Jocko Podcast - 207: Live a Life Worth Fighting For. Medal of Honor Recipient, Kyle Carpenter

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

0:00:00 -  Opening 0: 06:24 - Kyle Carpenter. 4:30:24 - Final thoughts and take-aways 5:00:30 - How to stay on THE PATH. 5:33:00 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 207 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Now on podcast 203, I had the honor of having on some members of Kilo Company, 37 Marines. I had on Corporal Kelly Miller, Sergeant Wild Bill, William Hampton. First Sergeant John Ferg Ferguson and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson. And they came on the podcast to share the story of their brother in arms, their fellow Marine, Jason Dunham,

who sacrificed his own life by smothering a grenade to save Kelly Miller and Bill Hampton on April 14, 2004. And he died of his wounds eight days later on April 22nd, 2004 and obviously that was an extremely hard podcast to record I know it was hard to listen to it was hard for them to recount their memories of Jason and of his life and of his death as well and it was hard for me to watch as their emotions came to the surface and to see the anguish in their faces and hear the sorrow in their voices as they spoke. And it was also hard for me because I was thinking about Mikey Mansour.

Because on September 29th, 2006 in the city of Aramadi, Iraq, who was one of my guys in Tasking a Bruiser at SEAL Team 3, he also jumped on a grenade to save three of our teammates. And he was also killed from this ultimate, act of selflessness. And both of those men posthumously received the Medal of Honor. And the stories of Jason and Mikey were, I mean, they were definitely similar stories. And what the men of 3-7 kilo company went through were similar to what we experienced

in Task Unit Bruiser from the morning of our brothers. to the writing of the award citation, to the ceremony at the White House, to the christening of U.S. Navy warships, one named the USS, Jason Dunhamen, one named the USS Michael Monsour. And there's another similarity that's there that can't be denied,

and that is that we all wish that we could have had one more conversation with these heroes, one more chance to tell them about our lives, now to tell them that we are not wasting the gift that they have given us. One more chance to talk and smile and laugh with them again. One more chance to say thank you. But we will not get that chance, at least not in this life. Because even though we remember them, they are gone.

And we can only imagine what they would say to us now, where they would be, how they would explain their actions, and what kind of miracle. could have allowed them to survive. To survive something like that, it absolutely would take a miracle. Or a miracle on top of a miracle, on top of a miracle, on top of a miracle, on top of a miracle,

to survive a grenade blast at point blank range. The miracles do sometimes happen. And tonight on the podcast, we have someone here with us that is the result of many miracles. miracles that unfolded after he did the same thing that Jason Dunham did, the same thing that Mikey Monsor did. He smothered a grenade with his body to save his friend.

His name is Kyle Carpenter, and it is an honor, and it is a miracle to have him here with us tonight. Kyle, thanks for coming on. It's awesome to meet you. Thanks, brother, you too. And to say it's an honor and privilege to be here would be an understatement. So I do appreciate this opportunity. Yeah, I, that's sitting through the podcast, you know, and I had, you know, one of my guys, Mike Sorley on,

and he's one of the guys that Mikey Monsor saved. And, you know, it's just sitting there with the guys from Kilo Company. And you're just thinking the whole time that, man, if I could just, just have one more conversation with your bro, you know, just one more conversation. And, you know, when I was reading your story, I mean, I'd obviously heard about your story, but I was reading about your story, you know, it's like I kept smiling to myself and saying, man, this is, this is that chance, you know, this is that chance to talk to somebody that for all practical purposes, there's no possible way that you should survive.

There's just, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, the only, that's why I use the term miracle, and I know you used it in your book as well. But to have you here sitting and be able to talk to you, it's just, it's amazing. It's amazing to be able to sit here. So thanks for making the journey and making the trip and coming out here. And I just mentioned your book.

You got this book that just came out. It's called You Are Worth It. and you know whenever I have someone on I was kind of like to start I guess to start at the beginning you know kind of kind figure out what people's backgrounds were where they came from and you do a good job of that you know you actually you your second chapter in the book is called it starts at home and you go into your history sounds pretty sounds like you were pretty uh let's just say an energetic kid Yeah, like a little five-year-old Marine. Yeah, you start off here.

My dad will tell you that I had more confidence than any little kid in history. When I was still a toddler, I insisted he draw a Superman logo on my chest with a marker. And not some weak washable marker that would come off in the bathtub. No, I had to be the man of steel and permanent marker. And I wanted the logo redrawn

every time the ink started to fade. Aside from my secret superhero, identity, I was exactly like every other little boy in Mississippi. I was fearless, restless, reckless, and relentless. A tiny blonde ball of energy who climbed up, leapt from, played on, rolled in, ran around, or found a way to destroy whatever I possibly could. And my dad and mom were thrilled about it, truly. From the start, my parents, Jim and Robin, taught us to believe, taught me to believe in myself. Of course, they protected me and worried about me at times, but they also made me believe that anything was possible.

They'd both grown up in wonderfully stable and loving homes, that had also been a little bit sheltered. My mom had set a goal to make sure her kids expanded their horizons. My dad said, my dad made sure he didn't just spend time with his kids, but made quality time with them, engaging with us in meaningful and deeply personal ways. Both of them hit their parenting goals squarely on the head. So that sounds like you had a very ideal. upbringing. I did and it absolutely gave me the foundation that I needed to become the person that I wanted and needed to be and also I believe played a huge part in that foundation that allowed me to be the

Marine and the friend that I needed to and I'm so thankful and proud that I was in that moment and stepped up when I was needed. But, you know, talking about that chapter of the book, I was hesitant, actually, to write so much about my parents, how amazing they are and how much they did for me, because I wrote this book to transcend all boundaries. And I wanted to write a book that anyone and everyone could pick up and understand but also take lessons from.

But with that said, I didn't want to shut anyone out either. And I know that there are so many out there that were not as fortunate as me, that were not born into that stable, loving kind of textbook, perfect home. But as I thought about it and through the two years of writing, and I decided that hopefully, I'm going to put it in there, and hopefully it won't turn anyone away, if anything, those that maybe didn't get that example that don't know not only how great of a parent you can be,

but also when those trials and tribulations come, what you can make it through. You know, obviously everyone loves their kids, wants to help them and, you know, make them great. But, you know, I wanted to use my parents. parents as an example, you know, of the hardships that you can make it through with your child and what you can battle through together. You know what else is, it's interesting when you come at it from that angle, because as I was

reading this, the thought goes into your brain, right, of like, well, oh, he had this perfect childhood, right? No wonder he ended up good. Here's the thing. There's kid after kid after kid in the world that have the most. perfect situation that they grow up in and it turns out to backfire on them. I mean, what's the difference? The line between being a spoiled kid, I mean, the fact that you joined the Marine Corps, right, you had a nice upbringing, you had no reason to say, oh, I'm going to

leave college, I'm going to go in the Marine Corps, I'm going to be a grunt in the Marine Corps. Like, that's, there's a fine line, right, with raising kids, and I got four kids. there's a fine line between, hey, I'm supportive and I'm helping and I'm going to be there for them and turning them into spoiled brats. And it seems like your parents found the place where that line existed and didn't go overboard. But at the same time, you know, they provided you with support. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. That makes perfect sense. And yeah, I think all the way up until working at the chicken plant for two summers was about, you know, where my potentially being spoiled ended.

But, yeah, you know, I could have written the entire book about my parents. I'm so thankful that they've been there from the moment I was born and from the moment that I woke up again to this beautiful bonus round that I'm living now. Awesome. Continuing on with the book, I desperately wanted siblings, but that proved a particularly elusive goal marked with a lot of loss.

The hardest was a stillborn baby boy when I was four. I'd been over the moon about getting a little brother and crushed when it didn't happen, but you can imagine how devastated my parents were. To lose a child and feel completely powerless, as it is happening, has got to be one of life's greatest agonies. Finally, two months after my sixth birthday,

my mom gave birth to twin boys, named they named Price and Peyton and I was smitten I could not imagine anything in the world more special than getting two siblings at once I could not have been prouder when I have three older kids and when they when my youngest was so they were seven like seven nine and eleven or something like that or six eight and ten and we were we found out that my wife was pregnant we were having a another kid and it was Halloween. And we decided we were going to tell them, you know, Halloween, then we can go out trick-or-treating.

It'd be fun. So we sit the kids down and we say, we've got some really exciting news for you all. You know, you're going to have another baby brother or sister. And their reaction, the oldest daughter literally stood up and started crying and ran to a room. That made my middle daughter stand up and go to her room to start crying. And then my son just started crying right there in the spot. It was like we delivered in the worst news news. I was kind of saying, well, that was exactly what we were looking for, what we expected.

I was hoping for the Kyle Carpenter reaction, like, yay, this is awesome. But no, that whole thing, I don't know what it was. I still haven't quite figured it out. I don't know if they were jealous. I think they might, I think my oldest daughter, who is very sensitive about like money. And, you know, I was in the Navy. We didn't have a ton of money. We lived in Southern California, so don't have a, the Navy's not a lot of money in Southern

California. I think she thought to herself, we're not going to be able to afford to eat. So she freaked out and that just made the other kids freak out. But yeah, awesome. You know, for a kid, though, that's a legitimate concern. And I might not be able to relate to that. And we'll get to it. But, you know, after I was injured at Walter Reed, especially being a junior Marine that I had done one three-month deployment, if you want to call it that, before I went to Afghanistan. and you get these pre-deployment briefs,

but at least on the Marine Corps side of things at the time, and hopefully this book helps kind of educate and maybe change things up a little bit as far as protocol goes, but in these pre-deployment briefs, it's kind of like they tell you, okay, well, here's what's going to happen. If you come back, thankfully okay with your unit,

or here's what is going to be. going to happen and how it's going to go if you come back in a box. And there's not really that in between. So being ignorant on military medicine, especially that some of who were going to be down the road, some of my best doctors that saved my life and my limbs and kept me here, you know, they were going to be wearing camouflage, Air Force, Army, Navy doctors, but to wake up and not know that military medicine world is out there along with the injuries,

disorientation, and the medication, which probably was the number one factor. I had an extremely hard time trying to come out of the ICU fog and hallucinations, thinking that my parents had lost everything, had spent everything, couldn't

provide those meals, food on the table for my brothers. And, you know, of course, everything thankfully was covered. Because I think it costs it a little, a little bit to put Humpty Dunti back together again. But, yeah, you know, I think as a kid, you know, for some reason you worry about those kind of crazy life situations. But I was thinking that story is going to go a little bit better than it did. Yeah, yeah.

And you know what? My daughter didn't realize is that an extra pack of ramen noodles didn't cost that much. All right. So getting to you a little bit. I was obsessed with any kind of physical challenge. So sports became a major part of my childhood. Aside from the birth of my brothers, the thing I was most proud of was making the Brandon All-Stars in Brandon, Mississippi,

when I was in first grade. It was a coach-pitched baseball league, and my dad was usually throwing the balls. And then you start getting into football. And I always have to say this. So when I'm reading chunks of this book for everyone that's listening, I'm obviously not reading the whole entire book. And this is an unbelievable book, all kinds of details in there. Great storytelling.

And I don't know how much you thought about that, Kyle, as you wrote this, but like just your storytelling capability, it's great. It's great story to read. And so, but I'm jumping around as I read this. So, you know, you only get part of it. That's why you have to buy the book. You are worth it. So here we go. you're getting you're into football now here we go finally as summer practices between my sophomore

and junior years came to a close obviously i've just jumped ahead um and the starting lineup was posted on the door of the football field house there was my name kyle carpenter strong safety and what did you weigh at this point maybe 140 at the most i had done it i had accomplished the thing i had dedicated the last three years of my life to pursuing. I was elating and I was all it was elating and it was also incredibly deflating. We just learned that my family was moving to South Carolina in a matter of weeks. So your dad worked in the poultry industry. Poultry industry and just like with a lot of the business world out there you move up do good things, get promotions and sometimes that comes with moving around, which every other time before that, kind of moving across the southeast and

gradually making it to South Carolina, every other time before that was an adventure. You know, there's always the, I guess, nerves and kind of dread of going and walking into that class as the new kid, and especially in elementary and middle school years. this time just not only knowing that I was going to have to restart in a way halfway through high school but also I you know high school football now in the grand scheme of life isn't a deal breaker by any means but at the time just having committed and devoted you know every ounce of myself. It was either class or I was working towards that goal as a starter from eighth grade until 10th grade in the summer after 10th grade. You know, that was that was hard on me.

Just that in addition to knowing I was going to have to start over, not only that, but the school that I was starting over at was the first two-story high school I had ever seen. I mean, they had fake painted doors on the wall, so all the, you know, dumb freshmen would kind of walk towards those and you know it was a massive school so you know 900,000 a class so that was daunting in itself but you know to have have a move right after seeing that strong safety posted on the door it was tough yeah you kind of went from you also kind of went from the small the big fish in the small pond or at least a medium sized fish in a small pond into being a tiny fish in a giant pond. This is what it felt like here, going back to the book. The reputation I'd work so hard to

cultivate with my coaches back in Savannah meant nothing here. A guy who would always show up ready for practice and give 100 percent, someone who didn't get into fights or get put on academic probation. No one knew how hard I worked or how dedicated I'd been over the past few years to develop as a leader. Basically, no one at my new school knew my character. It wasn't anyone's fault. It was just the way the chips fell. I was starting from scratch as a guy weighing 135 pounds trying out for football at one of the largest high schools in the state I'm rarely someone who gives up but at that moment I just couldn't see the point it wasn't worth it to me to continue making it my life's mission to earn a starting spot on a team where

none of the coaches even knew my name I've always been an optimist but that doesn't mean you can't be a realist too realistically I knew I would graduate before I ever saw the field earlier than the fourth quarter so I quit and the following months that decision and the following months following that decision remain to this day one of the lowest periods of my life. I hadn't just lost. I had given up the opposite of who I was. For the first time in my life, I felt like I didn't have a purpose.

Yeah, you know, you said it seems like no big deal, you know, high school football or whatever. This is one of the reasons that I've written a bunch of kids books. One of the reasons that I wrote a bunch of kids books is because one day I was talking to my kids, one of my kids about something. And what I realized, you know, I was like in the military and we had wars going on and I was worried about, you know, big things like that, life and death and war. And I was talking to one of my kids about something and I forget what it was, but I realized that for a kid, like what's going on in their world is the biggest thing in the world. It's the biggest thing in the world. And when you're, when you work that hard to play high school football

and you make the starting team and now all of a sudden you can't even play in a lot, That's your whole world. It's your whole world. And that's the situation you're in. And your dad noticed that. And he recognized that there was an opportunity, that there was a little 1A private school out in the middle of nowhere,

and he asked you if you wanted to go visit it. And so you went out and checked out a Wyman King Academy, tiny K through 12 Christian school. How small? How small was that? Like, were we talking 25 kids? in a class? We're talking three lunch ladies, handmade lunch for every student, K-312. We prepared the football fields, the baseball fields, we painted the lines, we painted the lines, we raked the end zone, we built the new football field house, we built the new weight room,

and did everything, but probably because I was 135 pounds, bring us. all the weights in. So, but no, it was, it was amazing. And just good, small town, genuine, you know, patriotic people. And everyone, you know, there was a truck row in the end zone of the games where the grills would be set up and all the guys with camouflage on and still turkey blood all over their pants would come and watch the game on Friday night. And, you know, I even remember one time. And, you know, I've been in big public schools my whole life and, you know, everything from the

uniforms to clear backpacks. So I get to this school and, and I feel like I fit in right away and it was amazing. But at the same time, it was a very different world than what I had experienced. and what I thought was normal school. And I remember one time it was, we hadn't even started the day. We were kind of in a home room. And this guy named Kurt comes in. Big old,

had been turkey hunting that morning before school. And had a big knife on him. And it was just kind of like, hey, you know, you can't have that here. Take it back out to your truck. Like, oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot I was turkey hunting this morning. Now is it.

Time to start the day. So it was a different experience, but one that I'm forever thankful for. At the time, you know, I was just, I guess you could say in such a bad place. I just thought it was more of a, you know, why not than, oh, I want to go check this out. And I think it could be good for me. You know, but once I did, I immediately felt welcome. and loved in that family and from day one I feel like I thrived and just again met some really amazing people that I still keep in touch with today and that still show me that that same amount

of love and support as they did on that first day and it's actually not in the book another example of how small it is you know and and through the writing in the contract we had 75,000 words but as we went along through the two years, you know, you really dive into deep thought and self-reflection, and you kind of start branching off remembering different stories and examples in the stories you've already given. And we took out the ham sandwich story. But my nickname to these three amazing lunch ladies was ham sandwich, because sometimes in the morning I would sneak in there in the back of the kitchen of me a couple but if that tells you anything that's how small it was like oh here comes

ham sandwich again do not get breakfast like sorry thanks to the two ham sandwiches i'll pay you later put it on my tab did you did you transfer did you already start at the other big school and go there for a few weeks and then leave i did i went um the first semester of junior year okay And then I transferred, I guess, during Christmas break. During Christmas break. So I spent a year and a half at King, but it was a great year and a half. Yeah, that's awesome. So that meant you were going to show up with only one more year to play football as well.

Correct. Okay. You got a couple other cool things to mention in here. You would get guest speakers would come in, and you say this. One who had the greatest impact on me was a Vietnam veteran named Clebe McClary. Am I saying that right? Yes. While serving the Marines in 1968, Klieb took heavy shrapnel from a grenade that cost him his left eye and his left arm at the elbow.

Now he and his wife run a non-profit focused on helping military families navigate the stresses and challenges of deployment and combat injuries. At the time, I wasn't as taken with the fact that he had been a Marine or wounded in battle as I was with the fact that he was someone who really understood how to live, despite his advancing age and significant. He was still active, engaged, and dynamic. If ever there was someone who had an excuse to throw in the towel, it was Clebe, but he didn't. That was in awe of his spirit, that someone who had been through so much could create an incredible life, not only in spite of, but because of his experiences. So that's obviously something that stuck with you. And then you had a football coach. Coach Doolittle was a great teacher and was really funny with the students, but he would also absolutely destroy you.

in the past on the practice field. He knew how to push you beyond what you thought was possible so that you ended up capable of stuff you never thought you imagined you could do. And here's how you wrapped up. I finished the season with over 2,200 yards in offense, more than 20 touchdowns and three kickoff returns for touchdowns. It was a different kind of game from playing at a big school,

but I loved it. In fact, the year I was able to play for King Academy, my senior year, we went to the state championships losing in the finals in double overtime. Dang. It was a good one. It was a really good one. And, yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm thankful for that experience.

I wish I would have had longer. But, you know, better late than never. So it was good. Yeah, it's an interesting call decision to leave the big school and go to the little school. That's a tough decision for people to make, right? and you know it's one of those ones well I'm this close to being done forget about it but you you know you made that tough decision as a kid that's a tough decision to make it was it was and maybe thankfully at the time I was so I guess bummed out that it helped me make that decision

but also you know looking back over my life especially that time period and moving around like with all great and beautiful lessons in life, a lot of times those come from the hardest and darkest of days. And so now looking back, and, you know, my dad has struggled before and maybe still does a little with the fact that, you know, maybe moving me around so much and, you know, the fact that I was unhappy during that, influential time in my life that that kind of led me to join the military. But as I told him and as I truly feel and believe,

that moving around and being forced to meet new people, being forced in new uncomfortable situations, circumstances. Now looking back, I feel like all of those times, condition maybe isn't the right word, but they prepared me for a life of service, for a life of service, which, you know, really means a life of the unknown. And to join and I don't think until, you know,

you go through the things that you do through in a life of service you can fully comprehend or get mentally prepared or ready for. So just to know, hey, I know what I know. I know who I am. I might not know what's coming next, but I'm going to confidently step forward anyway. So I am thankful for all of those moves and all of those good and bad days because I do believe it gave me essential tools to step into that unknown and join the Marine Corps. Yeah.

You know, referring back to your parents again here, the example my parents set was instrumental in shaping who I became and how I engaged the world. Everything in our home was about developing character, humility, and resilience. My parents focused on raising my brothers and me to be functional, rational, contributing members of society, even as they let us enjoy amazing childhoods, they always had an eye on what sort of adults they wanted us to become. Chor charts and church trips were a given. We were expected to take responsibility for making the house run smoothly. And we were encouraged to be involved with our community. Life was more about, life was about more than what we could

take out of it, it was about making a difference, not necessarily on some global scale, but by improving someone's day or helping to lift someone up. Those are like the values you were just talking about. And then you say this and you, you kind of talked about this already, but you say, I realize there are many people out there who weren't fortunate, who weren't fortunate enough to have the kind of stable loving parents that I was blessed with, which is why I don't take my family for granted. There's something. to be said for the so-called all-American childhood. Respect your father, love your mama, stick tight to your brothers, always do your best,

always be honest, and never talk back. Like any family, ours wasn't perfect, but it absolutely gave me the foundation I needed to become the adult I wanted to be. As the saying goes, my parents gave me roots and wings, and none of us had any idea how important both those gifts would prove to be. I'd actually never heard that term before roots and wings, but that's a good one. That's a good little dichotomy there, you know, give them roots and wings. The other thing that is awesome about this, it's kind of like what I was talking about earlier. Here you are from this, you know, picturesque family of love and support. And yet you still

were raised in a way that you were willing to, you know, to step up and make a sacrifice. And I'm not talking about, you know, jumping or a grenade. I'm just talking about joining the Marine Corps. Just that right there. You know, there's, I guess what I'm thinking about is the stereotypical, spoiled kid that's never going to do anything like that. It doesn't have to be that way, right? And the other thing I like about this is respect your, respect your father, love your mama,

stick tight to your brothers, always do your best, always be honest, never talk back. There's kids that there's kids that look at a kid like that and they think all that that that kid's a A wimp or that kid's a you know what's the word I'm looking for that kid's you know a goody two shoes A square something like that and what your proof that That's wrong actually you know that this that you can be raised that way and you can be tough as nails Because I think the reputation of someone that would say those things Let me put you this way. I got a 16 year old son.

He wouldn't say those things because he'd think, oh, I don't want my friends to think, I'm, you know, soft. I'm done, you know, that's the way it is. You know, he wouldn't say, love your mama. Maybe he would a little bit. But, you know, it kind of sounds like, oh, this person's just a square, a goody two shoes. And it's like, oh, guess what?

And, you know, I've actually explained this to people before. Because, you know, in the military, we get people from every background in life, every different background in life, everything. Kids from the ghetto, kids from the hood, kids from the farm. And here's the deal. Kids from good families, kids from no families, kids that don't have a family at all. And they all end up in the military. And it's you still, even with all those diverse backgrounds, it's hard to predict. what a person's actually going to be like.

What that person is actually going to be like? And you meet some kid from the hood versus some kid from a farm somewhere versus some kid that went to a private school his whole life and had a fantasy about being in the SEAL team so he enlisted even though his dad has 10 houses. But that's what he does. And you just can't tell what that person's character is going to be like

based on how they were raised. That's just the way it is. I don't know if you noticed that. Absolutely, absolutely. From every background and you get you might have a rich kid that's a total loser in your team or you might have a rich kid that's great I had a guy who was he was wealthy beyond wealthy right like you he had more money his family had more money than you than a family could ever need in 20 generations like we're talking generations, generations, wealth. And I didn't know it. He was in there. He's a hard. Somebody asked me about him. They said,

hey, what do you think of this guy? And I said, oh, he's great. He's, you know, he's hard workers, great new guy. He's putting out. He's making stuff happen. And they go, isn't it weird? And I was like, isn't it what weird? And they said, isn't it just so weird that he's like that? And I said, that he's like, what? Why is it weird? And they said, well, you know what his last name is, right? And I said, yeah, but I didn't connect the last name with the last name. And it turns out, yeah, they said this guy, he's got unlimited money, basically. And I never would have known it in a million years because he was just a hard working head-down guy that was had enlisted in the dang seal teams. That's awesome.

And you would never know that. So that's what I think this calls out to me, you know, is that this type of attitude that gets frowned upon. And I guess that's a little bit of what, you know, when you were saying you didn't even. know if you want to write about this stuff that's what I'm getting at like you saying I don't know if I'm right about this because it's a little bit but some people might you know not connect with it it's like hey it's okay you should connect with it you can you should what people should do is look at the positive look at the positive things behind this you know that's what I think and I think

it's awesome that you did write about it and what did you say here you actually you you you that's what you said that there's something to be said for it right Cool. Agree. That's amazing that you took that from it. And I appreciate you telling me this because, and I've never talked about this before, but I always, just to myself in my head, battle with the classic, you know, the nice guys finished last argument. Because for my entire life, my mom has always said, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're,

biggest weakness and this was not in a negative way but more of just just wanting to look out for me you know being too trusting of people being too nice um and so you know kind of playing off this you know should i be a little more hardcore a little more aggressive a little more not me because, you know, I need to be in this world. But, you know, I believe, learn and realize over time that, and this is just me personally, but, you know, I do, you know, deeply care about people. And, you know, I do feel like maybe I am a little too nice

at times, but, you know, for that one time every once in a while that I might get walked all over, you know, there's a hundred times that I'm thankful and I'm proud of myself for, you know, always, you know, really striving to treat every single person no matter what the circumstance with love and respect. And now, you know, I'm starting to get a little bit of gray, just turned 30, looking over this long, you know, salty life I've had. Looking back, you know, I do feel like now I'm finally starting to get to a place where looking back, I do realize that it's not a bad thing at all to be, if you want to say soft,

or a square or, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, when the times as a Marine in Afghanistan, when I needed to be, when I was called upon, when that was appropriate for that situation and that mission, I feel like going into a room first with the saw, kicking in the door, having a couple of hand grenades on my, on my plate carrier, you know, I, that was me at that time, but now I do feel like I've gotten it as far as I have in life and I've done as well as I have, obviously with the amazing

support team and the people that picked me up when I stumbled, you know, but aside from that, I do feel like my softness, I guess, has got me to. an incredible place in life. You know, there's a saying, which I was thinking of as you were talking about that, the saying is, and I know you've heard it before, because I know I have, the saying is don't mistake kindness for weakness. And if you think about why that saying exists, that saying exists for two reasons.

