Jocko Podcast - 203: One Man Can Make a Difference. USMC Corporal Jason Dunham and The Ultimate Sacrifice

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:02:36 - The story of Jason Dunham, with Bill Hampton, Kelly Miller, John Ferguson, Trent Gibson. 3:34:07 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:38:20 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:12:00 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 203 with me, Jocko Willink. I want to make sure everyone makes it home alive. Corporal Jason Dunham told his friend Lance Corporal Mark Dean. He was explaining to Dean why he was extending his enlistment. Their battalion was headed for a six-month deployment to Iraq. Jason was due to get out of the Marine Corps a couple months into that deployment. which meant his time was up and he could carry on with his life. He had honorably served his country, done what his country had asked him to do.

But it wasn't enough for him. He signed on for enough time to complete that deployment. To make sure that his friends, his comrades, his friends, his friends, his friends, his friends, his fellow Marines made it home alive and that's what he did he took care of his men he led them he protected them and he gave them and all of us and it is an honor tonight to have some of those men with us to tell us about Jason Dunham how he lived how he served and how he died a man, a Marine, and a hero. We have with us, Corporal Kelly Miller,

Sergeant Bill Hampton, Staff Sergeant John Ferguson, and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson. Gentlemen, thank you for showing up here. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for making the trip. And thanks for sitting in those seats to talk about this. and I want to get right into it.

Let's go back to 2003 and you guys are you guys are in the best place in the world to be. A Marine Infantry Battalion, 3-7 Marines, a little place called 29 Palms and you're all in Kilo Company, I believe. Is that right? You're all in Kilo Company at the time?

Yes. I was not at the time. I came in in late May of 2003. I was at EWS, the captain's career course. TMO was packing my shit, and I got a call from the battalion XO, Major Anthony Henderson, and he says, hey, we need you over here. You're flying out of LAX in two weeks. So these guys had already been in country for the whole fucking march up.

We're already back in Karbala, south of the back. Baghdad doing stability and security operations. So I came in late May, took command of the company, spent three months with Kilo until August when we redeployed. We were the second to the last Marine Battalion back out, 17th stayed down in the job, I think. And so that was August 03. Okay. And Dunham was still a member of Keto 3-4, Keto 3-4 at the time. Got it.

But these guys, Miller, I'm sorry, Hampton and Ferg, they were there for the whole fucking march up and the rest of it. Okay. And then Miller came on. August of 3 is when I graduate. Nope, I was at school of infantry. I went to boot camp in June of 2003, graduated September 11th of 2003, went to the school of imagery. I didn't get to 29 palms until I think it was first month of December, or first of December of 2003. So I joined during the workup for the deployment.

So tell me a little bit about the workup for that deployment. Let's just jump into that. I remember taking a bus ride to literally the middle of nowhere, which was Twin Amphalms. And as soon as we hit the ground, Sergeant Trejo took all of us around. Because it was a big dump. I think you guys got like 20 guys? 30, okay. And so literally we got off the bus and instantly went to SIF and got our gear.

And we went and got our rifles. We got our sappy plates. and by the end of the day we're up in the sandhills. So you're a boot at this point. Yeah, I don't know. And you're checking in. And it's legit, like, here's your gear, and now we're going on some training exercises now.

Yes. Literally. So that day we graduated the School of Infantry at 3 o'clock. By 10 o'clock at night, I'm up on a sandhill attached to a platoon, getting ready to get some. And what were you doing? at this time, FERC? Well, I'll take it back to October of 2002 because I was on security forces cadre duty at a little place called Little Creek, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

And then I checked into the battalion and then we did the quick workup and then we did the push. But what was crazy about 3-7 is I remember we were there for so long. We were the first infantry unit in the desert and then slowly the entire division built up around us. And then on the push up to Baghdad, we were the first ones across the breach, took Safwan Hill, and then the whole snakehead of the division just passed us, and we fell in trail, and we didn't get to the lead element until we're just about to go into Baghdad again. But what was unique is that we did stay there. What were you at that time?

I was a staff sergeant. I was a platoon sergeant for Kilo 1 at the time. Roger. And I had a good man, Lieutenant Dave Fleming, as my platoon commander. And then I had Wild Bill here. He was one of my top sawgunners for that deployment. So I got to do nine months with him. All praise the sawgunners of the world.

Winning doubt that sawout. That thing can sing, I'll tell you. Just take care of her. And she'll sing all day for you. Indeed. So you were on that push-up too, Bill? Yes. And now you guys are all back.

So you guys get done with that deployment. And you guys are doing a quick turnaround to go back again, right? Yeah, I think one of the quickest ones, we did nine months, and then our workup and everything, we only did five months back in the States and went back again for OIF2 for an additional eight months. So in a 22-month time, we were deployed for 17 of those. It was unreal. And then I remember, too, that the day that they told us we were going back for OIF2, it was on a Friday, and it was just before the ball weekend.

Get some. So then, yeah, and then the wives find out about all this. And then so they're not too, man. You're supposed to have a good time. at the ball, then a lot of them, all they can think about is, well, you just got back. And I was thinking that maybe they should have not told us, wait until Tuesday after the 72, you know, but. Let us have a good weekend with the ladies.

Good old military, you know, green weenie. Check. So that's the time you're going back. Hey, what do you guys remember about when you're meeting Jason for the first time? So if I can't put this in perspectives. So Miller is talking about graduating SOI in the afternoon and then being up on goddamn, what, cardiac killed that fucking night. So this is a full five-day battalion-level training exercise that we're conducting station training. It's being facilitated by our sister battalion 1-7, who was the last battalion out.

in O-F-1. But we're going to be the first time back. So they've been over backwards to set up this training force. And once that Friday hits, we're on a two-week leave block for Christmas. Then on the second of January, we're going to be at March Air Force Base for one more battalion level training exercise. And that's the last battalion little training we've got before we push. and I'm going to wind up going on an advanced party on fucking Valentine's Day, right?

So it's all, it's happening, it's happening quick and we ain't got no, we got no freaking time. So that afternoon, I'll never forget, we're up on the hill above this row of barracks where 3-7 is billeted. And we're running through the stations and first sergeant comes out to me, he says, hey, sir, we're getting a, We're getting 30 boots from SOI Tonight Fucking excuse me Thanks for the heads up Sorry, and I know I'm shooting the messenger

But what the fuck? I'm not complaining We're getting 30 new Marines But Jesus Christ, can we get a little heads up? So those Marines are going to get plugged right into the training, right? And so I've got a decision to make about

How I'm going to plug 30 brand new Marines into the company, which right now is really imbalanced. There was a huge loss of NCOs at the end of OIF1. As in a VIN deployment, right, you're either EASN or PCS and. So we don't have an even spread of, of leadership ranks in the patoons. We don't have even spread of experience in the patoons. I think second platoon had like 20 Marines in it.

Third platoon had 25 at the time. So I got a decision to make. Do I just top everyone off at 30-something Marines? And overnight, if I did that, kilo-2 overnight is going to be twice as inexperienced a C kilo-3. So I knew there was going to have to be some manpower shifting in order to be able to absorb the new blood

evenly without putting a platoon at a deficit, right? And on top of that, from my three months in country at the end of OIF 1, the thing that I was never happy with was weapons platoon. Because there are weapons between. They're not organized as a standard rifle platoon. And in the environment that we were operating, that conventional task organization had no place.

It was wholly impractical and unwieldy. If weapons platoon was tasked with doing a patrol in Karbala, they had to borrow rifles from another rifle platoon in order to go on a patrol. And on the other hand, if Keto2 was on perimeter security, they're going to have to pull Marines out of weapons platoon to man the machine guns that I've got on the freaking posts. Right? So it just made no sense. It was a cluster fuck.

So I knew we were heading into an unconventional operating environment. And I thought, well, looking at OIF1, we needed weapons guys in the right. rifle squads, right? And we needed rifle in the weapons platoons. So why don't I'm just make four fucking rifle platoons? And I'm going to put weapons specialists

in every squad. So if they're rolling in in trucks and I got a machine gun on a truck, then that squad can man their own vehicles. Right? Or if they're on a damn perimeter post

with a 240 golf, they don't have to pull a Marine from weapons platoon out of the rotation to man the damn gun. So I did, what was at the time, probably the most unpopular thing in the history of Keele Company. And when the word got out that I was going to reorganize the company, the NCOs just threw a fucking shit fit. What about up the chain of command? What did your battalion commander think of this idea? He didn't know. Jack.

I didn't even occur to me to tell him until my good friend George Treffler, the operations officer, pulls me aside when H.S. H. Trent. I hear you reorganized the company. Yeah. Yes, sir. He says, tell a boss about that? No. You think you ought to? There's only one right answer to.

So, so I've got the first art and I said, look, I want you to, you're going to dump the company in a fucking pile, okay? At the time, with the 30 new Marines, we had about 120-something Marines slated to deploy. That was 122 trigger pullers was all I was going to have. So you divide that equally amongst four rifle platoons. that gives you 12, 10-man squads. So I want you to print out the list of every Marine in the company. Sardin on down, we had two sergeants at the time, a dozen corporals and all the rest,

Landscobles and below. And you're going to hold an NFL-style draft. And to make this fair, Keel 1 will get first pick, first round. Keto 4 will get fourth pick first round. For the second round, Keto 4 will get first pick. And we'll just go back and forth. You're going to fill in squad leaders first, then fire team leaders,

then weapons specialists in every fucking squad, and then fill in the rest of the fire teams. And at the time we only had two lieutenants, Dave Fleming, Kilo 1, and Jay Johnson had Kilo 2. but our KELO 3 platoon commander had rotated out and the weapons of the commander had fleeted up his XO really Celsius. So Furg was covering down as Patoon Commander for Ketal 4. And he became the Ketal 4-Pertun Commander. So now it wasn't just Ketal 1 through 3 and whiskey, it was Ketal 4.

So, fourth pick, first round. He picked Cropo Travis Struker, wrestler out of Iowa. Good call. Right? And then... He was another one of my sawgunners that I had through, O'F1, so I knew he was a solid guy, leadership-wise, and everything. Awesome.

And then first pick, second round, Ferg picked an O331 machine gun. Copeland. And what was that based on? Well, during that five months that we had, I had the weapons platoon, so I got to work with Jason Dunham, and I got to see his leadership. And the kid just had that it factor. And I think the biggest thing about him was, well, one of the abilities he could laugh at himself, but the thing is I think his leadership was so awesome because he would tailor it to each individual Marine. We all know he can have a certain style of leadership.

But I really like the way he did that. And it took me almost three years at the School of Infantry from Corporal to Sergeant to get that. Because I had 50 different cycles so I could play good cop, bad cop, I can experience. But one of the biggest things I found out, even with brand new Marines, if you give them a reason why or you tell them what's going on, they work that much better for you. So if this is with a bunch of booths that are just out of boot camp and they perform that much better for you, then imagine what that's going to do for a bunch of fleet lands corporals and corporals. and I just liked his style and I know I was taking a chance because I even got laughed up by some peers

because we had a company full of combat veterans and they're like, oh, whoa, you use your second pick to pick Jason Dunham, a guy from security forces that had no combat experience but I'm like, that's one of my picks, that's who I want as a squad leader. And one of the great things that they did, though, they did spread out the talent

because what they did is Kila 1 through 4, they put the senior platoon commander in Kilo 1. And then all the way, and then Kilo4 had the boot platoon commander, the juniors guy. And then for the staff NCOs, we did the opposite. Brand new, or the juniors one was in Kilo 1, and I was

the senior staff NCO, so I had Kilo 4. Yeah. And that was good. But also with the draft, one of the big things, that Kilo 6 forgot to mention, one of the nights, we were almost going to do it at night. But we were working on godly hours, training, everything. And I'm like, you know,

I need a couple hours for this. Because myself and Gunny Walker took it seriously at the time, Staffs Aren't Walker. He, I went home and I basically took, I got a company roster, and I put everybody into four categories from must have great average. Hell no. And then I evenly did this and I put that. And then even once they're in these categories,

I rank them one through 30 or whatever. So when I went in there, I was ready with all my picks. I was going right down the list. And then boom, then I had like little triangles or squares for sawgunners or O331s and 50 ones. And restructuring the company at the time, it was kind of like groundbreaking, but it was by far one of the best decisions we ever did. And me spending three hours that night, my wife was mad at me doing that, that set up the foundation for having a great platoon. Because who gets to pick their own platoon? And I got to experience a lot of these guys in real world combat ops and real world training.

So I felt very fortunate. Yeah, it's kind of like an unfair advantage for you to, because you knew the guys, you knew the guys better than the officers would, right? Right. And then also with the other platoon commanders, I knew like their two top squad leaders too. So, you know, their picks would be, so I wouldn't even put those guys on my board because I anticipated them. taking their first one, two or three guys. And so it just worked out really well for myself personally, the platoon, and then also for the company.

Furg, with the strategic maneuvers out there. You've got to watch out for those staff sergeants. They're going to make it happen. I'll tell you, it was impressive because the two guys who took that draft the most seriously were Furg and Walker. And you could tell when you, When the first started to put the final rosters in front of me, you could tell who would put the most work into it. And it was a testament to this man's sense of commitment and responsibility, his degree of ownership, to put that much time into it.

And we didn't have any goddamn time. I made this decision on a Wednesday, Thursday, right, of our second to last. week of training. And we pulled the trigger on Friday, right? So by the time the Marines went on their two-week Christmas lead block, the new squad organizations had been announced. But the first time that those squad leaders stood in front of their Marines was on the second of January of March Air Force Base on the first day of the last five days of battalion level training that we were going to have before we fucking deploy it. So we accepted a degree of risk in it,

but in the end, getting that spread of talent, experience, leadership, and fresh blood, spreading it evenly across the company. It felt quite confident going into OIF2 that I could plug any rifle squad into a mission and that they'd be able to pull it off.

Yeah, and you kind of ripped the Band-Aid off. just like hey we're just gonna do this we gotta do it we got to let's do it otherwise you wait till in country now of a sudden you're looking around going damn this isn't working the way it's supposed to work and I need to start moving people around and that's infinitely worse than just getting it done so so Bill and Kelly you guys were you guys immediately in Jason's squat is that how that worked when I first arrived I was in the first platoon for the first battalion ops that lasted five days before Christmas leave and so no I

I'd seen him, but I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who Bill was. I only knew the guys I showed up with. You were keeping your mouth shut and your ears open. I was really good to keep my mouth shut and my ears open, do what you're told. So I got put in charge of a couple of the other boots to make sure they were squared away when I got there. My most memorable memory actually of when we first showed up is I met first Sergeant Templeton at the times. and at the time

Captain Gibson was over and addresses us and I just remember it's the weirdest memory he stood with the son directly I was back I had no fucking idea what he looked like at all I couldn't see him I couldn't see features I couldn't see anything but if you ever met this man when he talks you listen and I just remember like the presence he had

I was like I'll go to war with this guy I like this guy and what did you think about the reorg bill be honest I think Carbohle and I were we had choice words for ourselves that we kept to ourselves

but in the end entrusted staff Sergeant Ferguson we were hey no I can elaborate on that too because if you think you got these two guys that have been through nine months and they know the drill

and then they got this brand new security force corporal coming in and I saw there's some animosity and obviously if they were senior to him, then these guys by all right would have had that. But Jason had the rank and everything, and I saw that leadership, so I had to take that chance. And it was weird to see the bond because the two fire team leaders, like I said, they were a little

butt hurt, a little bit about that. But then the way Jason eventually won them over and everything is just his smile, his leadership, he just did that to people. Yeah, that's a tough spot to get put into. You've got no combat experience. You're rolling in here, and you're going to start taking over for guys that do have combat experience that certainly think that they deserve that role. That's a tough one. One of the things that Tink got brought up about the reorganization, like from a brand

new boot who doesn't know anything, as soon as the reorganization happened, one of the side effects was I learned how to shoot machine guns because I was surrounded by a couple machine gunners. I learned about mortars. I learned about demo. By the time I deployed, I had had Donham had grilled me so hard about machine guns, I could clear and operate a 240. I understood like the basics to shooting a 50 cal if I had two in a pinch, you know, like I

had more knowledge than I was trained for at the School of Infantry. So like that reorganization really started to crossbreed us in everything and I wasn't just No311, I was more of an O3 everything because I could function in more than one situation with one weapon. Yeah.

That's good across the board. So you guys did that reorg January? Right after leave. Well, it before. We pulled the trigger on it the day before they went on two weeks of leave. Okay. For Christmas.

For Christmas. Got it. The first time those squads stood, the new squad stood together was on day one of training on second of January. Got it. And then you guys come back, when you guys come back, you said you do one more battalion, big battalion exercise in January? that was it second to the sixth yeah and then and then just it's load out time because you guys are

deploying in February and did you guys know where you were going on deployment to yeah yeah what was the uh what was the kind of thoughts heading out there how much did you guys know about it we started heading out to al-kind that's where that's where you're getting told you're going out to al-kind yeah uh the battalion was already leaning into a george was the operations officer. He'd had Lima company during the march up, and he's hands down the most comprehensively proficient and professional marine I've ever been honored to serve with. And so he was getting as much intel as he could from the cavalry squadron that we were turned over with, first of the third ACR. He was up in all kind. By the time we got there, they'd been in country for 11 freaking minds.

and they were operating out of their, they had a base up on the Syrian border, Nidu Saba, and then their cavalry headquarters was at the train station in all kind, which was about, I know, 28 miles southeast of the border post, Nusayba.

So we knew that things were going to Helen Handbasket up there. and across Iraq as a whole, if you were listening to the news reports, I'd listen to NPR every morning coming in. And if you were paying attention that you knew that this was going to be the Wild West, and it wasn't going to be the same kind of environment that we had experienced at the end of the push-up in the last three months of OIF One. And it really hit me one day while I was coming in, listening to. listening to NPR News and an Army rifle company commander had been killed that week. And to hear that on the radio, knowing that a rifle company commander is killed, that you know that this is going to be a different fucking show altogether.

What's your deployment, the actual logistics of the deployment, you guys are flying over? Yeah, so we flew in. I went ahead of the battalion main body, was our company gunny. Eli Fon Tekeo was killed on the 4th of August. He and I went over with the rest of the other company commanders and company gunnies to get things ready. So we went into Al-Kime. We were there probably a week, I think, before the battalion's main body started echelon in, flew into Kuwait, and then trucked all the way up from Khrush.

weight. So these guys, these guys were pretty tired by the time they got up there. So we fell in on the train station. We knew that Kilo was going to be taken over for, it was a Fox Troop, I think. I believe so. Yeah, they had, their error responsibility was roughly the same as the one we were taking over, which was Carabola and Sada, which were sprawling settlements east of the border town of Yusaba. So we went in and started a turnover with that cavalry crew, and they ran us through some basic things like just some basic patrolling through the zone. doing vehicle searches, how to cordon, off a road, conduct vehicle searches, hasty, house searches, whatever.

