeah, that is good, actually. So, yeah, YouTube videos.

There's also Echoes, enhanced YouTube videos. I just put one up today. Yep. What up? Actually, technically it would be what yesterday, Monday, Monday. Those are good. Check out Flipside Canvas.com. That's a little company by my brother, Dakota Meyer.

He's making cool things to hang on your wall of highest quality, made in America. He made one that says good. If that's a message that resonates with you, can do that. he's got one that says discipline equals freedom and by the way I didn't really know this until the other day and I hate to even do this because Dakota might get mad at me but he kind of takes requests

so if you heard something on this podcast and you say to yourself dang when when Matt Bradford said this when Matt Bradford said just walk I mean can that not become that's like something you'd kind of want to put on your wall right just walk boom So if there's something like that hit up Dakota on Twitter and say hey Dakota

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a A canvas that said just walk He might have to put like a request like a section thread or something like this yeah to filter that one out yeah it's true Yeah there's some good stuff on there I went through it and was like looking at it Oh, this is good man and I'm not really an artsy guy as far as up hanging art on the wall you've ever been in a hotel Yeah, yeah. It has like a picture of like a cabin, you know.

And I see what they were doing. They were trying to make you feel cozy, but it's like, this is a random picture of a cabin on this thing. And I don't know. But yeah, you get that good one that we have that he has. I was like, okay, I can kind of get down with this, even just the looks alone. For sure.

And then you got another layer, the good and all that. Physi aesthetically pleasing. Yeah, it was good. And there's layers. And layers exactly right. We haven't talked about layers in quite some time. You abused the layer talk, didn't you? I think you did.

But, you know, hey, man, it's probably my fault. also psychological warfare if you don't know what that is it's an album with tracks of jocco getting you getting us getting all of us through our moments of weakness whatever they may be so check out that one that's on like an amazon mp3 spot where you get mp3s you understand iTunes all that stuff that's where you get it's really good also on it so if you're expanding your home gym still which we all are that's an ongoing thing i understand get your kettlebells rings what else these maces and clubs really good for your creative type workouts unless you unless you want to keep a boring workout like jaka i mean that's it's up to you how creative are

your workouts matt you'd like to do the same thing do you varied up all the time i got things i like going back to like i love doing bench press and um pull ups and dips but i do like changing up every now and then but you were talking big time about the chains i love chains it's kind of like legit isn't it yeah yeah it's kind of dope like looking to when one like while you're working out with them but what that does it offers this kind of offsetting like weight right to you and to what you're doing it's yeah it's good especially when you do my pull-ups too change yeah yeah hard but yeah love love making my workouts even harder than it really is yeah that's all right use the weight use the weight like rob jones says boom but yeah that's where you go on it dot com

actually you know what here how's this the perfect mix morning mix or pre-workout mix like before jiu-jit-to-be-so on it has these uh it's their minerals or electrolyte minerals mix that two scoops of discipline water and if you know I put a five-hour energy every once in a while

when I want to like a boost or whatever but all you need those minerals the discipline water and oh that's when you take like your krill oil and all that stuff boom perfect mix interesting yeah try that one I got a bunch of books too. Mikey and the Dragons.

I got these books, I brought these up for your kids too, Matt. Mikey and the Dragons, little kids' book, Lessons for Everyone. Way the Warrior Kid, and Mark's Mission, those are for a like kids that

want to be on the path, and there's a new one coming out. It's called Where There's a Will. Dot, dot, dot. That's what it's called. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. If you want the audio of that, it's also on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, MP3 platforms. Extreme ownership.

First book I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. Follow up to that is the dichotomy of leadership. We got Eschlon Front, which is leadership consultancy. And what we do is work with businesses to solve problems through leadership. Go to Eschlonfront.com for details. We got the muster coming up. May 23rd and 24th in Chicago, September 19th and 20th in Denver. And December 4th and 5th in Sydney.

You came to the muster, Matt. I did last year. Washington, D.C. How did you like it? I loved it. I loved going there and thank you and Leif for inviting me to join you all. It was awesome to have you there. Did you relate or did you recognize the leadership lessons?

It's amazing because you don't think about it too much, but, you know, it's different terminology, but it all means the same. And I love how, like, prioritize and execute and all this stuff, you know, going back to the military side of it. and it kind of keeps you back in the fight a little bit. And so I do go back to work and like, all right, this is how you should lead. You know, it's weird too. I always think about leadership.