One, because people do mistake kindness for weakness. People see someone that's nice and kind and they think, oh, that person's a pushover. So that's one reason that that statement exists. The other reason that that statement exists is they're saying don't do that because it's a mistake, because kindness is not weakness.

In fact, kindness takes strength. And when you have that person that has that internal fortitude and they have the self-assurance that they don't need to, you know, what makes someone walk around with their chest, you know, pushed out, acting like they're tough.

Most of the time those tough guys are acting like they're tough because they're insecure about something. That's what's going on. And so when people actually have, when people are kind, it's because they're secure. I can tell you, like, I train jiu-jitsu. I'm way nicer.

I, you know, I started training jiu-jitsu when I was, I started training when I was 20-something. I became nicer and nicer and nicer, the more I trained jiu-jitsu. Because I realized, oh, yeah, I don't need to act like a tough guy. I don't need to walk around like I'm some intimidating guy. No, it's like, oh, I know how to fight.

If somebody wants to bother me, then I can handle it, but I really don't want to. Because I don't need to, right? So I think that idea of mistaking kindness for weakness is there's a reason why that term gets said and there's a reason why you best heed that. And the other thing is, you know, when you just talked about, well, I'll say this, kindness may have a negative impact in the short term sometimes, right? I think that's what you're talking about. Like, hey, sometimes, oh, this person kind of got what they wanted in that immediate short-term thing.

Right. You know, somebody, oh, here's, you know, somebody cut in front of the line. And instead of me being like, hey, you know, go to the back line. It's like, you know what, I'm not going to say anything. It's fine. And, you know, I think to myself, well, that person is probably going to be somewhere, who knows what they've got going on in their life, whatever. They got kids or whatever.

So fine. They might win in that situation right there. But over the long term, being kind of people and helping people out, I mean, look at the support network that you just talked about. Those people were supporting you. Obviously, they're doing it because they're good people. But they're also doing it because you're a good person. You know, that little extra effort when they say, hey, this guy's a good human being. This guy said hi to me.

This guy was nice to me. This guy didn't flip out when I made a mistake. Like, okay, that long term, that kindness is going to win every single time. Long term. Like I said, short term, there's going to be some jerk that's going to walk around and push around. It's like, okay, everyone just saw what just happened. And when you come back here into the store or into the situation and you want a little extra help from somebody, it's just you're not going to get what you want. You know, I used to, I was the Admiral's aide for a while.

And I used to have to book us travel. Yeah, no pressure. No pressure. And just sit, just send me back to Iraq. Oh, man. Yeah, I will believe me. Not logistical plane tickets. I would have gone back to Iraq and a heartbeat.

But, you know, he's a great guy, a nice guy. But, you know, you want to take care of the boss's guy that's in charge of all the seals. And I want to make his life easy. So I would be booking travel. And, you know, we'd get bad seats. like on an aircraft. And I would call up the dang help desk of Delta or of America, whoever, whatever airline. And I would spend at least the first like two minutes of saying, hey, how you do?

You know, they'd say, how can I help you? And I'd say, oh, how you doing? I'm just setting up some travel. And I'd make some little small talk and I'd be nice to them. And I'd guarantee you, like the chances of success when you were just nice to people, just, just be nice to them. And they'd say, well, you know, the first response would be like, no, the seats are all booked. I'm like, I'd say, you know, ah, wow, is there anything I could do? Because I got my, I don't, I'd usually complain about my boss.

That's how I would connect with him. I'd say, you know, my boss is going to, I work for this guy. He can be a bit harsh, which was actually not true. So I was telling a little white lie. But they could relate to it. Yeah, as soon as I was, as soon as they related to me as like someone that was just a work and nug like they were, they'd say, oh, you know what? I can get you an up.

or hey, let me get you a window, whatever, and they just take care of me just by being nice, you know. Whereas I guarantee you, you get on the phone with someone at an airline, and you start saying, look, I booked these seats two weeks ago. You need to give me the seat I want. There's no possible day. You're accidentally on the next flight.

You're not even on that one. Exactly. Not window, not out. You're on the next one. You're in the middle seat, 47th row. You're in the cargo, man. So, yeah. But, you know, that's, you're exactly right, man.

I couldn't have said it better. And with all that said, I always kind of forget, like, you know, the biggest piece of this. And, you know, I don't, after getting hit with a grenade, you know, it's okay if people think how nice. I feel like hopefully that in itself gives me a little bit of street cred, you know? Yeah, that gives you some credit, I guess. I'm going to hammer on your parents a little bit more. Well, not hammer on them, but bring them up a little bit more. My parents did not believe in shortcuts.

And I always claimed I believe the same thing. Until I was 18 and my dad got me a job at the chicken processing plant where he worked. I figured I would get some kind of an airman boy starting the coffee in the mornings, maybe filling some paperwork or answering phones in the air-conditioned office. Dad didn't pull any strings though. And I was definitely not the boss's son. I was Kyle the new hire. And you go into that, you know, it's obviously, it's real hard work, real hard work. Very hard work.

And this is what you get out of it. And this is, again, looking at life of what can I learn? And you know, you were saying earlier that all these different situations that you've been in, that's what prepare you for the future. And this is one of them. As awful as I thought that job was, I developed a whole new appreciation not only for the value, but also the importance of hard work. It was sobering for me to realize firsthand how many hardworking people do a job that allows us to grab food at a store without giving a second thought to how it got there.

So you're learning about work. You know, this is what it is. And also learning to appreciate, once again, you know what, when we talk about being raised in a sheltered situation, you know, that's what that's what that is. You don't understand what goes into that chicken patty that's coming onto your plate at night. You know, we get a factory up in Maine and there's where we make clothes, you know, and people don't realize, oh, somebody made that, somebody sewed that. You know, many people, you know, stitch their fingers and injure themselves just trying to make a pair of jeans or a time away from their families.

Exactly. Of course, it's a job, but still. Yeah. There's, there's real sacrifices out there in the world. And it's, and that's what America's made of, by the way. That's what America is. It's hardworking people that put. Chicken patties on your plate and put a pair of jeans in your drawer and then you also start getting some leadership skills here I also gained an important

An important mentor in my supervisor Rodney Taylor he was in charge of Sanitation for the plant and a leader like none I had met before he was rough around the edges and authentic He rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside his team whenever an extra set of hands was needed He wasn't above grime or hard work Since workers at the plant were from various walks of life, he learned to relate to his people in order to be able to communicate effectively with them rather than getting frustrated at the differences in everyone's backgrounds. He believed that his workers would respect him more if he was able to connect with them directly. He also believed that they would do their job, their own job more efficiently if they weren't afraid to ask him for clarification.

That's a little decentralized command, you know? Hey, boss, why are we doing this? Can you explain this to me? Yeah, oh, absolutely. And by the way, I'll communicate to you in a way that's respectful that you'll understand that you can relate to. These are really good lesson learns from the chicken factory. Yeah. And also two more things.

He had this guy that worked under him, kind of his right hand man. And although I did see him get out, get dirty. You know, get down on his hands and knees work, show us how to do certain things, and supervise. For every one time he left his office, you know, that guy, his right-hand man, came in 15, 20 times a day. And so now, after earning that title, becoming a Marine, seeing how the Marine Corps military is as far as effective communication and delegating, I see what was going on there now and also a big portion of the workforce at that chicken factory

was from the Hispanic community, Mexican Americans. And after he got that position, he would bring his workers in while he was working on learning Spanish himself, bringing him in all day, just asking them questions. you know, how do you conjugate this, how do you say this, and he got to where he was completely fluent, and he did that, now I realize because he needed the most effective communication. He didn't need anything. He couldn't afford to have anything lost in translation just because, you know,

and to learn a second language, that's no joke, of course he could have got, you know, his right handman in there, got, you know, any number of people out of the plant to help him out with that. but he wanted to do that. He wanted to take ownership of that position and those under him. And so through that and just those simple lessons and him telling me just stories, which now don't seem anywhere near as crazy, but stories from his service, and many of them were. but just, you know, things that unless you enter our world, you know, on the other side of it are not only powerful but incredible to listen to, to think about, to try to, even though I don't think you effectively can, but to try to, you know, visualize or put yourself in those situations like, oh, damn, you jumped out of a plane. broke your leg and picked your shoot up and kept, you know, running to your objective.

Like, what are you talking about right now? But just things like that, that his leadership, along with those stories of, you know, perseverance and just aggressiveness and determination, all of that, you know, together made me not only realize what a leader could be, but also, you know, planted that seed, started that fire and kind of gave me that burning of of knowing that there is more out there and seeing what maybe with hard work and dedication I could become, not him specifically, but just how he carried himself. and the way he, you know, even as sanitation supervisor at a poultry processing facility,

you know, that leadership that he brought every day and how all of those under him were not only structured, but extremely effective. You know, I never, I hung out in the office a lot, probably because I got so many cool stories. But, you know, I never, and maybe they wouldn't have. come in and reprimanded him or talk to him about business in front of me anyway. But I always heard about issues with QA, with, you know, go down the list of all the pieces that helped make this company. But it was never, hey, we need to start from the beginning, sanitize the plant again.

Everybody knew what they were doing, how to do it, and they knew that they worked hard and did it right and had that effective communication. that everyone was going to not only complete the mission, but hopefully get out of there at a decent time. Were you conscious of these things as it was happening, or is this you look back and you go, wow, I learned this there and I learned this there. Or at the time were you saying,

hey, this guy is a good leader? Definitely at the time. But I think, like with most things, I realize a lot more now looking, back than I did at the time, but I knew that it was special and different, and it was unique what I was experiencing and learning at that time. And he was prior military? Marine Corps.

Oh, dang. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So now we start putting the pieces together. Oh, yeah. Also, where the most creative swear I've ever heard comes into play. A little shocking to your ears.

Yeah, my little baby 18-year-old ears. Yeah, that's awesome. Some people can do it pretty well, and you can definitely get a good background in creative swearing in the United States Marine Corps. I was impressed, and yes, you can. He had a PhD. I think I'm just, you know, maybe bachelor's or master's level.

But I never swore in front. front of my kids, but I would take my son to training sites when I was training guys in the teams and platoons. And I think the first time he listened to me, give a debrief to a seal platoon. His eyes were as big as saucer plates, man, because I, you know. They start running away crying like a day when he felt like he was getting a new brother. You know, he thought that was, he was like, wow, that must have been some serious talk right there. You could see the look on his face. It was pretty funny. Yeah, but just like we were talking about, you know, there's a time and place for everything.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, even my platoon commanders or guys that work for me, be like, could they come over to my house? And I'd never swear in my house, you know, not never front, swear in front of my kids. And they'd come over and they'd be like, how do you do that? And I just, you know, just like, no, can't swear in front. You can't have your kids running around. Because your kids will imitate you and you can't have that. So, so you start getting done with.

you know, high school and you start looking at college and, and that's sort of, uh, the expected path. But your, your, your senior year was what, 2007? Is that when you graduated? 2008. 2008. So we're talking the war is on. I mean, it's on. And well, you say this in here. In the book, around the world, terrorist activity was increasing. From the London subway bombings in 2005 that killed 52 people and wounded about almost 700 to the Mumbai train bombings in 2006 that killed nearly 200 people and injured more than 800. Every time I turned on the news, it seemed like the world was in chaos. War is awful and I believe it should be a last resort, but sometimes it can be the only way to restore some kind of order and help those in need. It seemed to me that the United States military had a mission to do exactly that.

and I fit the bill of someone who could contribute to that effort. Young, healthy, fit, willing to be challenged, and eager to be part of something bigger than myself. It was that last part that affected me the most. As I considered what my life might look like if I took a different path, I found myself increasingly disillusioned with the traditional expected path. The more I looked around at colleges, the more I detached and began to feel, the more detached I began to feel from the whole experience. I could definitely see the appeal for many people, but it wasn't where I felt I needed to be at that point in my life. I turned 19 in October and had been sitting in classrooms my entire life. There were some major events in the course of

human history going on in the world at that time. I wanted to get out and do something. So you start thinking about it. And you talk about it with your parents. and that how was that your mom wasn't too stoked on that was she that that was a difficult to say the least part of my journey and you know to for a couple of months after i had initially kind of broke the news on what I was really thinking about and considering, like you said, we were in a time of two serious conflicts, and who knows where things were going to go from there with all of these terrible and just unreal things happening around the world. And for a couple of months, you know, to see my mom in the morning, and I'd just

dreaded walking into the living room and seeing her eyes red and swollen and knowing that she had been crying through the night to herself because she was so scared and so concerned for if I was going to do this, you know, at the time I think she was thinking hopefully not, but if I was going to do this, knowing that her son, her oldest son, could be put in harm's way or killed. But, you know, after a couple of months, I sat them down and, you know, yes, I agreed that one day I was going to get my degree, I was going to go back to school, that that was a priority. But that was a priority that I could complete at that moment or 30 years down the road. You know, I know a lot of people say that and then, you know, they eventually don't go and just kind of the classic, oh, I'm going to do this and then it doesn't really work out for whatever reason. But that was kind of secondary.

I sat him down one day and when I told them and after I'd obviously took the time to think, self-reflect and truly decide if this is not only what's right for me but what's meant for me, when I decided that and I sat him down and I told them, this is not. not just what I want to do with my life, but this is what I need to do and I have to do. And, you know, not only do I feel called to do this, but, you know, no matter what happens, this is my decision. And this is the path, at least for now, that deep down aside I need for myself. You know, when I told them that, they've always loved to support to me, but in that moment as tough as it was and they gave me a hug and from that moment on they were serving with me and they've always been again they've always always supported me but um i guess uh that moment

that conversation and them hearing that i believed it was my purpose i think that ended the period Maybe denial's not the right word, but the period of, oh, well, maybe he's just thinking this is cool. It's just a phase. Just a phase, yeah. It's just a phase, mom. Did your mom or dad have any military experience either themselves or with their parents? No. Well, no one in my family except for my mom's dad, who unfortunately died when I was very young.

So I think I have one picture with him, and I definitely don't remember any conversations. Was he a career military guy? Uh, he was, Navy guy. Okay. But, uh, yeah, I think he spent, uh, it wasn't just, you know, a four year term. He's, he spent some significant time in. It seems to me like, if in many cases, it would be harder for parents that don't, like, if my kid, if your kid joined the military or my kid joined the military, it'd be like, okay, I know what he's doing. I know what he's getting into.

I know what it's like. I know what's going to, you know, you know what's going to happen. The unknown of. just thinking, because what, let's face it, what Hollywood can portray the military to be like is a lot different from what the military really is. Yeah, and not parent-friendly most of the time. Yeah, absolutely. And even, you know, some people, they think that you're, they think that 20 years in the military

is 20 years in boot camp. That's what they think. They think it's 20 years of people yelling and screaming at you. And it's like, no, that's 13 weeks, right? Or whatever. It's a very short period of time. And then you become a responsible human being that's doing stuff. But and that and also, I mean, the chances of going to war, the chances of being on the front lines, the chances of being an actual direct combat, and then the chances of getting actually hurt, wounded, or killed are relatively small compared to what it looks like in a Hollywood movie.

You know, in a Hollywood movie, it's like everyone's going to fight. Everyone's going to war Everyone's getting blown up It's like that's what happens in the movies It's not like that in the real military So I've had plenty of people ask me about that And and yet The bottom line is

The other side of the spectrum is people think Oh well that will never happen to me but I'll go in It's like no This is what happens When you do join the military And you put your name on that line That means you have the possibility Of this happening

You know You could be there. You could go to war. You could fight. You could get wounded. You could get killed. That's what the, that's in the, that is one of the things that can happen without question. And I feel like if that is a statement that you say maybe you're not at the right place to sign on that dotted line.

Yeah, I've told many young aspiring seals. Oh, I want to be in the seal teams. And, you know, they'll start asking me questions about, you know, the workouts. and the, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm like, you don't join the SEAL teams to work out. You can work out at the gym. You can work out at 24-hour fitness. When you join the SEAL teams,

what you're joining the SEAL teams to do is kill people. And then when you're killing people, there's going to be people that are trying to kill you. And by the way, sometimes they do. They could kill you. They could kill your friends. And they're not going to care about your six-pack and your workout plan.

No. No. That's amazing that people come to you and, you know, aspire to be something that you've accomplished. But how many times have you heard I want to be a seal? Oh, yeah, definitely a lot of times. And I was just saying that yesterday, you know, the bottom line is most people quit. Like 80% of people quit. And that number really hasn't changed.

So it's cool. You want to do it. But how bad do you want to do it? You know, how bad do you want to do it is the question? Then do you have the intestinal fortitude? Did you have the right mindset going into it? And again, I don't care where you're from. I don't care what background you're from because I've seen every different type of person you can imagine make it through training.

And I've seen every different type of person you can imagine quit through the training. Champion wrestlers, champion athletes quitting, you know. Ivy League people quitting. You just don't know. And then you get some kid from a farm in Iowa. that makes it. Yeah, you know, and you're like... Number one in the class.

And the reason I say that's surprising isn't because he's a farm in Iowa, but you grow up in a farm in Iowa, there's a decent chance you've never seen the ocean before. And here you're going to be a seal. So, yeah. So, yeah, it's definitely something to think about. And I guess what I'm saying is from your mom's perspective, there's two wars going on.

And, you know, did you tell me you wanted to join the Marine Corps out of the gate? Did you go straight? Hey, I'm going to the Marine Corps? Yeah, unfortunately, that probably didn't help. And did you tell him you wanted to be infantry? I didn't. And, oh, man. So I definitely didn't put this in the book,

but I always try to be open and honest, no matter what the situation. And kids, I don't recommend lying to your parents, but I just couldn't hit him with two haymakers in a row. So I pulled the, I was military police to, to start out and then eased them into it after boot camp. Not really eased them at all, but they found out after a little bit of time to digest

just the Marine Corps piece of it. Do you get a choice of an MOS in the Marine Corps now? When I was a kid, you joined the Marine Corps. Really? You joined the Marine Corps, and then you got whatever assignment you were going to get. Everything was open contract? As far as I could tell.

Yeah. And again, man, I was, I'm not exactly smart now when I was 18. I was even dumber. But, you know, I remember talking to Marine Corps recruiter. And it was like, you know, I want to be a machine gunner. You know, and he's like, well, you know, you join the Marine Corps. Everyone's a rifleman in the Marine Corps. Okay, well, I want to be a machine gunner.

Well, you might be, but, you know, you need to join the Marine Corps. And I never got an answer that made sense. And the impression I got was you joined the Marine Corps. And then you got assigned, whatever you're going to get assigned. I think later on, they started saying, okay, we need to start allowing people to have some say over where they end up. But thankfully, things have changed. Yeah, good.

Yeah. So you, so did you, did you actually ever have military police as your MOS or was that just fabricated completely? And I hate to use the word lying. Yeah, yeah, no, not, definitely not officially, actually. But I did, you know, because nothing is really official until you go and raise your right hand. all that paperwork is official. So it was what I was going for for a few months.

But as I thought about it, you know, if I was going to do this, I was going to fully commit. And I wasn't, you know, the most important thing was earning that title, that Eagle Globe and Anchor and becoming a Marine. But, you know, what good is that if I'm not being true to myself? Yeah. Yeah, you have a section in here on being true to yourself. You say in coming months and years, I would learn what an essential part of the Marine Corps leadership is keeping one's word. Your fellow Marines have to be able to trust you completely and you, them. Each Marine has to know that everyone else will keep their word.

Otherwise, you can't stay focused on the right things. Even more basic than that, however, seeing your promises through is a reflection of your character and integrity. and an essential part of integrity is respecting yourself enough to defend and follow through on your personal convictions. And that's what this was. I mean, this was a personal conviction of yours that you were going to move forward with.

So when you enlisted, when you raised your right hand, did you have infantry, 0-311 infantry? I did. Get some. Yep. I can never resist getting a little bit of boot camp activity here. Back to the book. As you near the gate of Paris Island,

the bus driver tells you to put your head between your legs. Then you ride with your head down until the bus stops and the doors open. They do this so that if you try and run away while at boot camp, you won't know which direction the only exit is. It sounds crazy, but it also makes sense, given what's coming next. It's got to be a universal feeling for every Marine I've ever talked to anyway. When that door is jerked open on the bus and you step out onto the famous yellow footprints as a new recruit, you are hit with a mixture of thoughts. Is it real?

What's going on? What have I done? Oh, no. This is the beginning of a four-year obligation that I can't get out of. I know I absolutely had those feelings at first, but I also was determined that this was what I was supposed to be doing. So I resolved not to let anything get to me. Easier said than done at Marine Corps boot camp. So there you go.

You're getting that you're getting the classic Marine Corps. It's what I mean how many times did you seem full metal jacket prior to this? Uh, crazy answer. I had not. Oh my. I know. That's crazy. Had you seen any boot camp stuff?

Maybe for the best. Uh, no, I. Had you ever seen a rated R movie before? I had, but you know, I think I it didn't matter to me to do the research because it didn't matter what was going to be put in front of me or what I was going to be put up against or experience and so my mindset going into boot camp what well you know I joined the military like we said to commit devote my life and purpose and now my body to something greater than myself or any one individual. I joined the Marine Corps. Growing up, I always welcomed and thrived on that challenge.

And so, you know, I knew my limits at that point and up to that point in my life. But I joined the Marine Corps specifically because I wanted something that not only would, push me past those limits that I knew about myself, but would make me really look deep down inside myself to discover not only how far I could go and how hard I could push myself, but who I could become and the Marine I could become. And so, you know, with that said, after a little context, I didn't do too much research. Yeah, I think I had seen one or two rated R movies with mom's permission. But, you know, I just thought about it as, hey, I don't think any amount of research can prepare me for what I'm about to, the endeavor I'm about to take on. And knowing that and

that there was really no point in even trying to know or prepare, my mindset was just, I'm going to do this, I'm going to fully commit no matter what happens. I made a vow to myself that I would never quit. And, you know, I, even though I couldn't prepare, visualize what was coming, I just was always thinking to myself, okay, when those moments do come, the inevitable moments where I want to quit, or I feel like I'm at those limits that I just, I can't get past. I just thought, okay, in those moments, right now, remember, remind yourself how you felt right now before you went in. How specialist is to you, how much this means to you, your purpose of wanting nothing more than to earn that Eagle Globe and anchor. and you know people were probably like oh well why are you having to remind yourself with that you obviously already know that but as we all know in this room ah ha ha in those moments without remembering those things and reminding yourself and self-reflecting about those things that's why i think it's easy to well not easy but it allows you to hang up that towel or

ring the bell. And so it was not more of specifics that were coming my way, but just thinking about when those things that I couldn't even imagine at the time, when they do come, how am I going to handle it? How do I want to handle it? And how can I learn and become better and try and strive to become the best version of myself? I'll tell you what So you were what 19 years old

Yes I was 18 when I joined the Navy And you were about 5,000 times more introspective And thoughtful than I ever was Like I'm sitting here listening to you You just said something like The things that I, how can I imagine The things I can't imagine? I couldn't even imagine anything

I was just like so dumb You know you heard that saying If you're going to be stupid you got to be tough. That was written about me. I was like, oh, I'm going to the seal teams. That's what I'm going to do. What am I going to do to get ready? I don't know. They run. I'm going to run. They swim. I'm going to swim. I'm going to show up there and I'm not going to quit. What? You know what I just had so such. They say that that part of your brain isn't fully developed until you're like 25. Maybe yours was a little bit earlier. Maybe mine was a little bit later because you were way more introspective than I ever was. I was like a knuckle dragger. And I, you know, and even when, you know, and even when you said research, you're like, you know, I didn't do any research. I didn't watch Full Metal Jacket to do research. I don't think I ever researched anything until I was like 30. You know, I just, it was a movie.

And I said, oh, that looks, you know, this is a cool war movie. I watched every war movie I could possibly watch. And that opening scene of the opening scene, which is 45 minutes long of full metal jacket, in my mind, I would think, oh, if you saw that, you'd know what. was coming, right? You'd know like, okay, these guys are going to yell and scream, this is blah, blah, blah. And you just do any of that. But you had these incredibly introspective thoughts about what could happen.

If these situations, I'm like sitting here baffled that I was able to accomplish anything because I never thought through any of it to that level. It's crazy. That's good, man, because, you know, Marines aren't known for being very smart or intelligent. So think if I can hold it down. Somebody put a meme up of, it said happy birthday Marine Corps and it had a picture of a 240 golf

and then four, and it said, it had a picture of the 240 golf and it said plus and it had four crans. And it said, you're this many today. I was like, yeah, that's pretty funny.

Good, good grunt humor. Oh, yeah. You got a couple things about leadership and obviously I talk about leadership all the time and you got, this in the book. Like any successful and efficient organization, the Marine Corps emphasizes leadership at the foundational level with every Marine trained and ready to take over the job above them if the situation calls for it. This appealed to me as being a part of the military,

the discipline that shapes recruits into leaders. Obviously, the way the Marine Corps does it is not the most pleasant approach, but it has a remarkable success rate. Then you talk about this. I was honored to be named a squad leader early on and hold that position. through graduation. If the DIs decide you have earned the right to stay in that role and you graduate as a squad leader, you will leave boot camp at the rank of private first class rather than private. It is an honor, but it does come with its drawbacks. You help maintain order, but you also have to share the punishment with anyone in your squad who needs to be disciplined.

If one of your guys has told he has to do push-ups, you have to be there, doing them right alongside him. That was one of the best lessons in leadership the Marine Corps taught me. A true leader is not someone who keeps themselves separate from the people they lead. He or she is right in the middle of what the team is going through, experiencing the lows as well as the highs with everyone else. And you go on here. There were times when I got in trouble for something that one of my squad members had or had not done, and I had to be willing to accept that. Ultimately, the responsibility for the execution of any order came back to me since I had been trusted with the job of seeing it through. And you're getting that in Marine Corps boot camp.