In the process of that, turnover, I had to give up two platoons, and I knew that was coming, but I had four rifle patunions, right, that I'd just organized for this fight, and then I was told that I was giving up two of them. to the battalion main effort, which was Lima Company in Huseba. So that was a battalion main effort. So I gave him my best platoon commander, Dave Fleming, Keele 1. And then to make it equal, I just said, all right, Kilo 1's going. Then I'll send Kilo 4 to go with them, which gave me Ketal 2 and Kilo 3. And during that turnover... How long were they...

going to be, you know, take on to this other company? Ten Colonel Lopez promised that I could have Kilo4 back after a month. But Rick Gannon and Lima Company, he needed as much ass as possible that first month just to get their feet wet and get established. And this was because they were going to be rolling in and trying to, this is in Huseba? In Huseba. And so Huseba was the center of gravity for the battalion A.O. Right.

So, and it's the border crossing point with Syria. So they were determined to be the battalion main effort. And so he just loaded him with as much manpower as possible in order to make the transition as seamless as possible when we took over the AO from the army. Because, you know, anytime there is a unit turnover in country, the moogh fucking know, right? and you're going to get tested.

And so the colonel knew that going into it. So he wanted to make sure that Lima had as much ass as possible so they could go in as heavy as possible to establish a strong presence and get things going without getting bloody too bad. And so for the first month, in Huseaba, they ran platoon-sized patrols. They didn't run-squat patrols.

the lightest unit that ever stepped in the zone was a fucking platoon. Meanwhile, in my zone, I hit fucking six squads to hold down the holy o'est. And so we were rolling in squad-sized patrols from the outset. So what were some of these patrols, FERC, that you guys were going in? What were you guys doing? A lot of it was just getting familiar with the area. And then because we did have atoons, we would do the satellite patrolling's where, even though we're all going the same direction,

we maybe have one squad on this street, the other squad on this street, still keeping visual eye to eye and having phase lines and checking in. And other than that, I was just getting to know the AO. And I remember that it was quiet for a while because we just relieved an army mechanized unit.

And now you got Marines, boots on the ground. So you could tell, like, insurgents were taken back a little bit and nothing happened for a few days. And then all of a sudden it just started and just the kinetics just kept flowing and it was like cat and mouse games back and forth. Now, we're talking early 2004.

So one thing that's interesting is there were IEDs, but they weren't as bad as they got. I mean, they weren't as bad as they got in 05, in 06, in 07. I mean, they just got worse and worse. So at this time, you're still, I mean, obviously, like I said,

I'm not saying there wasn't any IEDs, but was that, would you consider rolling out into town your main threat was IEDs or was it you know a friend or or a just small arms fire? I would say it's a little bit of both but you're absolutely right. Some of them were buried too deep or backwards. I know on the battle of the 17th myself and Carbohal there was one between us and one of somebody kicked the blasting cap out and all we heard was a little small pop and like one of those pucker factors but yeah in the middle of a battalion attack to clear the town and so you guys are rolling in how often what's your op tempo like uh i don't you want to take

that one bill our op tempo meaning like how often were you guys doing ops we were doing ops we were doing it was about two a day six hours each it was about a day in the night patrol yeah each patrol is about six hours because we'd go from we'd go through the whole town and back well another thing that was crazy is you you know you have a set mission and then something what happened, you would have to secure a vehicle that got hit by an IED, or you'd get this new Fraggo to go to this house that you heard could have been a torture chamber or had insurgents. So I remember going out there, and then a four-hour patrol will turn into an eight-hour patrol. And I remember at the time I was just 28, but I remember my back was killing me because I had

extra large sappy plates. You're walking all the time. And later on, we learned that from the warfighting lab came out when we were attached back to Kilo, they came and weighed us. And I remember I was about 225 at the time, but me and my first sergeant were one of the two only Marines that were over 300 pounds with full combat, frags, and all that stuff. And we'd laugh about it because at the time, you know, some of those anti-tank mines, you just need 300 pounds of pressure. So I'm like, damn, me and first sergeant. You passed that threshold. If Sig stepped on it, he'd be good. He could jump up and down on that,

but me and Templeton, we had to worry about it. Go ahead. It's your question about. the evolution of the ID. It was fascinating to come in there and see that the ID threat that first of the third was dealing with, 82 mortar rounds, 152 artillery shells, all usually primed with debt court, this Soviet-style red debt court. And so when the moves were first employees,

they didn't know enough to bury the fucking debt court. So they'd be rolling into town and they'd see this string of red coming out of the desert terminating at the roadside. They're like, oh, gee, what do you know? Maybe we shouldn't drive over that. But, you know, by the time we left, it had already evolved into command debt

via not cell phones, but cordless phones. Kind of cordless phone you'd have in your house, right, VTEC or whatever. whatever. But when we came in there, the Moos were used to dealing with an armored threat. And the thing that scared the soldiers the most from the cavalry was a 62-millimeter Chinese rocket. This thing had showed up in Zone several months earlier. And the Mojj were affixing these things to walls. They would mortar in around this thing, so all you could see is a circle, right? And they'd set it up about base of the turret height and wait for a vehicle to roll by.

And there were poking holes in main battle tanks of these things. In one side and outside the other of a Bradley fighting vehicle. So the Army were scared shitless at these things. And I remember they had a display in the makeshift shot. There in the battalion CP of different types of IEDs that they had encountered during their tour, which was really instructive for us because Marines got to get eyes on them, right? One of those was a Chinese rocket. We're like, holy fucking Jesus.

You know, we're rolling out in Havis. And the day of the relief in place when it was finally effective and first or the third was rolling out, I climbed up onto the Bradley from the Fox Troop Commander, who was my counterpart during the turnover, to shake his hand and thank him for the turnover. He looks behind me at our row of Humvees, which were Soft Skin and Hovies. We had four up-armoreds that the first of the third's organic self-propelled battery had to use. It turned in their self-propelled howitzers, for Humvees, once they went into the And of OIF one,

and thank God they gave us four of them, right? We spread them out amongst the battalion, so four came to Kilo. And the soft-skinned Humvees, my Marines were in the process of strapping, used army road wheels that they had scavenged from the fucking scrap heap and strapping those with cargo straps

to the side of our Humvees, so we had some armor. and he looks at that and he looks at me and he says I don't know how you're gonna fucking do it so that's how we roll you got no choice right

and within a few weeks a Chinese rocket disappeared because it needed that 152 82 mortar round they do just fine and they had their hands

full of anti-tank mines and they put those to good effect. They learned to plan them upside down so you could get a rear-wheel strike on a Humvee instead of a front-wheel strike. Because, you know, if you get a front-wheel strike on a RV with a mine, it's going to kill the vehicle, right?

But most likely, you know, you've got guys may get a broken foot or broken leg. But if you get a rear-roll strike, you're going to kill at least one Marine and probably probably do that. So they figured that shit out. And on that last day of our turnover with Charlie Company 1-7, first starting Templeton, stepped on one of those damn things,

left his size 14 fucking boot print right in the middle of it. Thank God. It was planted upside down. He'd been there a while. But this Lance Corporal engineer comes up, yanks his helmet off, gets down there face first with this fucking anti-tank mine, breaks out his K-bar, starts unearthing it. And he says, I'll be damn.

I said, what do you got? I said, don't tell me. It's upside down, right? He goes, this thing's fucking upside down. Lieutenant Justin Englehart, Cat Red, figured that out about five months into the deployment. Well, did you guys, did you guys prefer to be in vehicles or on foot? Foot. Definitely on foot.

Well, we had a unique situation because we were attached to the main effort, Lima Company for a while. So we were used to patrolling on foot. And then we had great dispersion and stuff. And then going back to the vehicles, it took a while because, yeah, it wasn't comfortable. I mean, in Ramadi, we didn't like being in vehicles. Yeah. I mean, because you just don't have any control. You know, I mean, I was a damn vehicle commander, and I didn't feel like I had any control

because you just can't see what's happening fast enough. You can't see an IED fast enough, whatever. And so I always felt, and we pretty much did everything we could to take the vehicles to where we needed to take them to and then get out of those things and walk. Was that the same thing you guys were feeling? Yeah, we'd get dropped off. We'd get dropped off and they'd go and, all right, they'd go back and support QRF or whatever, or wait to go get us. or they'd go check out another spot over on the other side of town while we're you satellite to them.

Got it. Would you like better, though, Bill? Did you like better sitting in the Humvee waiting to suck start an IED? That's what I would have felt like. Well, and the thing you got to, for us, we weren't rolling in a regular Ford or Humvee. We weren't high backs. So in the back of the Humvee there was six of us, seven.

Crammed in there, you know, like, tune it. And you're just, you can't drive slow. because then you're an easy target, so you drive fast, and what can you identify going 45-50, fast enough to stop to not hit it. And so I always preferred to be on the ground. It felt like I had more control. Yeah.

So we came up with a method of employment that involved what I came to call split sections. So we'd have two gun trucks, escorting two highbacks, right? So you'd put an up-armored up front because it had armor if you were going to hit an I-ED. and then two damn highbacks, and one rifle squad, which was organized into two fire teams, because we didn't have large enough squads to have three fire teams, right?

So you'd put a fire team in each VIC, and by the time we were in country long enough, we figured out you take your third squad, and those guys are going to man the vehicle itself. They'll drive it, they'll vehicle command it, and they'll gun it. We got 240s eventually mounted on the tops of these things. And then that left you with two full dismounted rifle fire teams, one in each truck, right? And then you had another gun truck in trail. So you get where you're going, the fucking squad dismounts. And then those four trucks could satellite around the dismounts to keep the enemy guessing

and while these guys did their work. What was the, how long did it take for you guys to take casualties rolling in there? You remember? Italian's first casualties were on St. Patty's Day, if I recall. So you guys got there in February and St. Patty's Day is what, end of March, middle of March, end of March? The actual effective transfer of authority day, I think,

was the dam, I think the first week of March, maybe the second. It wasn't long before we took our first casualties. Cat Red took an IED up at checkpoint 51 in my zone. Marines were still around with windows down. Marine took a hit to the elbow. Another Marine took strapnel through the window into the back of his leg. The gunner did. Right. And then it was either the same day or right after that, that Potentica's first KIA, two killed in a rear-roll mine strike in the HK triangle, which was the western end of Kilo's zone, right up against the wadi that delineated the eastern edge of Huseba and Lehman Company zone.

So the HK was this sort of no man's land, right, between mine and Kilo or Limus's zone. But it belonged to me. But at the end of the day, the end of that deployment, the vast majority of the battalion's casualties had occurred in the HK. Kelly, how old are you at this point? I turned 21 on April 2nd. So like a couple So in country You turned 21

I got pulled out of my I got pulled out of my bed By head first to my sleeping bag and I was given my 21 Happy birthdays And what are you thinking at this point Now you know how much did it change your perception

And perspective When all of a sudden You know that the battalion Has taken casualties Um I came from a military family? I mean, I got my grandpa was in World War II in the Navy. My dad and my uncle were in Vietnam, a cousin in Desert Storm, and then I have law enforcement everywhere. So I grew up with an

understanding of service. And when I joined the Marines, we were already in-country casualties cheese where happens and my recruiter made no bones about it when I told him I wanted to be in the infantry. He's like, you do know you're going to deploy. I was like, yeah, I'm well aware. I didn't go in blind. You know, there's some guys that they joined the Marines and they're like, I don't want to go to Iraq. I'm like, what the fuck did you join? Watch the news. Pick up a newspaper. So I knew what I was getting myself into it and that never prepares you for it. But luckily, I was surrounded by such good leadership, you know. I was only for four years.

I had three different command sets. And my first one was of the highest quality, literally. And I never, I always felt oddly taken care of and at ease through it all because I believed in the guys that were above me. It made it easier in a really weird sense. I always felt calm. I never went out nervous. The brotherhood of the Marines, it's like you're going out and you know that every single guy you're going out is going to do everything in their power to make sure you can make it home and make it back.

In the confidence and calm. You know, I never felt uneasy. I was never scared. I was just there to do a job. It's sprayed at a core. Exactly. Yes. Thank you, Bill.

How old were you at this point, Bill? 22. 22. Get some. You know, you're talking to. to a lot of these guys that I've brought on that were going into the most horrible situations, whether it was Tarawa,

Guadalcanal, wherever. You know, there's something that the young man has, which I think we all know, which is it's going to happen to someone else. Like, hey, people are going to get hurt, people are going to get wounded, people going to get killed. Not going to be me. And I was just telling you guys about Dean Ladd,

who I just had on the podcast, who is Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and he's never even thought about. He was like, oh, yeah, I'm sure some, we're going to take casualties as we cross the beach to Guadalcanal, and I'll try and help those other guys as much as I can because it's not happening to me. So, and then I know you guys know this too. I had guys, and I'm sure you guys knew guys, that thought they were the one.

That was absolutely going to be the one that gets hit. Like that was in their mind, and God bless them, because I don't know how they did it day after day, but they'd go, yeah, it was the guy that was going, I've got a bad feeling about this one, man. I got a bad feeling, and you're going, hey, you're going to be okay, bro. It's going to be all right. They always strapped it on and got their helmet back on, you know. But to me, it seemed like people fell into those camps for the most part,

and I'm sure, you know, occasionally someone goes, you know, we're taking casualties. I could be one of them. But for the most part, I think people are either, hey, probably going to happen to someone else, or it's going to happen to me. So I don't know, that's kind of what I see. Jago, I think you're like 100% right.

And I've been fortunate or unfortunate to see combat in my early 20s with Somalia at 28 in Iraq and then 38 in Afghanistan. And I think as a young 20s, you feel invincible and you don't think it's going to happen to you or you just operate and you're there. You want to be the one to kick the door and you want to be then clear the room. And then at 28, I started leading more Marines and I become – you understand your mortality and what we're doing is not normal and, you know, fire and stuff and explosions. And then when I was a company first starting for 2-1, then I just wanted to be that father figure and take care of them all. And all these young Marines, they just want to see that grizzly, that combat. And then, you know, but you know it's not what it's cracked up to be.

And that grizzly's powerful and could fight back. Yeah. I definitely, from my perspective, it was always, hey, I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about my guys, you know? And I was always in a leadership position because I was a platoon commander. I was a tasking commander. So for me, it was always, I'm worried about my guys, you know?

Well, I can, for her, absolutely right. I mean, I was 21. I was on the, I never thought it was going to be me bandwagon. And I mean, that's why I frequently ran point. I was like, I want to be the first one. I want to be in the lead. I'm going to be checked for IDs. Something happens.

It's going to shoot at me. I know how fast I am. I can get by on a wall. You know, I never, ever, it never crossed my mind. And in a really weird way, even with all the casualties that happened, I didn't think it was an option. I think that, at least from my experience, but I got this sense from other Marines, as casualties started rampant, Lima was taken the vast majority of the brunt. And I was probably technically incorrect in that statement about the HK and casualties.

There had to been more than you say about proper. But anyway, as they started happening on a regular basis, at least for me, it was no longer a question of if, which is a question of when. So I eventually just decided, well, it's going to happen, right? I mean, Rick Gannon, Lima Company Commander, and four of the Marines killed in the opening stages of the Battle for Hussein on the 17th, three days after Dunham was hit. company commander gone just like that so it wasn't

a question of if it was going to happen so at least for me I just resolved that it was going to happen so once I accepted that it was easier to operate because then you didn't have that uncertainty about whether or not it would happen so it was just like well when it comes it comes

it nothing I can fucking do about it so it's just time to get this thing done And I think there's, I would say to a large degree, an acceptance amongst the Marines because we didn't pull back. It was one day we didn't fucking operate in that seven-month deployment. One day, and that was after we lost three Marines on the dam, 5th of July. is that the one day we did not send a patrol

on his own. Yeah, I know for us certainly rolling into Ramadi in 2006, you know, there was memorial services going on every other day, every two days for soldiers and Marines that were getting killed. I mean, it was that.

And so much like you're talking about I knew every time we rolled out the gate or every time my guys rolled out the gate there's a decent chance that something bad was going to happen. And all you can do is do everything you can to mitigate that risk, but there's no possible way to mitigate all the risk. It just doesn't happen.

Even if you say, you know what, we're going to stay in camp, you're going to get mortared. So my attitude was default aggressive. We're going to go and take the fight to the enemy, and that was certainly the attitude of the troops that were in Ramadi was we're not going to sit back and wait for it. We're going to take the fight to the enemy. And I believe that's the best thing you can do. You have to, I think.

And the most inspiring thing to me was watching these Marines day in and day out every fucking day, despite the danger, despite the casualties. despite what times I'm sure seemed like a ridiculous mission, despite all of that, the cold resolve to do the job and keep each other safe in the process was humbling. American sons out there devoid of any political context what they were doing they were doing for each other. Yeah. It's also interesting to think about when you say American sons.

Look, Americans come from all different kinds of backgrounds, but the fact of the matter is, when you live in America, you are a privileged human being. Like you have opportunity. Hey, even if you're the most unmotivated person in America, you still can live a pretty decent life. when you compare it to that of a grunt overseas living in some outstation somewhere

off of MREs and crappy bottled water shitting in a damn outhouse burning I mean just the whole nine yards so when these you know it's not like hey people join the military maybe there's that idea hey I'm trying to get out of my hometown which I know I certainly did hey I want to get out of my hometown I want to go somewhere I want to be in the world but you're signing up to put all that American privilege on hold.

You're gonna put it on hold. And you're gonna go out there and you're gonna live in horrible situations with the threat of being wounded and killed and that's the way it is. And so yeah, when you see that and when you see those service members rolling out like that day after day after day. And that's, you know, I've talked about this,

in Ramadi, you might remember this, Kelly, but they had the vehicle graveyard. The vehicle graveyard of all these blown-up vehicles was on the road that headed to the main gate. So when you were driving to go out into town, you were driving past, destroyed, not just destroyed Humveys. Seven tons. Seven tons.

Tanks that they dragged back in. So that was your little send-off every time you left the gate at Camp Ramadi. Oh, there's 75 or 100 vehicles that have been destroyed, and you know that each one of those meant some level of casualties. Well, and you know it got real because there was the two EOD vehicles that were in the graveyard that had the V barrels. Oh, yeah. Bearcats, I think they were called. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those big mind-resistant vehicles, they blew one of those things in half. So, yeah, that's what you're signing up for. and yet Americans sign up for it voluntarily every single day and then they go out there and do the work

what was morale overall strong that's what I'm hearing strong it was resolved in my assessment we just fucking resolve

we're in this we're not getting out of it right we got a fucking job to do we're going to get it done we're not going to let it up the enemy wants us to fucking take a break they want us to feel sorry for ourselves turn our fucking backs for a minute and we're not gonna fucking give it to him period they will not win well I don't know we'll we'll call this a

a boot's perspective but a really weird thing happens bad shit starts to happen you go out on patrol you get shot at an IED goes off doesn't take you out There was one situation where an RPG hit the vehicle with the guy didn't arm it. What do you do when you get back to base? You and your buddies you sit around and you fucking laugh about it. It's a joke and you laugh about it. And I've told that to a lot of people and people look at you like you're crazy, but the reality to it is you do that because by making it a joke, it's not serious.