It's always in my head. And I always think about military stuff. And actually, I was listening to you talk about getting blown up. And you were talking about how you guys had good dispersion. And what that means is you're separate from each other. That way if something blows up or you get hit with a mortar or, even machine gunfire, if everyone's too close together,

then you get multiple wounded. So you have to have to have spacing. Now, obviously there's a dichotomy because if you have too much spacing, then you can't see each other, you can't help each other, you can't get to each other, and you can't communicate with each other.

So there's a dichotomy. But we used to use this real simple, corrective statement, and it's real simple, don't bunch up. Don't bunch up, don't bunch up. Like, if you'd see guys patrolling, and one guy hits a little bit of an obstacle, and so it takes him a couple extra seconds to get over.

You fast forward that times eight guys and all of a sudden there's five guys sitting on this obstacle they're trying to get through it. Guess where the enemy puts a landmine? They put it by that obstacle because they know you're going to get bunched up. You're in a gunfight and you see there's a little piece of cover or sometimes there's not even cover

but everyone just, you get the instincts that if we're closer, we're safe. We're safe. And so when I was running training, I always be saying don't bunch up, don't bunch up. Now, how does that apply to, leadership. It hit me the other day as I was working out as a matter of fact. Don't bunch up on leadership. What does that mean? That means if you're leading echo, I need to let you lead.

I don't need to come in there and lead too. I don't need to get right up and bunch up on you. So when someone steps up and takes leadership, don't bunch up. Make let them get some space. Let them move and follow them. And there's nothing wrong with that. So these things that I learned in the military that Matt learned in the military, when you when you look at them from a leadership, perspective outside the military, they still apply. So if you want to learn about some of that stuff, come to the muster. Extremeownership.com for details. EF online. Maybe you can't come to the muster.

Maybe you're too busy. Maybe you don't have that much money right. Maybe you can't get the time off. Maybe you can't travel that far. There's a bunch of reasons. And we know that. And we don't like that. We don't.

So what we did is we made EF online. It is online interactive leadership training. It's me and the rest of the echelon front team showing you, teaching you about the principles of leadership that we learned in combat and it's available right now. If you want to go check it out, eFonline.com. And finally we've got EF Overwatch which is us connecting leaders

from the military, from special operations, from combat aviation and we're connecting them with companies in the civilian sector that need leaders. And this is one thing I've started to say is when people, people always ask, oh, I want to hire the right person. How do I do it? Hire the leader. You want to hire somebody that has experience as a leader.

Just because someone is good at some technical thing doesn't mean that they're going to be good at leadership. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. So it's better to hire somebody that has leadership capability. rather than, and then you take that person that has leadership capability, and you teach them what they need to know

about the industry that you're in. So you could have somebody that was in the special forces and you say, oh, I'm gonna hire him to run this communications sales group. He doesn't know anything about communication sales group. I'll tell you what, though, you give him like a month and a half, digging in deep, he'll learn everything he's gotta know, anything to apply the leadership things

that he knows from his military service into that position, and he's going to win. He's going to make it happen. Yeah. And what I realized that, it's not to be confused with boss. Like when you say people with leadership experience,

not boss. Because they won't roll in and be like, I'm the boss now since I was the special force. You know, it's not that. It's like. Because we're humble. Because we're only bringing people in through EF,

through EF overwatch. We're only bringing people in that understand the principles that we talk about in extreme ownership, which none of that has to do with being a boss. Yeah. I have a thing where I annoy my wife. I can understand. One of the most annoying things that I can do to her is I'll act like I'm not listening to anyone.

No one can have any influence on me whatsoever. And so she had some conference thing that I was supposed to go to. And she's sending me this, you know, she's sending me like, hey, we're supposed to be there at 6 o'clock. I'm like, I'll show up when I want to. And then my little daughter, she always takes my wife's, side because she hasn't quite figured out my sense of humor yet. And so my daughter was like, Dad, you need to do what mom says. You need to go.

She said six o'clock. And I was like, they're not the boss in me. So my little daughter was all mad at me for a little while. And then she realized I was joking. Now she goes, dad's not serious. She figured it out. Yeah, dad's not serious. He's kidding.