That is so legit. So legit. And it's something, you know, I mean, obviously I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, which means that, you know, when you're in a leadership position, you're responsible for everything that happens. 100%. And they're teaching you this with simple tool to teach you. It's called push-ups. You take the words right out of my mouth. And you made that connection, though?

That's what I find pretty amazing about you that you're making these connections. See, for me, when I look back at my career, I see where I learned things, but I learned them more like a dog learns, right? Like I learned like, oh, you know, if I want this to happen, I need to do that. Like I don't, you know, your dog isn't saying, your dog isn't philosophizing about how to get another treat, right? They're just performing an action because it worked. That's kind of how I learned. When I look back in my career, you know, I had a bad leader and I'd see what they did and I'd say, oh, that doesn't work good.

I'm not going to do that. Then I'd have a good leader and say, oh, that worked good. I'm going to do that. Kind of like a dog getting trained. That's how I felt. And yet it seems like you were actually connecting legit. Legitimate leadership principles even at that young age even when you're in the chicken factory. You were making that happen. That's pretty impressive man Thanks man. I wish I would have pulled that off. You're making like feel like kind of smart right now. I don't know what to think

Uh Going on here by the time we got to the crucible the grueling 54 hour culminating event that caps off your time at boot camp our platoon was one unit that felt as if we were going to live or died to Every obstacle in the crucible is named for a different Marine who is awarded the Medal of Honor Part of the experience is learning their stories of bravery and loyalty honoring the history of which we are all about to become a part as newly minted Marines The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis meaning always faithful I wanted to be a leader who is always faithful to the people with whom I was serving I paid special attention to the each to the story of each Medal of Honor recipient as the DIs recounted them as we moved through the

crucible. It felt profound, sacred, and monumental. I wanted to understand what made a great Marine. That was also the reason why, when it started raining just three hours into my crucible, my feet quickly blistered beyond recognition. I decided to hike the 10 miles back to the barracks anyways. Because my feet were bleeding so badly, I was offered a ride in the medical van at the end of the second day, but I refused to take it.

Are you hiking on your tiptoes? Recruit, the D.I.'s yelled at me, but I was not going to take the easy way out. I was going to stay with my platoon no matter how much pain I was in. You end the final hike as the sun is coming up at the parade deck in front of the Iwo Jima Memorial. It is there that you are handed your Eagle Globe and Anchor Insignia or EGA, as it is affectionately called. They place the EGA in your left hand and shake your right. at that moment you've officially earned the title Marine. I got chills still.

That's new, relatively new, that you get your Eagle Globe and anchor after the Crucible in boot camp. How many weeks into boot camp is it? You're there a total of about 13 and a half weeks and the crucible happens a little less than a week before you leave, so about 12 weeks. So you're right there, right there at the end of it. Yeah, that's powerful and it actually stepped up a little bit here. You go to Family Day, you have the graduation ceremony, and then this happens. It was a relief to know that boot camp was over, but I broke into a cold sweat when D.I.

Drill Instructor Billingsley pulled me aside and asked to talk to me alone for a minute behind the racks and the squad bay. Carpenter, he said, where's your EGA? I retrieved my EGA from my cover and brought it to him. He took off his drill instructor hat and his own insignia and said, here, I want you to have this. He said he saw something special in me and that he respected my determination to complete the 10-mile hike, even though I would have been medically excused from doing so.

That was one of the most surprising and impactful moments of my 13 weeks in boot camp. That's pretty crazy. It was. And I mean, now looking back, it's even more crazy because I've never heard of that happening to anyone else. And maybe it hasn't. It just didn't come up. But yeah, before we did get behind the racks, though, I thought, man, I almost made it. I almost got out of here alive.

But, yeah, I was, I mean, floored, blown away, and maybe in a way a little confused to say the least. When you talk to him, because you talk about you had a little bit of relationship with him after that, like, did he tell you what was his reason for doing that? that's a big deal. Yeah, especially when he was the one that, you know, you always had those leaders, drill instructors that are extra hard on you and seem to always pick on you, pick you out. And up until that moment, I felt like it was his mission every day waking up,

even though at the time we didn't even think that those guys slept. but his mission waking up every day to destroy recruit carpenter and I wholeheartedly believe that and he did a great job at it so you know that that moment was very powerful and it also showed me that you know a good and effective weeder at times can seem very hard on you but

you know a drill instructor at the time sergeant Luke Billingsley I realized that at least from just what I knew in that moment and the past 13 weeks that and again

in my opinion but the most effective leaders, yes, are hard on you. Yes, bring the hammer down daily if they need to. But, you know, to have that moment and to have leaders that, yes, they do destroy you all day, but at the end of the day, they sit you down and they calmly, respectfully, effectively, effectively and effectively and effectively and efficiently talk to you and tell you, hey, this is why I destroyed you all day. And I didn't do it because I don't like you. I did it because I do see that potential. And I am, you know, I know the risks.

I'm a sergeant I have been in. I know what you could potentially be going into. And so, you know, to give the reasons not only, You know, why they're so hard on you. But also to tell you this is why and I do it because I care. And not only that, they give you the tools to fix whatever it was that brought that pain and suffering initially. And not only the tools to fix it, but how. you can become better and how you can mitigate those mistakes and make them less and less over time.

And so, yeah, at the time, I think probably because out of a nice mix of fear and just being completely dumbfounded that this was happening, I, you know, I was at a loss for words. But again, and now we're great friends. I saw them a few months ago. We had a beer together. But, yeah, that was an important lesson that I've always carried with me that, you know, the people that care about you, the people that want to make you the best version of yourself, you know, at times have to be hard on you.

I was So the last job I had in the SEAL teams was training the West Coast SEAL teams And I'd be putting platoons through these really hard training evolutions And I was really harsh debriefing I mean the training was really hard we set up super hard training and then and then I was Incredibly harsh in debriefs and I actually have a guy Actually two guys that were they used to they were They worked for me, but they would record the debriefs.

Like, I'd be in their debriefing, and they would record them. And I've heard them, and I'm, like, really harsh. I mean, just blunt and just pointing out all these mistakes and just really harsh on guys. And I realized it. There's two things that made me realize it. But one is I worked, I had a guy on the podcast named Jim Mukayyajai. who is a army guy and he worked for David Hackworth and anyways he became a general but he was like one of the leadership principles that he talks about is like the most important things that you care

about your people so I have that in the back of my mind all the time right and it's what you just said like when you know someone who cares about you then you're you're willing to listen to what they have to say so there's that and then I started us I started thinking to myself you know well I always tell people what you started off saying like, hey, be nice to people, right? You know, be nice. You know, when you're communicating with someone, be nice. Because that's how you get people to listen to you. And that's kind of contradictory.

I was thinking to myself, that's kind of contradictory. The fact that I'm telling people to be nice, but I know for a fact and I've heard recordings of me being over the top harsh on guys. And I said to myself, how is it that I, because I would get feedback from those guys, you know, either six months. months later or two years later or five years later or that day they'd be saying hey thanks thanks it's good stuff I need to work on that and I was thinking myself how how what am I doing that's allowed what did I do at that time that allowed me to be brutally harsh with these debriefs and I realized that general Mukayama explained it to me he didn't say it directly to me at the time but I came

to understand it. What it was when I was putting guys through training, all those guys knew that more than anything else in the world, I cared about them and their men, and I wanted them to be able to go overseas, accomplish their mission, and bring their guys home. And I cared about that more than anything. And so they knew that.

They knew that I wanted them to bring their guys home. They knew that I didn't bring my guys home. They knew that I didn't bring my guys home and I didn't want them to ever have to feel that. They knew I cared about it. And that allowed me to say, hey, you screwed this up. This is what you need to fix. You need to do this better. And they accepted it for the same reason that you listened to and learned from Billingsley

is because you knew that he cared about you. And that's the difference. And that every time you're not harsh, you're not relaying those lessons. Could be a potential moment, downrange. Just a couple months later that, you know, not for y'all, you know, training is obviously longer, but, you know, in the short term, for every mistake that, you know, you weren't so harsh on them for, could be a life-altering or life-ending.

you know, a mistake that could have been corrected before. So, yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah, I remember coming back from Ramadi, and I'd be doing urban combat training with guys. And if I saw a guy, it didn't happen. It happened for probably like six months. When I would see like a young new guy seal standing in the middle of street with no cover,

I would get, I would feel sick to my stomach, like just a real, like a sickness. I would come over me because I would think that they're going to get shot, you know, and I'd go over it. I'd be like, hey, you need to get some cover. What are you doing, stand out? You know, I'd like try and teach them that lesson that, man, if you're in an urban environment or any environment, you cannot be standing out in the open.

You move from cover to cover. That's what you do. Don't stand up. You're going to get shot. And I felt this sickness in my stomach. And it's the same thing that you'd feel, you know, patrolling in Ramada. You'd see like an army guy or see one of my guys like standing in the open. You go, it's like it makes you feel sick because you're, you're just you.

You're waiting for rounds to come at them. And so, yeah, that absolutely has an impact. And, you know, for our timeline, too, you know, you get guys that would go through basic seal training, go to seal qualification training and deploy. If they got assigned to a team that was on deployment, they'd go on deployment. So, yeah, like, you could have, we, I had, in Ramadi had a couple of guys show up that were, we'd be on deployment. They'd show up. And, you know, we wouldn't throw them into an assault train or whatever. But hey, they'd be external security.

I mean, we would start to use them. We needed bodies. We needed men. So, yeah, it can happen. That's wild. Straight from training to Ramadi. Yeah. Yeah.

That's an interesting way to get broken into the teams. Yeah. Especially because, you know, we were talking about earlier, like the amount of combat that you may or may not see in a career. You know, if your first deployment, is to Ramadi that's gonna be a tough one. Jumping in halfway through a deployment.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Obviously they're trained and ready. What we did with them is we didn't have high expectations. We weren't like, okay, now you're gonna be the driver of the lead vehicle. Like, no. Yeah.

You know, we would continue to train while we were there. They would start off doing something really simple. And then if they did okay and we'd continue to work with them, we'd get them up to speed. and eventually they'd be all right. But you know, what's crazy

when you talk to guys that were in Vietnam, guys were in Vietnam, you would just get replacements, would just come in. And they would just show up and one guy would wrote, you know, it'd be your 365 days or up, you're going home and here's a new guy

to take your place. And that's it. And there was no continuity. It wasn't like work up, like what we got the luxury of doing, work up, train together, live together, then deploy together as a unit,

do our work and then come home together. It's like it doesn't, They didn't work that way in Vietnam, which undoubtedly is bad. It's undoubtedly bad. You know, I had Jim Webb on here, who is the Navy Cross recipient, Marine Corps. But, you know, his story, he's like, goes, he finishes the Naval Academy, goes to the basic school, goes to their little short, condensed infantry course. That's like 11 weeks long, gets 13 days of leave, flies to Vietnam. and then they take him out on a patrol.

They point up to a ridge line and they're like, your platoon is up there, go take it over. And then he walks up there. He goes, hey, I'm here to take over for the platoon commander. They're like, oh, the platoon commander's dead. Welcome aboard. This is Sergeant, you know, Smith and he's been running things. And then that night they got like into a heavy contact

and he was on the radio calling danger close fire support that night. 12 hours boots on the ground. Crazy. That ain't it. Crazy. That is not. And that showed you how efficient the Marine Corps is that you could take a guy like that and they would actually be up to speed.

You know, that's incredible. That's incredible. And then we just had a guy on the podcast that was Army, Ranger, Special Forces officer, and he'd enlisted. But he got to Ranger School, got to OCS, got to Special Forces School, and then volunteered to be in Saug in Vietnam. And I was, I said, you know, well, You know, was it hard to get selected?

And he was like, no. He goes, it was Vietnam. You know, the survival rate of an officer in Vietnam was like nothing. And he said, if you wanted to volunteer for that, they were like, oh, yeah, come on, come on over here. Oh, you want to volunteer for special forces? Cool. Come on over. Oh, you want to be a Ranger Cool.

Come on over. Oh, you want to be in SOG? Cool. No problem. There was no resistance whatsoever. It was just wide open doors because so many, the casualty rates were so high. So yeah, we kind of have a little bit of a luxury nowadays the way that we do it. And the Army, everyone does it that way now.

Pretty much. You can lose guys sometimes or you can have guys replaced, you know, in all branches, I think. But, you know, they're not going to do what they did during Vietnam again. I think everyone recognized that was not a good plan. Yeah. You head off from there. You go to school infantry, S-O-I, which, you know. is awesome and you described that here for the next two months life

consisted of learning how to master various weapons systems that would be vital for our service in Afghanistan that and taking progressively longer hikes where we would dig fighting holes and learn how to operate the radio while out in the middle of nowhere in combat survival depends on finding the right place the right balance between caution and action I think for most of us myself included are wired for caution but I knew that in order to be the kind of leader I wanted to be, one who would protect my guys and do what I could to ensure the success of the mission, I had to respond automatically when my brain detected danger. That became one of

my main goals at SOI because we all knew that a deployment was coming wherever we got assigned after graduation. That's what infantry does. We fight. So this is interesting. I wrote another book called The Dynchotomy of Leadership. And what you're talking about is exactly what that book is about the difference finding the right balance between caution and action. If you throw caution in the wind, you're going to get everyone killed. If you never take action, you're also not going to accomplish a mission and you're also, in my opinion, going to have a higher chance of getting everyone killed because inaction and standing there while or sitting there while the enemy maneuvers is not going to turn out good. So finding that balance. And then the other balance that you talk about is

protecting your guys and accomplishing the mission. Like that's a dichotomy that you have. have to balance. So you're right in it, right in it. You figured that out. And again, were you thinking about that? You were thinking about that. As a, how old were you, 19? 19 years old, you were thinking about that. Yeah, yeah, to an extent. I think these lessons are, you know, a little more complex than what I was thinking about during boot camp. So I think I realized these even though I did at the time, I realized them less than and more later on. Yeah, the reflection when you look back, and for me, I've been doing a lot of that. You know, I got this book that I just wrote, Leadership Strategy and Tactics,

and I start off by explaining how I transitioned. I don't use these words because I just thought of this today, but how I transitioned from learning like a dog, which is, you know, kind of how it started. to saying, oh, okay, this is what's happening. Oh, okay. And for me, one of the reasons that I got focused on leadership was because I wasn't that great at anything else. I wasn't that fast, I wasn't that strong,

I wasn't that smart, I wasn't gonna win any of the races. And so what I could do is like pay attention to what was happening, pay attention to how we could work together as a team, help the whole team do a good job together. I could help with that more than I could help as an individual, doing the best because I wasn't the best. So I kind of naturally focused on leadership because it was the thing that I could do better

than I could do the other things. So that's what happened with me. So that's also amazing that you were that introspective knowing like a good leader, realizing admitting to yourself, which is sometimes the hardest thing to do, your weaknesses and to emphasize different areas that you knew could be strengths. Yeah, I really wish I would have thought about it that way.

The reality was I was like, well, I'm not that great at this, but... Just wanting a dog treat? Yeah, I want the dog treat. And the dog treat for me was, as we were maneuvering, if I took a step back, I could actually tell what we should do. I could figure out what we should do. And as soon as I realized that, I was like, oh, I can do this.

I can be a leader. I didn't even think of it in those words, but I just thought, oh, I can make the calls. You know, I can make calls. I didn't think of that word yet. And then luckily, well, you kind of went through a similar experience to me

and we'll get to it where you had a bad leader and then you transferred to a good leader or you had a good leader come in and I had that happen to. That was another thing that really opened my eyes. But hey, you finish,

I want to get back to this. You finished the School of Infantry. When our assignments came down, I couldn't help but feel like we had lucked out. The four guys who roomed together, Griffin, Scott, Mike, Jared Lilly, and I had all been assigned to Fox Company's 2nd Battalion 9th Marines, aka hell in a helmet. It had a nice ring to it. In fact, 2-9 is a unit that is only activated in times of combat. And you say here, I couldn't have been more excited.

However, this enthusiasm quickly turned into fear when the Marines from Fox Company arrived to pick us up and take us to our new unit. 20 minutes after SOI graduation, the guys assigned to 2-9 were loaded on a bus for the 10-mile drive up the road to Camp Lejeune. I will never forget the first Marine I saw when we arrived. He had more tattoos than anyone I had ever met before. I distinctly remember that his right arm was covered with a skeleton wearing a top hat and holding a double barrel shotgun that seemed to point right at anyone looking at it. Yup, that was me, staring down the end of that barrel for the next four years of my life. I opened the door to my new barracks and experienced one of the most intimidating moments

of my Marine Corps career. The entire platoon of Marines, our new family had lined the halls in preparation for the new guys. They had just gotten back from deployment to Iraq and seemed like hungry caged dogs waiting to be fed. It felt like we were their next meal. And we were.

That's classic. Like that scene right there is epic. Those guys just coming back from Iraq and here's the fresh new meats showing up from S.O.I. Ready to get some. Yeah. So not only, you know, did that ring with the tattoos have the most and most intimidating tattoos, but half of them weren't rocking skivvy shirts, which I didn't even know was allowed at the time. So I knew things were getting real when there was no skivvy shirts. And I knew things. shirt on under the camis and then yeah we get to what i hope have been demolished since but the barracks

at the infamous french creek on camp lejeune which were um not i mean falling apart yeah that's kind of a given but uh they were some of if not the last barracks that the rooms were internal and in the hallways and not outside to where you could have Hopefully you could escape. If someone, a responsible someone, maybe an officer was walking by, they could save you if you were getting destroyed. But no. And maybe not funny is the right word, but, you know, we got off the bus and, of course, we look like clowns walking around. We got our sea bags at our pack, who knows what.

I got all this stuff. And so we get off the bus and no one's really around. Thinking, nice, we got here at the perfect time. Maybe they're all just relaxing, maybe at the chow hall. We're good. You know, we at least got a couple buffer hours to get, you know, get checked into our lovely sweets and, you know, take a breather before the chaos begins. And they were there.

They just were not outside. They were patiently waiting for that door to open up. And, yeah, the chaos began right there. But again, you know, as hard as they were on us, you know, they would have us 10 o'clock at night running classes in the hallway, taking, you know, putting tourniquets on and off, going through those nine lines. You know, learning about everything from air panels to let Helos know where you are to those nine lines to, to those nine lines, to, fighting holes, and just everything. And at first, there was no love shown. So it wasn't that nice balance that we've already talked about.

But as we went through those first few initial months, after that first three-month deployment and leading up to Afghanistan, you started to realize that, yes, they were hard on you, but the respect slowly started to come. And not only hopefully it started to come because they saw us working hard and trying to be the best Marines we could, but also knowing that,

look, when we gave our loved ones that last hug or potential last hug and got on those buses, it was just us. And it didn't matter if you were a boot or if you had been in a year or 10 years. you were going into that unknown together, and just because I'm three ranks lower than you doesn't mean that I'm going to try to protect you any less

or vice versa. And so I think that mutual respect started to grow, thankfully, and, you know, it's a good thing because even though we didn't know what was in store for us, just to have that mutual respect. respect, understanding, and that efficiency of working together as a team. It's not only vital and essential, but it's comforting. And when did you get assigned as a sawgunner?

Was that during SOI? That once you showed up? Once I showed up. Yeah. Yeah, I still don't understand why 100,000. 142 pound me was given one of the biggest weapons in the platoon, but welcome in the Marine Court. Right on. Yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. So you just mentioned you guys did a little float, and while you're out on float, you hear Obama is saying like, hey, we're going to step up the game in Afghanistan.

You guys kind of know what that means since you guys are prepared, basically prepared for deployment because you're on a little mini deployment so you guys figure if there's troops that going to Afghanistan for this surge thing going on, it's probably going to be us. You say here, I was excited as were most of the Marines I knew. This was the reason we had joined up after all to be part of a mission bigger than ourselves. I had found what I was looking for in the Marine Corps, mission and meaning. We had a clear objective to flush the Taliban out of their Helmand Province stronghold in southern Afghanistan where they were growing never-ending fields of poppies regardless of the what at what inevitable dangers lay ahead I was excited to earn my place in the

platoon that motivation drive was quickly overshadowed though when I was assigned to my four-member fire team my fire team leader was a disappointment to be charitable everything I had seen experienced and had been taught about effective leadership was suddenly being contradicted he yelled without purpose gave little to no useful instruction and was one of the slowest guys in physical training every day. How could we trust someone to lead us

as a four-man fire team in combat? Someone like that to lead us as a four-man fire team in combat. He didn't seem to care about anything but his next cigarette and getting out of the military. The days, weeks, and months dragged on under his command.

So there you go. You got a bunch of little statements in there. You know, my favorite one out of that is he yelled without purpose because people, think that oh well it's a military leader they're gonna yell and scream it's just not true and I usually bring up the fact that I never yelled at my guys and in fact when I as a leader when I have to yell at someone I feel like I failed about 48 times prior to me having to yell if I take us to a

situation where I have to yell and the other thing I was up talking to a tech company a few days ago and when I got done talking one of the guys that was working there he's a vet and he comes up He came up to me and he said, you know, because I talked about, look, you know, you've got to explain to people why. They've got to understand. You've got to let them come up to planet. All these things, all these principles. And one of the things I said was sometimes when people hear me say, hey, your people should, hey, they should want to know why we're doing something. And that scares some bosses.

Because some bosses, you know, if Kyle comes to me and says, hey, why are we doing this? I say, shut up and do it. I told you to do. And that's just horrible leadership. And so I said this. And the guy came up to me afterwards. And he said, yeah, you know, when I was in, I had this, my, my, I had this first sergeant. And I asked him, I said, hey, why are we doing this mission?

And he told me, you'd be a better shoulder if you'd know, if you would shut up and do what you're supposed to do, do what you were told to do. And he said, I'm glad that the military doesn't have that attitude anymore because he was in during the 90s. And I go, I said, listen, I appreciate it. But that's not the way the military is. The military, just like the civilian world, has varied types of leaders, various levels of leaders. various levels of leadership. And some of them are good and some of them are bad. So here you are in the modern Marine Corps,

and you still have Marines that haven't quite figured out that, hey, you don't want to yell at your people for no reason. You want to actually instruct them on how to do things. You want to make sure they understand why they're doing what they're doing. And you had a guy here that was none of those things. Yeah. And it wasn't even a disappointment. I was just dumbfounded.

to, to, and I realized, it's obviously been exposed to other Marines in the platoon, my jewel instructors, every Marine I encountered Rodney up until that point. It was just baffling to me that all of these ideals I had learned about, heard about, seeing firsthand. All of the characteristics that I aspired to have as a Marine. And all of these things I was working so hard and striving for to not only try to learn, but really grasp and understand, in every way he went completely against all of that.

And it was, it was, it was scary because, you know, I wasn't in this situation. I didn't get put with this leader as a sergeant, as a staff sergeant after a couple of years in. I was first couple of months in the fleet. And not only did I feel like every day he was in charge of me, I was not able to thrive in potentially reach my full potential for that day or continue evolving as a Marine. But, like, dude, in a few months we're going to be in Afghanistan. And you're going to be in charge of my life.

And I just destroyed you in PT. I just, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do. And I just got, and I talked about it, I got in the mindset of, okay, he is not going to define who I am, the Marine I am, what I know, what I can learn, how I can be in Afghanistan, how I can step up. You know, really, and this was counterintuitive to think, well, he really doesn't matter in the big picture because, you know, you're taught that every Marine is so vital and

important to the mission, and you need every Marine. to be efficient and to reach your full potential. And so it was scary, but I just decided that I would train, learn, evolve on my own, and I would help the two other guys in the fire team, really just one because he had come in after me. He was a lower. We were same rank, but he hadn't been in as long as me. So even though it was just a few months different, you know, you got to start somewhere.

That's the Marine Corps. So I was, you know. There's two men in room. One of them is the senior man. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I knew that Nick, who eventually was going to be on top of that roof with me that day, I knew that I could take care of Nick. We could look out for each other.

We could learn, do classes together behind closed doors. And we didn't have to really worry about him. But with that said, and again, talking about once you get on that bus, there's no rank, you know, to a degree. Everyone is equal and everyone's lives are just as much on the line as the person to the right and left of you. But I, and it's kind of sad to say this, but I got to where I look forward to getting on that bus and going on that deployment because I thought I can tell you what's up and what's on my mind once we get in Afghanistan and once you're in charge of my life, which I'm not really even going to let happen once we get over there. But I can educate you on the things I've been thinking about these past six or seven months.

And so I look forward to that. Thankfully, as I talk about it didn't come to that. And he politely got asked to leave the Marine Corps after not obeying the rules. So thankfully, you know, and I hate to say thankfully, but just for my self-preservation's sake and our fire team, thankfully he did kind of dig his own grave and make a mistake to where he had to leave the Marine Corps, which leads into. Yeah, this is an awesome situation. So, well, that's not the awesome part, but the fact is you say here, we caught a break.

The Marine who would fill our old fire team leader's boots would be his opposite in every way. Is it Taryn Heinz? Is that how you say it? foreign boy from Iowa. There you go. Taryn Heinz was an eagle scout, an exceptional person, and an exceptional Marine, an exceptional leader, and my saving grace. He was exactly what I had been searching for, opening the door to the barracks. Lance Corporal Heinz seemed more like a teacher than a boss, leading us with patience, understanding, and calmness.

Heinz's style can be summarized in one sentence. Lead with action. Any orders or tasks that Heinz gave us, he had either already done himself or he was absolutely willing to do alongside us. He made sure we ate first. He was the one to work holidays and take the less desirable posts so his junior guys were taken care of. In short, he earned respect.