And now you can go out and do it again tomorrow. Yeah. We actually have video of one of my small elements was out in Ramadi. got into a big gunfight they were with some Iraqi soldiers one Iraqi soldier got wounded one Iraqi soldier got killed got called in the tanks the tanks went in escorted them put down fire

Kazevac the whole nine yards as they're patrolling back in one of the Overwatch the seal Overwatch positions was videoing them and as they're coming in like World War II style in a column in between two tanks and they're their foot patrolling back and the video

the video cameras like tracking them and you can hear the The platoon chief, Tony Afradi, looks up at the camera and yells, everything's a big joke. That's how, so to your sentiment exactly, yes. If you take everything too seriously, you're going to go crazy. So that's another thing that can't be stopped. The American resolve can't be stopped and the American sense of humor can't be stopped.

No doubt about it. All right. Let's roll into April 14th. So April 14th, this is pretty much, what are we dealing with? Another day at the races for you guys is what you're looking at. Nothing abnormal. It seems like a pretty standard type of operations that you guys were doing at the time. Yes, the only difference is because now we were back with our kilo company proper.

So we're back with six. And the way we looked at it is instead of walking outside the gate to work, we get a ride to work and then we'd do our patrols. But yeah, that's the only thing that was different that day. And squad size, vice platoon size. Right. What you were saying, yeah, yes. Oh, so now you got into...

Well, Kilo, in our zone, we didn't have enough ass to roll out in the platoon. Because I only had two rifle platoons, right? So for the first six weeks, I was pumping out at least a patrol a day. For the first four weeks, we ran four patrols a day with six schools. squads. And they were smoked. Every Marine in the company was sick. It was like a freaking sick ward in that warehouse. It was heartbreaking at night to listen to all those Marines coughing and hacking and not fucking sleeping and knowing that I was going to send them out on the next fucking patrol, regardless of what state they were in. So we had no choice but to roll

squad-sized patrol. So Qa4 actually got a bit of a break in coming out of Huseba because now the opt tempo may be the same, but now instead of having to send the whole damn platoon out, now, you know, you could rotate it and do one squad at a time. So the battalion had just graduated the first class of Iraqi policemen from this, you know, the army. police academy that Ten Colonel Lopez thought up, we had an attached M. People Tune, and

he understood that policing by the Iraqis was the key to the whole thing, right? Yeah, that's some impressive that's some impressive foresight right there. Because I was thinking about that when I was reading this book, this idea of the Iraqi police became a national

program in 2006. Before that, it had become something called, it was something called Desert Protector, which was sort of the same thing. Like we're going to get a homegrown kids, young men to help police. And a lot of that from what I've been told came from Al-Kime when the push happened through Al-Kim. But that was in 2005, that the big push happened in Al-Kim was Operation Matador. And those Marines got civilians that came up and said, hey, there's bad guys over there. Hey, there's bad guys over there. And the idea was, okay, let's get the, let's hire

those people. So we're talking now 2004 and your battalion commander, Colonel Lopez, was already in the game thinking that way. That's impressive foresight right there. That's outstanding. And that guy had incredible sense of ownership. He never waited for permission to do anything. He's just like, you know, okay, we need a

fucking police academy. We're going to have one. And so his MPs knocked that shit out. They did a three week course. And at the end of the course, Colonel calls him in and he says, hey, Kevin Gibson And tomorrow we're going in zone. I'm going to pay the first two weeks of pay for these policemen.

I'm going to turn that over to the police chief. We've got 33 police recruits that we just graduated. And I'm giving them all to the Kravil police. It wasn't up to the Iraqi police chiefs to determine where their manpower was going. Colonel Lopez decided they're going to Kerala. So Kilo, you got them. And what I want you to do to reinforce. the skills they just learned in this police academy, you're going to conduct around the clock

patrolling with these guys for a four-day period to show the people of Corabla, Marines, and police working side by side, and Iraqis doing their job. Man, this is, this is incredible foresight from Colonel Lopez, for sure. That's brilliant. So he said, we're going in zone, and I'll meet you in there, right? So at the same time, I need you to identify a prospective location for a company patrol base to carry this patrolling operation out of. So... Was that going to be a permanent base?

Like, hey, we're looking for somewhere. It's four days. Okay. Okay. But you were looking for something for four days. Yeah. General Mattis at the time forbade the permanent establishment of any thing below the size of a battalion in zone, right?

So he said, you're taking the... coming in, four days straight, your patrol. Got it. So I came back and I grabbed Bull, Lieutenant Robinson, Ketil 4, since they were on the rotation now. And I said, hey, I need a fucking squad to get me in the zone tomorrow. And by the way, I'm also picking you because during this patrolling operation, Ketal 4 is going to be perimeter security for the patrol base. So I need you guys to get eyes on this watertree implant and confirm for me whether or not it's going to answer the mail for us from a security standpoint. So for you guys, this was like a recon

to find out where you could establish this four-day fire base and then you were going to conduct patrols out of there for four days with the Iraqi police. And it was situated right behind the police station. So it made perfect sense because we were going to, I grabbed Kedal 2, they were going to be the patrol platoon.

They would have a squad-sized patrol around the fucking clock with policemen embedded in it. Keto, 3, you're going to be local security patrols for 96 hours straight, outside the perimeter to keep the enemy off our fucking backs. And Keto 4, you've got the perimeter security for the patrol base itself. All right. So you guys roll in. Did you roll in with the colonels, with his convoy? Negative. We met his patrol on site at the police station. So you, who showed up first?

Do you guys? No, Colonel Lopez was there. Okay, so Colonel Lopez was there. They're doing their meet and greet. He's paying people. He's shaking hands and establishing that. And then you guys roll in there afterwards, meet with him. And now you're doing your assessment.

And you have, who's the element that's with you right now? With just you. Who is it? Is it? Kilo 4-2. So it's Kilo-4-2. That's who you have. They were your escorts.

court going in there basically. Correct. So in addition to Dunham squat proper, we had attachments, right? For being one of them because he was going to be the platoon sergeant in charge of perimeter security. So he wanted fucking eyes on to get a good idea of exactly what he was going to need to pull off a perimeter security plan, right? And then we had stessorant by auto, right? From the S3. Yep. We all We also had the Paymaster for the battalion was run along because he was the one to turn over the cash. For sure. And we had brought along.

We had Sergeant Reynolds from the state. Yep. Because as part of the defensive plan, I was also going to put in sniper hides. Because I wanted no interference whatsoever with this petroleum operation. And based on the feedback we had gotten. from first to the third, they'd gone in a couple times to try and establish patrol bases. And every time they'd earn in there a couple hours before they were taking mortars. Turns out, at the end of the day, I think they didn't have strong enough local security, right?

I think their sense, inherent sense of protection that came with an armored unit, I think they took some things for granted that a regular rifle company wasn't taken for granted. You get a little bit detached when you're inside armor, right? There's a connection missing between you and the local populace if you're not careful about it. Right. And a certain sense of invincibility, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

For sure. The Abrams main battle tank is a badass machine. It can give anyone a sense of invincibility until, Of course, they hit IEDs that can take them out. So you guys get there, and now you're, you know, the colonel's doing his kind of thing, and then at some point he's going to leave, and he leaves, and you guys are now doing a deeper assessment. You're checking things out, probably looking where you're going to set up sniper over watches and whatnot. Yeah.

So we had transitioned over to the treatment plant by then, and battalion commanders patrol. continued to Huseba, per his plan, to visit the new Iraqi police station and then continue on to Lima. Got it. So heading into this mission, where you're going to stay for a few days, was there anything from a planning perspective that was different or that you noticed heading into it? Well, for me, I hadn't even, I'd started the, the drive. of the company order for that.

I knew enough that already what I was assigned each platoon to do, right? And I'd be flushing that out in the days ahead, but of most immediate concern, was the patrol the next day that was getting us in there to conduct the recon. And that mission planning fell on Dunham. And it's up to him as the... rifle squad leader in charge of the patrol, he had more than just his Marines he was responsible for. He had another 10 Marines in escort from the CAT split section in addition to another

squad minus that was going to be man in the trucks that was getting his squad into zone. So all told, he had something like 25 Marines that he was responsible for in that patrol. And it was his first time doing it because prior to that in Huseba it was always up to Tent Robinson right because it was a platoon-sized patrol the whole time they were up there so in addition to that there was a bit of angst or not angst but concern in the air of the company as a whole because we just fired two rifle squad leaders both from the same platoon, Kilo-3, two corporals that had talked a good game, came across as knowing their shit, you know, during the training back in 29-poms,

and were selected as squad looters, Keto-3-1 and Kilo-3-3-3. And by the time we were in our third week of operations in all-kind, You could tell in the mission brief prior to step off, whether that squad leader knew what the fuck he was doing or not, whether he had put the time and effort into preparing his Marines for that fucking patrol. And these two Marines, these two corporals weren't taking it seriously enough. They didn't grasp the gravity of the situation. They thought they could just bullshit their way through it.

And so we fired him. And we put a Lance corporal in charge of Keto-3-3, Danny Santos, Salvadoran from East L.A., a fucking libo risk till the cows come home, but that fucker could fight. And he had an extremely strong sense of ownership that I saw stood out to me during our training. at March Air Force Base in early January, just pulling new guys in before and after every training patrol, just teaching them everything he fucking knew

to get them up to speed without arrogance. And when I saw that, I said, you know what, that guy, he needs to be a fucking squad leader because it shook out, he didn't get selected, but when the opportunity arose and those two corbels got fired, it didn't even need to be set.

he was a foregone conclusion that Danny Santos was taken 3-3. And then PFC Matthew Royer took Kilo-3-1. He should have been a corporal. He did coke between before OF1, right? He had been busted down. So he was in the same group as some of the other corporal squad leaders. But he was a PFC. But it didn't matter to me because the guy knew his shit and he wasn't afraid to stand up and open his mouth

Right, so To me it was more far more important to have A Marine who Who knew his shit and wanted it to be in charge of that fucking squad than anyone with fucking rank It didn't matter to me. It was performance-based rewards right at that point The only thing that matters is fucking performance I don't care what your rank and is. So this was hanging over the company, right? And when your squad leaders see other squad leaders getting fired, they know that they were to have their shit in one bag, right? And I could tell

that Dunham was nervous about that. He cared so fucking much, you know, and he didn't want to screw anything up and let there be any doubt in my mind that he deserved. He deserved. to be a squad leader, right? He deserved that role he was in. It was so obvious that he was nervous, and I think the Marine, or just military in general, puts this fear in you that you don't want to let anybody down. And just if you have self-respect, you want to be prepared,

and you don't want to look like an ass hat, and you just want to have all your eggs in one basket. And he was nervous. Didn't help that our skipper here was, you know, he just, his last duty station, he was an instructor at the infantry officer, infantry IOC, right? And so he's a little intense.

So Dunham was a little bit worried about that. But I'm like, Jason, just do what you've done. Do what you're taught. Go down the checklist, hit everything up. You know, we'll help you out whatever you need. So this patrol was due to step at 08. And it's midnight on the 13th of April. And I'm in the COC.

I got a radio operator, Cresswell, I think, is on the radio. So it's just me, Crest. and Dunham, and we had this makeshift picnic table that we had inherited from the Fox Troop and had a laminated copy of the damn company AO and satellite imagery on the whole table, right? So that was the table covering. It was a useful planning tool. Dunham was sitting there, and he was writing his order. It was fucking midnight. right so he'd spent the whole damn day getting his squad ready for that freaking patrol he hadn't bothered with the paperwork you know but he knew that he needed to give an order the next morning right

so he'd spent the whole damn time getting them ready for the mission so there he was going to be losing a lot of sleep in order to make sure that they also had proper freaking order before they step. So I'm sitting there watching him bare-chested. It's hot, fucking hot. Boots and Utes, bare-chest, working on his order. And it's midnight.

And goddamn Hampton and Carbohal come in. Dunham's two fire team leaves. We did what we do best. Raided the Chow Hall. so they come walking in with this cardboard tray with some tray rat fucking eggs and probably a slab of damn ham

right or something whatever they could scrounge which wouldn't a whole lot no I remember the sausage who looked like cat poop yeah just yeah but I remember there was a sausage on it and there's nasty eggs and that hash, that beef hash.

Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. The horrors of war. So they walk in there, and I look up, and I realize it. It's just two fucking fire team leaders, and they've got a plate of child for him. And he looks up and he says, what's this? And Hampton says, you know, you spent your day taking care of us, and we know you haven't had time to take care of yourself. Right.

It's Chum. And I always remember being a student at TBS, you know, as a second lieutenant, and hearing stories from instructors about being a good leader as an officer. And if you're doing your job and taking care of your Marines, they're going to take care of you back, right? Like if you're digging into the D, you've got more important shit to do than dig your own fucking hole. And there was a story about a platoon commander who had come back to find his Marines finishing up his freaking hole for him because he was too busy taking care of them, you know, to worry about protecting himself.

And that came back to me in a flash. And to me, the imagery of them presenting him with that plated chow, it was symbolic. And to me, what I saw wasn't them giving him a play of child. It was them putting a crown on his head and seeing, you're a fucking leader. And it was in that moment,

and I'd been a Marine since 87. It wasn't until that very moment that I realized that the only one who can designate you as a leader is your fucking Marines. Your peers can say you got leadership qualities and your seniors can see the same thing, but the only one who gives you that title is the one you earn it from.

And that struck me, and I was sitting there and I thought, Jesus Christ, what I ever do if I lost him reading like that, And I thought I should take a photo of him. I was fucking tired. And I didn't fucking do it. It would have been the last photo of him. And I fucking regret that.

These guys taught me a lot. That was probably the most important lesson I ever got as a leader. I was seeing these two crown him. A lot of that in part too was Carbohol and I kept coming to him and trying to help him with the order, because the first deployment, that's all. So Treo had us do. That's all we did was we did map overlays.

We patrol orders, and so we knew it. We had it down, and we kept coming in. Hey, you want us to help you, and you want us to help you. We want us to do something that, you know, you need to get done, but you're doing this. So we'll do those. Nope, don't touch it. This is going to be all mine.

Roger that. Let us know if you need us. I think after that, that was when I was like, hey, let's go get it, chow. Well, because he knew that the way we're going to get split up, that I was going to have to run point that day. So he ended up having me do the patrol overlay. He already had the route mapped out,

but he made me do the overlay. And the whole time he was asking me questions about where are we going, what are we doing next? If we get in, I remember him asking me, If we get here, what LZ are we going to, you know, and stuff? And I had to turn that into the COC with all the radio frequencies because he knew I wanted to know. Like, that's how it was.

I was wanted to know, I didn't want to know my team leader's job. I wanted to know my squad leader's job. Like, I wanted, you know. And I remember when he pulled me in, I was like, I felt rewarded to get to do this, you know, because he trusted me to do it. It was a big deal to me. Yeah, you know, Ferg was talking early. about

you know making sure that people understand why they're doing what they're doing and how important that is no doubt you know for me that's the key of decentralized command is making sure that everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing but the other thing that happens is when like what you're saying when you give people the opportunity

to come up with part of the plan it's like it elevates them and makes them it's they have ownership of the plan because they made it up you know they made it up and so that's exactly what you're talking about. And those are the kind of things that make, you know,

young, young troopers crown their leader. Not because their leaders barking at them, but because their leaders going, hey, I'll do this. I'll take care of this. I'll handle it. You guys get some rest. You guys take care of yourselves. And at the same time, hey, here's this piece of the mission.

You come up with a plan for this. You make sure we know what we're doing. And, you know, I had a guy on the podcast, Jim. named Mukayama, who retired as a general, General Mukayama, but, you know,

he made this statement that I've underplayed over and over again. But for him, he's like, oh, you know, what leadership boils down to is that you care about your men.

You care about your men. Because if you care about your men and your men know that, then it goes back to what you said, Trent. If you take care of your men, then your men are going to take care of you. And the many,

you see a leader that's walking around, barking orders, thinking of themselves. And by the way, anybody that thinks they can plot a little good agenda for themselves and their team isn't going to see it, you're wrong all day long today and twice on Sunday. That's what's going to happen. But that leader that's going, hey, I'm doing this for the good of the team, that's the one that will get the crown of leadership. Yep. There's one story that sticks out to me. It was when we first got in his own where Lima was setting up base.

There wasn't one. So when we weren't doing a patrol, we were setting up HESCO barriers. And filling them? Fill on them. By hand. And you get a working party together, go to do it. Well, who does working parties? The juniors.

You know. But there's this one day. Almost everybody in the platoon's out there doing it. Most of the squad leaders are working on patrol orders or getting things together, and outcomes Dunham. Comes joins all of us, starts putting the work by hand.

And we're filling this huskians, the only squad leader in our platoon that's out there helping us fill these Hesca bears this time. And I just remember thinking, I was like, he's, because this is, it's miserable. It's fucking awful. And I just remember thinking,

I'm like, he doesn't have to be out here doing it. But he's doing it because we're doing it. it, you know. And I could give countless examples of that that was the exact reason why everybody in his squad would have ran through a wall for him every day, you know. He took care of you. He took care of the junior rings really well. He took us aside and he would always tell us, you know, if anybody's like stepping over the line, just to let him know to come talk to him. You know, I remember him telling him that like, you know, if you're stressed out, come talk to me. I want to know about it. And he was just always available. And it made you.

want to please him. You know, like, I remember distinctly, like, I want this guy to look at me and be, like, be impressed. Like, I want him to like me, you know? But not, not as a friend. I just want him to look at me, like, that's a fucking good Marine. You know, that's one of my Marines.

And so you're trying to live up to this bar he sets, and it made us all better. Yeah. So, taking us back now, you've executed the plan, and now we're out in the field. We're in that. So are you in the police station?

Are you in the water treatment facility? What's the difference between the two? What's going on right now? Yeah, so the commandant officer had finished his business with the police chief. So he was heading to Huseva, and we walked out the back of the police station right across an alley into the water treatment plant, which was unoccupied at the time. wasn't in use, but it had been, actually was occupied by an Iraqi family who were squatting

in one of the buildings, the headquarters building of the Trudeau plant. So this thing had been built, it just never been used. And so Ferg was doing his thing, getting eyes on the perimeter of the entire structure. and I had gone up to the roof of this headquarters building. It seems it was a three-story. That's correct. You were on the roof, and I remember it all. His Dunham's radio operator, Jason Sanders, had good essay,

and he was listening to what was going on in Huseba with some of the other stuff in the chatter. Just like a good young Marine does, he brought it to his squad leader. Squad leader, Dunham came and brought it to me. I'm like, Roger, let Six know because he's got to have an essay, what's going on. And then that's how that started. And by the way, I kind of skipped right into Colonel Lopez's convoy that had left that police station and was headed out. But there was a whole other scenario unfolding where they had casualties in Huseba. Casualties, they had a sniper-o-o-watch position getting hit.