And now I've gone too far where, you know, I'm like, clean your room. She's like, oh, you're just kidding. Actually, I'm not. Jokes on you now, man. Jokes on you. So, hey, if you want to hang around with us a little bit more, you can find all of us virtually on the inner webs. So Matt is, you already hear his website, Matthew dash,

or Matthew hyphen, Bradford, I think that's right. Matthew, oh, and there's also two T's. Is that a thing? Is there two ways to spell Matthew, or am I just dumb? Is it always have two T's? That's the common way. Okay, cool. You know, yeah.

I won't, I won't emphasize it then. I thought I had to emphasize that there was two T's in there. So Matthew hyphen Bradford.com is where you can check out Matt for T-shirts, for booking him as a speaker, for seeing what he's up to. He's also bionic Matt five, number five, bionic spelled wrong with a K. I wanted to be young and hip when I created a Twitter candle. That screams young. and hip. For sure.

I'm getting up there in age. I got to keep young, you know. Yeah. So, and Matt's posting all, if you want to, if you're feeling sorry for yourself at all, check out and follow Bionic, spelled with the K, Matt, number five. What's the number five for? That was my football number. And if you want to think about it, graduate high school in 05, so.

There's all kinds of layers. Layers. And there's also, my wife just created it here recently to a new Facebook public page no legs no vision no problem too so we've been kind of posting stuff on what we're doing and also other you know ampetees and stuff like that and also since you're young and hip you also have your gram your instagram don't forget about your instagram well the the funny thing what that is p Amanda's like if you want to get your name out there you need an instagram count I'm like I'm blind I don't need to look at pictures so she was like she's like okay well I'll run your Instagram

count. So when people yell at me and it's like, how come you don't follow me on Instagram? Like, well, you need to go talk to my wife on that one. There's what you need to do. The next 10 posts you put on Instagram all black. Just all black. And be like, hey, what up? Matt Bradford here. Can you see what I'm talking about?

That's what I thought. Look at this beautiful view of the ocean right here. I'm in California. Doesn't it look nice. Hey, get off your ass and go do something. Oh, I'm back in Kentucky. Look, it's the fall. It's the springtime. Here comes the green grass. This is what it looks like. to me.

Okay. Now get a grip on reality. Get out there and live your lives. So you got to do that. I'll talk to Amanda. Let's hopefully I can get her on board with the program. She'll be all for that one. No, that'll be awesome.

We'll make it go viral. Just learn that expression. Which part? The viral part. The viral. Like, make it go viral. Okay. And then that for your, for your Instagram page is

M underscore Bradford underscore USMC I'm glad you got that down Yeah Oh I wrote it down Because when I found it I was like cool

I'm gonna put out the word And then I'm gonna tell you To post a bunch of black pictures And then on that And so the public What was the public Facebook again? It's just no legs No vision, no problem

Awesome And Of course On all those platforms Echo is at Echo Charles And I am at Jock Willink Echo, you got anything else?

No, sir. Thank you, Matt. Great to meet you. Thank you so much, Echo. It's nice meeting you, too. Any closing thoughts, Matt? I just really appreciate, Chaco, you all having me on your podcast, and, you know, the friendship that we started last May, you know, I look forward to it, continuing in the future and stuff.

And, you know, for everybody out there listening, you know, when life gets tough, just remember that one day at a time and you put your head down and close your eyes and the next day will be over, or the old day will be over and the new day will be the. So just push on better yourself go to the gym work out love life and enjoy everything that we have to offer here in the United States Awesome man and thanks to everyone that has served and is serving in our military and I started off this podcast by reading the oath that you all swore to defend us So thank you all out there in our military for taking and keeping that oath and and obviously Matt

thank you so much for taking that oath for taking that oath twice for keeping that oath despite everything that had been put in front of you thank you for your service and your sacrifice and thanks for coming to talk to us also police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs correctional officers border patrol first responders

and that includes dispatchers that are staying calm on the phone, on the radio to get people to help that they need when they need it. Thanks to all of you for protecting us as well. We owe you all a debt of gratitude. And to everyone else that's listening, I'm going to take a quote from Matt Bradford's Twitter. And it says this, to walk this earth blind is not the same as having no vision. to walk by faith unchanged by the hand dealt is to live life as a visionary and to love life as humans were meant seek never settle inspire never complain rise never stay down no legs no vision

no problem and let's face it if Matt Bradford can do what he does if he can keep pushing and keep driving and keep finding new missions and successfully executing those missions if he can wake up every day and say no legs no vision no problem if he can have the vision he has and the heart that he has then all of us can stop complaining and we can go get after it and until next time

this is Matt and Echo and Jocko out