He didn't demand it. I wanted to follow him until my last breath. His arrival changed the morale of our entire. fire team the bond of trust and commitment we felt towards one another became unbreakable as hard as my first experience was I am thankful to have been exposed to poor leadership so early on it not only taught me what leadership is not supposed to be like but it also showed me that no matter what is going on around you or who's in charge you can still be your own leader and lead those and a leader to

those around you I think that experience helped bring the rest of our fire team together. We were going to need that in the months ahead. So there you go. This is a great contrast. And this is what I was saying. This similar thing happened to me. I had a platoon commander that got fired and an incredible leader came in to take his place. And that was my second platoon. And so I had just enough experience to like pay attention. And this is probably when I started moving more out of dog learning mode into actually paying attention. But the shock of those two things, the contrast is what sort of shocked me into paying attention. You know, I was saying,

wow, this guy was horrible, we didn't like him. We had a mutiny and got rid of him, and then we had a new guy come in who was not a new guy, but he was an experienced guy to replace him, and he was just the contrast of those two made me start paying attention a lot. And as you said, you're thankful to have it. I'm thankful that that happened to me.

Same thing. I saw my previous boss that got fired. Saw what not to do. Like, hey, that's bad leadership. I'm not going to do that. This is another little dichotomy you talk about. Even from our first day as new recruits on Paris Island, we were simultaneously being trained to be leaders and also respectful of orders.

So that's a dichotomy. Hey, we're going to lead, but we're also going to respect the orders. It might sound illogical, but it's actually a brilliant way to shape the character and outlook of the next generation of Marines. What I witnessed in the first year of service modeled me for the importance of the balance. of confidence and humility. Initiative and patience, action and caution. So there you go.

You just named three dichotomies of leadership that everybody has to pay attention to. And if you go too far in any of those directions, in any of those characteristics, they'll be bad. So if you have too much confidence, bad. Too much humility, bad. Too much initiative, bad. Too much patience, bad.

Too much action? Bad. Too much caution? Bad. You got to balance every single one of those. And then you say the best leaders aren't the ones who detach themselves from their people or use their authority to avoid responsibility. The leaders who have the most influence and ultimately earn the loyalty of their team are the ones who invest themselves in their people and who willingly shoulder the responsibility that comes with being in charge. I learned from watching the Marines more senior to me and from being entrusted with a bit of authority myself at boot camp that being a part of whatever needs to be done, no matter how seemingly means,

or unpleasant goes a long way towards strengthening the bonds of a group when you know the person in front of you during drills is also willing to be in front of you in a firefight or next to you scrubbing the squad bay you begin to view the entire mission and your role in it differently a great leader communicates his or her actions that you are worth their time effort energy and sacrifice that's when your people will trust you to lead them anywhere even into the heart of the fight and that's exactly where we were headed. So there you go. I mean, these are just, again, incredibly profound leadership attributes that you're picking up. Man, all of these dichotomies

I didn't know I wrote about. I'm glad I can make you proud, Jack. Hey, it's funny. You know, if I wouldn't have stolen the idea and put it in a book before you, you'd have another book under your belt already. But yeah, and this is, it's one of those things that as I was teaching leadership

to young seals, I realized it, you know, because I would tell that you got to be aggressive, and then they'd be so aggressive that it would be stupid. And then I'd say, well, you can't be over-aggressive. And then I'd say, hey, you've got to take initiative, but then they'd take so much initiative

that no one knows what's happening. And I'd say, hey, you need to still pay attention to what the overall plan is, you know? So that's what I realized, and it's true in everything. It's true in every characteristic. And, you know, it's stuff that you picked up on. You know, like I always say,

I didn't invent any of this stuff. I mean, leadership has been around since human beings have been trying to surround a damn lion on the planes and kill it, right? Somebody had to take charge of that. Yeah. And so leadership has always been there. And even that group of guys trying to kill a lion, if they got overly aggressive, you know, too early, they're going to get eaten. But if they did it right, and if they weren't aggressive enough, well, then they would never catch that thing. So they'd have to find that balance, too.

You ever did it right? Live to pass on those lessons to us. Exactly. Exactly. You're heading to deployment now in Afghanistan. And again, you got so much great information in this book. I'm jumping ahead a little bit. You're heading to deployment.

As the buses pulled out, we wave goodbye to our families. I looked back to my mom. I'd never seen this look on her face before, one of pure desperation. Then we were out of sight. How'd that hit you? Seeing your mom like ready to break down. It was beyond that.

It was one of those looks where, along with the thousand-yard stair, even though you know looking around, there's nothing around you that could help you, but you just look around because you're at such a loss and in such despair that, that you don't even know what to do in your brain, I think is struggling to comprehend. Is this really happening? Is reality really reality right now? And so that, it was devastating.

But at the same time, as I had so many times before, I had to remind myself, this is my purpose. This is what I'm doing. This is my mission. And even though it devastated me, I tried. And this is hard to say, but I think I was in a way more successful than not attempting to not let those emotions carry on any further into that bus ride. I saw it.

It was so tough. I had that moment, but I also knew that if, you know, I didn't snap out of it, get immediately, fully into mission mode that I might not survive to see seven months later when I could get off that buzz and give her a hug and see the complete opposite emotions. and I also knew looking around on that bus that not only were we all seeing those loved ones left together, but also to look around and wonder, and not just wonder, but know, hey, on this bus ride home,

there's going to be a lot of empty seats. And to know that and know that, your emotions and your attitude is going to potentially dictate or affect how many empty seats there are on the way back. It was a heavy dose of a reality check. Yeah, there's a line in the book, and I didn't read it earlier, but it's when you're having the discussions with your parents about joining the military. And like your mom says something along, and you've got the quoted there, I'm going to

Butchered, I'm sure. But she says something along the lines of, I spent, you know, my entire life trying to protect you and keep you safe and set yourself up, set you up to live a good life. And you're about to go do something that takes that entire idea and throws it in the garbage can. I mean, you know, like I said, I'm but just that thought, you know, that's what a mom does, right? A mom's supposed to take care of her kids. And here, here she's done everything.

And you've said, okay, thanks for protecting me for 18. years and now I'm going to go put everything at risk. Everything that you've tried to prevent from happening, I'm voluntarily running towards it. You get on a civilian aircraft. You, you know, you talk a little bit about your attitude going in and, you know, you say this. It's not hard to feel invincible. First, the Marine Corps trains you so well that you know you are part of one of the most elite fighting forces on Earth.

It seems impossible that 40-year-old Soviet weapons and homemade detonating devices of the Taliban could possibly pose a serious risk. You're in your late teens or early 20s and the risk rewards center of the brain has not fully developed. So the possibility of danger seems thrilling rather than sobering. It's hard to think about death when the world seems so full of life, possibility and excitement. You feel invincible because up to this point you basically have been broken arm from falling out of a tree for it. No problem. The doctors can fix you right up by putting you in a cast for a month. Concussion from a bad hit in football. But you'll be back in a few weeks

When that is your frame of reference, it's hard to imagine the degree of injury that might be waiting you that might be awaiting you If you can't imagine it, it still seems like something that would happen to someone else The problem is that you are everyone else's Someone else and I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to it, but I just had a guy a Marine that was when in a to Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. And, you know, I've had this same exact conversation with a lot of guys that have been in a lot of extreme combat. But, you know, he was the same way.

He's like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure some people are going to die, but it's not going to be me. I'm sure some people are going to get wounded, but it's not going to be. And by the way, he did end up getting gut shot at Tarawa 100 meters out of the landing craft. Well, he still had 500 meters to get to the beach. You know, talk about miracles he was able to survive. But, yeah, that attitude of. it's not going to happen to me is a real prevalent one for anyone under the age of like 23, 24, 25, 27, 29 sometimes. 40.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of it is attitude. And again, kind of like I said at the beginning, you know, what, even though we signed up for it, we raised our right hand. You can do the research. You know we're in a time of two companies. conflicts in two different, on two different fronts in two different countries. And, you know, for y'all's family, many more countries and a lot of fronts that,

thankfully, people have the luxury of not even knowing about. But with that said, even though we signed up and volunteered, to think, oh, well, I could get all my lungs blown off. or the second I put boots on the ground, sniper could take me out at 18, 19 years old. I think those, even though you know it's a risk, you're not naive about anything, those things are just so surreal.

I think along with thinking, oh, it's not going to happen to me, also just not really being able to comprehend the possibilities that are very quickly and aggressively coming your way. I think, you know, those two things are the two biggest contributors to that mindset. I guess we should be thankful that that mindset exists because otherwise I think you might go crazy, right? Yeah, absolutely. All right, jumping ahead. We didn't jump into patrols on day one.

So you arrive. Helmand Province, autumn 2010. We didn't jump into patrols on day one. There was a kind of leadership training down period. The higher ranking Marines went out on patrol first to get a feel for things before leading patrols of their own. It was a way to help everyone get acclimated to being outside the wire. But our step, our time to step into an active role came quickly enough. My first patrol took place four or five days after we arrived.

We stopped at a compound at the end of a road. after pausing to talk to the owner about his family in the area and whether or not he'd seen Taliban nearby. You guys set up security here. And as I lay on my stomach behind my gun, scanning the landscape, I remember thinking that the field before me was a perfect rectangle, as if it had been laid out with a ruler. In a region where so much is scattershot adapted to the land, it was unusually to see something so precise. It was oddly beautiful. All of a sudden, it was as if the skies had opened and the clouds were done. So many rounds were hitting the ground around me that I couldn't even see through my scope for all the dust they were kicking up

There was a thunk as a bullet ricocheted off the side of a shed and at almost exactly the same time I felt something hit my lower back about two inches to the right of my spine just above my belt line and below my body armor Probably only an inch of skin probably the only inch of skin that wasn't protected I'm hit I yelled grabbing my gun and leaping about 10 feet behind me to where my buddies were holding security. Two thoughts raced through my brain. Did bullet wounds really not hurt as much as I had imagined? Or did I just have so much adrenaline in my system that I wasn't registering pain? And after an hour outside the wire, was I already a casualty? I was furious that I wouldn't get to contribute anything to the effort if this stupid Taliban bullet sent me home. I couldn't imagine leaving my guys behind because of an

injury on our very first patrol. As I bounced back, another Marine instantaneously moved forward to man the end of the road security position while the corpsman checked me out behind the compound. Amazingly, the bullet had not penetrated the skin, but it did leave a dark bruise almost like a

paintball fired at point-blank range. I was hurting, but grateful my tour wasn't over so quickly. So that's your first contact. You get the ricochet round. Day. Let's just say for the next four months, every single day that we were getting some, that is the one and only and last time I ever was in the prone position.

All 800 rounds every single day out of my saw, roughly, everything was standing from that point on. And, you know, not only did I immediately feel more vulnerable than I just in the prone position, you know, I, that's how we had trained, that's how we had shot most of the time. And I had never really just let loose from the standing. And so that really wasn't even kind of an idea in my head. So just doing a lot of things like in life, on the job, in the military, you learn a lot of the most important lessons and kind of the tricks of the trade as you go along. And laying in the prong surrounded by Taliban is not the way to do it. At least it wasn't for me during that deployment. So I learned quickly that the prone position at times on L.O.

elevated positions on overwatch and at times that even though you can't predict it might be a little less kinetic than others you know maybe maybe I would have considered the prone position but in that moment you know not only could I not even see out of my scope but but laying down and I wasn't frozen by fear it was just you know when rounds are coming down range at you even if it only takes two or three seconds to get up, grab that carrying handle, and make moves. Bullets travel a lot faster than two or three seconds. And so I learned my lesson,

but ultimately I'm just thankful that I was not taken out of the fight. But it was surreal to say the least and almost incomprehensible that, I mean, an hour or maybe less, outside of the wire the first time, you know, I was getting lit up with an AK-47. But, I mean, maybe not the wake-up call I needed, but the wake-up call that helped immediately put me in the mindset and expectations and kind of frame of reference that I needed to be from. from the second I stepped out of the gate. And you said that it made you feel more vulnerable. Because I could see that going two ways.

One would be the attitude of like, I just got shot and I'm good to go. Bring it. And the other one is I've been here for an hour and I've already been shot. This is going to be a long seven months. And you felt like you leaned a little bit towards this is going to be a long seven months?

I would say completely towards a ladder. You say that not every patrol is that exciting, you know, but you were always prepared. And again, jump it again. You're on another patrol. You're with Nick Iphrasio. Is that how you say it? You're with Nick Ephrasio. My best friend was out on the canal and exposed when all of a sudden bullets started to hail down on us.

We began, while we began manning the VCP, the Taliban had. had set up three shooters no more than 100 yards away at different angles in what's called a bare paw formation to try and triangulate and wipe us out. We could see their heads as they ran along the canals by the tree line. I happened to be positioned by the compound on the other side of the road. Lance Corporal Stringer, the team leader at the time, peered over the edge of the canal to see if our guys could safely return fire when his head flew backward like he'd been punched.

It looked like a bullet had gone straight into the canal. his forehead. For a moment he sat perfectly still, blinking in a daze. Then he shook it off. Miraculously, the bullet had struck his helmet and the Kevlar had done its job, warping the track of the bullet so that it skimmed the edge of his helmet rather than lodging in his skull. I had a 200-round drum ready, already loaded onto my squad automatic weapon. So I called the guys, get ready to move when I turned the corner of this building. I prepared to unload. I turned the corner of the compound, pressed my finger on the trigger, and didn't let up while the other guys ran in a crouch position down the dried-up canal

before hopping out to cross the road and take cover in the compound until the fire fight was over. There was a classic example of cover and move. Doc Friend told me later that he could see the bullets striking the wall right next to my head and body as at least one of the shooters turned his weapon on me. Nick, who had been lobbing grenades in the direction of the shooters in an effort to clear the area long enough to give the other guys a chance to run, was the last of our guys to cross. At exactly the moment when he made it across the road and behind the wall, I ran out of rounds.

For the next two hours, we were engaged in an intense firefight until Morterman Corporal Vance Rath, awesome name, was able to respond to our radio calls back at base and drop mortars on the Taliban with pinpoint precision almost two miles out. After we were confident that there were no active shooters left, we approached the shooter's position to do a battlefield damage assessment. bullet casings littered the ground. Those guys have been busy. Incredibly, none of our men had been injured that day, but the incident shook us up.

Our squads had already taken an incredible beating that autumn. While what had initially started as a platoon of three fire squads broke up into four in order to cover more ground, but we lost so many guys we had to reorganize and combine back down to three. No matter how mentally prepared you are or you think you are, you will never be ready for that first firefight, let alone the first casualty. A guy gets blown apart by an IED or takes a bullet to the chest and suddenly everything you've ever believed about the world collapses in a moment. I turned 21 on October 17th, but the day really didn't make me feel any older. My experiences

in Afghanistan, however, felt like they aged me years at a time. We had left early in the afternoon on my birthday and we were now trying to make it back to patrol base beatly by nightfall. It had been a four-hour game of cat and mouse as we entered one patch of woods, our patrol had frozen mid-step as the dreaded sound of 203 fire echoed all around us. A 203 is a grenade launcher that attaches to the bottom of a rifle, and when fired it makes a distinct fump sound, followed by an anxious wait to see where that deadly thump impacts. Immediately our squad leader got in the radio to tell the other half of our squad to stop firing 203s until we could get their exact location. We had intentionally split up to cover more ground, but during the intense fighting through the thick

tree lines and scattered villages, we had become unsure of our exact proximity to one another. A voice crackled over the radio, that's not us, those are not our 203s. In an instant, we went from frozen to executing some quick maneuvers to find cover. For the first time in three months, the enemy was launching grenades at us. Happy birthday to me. Yeah, never split forces. That's one of my rules. If you can avoid it.

And that's why. You guys pulled it off, but it's so dangerous when you end up splitting forces. I know we have to do it. I shouldn't say never split forces. Use caution. Yeah. Plan. Think.

Communicate. You continue on here. Maneuvering out of the tree line, we approached a compound on the outskirts of the village we were nearing. As usual, family livestock were hanging out at the home. Two goats were tied up to a tree. The chicken strutted around pecking at the ground. We slowed down just in time to hear another dreaded fump from the 203.

The scene couldn't have been scripted more perfectly. The grenade ripped through the air, struck a chicken, vaporizing it in a instant. I felt terrible for the chicken, but part of me had to laugh because I was just relieved that our latest casualty wasn't another Marine. Before that battle was over, I vividly remember crawling through the field with my weapon on my back, holding the barrel over my shoulder to keep it as clean as possible. Crawling just under the trajectory of incoming bullets, I couldn't help but think how strange it was that I might not even make it. to enjoy my first legal beer. That's a hell of a 21st birthday you got going on there.

I won't forget it, that's for sure. When you're doing these missions, where were you guys based out of? Were you guys just based out of a Ford operating base somewhere? Patrol base, a single, as you know, kind of mud hut compound type setup. We had a few Afghan National Army members attached to us, but it was just myself and my platoon when we started roughly 60 Marines.

Unfortunately, yes, we lost some and had casualties along the way, but it was just us and as a platoon there at patrol base Beatley in this specific village in Marja. How often were you guys going out on patrol? All day, every day. All day, every day. All day, all day, get your gear on. What time were you guys going out?

So with our four squads, we sent out an early morning patrol, late morning slash early afternoon, late afternoon, and a night patrol. Doing that to not only continue to disrupt enemy activity operations, continue to expand that area of operation by pushing that enemy out, but also, and just as important, showing the civilian population that you really are there for them, that you're willing to sacrifice for them, to do those patrols, get rid of that enemy that oppresses them,

that kills them for wanting to learn how to read. and so yeah and you know the mission and the kind of structure of your deployment depends on when you're there when you're there in time and when you're there in the in the operational picture of things And with that said, we were the second Marine unit and some of the first Marines to put boots on the ground in that area, potentially, you know, in history as far as American forces go. And no one had really been there since the Soviets in the 70s. And so because we were there so early on, looking ahead, the end goal is you want to, in the big picture, give these people a better life, help them to wake up every day and not live in fear, and to hopefully see that better and brighter future. But to get to that, you have to create stability and a foundation. So if you're there more towards kind of the end of that stability and that structure, your mission changes.

You hold that tempo, you hold that stability while roads are being built. Schools are being opened. Fresh, clean drinking water wells are being dug. But in order to get to that, you have to get rid of the instability, the bad guys, the enemy, the evil people that are creating all of these problems. So when we were there, I would love to say we had this profound mission, and in a way it was, but, you know, people ask me all the time, what were you really doing? Why were you going out there? What were you doing while you were outside of your base? And the simple answer is we would go out every day.

I mean, and it's important to note every day from sun up to sundown was a constant and vicious fight for survival. Every single day was never a question of, I wonder if we're going to get shot at today. It was, I wonder when we're going to get shot at today. And every single day, I never walked outside of friendly lines with less than 800 rounds from I saw. And there was a few times where I had to do the whole prayer walk back to base just hoping I have zero rounds. Please do not shoot us. Please do not shoot us. And after hours of fighting, you know, it's kind of wishful thinking.

You think there's no way we're going to make it all over back to base without getting attacked again. Thankfully we did during those times. But we were there in the beginning, and our mission was to patrol. and patrol just meant every day, all day, sending out patrols, leaving those friendly lines, and walking around until we picked a fight with the enemy. And as crazy as it sounds, that was the most efficient way to do it. You go out, you upset them because, again, you're trying to give this region, these people, a better life. and I think in a way you're showing them the people that they really are

and these Marines have to be here because you are such terrible and evil people as both of you know and so that's what we did all day every day we would go out and we'll walk around until we picked a fight with the enemy they came to us and we either continued to push them further out or eliminated them That's a hell of a op tempo. So was it, how big was each patrol? Is each patrol a squad? Squad. So would you guys rotate?

You'd get, so for a few days you'd be the morning patrol, then you'd be the afternoon patrol. Then you'd be the night patrol. Is that how you'd rotate through? Yeah, a few weeks to maybe a month. Okay. And, you know, we wanted that continuity of, if you're a night patrol, operating with those MVGs. You know, obviously we knew how to use them and we're a few. with them, but just keeping, you know, that rhythm that you know and you're comfortable with,

and then, you know, we would have those transitional periods where, you know, we might go from night patrol to early afternoon patrol. But, you know, to keep that presence and strive for that stability, we always kept to patrol out. You say here, again, I'm always impressed with your perspective as a young Marine there. You say, I think a lot about the Afghan people who were threatened with violence if they didn't raise a gun against the Americans. On the surface, it would be easy to classify them all as the enemy, but some of them just wanted to be left alone to raise their families in peace. How quickly did I dismiss people based on circumstances I didn't fully understand? And what about the way people react to extremely high stress, high stakes situations? Previously, I might have regarded

someone's panic or coping mechanisms as a sign of weakness. But that was before I ever, I had never lived with this kind of pressure and trauma before. I know now how the horrific casualties I witnessed deeply impacted me, but what about the perspective of the guy who got hit? What about his family? In an instant, their lives changed forever in ways I couldn't fathom. I started asking myself when I am having an unshowered, dehydrated meal far away from home kind of day, how do I react? How do I view myself? And what does it mean that there are still

people out there, millions of them, who have still got it worse than I do? They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I think maybe we all become philosophers in combat outposts as well. So you're seeing these things and you're thinking about them. That's awesome. That you perceive these things even as a young, as a young kid. Thank you. I give you maximum credit for your. And what's good is that, you know, as you write this stuff down and you look back and you see how it affected you. And it's neat to see in the arc of the book.

And again, you got to read this book. You can follow the arc of how you assemble these things. And, you know, you started off earlier in this conversation. talking about how what you went through kind of prepared you for what came. And you can, as you start, as you read this book, you put those pieces together and you can kind of see it form. It's awesome. Continuing on here, there were certain sounds I never would have imagined that I could tune out, like AK-47's being shot at me with the intent to kill. But at some point, your brain starts registering certain input as more of a nuisance than a threat.

Besides, bullets were not our main concern. We were focused on avoiding the IEDs that were stretched across roadways, walking paths, and inside of walls. They'd taken quite a toll on 2-9. On September 30th, Lance Corporal Timothy M. Jackson had been killed by an IED. Then in mid-November, IEDs had taken out two more of our guys. One of those remarkable Marines was our squad leader, Zach Stinson, who stepped on an IED that had been placed underground near a wall that separated two. villages. The scariest thing about the IED is that without a metal detector, a well-placed one, can be almost impossible to spot, even in broad daylight. You're lucky if the person who

placed the IED is inexperienced or lazy because they will leave red flags like disturbed dirt or a small trash pile that looks like it might have been constructed to hide something. At about 1 p.m., we were walking on patrol through one of the dried-up irrigation canals that crisscrossed the landscape. We were scanning the terrain for Taliban and making our way toward the next town we needed to secure when another dreaded explosion went off. The shockwave of the blast rippled through our patrol. I was the fourth man in the patrol. The cloud of dust engulfed me as the debris rained down.

The stomach wrenching curiosity of who had been hit began to sink in. It took a few seconds to locate Stinson because he had been blown about 15 feet and was on the other side of the wall of the canal. We found him folded in half like a lawn. chair. He was, his one remaining foot was up by his head and his legs were mangled. Christopher Doc friend, our Corman, quickly evaluated the scene and announced, I think Stinson is dead. I didn't seem possible, it didn't seem possible anyone could survive that. Incredibly, Stinson called out, I'm not dead. I just can't move. Doc rushed over to administer triage care, while other Marines called in medical evacuation helicopter and our squad moved to provide cover.

just as we got in a position insurgents opened fire and began their attack they often attack after an iED blast because they know that our corpsmen will be with the casualties leaving us exposed and vulnerable doc tried to pull simson stinson down to a safe location while i laid down fire to suppress the shooters the other marines rushed to help the doc drag stinson to safety behind the other canal wall as they did they realized that one of his legs was no longer attached to his body what was lit left simply stayed on the ground as he was dragged around the corner when doc applied tourniquets stinson asked us to take care of his wife back home who was pregnant and he talked to us about our mission doc gave him an injection of morphine for the pain but it didn't knock him out he somehow remained conscious we remained under attack the entire time we waited for the medical evacuation helicopter to arrive almost 50 minutes it was the worst thing I ever witnessed. You pointed out that moment of this explosion takes place.

It's close to you, close enough that you're engulfed in dust. At some point in the following seconds, you realize you're okay. And the very first thought that goes through your head is like, okay, someone is not okay. You don't even want to look around because someone had to have initiated that IED. And so you have to, obviously, you are concerned to say the least. You want to get to them as quickly as possible to take care of them, to comfort them. But you don't want to look around and survey and look for and discover who that is. 50 minutes for the Evac to get there.

You continue on a few hours later This is after the Casualty evacuation A few hours later after the sun had said I was on my shift as radio watch Back at patrol base of Beatley Listening to information as it came in From the Marines who were outside of the wire

During the silence of breaks And the radio traffic I couldn't help But let my mind wander back to the hour before Was Stinson still alive How would his wife and family handle the news Would I be able to survive something like that If or when it happened to me As my brain raced to compartmentalize

as the recent past, my present reality suddenly became even worse. Loose dirt crumbled out of the cracks in the wall as the room shook. A second later, the sound of a massive explosion reached us. More than a mile away, Lance Corporal Dakota Hughes had been making his way through the dark fields and tree lines with his squad on night patrol. They were moving toward a village to our south. The Taliban would flood fields in order to make it harder for us to advance quickly. The inundated fields didn't slow down our tall guys much because the water was only about as high as their boots. But for shorter guys, like Dakota and me, the water was up to our ankles and even our calves at times.

Between the water, our 22-pound squad automatic weapons, 20 to 30 pounds of machine gun ammo, and 45 pounds of gear. It was hard to move quickly. And the Taliban knew that. As Hughes and his squad approached the village, he reached a gun. goat path a small trail that surrounds an agricultural field and allows locals to travel through the patchwork of land without damaging their crops. Stepping onto it a few moments later, 19-year-old Dakota from Greenwood, Louisiana took his last step and breath on this earth.