You had wounded Marines. I mean, it was, so all that chaos is breaking out in the morning, kind of all morning, right? Right. So we know this is a, we're going into a rough day in the city. Yeah, and Lima 3 had been in contact, I think, for since, sometime between 09 and 100 that morning. But I didn't have any Viz on that. But as I was standing on top of that building looking west, just checking out the general. layout from that vantage point we heard explosions to the West and my first thought

with these explosions that was that Lehman Company was getting mortared again because they'd been getting mortared every day for about two weeks straight 22 days straight 22 days straight okay but they had yet been able to get the jump on these guys So I thought, shit, you know, we're actually in zone right now. Lima's getting mortared. We may be in the position to interdict these guys. So Dunham came running up the ladder well. You still hear these explosions.

And I turned to him and I said, what do you think? And he says, I think Lima's getting hit. I said, well, let's go get those motherfuckers. So we called his boys and told them they were saddling up pushing out and our vehicles had been satelliteing at the time on a certain radius outside of our position so we started moving out on to route diamond that was an emissor that would lead us west into Lehman Company's paws and we started running because there was a sense of urgency in

know, when the fucking sister unit's getting hit, you want to fucking help. So we started running down Diamond, and Sanders on the run got a hold of the gun trucks and got them to link up with us on Diamond. So before long, the truck showed up. We mounted up and then started racing west. and within moments, an RPG flew over one of the high backs right over Carver Hall's head, and we knew he had arrived at the ambush site. By the time we got in the trucks, we heard on the radio net that he wasn't leaving

mortared. The battalion commander's patrol just got hit outside the arches, which is the almost the eastern periphery of Huseba. So it was a direction we were headed and then we were there before we knew it.

And they got hit hard. And they took multiple casualties and had pushed they pushed through the kill zone though, right? Yeah. But now they had casualties and so you guys drove through the exact same kill zone. We rolled into

it. As in my assessment that the ambushing element was unass in the ambush

zone, but I'm sure they weren't expecting us to arrive and I thought, oh shit, you know, some fresh meat,

it was fucking launching another RPG. Bonus. Yeah. So we started taking fire immediately.

And the first thing, like we talked about early, get out of the fucking truck, right? So we got out of the

trucks and got up against the wall. The trucks leave? No, they stayed there initially. And we all got up against the wall to give us some cover from the fire that was actually then coming over

from behind that wall and down the whole row of buildings there towards the arches. And so Dunham and I got up against the wall. I wound up right next to him. and decided we need to get the, the only way to do it was to clear these fuckers out on foot, right? And I had seen the battle drill before,

on my first day in zone, before the company even got there, when we were doing an orientation patrol with first to the third, we got hit in the HK in damn near the same spot. And the guys that we were on that patrol with were the self-propelled battery, that was organic to first of the third. And they were the only guys, I think, in that, they're definitely only guys in that squadron

who were employed in Humvees. So they were the closest thing to grunts as First of the Third had, and they knew their shit. And they called an immediate audible when we got hit with an IED and started taking fire. And those troopers,

immediately pushed south to the elevated train tracks on the south side of HK. It was delineating the southern edge of that village. And they pushed south to coordinate and to then dismount and start sweeping. And in the process, they killed one moog and captured two more. So my first thought was, hey, same thing. Cordons on the south, sweet from north to south. And Dunham said, all right, I'm taking Hampton, you go with Carboh. Roger that.

Get those trucks to the south and let's do it. And so then Hampton, Ferg, and Dunham and Miller. Sanders. Sergeant Reynolds. That's Rambriado. That whole element. and started pushing south, and we, myself with Carbohal, we wound up sweeping more to the west initially as these guys were clearing to the south.

Now, there's a book. There's a book called The Gift of Valor. And it's a book written by a guy named Michael Phillips, who's a Wall Street, Journal reporter, which may make you think, oh, well, what is that? Well, he actually did four tours in Iraq, and he was with the 3-7 a bunch, and he did a great job of interviewing so many people to kind of capture this story. The book is called The Gift of Valor, and he spells out this section, well, pretty good, pretty comprehensively

and I'm sure you guys will have stuff to add but I'm actually going to go and read a little bit of this book picking up from that situation so here we go at about 1220 p.m. the Marines reached the next cross street

where the alleyway hit a T-junction on the left before the junction was an unfinished single-story home made of a tan stone and poured concrete with red metal doors and window grates on the right the alleyway widened out to the courtyard of a concrete and cinder block house a rusty twisted car chassis lying forlornly amid the trash straight ahead over some buildings and about a block

away they could see the top of the water treatment plant the dirt lane that crossed in front of them was deeply rutted to their right was bordered on the north side by a tumble down stone wall and a couple dozen yards further to the west a straight ahead cinder block wall stopped in the lane were eight vehicles pointing from east, pointing east toward the approaching Marines. From the corner, Dunham and his men could see a small bus, a van, a white Toyota land cruiser, a second SUV, a red tractor, a black BMW, a white truck frozen in the middle of an attempt to turn around in a narrow lane, and finally a white sedan with all four doors open. The point

man, Miller, had just reached the T-junction when Staff Sergeant Ferguson a few dozen yards back noticed the lineup of vehicles. What's going on? He asked Corporal Dunham. What are you doing? Dunham wanted to keep moving, but Ferguson recalled the white SUV that Sergeant

Reynolds had seen high-tailing across Jade a few minutes earlier and thought the cars were worth a quick look. No, Ferguson told Dunham, we're going to search these calls. cars so there you go you guys and I you know we didn't really cover that part of the story but there have been vehicles that were PID leaving the ambush site and so that's what you're seeing positively identifying or at least suspected vehicles that

had left the ambush site because Trent as you said the ambush was probably over when you guys showed up or at least they were trying to wrap it up you guys showed up they got a little bonus secondary but most likely they're all leaving And that's what you guys are thinking heading out. And now you see these vehicles lined up. And they're looking sketchy. Yeah, that was the assumption that they would try to leave the area. And I figured they got cut up in the log jam right there.

And I knew because we had patrolled that area before with Lima companies, so we were familiar with that area. I knew it was the other water treatment plant. And then on the opposite side of that would just be the railroad train tracks. So I thought that was our best course of action at the time. And I remember when I told him that he was looking at me and then also looking down the rows of cars. So something was going on down there that had his attention as well.

And then he started be lining down that way. I remember you yelled out for hasty vehicle searches because we were essentially pushing to contact. So it was like we needed a search. Yeah, it was just a quick hasty searches. Hampton walked alongside the small bus and peered through the windows. He saw only women and children decided not to bother searching the interior. The driver the second vehicle, the tan, the van was middle-aged with a younger man next to him.

Search vehicle, Hampton said in Arabic, a phrase he'd picked up from the Marines' pocket language cards. He saw no weapons in the driver's lap, so he opened the sliding door on the van's right side. The cargo space contained nothing suspect. I always felt like when I spoke Arabic to Iraqis, that it didn't really seem right coming out of my big white head and that they never understood a thing I was saying. I wasn't sure if they were just shocked that I said something to him. That's the look I got. That's the little guy where he's got.

Dude, did this guy just tell me? He's going to search my car? Wow. Or did he just tell me the dog is brown? And I don't understand why I need to tie my shoes. Nobody here has laces. I just, yeah. So quick vehicle search.

That's what you guys are doing. Pretty straightforward. Back to the book, Corporal Dunham and PFC Miller moved quickly up the street until they came to the elderly white land cruiser, which was some 50 yards from the intersection where the alleyway met the road. Miller edged along the passenger side and saw the muzzle and wood front grip

of an AK-47 rifle poking out from under the floor mat. He looked up in time to see the driver, a young Iraqi man in a black track suit, opened the door and lunge at Dunham. People, a lot of people don't know about the Mujahide. uniform of the track suit, the track suit. So you see the guy in the track suit. Again, these things you can't, when you explain them to people, it's almost like a bad movie, right?

Like you see the AK-47 hidden under a floor mat, like you guys are going to get away with this. Well, he had multiple. It was a small cash, four or five guns. I think there was an RPG. and because I was passing by appearing in the windows you know

passenger window and I hit the second window in the vehicle and I saw them and it's like instantaneous as I'm looking up to say something they start fighting

and I didn't have a chance to like say anything you know I just reacted to go around and assist how many guys were in the vehicle one? Oh so it was just one guy in the vehicle

so as you're coming up on the passenger side, you look in one window, you see it, next thing you know, you look up, the driver in a track suit gets out, and he's on Dunham, like, in an instant. Yes. Yes. There have been more guys in that Vig, but they unasked it by the time Dunham got to it. Okay. Because that in the far car, in the far vehicle as well, that was trying to turn around,

they just unasked and ran. Yeah, the vehicle behind the forerunner, everybody D.D. Malad. I guess they have the same thoughts about being in vehicles as we do. Let's get out of this day. It's about to become a bullet sponge. Well, and those vehicles were stuck. They were all stuck.

And in hindsight, there were, you know, maybe a couple of those Vicks were filled with insurgents. And all the rest of them were just fucking innocent people who were trying to get through the age. HK around this site of the ambush that had just been unleashed up on Diamond, right? So they were going to try and drive through that thing. So they were just trying to bounce around through the village to carry on with their life's business. And stuck in the middle of them were a couple of Vicks with insurgents.

And a correction on Mike's terminology in the book, what we discovered later was by the 17th, three days later, the battle for Huseba kicked off was that this guy wouldn't Iraqi. He was a foreign fighter. They had infiltrated through Syria by the hundreds to kick off an offensive across the entire province. They were there to fight. Yeah. So continuing on, the Iraqi, which again, as you just pointed out,

This guy is a foreign fighter from any number of countries. Wrapped his left arm around the back of Dunham's neck and cocked his right arm to punch the corporal in the face. Dunham caught the man's fist to block the swing. The two stumbled toward the land cruiser. Dunham pulled his right knee up and drove it in the Iraqi's stomach. The Iraqi doubled over from the blow and the men fell to the ground in an angry embrace.

Miller's brother, a sheriff's deputy in California, had bought Kelly a telescoping police baton and shipped it to Iraq. Miller didn't really think he'd ever need it, but he liked the idea of having one and kept it in a holster zip tied to his flack vest. Up until that point, Miller used it mostly to fend off stray dogs, but as he ran around the front of the SUV toward Dunham

and the Iraqi, again, Foreign Fighter, he pulled the baton out and snapped it down to his side to extend it to its full length. Miller saw the Iraqi lying on his back, his head toward the rear of the land cruiser. Dunham was face down on top of him, torso rotated slightly counterclockwise.

Miller planted his left knee in the Iraqi's ribs. Bracing his left hand on Dunham's back, he slammed the butt of the baton as hard as he could into the Iraqi's forehead. The blow was so sharp that the metal baton collapsed back into itself. Miller was amazed the man was still, conscious, much less still fighting.

He drove the baton into the Iraqi's forehead again, then jabbed it into the left side of the man's neck, a blood choke he had been told would pinch off circulation to the brain through the carotid artery. Lance Corporal Hampton saw the melee and charged around the van and up the street his adrenaline surging.

All he could hear was the loud pounding of his own pulse as he searched for an open shot on the Iraqi to hit. Shoot him in the head, he said to himself. He aimed his rifle but worried that any shot might go through the Iraqi and hit Miller. Hell, he thought, I'll muzzle thump. Marines are taught to poke their rifle barrels under the eyes, their enemies, to make sure they're dead. Only the dead or comatose could resist flinching when poked hard in the eye with a long piece of metal. The muzzle thump

could also be delivered to the chest to get someone aggressive to back off without resorting to deadly force. Hampton planned to thump the Iraqi in the temple. If it knocked him out, fine. If it killed him, that was fine with Bill too. Hampton picked out a spot on the wriggling Iraqi's temple and pulled his rifle back to get some force behind it. Is that right, Bill? We're shaking your head. I was going to put that thing through his head. I was put it through his eye. Yeah. I wasn't going to put it through his temple. I was going right here. I was just going to go right here and try and push that rifle back out this way. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's hairy. Those, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, When that's going down and you have a weapon and you're you're you know one of your guys is grappling with an insurgent

That can that's a that's a tough shot to take because it's not like a A movie where the bad guys holding the hostage still because this is a fight that's going on and you know anything can happen at any point And the other thing is I mean you guys are You gotta think, you know, I'd be thinking to myself, okay, well, this guy didn't shoot us. He didn't blow us up. So how do we know this guy's armed or not? That's another question that can be going through your head.

I'm sure people sit back and say, oh, I'll just kill him. Yeah, that's something that is a decision that's getting made. But when you, your first instinct in that situation, you got your buddy on top of them. You don't know if the guy's armed. There's a lot of things going on to just start. unloading your weapon and and that's why I'm thinking both you guys are thinking well you're kind of got your thought in your mind to I'll shoot this guy and you

guys but both you are going non-lethal at this point in time yes I was just trying like my thought process was if I hit him hard enough I'd knock him out I mean I'm hitting him with a metal baton and I hit him the first time and he was still struggling so I came in for the second one and at that time you could see that I'd split his forehead wide open and fractured his skull and he was still fighting. And so I was like, okay, I need to do something different. And I always remember in boot camp, they talk about the blood choke.

So I just started to put pressure across his carotid with all my weight. And then by then I think Bill had just, when I started to apply the choke, that's when Bill had come up. And that's when the rest happened. Yeah, you know, again, for young, people in any employment like this whether you're a cop or you're a soldier your Marine whatever situation you're in well this is one thing that we learned there's this idea that when you hit someone if you hit them hard enough they're

gonna get knocked out and we learned this over and over again that it's not true and there's a chance when you hit someone you can knock them out but there's a chance that they don't get knocked out one of my my assistant platoon commander entered a room We were taken down a building, and there was a combative insurgent in there. And, you know, we had learned muzzle strike, muzzle strike, you know, muzzle strike to the face. It'll knock them out for sure. It may kill them, so you've got to be a little bit careful, whatever. My assistant platoon commander did the hardest muzzle strike, I think a person could.

He took a running start of about eight yards and fully cocked back his weapon. and then drove it into this guy's head. And it deflected a little bit, like around the brow, and carved out a big, giant chunk of his scalp. No factor. The guy, he's bleeding like a stuck pig, but he kept fighting. So all that's going on, and here we go back to the book.

While Dunham, Miller, and Hampton wrestled with the Iraqi. Sergeant Reynolds, the sniper, told Sanders to provide cover in case the Iraqi had friends around. So Sanders was more than a dozen yards away. from the fight when he heard Dunham yell a warning. No, no, no. Watch his hand. Hampton heard nothing except the beating of his own heart. But he caught a fleeting glimpse of Dunham's helmet

on the ground next to the Iraqi. Dunham was on his stomach with his arms outstretched in front of him and wrapped around the sides of his helmet as if he were holding it down on top of something. Then came the explosion. Bill Hampton saw a flash of light, but the explosion didn't sound very loud to him. His vision blurred, and he knew that something had happened to him. He just didn't know what.

His first thought was whether his teeth had been hit. He ran his tongue along them and was relieved to find them all in place, but his face, leg, and arm leaked red. The concussion had broken his nose. One tiny metal fragment hit him under the nostrils, and another embedded itself in his top lip. A piece of shrapnel about the size of a pen tip had hit. him in the right knuckle. Several shards of metal hit him in the left arm and left leg. One piece hit a bone in his forearm broke up and open an inch wide hole as it exited. Another traveled to up his arm and cut away, cut its way out the middle of his elbow, leaving an exit-shaped tear,

tear, then lodged in his bicep. He remembered that slowing his breathing would slow the bleeding and he tried to do so. He staggered against the cinder block wall and back toward the intersection. He couldn't lift his rifle with his left arm, so he held it in his right by the trigger guard and pistol grip, trying to keep an eye out for enemy fighters. A boom and a flash. Kelly Miller saw the explosion in its aftermath in a series of still frames. First he saw Dunham tipping over, his radio headset still on, but his helmet gone. Then Miller saw the sky as he fell over backwards onto the rocket launcher slung from his shoulder.

He heard a steady ring like the sound of a hospital heart monitor. makes when the patient flatlines. Miller's face hurt and felt hot as if he had a bad sunburn. He tasted blood in his mouth and had the vague feeling he was being shot at. His left arm hurt next. He tried to grab his rifle with his left hand, but nothing happened. He wondered why his arm wasn't working. He looked down to see blood streaming off the fingertips.

One piece of hot metal had hit Miller's upper lip, traveled inside his right cheek and shattered a molar before coming to rest inside of his back cheek. Other fragments peppered the area around his eyes, left cheek, and forehead. The blast blew out his left ear drum. One piece of the grenade shrapnel went clean through his right tricep, side to side, and punctured the brachial artery. But for some reason, it didn't hurt as badly as his upper left arm,

which had been hit by five or six big chunks of metal and sprayed with pebble-sized fragments. The explosion left Sanders, the radio operator, temporarily deaf. He saw Dunham, Miller, and Hampton knocked back by the blast and thought they're all fucking dead. So with that, the insurgent that was laying there actually gets up and runs. And Sanders, the radio operator, then unloads on him and kills him. But it's interesting in the book, it was like Sanders didn't really understand. looking for someone else as well. He thought there's no way that whoever was there survived.

So he was looking for someone else, another insurgent. And that leaves you for kind of trying to organize the Kazivak at this point, right? Well, yeah, I just went from a seven-man team to three Marines getting wounded so we're almost combat, you know, ineffective. So my main thing was try to set up a casualty collection point around the back of the fence line right there and get these range tended to. Could you guys? Yeah, yeah. In the book it says I felt the, like, it's accurate, but I could feel the bullets passing me.

And I was incredibly disoriented, never lost consciousness, but I'm looking down on the ground and I can see the bullet striking. And so I got my rifle with my right arm because it still worked, and I actually knelt behind the, I knelt at the front of the white Land Rover and tried to hold security one-handed. And it felt like an attorney, let me tell you what, but it was probably seconds past and my adrenaline started to wane. And then I actually had to go back. I kept moving back down the line of cars the way we came because with every passing second, my pain level started to skyrocket. And I actually puked right there at the White Land Rover.

And then I made it back behind the red vehicle, and I puked again, and that's when Sanders came up. And he was passing by, and I was in actually so much pain. I asked him to knock me out because I just wanted it to stop. Like, I couldn't stop puking because the pain was so bad. And then I think I saw Ferg moving up past me as well. And then Sergeant Reynolds guided me to where the casualty collection, point was and just put me up against a wall, the pile of goo I was at this point, and then Hampton joined me. And I remember the thing that I cared about most, and Bill was the same way,

I didn't give two fucks about myself. I never asked how I was. I never asked how Bill was because I could see him. Where's Dunham? How's Dunham? You know, that was the only thing I could care about because, like, I'm, I could tell, like, I'm still talking. I can think I'm fine enough. I could see Bill, he was talking, looking at me, he was going to be okay. But both Bill and I were just wanted to know where was Dunham, how was Dunham. And that was like a theme almost because nobody knew. How did you guys get, so did you bring Dunham back over the casualty collection point? What it was is actually Jason Sanders was moving him when they were fired upon and he had gotten him back around to the wall.

