Jocko Podcast - 220: Seeing Death From Close up. What We Learn from Mortuary Affairs. With Chris Bussler

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:16 - Chris Bussler, Mortuary Affairs.  No Tougher Duty. No Greater Honor. 3:36:27 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:42:31 - How to stay on the PATH. 4:03:53 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 220 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Three hours passed by slowly, and the terrible news had been heralded by the few frustrated medical staff members walking out of the tent stressed out. Three of the wounded did not make it. And the word was passed that it was time for us to perform our job. and the sinking feeling in the pit of my belly fell into the sea. We tripped over ourselves trying to get up.

Several of our Marines volunteered as litter bearers, and several of us quickly cleared our sleeping area to make room for the processing. Our sleeping area was out in the open, and people who were passing by could see in through the camo netting. So a couple of our Marines were assigned to each end to ensure that, was maintained the only sounds that could be heard were the not so distant generator and the swaying of the camo netting in the light breeze We stood in earnest under incandescent lights watching our fellow m a Marines carrying the remains of our fallen brothers In and lowered them on to the sandy floor of our sleeping area

It was out of reverence that no one spoke We each intently watched the actions of our MA Marines as they began their work. The slow sound of a heavy zipper being opened on each bag was deafening. And the confused emotions began to whirl inside my soul. The female chaplain assigned to the STP followed the procession in and watched our Marines begin the processing. And she leaned over to whisper to one of our teammates, You guys have a very tough job.

Very tough. The first was a Hispanic staff sergeant who was assigned to a tank battalion and had succumbed to his wounds sustained in a firefight outside of Baghdad. The second was a Caucasian Lance Corporal, the same one who, three hours prior, I had helped carry off the helicopter. His fingers were still wrenched together, just as he had done earlier, as he writhed in pain. And the tracks of his tears were still visible. when the zipper of the third bag was undone. It revealed an individual whose whole head had been bandaged in thick, bloody gauze. I thought to myself, how can that guy breathe through all that gauze?

Then it dawned on me, and I felt stupid. He was dead. And the medical staff had bandaged his head to keep all the pieces in. One by one, the paperwork was filled out. The personal effects were cataloged, and the transportation was arranged to take our fallen south to Kuwait. We had completed our work, but there was still something missing. We wanted to do more for these guys. Someone had asked the chaplain to lead us in prayer, and she did.

So under the glow of the incandescent lights and swaying camo netting, all 23 of us stood in a circle around our brothers and bowed our heads in solemn prayer. I felt bad to know that a world away from here, the families of these men were praying that those who lay before us were safe that night, and it ripped out my heart to know the truth. I hope that God could provide them comfort and strength when the terrible news traveled to meet them unaware. The chaplain quietly knelt in front of each stretcher and performed a last rites prayer according to each of their individual denominations,

and she put the sign of the cross on their foreheads with ash, and it meant the world to me to witness it. Our volunteers transported their remains to the flight line to be evacuated out of Iraq and to Kuwait by C-130 Hercules cargo plane. From there, they would be placed inside an aluminum mobile coffin called a transfer case, and an American flag would be placed onto it before they would chase the sun across the globe

and land in the United States. It was a tough night. The first time I had ever seen deceased servicemen. And as much as I had prepared myself mentally and physically for the job, I had never prepared myself emotionally. I kept thinking about those guys. The scenes kept playing over and over in my head. I felt terrible for them and for their families.

What a huge loss. I couldn't sleep. So I sat on a broken piece of concrete, stared off into nothing, and smoked my cigarettes down to the filter all alone. And that is an excerpt from a book, a book called No Tougher Duty, No Greater Honor by Gunnery Sergeant L. Christian Bustler. And you've heard me say before that the nature of war is. death it's one of the things I said when I retired from the Navy and I get it that

there are an infinite number of other dynamics in war there's there's strategy and tactics there's manpower and logistics there's hearts and minds there's technology and weapons there's leadership there's human nature and the list goes on and on but one thing is always isn't in war and that is death. But death does not end on the battlefield. And in fact, the finality of one life in combat unleashes a chain of events that profoundly and forever impacts countless other lives.