So this, do you find out immediately that, you know, that he was KIA? It was, that could be gathered. from the radio traffic and the fact that, and I'm hesitant to go into detail just in case his family ever listens to this, but at the same time, I think that it's important for people to know what really happens, sacrifices that are really made. And so if we couldn't conclude that from the radio traffic, when they got back to our patrol base, they didn't call in a medevac. They couldn't even bring Hughes back because the IED had been so big and inflicted so much damage that it would not have been. been wise at dark to start walking all over that field to look for the pieces of Hughes that were

left. And was that the, was, was, was Hughes the first guy from, from your, from your platoon that was, was killed? Because, because Stinson, he'd been Casabact and he survived. He survived. And, uh, yeah, it was amazing. Now he's completely outnumbered by enemy forces with not one but two baby girls now. But he's doing amazing.

He's crushing marathons on his hand cycle, just finished his first Iron Man. I text on him like, dude, take it easy, man. You're really making all this guys with both our legs and healthy look bad. But yeah, he's doing amazing. and hopefully if I you know he keeps he keeps working hard which he always has and keeps doing well I hope that maybe one day sooner rather than later he will be you know representing our country potentially in the Paralympics so he's doing amazing and we recovered together and really grew our relationship at Walter Reed for the years that we were there

And I'm glad you brought the story up because as we've talked about, leadership is vital, obviously. And no Marine is ever from the first day of boot camp as a recruit or a Marine that's been in 40 years compared to a Marine that's been in a week. No one lives. No Marine is more important than those to your right and left. But Stinson was the highest ranking Marine and leader. He was our squad leader on that patrol. Leadership is especially important and vital on the battlefield, not only to communicate that strategic information to hire ups within your chain of command,

to keep that order and discipline on the battlefield. And arguably, most importantly, to direct. troop movements during engagements with the enemy. So although he's not more important, his job, it could be argued, is more important and is the most vital role out of our squad that needs to last as long as possible. So with that said, from the moment that IED went off, I had always wondered Why did that happen? And not why did it happen as in why was there an IED there, but why I was Stinson specifically the casualty we took.

And when I speak to companies and corporations, I relayed this story because I think it is one of the greatest examples of leadership. But years later, we're sitting in his Walter Reed, Wounded Warrior, barracks room and it was they were nice it was more not Marine Corps barracks it was a little more luxurious they had a couple of bedrooms and and your family could live there with you while you recovered and so you could have that support system and we're sitting there and watching ESPN and he's in his wheelchair while Olivia his daughter was an amazing moment at least just to me I didn't see anything but

His daughter that he had in what we thought were his final moments, giving us, you know, his final request, take care of my wife and my unborn first child and baby daughter. And she's Olivia crawling all over him, all over his wheelchair, you know, what's left of his legs. And in that moment, time had passed. We had healed. We had got to better places. And so I finally got the opportunity years later to ask. ask him what I had always wondered, that question.

And his answer was very simple, but very profound. And he said, I'm just glad it was me and not one of you guys. And so you have to know as a leader that your responsibility is laced with risk, and that if and when that risk comes to fruition, you not only are obligated, but you are expected, you are expected to bear the burden for those that you lead. And so Stinson taught me a very powerful lesson

that I've always carried with me. And I'm very thankful that, of course, he not only survived, but he continued to be a leader and teach me things along the way as we recovered together. Yeah, that's what we talked about earlier. I mean, he proved at that moment, you know, that he cared about you guys more than he cared about himself,

which is one of good leaders going to do. Yeah. And when it's corporal Dakota Hughes, we had had many casualties, but he was our second killed in action. And, you know, 12 days later at our new, patrol base that we were living and operating out of named patrol base Dakota

is where I was injured about a week and a half later. Well, after that had happened after you lost Hughes to that IED, I'm going back to the book here. It says 10 days later, word came from command that we needed to expand our area of operation to create more of a presence in the area.

My squad got orders to help us a new compound in the village to the south, the same one where Hughes had stepped on the IED because it was a Taliban stronghold in the region. So there you go. You want to know what the Marine Corps does? That's what they do. Oh, we got a problem? Cool. We're going to go attack the problem. The village was tiny, no bigger than a hotel conference room. And the home we were occupying was only two stories high, though it was one of the largest structures in the area. Unfortunately, the intel we had received proved accurate that there were Taliban in the village and they weren't happy about our arrival and the choice of landing spot.

And again, skipping a bunch of stuff. You guys are now kind of in this new position. As the afternoon sunlight started to fade, I was instructed to get off the roof and keep post in the room directly below. This is after you had spent a bunch of time and you do a great job covering this in the book of you're up there trying to build, put some sandbag protection up. And there's a guy basically taking sniper shots at you. and you're just staying up there, staying low,

people are handing you up full sandbags, you're putting up in a position, and every time you put one in a position, boom, he cracks off around at you. So. Yeah, it was probably a really stupid assumption at the time that he had a single-bolt action rifle, but I thought that's what I gathered

from the first couple shots. And so thankfully, he was nice enough he didn't start shooting at me until I got three sandbags high of a kind of semicircle wall on that roof and around me. So when he did start shooting, if I laid completely flat, I was covered by those sandbags. For the most part.

Yeah, for the most part. But it was eerie to be behind those sandbags laying up against them, and I can still feel right now when he would take those shots. You know, usually the Taliban weren't extremely accurate, especially, I mean, we rarely, if ever, up until this point, saw snipers, and if we did, they were not accurate. And so that was surprising, but it was just so eerie to lay behind those sandbags. And when we heard the crack of the rifle to be able to feel, because he was so accurate, the thud of that round impacting the sandbags. that I was laying up against. Yeah, as you said, it may not have been the best decision to stay up there.

Add it to the list. We live and learn. So then finally, you do get instructed to get off the roof and move to a room below. And then you say this, I gouged out a little hole in the wall so I could get a better vantage point about 45 seconds later. A rocket came barreling into the roof and the sandbag wall I just built completely obliterating the post position. It was as if I had stepped into the middle of a tornado.

The debris cloud surrounding me was so thick that I couldn't see and couldn't breathe. My squad members immediately realized what happened to the roof, and Doc Friend was scrambling for his medic bag ready to rush in and see if there were any signs of life. Somehow I wasn't injured and was able to get up and walk out of the room on my own. So they obviously don't want you there. Continuing on, we had officially lost the roof as advantage. point from this post we were now facing four major challenges the first was we had probably we that we had previously had two positions in the compound on each of the

two roofs but now we only had one so we had to double up on the remaining roof the second was that it wasn't a great position to begin with since we couldn't see as far out as we would have liked to from just two stories up the third was that we were now dangerously low on sandbags and fourth was that because we only had enough sandbags for a three to four foot stack, we would have to stand post in a somewhat reclined position in order to not be exposed. That meant the enemy could sneak right up alongside the building and throw an explosive over the compound wall or fired us, then dart away.

The weakness of our position was proved almost immediately. We heard a thud, thud, thud from the courtyard outside the building, as if someone were tossing something over the wall compound. There was just enough time to ask who's throwing rocks before the first round of explosions began. They weren't rocks. They were grenades. Brad Skipper had been sitting outside as he'd cleaned his weapon and he took off running for cover. As he took off running for cover, a grenade exploded near him.

He staggered into the house squirting blood from a hole in his spleen. I had been outside in the courtyard of the compound helping dig a burn pit and fill more sandbags. When I saw what happened, I took off after Skipper reaching the house just a few seconds after him. Doc who was inside stuck his finger into Skipper's wound to stop the bleeding while he grabbed his supplies Skipper kept pounding on his chest to tell us he couldn't breathe I kneeled down next to his head assuring him he was going to be okay And that pretty soon we'd have all the ice he'd have all the ice cream he could eat in the hospital Doc grabbed what he needed and performed a needle decompression on Skipper for a collapsed lung It was the first one he'd ever performed I cringed watching them jam the needle into the skippers side

But when he heard what's what when we heard what sounded like a balloon letting out air as Skipper's lung reinflated. As Skipper's lung reinflated, we all wanted to high five dock, but he was a little busy. Jake Belote. Am I saying that right? Belote. Jake Belote, who had been outside the courtyard, in the courtyard, made his way to the house as well, white as a sheet and covered in blood from where shrapnel had hit him in the groin.

Two things were abundantly clear to me. Corman are worth their weight in gold, and P.B. Dakota was not going to be easily held. So you get those guys out of there, right? Do you get those guys, Kazavak? We did. And we also lost one of the few, just a casualty, but who was also hit with Shrouten on one of the few Afghanistan National Army members that had gone down on this mission with us.

And so right there immediately, just from hand grenades and not even leaving our four walls of our patrol base, we were down three guys. and we had only gone down there with a squad and arguably small squad and our mission. And we did this to give people listening context. We were over the halfway point of our deployment. We still had three months, but when you can see the end in sight, you know that at seven months, whether you want to or not, your time's up, you're going back home, and another unit is going to come in and relieve you.

to prepare for that and to continue to keep the momentum going of an efficient mission, just like with anything in life, hopefully you want to leave it better than you found it. So, you know, say, and this is random numbers, I don't know what they are, but say our area of operation was two square miles. looking ahead to that next deployment and leaving things better for them than when you got there, you want to expand your area of operation to continue to push that enemy out and continue that mission of creating stability, which we've already talked about. So when that time frame is drawing to an end, you want to, like we did,

push into those outer outskirt villages from your area of operation. And doing that, again, there was nothing sexy about this mission. We were to go down there, pack as much as we could in a bag, in a day pack, food, water, ammo, and stick your foot in the ground. Don't move and try to survive for the next few days until we can get you reinforcements. And that is the first step that I was talking about earlier that you need to accomplish an order for years down the road to have a school across the street. To have those fresh, clean, drinking water wells. And so that was our mission getting down there on November 19th, rockets, multiple hand grenade attacks, multiple casualties, and our numbers weren't.

strong to begin with. And now with those three casualties, we're already creeping towards not only being combat ineffective, but just for self-preservation needing reinforcements. Yeah. Yeah, this is a rough situation. So how many people do you have right now? Like, what are you down to? You know, I should know this, especially after. But I mean, just like an estimate, You got, is it your squad plus some Afghans? 10 or 11 Marines with the Navy Corpsmen and then three or four Afghanistan National Army members. So you got 15 guys roughly.

Generously. And with that said, you know, surrounded by villages and miles of enemies. How far away from you are the, how far are you away from the patrol base that you let, you left to get it down here? Oh. Is it like 500 meters or is it like three or four clicks? Click to at the most, maybe a click and a half. And that's where the rest of your platoon is.

Correct. Still at patrol base Beatley. Then we were setting up patrol base Dakota. And did you guys have any vehicles there at all? It was so. Other than your feet? Yeah, that's it. The marine vehicles.

No, no vehicles. It was so primitive and there was so little to know infrastructure. And because there was no paved roads, vehicles could not get to where we were. Not only not having roads, but not having roads leads to dirt paths that if you take a seven-ton truck on, the side of that canal collapses and you have four. Marines strapped into an armored vehicle upside down in water. And so it wasn't worth the risk. And, you know, with that said, we were so far out behind enemy lines and that enemy territory

that for those seven months, well, the four that I survived, anything and everything we needed from water, food, ammo, medical supplies had to be brought in by aircraft and helicopters and I even remember there were times where they brought things at night because during the day a lot of times they would have to U-turn and return to base and bring it later because you don't want an Osprey crashing in some random backfield in Marjah Afghanistan especially I mean hopefully everyone survives but to have an aircraft crash no vehicles no support, no nothing, and you're going to potentially have survivors of that aircraft crash immediately be pretty much a Black Hawk Down situation.

Rough, rough, rough day. It's as I was prepping for this, you know, today is November 20th, 2019. And what we just talked about was November 20th, 2010. Getting to the next day. So now it's November 21st, 2010. It's the next day. Here we go. Our solution to the visibility problem on post

was that we were going to put two people on the roof at the same time. This gave us an extra set of eyes to help evaluate the scene. Nick and I began our first shift at noon. It was quiet almost eerily so during the entire four-hour shift. Because the sandbag walls were so low,

we had to lean back, propped up just enough to see over the edge with only our head and shoulders exposed. As we scan the weirdly silent village waiting for something to pop off at any second, we went through the different scenarios we might encounter. Okay, if we get attacked from this direction, you do this and I'll do this. But if it's the other direction, we'll need to do this instead. I was glad to be on post with Nick, especially on that day when something just felt off.

Nick and I started going over the 1F scenarios again. We hadn't seen any grenades our entire deployment. That is until the day before. Previously, the enemy preferred guns and rockets. But after seeing grenades thrown over the wall of the compound yesterday, we now knew they were a possibility. So, Nick, I joked making fun of this, of his crazy, strong Massachusetts accent as best I could. What happens if they throw a grenade up here?

My ass is off this effing roof, he said. I laughed, dude, I'm right behind you. So you guys are going through some scenarios that could unfold. Some what ifs. That's what's going on. So you guys are up there and then we get here. Presumably there is a soft sound and a puff of dust as something lands near our feet, but I don't remember it. All I know is that my body reacts instinctively before my mind even registers what it is.

Then suddenly it feels like I've been hit really hard in the face and I can't see a thing. It's as if I'm looking at a TV with no connection, just white and gray static. My ears are ringing extremely loud, but my body is numb. There's no connection, no through line, no logical purpose. progression of events. I just remember heat, laughter, and then a massive impact as all of my senses go haywire for reasons I can't explain. The last thing I remember clearly is laughing with Nick before starting to move toward something. And here's an official report. Four eyewitnesses saw Lance Corporal Carpenter rise up to a standing or kneeling position immediately prior to the blast.

Multiple eyewitnesses saw Lance Corporal Carpenter's body lying directly over the blast hole immediately after the grenade detonated. The explosive ordinance disposal staff non-commissioned officer attached to the platoon provided his expert opinion that the grenade had to have been covered by a heavy object to blast through the roof and that the significant damage done to Lance Corporal Carpenter's personal protective equipment, particularly his small arms protective insert sappy plate carrier was consistent with the grenade detonating immediately under or in close proximity to his body.

In other words, I threw myself over the grenade, apparently. I don't remember thinking about it, and I certainly don't recall actually doing it. I only remember the after effects. A few seconds after the strange assault on my senses, I tried to shake it off and push my body up, but I couldn't feel my arms. With every ounce of strength, I possessed. I worked to push myself up, but my body simply would not respond. The disorientation was overwhelming. Five seconds before everything seemed normal.

Suddenly, I was numb and vaguely aware that I probably should be in. in pain but I could feel nothing at all. I knew I was alive so I must be okay, but nothing made sense. Why couldn't I see? What was that deafening roar that was blocking out every other sound? Where was I? And why was everything numb?

Calm down and think. The last thing I remember is being on the roof. I reasoned in my head. I wonder what could have injured me this badly on the roof. Or did I get off the roof and went on patrol and all this is just going on in my head? Maybe I stepped on an IED and the last thing I remember is being on that roof. as I was puzzling through these questions, all of them racing through my mind in a split second,

my confusion grew even deeper as I realized that someone was pouring warm water all over me. What was happening? Nothing made sense, and I had no context to even try and make sense out of it. I was on the roof talking to Nick then, this, whatever this was. As I searched for answers, my brain was furiously putting the pieces together to create some kind of meaning, and then it clicked. This wasn't water. It was blood.

I was bleeding out. At that same moment, I tried to call for help, but the only thing I could feel was that my tongue was searching for my lower jaw. No cheeks, no teeth, no jaw. It was as if the bottom part of my mouth had disappeared. A seat of panic started to grow inside me. Was I just in shock or was I really missing part of my face? According to the reports, a great friend and one of the greatest Marines I've ever known, known, Jared Lilly, had been watching us from the stairs and was the first one to the roof

just seconds after the explosion. He immediately screamed for Doc friend. Normally, Doc would have stayed downstairs until we had a chance to sweep the perimeter and make sure that there was no one hiding in an effort to ambush our medic, but Jared knew there was no time for that. Doc came pounding up the shaky bamboo ladder from the room below and saw me lying face down on the sandbags. With one glance, he sized up the scene and realized that even though, and realized that even though it was probably too late for me Nick had a chance he had taken shrapnel to the forehead that had blown up and under his helmet not good but he was still breathing well kind of the report said it was more of a snoring sound as his body struggled to pull air into his lungs so doc went to work stabilizing him

while the rest of our guys radioed for medevacs and backup there it is it's weird I first saw an interview with some with you sometime a long time ago and I remember you saying yeah I don't I don't really remember it, which is crazy to have this incredible amount of focus on your life story on a situation that you don't remember. And I've been knocked out before, and I mean, I imagine this is just like the absolute worst knockout a person can can get. And, you know, you wake up and you go, wait, where am I? You know, I've been knocked out and just, you know, come to going, oh, wait a second, where am I? And that's basically what you had. Yeah, and you're exactly right. It is, you know, In the beginning, after five weeks later, after I woke up, after those, what I thought were my final moments on that roof,

it used to frustrate me that I couldn't remember it. And I don't think it would if there were no external influences, but knowing that the Marine Corps, the military, Department of Defense. And in a way, the whole country and world, we're looking into talking about, examining parts of your life that you can't remember was wild. And, you know, but as with everything, I tried to not only see both sides, but really think through it. And thankfully, and eventually I just realized how wrong of a mindset that was. And not only is it understandable that I don't remember anything after taking a grenade to

the face. But also, I woke up and I'm still here and I'm so thankful and grateful to be alive. Like, who cares? I can't remember. Not that they would have taken my eyewitness statement anyway because you can't be injured and be an eyewitness just because the blast might have affected your memory of things. And so, yeah, you know, when everything kind of started with the metal and I'm going forward a little bit we can backtrack but yeah you know they called me up first phone call in the hospital and I just said I'm sorry you know I don't there's nothing that I remember that can help hurt assist in any way with this investigation and chief foreign officer five's Reeves who was assigned to to two nine second battalion ninth Marines just to spearhead this

investigation. You know, he thanked me for my honesty, and he told me no matter what happens, what this investigation turns up, that, you know, we're proud of you and the job your fellow Marines did, and we're thankful for your service, and that was really it. But, yes, you're right. It was weird and frustrating to have this happen and has so much. so many people, so much time and effort going into these moments that were nothing but a dark abyss to me. I was actually surprised at how much you did remember.

I mean, and because, I mean, this is devastating injuries, but you, you know, you regained consciousness and memory pretty quickly. I'm going back to the book here. Here's Doc. Blood was on every inch of my body. My body armor was torn and mangled. A huge portion of my face was hanging off my skull and onto my shoulder, which clearly had a shrapnel embedded in it. Doc could see that I was struggling to breathe,

so he started putting an airway in before they took me off the roof. He figured he could put Humpty Dumpty back together again after they got me on the ground. But he had a choice to make. Normally, with a fractured face, an oral pharyngeal would be the way to go, but I didn't have any jaw left to help create the airway. So he had only three choices.

He could cut my throat open with his pocket knife to create an airway, which was even more terrifying than it sounds because he didn't have a mask or a bag to help me breathe. So he would have had to do the breathing for me through a rubber camelback tube from our hiking canteens. Or he could crick through my nose and down the back of my throat to create an artificial airway as I was choking on blood, but he didn't have to be. have a crick kit either or I could somehow figure out how to breathe on my own but I was still

choking so he realized he was going to have to improvise with that same pocket knife and camel back tube and rig up a crike that wasn't the sort of thing they taught when he was preparing to be a medic presumably because they never anticipated a fire team would run into so many casualties in such little time to exhaust their supplies he put a device into my nose to support the tube and that sensation was the trigger that jerked me back to consciousness and made me start coughing Doc needed to lay me down to finish the procedure, but he was afraid of all my teeth fragments falling back into my throat, so he kept me sitting up right as he worked. I kept trying to talk, but it only sounded like gurgling water from all the blood and tissue blocking my throat. Even though they couldn't understand a word, my attempt that speaking was a good thing because Doc saw that my body was somehow still functional enough to keep me breathing, so he decided not to risk the cricket after all.

As he pulled a plug from my nose, a huge stream of mucus and blood came with it, and I suddenly began to take in air more easily. So, I mean, I'm picturing this and like looking at you, look now, okay, you can tell you got dinged up, but this is like catastrophic injuries. It's still, I mean, borderline unreal to even still working on this for two years, obviously knowing for nine years now what happened, experiencing it myself. it's just to still

too surreal to comprehend that it not only happened but that I did survive it and you're right I haven't really thought of it that way before but it is amazing that I can remember anything at all but

and thankfully now again looking back I'm thankful that you know besides seeing white and gray static and my ears ringing and not being disoriented, not knowing what happened, all of those thoughts were only going on in my head, and all of that really happened in just a few seconds. And the most profound couple of things that I do remember.

and at the time it was just too heavy in my mind and with the blood loss to even halfway process or comprehend and it's crazy to think about and think back to what you thought were your final moments on this earth but I'm so thankful that I did get knocked down so hard that I did have those final moments where I truly thought that was it. You know, after I put the pieces together, okay, this isn't water, my buddies aren't messing with me, this is blood, I'm bleeding out. I knew that from how I felt, the casualties I had unfortunately seen so far on that deployment and just the basic medical training we get as Marines. Once I realized that it wasn't warm water and I was bleeding out, I used those last few seconds. my family, specifically my mom again, and how devastated that she was going to be, that I did not survive to make it home. I said a quick prayer for forgiveness and anything I had done wrong,

and I faded from consciousness in the world. And I say that I'm thankful that I tasted death, and I went through what I thought those final moments because now I know and I can share with people and it sounds kind of cliche

but just how truly finite and delicate and beautiful life is and I can tell people thankfully that have not tasted those final moments.

and have never had that reality check, which is great, but I think a lot of times we just, again, going back to that maybe the Invincible conversation and always thinking it's going to be someone else, that's it. We always do think it's going to be someone else. And so to remind people and give them that reality check, hey, really think. think about and really realize that at any moment in the military or as a civilian, you know, with the terrorist attacks, with, you know, cars, playing, at any moment, you could be that someone else tasting those final moments.

so before you get to those not only strive to be a good person and live your life the right way and love and care about those around you but for yourself don't get to those final moments and wish that you have more time or wish that you had a few more seconds

before the darkness closes in and so it just it's given me such a profound just appreciation for not only waking up after that, but being able to continue to live my life, knowing that it just makes it so much sweeter. But also the downfall and negative side is, once you have tasted that,

or been around guys and have seen those final moments in their eyes, and have heard those last breaths. You know, I'm not scared of death now, and I don't dread it. I don't think any more than I would have before. But just knowing and experiencing that when those lights went out, until I woke up five weeks later, they were out.

And it wasn't even a darkness. It was a darkness of nothing. And so before you get to that darkness, enjoy love and live your life. But waking up, that is really what started this new path and journey of recovery and self-discovery, I guess you could say, that I'm living now.

There's a bunch of things that went down as all this is happening. I mean, for one, there happened to be two Kazavak birds that were nearby that were there in a matter of 10, 15 minutes. I think 12 minutes is what the actual number is. There was Doc that was trying to give you a shot of morphine to ease the pain

and as they had wrapped so much gauze around you to try and prevent you from bleeding out that as he's trying to give you a shot of morphine the needle breaks and he can't give you any morphine. His last morphine shot. Oh, so he broke that one. If you had had one, if you'd had one more, he would have pulled out another one,

cleared some of the gauze away and given it to you. Correct. And they told me, you know, after the fact, after I woke up, um, that if I would have to, have received a single drop of morphine. It would have depressed my respiratory system to the point of being unrecoverable to where they could not resuscitate me. And it was the combat galls that, you know, they had that 12 minutes and it was kind of like, okay, we had the combat gals, we have a

couple minutes, even though his legs are just minor tissue wounds compared to everything else. And I wasn't even bleeding out of my legs. And they were a little towards. up, but I wasn't even bleeding out of my legs because I wasn't even bleeding out of the hole in my carotid because my brachial artery, which had been blown open, was putting out so much blood. And so the needle caught the combat gauze that was wrapped around my leg, which was at the time a paper cut compared to everything else, if that. And so that just, you know, and I think you're getting into it, but just one of the few beginning of those dominoes of miracles that allow me to be sitting right here with you.

Yeah, you say this. There are two types of miracles. The first kind of miracle is one when one amazing thing happens. And there's no explaining how or why. The second kind is when there is a massive line of dominoes set up that all have to fall precisely the right way and at the right time for something to work out. this piece of my life is the second kind of miracle. So number one, the Kazavak helicopters being in the area, they're there to pick you up in 12 minutes.

That's a miracle. I mean, just a few days earlier, it had taken 50 minutes, which there's no way you live in 50 minutes. Then you already talked about the morphine, if they had given you that morphine, or had one more morphine to hit you with, because the first one broke, you wouldn't have survived.

It would have killed you. And then you have this. First I was flown to Camp at Camp Bastion. I was treated by a Army forward surgical team. My official ruling upon arrival was P-EA, pulseless electrical activity, meaning I had flatlined. But the medical staff there restarted my heart. and managed to stabilize me

enough to send me on to Kandahar. So that's another, so you got, you're flatlined, you're dead, and they bring you back, and then the last one on the morning of November 24th, you flatlined again, and you got revived again. So that's miracle upon miracle,

upon miracle, that you're sitting here right now. And any, I mean, what are the chances that Doc Friend could have loaded two extra morphine in his back, right? I mean, it's just, There's so many different ways that this could have gone. You get to Lawnstool.