But I can't stress enough because I was at the, I just, passed the first headlight of the vehicle when it exploded and it's absolutely amazing. I thought I had three wounds or three KIAs on my hand because or the amount of concussion that I felt and I had the vehicle between me and just reverberating off the walls and that and it even says in the book you could feel how hollow your chest cavity is and it knocked me back a few feet too and I had to get my orientation so the fact that these guys any of them were able to get up It was like, yeah. The only thing that stopped me was the wall behind me.

I like, I put a nice little body imprint into it because I went into it's hard. And I was on one knee hunched over. So it was powerful. Yeah, and it would make sense, you know, when you start talking about getting shot at, obviously if you're those insurgents that bailed out of those first, the sedan,

and then the other guys that jumped out of the land cruiser, they know what's about to happen. and they're going to set up on you. As soon as they get a good distance, they're going to set a position so they can start shooting at you once this suicide guy executes his part of the mission.

They're going to be coming in hot. It was one of the indescribable, eerie things because my hearing from the explosion was so fucked. I couldn't hear being shot at. I actually had no idea I was being shot at through hearing. The only reason I knew I couldn't be there is because I could feel it. And I saw the dirt.

strike marks. Same with you, Bill? I didn't see anybody shooting, and it just baffles me because I stood up, and I walked back toward Staff Sergeant Ferguson, and they're telling me now that I walked through bullets, and I had no clue. I couldn't hear anything.

It was ringing. I mean, I got slapped in the face. It felt like I got slapped in the face with a shovel. I mean, and I remember who, ever did it got a full swing with that shovel. Yeah. Because that's, I can't explain it any other way. It was just, you got hit with a shovel in the face.

They were almost like walking zombies, obviously, because of that concussion and that. And then he just, Miller's like, it fucking hurts. Are you going to be all right? And I could tell the way they were holding their arms and which arms were hurt and which arms were damaged. And then I could see some other visual wounds. And I just like, hey, you're going to be fine when we get you back there. What about your brachial artery being hit? How bad is that bleeding?

It's like a waterfall going down my arm. He puts his arms up and goes, ah, fuck! Well, all three of my nerves and my left arm were damaged, a high bicep. So I had no function from my shoulder down. I couldn't move my fingers, couldn't bend it. I also had no feeling because your nerves tell you when shit hurts.

I'm getting buddy aid. And I'm like, Hampton's like his left arm, his left arm. I'm like, no, my left arm's fine. My right arm hurts. and they're like no no your left arm and all of a sudden I just look and my cammy's red and I'm like it's like somebody

took a water bottle and is holding it on your shoulder and it's just flooding down I've watched it just watched his cammy's just so and then I was like I actually got hit in both break wheels because I lifted my right arm up after he cut my sleeve off and it was a squirter

so I had and I ended up getting trunicates on both arms and well I'm sorry, Reynolds was doing that. Was Reynolds? Reynolds, buddy, ate in me. Okay, and then I self-aided my leg, and then I think he helped me with my arm. But I self-aided my leg while he was doing that with Miller, and then I had to pee.

And he had to pee. You know, not as serious as rest, but the things you worry about after you get hurt don't make any sense. Bill and I both took off our watches because we didn't want him to cut it off. I was pissed off because I hadn't showered in 30 days and I'd showered the day before so I was wearing clean camis They took my blouse off They ripped it and all the buttons went off

And my first thing was like You know I looked at Bill and I told him I was like I cut my boots off I was pissed about my boots getting cut off There's laces cut the laces Pull them off I want those back You know I looked at Bill

And I told him my mom was going to be pissed You know I were probably right about that Oh she was But it's amazing what the mind can do. I'm sitting there with both my brachial damage, two tourniquets on. I've lost units of blood. And I'm worried about the most trivial things because, again, I'm a 21-year-old who thinks I'm pretty invincible, but it fucking hurts right now.

How long did it take to get the Kazabak going for? They were there in a matter of minutes. We used our Vicks to get out, and Jason Sanders, once again, he was awesome because he had that all set up. up. The only thing he asked me to what clarification. I said one urgent surgical to routine. And he took care of all that. And a lot of it is the way the skipper broke down our company because it was really as groundbreaking because I always felt comfortable that no matter what the mission, I had 51s with me that could breach or demo or C4 anything. My mortarmen, there were call for fire specialists and they were also Medevac guys.

And then 30-1s, when we were at Lima Company, us and Keelow 1, we're the only ones that we didn't need no help from Lima. We could man whatever position in Mark 19, 240 golf. So the way we did that, it was awesome. And that paid off dividends being having Jason Sanders. And I didn't even have to tell them anything except for the classifications. How many vehicles came in and get you? It was our, what was it? It was corporal self, right?

Cat White kicked up done him because Stout was there. McManus and so came in. With four vehicles. Four vehicles come in. They've been in an Overwatch position. Got it. We kept them, anytime we had a union zone, and even while we were out of zone,

God, for the first two months, we had a cat section, in zone around the clock as a ready QRF in case the battalion, any unit in the battalion came into contact. There was always someone in zone who could fucking respond. Well, for me, it wasn't until Cat White came and picked up Dunham that I actually realized how bad I was hurt.

Like, I had the buddy aide, and, you know, I had the turnicets on, but Stout was a gunner for Cat White, and him and I went to the school of Humphrey at the same time. And his vehicle parked right by the wall, and he could see me. And I looked at him and he was like, and he looks down and he's like, hey, Miller, you're going to be fine. We're going to get you out of here. And he was like, you know, trying to instill confidence. But it was a look on his face when he was looking at him. I mean, and that was when I was like, it sunk in.

I was like, I must not be as okay as I think I am right now. The thing no one wants to hear, you're going to be okay. We're going to get you out of here. That was the thing, too. I was worried about it because my facial expressions, I could tell, and I told Sergeant Reynolds, hey, look, because I was worried we might have to tournicate that or something because I knew he was bleeding that. But the weird thing I remember is because everything was going off in Huseba, and we just

had that incident. We didn't know what was going on at the time. So I'm like, I remember loading these guys up. I'm like, hey, we don't know how much security we're going to have for you. You guys might have to go down Market Street in the middle of this stuff. So you might have to be prepared to fight, you know, until you get to the LZ. And they're like, Roger, that. They just got their weapons ready and loaded them up. We couldn't send anybody with them because we had our ground element. So it was just the cat guys. And we ended up, we went back train though. Yeah, we went we went. We were like, we asked. Okay. We asked them. We asked them like what were we going back and they're like route train in both Bill and I were like

fuck because there was IEDs all the time on train and I was like great I'm gonna get blown up fucking twice yeah so it wasn't just the cat white that responded it was also our high backs with Gunny Fontecchio or company gunning and he got he heard the call when Sanders contacted Cat White's he was on the platoon net so he bounced down there as well and it was our own high backs that they loaded the casualties up into to get them back to the Kazi back LZ in Huseba. And so what did you, Ferg, you stayed out there? Yes.

With what, you, Sanders, there's three of you now? Yes, and yeah, Stats aren't Viato. And what we did as I waited to the cat guys came and they moved forward and we just went around to that position just to clear those two houses. and then we got some NMPOWs from there. And I was with Carbohal's team, right? We were on the western edge of the HK at an old abandoned mosque,

overlooking the Wadi and Hsu Saber to the West when we heard the gunfire. I never heard a fucking grenade. I never heard a blast at all. All I heard was small arms fire. and there was a corman there with me and sam our arab-hating atheistic kurd linguists that we inherited from first of the third thank god and so i got those two and yelled at carball and we ran towards the sound of the fire and there was a black sedan that was backing up out of that

off that road that line of vehicles was stacked on so there was a vehicle trying to get the fuck out of Dodge in reverse. We stopped it Sam was there we started searching the trunk

and he says hey sir they're going to a fucking wedding so let him go so we let him go and I looked down the road and started Reynolds, the sniper that we'd put along, I could see him next to a line of vehicles, and he yelled at me to cut off a white pickup truck that was headed south.

So all I could grasp the situation at the time was that they had made contact with insurgents and there was at least one vehicle trying to get out of there that we needed to cut off. So I grabbed Carbohol, who had gotten to where we were at that sedan by that time, and we pushed all the way south to the train tracks. As we were pushing south, we saw Cat White racing from the direction of East End and Huseaba, just across the wadi, they were flying, flying. east beneath the train tracks and we didn't we we we I had no cons I had no fucking radio comm so I saw I had no clue that that was your boys being Kazavak

correct so we got into the water treatment plant and in Carball had no comms on his interest squad radio with you guys carrying im bitters for work radios no we were still using PRRs. Yeah, PRRs at that time. So we needed elevation to be able to get comms with Dunham. So we got to the water treatment plant, which was the tallest, had the tallest building around, and Carbohle scrambled up to one of the roofs, got a hole of Sanders. And then one of the Marines, Carbohel actually got a Viz on.

so we could tell from his perspective how we could get to where they were. So he came back down and then we arrived on foot at the site. And when we got to the site, Ferg was standing there in the middle of the road in front of that, or maybe behind that white tortoise-land cruiser. And I'll never forget, he had those Wynley-X goll. on and he came up to me he said hey sir Miller and Hampton are going to be all right and there's something about his tone that implied that Miller and Hampton weren't the object of that fucking statement and I looked him in the eyes and I said what the

fuck are you saying he says it's done him so I did a largely unpopular thing and said we got to clear these fucking houses. So I stood post on top of one of the buildings while these guys cleared out the rest of the houses in the vicinity. And we pulled in some EPWs from that, right? So by the time they finished and got back to the site, Ferg was explaining to me what had happened.

And I was looking around and they had taken the weapons out. of that land cruiser and stacked them up against the wall. And as I recall, there were a couple AKs, a couple RPGs, Mark I grenade, Millsbaum, British-made grenade. Looks like a pineapple grenade from World War II, you know. And I saw something else. I saw what looked like a large chunk of Kevlar. And I already knew that the Muge was scrubbing sites of contact.

When Cat Red lost that Marine, two Marines, PFC Smith, and I can't remember the second Marine that was killed in that rear-world mine strike in the HK, just fucking maybe 200 meters from where this thing occurred, back on St. Patty's Day or sometime around then. Two days after that incident, the Staff Sergeant Lassard, the platoon sergeant for Cat White, was on patrol up on Diamond, and they rolled up a couple of Muges in a black BMW

with a pistol, GPS, and as I recall, there were grids saved to that GPS that were inside the fucking battalion patrol base at the train station in all kind and and one of those one of those guys had pfc smith's ID card so they had scrubbed the side of that mine strike and my first thought was that that was probably a piece of kevlar from the inside of one of those Humvee doors because uparming hivis or those doors are armored with kevlar on the inside so my first thought was it's probably where it came from but as i'm looking at it i see it's got a familiar shape to it

and that's the ear scoop on the side of the kevlar where it drops down from the visor to cover the ear and i realized i was holding a fucking piece of a kevlar helmet and i started looking around and i noticed that there were tiny scraps of Kevlar covering that fucking road from wall to wall. It was probably covering a dam

at least a hundred, if not great, or square foot area. There was Kevlar scraps everywhere. And I called over to Fur and I said, where's Dunham's helmet? Furg called to his guys and they grabbed

and they went to where everyone's gear was still staged at the CCP behind that wall and there was no helmet they couldn't they found the rest of his gear but no helmet and I realized that that was his helmet was all over that

fucking road and I looked at FERC and I said let's get this shit picked up the last thing I wanted those fuckers to see the goddamn mooges was that they could get to us. I wanted no sign of weakness that they could latch on to.

And one of the Marines had a couple of two-gallon Ziploc bags in his butt pack, you know, for waterproofing fucking whatever gear he was carrying. And we filled two two-gallon Ziploc bags with pieces of Dunham's helmet. Four gallons of fucking Kevlar. We policed off that road. So my assumption was that, based on the injuries that FERC told me about that Dun & had sustained, that he was probably facing the grenade when he went off. And I just assumed the blast had ripped the helmet off his head and blown it apart.

And it wasn't until two days later when I was sitting down with Sanders, in the fourth platoon space there, we had built dividers within that warehouse to give at least the platoons their own fucking space. And I was sitting with Sanders on his cot. And Ferg was there, and we were talking about Dunham. And Sanders, he tells me a story about, I fucking conversation that occurred like two weeks earlier when Ketil Four was still attached to Lima. You know, during a break between patrols, they were resting in the damn platoon space. Doing a dart tournament, that dart tournament, we had the whiteboard up and oh man, and Jason always at the dart board practicing or just schooling people.

So this conversation comes up. And it's the type of conversation that combat Marines have. Combatants, period. You take that Medal of Honor citation book. This is thicker than a freaking Bible. In my estimation, and I used to read from that thing all the time as a instructor at the basic school, probably half the citations in that damn book are from Marines and soldiers. Covering the fucking gunning, right?

So it's something Marines think about. And I'll let Fer take it from here because he was there for the conversation. Well, it was actually the conversation, were you there with them when they did that? Because I remember a platoon commander, what you want to talk more about that? You all turned and looked at me and you, what do you think, Hampton? Jason said he would cover it up. I said I'd kick it back or pick it up and throw it back. The topic was, what do you do with a live grenade?

What do you do when it rolls to your feet? What do you do? You run? I just assumed kick it. Get it away from us. Yeah, Dunham had a theory of that if you put the helmet on it and then you shoot your body on top of it with the sappy plate, the helmet, and the flack.

But I'm like, the concussion from it is still going to, yeah, rock your world. But that's what they were talking about. And Lieutenant Robinson says, besides, it doesn't really matter because the grenade's only got a three to five second fuse. And you wouldn't have time to cover it with the helmet anyway. And then Donovan looks at him and says, really? He says, I'll be back in a second. And he goes back to his gear and he shows back up with his freaking helmet on.

And he looks at the lieutenant and he says, tie me. So Bull breaks out as G-shock and he says, go. And within a second, Dunham, it tilted his head forward, chin strap off the chin. And he slapped the helmet on the deck. He ain't something he just thought about. He fucking rehearsed that shit. He was so comprehensive in his concern for his Marines. He was practicing what to do with a fucking live grenade.

And my fucking jaw dropped when Sanders told me this story. And I got right to fuck up and I walked right into the damn battalion CP. Lieutenant Colonel Lopez was in his office. I knocked on the hatch and I said, sir, I just found out what happened to Dunham. And I explained to him what I just heard from Sanders. He looked at me and he says, okay, get it written up. So went back to the fucking company space

and I grabbed Bull who'd been a platoon commander for all of fucking four months. God damn second lieutenant. being told by his company commander to draft a Medal of Honor citation. There are many lieutenants who ever get thrust into that situation. And all this is unfolding while Kelly and Bill, you guys are getting Kazavak out of country? We're probably by the, no, we went to Anaconda first, or I did. I went back to Al-Kheim, the battalion aid station. I was there for,

Fuck, I don't know, maybe a couple hours. Yeah, Al-Qaim, the aid station, and then... And then I went, from there I went to Al-Assad. We're being transported to the helicopter, in the A-HumV where they can stack us. And Miller's on top, I'm on the bottom. He goes, Lance Corporal Hampton, what, Miller? Am I still a boot? No, Miller.

I just needed clarification As Again Now you say it's two days After this event that you're getting You piece this together You know it's like you had one And now you get the other one

And now you got one and one equals two You got Bull starting to write up the citation For forwarding up the chain of command But one thing that a lot of people especially civilians don't understand is that there's still missions to do and there's still work to be done

and when the enemy gets a win they don't back off in fact oftentimes they step it up which means we get no rest from a leadership perspective

you guys now looking at your troops going okay here's what happened we have ops to do. What did that look like from your all's perspective? It was a really busy time. We knew that Dunham had been casivaced, and eventually it made it back stateside to Bethesda.

But we're in the fucking middle of it. And on the 17th, all hell broke loose. And that was the day that Rick Gannon and four his Marines from weapons, Patoon, Leema Company were killed. And that kicked off the battle for Haseba. And that lasted for three freaking days. We came out of there on the 19th. And so that that was a conventional attack and defense followed by a sweep-y

and clear within the entire town of Ysaba but then it was back to patrolling again right back to it there was no no break and and there was the last thing that I was gonna take was a break right because now now we know what the fucking score is we've just we've lost a Marine on the 9th in a massive ambush. Now we've lost Dunham. The rest of the battalion is taking casualties. Ramadi is blowing up.

My good friend Chris Bronsie, who takes 15th Mew actually on the 13th. Company Commander, 24, is in there, and they're in a fight for their fucking lives. It's going to hell in a hand basket across all Ambar province. So there was no rest. We were in it. And we eventually got word on that 22nd that Donham passed when he was removed from life support.

So he lived for eight days from point of injury to being removed from life support with his parents at his side and the common arm on the Marine Corps there as well. But this was all for us and anecdotal because we're in the middle of it, there's no fucking break. It was just something else that we had to absorb. And when I got the word that evening, when we had a break in patrols, I pulled the whole company in and gave them the news. one of the things that really this guy Phillips

he literally interviewed like everyone that came in contact with Jason over that time period and this the story as it unfolds is

very well it's so detailed and it lets you it gives people an insight into not just the frontline troops, whatever, that's in the service, what they're doing, the medical folks. There's a section right here

that harkens back a little bit to that. It says Al-Assad Iraq, on the morning of April 14th, Becky Sparks, commander of Alpha Surgical Company, received an email with new instructions from the chief surgeon of the first Marine Expeditionary Force. The title, treatment of expectant patients, patients would have struck a civilian as out of place in a hospital in the middle of a combat zone.