It impacts the members of a unit, the unit who lost their comrades in arms, who still must carry on with their mission. And that's an incredibly heavy impact. But on top of that, and even heavier, it impacts the mothers and fathers. And the husbands and wives and the sons and daughters. The families and friends of the fallen death has a monumental impact. And in war, those of us who are in it experience death more than normal civilians do. Most of us from the military have been to more funerals and memorial services than we care to remember.

And depending on your specific job inside the military, you may experience death more or less often. If you're an infantry soldier, then you're going to experience more death than a supply clerk. But there's one military job that deals with death more than any other, and that is mortuary affairs. those military members who are charged with handling our fallen service members. And that was gunnery sergeant bustler's duty. And as the title of the book indicates, there is no tougher duty. And there is no greater honor than ensuring our heroic service members who have given their last full measure are sent home with as much care. and respect and honor as they deserve.

It is an honor to have Gunny Bustler here with us now to share some of his experiences, what he saw, what he went through, and what he learned. Gunny, thanks for coming on, man. Thank you so much for having me. It is a deep and profound honor to be able to, to sit here at this table with you guys and bring to light an MOS that's very not well known and to bring the light to different sacrifices of the guys who did this job.

You know, as I was writing the part I was thinking about the fact that who deals the most with death. And obviously you think of an infantry soldier, you know, you're going to see a lot of it and then I thought about medical you know obviously the medics the cormon the the doctors the surgeons that are out there they're going to see a ton of it too but the the big difference is they get a they get to see the other side of the spectrum they're saving people's lives you know they're there there's someone that that they can pull through and i would only think that that would counteract the difference between being in mortuary affairs where you don't see any of that. There's nothing motivating to do with our job because if you work in the medical field,

you do your best to ensure that guy will get home and have a normal life. You've really with the grunts, you know, you train, train, train, try to prepare yourself. But for us, we never know what we're going to get until, you know, we open the bag. And then we have to wear so many different hats, you know, between processing the remains and then we're dealing with and working with their unit members and taking, you know, their statements. So you have to play the role of a funeral director and it's so hard to do it to remove yourself from that because you may recognize that person you're working on from the Chow Hall. or you know that guy, you know, and that had to happen to us several times.

And that's where it really, really sucks. So let's start off and figure out how you got there. Okay. So you were born where, in Ohio? Oh, I was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Okay. And your dad was a vet? He was Air Force.

Okay. I grew up in the Air Force, traveled all over the world, spent 70 years. years in Japan. When we left there, we went and visited some friends over in Clark Air Force base over in Philippine, Subic Bay, went back to Thailand. So how old are you at these times? Oh, wow. So your dad was in the Air Force. You were a kid. You were stationed to Japan. You were traveling around. You were a military brat, as they called. I thought everybody was that. I thought everybody, to be an American, you had to be in the military. And I had no idea that there was a

civilian world until I came back when we're 10 years old. And we moved straight into South Carolina. And I'm like, wow, there's actually people who don't, you know, run and work out. What was your job? What was your dad's job in the Air Force? He worked POL. So he refueled airplanes. He spent three tours in the Vietnam War where he met and married my mom. But back then, he was making, you know, he said he used to make napalm and stuff like that. And your mom's tie. Yep. Yep. Yep. They met and married, and she immigrated here, had me and my two brothers. And so where'd you do your growing up?

So when you moved back to the States, where'd you move to? We moved South Carolina for like three or four years. Then we moved to Illinois for a year, and then we moved to Ohio. My dad found a job as a contractor at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He was there for a few years. They lost the contract during the Clinton years, and then he got a job as a mailman. and I went to high school out there, graduated, and that's what led me to joining the reserves,

the Marine Reserves, because I traveled as a kid, and I never had friends beyond three years, four years, and I didn't want that. I finally had a place where I had, you know, I loved my hanging out with my friends. And so after I joined the Reserves, they were like, hey. So how did you pick the Marine Corps? Because I grew up in the Air Force.