The nickname for Lawnstool is halfway home because once wounded military members there make it there, their chances of survival rise drastically. The fact that I had survived long enough to make it to launch stool was a miracle. On Wednesday, November 24th, Master Sergeant Chuck Williams, a chaplain's assistant from South Carolina was reviewing the list of chalks.

expected that day. That's folks that are coming in. He always checked for reservists and national guardsmen since he served through the South Carolina Air National Guard. But that day, he was also scanning the list for my name. He'd gotten a call that there was a critically injured young man from South Carolina arriving, and he thought it might be nice for a Marine

to hear a familiar accent praying at his bedside table. Master Sergeant Williams had made sure that he was part of the group assigned to my flight's arrival, and he was ready to move the moment he heard my name called as I was unloaded and rolled toward the door. Hello, Kyle. I'm Chaplain Williams, and I am here to help you with anything you need while you're here at Longstool. He said gently leaning down next to my face. Then he spoke a quick prayer for me, and I was whisked away into the operating room.

The next morning he came into my room to talk with me again, what the chaplain court calls, Ministry of Presence. I wasn't awake and I couldn't ask him any questions or seek his counsel on spiritual matters, but he thought he would sit with me so that I was not alone as I fought for my life. I'd never heard that term before, Ministry of Presence. Me either. But that's just the image alone of that is amazing. Is powerful.

And, you know, again, I hate to not do this book justice. I mean, I can already tell you, like, I just. skip the entire notification process for your parents, which is a book in its own right. And as a matter of fact, I just, I just did a podcast on a book called Knock at the Door, the Knock at the Door. Yeah, Ryan Mannion. Yeah. And amazing family.

I mean, that's one of the reasons I said, you know what? With Kyle, I'm going to like not go in depth on that part, but you do a great job of explaining what that was like, explaining the unknown and the, the, just the complete, sorrow and fear and the emotions that they're going through. I mean, it's just, again, you've got to get this book to get all that. You talk about the surgeons, physicians, the nurses. I mean, they are all just doing incredible work and you go into awesome detail. You're getting surgeries on your skull, your face, your jaw. And this shocked me. On Sunday, November 28th, I was cleared to head home.

As it turned out, however, mine was not a typical flight. So it shocked me that we're talking, it's been a week, and they've got you stable enough to try and get you home. That's just phenomenal. As it turned out, however, mine was not a typical flight. There was an army sniper on board named Ryan Craig, whose mother, Jennifer Miller, was a nurse. Ryan had taken a bullet to the head in a firefight,

and his chances of survival had been even lower than mine. Jennifer had received the dreaded invitation from the military to come over to Germany to say goodbye to her son. But by the time she arrived, his condition had begun to improve and suddenly it looked like he was going to survive after all. Like me, Ryan was still unconscious. But he too had been cleared to fly back home. As she settled in next to him for the trip, Jennifer heard me start to make a sound. My bed was right next to Ryan's and as she listened, she realized I was saying, Mom. She knew immediately what she had to do what any mother would do

She situated herself right between us and with one hand reached out to her son and with the other Reached out to me she held his hand and my hand the entire eight-hour flight Man yeah, you know you talk a lot in here as well about these like responses that you give to hearing voice I mean you're not conscious but you respond your vitals peak you know so like a little thing like that is having real impact, you know? It's like when you read about little kids that are abandoned and what messes them up, they figure this out in Russia.

I think I read an article about like when they have a bunch of babies that have been abandoned and they're little and they don't have any human contact, they become, they have real problems. So just that human touch is a real thing that has impact. And here is this story of this mother who's doing everything to help her son and she sees you, and it's like she knows instinctively that that human contact can make a difference.

Again, jumping ahead, you're at Bethesda. By the end of the first week of Bethesda, I was apparently awake and alert. I would follow people with my eye and blink and nod in response to questions, but I was not yet talking, other than some groans and incoherent mumbling. My first memory is from about a week after that when I opened my eye and saw hospital equipment. It was weird because the last thing I could recall clearly was being on that roof, In the rooftop in Afghanistan. I was definitely disoriented now, but in my confusion, I just rolled with it.

Gradually, a seated figure next to me came into focus and I managed to croak out the words, Hey, Dad. I'm not going to lie, it was difficult as I slowly became cognizant of the extent of my injuries. I think it was difficult for my parents to watch too as I gradually started to realize one thing after another. Each time I emerged back into consciousness, I've lost an eye, I've woken up with no teeth, I can't feel my face, I can't live, my arm my arms but once reality sunk in I didn't enter any kind of deep morning period for my body or my old life at least not yet the more cognizant I became of the extent of my injuries the more I'd realized what a miracle it was that I was

alive at all maybe my tendency to compete with myself kicked in right away maybe my mom was right and she really was willing me to live whatever the case my focus switched from the injuries that were out of my control to whatever recovery rehab I could do to maximize the facilities I still had. I don't think people believed at first that my positive perspective was genuine. I'm pretty sure my family and nurses thought I was in denial or not fully lucid, but I was driven by three things. The first was the simple fact that I couldn't undo my injuries. Second, I had a desire to be strong for everyone around me who is clearly struggling with how to learn how to support me. Finally,

I was motivated to not let my injuries and by extension the Taliban have any. power over me for the sake of every Marine who had gone before me and those still fighting. Yeah. How long did it take that transition from when you were, like each time, how long, you'd be awake for 15, 20 minutes and go, hey, I only have one eye. And then you're out for another day. And then you wake up and go, I'd like to itch my face, but I can't move my arms. the crazy thing is at first

I didn't know that my right ear drone was completely blown I didn't know that I only have one eye left I think because of the disorientation the medication they give you this medicine it's called atropine and I forget exactly what it does but one of the side effects is it dilates your pupils really bad and so everything was kind of blurry already

and it was just everything was just so strange you know and again going way back not only that not only was my injuries the medication where I was at those you know I faded from consciousness world on the on a hot dusty rooftop on the other side of the world now there's snow building outside at my hospital room window pain I didn't even know there were military hospitals and everyone you know you always see your whole life doctors in white lab coats. Now my doctors were in camouflage. And just all of those things, it was like, you know, what is going on? But yes, I knew I was alive.

That was the main thing. You know, a lot of times when I woke up in the beginning, it was a very short burst of being awake. And those short bursts were either full of pain, full of confusion, or full of, I think I would just had so much of not an idea of what was going on. I, again, I just kind of roll with it until, thankfully, you know, I started to comprehend more. but for me to say hey dad that was one of the most profound moments in my recovery for my parents and my family because they had the mindset which they talk about now that anything physical

missing limbs missing eyes we can get through that we can get better we can love and heal you but the brain is a beautiful but delicate thing and if you weren't Kyle anymore or if you didn't know who we were, that would have been an entirely different area of how do we cope with this? So you got all that going on and then this happens. I'm lying in bed. My heart races as I try to process how they got me into the hospital. I am fixated on what used to be the silver sprinkler heads that are mounted in the ceiling. Now they are bullet holes. They've been shot out by the Taliban who have been taking over the hospital and now in the room above mine unloading AK-47 rounds down into my room. I can't move as my mom stays at my bedside with me. She gets shot in the

leg and I've never felt so helpless. The shooting suddenly stopped. Seconds later, the silence is interrupted by the dreaded clinking of a hand grenade bouncing on the hospital room floor. The Taliban dropped it down through one of the holes in the roof and it lands at the foot of my bed. I hear the nurse scream, No, he's had been he's been through enough already She jumps on it I watched the pink mist and body parts that are the only things left of her Float around my room and what these are these are hallucinations that you're having and They are 100% real to you as real as us sitting here right now

Going on my parents told me later that night was the worst of their life even worse than getting the call that I've been injured or seeing my mangled body when I'd arrived. Up to that point, I'd still been Kyle, just physically battered Kyle. They had no idea who this hallucinating person was, and I was so far gone to whatever my mind had taken me, they were afraid that they would not be able to get me back. I was returned to the ICU early the next morning, and then my dad, frantic that our family can't afford the medical bills, loads himself down with weapons and storms in the emergency room to demand that I get the surgeries I need and to reverse the hospital's order to discharge me. I try to scream and beg him not to. I want to tell him it's okay and he doesn't have to do this even if I can get, even if I can't get any more

care. As the second set of the ICU sliding doors open, he is met by a SWAT team who unload on him until I see him fall behind the nurse's station. The last thing I remember is the sound of the shotgun my dad was holding as it hits the ground. I think about how much he must have loved me to do something like that. And then this, I am standing on the top of a small hill looking down and across a field, watching a funeral. The sky is so great, it seems more light than dark, more dark than light. There are no tombstones, not even at the grave site of the person being buried. The only person in attendance is the pastor who is holding the Bible and standing at the head of the grave. I begin to wonder why I'm here standing on this hill by myself. As the pastor begins to speak, I realize the

horrifying answer to my question. I am watching my own funeral and no one has come. The Marines I had called my brothers were so disappointed that I had left them behind in Afghanistan that they didn't come to say goodbye. I try to yell out but I can't. I tried to take a step but I can't. I am paralyzed with despair as tears rolled down my face. Then you say the hallucinations were intense at no point Did it ever occur to me that the things I was seeing, hearing, and feeling like might all be in my head? Every detail was so vivid and lifelike. To this day, they are forever locked in my brain, not as memories of hallucinations I had, but as memories of real events I experienced. How long did that period last?

It seemed like months, but I think it was only a few hours. And that was the reactions to a drug that they were. were giving you. Correct. And, you know, early on, especially during my time around this time that we're talking about in an ICU, I mean, I was in surgery minimum every other day, going through 13-hour surgeries to save my arm, going through multiple, you know, every time you put someone to sleep is a risk. Yeah. So every other day they might have put me to sleep one time,

but they would do three or four operations. And every other day, if not every day, Wounded Warriors at Walter Reed, myself included, had to go to daily every other day what's called washouts. And as you know, the bacteria and things that we don't, quite understand, haven't researched enough yet in the soil in Afghanistan, create infections that can be just as deadly, if not more deadly, than the actual injury and can kill you weeks later at Walter Reed. So having to go in for these washouts, multiple operations, every time

I was put down, so I think just all of that combined along with already struggling. to grasp this new reality that I was waking up to and experiencing. But, and that last hallucination you read about, about watching my own funeral, is the only thing out of my entire journey that still chokes me up because it was just a feeling of beyond despair. I couldn't move. I was so frozen with despair. And I was just so devastated that not just my buddies, but no one, no family, no nothing. This massive rolling hills worth of a field was just a hole in the ground where I was.

and that religious leader conducting the funeral. But like with so many pieces and parts of my journey, I'm thankful that that hallucination occurred because that taught me one of, or helped me realize one of the most powerful lessons and questions that I continue to carry with myself today and always ask and remind myself. self and that is and at least just for me this is what I translated from that but what is

my legacy and when I get to those final days which will be followed by my funeral hopefully where people will come but you know who will I have there how many people while I have helped loved touched impacted What am I doing every day and how am I living to create a funeral that has people there or has more people than less? And, you know, I think it was also scary, and I've never really thought about this until right now, but I think it was also scary because the other hallucinations, I think maybe 1% of my brain. at least after the first hallucination, continuing to have more, yes, they seemed completely real. And I felt like I was completely lucid.

But after going through multiple hallucinations that were just so crazy, I mean, giant spiders attacking my hospital room, the Taliban dropping grenades, my dad, you know, charging the emergency room, they were not kind of normal life experiences. So when I entered that hallucination of watching my own funeral, then it became mixed with, okay, this actually does relate to what's going on. Like, did I finally succumb to the fight? And actually, you know, is this really, really happening? You know, because last I remember, before this hallucination started, I was struggling to hang on to life. So it was kind of like a plausible scenario.

But, yeah, you know, that was, of course, I know today it wasn't real, it's not true, but it still cuts into me to feel like I disappointed those around me and that I disappointed them to the extent that they didn't care about me anymore and that they were upset with me for leaving the deployment early and my own family didn't come. And I don't remember exactly, but I think in that moment and that hallucination, I was thinking, well, you know, they didn't come because of the hardships I put them through. And so that was extremely tough.

But again, has made me from that day on think about when that time for my funeral comes, what legacy am I leaving. Yeah. And it's interesting that it's framed up what the most important thing to you is everyone else. Like who have I helped? Who have I given enough to that they want to come and give a little bit back? to me right now. You're getting back to your your attitude a little bit here, which is just, you know, important for anybody to hear. Your Nick had woken up because Nick, you know, he suffered

bad injury too. And you say this. I was thrilled when I learned Nick had woken up for a variety of reasons. I only saw Nick a couple of times in the hospital, but it made my day when he penned what's up, Kyle, on his whiteboard when he was doing occupational therapy for writing. We were just a few rooms apart but still bedridden so we started sending a whiteboard back and forth with short messages we practiced writing to each other it was encouraging to see it was encouraging to me to see that nick was on the same journey i was we were reclaiming our lives and learning how to be our fullest selves not in spite of our injuries but because of them our injuries happened nothing would ever change that our wounds were part of our bodies but we were the one

who would get to choose what role they would play in our stories. Awesome statement. And what's awesome to me about that statement is how often do people let things that are much less significant, infinitely less significant than the injuries that you received and the injuries that Nick received. And yet they let those things, those little insignificant things dictate their whole life, dictate their reaction, dictate the way they're going to behave. And here you were looking at these catastrophic injuries saying you get to choose what role those injuries play in your life. That's an attitude to think about for sure.

Yeah, everything is a choice. Everything is not only a choice, but everything is shaped by the lens of perspective that you choose to look through. I'm trying to kind of conjure up where you found that lens Because there's plenty of people I'm saying that Could use to would want to borrow those glasses from you to have a look through that lens at their world And I think you know I always think that There's things that can help people That all they need is awareness, right?

Like all they need is to see it And so I think even hearing you say look it's how you look at it hearing you say that people go maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way so if you're in a tough spot right now out there in the world my guess is you're not

in as tough as a spot as you were in as Nick was in and how can you adjust your perception a little bit so that you see it in a different light see your situation in a different light yeah absolutely

And, you know, I think it's important to note that struggle, adversity, all of these life obstacles that get in our way, that knock us down, you know, those things are the last things we should ever compare. But exactly what you're saying, to have a frame of reference of, you know, wow, I can get through this. and I and this is one of the reasons I wrote the book to tell people that you can come back better and stronger might be physically mentally and emotionally different or emotionally different and that is absolutely okay we all handle adversity differently we all heal on our own time but you truly can come back better and stronger than you were before whatever knocked you down and in good time you can not only come back

better and stronger but you can do it with a smile on your face just to kind of point out some of the what we're talking about for a struggle you you end up going home for rehab for some of your rehab which was great but like

you you go into like a full celebration mode after you finally are able to put on a pair of socks for the first time and by the way it took you like 10 minutes It's per sock to get the socks on. And eight months. And eight months of effort, of work to get there.

So eight months of failing to put your socks on. All my mom brushed my teeth, you know, before that getting ready, the few teeth I had left. So, yeah, I mean, it still sounds crazy to say it to be eight months to be able to put my socks back on. You know, sometimes people look at a challenging situation. you know and they say well it's going to take me a long time to get this done and whatever that thing that they're going to get done is going to be a pretty giant triumph whether it's completing a marathon or completing some courses at school and here you are grinding as hard as you can and it takes you eight months and your reward is it only took you 10 minutes per sock but you were

able to put your own socks on you say I knew I was reclaiming my body and my life one tiny muscle twitch at a time. Yeah, that right there, again, what is, what, you know, if you're listening to this right now and you think you got some challenges, hey, you probably do. We all have challenges. But if you can make that little, that little bit of progress, that little tiny bit of progress, and you do it today, you do it tomorrow, and you do it the next day, you will dig yourself out of where you're at.

You say this. You say this. I get mad because I can't just read this entire book to everyone right now, but that's why they can buy it. And actually, you read the audio book, too. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really cool as well.

Yeah. So a lot of times books are read by some random actor, and they say like, here, this part says, I know caretakers are the unsung heroes, but they read it like this. I know caretakers are the unsung heroes. So you didn't do that. You read it yourself, which is awesome. And you're in this section. You're just talking about everything that they did for you, day in, day out tasks of keeping someone comfortable, taking them to the bathroom, remembering their pill schedule, accommodating their diet, helping them to get dressed, keeping them company, cheering them up, celebrating the good days, walking them through their bad days.

I can't imagine how exhausting it must be to find yourself in a full time around the clock job of taking care of someone else. And yet this was the role that various people took on for me. It was this strength and support when I still, when I was at my worst and most broken physically, that enabled me to begin to rebuild a normal life. So again, shout out to the caretakers, the people that got you through this. Just incredible people. Continuing on here, I wasn't just physically exhausted. that I was emotionally drained.

From the moment I regained consciousness back in December, I'd been putting a strong face on for my family. I thought if I could reassure them I was okay, it'd be easier for them to deal with what happened to me. I am a Marine, which means the instinct to protect others is second nature. And that instinct was working overtime now. It was more than the endless hospital trips and surgeries and skin grafts and adaptive exercises.

It was getting used to the constant pain and the feeling of the shrapnel still trapped in my body. From what I could see with my remaining eye, the world looked much the same. My mom and dad looked exactly like they looked before I'd shipped out. My brothers were taller but otherwise the same boys I'd known. But I knew that what they saw, what they saw was forever changed. Every time they looked at me, they couldn't help but see my wounds. I had been the one to enlist, but now my family was serving alongside me.

Yeah, this it's so easy to breeze through like the the A what your family's going through B what you're going through it's like you know I'm the when I get an injury I'm like the sorriest pathetic person I'm so embarrassing like I get so frustrated if I get a cut on my finger and I can't like you know train jiu jitsu I'm all and and when you think about this level of injuries that you suffered, it's just, it's hard to comprehend. And something you said earlier, there was, I had a guy on here a few weeks ago named Jim Searlesley, and he was in Vietnam. He was an awesome guy. He went to Vietnam. He was on his 11th month of his tour in Vietnam, and he was checking the perimeter of where his

Element was set up and he stepped on a mind and it it took off Both of his legs and one of his arms and and they took like high above like way above the knee proper more like at the hip But one thing that he said That I was thinking about it wasn't on the podcast, but we were talking about it later is like the 100% Like this is this is this is what happened this is like the 100% this is like the 100% acceptance he said made a big difference in his life because he was with a lot of vets he talked about some of those other vets with me that he was with that never accepted what had happened to them and no it reminds me two things it's like number one you say hey I

accepted that I couldn't change what had happened but also because he told me he said you know some of the guys that I knew they only accepted it 95% and reminds me what you said when you're talking about those hallucinizations, and some of those weren't as bad because even though you were 99% sure, that little 1% was enough to make a difference in your brain. And I think that's what happens with our life. Like we have to accept, okay, these things happen in the past

and there's not anything you can do to change what's happened in the past. It is impossible. And it's the most obvious piece of the whole puzzle. It is the past. We know we can't change it. We know we can't alter it, fix it, go back. But it is one of the most detrimental aspects, potentially, of a recovery, of a struggle.

The what is, that daunting question that most of the time will never be answered. And the main thing, a lot of the times that people get hung up on. but the most obvious. And so I'm thankful that I did leave the past in the past, and I left it 100% behind me. But in order to realize that, I had to hit rock bottom. Arguably, the lowest point in my life, by far the lowest point of my recovery. As you already said, I had gone home to recover roughly six or seven months.

I had been injured November 2010. I was in my first three kind of initial life-saving months of my recovery until the last week of February of 2011. At the time, there was such an influx of casualties, not only from Iraq, but now from the push in Afghanistan. I remember just stopping in my tracks at Walter Reed. I went up on to the recovery floor, and I think I was going to visit some guys because, you know, this was after I had already got back on my feet, become stable. But I remember stopping in my tracks at the site of hospital beds being put in the hallway because Walter Reed,

had run out of space in rooms. Every room was doubled up on patients. Initially, after I got injured, I was the only one on the whole floor because of how delicate my condition was that did not have a roommate because I needed two corpsmen or army medics in there every second of the day on what's called a one-to-one to just sit there for hours and hours day after day watching me, my machines so that if I crash, if I flatlined, you know, it might only save five to ten seconds, but some will not only be in there, but they could immediately contact doctors and people that could help bring me back. So with that said, you know, we had already been told and I had already unfortunately heard the extremely heavy news that minimum I was going to have to spend two years at Walter Reed.

Minimum, if everything went textbook, if all 40 of my surgeries, and maybe at this point it was like 20, 25 left, me and mom lost count. But, you know, three years and 40 surgeries, that's obviously a long time, a commitment. And with the months that I had been there, the chain of command, the Marine Corps, they met my family, they knew them, knew they had my best interest, which unfortunately is not the case all the time with wounded warriors coming back. And so knowing that they were going to take care of me, they had my best interest. If we agreed, if they let me go home, lay on my own couch with the dog, eat mom's amazing home-cooked food. I could go do that with the agreement that they would just continue to extend my leave month by month. Every day I would go to the local hospital slash clinic in Lexington, South Carolina, get that daily therapy. And every two weeks from March 1st until

September when I moved up to Walter Reed. Every two weeks my mom drove me from South Carolina to D.C. to get a surgery. So if all those agreements were good, I could go home and recover. So, and what I'm getting to is I'm at home recovering. And it's March, maybe early April, spring of 2011, right after the hospital. and it was around 10 o'clock at night I was winding down for the day and I mean after a whole day of therapy with the injuries I still had and how early on I was in my recovery might as well have been three in the morning so I was already tired maybe a little frustrated and my mom was in the in the next room over the living room and there's a couple of reasons, which I'll get to, but there's a couple of reasons why this story goes so deep and dark so

quickly. And the first is, and I didn't realize this until recently, but it was the first time standing there, sitting there in my kitchen, that really for the first time since I joined the Marine Corps, and especially from the first time that I got injured and woke up in the hospital, it was just me. Not a team of six people standing around telling me, hey, it's okay to go to the bathroom in front of us in this bedpan, not a team of people holding all the tubes coming out of me. I wasn't struggling to breathe through the tube, the trache in my neck. And it was just me. my own thoughts in my own head with the ringing in my ears. And in that moment by myself, in the quiet,

and leading up to this moment, I had been taking on the monumental challenge of trying to make a bowl of cereal for myself. And at this point, I hadn't had the nerve graft repair surgeries to fix my wrist from hanging, my weight was extremely low for what it you know my age and and circumstances aside my weight was extremely low I was extremely weak you know the milk might as well weighed 100 pounds you know I struggled to

open the box of cereal and it was almost impossible to even hold the spoon I I complete the mission of making my bowl of cereal. And I'm sitting at the kitchen counter, and that was only half the battle. Now I had to try to eat it. My nerves had been severed in my face. I still can't feel a portion of my face and my chin. I didn't have teeth, which not only give,

you don't really realize, but they give your mouth so much structure and your lips structure gives you the ability to close your mouth to not have milk going everywhere and not only was it going everywhere I couldn't even feel it all over my face and this bowl of cereal was just, dude, it was defeating me

and in that moment I completely broke and we've already hit on it But I know for two reasons that I broke in this moment because it was the first time I had been by myself with only my own thoughts. And also, until this point, I had been strong every day because I knew the hardest part of my entire journey

was my parents suffering through that burden of recovery with me. And I think now knowing and going what I've been through, being on the other side of that hospital bed is a loved one. A lot of times a helpless loved one is exponentially harder than laying in that bed. So trying to put a smile on every day, trying not to tear up when that's all I really could do after a 13-hour arm surgery where they had been hammering metal rods through my bones and it was pain like I had never felt all the way to the deep center core of my bones. telling them, hey, I'm not in pain. It's okay. I'm good. You know, smiling, being strong.

But in that moment by myself, no one around me, almost a movie-type setting, the lights were a little dim. And, yeah, I completely broke. My mom rushed in, and like any wonderful mother, she puts her arms around me and asks if I'm in pain, what's going? on and through the sobs I could only choke out one thing and that was look at me who's ever going to love me again and that's that's tough even still now to talk about that today but like I said already multiple times sometimes the deepest darkest lowest moments in life teach us the most beautiful lessons. And in that moment, you know, I'm thankful that I had this insight, and I realized that in talking about the past,

that the past is truly the past, in that moment I realized that with any situation, with any obstacle or event, that really knocks you down in life. Every opportunity, every intersection, good or bad, you cut out the noise, and this is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some people listening, and it was for me.

But it must be done, and that is that you cut out the noise and you only ever have two options. You can either, stand up and take that small step forward. You know, I have to know where you're going. You know, I have to have the perfect plan. You don't have to know what tomorrow holds.

But you can either get up and take that small step or you're going to sit at that kitchen counter for the rest of your life. And now, years later, and one of my favorite lines in the book, I'm thankful that I pushed through those hard times and I realized and I truly believe in now that the smallest of steps eventually completes the grandest of journeys. And that is one of the parts of my mission that I am trying to get out there and tell people and educate people about. And this is by no means ending it. I'm still excited and looking forward to keep going.

But with that said, and I appreciate you having me in this time and helping me with your platform with that mission of helping people through that struggle and telling people that one small step at a time. You work hard, try to stay positive, try to be a good person, do the right thing. And it will not only bring you out of that, but take you to great places. Yeah. I don't have anything to add to that. I mean, that's such a poignant thing to perspective to have. And it's, you know, I often talk about the fact that the first step is the hardest one. In many situations, like the first step is the hardest one.

And what I like about what you bring to that statement is like it doesn't. matter how big that step is or more important how small that step is you got to do something you got to you you you got to move in the right direction um yeah the you and you detail that just it's a whole chapter in here um where you where you go through that and people got to people got to pick this up to really reinforce those ideas so that we can push through it you know you here Here's one of the things you say kind of bringing this home. At some point, everyone will face a rock bottom moment when the past looms too large to overcome and a hopeful future seems too far out to imagine.

I mean, just think about that right there. There's times that you're going to face where the past is too much and the future seems too far away, too far out there. You go on. It's difficult to prepare yourself for that moment because it's impossible to know what will trigger it. It may be a major setback that knocks you to the ground or could be something so seemingly, minor and innocuous like trying to eat a bowl of cereal, which is what you went through.