But in battlefield medicine, expectant means quite the opposite of what it does in the faraway world of maternity wards and delivery rooms. An expectant mother is expected to create life. An expected soldier is expected to die. So here's the email. Occasionally, in our triage of patients, in the combat environment, we classify. patients as expectant, the chief surgeon wrote. With multiple casualties, these patients have our lowest priority for care, but they have the highest priority for care for another member of our Navy Marine Corps team, the chaplain. An expectant patient does not always die. Expectant means you

expect something to happen, and most often it is death, but sometimes after the higher priority patients have been treated, an expectant patient survives. Their care should be continued with the resources that can be committed. Heroic efforts may seem to be helpful in the short run, but if resources are expended when the next patient arrives, then you have not helped this latter patient. This is when judgments are critical, and I would dare say that very, very few of us have enough experience to make these decisions easily. When the decisions must be made, talk about it, include your entire team in your decisions

and move on. If the patient is expectant, make sure that he is comfortable and that someone stays with him until something happens. If the patient does die, document the death appropriately. At the 7 a.m. staff meeting, Commander Sparks, a brisk woman whose auburn hair and bright lipstick stood out next to the black 9mm pistol

hanging from her shoulder past the chief surgeon's message along to her physicians. She briefly discussed it with them, highlighting the advice that doctors revisit the expected ones, once they have treated the other patients. Then she moved. moved on to other issues. That afternoon, Jason Dunham arrived at Alpha Surgical Company,

expected to die. In Alpha Surgical Company's contingency plan for dealing with mass casualty event, responsibility for the expectant ward fell in the Navy Dental Team. They had enough general knowledge to push intravenous fluids into a dying man, but not enough to be much use in the trauma ward operating room or intensive care unit. Technical technician first class Christopher Graham who had helped carry Jason Stretcher in from the helicopter been waiting outside the emergency room while the doctors completed their triage after 15 minutes the door opened and an order emerged from the chaos Please take this patient to the expectant ward Graham and three other Graham and three others carried corporal Dunham's litter to a dim white-tiled room with a pair of broken shower stalls a tape above the door red washroom all the

the sawhorses were in use elsewhere, so the litter team carefully placed the stretcher on the floor. Graham sat by the corporals side, across from Rachel Sterling, a 21-year-old dental technician, third class. Sterling had chosen service in the Navy because her grandfather and great-uncle had been in sailors. Navy Lieutenant James L. Harris, the third, a 32-year-old dentist from Crockett, Texas, joined them in the expectant ward and did as the chaplain, as did the chaplain, Lieutenant Lentz. Then they waited for Corporal Dunham to die. For 45 minutes, they spoke to him in soft voices, holding his hands and stroking his limp muscular arms as Lieutenant Harris pushed fluids and painkillers

into his veins from an IV sack. The Marine Corps is proud of you, and we're all proud of you, Graham told him. Obviously, Dunham was a fighter and wasn't... Wasn't running to give up. Makes it to Germany. And, you know, again, I think shows up in Germany, and this is the situation he was in. Jason was hooked up to a plethora of medical equipment over the course of the day.

There was an intercranial pressure monitor. There was a catheter that passed through his urethra to drain his bladder into a bag. A line ran into his left femoral artery to monitor his blood pressure and allow the nurses to draw blood samples easily. He had a rectal temperature probe. On the right side of his groin was a triple-headed catheter running into a vein for IV fluids and drugs. There was an endotracheal tube in his mouth to facilitate the passage of air between the ventilator and his lungs, plus a suction tube to draw excess fluid from his lungs and an oral gastric tube to suck out stomach acid. Compressant sleeves on both calves alternately squeezed and relaxed to keep blood moving through his legs to prevent clots.

Five pads on his chest monitor his heart rate. A blood oxygen monitor was clipped onto his finger. A blood pressure cuff was on his arm in case the automatic reading failed. The nurses put a sterile plastic cup under each ear to collect the cerebral spinal fluid that continued to drain out of his eardrums. So he's in horrible condition. Horrible condition. on the brink of dying this whole time. These medical folks in the military are doing everything they can.

They're making heroic efforts. And they want to get him stable enough so that they can get them back to America at a minimum. And they're actually able to do that. And of course, at this time, Jason's mom and dad, had been notified of that their son had been wounded and this is one thing that's I don't know what the protocol is when someone gets killed there's a there's a knock on the door when someone's wounded depending on the severity and how well it's known and I

don't know what they do in the Marine Corps in the SEAL teams they're gonna still try and give someone a knock on the door but what Devon Dan got was a phone call. Hey, we don't know what's going on. We don't have much information, but Jason's been wounded. And if I remember correctly, they didn't even get like a massive amount of criticality. You know, they didn't, they weren't quite sure. But they do find out that he's coming. They get down to D.C. Bethesda area. And Jason, the, the medical personnel in Germany are able to get him stable enough to send him back when he lands back in America.

This is what unfolds. 39-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jim Byrne was working as a federal prosecutor going after Colombian drug traffickers when he volunteered for active duty. He expected to end up at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prosecuting the Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects. Instead, the Marines sent him to Bethesda. to head the liaison unit. Burns drove to Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday night

to meet the plane from Germany and watch the crew load Corporal Dunham's litter into a private ambulance waiting on the tarmac. The colonel sat for a few minutes next to Jason. The noise from the plane was deafening and Byrne leaned over to speak into his ear. Welcome back, Hero. We're going to take care of you.

Here's the colonel's standard greening for a wounded man. Byrne had no idea if Jason could hear him, but just in case he explained that they were at the air base where the president's plane landed and that he was going to be taken to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. And when he gets there, this is where his mom and dad, Jason's mom and dad, Dan and Deb finally get to see him. Dan and Deb walked into the room and saw Jason lying naked on his back, a towel covering his grove. in a catheter tube running to a urine bag by the foot of his bed. His head was wrapped in gauze, and the left side of his face was a mask of purple and red. He wore a neck brace that tilted his head slightly. Both eyes were still swollen shut, and the Dunham's imagined an empty left eye socket beneath the inflammation. His lips and tongue, which protruded next to the plastic breathing tube, looked parched. The ventilator moved his chest up and down in perfect robotic rhythm.

His feet curled down towards each other in an exaggerated pigeon-toed position. Dan thought he looked thin as if his muscles were already fading. Deb thought he looked cold. I'd love to put a blanket on him, she said. I know that's the instinct, the nurse responded, but we're trying to keep him cool. Deb sat in a chair on Jason's more heavily damaged left side and Dan sat across from her. They each held one of Jason's hands and they held each other's hands across Jason's stomach. We love you.

and assure Jason, you're going to be all right. Hi, honey, Deb said. We're here. You're home, and we're here. So, again, at this point, I mean, you guys still are working. Did you guys have, I mean, Ferg, you had seen, you had seen Jason and probably were the most, whatever, aware, you know, mentally while you're getting him Kazavak. What were you thinking?

Do you think, did you think he was going to live? Did you think? What I had told the platoon and what I was thinking is like, if he survived the first 24 hours, that kind of going along with the no news was good news things. So it was like day four or five, and we started having really a lot of hope. You know, because at that time, you know, obviously stabilized.

We haven't heard nothing by then. So that's what I kind of told the platoon. When I had seen him, I really couldn't tell a lot of his damages. and at the time, K-06, it told me later that a piece had come up through on the bottom of his throat, went straight up, and we did not know that at the time, because it was just, he was all red, the capillary bleeding. I was worried as long as that the pressure from the grenade, and like I said, every day that he lived, I was hopeful for it, and that's the only thing I could tell the platoon,

because, you know, they'd asked every day for updates. And, but, yeah, I was just, and the, biggest thing is we still had to go work and everything and I remember on the 14th because your body goes through these physiological changes that you really can't describe to you do it and when everything happened you just go off your training and then you don't think about it but I remember us being at Camp Gannon there at Lima's pause and it was just about the sun was gonna set here another hour or so but we had a roll back roll through that dams town again and

go back to our train station but I remember then I felt sick and I had to switch spots with the Marine from sitting in the back up against the cab of the Humvee to the end so I could dry heave. And then I remember going back that night. I wrote up a statement that was a page and a half long because I knew what had happened and I knew it was going to be a metal bonner or a Navy cross for what he did or I was hoping. But I also remember too waking up in the middle of the night and that train station violently. just from the explosion again and hearing that and just sitting up right violently. And, you know, it's like you can train yourself for that.

But until you experience that, it's just you can't help that. And then I remember some of the Marines being angry and they wanted like retaliation, especially since we had those three enemy POWs. But, you know, like you can't, we've got to get them back. Intel, clutch, all that stuff, the bigger picture thing. But, yeah, there was some tough. days for the company. One thing that it's interesting both you guys mentioned is like, and this is a double-edged sword, but I'll take it, is you had work to do. And we're going to have

to deal with these things at some point, but you know, when I lost my first guy, Mark Lee, we had there's no instruction manual on protocols to follow there's no there's no book procedure that we could follow there was nothing like that and it was just me and you know mark was the first seal killed in Iraq and you know there wasn't a lot of experience in dealing with that and what I said to the guys was we're going to go back to work That's what we're going to do. We're going to go back to work. And I believe there is something beneficial to that.

And one of the things that I notice a lot when guys do get, when they have a hard time, a lot of times I see it's guys that don't have a new mission of some kind. What is your new mission going to be? And that's one of the things that I advise military folks that are transitioning out of the military, you need a new mission. You've got to have something else to focus on because if you don't do that, then you're stuck

at thinking about this stuff. And those thoughts, you have to have them, right? You have to have them. You're going to have them over time. You know, we were talking about this earlier. You're going to have those thoughts over time. You've got to sort this out in your head.

But just like when you get sick and you take medicine, you don't take all the medicine at once. You don't take all the medicine at once. take all the medicine once. You take it a little bit at a time and you bring it back a little bit of time and you you heal up over time. And I believe that's a good thing about having when you're on deployment. Like, oh, guess what we're going to do? We're going to have a ceremony and then we're going to get back to work tomorrow afternoon. And I think that's beneficial. And we don't always get that opportunity.

And especially guys that get home and get out, it can be really hard because they don't have a new mission and they're they're they're they try and take all that medicine at once which is which is hard to take hard to take all that medicine at the same time hey the medicine is going to be there like it's your your brain has to get sorted out over time but take your time with it and one of the only ways to do that is if you have a new mission something else to focus on and you guys get in casavac home what was that process like we got split up at battalion aid because i was a little more severe than Bill. Yes.

So I remember getting picked up from L. Z. Parrott and they stuck me at the very roof of the Black Hawk. All I could see was the ceiling and all I could hear was the blades. And then I must have passed out a little bit on that fight

because it was really short. I remember waking up in battalionade and they were working on my arms. I still looking here for shit and I was really just out of it but I wasn't it was like it felt very surreal like I could sense everything that was going on and I could see people doing stuff but at the same time like I just wasn't mentally processing what was going on like the doctors asked me

if anything was wrong with my mouth and I didn't say anything I just reached in and pulled out a tooth fragment and showed it to him. This is the non-verbal answer So I believe Gibson And first start in Templeton Do you guys come into BAS

And see me before I flew out Of Battalion Aid Negative Then it must have been It may have been Templeton Okay Because We were in zone

It might have been him and Rob I can't remember It was gross Okay I remember them coming in and it was right before I was getting pushed out to Al-Assad because I think I needed some debreedion surgeries, which I got in Al-Assad.

And basically, once I left battalion eight, I was by myself. I didn't have anybody else. In Al-Assad, I got sweatpants because I was in just boxers. And one of the Navy people there let me use a sat phone and I called home. Unfortunately, I regret that because I was. I left my dad out to dry on that one. Sorry, Dad. What was the message?

Hey, Dad got wounded. Guess you're not home. Sorry, bye. No, he answered. He answered, and it was daytime, so my mom was at work. So I called my dad. I called home, and my dad answered. And I was like, hey, Dad, I just want to let you know.

I got hurt. I'm okay. I'm going to end up in Germany. Soon, I don't know when. But I wanted to let you know. And that was it. He said, okay, I love you, you know, and everything. But the problem was my mom had a lot more questions.

And he didn't have any answers, you know. He was just happy that I called and told him I was okay. He didn't think to ask stuff. So I kind of left my dad up to drive on that one. But I think I was in Al-Assad for two days. I had two debreeding surgeries. and then they casually backed me out to Germany. In Germany, I had two more depredion surgeries, bandage changes,

and I was there for five days. And I was actually paired up with one of the guys that was on the roof that got hit. Yeah, and he had taken a bullet in the hip, and it traveled down his leg bones and came out of pinky toe. That was the damn sniper team that was supporting the three that morning? Yes, I can't remember his name. He ended up... Thompson?

Yes, and he Kazivak to Texas from Germany, because that's where he was from. So once I left Germany, I hit Bethesda for four days. I had one more debreed in surgery. and that was it there. And then I hit Balboa in San Diego. And in Bethesda, my mom actually had flown out to Maryland. And she was there in Bethesda with me, and she flew on the military flight from Bethesda to San Diego.

Was she pissed? She didn't show it. She was amazing. The hoops she jumped through to find out when I was getting to Bethesda. We're pretty impressive. She had an old friend who was retired. Air Force Colonel, she got a hold of him. He actually found out what Kazavak fight I was on.

And then she rallied her friends to get air miles and flew out and met me there. Outstanding. Yeah. And then in Balboa, I had two oral surgeries and like a seventh de Breasian surgery because my arm had gotten hit so bad. I was in swelling. I was basically pushing the muscle out of the wounds. So they had to clean that up.

And I had no function. and I was in San Diego. You beat me to San, Bill beat me to San Diego because I actually linked up with him there because I was there for a week and a half before they sent me home on convalesantly because I couldn't take care of myself so they just literally, here's 60 days, go home.

So I am back home to Eureka, and then in Eureka I had four more surgeries. Two days from being home, I reached out to grab a glass of water with my right arm and I had a piece of metal sitting right on my brachial artery on my right hand side, the flexing from the muscle, pushed the piece of shotmow down, ruptured my brachial and my arm swole up huge and just caused increased amount of pain. So I had to have emergency surgery that night.

It was a 12-hour vascular surgery on my right arm where I got a vein from my ankle graft in and a whole bunch of stuff. And then two weeks later on my follow-up for that, I asked my question to doctor about my left arm because there was this weird vibration in my armpit I could feel with my right hand. He puts his hand in there. He's like, you have an avi fishula. You're going in for surgery tonight.

So I had a what? What was it? It's an a v. Fisciula. So my brachia artery had a hole in it. And also my vein had a hole in it. So blood's coming out of my breaker artery and going back into my vein. It's not traveling down my arm like it's supposed to.

And it creates like a really low, they call it a thrill, but it vibrates. And you can feel it. I was bad enough. So that was 16 hours. surgery happened that night and then the rehab started for me that was eight months of physical therapy

two more surgeries a lot of cussing lots of cussing but and so like my recovery process is after the surgeries is the Marine Corps tried to medically discharge me because I was a broken Marine

that was unacceptable to me. So Captain Gibson at the time, he put me into company office staff. I was the scribe. And so I did that while I was rehabbing. And when he rotated out, we got a new captain, Captain Gibson, who was a new company commander, and he allowed me to stay on and keep rehabbing. Oh, yeah, sorry, Captain Nash.

And it got the point where I was banned from his office because he was tired of me asking to go back to my platoon. And it took me nine months of physical therapy and rehab and a lot of getting yelled at to stop asking. And Captain Ash told me that I better not bring it up again unless I had a note from my doctor, my physical therapist, and my mom tell me I was okay enough to go back to the platoon. And your mom.

And my mom. I think I shocked him the next day when I came into the office with a note from my doctor and my physical therapist and my mom. I'm surprised you got your mom to sign off, but that's all good. She knew I had to because we were gearing up to deploy to Ramadi. And the whole time I was like, I signed up to serve my four years. I'm not getting mentally discharged. I signed up to do my four years.

And she kind of, she didn't like it, but she was. respected it, I think. And so he let me go back to my platoon and I deployed again, but it was a need. I needed to prove myself I wasn't meant to die there. I had to go back and make sure all my brothers made it back. You know, I had to do what Dunham did for me. I had to make sure everybody made it back. And I just, I had to serve my four years. It was this a spirit of core drive to do what I signed up to do. And the whole time I went through the emotional rainbow on this journey. It wasn't an easy journey at all.

I went from self-destructive to depression to I thought I was invincible. A lot of bad choices. But in the end, I found this path of I'm not fucking hurt. I'm not fucking hurt. I got staples in my arm and I play in a slow-pitched softball tournament at home. Got yelled at my mom. I tried being 21 on a field with 20 of your friends

and your mom shows up and starts fucking yelling at you. It's embarrassing. But that's how I healed. I got so fed up with being hurt that I said, fucking, I'm not hurt. I'll play one-handed. I would have deployed one-handed. I mean, shit, I mostly did.

deployed with arm in a two-thirds because my left arm wasn't strong. I still don't have full range of mobility. I was good enough to fake it and make it look good, you know. But it was just about like coping. And I had to be around my brothers because if I wasn't around them, I probably wouldn't. I would have killed myself some way, somehow. And I needed them to help me keep grounded to give me a mission, you know. And my mission was they're going to make it through this one. So that was a lot of surgeries. Yeah, a lot. I had to go in for a shoulder surgery because the wall fucked my back and shoulder up pretty good.

And the anesthesiologist, you know, they got to talk to you before going to surgery. And she's like, have you ever had anesthesia for it? And I just got this huge. She's like, what? I'm like, I'm an anesthesia pro. I'm good. Don't worry about me. I wake up from it just fine.

She's like, how do you know? And I was like, I'm about 16 surgeries deep. Shuck. So a lot of metal. And Bill, you get Kazavak. I got Kazavacked. I think I went to, after the battalion aid station, and Miller and I got on the helicopter. From there, I went to Anaconda, and they pulled some metal out of my leg.

and stitched me up. And then a day later or a couple hours later, I was on a flight up to Lambstool. And then from there, I went straight into San Diego. Stayed there for about a week or two. Just getting made sure that my hole in my arm wasn't going to be detrimental. And then they'd sent me on my convo leave. Where'd you go on Convo leave?

Back home up to Washington. Washington. Nice place to Convo, huh? And, well, one of the hardest things through my whole, like, getting Medevac out was nobody had any answers for me. Battalion 8 didn't know. Nobody else saw. I knew it because I kept asking about Jason because I wanted to know. My mom had during the deployment became in contact with Deb and Dan.

They kind of became, you know, a Marine family. And my mom was the one that actually told me Jason Fast when I was in, I think I was in Bethesda, but I was still in the hospital when she told me. I remember it was like crushing. It was basically just reliving it all again because the whole time I wanted to know and the only news I got It really was the bad news. And Bill, you, you're, it sounds like you're the one that actually saw, oh, you saw him with his helmet, reached out. And you're probably the first person that said, I know what just happened.

Yeah. My sister broke the news to me on the 22nd or 23rd, 24th, whatever. They came down to, and stayed at the Fisher House at Balbo. Yeah, when I pulled that rifle back And I was thinking in my head My eyes had gone down And he was right there with right there in front And I didn't

I thought his helmet had come off during the fight And I was like, all right, hold him There we go, I'll do this And then it went out. Boom. Talk a lot about decision making And as combat leaders you got to make decisions. You got to make decisions.

You got to make hard decisions. And as hard as those decisions are, there's the absolute most horrible of all decisions that I can't even fathom trying to make is one that Dan and Deb were faced with. And this is based on the fact that they're getting told that, I mean, this is what they get told. Dr. Dunn introduced himself

and Dr. Mulligan joined them back in the waiting room. Deb thought the 35-year-old Mulligan was pretty. Dan thought she seemed awfully young for neurosurgeon. Dr. Mulligan spent little time on pleasantries. The prognosis for your son is grim, she said. She explained that the biggest grenade fragment had caused so much damage that even if he survived, Jason would likely be paralyzed on one side and unable to speak or understand those who spoke to him.