And we would always watch the war movies, platoon, and, you know, and full metal jacket. And we're like, oh, man, that's awesome. How cool to be to go shoot a 50 cow. How cool it would be to, you know, they shoot him 16s all day long. And, you know, and by the time. What did your dad think when you joined the Marine Corps? He didn't like it. Was he didn't like the Marine Corps?

Did he not like anything? Or was it just, hey, I did this so you don't have to? No. It was, he knew that it was something I wanted to do, but he was very cautious about it. He said, when I was over in Vietnam and in Thailand, I remember seeing a lot of those body bags getting loaded up on the helicopters and the planes,

and I don't want you becoming one of them. And I told him, I was like, Dad, if I died doing something that wanted to do, I died doing something I wanted to do. And so he signed for me. I signed when I was 17 years old and I knew I wanted to go in. I never thought we would ever go to war. I just wanted to go.

What year was it were you? 1992. 1999. Did you just graduate from high school or did you go in between your junior and your senior year to boot camp? No, I signed when I was still in my senior year. And then I was in a debt program and I went in November of 1992 and graduated February of 93. And you enlisted in the reserves. And so when you enlisting the reserves, you go to boot camp

and then you go to AI or school of infantry? Yeah, school of infantry. Back then we did a Marine Combat Training, which is a four-week condensed course of, you know, we're going to do humps and we're going to go out and shoot things. And then after that, that's when we separate the people who were doing like admin jobs, they would go away, you know, and they would go do their other school. But we would do the C-bag drag from one side of,

Geiger to the other side of Geiger. And then, you know, from there we started our infantry. So I joined up as an 0-3-11 rifleman. I didn't really understand what it was when I was a high school. You know, I was like, oh, I got to go shoot things. I didn't really know about all the running and all the, you know, 100-pound packs and, you know, going out for 27 miles and stuff like that. But I was like, I want to shoot a 50-cow. All right, cool. All right. Now you got to clean it. Yeah, they never put that in any of the advertisements, do they, cleaning weapons. Fun to shoot, a pain to clean. Did you play any sports that got you ready for this?

I didn't. We traveled so much as a kid, and I never really stayed in one spot for too long. And growing up and having a mother that's Thai, I felt more trying to find my connection to my roots. And I grew up knowing about my uncle who fought. in Muay Thai. And so by the time we settled down in Ohio, met some people in the Thai Air Force, just before Moytai was anything. And I started going in the backyard. He started training me on some stuff that I had no idea. It was so cool. And then from there, I just went straight in the Marine Corps. The only thing that I would really say that would prepare me for it was bailing

hay, you know, pails of hay, throwing up from sun up to sundown. And the guy was driving the tractor was a former Marine. He was like, you're going to work faster than this. And then so you get done with boot camp and SOI. And what does that take? Like six months, something like that? Yeah, something like that. And then you're done with your Marine Corps indoctrination, right?

And now it's back to the civilian sector. Now it's back to civilian sector. I checked into my unit, which was an MP company. they had a small detachment of reinforced, which was, you know, basically most of us were grunts. And at the time, they were like, hey, you're something called Graves Platoon. And I'm like, okay, what does that mean? You're supposed to handle remains in war. I'm like, well, I didn't join up for that.

I wanted to be a grunt. And I was like, well, I might as well stay here because we're not going to go to war. You know, I had a beater car anyway, and if I was to drive anywhere else, it would, you know, it was good luck getting there. So, yeah, I stayed with that unit. Graves Blatoon eventually turned into mortuary affairs, and that's how I ended up being in that unit. And then what were you doing for a civilian job? I bounced around from being like mall security, and then I worked for a couple department stores. I ended up working, you know, for Lowe's security, and then I applied for every police job that I could.

So Dayton, PD, Englewood, and Beaver Creek, and the next thing I know, my dad said, hey, the post office is going to be hiring. I'm like, well, sure, I'll go ahead and take that test. And I got a call back from them. I'm like, awesome. I get to work with my dad. Because me and my dad, when we were growing up, you know, he was always yelling at me. I was the knucklehead, you know, not listening to him. I'm going to sneak out on my window, go hang out by my friends kind of thing at night.