The point is you can't really do much ahead of time to prevent that moment from happening. You might not even be able to brace yourself for the impact. All you can do is commit yourself to surviving for another day and recognizing that you can't change what is behind you, only what lies ahead. You may even wonder if it's possible to move on. And it might not be without professional guidance to help you process everything that your past represents. It's not a process that can be rushed. Do you have to be honest with yourself as to whether or not it's time to let go over the past? Maybe the answer is not yet, and that's okay,

but at some point you have to be willing to say, from this day forward, I am choosing to live. Too often we fall into the trap of thinking we need to have everything figured out before we act. You don't have to have a roadmap before you set out. You don't even have to know what direction you're traveling, you just have to be willing to move and leave the past behind. So this is just, you know, powerful stuff. And you go through and you talk about, you know, you went jumping with Jay Redmond, who's been on the podcast and, you know, a seal that was wounded very badly. You did a bunch of mud runs with the Marine Corps. Like, you're doing stuff. You're pushing. And this kind of, you know, this is what you say about that. about those things. Every obstacle I took on had a whole new significance. And every time I conquered

one, I took on new significance too. I gained significance as someone who fought to live and was succeeding. I gained significance as a combat survivor who was doing more than just surviving. I gained significance as someone who attacked physical and occupational therapy with every fiber of my being and was now proving what my restored body could do. I gained significance as someone who refused to let fear make his choices for him. I gain significance. I gain significance. as someone who reclaimed his life unapologetically. And even if that significance was only apparent to me, and no one else had changed who I was in my own eyes and in my own mind.

My injuries will not define my life. I will. And the greatest power I have that any of us has is the power to make that choice. So once again, it is about taking control over what choice. choices you make deciding to move forward yeah and again it's one thing when somebody says that stuff that you know their their big challenge was who knows what what big challenge they had but to hear it coming from you who's literally been dead and and and and come back and suffered through the the the recovery process you know it's just if you can say that

we can all say that. And just to add on to that and thanks for pointing that out. But that's exactly why, along with having to realize how I wanted to approach and write it, that's why this book was written now, nine years later. Because I didn't want to write a book, not only that only military service member, veterans, or people that have been to combat could understand, I wanted a book that I lived, I lived, learned, and proved and completed the lessons that I am teaching.

The worst is, when you get, whether a book or some motivator out there, telling you a whole spreadsheet of things you need to do and they have it done it themselves and so the last thing I wouldn't have wrote it if I wouldn't have done these things

but I'm not going to tell people you know after you get knocked down you can go to college earn your degree without doing that I'm not going to tell people oh you work hard you know one foot in front of the other

and eventually one day you can run a marathon without crossing the finish line of that marathon without jumping out of the plane, backpacking across Europe. So thank you for recognizing that. And I just wanted to add that. You know, people ask me like, oh, you could have wrote a book right after this happened.

I mean, your story was there. After the medal, you know, pretty much would have been the same book. In a way, yes, but not really. Because I wanted to have substance behind the things, the lessons, the challenges and victories that I talk about in this book. You know, you kind of got a tone in your voice when you said some motivator out there. And I have, I've pretty consistently talked small. Mac about the term motivation.

As a matter of fact, I made a little video the other day where I was making fun of Motivation Monday, right? And as I was reading your book, I got to this chapter, it's called Stay Motivated. And I was like, ooh. Done reading. And, you know, my mind is always open. And I'm always looking to learn.

So I was like, okay, let's see what Kyle has to say about it. And you said, you know, stay motivated. You had in quotes, any Marine reading this is rolling their eyes right now. I was like, okay, so he knows what I'm talking about. Those two words stay motivated are pretty well worn within the core. Leadership loves to say them when you're in formation on a grueling run or any time there's a large lag in the conversation. In fact, it seems like when you are cold and wet and hungry and dirty and missing home,

that's when you say it the most, stay motivated. The line has become a bit of a joke in the Marines, that Marines will toss around sarcastically in really miserable situations when it seems like everyone hates their life. But still, there's some wisdom in the phrase. I checked it out. That allowed you to keep going? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, my mind is open, man. My mind is open. And there's something that I realized. I did a little research. And the root word of motivation, which we know motivation is like, it comes across as an emotion or feeling. That's what I don't like about it

because we can't rely on it, right? But the root word of it is Latin. modus and it means move that's what it means move and so you spell out all these things you might be angry tired broken hurt confused what can you possibly do in a situation like that stay motivated which ties back to what you already said you get up and you move that's what you need to do no matter who you are or where you are in life there are simply things that are going to be terrible, but you just have to level your head, put one foot in front of the other, and walk straight into that storm.

Stay motivated. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about moving. We're talking about taking action. And when I turn that word motivation, which is like a feeling into action, then I get it. Then I get it. Yeah, that this chunk of the book where you talk about what you're talking about what you went through is and and your attitude towards it and sometimes you have to dig a little deeper

you got this part here there was a local Afghan Afghan boy about 12 who loved the Marines who would always salute us when we would walk out of our patrol base on foot he and his eight-year-old brother even made a game of trying to snatch our water bottles and goodies from the dump pouches on the back of our sappy plates which were designed to carry empty magazines from firefights but doubled as a snack candy and water bottle carrier the two boys got to be friends with us and through the months of talking and playing with us would sometimes tell us where well-hidden IEDs were buried. Our EOD guys made a good show of trying to make it appear that their discoveries were accidental before the explosives were diffused, but in Taliban strongholds, eyes are always watching.

One night, about two weeks after I was evacuated, a grenade was thrown over the wall of our compound and detonated at exactly the spot where my now empty bunk sat. No one was injured, but it obviously shook everyone up a bit. A few nights later, that same boy who used to salute us showed up at camp in the middle of the night to tell us he threw that grenade. He was sobbing and begging the Marines to forgive him and not to kill him. The Taliban had caught on that he was friendly with us and that fewer IEDs were being detonated. They suspected he was the cause, so they beat him senseless, but they didn't kill him. Instead, for his final punishment, they dragged him to the wall of our compound.

placed a grenade in his hand and pulled the pin a 12-year-old child was forced to kill or be killed That was just one story of countless others we heard stories of violence ritual stoning of women pushing people off buildings for being gay and children forced to become weapons of war How is one not affected witnessing that degree of evil you remind yourself why you're over there in the first place to stop the Taliban and their torture and depression of the their own people. You remind yourself that if you were able to weaken their strongholder, just give hope to those innocent people, even the smallest of ways, so that one day they might taste the freedom of safety, then you made a difference. That helps you stay focused. That helps you stay motivated. That's a, I would love to say that that's a rare story, but that's what those,

that's what the enemy is like. Yeah. That's what they do. So, you know, you just mentioned that you put down your backpack, put down your rucksack and picked up a backpack. You ended up going to college, kind of fulfilling that promise to your parents. And on the afternoon of December 18th, 2017,

I was sitting in a folding chair on the floor of Colonial Life Arena, just adjusting my tassel to make. sure it was positioned correctly on my cap. I was about to receive my diploma, making good on the promise I'd made to my parents eight years earlier that one day I'd go back to school and earn my degree. The graduation speaker introduced me to the crowd and announced joining Kyle's family this afternoon are members of his medical evacuation team and two of his doctors from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Our thanks to you, Kyle. Would you please stand and receive our recognition? I stood and suddenly so did the entire arena. My fellow students were cheering The crowd was cheering My family was cheering And I realized that I had really done it We had really done it

My family my peers and all the people I'd Been with who'd kept me alive along the way Both literally And figuratively So you graduated from college And while you were doing that You were also running marathons Right? Do I have that timeline correct?

You have that timeline correct The first one was 2013. All three were Marine Corps Marathon for the Semper-5 Fund in Washington, D.C. And the first one I completed was October after I got out of the hospital in July. And then the next two were the few years following that. The second one actually, which I don't recommend because I didn't think about circling and cruising around in the clouds over the Pentagon before I skydived out into the starting line, it was a solid 20 minutes worth of invisible air squats, cramped up in that plane,

waiting for the sun to break over the horizon. Yeah, great times. And so I landed, and if I hadn't put my sweet mother through enough already, of course it was not the greatest weather, and it was windy that day. so I'm not only skydiving in front of her, putting her through that, but the wind, because I jump with team fast tracks, Austin team, most of which are our former operators and special forces. And myself and my jump partner got blown off course.

Ironically, crash landing, I'm talking sliding in between headstones in Arlington Cemetery. I thought, oh, man, I hope this isn't about to express me into being on one of these spots right now. This is so completely crazy that you're running marathons, parachuting. This is just ridiculous. I might, I might like have a talk with your mom. We might need to tighten you up. I think I'm actually on her side. She hammers me enough already.

So we crashed land in Arlington. I'm sprinting to the starting line, undressing out of my, out of my, gear doing an interview right as a can and goes off so I made that one but these marathons came up very early on when I was in the hospital and when I said earlier you might be a little different physically mentally or emotionally but you can truly come back better and stronger than you were before whatever knocked you down and that lesson comes from early on when I I had, when I was breathing through that tube, when I had my arms tied up from swelling, when I had to go to the bathroom in a bedpan in front of my parents and six to eight

medical staff from the hospital. In that low, knocked down, seemingly hopeless state, I decided to think of something that I could do, whether it was a year from then or just at some point in my life. I tried to think of something I could do to show and prove to myself that I was not only back, but again, I was better and stronger than before. And I thought, and at the time, I mean, I can't say I was 100% confident I was going to accomplish this goal. But I set the goal to run a marathon. And years later, that was 2011, first marathon was.

So over two years later, when I crossed the finish line of that first marathon, thankfully I had sunglasses on, I was tearing up. because, you know, for years I had been telling myself, deep thought to myself, coaching myself. And I think doing it so much unknowingly just trying to convince myself that, hey, you know, I really can get better, come back stronger. Like, I knew I could, and I did believe those things. But again, sometimes that goal or the future is so far away and you have to go through so much to get to it. That's not that I didn't believe myself,

but it's kind of like until it happened, I couldn't fully buy into it, which is weird because it was my own just internal talk and advice. But when I crossed the finish line of that marathon, it was such an incredible, amazing, beautiful moment because not only was I, just like I do every day in life, any new experience I have, any experience I have, period, just sitting before we drove here this morning, sitting and watching the sun come up. Anything I do, I literally can't help but to think, wow, I was so close to not,

experiencing this right now, big or small. So when I crossed the line of that marathon, that finish line, and they draped that metal around my neck, in that moment I proved to myself what I have been hurting and working, striving, getting knocked down every single day for. And after years, in that moment, I not only realized, but I fully believed it solidified permanently forever in my mind what I had been teaching myself day in, day out, and through those long, dark, and painful nights. Yeah, that's an incredible journey. and I cannot believe that the journey only lasted, what, two years to get to you for your first Marine Corps marathon from the time you got wounded? Yeah, which I don't recommend whatsoever. You got all this stuff going on, you got your recovery going on, you got your going to college, you're running marathons, you're skydiving, you're skydiving into marathons.

And at some point, you start hearing the, and you talk about it in the book when you first start getting some indication that the Medal of Honor could be in your future. And again, you talk about it in the book. You kind of build to it the little indicators along the way. And then you get to this here on an unassuming day. in February, I was notified that I should expect a call from President Obama the following Monday at 1.36 p.m. This seemed weirdly specific until I remembered that the leader of the free world has more than a few demands on his time and probably runs a pretty tight schedule. I told my parents, of course, but they didn't say a word of it to my brothers. I think we thought it would be more fun

for them to be caught off guard. And then you go on. The call came through at 136. On the dot. I remember being surprised that an actual number appeared on my phone screen rather than an unknown caller message But it must have been the number for the central switchboard at the White House. I answered the phone and a stern sounding woman on the other end announced standby. I have the president of the United States on the phone for you Okay was all I could get out after such a profound statement A moment later a voice familiar to me came on Kyle, said the president in a surprisingly conversational, friendly, and upbeat tone, it immediately set me at ease, or as much as at ease you can be at when you're talking to the commander

in chief. Yes, sir, how you doing? I'm fine, sir. How are you? Am I really making small talk with the president? I thought to myself? I'm doing just fine. Thanks, he answered.

Then he continued. It is my pleasure to let you know that based on the recommendation of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Defense of Defense, I have approved the Medal of Honor to be awarded to you for your courageous actions in Afghanistan in support of operation and during freedom. There it was. It was happening.

That's got to be a hard thing to kind of contemplate that you are joining this, you know, Legion of our most profound heroes. And how old are you have? at this point in time? 25. 25. Sophomore in college.

I left class to drive home, received the call. After entering my home and getting yelled at by my mother, because my first question was, does anyone have a phone charger? I'm on 7%. So I was not prepared for the mission you could say, and I also got yelled at, even though it was a call on speaker phone with no video that my shoes that I was wearing were nasty.

And so after getting reprimanded, I received that incredible and surreal phone call. And at this point, for years, we had heard not really any updates, but it also hadn't ended. So one can only assume, especially with the months before this, since the previous November, November of 2013, the year before I received the medal, at the Commandant's Marine Corps birthday ball, my mom and I sat down for a casual meeting with a Marine by the name of Kendra Motes.

She worked public relations slash public affairs, for the Marine Corps, and she wanted to sit down with us and say, hey, we have no idea where this thing is, where it's going to go, if it's even going to happen. But looking ahead at your next semester of school, you know, I had recovered. I left the hospital. I had been out of the hospital for, you know, I guess now that I'm thinking about it, only a few months, but by the time the the metal rolled around. I had already had to not only recover, but get on with my life, make that transition. So as a sophomore in college, they knew that that was my new mission, that it was my priority,

and I wanted to do good at it and give it my best. And it was kind of, you know, them looking out for me. And all of this was so weird as we went along because all of these, you know, I had to do all this preparatory work for something that not even the highest Marines knew where it was at. And they wouldn't tell me, of course, even if they did, but I believe they truly did not know. And so with that said, as the first couple of months, it was just like, hey, this could potentially happen. Even though we don't know if it's going to happen, we need to adequately prepare you. So at that said, it was kind of like, hey, if you want to do good at school, we suggest, unfortunately, that you need to withdraw from this semester.

But once I got word that I was going to be receiving that call, it was beginning of February. So I was still just a few weeks into the semester. and I was thinking, hey, I'm going to stick this out and wait for this insane call if it actually is going to come to happen before I withdraw and lose a semester of time, energy effort, and class credits. And so, yeah, I left class. I took the call. I drove back for some reason to make the next class and finish out the day strong before I withdrew from my classes. and it was so strange still to this day sitting through that history class and thinking like, okay, well, it's kind of crazy. I was just talking to the President of the United States, and now I'm in my sophomore college history class.

And so, but after that, yeah, I got the call. We knew it was going to happen, but we still couldn't tell anyone. So I was at the Pentagon every other week, all week, going through chaos, training, everything from sitting in a room for hours getting drilled by two who were awesome and really did good to get me prepared but almost an interrogation set up and grilling me with every question that could be detrimental to me or learning how to if I don't want to answer a question directly navigating that reporter that interview in the direction that I wanted to take it but all my friends I couldn't tell anyone so all my friends thought I was still in class

So, like, oh, how are finals going? Oh, well, they're good. Not knowing I was just at the freaking Pentagon all week. And then hanging out with them on the weekends, going to football and basketball games. But, yeah, it was incredibly surreal to receive that phone call. But even when I received that phone call, it made it no more real.

And I think just one of those things in life that, like combat, like the unknown of the life of service, service holds, I think you can only comprehend and process to a certain extent until those actual moments happen and you're exposed to them. But yeah, fast forward a few months after my imaginary semester that I was suffering through, I did. I received the Medal of Honor as along with Dakota, the second living recipient, marine recipient, since Vietnam and still currently, thankfully, that thankfully I'm still the youngest living recipient

of that incredible and humbling honor and award. You, I mean, you do a great job in the book of talking about, you know, the ceremony and doing the interviews and the pressure in the White House and all those things going on. but and it's definitely worth reading to get some appreciation if you don't understand what this award means that will begin to give you some appreciation of what it what it means for the person that's receiving it I mean just what you are what is happening to you you do a

great job of explaining that in the book but I really liked this section here which also kind of explains what the Medal of Honor means. It says the thing I want people to understand is that the Medal of Honor is a heavy distinction. It only weighs a couple of ounces, but the physical weight is nothing compared to the weight of what it represents. Everything that the medal symbolizes,

not just the circumstances under which it was earned, but the broader conflict of which that action was part and all of the losses that are a result of that conflict adds weight. One of my friends from deployment told me that when he saw the president place the medal around my neck, he cried because our unit, our story, and the guys we lost will never die after that.

For my fellow Marines, he said the medal was a part of everyone's deployment. And you go on and hear talking a little bit more about awards and you say, the ribbon rack never tells the full story of a person's service. But having served alongside someone who is awarded the Medal of Honor somehow helps to capture in a bigger sense what we all went through. Even beyond our current operations, when you start trying to add up each casualty, each death, each injury, the mental scars, and every person listed as MIA over nearly 250 years of military conflicts,

it's overwhelming. I marvel too at the tremendous. tremendous acts of bravery and heroism from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Somalia, OEF, OIF, even to the special forces and intelligence communities who operate without recognition in places we will never know that never got told. Maybe those stories weren't told because there was no one around to witness them. Maybe they weren't told because no one survived to tell them. Maybe they were told, but some external factor stood in the way of someone getting the honor they deserved. That is why I often say the medal doesn't belong to me, not really. My story just happened to be noticed. Thinking that the Medal of Honor, thinking of the Medal of Honor as an individual award, couldn't be any further from the truth.

Hard to sum up in words, but that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good, uh, shock. at it to to explain what it means and and certainly for me having served with with Mikey Monsor everything you're talking about that the year Marines felt you know I know that myself and the rest of the guys in Tasking of Bruiser we all we all feel that we all feel that pride we all understand that sacrifice and it's and it's not just limited to guys in Tassaner Brewers everyone that was in Ramadi with us they all feel the same way You know, you end up, I guess you're, I guess you know, when you were, you said you were a kid with a lot of energy, well, that hasn't really been stifled out despite grenades and whatnot.

Because you end up going on something that you call a gratitude tour. And you go around the country and you actually go around the world because you go to Afghanistan, you go to Germany, you go and you meet people and you thank people, the medical people, the medevac crews, the rehab folks, everyone that, you know, you. that played a role in your survival and your rehab and your recovery. And you basically go around and you say thank you. And you say something here, there is a power in moving from someone who only receives to someone who is able to give to.

For me, it marked a major shift in my view of myself and of my view of the world, even though my healing journey will never really be over, the opportunities I've had to thank people have helped me move beyond the chapter of my life dedicated to recovery. Now I can look ahead to whatever comes next, making something out of this life that so many people work to save. The healing power of saying thank you is immense. I believe this with every ounce of my being. I can't imagine anything more beautiful in this world than gratitude, feeling it, expressing it, receiving it. Gratitude is a

at the heart of every thank you for your service that someone offers to a veteran. I understand the feeling of not knowing what to say, but wanting to say something because the gift that was given is too significant to go unacknowledged. I appreciate the gratitude that is shared with me, but I hope people know that I owe so much more thanks than I will ever be able to express. Gratitude I've come to learn is one of the most important parts of become. a whole person and building a life of significance. Gratitude requires wisdom to recognize the roles of others.

It requires humility to admit that you couldn't have done it alone. It requires strength to be able to give part of yourself back to someone and know there is still enough of you left to thrive. And it requires inner peace to be able to say what you did for me helped create a life. I am glad to call mine. Before we end here today, even though the uncorrected proof, which we just went through and the final copy, are same content, essentially the same, the uncorrected proof does not have the introduction or my parting thoughts. and the parting thoughts is one of the most important, important lessons I would like to convey here today. And the end of the parting thoughts, or I guess really collectively as a whole,

I wrote them to help people not discount their own situations or struggle. because going through the years and all the while going through school and before the medal after the hospital and even during the hospital, I had slowly started, even though I didn't really know what I was doing, I had slowly started to work towards building not only the professional side of my life, but the public speaking side of my life. And going through the events over the years, people would always. always come up to me and say, if they weren't in the military, they would say, well, you know, I was never in the military, and I never did or went through anything like you. If they are service members or veterans, they come up and essentially say the same thing, but it's, hey, I was an infantry, or, you know, I didn't do anything like you did, or I wouldn't have jumped on a grenade. As you can see from one of the first chapters of the book, if you would have asked me, hey, in 10 minutes, will you jump on a grenade?

I couldn't, and I don't believe anyone could confidently say yes. And with these parting thoughts, I wanted to not only lay that out and say that we should never compare our journeys, our struggles, even our triumphs. But also to show people that the beautiful thing about people and the human spirit, which I see this, you know, take my name out of it, my story, I see this book as an example and as a journey, not of me, but as of what the human spirit can go through. So with that said, these parting thoughts I wrote to not only help people,

not discredit their own situations, lives, circumstances, and struggles, but also to tell people that the beautiful thing about that human spirit is you never know when, how, or to what capacity you're going to step up in a time of need for someone else and be that hero to someone else. big or small. And so thanks let me put that out there, but I had to do that because

on one hand it was good and turned out to be a positive that people were coming up and telling me those things. Because I realized and I had this light bulb moment as I was going through years of thinking about, okay,

if and when I graduate from school, or if and when I get the time and insanity in my life to maybe start a project like this. I'm willing. I'll be motivated, and I will do that. But because I had the speaking, the school, the metal, thankfully things are too chaotic, so I couldn't have this light bulb moment before the timing was right. But as I thought about how would I write this book? Because, again, I don't want a book that only people that have been to combat could understand.

I realized, after all these people have been coming up and saying, well, I was never in the military, but, and then proceed to tell me their own version of struggle, I realized, of course, everyone can relate to struggle, and everyone physically, mentally or emotionally, has struggled and can relate and really thinking about it and realizing that struggle beyond religion, beyond really anything but love, struggle is the only common thread throughout every single person on this earth. And so when I realized that that's the angle I could write about and I could just work on the terminology and take everything I've been through and allow everyone to relate and understand.

That was amazing. But also, it's sad and hard to hear these people just after they hear my story or research about my story. For the first thing they tell me is, you know, comparing their struggle and what they haven't done or haven't been through. And so one of the most important pieces of this book is to tell people, you know, don't discount yourself, your journey, your struggles. Everybody handles adversity differently.

Everyone heals in their own time. And you never know, again, how or to what capacity you're going to step up. and take that grenade in combat or in life for those around you. Yeah, as you were saying this, as you were going through this, I was kind of following your thoughts. And you said something about, take me out of this picture,

take, you know, remove me from this. And, I mean, we've gone over countless stories on this podcast of the strength of the human will and the human spirit is beyond comprehension.

But when you said, take me out of this, I actually did something a little bit different. In my mind, I sat here and said to myself, what if we take the grenade out of the picture? What if that didn't happen to you? What if that just didn't happen? Taliban didn't attack that day. You went on that deployment. You came home.

You carried on with your life. And when you said, don't discount your struggle. Don't discount what you've been through. I started thinking to myself and came to the same conclusion that you just said, which is you don't know. Don't discount the fact that you've got this in you. You're a human being and the strength of the human will and the human spirit. Just because you haven't measured it yet doesn't mean that it's not there. And that's an incredibly humble thing for you to be saying.

But from your perspective after hearing this over and over again, it makes sense that someone that's been through what you've been through can connect those dots and paint a picture for all of us to see. So, yeah, thank you. And those parts, like you mentioned, this book, and I've mentioned, it's called You Are Worth It and Building a Life worth fighting for. by Kyle Carpenter. I know you talk about gratitude, and I hope that I know that you like to give gratitude, but I hope that you can accept some gratitude from all of us. We've been going for almost five hours,

and it's just been incredible to sit here with you, talk to you. So accept some gratitude from me, from everyone that's listening, for your sacrifice, for writing this book, for sharing your lessons. People want to, you know, keep up with you. How do we do it? Facebook, we got Facebook, we got Instagram and Twitter. Facebook, you're William Kyle Carpenter.

And Instagram and Twitter, you have a unique call sign on there, which is at Chick's Digscars. So at Chick's Digscars with no C, by the way. It's C-H-I-K-S-Dig Scars. And then you're also available on, you got your own website, which is William Kyle Carpenter.com. And that's how people can track you. And you've got all kinds of stuff going on, speaking, talking to companies, your Twitters, your Instagram's cool.

you're always posting stuff on there. I know, like I said, we've been going for almost five hours. Do you got any anything else you want to say, anything else you want to close out with? Well, I'll just throw it right back at you. Thank you for having me. And not only am I sincerely honored to have been here today, but again, thank you for lending me your platform

and helping me get the good word out about helping people through their struggle, but, you know, you have helped me along the way. And I appreciate the strength and reality checks that I hate sometimes when I'm rolling out about 830 in the morning. I see you've already had half of a day. But yeah, you're the man, Jocko, and I thank you for this. and as a person, but, you know, a Navy SEAL with a, you know, Superman-type career and the things you've been through and what you've done, it's awesome, man. It's humbling to be here. I can promise you that I was no Superman, and it certainly am not,

but I appreciate you coming on. I can't even express that. enough and most important I think is just thank you for setting an example for setting an example for all of us to follow of what courage is of what honor is and thank you for representing not just the Marine Corps but representing men like Jason Dunham and Michael Monsor which you're walking around here doing and I know that we will never forget them and we will always be grateful for men like them and for men like you and for all of those who go forward and defend, defend freedom in the world. So thank you.

You're worth it. And with that, Kyle has left the building. obviously just an incredible story an incredible human being and I am lucky to be able to talk to people like Kyle and I'm lucky to be able to talk to people like you out there listening which if you didn't know I'm going to some cities and I'm going to talk directly to you in person This is in fact a tour So at one point not too long ago I was saying look we're not a rock band at echelon front we don't go on tour the muster is two maybe three times a year

But this isn't a muster this is just me talking so it's not taking the entire Resources of echelon front and focusing on this so it's just me and it's a tour so here's what's going on on live gigs in, first of all, January 6th in Washington, D.C. January 11th in Austin, Texas, which is sold out. January 16th in New York, January 20th in L.A., January 27th in Seattle, and January 28th in San Francisco. So if you want to come to those, go to jocco live.com. And again, we already have one show that is sold out. Apologize.