The swelling of his brain stem had destroyed its ability to keep the body alive unless a machine did his breathing for him. what you see is what you have, she said. He will never be able to hear you or know you are there. Mulligan said there was an operation she could do to relieve the pressure in Jason's brain, but she warned she wasn't sure that Jason was strong enough to survive the surgery or that it would do any good even if he did survive. The damage she believed had already been done and could not be reversed.

The chances for a full neurological recovery are non-existent. The doctors then mentioned the unconstitutional. Unmentionable, the Dunham should consider taking Jason off of life support. So they pulled out a copy of Jason's living will, which he had signed while serving at the sub-based in Georgia. They read it together in silence. If at any time I should have a terminal condition become in a coma with no reasonable expectation of regaining consciousness or become in a persistent vegetative state with no reasonable expectation of regaining significant cognitive function, then in any such event

I direct that the application of life-sustaining procedures to my body be withheld and withdrawn and that I'd be permitted to die. That decision. The Dunham's thought that Jason's breathing seemed more labored than before, even through the ventilator. I can't sit here and watch this anymore,

Dan told Deb. Dr. Dunn described how they would disconnect the ventilator and what would happen afterward. A nurse hooked up a morphine, drip to Jason's IV. Is he going to feel anything? Deb asked. The doctors assured her that he would not.

The Dunham stepped out of the room. The medical staff pulled the curtain closed and at 4.35 p.m., the respiratory therapist slid the tube from Jason's throat. The nurse turned off the alarm on his heart monitor. Deb sat on Jason's right side across from Dan. Dr. Dunn stood at the foot of the bed watching

Jason and the monitors. Lieutenant Colonel Byrne and two of his men stood there in silence. The colonel knew he was intruding on a private moment and considered leaving, but this bed was Corporal Dunham's final battlefield, he thought. Abandoned their brothers on the battlefield. A chaplain administered last rites. Then he leaned over to help Deb remove her gloves, and she once again felt Jason's skin as she held his hand.

Sometimes she reached across and held Dan's hand. sometimes she placed her own on Jason's heart we're proud of you Dan said we love you Deb touched the side and the bridge of Jason's nose stroked his arms and said it's okay honey you can go now

Dr. Dunn watched as the blue line on the monitor screen showed plunging levels in oxygen in Jason's blood his heart rate fell until the green line went silently flat Dunn stepped forward and bent down to listen to Jason's lungs and heart He straightened up, removed the stethoscope from his ears, and said he's gone. It was 4.43 p.m. April 22nd, 2004.

Jason's body relaxed, and Dan thought his son looked like himself again. Deb put a photo of the Dunham family in Jason's hand. We're talking about the fact that, you know, there's always things that we can look at from, whether it's a decision you made, whether it's a meaningless decision or one that matters, you know, hey, we step here, do we go there, do we put this unit over here, do we go over there, do we go down this road, do I go on this side of the vehicle? Like there's a million little decisions that we all make, and we all made. And it's something that can absolutely, it's something that none of us can change.

And it's something that if we, if you knew the outcome, if any of us knew the outcome of the decision, situations that we've been through, sure, you look back and say, oh, go left and set a right, go forward and set a back, go to that vehicle instead of this vehicle. But we don't have that luxury. We don't have that luxury of knowing what the outcome is going to be of every decision that we make. But we do have, we do have control over the decisions we make now, the decisions that we make with what we do now and how we handle the things that we've been through. And as I hear this story unfold and sit here with you guys. You know, that's what I think about.

Is not so much the fact that, look, there's a million decisions we all made that led to this point in our world. We can't control them. We can't take them back. And even if we could, we didn't know the outcome. But we have the opportunity to make decisions now and to move forward in the right direction. For a while.

I told you guys in the beginning, I was like, yeah, this is going to suck. And I was also talking about the fact that like anything that sucks, you know, you gain something from it. You make progress. You become stronger is the bottom line. You know, you do something hard. As an individual when you do something hard, you become stronger. As a unit as you do something hard, you become stronger. These things that we go through make us stronger, they make us better.

you know, before we close out, you know, I don't know if I just, if you guys want to have one last thought, you know, about Jason, about his impact on you and the

decisions that you make now in your life. Bill, what do you got, brother? I occupy myself. I occupy myself with four kids, two acres, and a small farm. I didn't grow up hunting,

but when I got out of the Marine Corps, I took up hunting. I got into it, I got my certificate, and then went out and applied more or less my infantry to hunting. I found that the more time I'm in the woods and the more time I'm out there,

It's so quiet that I can find myself and I can find peace. And when you get, it's a, is it a challenge though when you're climbing up a hill? If you love that hill, is that really work? Is that you get to the top of that hill? And I'm up there because Jason, I've got. kids to teach and to teach how to hunt and they love the idea of it all. I've got things to do now because of Jason. I've got a life to live.

I've got four to raise. And I got my best friend that helps me. And she's an incredible woman altogether on her own. That's, she's been, holding me together quite a bit and we're going almost 14 years now. Yeah, well, everything you just said from

the farm to the hunting to raising four and raising four kids that will reflect and never forget and that's outstanding.

Outstanding. And yes, your wife must be pretty incredible to put up with you. Thinker. Ferg. This definitely sucked, and I knew this was going to,

but I think you got to look at the big picture and tell his story, everything, and just like on that dusty road that day, these three still have my back, and it was tough for all of us to be here today, some more than others.

And the main thing is just don't take things for granted to be grateful. These guys have families, kids, great lives because of the sacrifice, what Jason did. We all know that's the greatest act of humanity I've ever witnessed or probably ever will. But it's like his legacy lives on through these guys

and what they stand for. And, you know, just try to take that strength sometimes and go forward. But it's amazing with veterans what happens on a grassy knoll in a wadi, in a valley, on a dusty road on the Syrian Iraq border will live with us until we die. And it's, I don't know, the brotherhood helps.

And, you know, we love, and we miss Jason. Happy birthday, and thank you for having us. Honor to have you guys. Kelly, Boot, which I guess you got promoted from Boot after you got your freaking arms bout blown off. You almost made it past Boot. That's outstanding. You know, for me, my path was long.

You know, after I got hurt and healed and deployed again and came back, I was very, very, very self-destructive. I thought I was invincible. But I was lucky enough to wake up and move on. And a lot like Bill, I found a woman in my life who supports me unconditionally but challenges me to not be crippled by what I've been through. Otherwise, I probably would be. She pushes me to get help and to do things for myself. But at the same time, she requires me to be selfless and be present and not get wrapped up in the wash. So I'm very fortunate for that.

And then because of Jason, I have a little seven-year-old who is my best friend. You know, we run amuck together, drive mom crazy, laugh, wrestle, hang out, fucking live. I get to live because of him. Living is the greatest gift, but it's also the biggest burden. I've gone through a lot of nights where I wish I was the one. I was the boot. I should take him the grenade, you know? But because of my family, I don't always need him.

I love him, and I'll always love him because of what I have. It's never easy to have. You know the best thing to do with that gift he gave you, and you know that every day. Enjoy it. Absolutely. You take that little boy jet, and you raise him into a man. Oh, yeah. Trust me, he doesn't take it easy on me.

I feel bad for Rick right now. Last time I heard he had the boxing goes on, so... No, I just... If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have my wife. I wouldn't have my son and the memories. I've been able to get from them... I feel the hole created from the loss. Well, like I said, it's a gift,

and just seeing your boy out there, who, by the way, I said, hey, kid, you know I've written a bunch of books for kids you want to read them and he goes nope he's the first person that's ever said that to me you know most people at least have a little thing in the back of their heads and say hey I'm getting something

for free I'll take it not jet I'm not here to read I said cool I got some padded rooms out there you can go run around and he said I'll do that instead you found your speed bag and he already asked me if you could get one we'll sponsor that awesome

man and Trent What do you got? When we were on post-deployment leave between OIF 1 and OIF 2, he just came back from Carolla. My ex-O Rudy Salcido was battalion officer the day one day. I was down in Palm Springs at my house. He calls me up and he said, hey, sir, three, four, just dumped 34 Marines on our doorstep.

There's 34 Marines from our sister battalion. We don't have enough time with 3-4 to deploy with them, so they're cross-decking them to 3-7, and they'll deploy with us. So some of those Marines are going to be coming to Kilo. I said, all right. The first day back from that leave block, at the end of the day, I had to first sergeant hold a company formation up by the barracks. because we had seven new

new corporals came to us from 3-4 we got seven of those and I wanted to formally welcome them to the family so we helped the formation I welcomed them on board

and I turned over the formation the first sergeant and I had him send me those seven NCOs so I stepped back a bit from the formation, standing there in a ditch outside the barracks. And I felt it was important to say something to them, something significant. So I told him the same thing that I told Kilo the day I took command in Karbala back in

early June of 03. I told him, I believe in three things. is that I believe in leadership by example. I believe in self-sacrifice for the greater good. And I believe that one man can make a difference. That's what I'm expecting from you, and that's what you should expect from me. Two years later, I found myself preparing a speech for the town people of Sion, New York, during a ceremony in which they would dedicate their post office.

office to their son, Jason Donnell. And Dave Fleming was there, Rudy was there, several Marines were able to make it up for that. And Dave had been his particular matter for a short time with weapons before he reorganized the company. And Dave was sharing with me the memory of some anecdote during that time. And it stirred in me the memory of my talk with those seven NCOs that day. And one of those seven was done them. And I realized in a flash that in that moment of utter selflessness, that he embodied the very essence of those three virtues. Leadership by example, self-sacrifice for the greater good, and one man making a difference. And as FERC said, he could think of no more profound example of humanity.

The acme of human existence. Give your life for another. Hampton's got three girls and a fucking boy named Jason. Two boys. Two boys. Melanie, Addison, William, and Jason. Jet down stairs working a fucking heavy bag? Jet Jason. Jet Jason Miller.

Life begets life. I spent a couple years, a couple of awkward years, as the company commander of a Medal of Honor recipient. Something I didn't want. I just wished that, that could have fucking so over Christmas and then one day

I walked up a pier at Bath Ironworks in Maine I was there for the mass stepping ceremony of DDU109 USS Chasing Dunham and nothing can prepare you to see

your Marine's name on the transome of a fucking naval vessel and I realized in that moment when I saw his name there. But in that moment of selflessness, he transformed an object of personal protection into an instrument of protection of others. And in that moment, his actions have created far-reaching consequences that he never could have duplicated in life. In that moment, he was born into the heritage of our core, and his example will stand alongside of the countless

others who've created that heritage, and will continue to inspire Marines and sailors, and anyone else who hears his story for years and years and years. It's an impact that I still can't fathom, but he is leading by example every day still. And today he's 38 years old on the 244th anniversary of the birth of our core. And if that isn't something, I don't know what it is. He's the term overwhelming, and it's pretty easy to be overwhelmed by something like this. It's easy to be overwhelmed by an act of such selflessness to make the ultimate sacrifice. It's easy to look at that and get overwhelmed by it.

And maybe think to yourself, well, you know, that was something else. That's something I don't understand. That's something I can't relate to. That's something I don't need to think about. And I would actually say to you, no, that actually is something you should think. You should think about that actually is something you should relate to that is something you should try and pursue Every single day to think about to think about every single day That there's a person person flesh and blood

With one life to live his life for his friends and maybe every day if you think About not what you can take from the world you can give a little little bit a little bit of Jason Dunham back into the world world will be a better place for it we've been at it for a while and I just want to thank all of you guys for coming on here for sharing some of these things that you learned from him from sharing it with other people and and thank you all of course individually for what you all did I could talk to each one of you individually separately for hours to hear about what you guys have been through what you've seen so thanks for your service and sacrifice but thank you for coming here and for honoring your brother

not only in the ways that you're living your lives right now raising your children but also by telling the story of his life and ensuring that no one ever forgets the sacrifice that he made and I can promise you we will never forget him so thanks for coming on happy birthday to the Marine Corps happy birthday to Jason Donum

and of course Semper Fidelis Semper Fidelis And with that our guests have left the building Sergeant Bill Hampton, Corporal Kelly Miller, Staff Sergeant John Ferg Ferguson, and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson.

Thanks to all of them for coming on. And Echo Charles has joined us at the table. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. You were in the support role. on that podcast. Yes, sir. So I appreciate you manning the controls in the back,

keeping things running smoothly. Obviously, an honor for us to be able to sit here and talk with those men. And once again, when we turned off the recorders and we were kind of helping those guys, you know, get on out of here and all that, they all had place. is to be and whatnot, but you know, you could see that they were happy to come on and happy to share the story. And I said, guys, and I never really thought about this before, but I said, guys, imagine if you could sit down and put some headphones on and listen to the platoon commander, the machine gunner, the platoon sergeant that was out there with John Baslo. Imagine if you

could do that imagine what that would mean to you and that's what it is like for them to come on here and and share the story of jason jason dunham so it's an honor for for me to be sitting here and to be able to meet with those guys and and share that story heavy as it is you know and i know it's i know it's one of the heaviest stories that that a person can share and have those guys sit down and go through this. I just wanted to say thanks to them once again. And, you know, one of the most important things that I need to put out about this is that there are some people right now trying to put together a documentary about the life of Jason

Dunham and what he did, how it all happened. and so the documentary is going to be called the gift and it's a couple vets a couple vets are trying to make the documentary so if you want to support them you can go to facebook or instagram they have at the gift documentary and then what they're trying to do is fund it and they're trying to fund it through an indiegogo campaign So if you go to Indiegogo, which is a website where they take donations to make things happen. And on that Indiegogo campaign, it is called the Gift Documentary. So if you can, try and provide some support so that this story can be told in detail and rolled out to an even larger audience. So check that out and if you can try and help them out to move forward with this project.

In hearing this story, I guess echo, you know, I also told those guys about how we sort of decompress after these things and how that is an actual thing. And what we just did is we just decompressed with the guys. You know, once we got done, we kind of took a breath. We walked outside. We started having some normal conversations about life and And while Bill was showing me pictures of hunting and his kids and we're running around with jet and just doing a decompression So that's awesome you got to do that and that's sort of how we started this whole Support

Part support Segment yeah was we did a podcast It was one of the early podcasts that was really heavy and when we got done I was like a hey, I need a moment over here to decompress. Why don't you talk for a minute? And so that's kind of where it came from. And the good thing is, if you don't want to listen to this, it's fine. You don't need to.

You can just press stop and we're good. You can go carry on with your day. If you need to decompress a little bit with us, cool. You can hang out. We're going to hang out for a little bit until we get a little decompressed. And, you know, one of the things that it is good to reflect on how do we take what we just heard, which is heavy, and turn it into. something that we can actually utilize as far as I'm concerned we got you know when you hear a

story like Jason Dunham we get charged with living the best lives we can be in the best people we can and you heard this from all these guys it's like hey how can we live better do better so that's what we're here for you know and look at look at our lives and say what can we do better in our lives how can we get better how can we be better that's what we're looking at And I know you know some ways, Echo Charles. Yes, sir. What's one of the primary ways that you can think of? Jiu-Jit, too.

Okay, so here's the thing. You get asked this. I got asked this the other day. Somebody presented this problem to me, this whole problem of like, look, we are tribal in nature and the tribes are gone and we used to hunt and all these things. It's all gone.

And now we got cell phones and people don't talk. This whole. big, this whole big societal problem. Sure. And said, what do you think we should do about this incredibly powerful societal problem that we've got of people being disconnected and not needing to hunt and not being formed into tribes anymore? The whole litany of problems.

And I was like, oh, yeah, all that just trained jihitsu. Yeah. And I'm not even kidding. Yeah. I'm actually serious. Oh, you got, you want to connect with people. You want to be part of a tribe. You want to be healthy.

You want to hunt. You want to get out your aggression. Cool. I got an answer for all those things. You want to be intellectually stimulated? Cool, I got an answer for that. What else? I got an answer for it.

It's called jiu-jitsu. So go find a jiu-tit-to-jim. Start training, is what I'm saying. Yes. Do you concur? I 100.1% agree. That's good. I'm glad I got that extra 1%.

Well, you know, it's one of these things where, you know, I'm over here estimating your passion and your, you know, your enthusiasm for the whole situation. So, and then you ask me if I agree. So I do agree 100% numerically and technically. The extra 1% is because your enthusiasm, I'm reflecting at 100% plus 1. Got it. Got it. I feel even stronger.

In my estimation, now. I like it. I'm not going to tell you how you feel, of course, but given my interpretation. So I'm looking at Instagram. I don't call it the gram. Instagram. Okay, you're changing. I'm looking at Instagram.

And I follow this one. I forget what it's called. It's called like houses or something like this. You know, the ones with all the nice houses on the Instagram. It's called, right? It's called houses. Maybe.

I don't know what it's called. It's called some houses. But they're like huge, like mansions. Manches. So this one I'm looking at as $25 million. Huge. Just like it's a hotel size house. In the market, are you?

I don't. Got your Zillow qualification set at 25 mil. I like it. Sure. That your max price, you don't want to go over that. Yeah. You got to be a little bit of reason. So I'm thinking to myself, you know, you thoughts, they just roll through your head, you know, all the, you know, a bunch.

And then so I'm thinking, I wonder who owns that house right now, selling it right now for $25 million. Who owns a $25 million house? And why? And what are they doing in there? Do they have mats? Do they have mats? Are there pull-up bars? Yes.

Yeah. Sure. Yes. that too, but at the end I concluded with this sort of thought that drifted me off of the current house I was looking at. I was like, okay, what if, what kind of money do you have to have to be like, sure, I'll buy that $25 million house. So let's say that. Let's say you have $5 billion. Let's just say, for example, whether you think that's a lot or not, a $5 billion, the average person, namely me. Does not have $5 billion. I don't have $5 billion. Would $5 billion make a difference in my

financially well yeah but what if someone offered you this is just the thought I arrived at what if someone offered you five billion dollars so you could afford to buy that house by the way put as many mats as you want to say what if they offered you five billion dollars but here's the thing you could never train jiu-jitsu again that we have no reason for the mats in the house yes no reason but so would you take that five billion dollars and I'll tell you why not not only on the premise and principle but also then you're putting your soul at Hazard you you can be bought now. Well yeah, you sold out there is that because next thing

They're gonna be coming now don't don't don't that's a slippery slope. I am it's a slippery slope well So don't give up the jih Tzu for anything no amount of money. Yeah, no amount of money don't give up yourself yourself for money right for money but that aside that is a 25 million dollar house in California Just FYI 1.1% sales tax or a property tax you're paying What two over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in property tax on that property Yeah, so just just FYI if you're in the market for the 25 million dollar house Think about how you're gonna cover that tax scenario because it's not a good scenario right So if you have twenty five million dollars in the bank and you'll be like hey, I'll just buy the house and I'll be good

Yeah, I got twenty five million dollars. It's just in the formal house. No, there's gonna be some taxes on no yes a lot of them be hardcore too So, but okay, you got it. I dig it and I agree. Don't sell your soul for money. No. Don't do that. Just the fact of you selling yourself for money, that's a bad thing. I get it.