And here, I got to work with my dad and I got to know him in a totally different light, you know, more of a man to man and not as a father and son. And we became really good friends. And I really, really loved hanging out with him and going to work with him in the morning and waiting on him at night and stuff. He'd always have a cup of coffee waiting for me in the morning, and my mom would fix me a, you know, a little bit of. breakfast sandwich and aluminum foil and so it's really cool and yeah I really look fondly upon those days and then you're doing um you missed the first goal for and so what's your drill consist of one weekend a month two weeks in the summertime one week in a month just as advertised right um and every once in a while they might have another school pop up and about the time i

picked up corporal sergeant I was like yeah I want to do two of these a year one do get my official like sergeant's course out of the way but then I want to go out to Bridgeport at California and you know snow ski and climbing and I love that stuff go to Norway and go out there and see the Aurora Borealis and all that I was like man this is so awesome I love this stuff did they train you in any of the Graves platoon stuff at this time no this is funny nobody updated it nobody updated the manuals from World War II. So we were practicing stuff that were World War II techniques. All the stuff, the diagrams on the inside was like an old airplane, like a bomber or something.

If they would crash, you know, you would have these big pieces and stuff. And, you know, and they'll talk about if you clean out a tank, which back then, Sherman tanks, all steel, they blow up stuff. Everything's usually contained on there. But, you know, and that's how we thought it was going to be. But it was mostly focusing on infantry skills. So we would do a lot of patrolling. And we would patrol into an area. That's when we were set up a perimeter. And then we would do a quick cleanup. Somebody's like, all right, you three guys, you're dead.

Get on the litters. We're going to carry you back now. That kind of thing. We really didn't know how to prepare for war and do our jobs. Nobody had seen anything like this since Vietnam, but nobody wrote it down either. That was the 90s, man. That was the 90s. You were just trying to look cool, you know.

So let's get to where things start to change. I'm going to the book here. Your postal supervisor, you know, you're out walking your route, and your postal supervisor drives up, and he says, hey, Chris, your Marine unit just called the office. and they needed to call them back as soon as possible. I took the call, and they sounded pretty serious, buddy. Get in.

We need to get you to the nearest phone as soon as we can. He said with genuine concern on his face. Then you say here, the Marine Corps had never called the post office looking for me before, and the latest and greatest from the airwaves had not been good. This had to be serious business. The United States and Iraq had been playing a silly game of posturing for years now, with the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City a little over a year ago and the Afghan war raging on,

all this just might have been coming to a head in another region of the world. So you must have been hearing about other units getting called up. Yeah. And had to know what was going down. We had the 26th Musok, Marine Expeditionary Unit, come over to Dayton, Ohio. And they were staying out Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and they were flying to 53s and 46.

all around, and they were practicing, clearing out buildings and stuff, and the newspaper said, we're preparing for Baghdad, we're preparing to going in Iraq. And I thought, well, if anything was to happen, I'll be getting called up to that, you know. But that was kind of, after they left, nobody started, you know, nobody's talking about it anymore. So, hey, go back to delivering mail until I get my phone call and I always dreamt about it and how it could happen and stuff, but how many times have they said, oh, prepare for this? Oh, no, stand down. You know, like, hey, we're going to go up to Vietnam and help clean. No, we're not. Oh, we're going to go to Kosovo and help, no, no, we're not. And then finally we're doing this. We're not going to get called up. They're

not going to need this. So the call comes. You find out that you're actually getting it activated. and you say here I was excited, sad, overwhelmed, unsure, motivated, and proud all at the same time. That's a pretty good combination of emotions. I knew that this day was the first baby step in a wild odyssey that would take my life for a whirl and in the end leave me a very different man than I was before that phone call. I wasn't stupid or blind to the prospect that in the very near future, a father might lose a son, a wife might lose a husband, a daughter might lose a father, and a daydream of better days may never be fulfilled.

Because at this point, you're married and you have a daughter. And how long had you been married for at this point? Oh, man. Over two years. Okay. Young dad. Young dad, you know, first real job. It just got a house, you know, and just loving life, you know.