Apologies for that. We'll do more. But if you want to come to these other gigs, go to joccolive.com and get tickets. Come see me. Come hang out. I'm going to talk. I'm going to go deep on some stuff. Go deep.

I'm going to bring the heat. Cool. Yeah. That's what we're doing. So, Jocko Live. I know that having Kyle Carpenter on here can definitely change your perspective on things. I know that we all have the opportunity to kind of create the life that we want the best possible life that we can create for ourselves. Seems like a good plan. And I was wondering, you know,

what you have thoughts, advice, maybe perspective on. on what things might make our life better. And by our life, I mean all of us, all of our lives better. And at the same time also, we'll provide support to this podcast so that we can continue to bring people like Kyle Carpenter on

and share his story, document his story. Document his story. I mean, I'm saying his story. Little play on words here. Sure. Straight up history. Yep. History.

Amen. So that's what we're doing. So what do you have? What do you have for recommendations for us? Improving your life. Improving your life. Broadly, any recommendations? Yes, I do.

All right. Well, Jiu-Jitsu, right? That's the thing that comes to mind first. Jiu-Jitsu. So I'm talking to a friend happens to me named Keenan-Cornilious, jujit-u-gai. And, oh, I've mentioned it to some... Jiu-z-u-gai is kind of a friend.

understatement. Understatement, yes, sir. Because Keenan is a real good, let's say, Jiu-Jitsu player. Yeah, even that's an understatement. And that's an understatement. So he, and we talked about it briefly at the muster. So Jitza improves your life, right?

And you know how you do, we, I guess, but you do a good job in spreading the word of that notion. Try to. Yes. J-Git-2 help me with my life, but I don't want to keep it a secret. Yeah. I want everybody to know that. Yeah.

make everybody's life better. Yeah. So it's no secret. We're spreading the word. Hey, in the old days, it was a secret. Yeah. When I started jujitsu as a secret, you weren't allowed to show people that weren't in your academy anything about jiu jitsu.

Yeah. And back then, you'd have more, like a way higher percentage. If not everybody was like, if you do jihitsu, you're in, you're doing jiu jihitsu. You know, it wasn't, you're not a casual jiu jiu jitsu guy. It was really, it was more, way more rare, you know. Now it's starting to have like a casual. jujitsu person, you know? And some people might think that that's like not that good, you know, because it's like, hey,

we're jiu-jitsu guys, either you're jiu-s-gat kind of thing. And I dig it. But I think that having casual jiu-jitsu people is highly beneficial. In fact, it'll help not only the normal non-hardcore jiu-jitsu people, not only, it'll help them for sure, but it'll even help the hardcore jiu-tze people. Yeah. More people in jiu-tizu is better. It's better for everybody.

For everybody. 100%. So, and that's not to mention the personal benefits you get from doing Jiu-Jitsu. Wait, that is the personal benefits. Oh, but you're saying collectively it helps, but it also helps individually. Yes. Yes, 100%. So do J-Jitsu.

If you don't do J-Jitsu. So we're doing J-Jitsu, that's what we're getting at. Yep. 100%. So anyway, look into it if you don't do J-Jitsu. What are you wondering? Some people are on the fence. They're like, I hear a lot.

J-Jitsu curious. Yes, exactly right. Jitsu curious. Step out of that column. Yeah. Get right into Jiu-Jitsu. There was a guy who asked at the Australian muster. He was like, it was one of the early questions.

He was like, oh, is there striking? And I knew exactly what he meant because he didn't know at all. Like, you know, because when you talk about Jiu-Sutu, it's like there's sort of three, maybe more kind of capacities that you kind of regard Jiu-Jitsu. So the original in my, the more, the most holistic way of looking at it is like a hoist-gracy. UFC one situation where it's like a straight up fight, you know. You use submission holds positioning like what jiu jitsu is. Sure, you can use strikes, but that's not what jiu jitsu is.

Jiu-suitzsche isn't training striking, you know, but you can strike in jiu-jitsu kind of thing, right? So he was asking like, oh, yeah, can you strike? So it's like, oh, well, it depends, you know? So when you train jiu-jitsu at a jesus school, typically no, even though some places do offer training with striking. In a jujitsu competition sport Jiu Jitsu, no striking. But that's just the rule.

That's just the rule. And then obviously in a self-defense situation, yeah, you do whatever you want kind of thing. But if you know Jiu-Jitsu, you're going to have the advantage. And that, again, is an understatement. They're going to be striking you too, by the way. So it helps to know these sorts of things.

True. But at the end of the day, from a day-to-day standpoint, jiu-jitsu is an enjoyable and beneficial, another understatement thing to do for yourself and for the people around you. Yeah, I agree. And if you're going to be doing jiu-jitsu, which hopefully you are, you're going to need a ghee. Yes.

You're going to need a rash guard. Yes. You're going to need the clothing. Uniform. The uniform. Is it a uniform? Yeah, it is a uniform. I mean, the ghi is certainly a uniform.

The rash guard is kind of a uniform. Yeah, I call it a uniform for sure. Yeah. So where are we going to get the ghee? No one asks me that anymore. No, they don't ask anymore. You know why? Because they know already.

Everybody knows. But for those of us that don't quite know yet, here, let me tell you, origin, you get an origin gee, 100%. Go to origin,maine.com, this is where you can get these things. So you get origin geese, you can get rash guards there as well. You can also get jeans. Yes. Like that you wear every single day.

Yeah, not for you. And by the way, emergency situation, something happens and you don't have a pair of shorts to do squats in. Guess what you can do? your origin genes. They got a little bit of flexing them. You can you can you can you can do you can do ass to grass squats in origin jeans all day long no factor good no factor yeah man I mean let's face it that's what we kind of look for in jeans and they're good to go and of course they're made in America 100% so when you buy a pair of jeans you are supporting freedom when you buy

something from origin you are supporting freedom and democracy in the world that's What's what you're doing. So you might you might want to do it not to mention they are dope jeans If I'm wearing what you mean from like a fashion perspective of a fashion see I can't judge that Well just say from an aesthetic I had like a 10 minute conversation with someone about Whether the jeans they were just they weren't even asking me they were just telling me that the genes were Fashionable fashionable and I and I was like well they're just jeans and they're like yeah, but I said what's different about these? I said there's no like Remember like those jeans?

that were out for a while. No, you know what I was saying? No, they had like, no, they had like sewing all over there and everything like that. And like ripping and whatever and then sewed up rips and stuff like that. Yeah,

it's not that. Origin jeans don't have that. No, no, no, no, no. There's a pair of blue jeans.

A pair of blue jeans. Here's what. You'd be hard pressed to give me a fashion specific part of those genes that is not fully there for function only. Right. Tell me one thing. Yeah. Tell me one thing.

I can't. You can't because they're functional. The, here's the fashion. This is good. This is like Pete Roberts is getting offended right now because you know he's all kinds of little fashion things. Yeah. He's like, it's kind of reverse yoke.

Your reverse the yoke is functional. I forget even what a yoke is. You explained to I remember, but it was, it was, I don't look for the yoke shape or quality. No one does. Every time I pick up the jeans. Like I'm not like fascinated and just enamored by the yoke. Yeah.

I just put them on and they working. All right. See, it's functional. They work. There you go. Thank you. But when I say when they work, they kind of look good. Like my wife can't, you know, talk trash to me because I'm wearing grandpa jeans or dad jeans or whatever.

I don't even know what that means, bro. Because I am a grandpa. Well, not really, but I'm a dad. Nonetheless, you can be a grandpa and that's cool. Dad is cool. But if you have dad jeans, maybe not so cool. If your wife is telling you that you have them and she doesn't like them, they're not attractive to her. My wife's not saying that.

She's saying they fake good. So that's what I mean when I say. So the genes are Sarah Charles approved. All right, we'll go with that. All right. Anyway, yes, all made in America, all the threads. All made in America. That's big.

That's not nothing. What's that stuff that they plant in the ground and then it grows? What is it called? Cotton. Cotton. All right, thanks. Anyway, what else? Don't forget about supplements.

Don't forget about joint warfare. Don't forget about krill oil. Don't forget about discipline and discipline go in the cans, which I'm drinking right now, which is legit. And of course Strawberry and chocolate and mint and peanut butter Mulk which is glorious Yes sir. Which is dessert. That's all it is that happens

Sure, it has a bunch of protein in it clean protein. Sure, there's no sugar Sure, it's it tastes delicious. It's dessert So check some of that out and get your get your jocco white tea as well Winter's here Brew some up. Get a brew on us that Aussies used to say. Or the Brits. Hot.

Like out in the field. Yeah, on the field. They're brewing up in the field. Do the Brits still put milk in tea? Yes. That's the thing, right? At least my Brit does.

Yeah. Yeah, no, they absolutely put milk in tea. Yeah, I guess so. Why would I even ask that? I don't know how they do it in the field, though.

Because they're not carrying milk with you in the field. Maybe evaporated milk. Maybe. Yeah, I don't think it's that serious in the field, but, you know, I dig it. I know it's not a phase. Of course, they're still putting milk in the tea.

It's a thing. No, it's a real thing. It ain't no phase over there in England. Cool. Anyway, also, when you're getting the copy of You Are Worth It, Building Life Worth Fighting for by Kyle Carpenter. Don't worry, I got you. It's on our website.

joccopodcast.com. Click on books from the episode. Boom, it'll be right there listed. Ready for you to purchase if you want to do so. Also, Jocko's store. It's called Jocco's Tor. And this is where we get. clothing items discipline equals freedom t-shirts hats beanies hoodies people have been asking me what

deaf core stands for they get the deaf part they get the core part and I'll go into that at some point but let me just say that there's layers yes there's some layers there and this is important layers yes and this is what I'm I gathered this is what I feel I feel like we all kind of know what that means. I think people understand. We understand. From a broad perspective, what it means, but then there's layers, right? Right.

Yeah, they want to know the why. Like, why is it called this specifically and not something else? But that aside, I feel like we know. I feel like we know and we feel it. Yeah. But anyway, yes. Oh, yeah, you want DefCore shirts? Boom, jocco store.com.

Cool stuff on that. When you're representing a DefCore shirt, that's pretty much kind of, you're kind of there. You're kind of legit, yes. Like you get, you get like the full head nod. If I see you in the wild, it's like,

oh, okay. Oh, yeah, people will see other people in the wild representing and they will, they will check in with me. Let me know.

Let me know. They'll take pictures, all this stuff and, yes, approved. So what I want to start doing is if I see someone in the wild and they come up to me,

what I want to start doing is doing live Q&A, get that person one question. Because everywhere I go, you know, people are like, Hey, you know, hey, hey, what's up, talk? Hey, what's up, man? But I want to start going, okay, give me your one question.

And do right there, just let's do it. Let's answer the question, live on what you call the gram. Or you could flip it around, ask them a question. I don't know. That might freak people out. Yeah, that's true. On the spot. Yeah, you can do that.

You're right. You're completely right. I mean, some people would don't care, but some people would freak out. Yeah. So you don't want to, yeah. That's true. I agree. Low risk.

Anyway, yes, some more rash cards on there too, by the way. Some cool ones. Also, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already on your Stitcher or iTunes, I think it's something. It's important. Yeah, you can leave a review on there. Yeah.

I read the reviews. I haven't read the reviews because sometimes the reviews are so good. Like, and by good, I don't mean positive reviews. I mean, they're funny. I mean, you know what it is? The reviews have layers. The reviews have layers. layers it's kind of worth maybe I've read some of those before yeah they're always good and

they kind of crack me up so appreciate that one also don't forget about the grounded podcast I uploaded another one by I saw that Jason Gardner with one Jason Gardner and then the Warrior Kid podcast which will be released by Christmas cool I'm gonna get three possibly four done because I know people are amped and I know the warrior kids are out there going hey what's wrong with Jock what's wrong with Uncle Jake Why can't he put together another podcast? I'll tell you why. Uncle Jake's out there working.

He's out there getting after it. But he'll come back. He'll record some more podcasts. He's going to do it. And don't forget about that warrior kid soap from Irishoaks ranch.com. 100% get some. Warrior kid up there making soap.

And if you want to, then you should so that you can stay late. Dang it. Also, we have a YouTube channel. Official. It doesn't have the checkmark. I think YouTube has check marks. Oh, does it?

I'm pretty sure. We don't rate the check mark. Wait. Yeah. Maybe I'm thinking of something else. I don't think it does, bro. No, I think it does. No, I don't think it does.

Well, I'm going to look into it. Look into it. I'll go look into it. Nonetheless, checkmark, no check mark. Doesn't matter. Jock Podcast does have an official YouTube channel. It's just called Jocco Podcast. And, you know.

And we just released. Mikey and the Dragons full the entire thing you know drawings by John Bozac echo put together we'll call it dynamic video of the images and the lettering and yeah so if you want to have your kids listen to Mike in the Dragons read by Uncle Jake if you want to hear my accents if you want to hear my seven-year-old boy voice unforgettable from England or from Scotland or from Ireland Or from somewhere not America I heard that I was like that doesn't sound good

You know it was good I liked it It kept me immersed in the story we'll put it that way You see what I'm saying I should have rehearsed that more or experimented More but we I think I make up for it when I do the King's voice And when you put the reverberation on the King's voice That makes it all kind of worthwhile

I can deal with the kids Couldn't you have used some like post production to raise my voice for the little kid's voice or something. Oh, like the tone? Yeah, yeah, yeah, a pitch shifter. Yeah, that would have been nice. It said it sounds like a jock relaxing. Yeah, seven-year-old kid that has been to war.

Exactly. Very entertaining. It's essentially like an audio book with video. Yeah, it's an audio book with video. So check that out. Good one. Yes, it is on the YouTube channel. And don't forget about psychological warfare.

Yes, sir. Did I cut you off? No. We're going to talk about psychological warfare. Yeah, if you're one of those people that goes, I wish Jocko would wake me up in the morning or, oh, I wish Jock would talk to me when I want to eat a donut, or I wish Jock would talk to me when I don't want to work out.

Cool, I will talk to you. Get psychological warfare from iTunes, Google Play, MP3. And when you feel that moment of weakness, press play on your iPhone 14 or your Samsung Galaxy 98 or whatever it is. Note? Your note. I don't know. Whatever.

Press play on that thing. And you can listen to me. tell you to put the donut down. Sugar-coot it. And then we also have flip-side canvas with my brother Dakota Meyer making visual representations of the path that you can place strategically around your home office and gym to keep you on the straight and narrow. Flipsidecanvass.com.

We also have some books. We have books. First of all, Kyle Carpenter's book, you are worth it. building a life worth fighting for get this book that's all I'm going to say get this book it's awesome on top of that I have a new book coming out it's called leadership strategy and tactics it has a ton of information that you can use to take and apply to your immediate life there's no there's no pause between taking what's in this book and putting in action. Like you can do it right now. And it's also a reference book. So when you run into a

little problem and you go, man, I wish Jocko is here to tell me about what I should do here. No, no, no, you just open it up. You just open it up. You check the index and you're like, oh, what should I do about emotional arguments? Oh, there you go. Emotional arguments, page 59. What should I do? How can I improve my charisma? Oh, page 65, 66 and 213. Oh, what should I do when someone complains? Oh go go to page 195 through 196. What if I have a complex problem? Oh check page 65 all these things are just in there Yep. So there you go check out leadership strategy and tactics and look We've been through this many times before and and this is all my fault But we know that the publisher doesn't understand the pop podcast because I personally have failed to explain to them that there's people listening to this thing

podcast and that the people that listen to the podcast will want to read the book. And so when the book comes out, if you haven't ordered it yet, they're going to run out of books again. Two problems with that. Number one, you'll have to wait a long time to get it. And what's even worse than that is you might end up with a second edition. A second edition. And you notice, I can't say a dish when I say second. No, no, no. It's a second edition. It's a totally different thing. Now, if you order Now you're gonna get that first a dish, which is what you want. You don't want to be walking around. I wasn't in the game.

You might as well get, you know if some people get like a Discipline equals freedom tattoo or a good tattoo? Cool. That's cool. You're in the game. If you get a second a dish, you might as well just get a tattoo that says wasn't in the game. Got that second a dish. Hey, I just spent money on, I get books. I try and get books that are first a dish.

And like I well about face. I have a lot of copies of About Face. I think I have close to 20 copies of About Face. They're all in one bookshelf. It's awesome. But the little special ones, well, I've got a bunch of signed ones by hack. I've got the advanced readers copy. Signed by hack that was given to me at a muster by guys like, hey, I thought you might like this.

I was like, book. I don't even think he understood how much how how how how how how much you to actually look I'm a hard person to shop for yeah I'm a hard person to give anything to my wife just doesn't get me anything because he's like whatever you want you just get I mean I don't I don't sit there and think about like oh well I really wish I no no no if I want something I've got it yeah my wife's like I'm not even getting you yeah cool don't get me anything yeah just just just hang out it's all good what are you get what do you want for Christmas nothing this guy gave me that addition the

advanced readers copy unedited edition signed by David Hackworth you know what that thing is in my gun safe it's in my gun safe yeah dang literally the best gift you ever had it's I think it is well I can't think of another gift that's been better than that in my life right now I mean I'll have to review that statement sure because I'm really I haven't thought about it much but I mean it's been a long time since I was needing something that I couldn't figure out. Like, I mean, this was just, you could, if, if I just right now just said, okay, I have unlimited money and I want to get another one of those, I don't think I could find one. Yeah.

I don't think I could find one. Yeah. So anyways, I don't even know what we're talking about. But I do know this. First a dish. That's the first a dish. You want that first. So get on, get on the Amazon.

Let my publisher understand. that we need to print more. They need to print more copies. So otherwise, you're going to be late. You're going to get that second edition. You saw in the video I included the first edition. Yes, I know. Little, little, little message, little subliminal,

maybe not so subliminal message to people to get some of that first edition. All right. Also, we have Way the Warrior Kid three, where there's a will. We have Way of the Warrior Kid number one and number two, Mark's Mission. We have Miking the Dragons. Again, you know, you get the video. watch the video now that's for free YouTube now teach your kid to read using that

they can flip through the pages they can read along the pictures match it's like what an incredible way to teach a kid to read and teach them to be brave oh here's two things you can do teach your kid to read and teach your kid to be brave you're welcome Merry Christmas discipline equals freedom manual this is another one this is one of those ones where you're like hey I'm not really sure what to get this person For Christmas. Cool.

Get them to discipline equals freedom field manual. It's the book that they can put anywhere and they read two pages a day, one page a day, three pages a day, and it keeps your damn mind straight. It keeps your mind straight. Let me ask you about the field manual. The new one? No, Discipline and Freedom Manual. Black one. Black on black.

Yes. What if should you get it for someone who doesn't read? You know how people are like, oh, you got me a book. don't really read books. Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter. Because... This is like the book that they're going to read. Yeah, but what if they're like, hey, I'm not going to read it, but I do want it because

it looks cool. And on top of it, and let's face it, this is a thing. This is an actual thing where people will, like, get it just to be like, yeah, I got it. So people will see that book on their table and be like, dang, you're, whatever, you know. Here's the thing. Even a person that doesn't read, that doesn't like to read that hasn't read a book since high school. Maybe they didn't even read a book in high school.

You get them the field manual. It's a different thing. It's not even reading. It's like absorbing. First of all, it's not, it's easy to read. I mean, it's easy to read. It's not like, and you don't have to read the whole thing at once, and you don't have to read it to understand what's going.

There's nothing that needs to be explained to you. There's no, wait a second, who's this guy and what's going on? No, it doesn't happen. There's zero questions when you get done reading that book about anything. You're like, I totally get it. I know what I'm supposed to do. That's the discipline equals freedom field manual. And that's what I tried to do with leadership strategy and tactics.

Hey, look, you don't have to ask me these questions anymore because boom, here it is. Page 49. Yeah, that's learn how to deal with that problem. It's really effective, man. That's, that new one where it's like, you know, like sometimes everyone's in a great while, rarely. But it happens where I'll come in and I'll ask you like, hey, I do, I need kind of some advice right now. This is literally the book for that. Like this is Jaku's advice on all these very specific things.

And there's, it's surprisingly short book given how much. many things are in there. Yes, because I didn't want to put any fluff in there. Yeah, there's no fluff in no fluff. Yeah. I just wanted pragmatic solutions to problems. I'm reading a book right now that's name will not be what do you call it remains to be why why it or whatever anyway I'm reading the book and there's fluff in it. I think it's normal to have fluff. I knew you're going to talk smack. I thought you're going to say something positive and I was like, oh, tell the book. But if you're just saying there's a fluff in it. Yeah, I'm talking it. I'm throwing it under the bus for a reason. Okay. You're still reading it, though, apparently.

Oh, yeah. It's a good book, but it just happens to be fluffing it. There's like three story examples for the little thing that they're talking. You know, there's a concept and they have, you know, stories some of the time. There's like three stories. Oh, yeah, you know, kind of like reading the concept and about the concept is enough. Like there's like three stories. So kind of.

Extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership has two stories per concept. Okay. Well, well, you might be brushing up again. The thing is those stories are. Oh, you call me fluff. You're fluffy guy. Lafabin to me, just writing fluff. I would not consider that to be fluff.

But to me... Because in my opinion, we have a military story, and then we have a civilian story, and then you have the principal. So you need to see the application in two different perspectives. Well, that obviously makes sense. I'm saying in this specific one,

and a part of this is me, too, by the way, like it's fluff, because I feel like it's fluff. What if someone reads a concept in this particular book that I'm reading? And they're like, I get it, but I'd like to hear an example. Hear the example. You're like, I get it, but what about in the real world?

You know, maybe they need the three examples. I get it, man. It's good. But to me, I got it when they explained it. And then I read a story. I'm like, cool. I see it in action. Did you feel that way about extreme ownership?

Well, you know, I think that the application to business part of it, since I was not in the military, made it landed harder with me, I think. Okay. So in my opinion. Now, did I? So what's your fluff rating for extreme ownership of that got in your leadership? There's no fluff rating. Because I don't think there's any fluff in those. I don't think so either.

I think we're explaining the concepts in a way that people can relate to them and understand them. Yes. I agree. Okay. So whoever this guy that wrote that, maybe it's just that extra story. Maybe if Leif and I would have written a sports example. What if we did military, civilian, and then random sports example? If I.

That would have been a bit much. Okay. See? That's what that's what you want. Nothing can be added. nothing can be taken away. There you go. Dicotomy of leadership and extreme ownership.

So the leadership strategy and tactics, one, to me, has like way less, way less. Where I understand the concept and I'm like, okay. And when there's a story, when there's like an example, whatever, used in action and whatever, I'm like, cool, good, I got it. And then you're just moving on. You're not like, okay, I got to read like yet another one, yet another one. I get it, man. Yeah, I'm looking at like some of the chapters in here are two pages long.

I'm looking for one of the ones that's like one page long because there are. There's some that are, hey, it doesn't take a bunch of information. Don't dig in. You know, like these are straightforward. Some take them a little bit more time, but I actually give pragmatic, like how to talk, how to actually say something to someone. Hey, don't say this because it's going to offend them. And they're not going to listen to you, say this.

Because it'll win them over and they'll start to listen to what you have to say. And then you'll make a positive influence. Actually give that level of detail of leadership instruction. So that's that. And leadership strategy and tactics, field manual, FM 02, dichotomy of leadership, extreme ownership, all those books, get them. On top of that, we have echelon front, which is our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership.

Go to echelonfront.com. if you want us to come and help your business team or organization get better at leading. And once you get better at leading, you get better at everything across the board. EF Online. This is our online training program because I, me, the team at Eschlon Front. We can't always train everyone all the time. We don't have the capacity. So we decided to make an online training program interactive.

What's another word to describe? It's not just interactive. It's immersive. Because you're going to go into scenarios in there and solve leadership problems and then get critiqued on how you did. So it's the most advanced form of online learning. Go to eFonline.com to check that out. And then we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. So these are two businesses that we've started to take military.

personnel and get them into civilian jobs where they can use their leadership skills in the civilian sector and put positive influence into companies because Leif, me and the rest of the echelon front team get asked all the time, hey, I really love what you guys did for us, but where can we hire people that know what you know? It's like, oh, I'll tell you where. EF. Overwatch and EF Legion. So go to EFoverwatch.com or EFlegion.com. Whether you're a military person getting out or you're a company that needs solid people that understand extreme ownership that understand the dichotomy leadership that understand the principles we talk about that's where you get them you need leadership at your team go to eF overwatch go to

to eF legion.com and we also have musters coming up we're going to announce the date soon but that is a live event if you go to extreme ownership.com and check those out you can come see the entire echelon front team And if you still want to communicate with us, even after listening to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of this podcast, you can do it. We are on the interwebs. Kyle Carpenter is on Facebook at William Kyle Carpenter.

And he's on Instagram and Twitter at Chicks Dig Scars, C-H-I-K-S-Digs Scars. and on the interwebs, Kyle Carpenter, sorry, William Kylecarpenter.com. And of course, we are also on the interwebs on Twitter, Instagram, and on that fish,

I'ma, Boca, Bo. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocka Willink. And once again, thanks to Kyle Carpenter for joining us here today and for passing on the lessons that he was taught

through pain and through suffering and through leadership and brotherhood and through faith and through family. And it's an honor to have to be able to talk to these heroes and to the rest of those men and women that have worn the cloth of the nation and that currently do so. Thank you for keeping evil at bay around the world and to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all the first responders out there thank you for what you do to protect us and keep us safe here at home we are grateful for your service as well and to everyone else out there the root word of motivate is modus and it

means move and that's what you need to do. Staying motivated means keep moving. When things are bad, don't stop, don't let up, don't allow yourself to give in. Instead, put your head down, put one foot in front of the other, keep moving and keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.