It actually made me angry as you, as you, as you approached the offer, which I kind of knew was coming. That actually made me mad. Oh, that part of it. Just the fact that you were going to approach me with that was making me mad. Yeah. Like, oh, you think you can buy me. Yeah. Okay.

Well, technically I was not approaching you. I approached myself with it when I was laying in bed looking at it. Instagram houses, but unless here's the question is, would you do it? That, that the sole selling thing aside, principally, the principle of that, that aside, would you do it? Like, basically you're giving up jiu-jitsu for something massive in your life, some massive like improvement in your life. The thing is, no, and I wouldn't. And I didn't even have to think about, no way. That's like saying, would you kill your mother kind of thing? Well, I guess it depends on who you are, but it's like one of those deals where it's like no amount of money, you know, and that's just to

train. Not to mention, like, oh, you lose all your jiu jutsu knowledge or something. Well, I was thinking about a lot of things. You went deep on this one. I'm glad you're sitting around thinking about this kind of stuff because I'm not. I know you're way more busy. It's all good. Yeah. Hey, you know, so. Okay, so we're going to keep training jih Tjitsu. Yes. We established that point. That's how much jiu jitsu means. Five billion dollar price tag off at a minimum. Not even close. Check. All the money in the world. No. Negative. then the last. So, and people who train jujitsu, they know this stuff.

Maybe they have that feeling. Maybe they don't. Unless, jujitsu in your life, improvement, 100% improvement, if not more. Agree? Or concur? 1001%. Boom, there you go. So when you do jujitsu, when we do jih Tzu, we're going to wear the ghee because

we're not doing just no ghee, right? Yeah. Maybe good, I guess. But you could, but we advise. Get the origin geese. 100%. Various options there. So origin, maine.

This is where you get all this stuff. We're about to talk about. Origin Maine. com has American-made stuff. Which reminds me, you know, we were talking on the podcast, you know, with this crew that was in here about what these young Americans do, stepping up and making stuff. It's also we got Americans, young Americans in our workforce. And guess what they're doing?

Stepping up and rebuilding the country. Up in Maine, what do we got? We got Americans of all ages up there working, bringing manufacturing back to America. So you don't necessarily have to go overseas to represent, to support our country. You're at here, here in our country, building our economy. That's what you're doing. And if you want to help build our economy and bring manufacturing back from overseas and rebuild communities that were devastated, go to origin, main.com.

Get a gui Get a rash guard By the way For no ghee Get a rash guard You can get jeans Yes sir you can Yeah

Now if you're an American We know factually you have jeans Probably three pairs At least Yeah Get a pair of jeans Don't just settle on a pair of jeans Made in China

See yeah And I was gonna say something like that too But I'm like wait But I don't want to like You know Disparage Disparge China as a country But here's the thing though

when you look at your kitty, you know, or your jeans, like, man, there's a different, because I have other genes, let's face it, I'm, you know, I'm old school. You do, huh? You didn't put those in the fire. Okay. No, not yet. That's cool. But you look at it, and one is made straight up. The cotton, like, one is made in America, grown in America, from the seeds, from the cotton, you know, all that stuff.

One is that, and then one is sort of made in China. You said it. It's like, man, you kind of want to throw them away. You see what I'm saying? So it's like, okay, I'm going to choose. Hey, look, I dig it. Like, if you're going budget or something like this, like super, and I get it. But, let's face it, at the end of the day, you don't want that one.

You want the American-made ones. I think we do. You want to support freedom. That's part of the whole gig, yeah. America. You want to support democracy. You get yourself a pair of origin jeans. I think so, too.

I think that's what we're talking about. Yes, sir. T-shirts. If you wear joggers, which I don't. Good idea. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you get joggers. I don't wear them. I think you should wear joggers.

And when I wore joggers, one time I tried them on, was laughing. And I showed my family, and they were laughing. My wife was like, please. And I said, no problem. I took them off, never to be worn again. But you wear joggers. Well, I wear them a lot less now because jeans. I don't know.

Yeah, probably because the jeans. I've been wearing the shorts. Origin shorts, by the way. But I wore joggers the other day when I was working out. Working out joggers are good, especially for jogging. Imagine that. But I don't do as much jogging anymore unless I was wearing them the other day, working out. But I'm wearing them as much.

I wear the shorts or jeans. Anyway, other stuff too, supplements. Okay, so supplementation. It's just being proven. It's like, what do you, you know, when you bang your head against a brick wall, right? That expression. I'm accidentally doing that. Every time, like I'll forget to be in the routine of taking the creole oil and the joint warfare.

I'll forget. Then I'll get these aches and I'll be like, oh, then you remember, oh, I'm not as consistent. Right when you get back consistent, it like, it'll all your little pains go away. It's for real. Yeah. So it's like, okay, me forgetting. to take it, you know, a day, two days, three days, four days or whatever. Just that little thing is jamming up my whole physical, like, element of my whole thing.

And it's essentially just remembering. So what you need to do is you need to take some discipline, go, or discipline of any kinds, which will help your motor neurons or your neurons in your brain to remember to take your other supplements so you don't get aches and pains. Here's why, and I kind of analyzed it like literally 10 seconds before I started. talking about it. Which is scary. Yeah.

Well, you know, that's my typical time of analysis before stuff. So that what I do is I take it and I'm good. I don't have any aches and pains. So why it won't be on the front of my mind? You see what I'm saying? If I do have an ache, I'm going to, oh, I better take this germ warfare to freaking help this problem I have. No problem.

No problem. Forget about that thing. What do you call? Out of sight. Out of sight. Out of mind. Check. Unless.

Get that. Get some of that. Get some of that. for your additional protein that literally tastes like dessert. My daughter, I got two daughters in college right now, she sent me a, we'll call it a text message. Sure. That was a picture of a peanut butter milkshake.

And of course, since she's a 18-year-old girl, the caption on it said, literally a peanut butter chocolate milkshake. Literally. That's what she wrote. And then she called me to tell me about it. Okay. She said,

she was like, Dad, it's literally. She said it's literally. She mixed it with, um, coconut milk, regular milk,

ice cubes, peanut butter milk. Literally. Literally. Literally. Literally. A peanut butter chocolate milkshake. Yeah.

So that's too. Is there a re there is, in my experience, there's a resurgence of the word literally. The kids are saying. Are you serious right now? Yes. You,

you're just, noticing that well what are you talking about I noticed it a little bit ago you but you since you could sort of you know jogged my memory you can't say it anymore don't say it well it's off limits now why because that's what these it's what the kids that's what my 18 and 20 year old daughters say right so people can think that you're like trying to be trendy saying it or they just think you're dumb yeah because what what I do with my kids as I won't even say any other part of the sentence I'll just say literally I well I wouldn't recommend that but here's the thing about the word literally literally yes it has another

definition though it's just like an exaggeration of emphasis yeah yeah it's like it doesn't mean literally anymore that happens that happens that's crazy that's the way the english language evolves that's why when i was studying english i realized english was like jiu jitsu because it adopts other words from other languages and they become apart and the languages the words that are in the language can morph and change as needed yeah but but here this case is is kind of particular because literally means something that's either it is or it isn't. Like all these other ones, most other words,

they sort of like, hey, I can see what you mean by that, but let's say this, you know. Here's two examples. Like and goes. Goes. Yep. Okay. Because whatever, 30 years ago, goes.

There was zero definition for goes that meant he said this. All right. Yeah, because now it's, oh, then he goes. And then he was like, Yeah, and she was all. Those are the two. So there you go.

Oh, yeah, that's another one. All. All. She was all like, all like this. She goes all like this. Well, here, yes, but I mean in a different way because literally means something. It's like turning the word yes into no officially. You know what I'm saying?

So literally means literally. There's no version of literally. Either it's literal, the literal sense of something or it's simply not. There's no in between. Yes. You're saying? Yeah. But now literally, literally doesn't mean literally anymore.

Literally. So literally just means very much so, or I felt it very much so. So I'm saying? And the kids, they're researching that definition. That's how they're saying it. I was literally dying when I saw this. Yeah, no, you weren't literally dying. No.

You were barely excited. So that's that. That is that. OriginMain.com and get some jocco white tea while you're there, which is, which will literally give you an 8,000 pound death. So there you go. in the first and foremost meanings of the word definition literally you will actually and literally be able to guarantee deadlift 8,000 pounds. Cool.

Also, when you get the gift of valor or any other books, we got it on the website, jocco podcast.com. And a little section says books from podcasts from the episodes. Also, if you really want to support, there's a good support role you can play. So when you shop on Amazon, instead of going to Amazon.com, go to the website. Click through one of those books in that section I just mentioned. Click through there on that landing page when it lands on Amazon, save that to your favorites. So now when you go shop, you click on that. So it helps support this podcast very much.

So that's a good way to support. Very good. Also, we have a store. Jocko has a store. It's called Jocco Store. And it's at jocco store.com. Got some stuff there. If you want to represent t-shirts and whatnot, discipline equals freedom, hoodies, light and heavy.

Rash guards. Rash guards. More rash guards. Yes, representative more directly of the path. You saw some representation today out on the mat. Saw it. Notice it? Check. Hats, hoodies. What else? Just some good stuff on there. You know, so yeah, check it out. Jocco store.com. If you want to represent while supporting while on the path, that's where you can do it. Big time. Also, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. I'm not going to say you have to subscribe, and I'm not going to say, I wanted you to have to subscribe.

I'm not seeing that. I'm saying if you want to subscribe, subscribe. Fair enough. And also if you want to subscribe to the grounded podcast. We actually have another podcast, if you can imagine that. We talk about life. We talk about jihitsu. And it's a little more free-flowing, we'll say.

A little more light. What was it? Light-hearted. Light-hearted. That was the term. Yeah, okay. So that's the grounded podcast. Yeah, it's a little bit more like the format, I guess, or the content isn't like as, I don't know, for lack a better word, heavy or even official.

Yeah. Varying levels of officiality, you know, but it's more, yeah, you'll go off on tangents and whatnot. And then there's the Warrior Kid podcast, which someone told me on Twitter that it's been so long since they got a Warrior Kid podcast that their kids. stopped asking about it. So that hurts and I'm working. I recorded another one. So we'll release. We should probably just release those couple.

And then you've got Warrior Kid Soap at Irish Oaks Ranch.com. If you need to stay clean, you might as well use the soap that Young Aden, the Warrior Kid is making. And then don't forget about YouTube, which we have a YouTube channel where you can see what Bill Hampton, Kelly Miller, Ferg, And Trent Gibson, you can see what everyone looks like during this podcast. And also, Echo Charles makes highly enhanced videos with lots of explosions, special effects, and other, what's it called when you make the words moving around? Typography? Yeah, typography. Typhography does a lot of that, too.

Kinetic. Kinetic typography. There you go. So you can watch, you can check that out. there's a lot of people watching the YouTube you know there's we have a ton of videos we have a lot of videos yeah there's a lot of videos yeah I don't know the number but it's a lot of videos yeah you can check for that number yeah because we do excerpts as well on there that's why oh like little excerpts of this yeah you know what's weird is most people when they think of an excerpt they think two minutes

well and for some reason when you think of an excerpt you think 14 minutes sometimes yeah you know Why? Because the definition of excerpt just changed when I started uploading stuff. Just like literally, it literally changed excerpts, excerpts. 13 minutes. That's the part of the definition. No. I have a thing called psychological warfare that is short, very short things, one to two minutes long, that you can press play on your recorder or whatever, iPhone, Android,

Samsung, whatever. You can press, play on that, and it'll give you a little boost if you need a little psychological warfare against weakness, because it's going on all the time. Yes, sir. MP3, whatever you get your MP3 plus stuff, there it is. We've got flipside canvas as well,

which is visual cues, visual spots to help you overcome psychological weakness, or if you just want really badass stuff hanging up in your place of work or home. My brother, Dakota Meyer, is making those down in Texas, made in America. So get some of that. We got some books. This book right here that I referenced and read a bunch from today on this podcast,

it's called The Gift of Valor, A War Story by Michael M. Phillips. It's, and you could see, I mean, I read a tiny fraction of the book. And even with the four guys that were there in the room, There's still details that this book goes into. Michael Phillips, an incredible job researching this. He says he interviewed every person that's named in the book he talked to. So think about that. And there is name after name after name.

So fantastic book. Check that one out. And then, of course, I have a new book coming out. It's called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. It's coming out January 14th. Here's the deal. If you want it, order it now for two reasons. Number one, you'll get the first dish, which you want.

And number two, you'll get it when it comes out. Otherwise, if you don't order it now, you're going to be on that group of people that get hit that week. They go, oh, it's out now. I'm going to press, I'm going to press buy right now. And then they press it and it says, oh, shipping in three weeks. Why is that? Because it's sold out. Why did it sell out?

because you didn't press by that thing. Pre-order. That's what you need to do. Pre-order. So pre-order that way also, look, I'm not going to say anything to you. When you bring that book to me to sign, I'm not going to say, oh, I'm not inspecting, really. Externally, you're not. But they did in this particular one, they made for me, it literally says, on the inside flap, it says, first edition.

They did that for me. good so that way I don't have to be all obvious about it but I'm gonna know where you stand what are you gonna do are you gonna like let's say you're like hey jocco sign my book or whatever I'm just gonna initial next to it yeah yeah or like circle it you know what TSA does they do like a little check of your your boarding pass and they do a little initial next to it I'm just gonna do that like oh first a dish cool you're good okay so I'm not gonna throw it in your face so you're not gonna point out the second edition third scenario I'm not gonna call people out for it but I'm gonna know and they're gonna know yeah we're all gonna know

And you're not going to feel comfortable. You're going to go to like initial the second edition, then you're going to like overtly like not do it. So I'll be like, and I'll just give you a little signature over here. That's fine. I don't, don't not like you,

but we all know where you stand. So if you want that leadership strategy and tactics field manual, you've, you've now read it. Yes, sir. Where are you at? Well, evaluation-wise, here's the thing.

I don't want to run the risk of disparaging any of your other books. But I'm saying, this seems to be the front runner. Sorry guys Ouch Oh cold blooded Extreme ownership I didn't get to reading

Until I already knew Extreme ownership You know what I'm saying So I'm reading I'm like cool cool Cool cool I know I didn't say I know but I get it It was familiar Then dichotomy I was okay

This is impressive I dig it but it was You did always talk about that Yeah No so I'm I'm not saying this wasn't the case for this But just the way it's laid out In this cohesive way

This is like It seems like a little bit more like given the time that I wrote or read it given the sequence of how like the chapters are or whatever given my very specific experience I enjoyed it a lot better sorry that's the truth it's really it's good check check you're going to be dead delay but that's I know man I know sorry oh that's cold-blooded also got some kids books way the warrior kid three where there's a will that is out there and that means we also have way of the warrior kid mark Mission also those two books are available to series and then we got Mikey and the

dragon for the little ones order that get it and then we have the original field manual field manual zero zero one which called discipline equals freedom which is still a great book to get for people that you know I mean I can't even narrow it now I was gonna try and narrow it down but then I'm like well is it the person that's on the path off the path no no it's like everyone everybody yeah Everyone. So there's that. And the audio version of that is actually on MP3.

And we have people that are wanting leadership strategy and tactics. Yes, I am reading the audio. So there's that. We also have extreme ownership and dichotomy of leadership, the first books I wrote with my brother Laf Babin, who, contrary to what Echo says those books are powerful. That is literally not what I'm saying at all. Yeah, well, it kind of sounded that way.

I understand. By the way, no big deal. Extreme ownership is like the number one selling business book since it came out. But apparently that wasn't good enough for you. Well, you know, for my very specific experience, I'm just saying, you know how like, let's say you eat, you know, sushi. Just own it, dude. You should have learned from that book. Just own it.

In the spirit of accuracy, maybe I won't own it as much as maybe I should. But nonetheless, I was telling the truth. Given my time and my personal experience, it gave me more like. If anyone's wondering what backpedaling sounds like, this is it. Life's not buying it. Check. And the dichotomy leadership. Those are the roots of the lessons that we learned in combat that you can then take

and apply to your business, to your life, to your world. We also have Eschlon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. If you want to have me or any of the... the team come and speak at your company, go to echelonfront.com. Don't Google Jocco speaker, because they're going to get through a speaker's agency, and it's a middleman. You don't need the middleman. You can go to eshlonfront.com. That's my company, and we will get it booked and come and

make it happen. We also have EF Online, which is online training for leadership. And it's eFonline.com. This is how you can get your entire company aligned behind the same leadership principles. So check that out if you need it. We have the muster coming up. The next one that we're doing is December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia. Listen, every time I say we're going to Sydney, Australia, 100 people ask me, what about Brisbane? What about Taiwan? What about, they ask me all over Southeast Asia.

And as a matter of fact, a guy just wrote to me on Twitter, only because I said no we're only going to city Sydney and someone said only going to Sydney is like doing a tour of the New York of a tour of the United States and only going to New York and I and I haven't responded yet but that's actually what we do we we only like the first we did one muster oh we did it in San Diego the next year we did another muster we did it in New York and then we did another one we did two the next year something like that so the guy's right that is what we're not we're not going on

tour we're not a rock band As much as we may be feeling like it We're not a rock band We have jobs and the jobs are echelon front So we're out working with companies all the time What we do is occasionally we take the time to go and do an event for a large group of people That is what the muster is we're not going to Taiwan We're not going to Hong Kong

We're not going to Melbourne We're not going to Perth we're not going to brizzy We're going to Sydney that's where we're going So if you want to come come And that is at extreme ownership.com. And of course, now we have EF Overwatch and we

also now have EF Legion. So, if you need to hire people for your company, go to EF Overwatch or EF Legion. Check out what we've got going on. We're taking combat proven leaders

and placing them into civilian companies. And for you vets out there, go to those websites and get your information put in there. for when you transition. That's what we do. EFoverwatch.com and EF Legion. And if you want to have more information from myself,

if you want to have more information or random thoughts from Echo Charles, we are available on the interwebs. We are on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. Once again, the gift to support that. The Facebook is, the Facebook and Instagram is at the gift documentary.

And the Indiegogo campaign is the gift documentary. So check those out. And once again, thanks to the 3-7 Marines that joined us today, Kelly Miller, Bill Hampton, John Ferguson, Trent Gibson, and to the rest of our service members. that are out there in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, thanks to all of you for what you do every day. And to Corporal Jason Dunham,

thank you for giving us all an example to follow, an example of courage and leadership and humility, an example as a warrior and as a human being. You are a true hero and an inspiration. And we will do our utmost to live a life worthy of your sacrifice. Semper Fidelis. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.