I didn't think, you know, anything was ever going to happen. I was going to spend my 20-plus years of the post office. And that was it and be happily married and white picket fences and dogs and, you know, mom's apple pie kind of thing, you know. Well, you signed that dotted line. I know. You signed that dotted line. You say here in the grand structure of the Marine Corps, our reserve unit was like no other. We were a hodgepodge collection of different mission occupational specialties, MOSs.

Most of us came straight out of infantry school holding such titles as riflemen, machine guns. gunners and assault men. Others were administrative Marines, motor transport, map makers, and aircraft repairmen. There were a healthy mix of Marines who had prior service and those like me who did not. College students made up a good portion of the platoon working on medical, political science, and criminal justice degrees. There were many of us blue-collar guys in the mix, having jobs anywhere from a train conductor and plumber to law enforcement officers. Within our ranks, we were 33 strong. Outside of the remote chance of participating in the recovery of lost remains in Vietnam or some sunny tropical island in the South Pacific, none of us ever wanted

to be activated to do the mission in a wartime capability. We were proud to be the only mortuary affairs platoon in the entire Marine Corps, even though in reality we really didn't know what that duty would demand of us or what kind of toll it would take. You guys were the only mortuary affairs platoon in the entire Marine Corps. So it was a guarantee you guys were getting called up. And then back in the 90s, they were talking about, you know, getting rid of us. All up until our lieutenant colonel decided to change the name and try to make it sexier now. You know, and he was able to save that. Convinced enough people over at headquarters Marine Corps that we should save this little group.

You know what he knew? That apparently other people that know is that the nature of war is death. Yeah. And you're going to have to deal with this. Because if you think about what would be going on if you didn't have this, and what knowledge would be lost and who's going to handle these. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what happens in peacetime. Yeah. People forget that, you know, even preparing for something like this, we would always come out here to Camp Pendleton, and we would get ready to get trained, and they were like, oh, what do you guys do? Mortuary Affairs. So what do you guys do?

We handle deceased. No, you guys are going to be working at the kitchen. You guys are going to be KP. You guys going to do the mess. duty for two weeks. No, we're not. So we'll go out and get lost. We go out and take our stuff out to out to the beach, get lost, hook up with a recon unit that was doing night inserts on Zodiacs, and that's what we did for two weeks, man. But yeah, everybody back then was, oh, nobody's going to die. We won't even need you. I mean, look at the Gulf War. No, no, no. That's how it actually

started when we actually got deployed, too. That was dead. the attitude. So you know you go through some stuff about what you guys did when you guys got called up and I have to say I always have to say this I'm not reading the whole book and so this might jump around a little bit or you might think oh what was that well it's because I'm not reading the whole book you got to buy the book yourself that's what you need to do to get these to get this entire story and this is a this is a big book and there's all kinds of details that don't go go into so I'm just covering some of it So if it jumps a little bit, that's why.

And I'm going to make a jump right now to this. As we circled about in a holding pattern high above the sands of Kuwait, curious Marines gazed out upon our new reality. This was to be our new home away from home, and the lives that we knew were now over. Sweat, toil, and hard work were the only promises that the Marine Corps afforded us, and we reveled at the very thought of it. We were the Marines of MA. We were from Dayton, Ohio, and we were from,

were eager for the chance to prove ourselves on active duty. We were eager to prove ourselves in war. That's, that's the attitude. And there's, you go through some great stuff in here, just talking about, and, you know, talking about what you got, what your guy's attitude was like. And it's exactly what you think everyone's attitude would be like in the Marine Corps, in the Army, in special operations. Like, we, we've been training this stuff for our whole lives and we're ready to go. And actually, I was going to say that there was probably no one in your platoon that had ever been in any kind of combat, but you actually had a few guys that had been in the first Gulf War. Thank God we had them.

Yeah. Because my first deployment to Iraq, there was zero experience, like zero combat experience, which was pretty normal for the SEAL teams because, well, we hadn't been an award in whatever, 20 years. And so there was a couple guys that had action in Somalia, a couple guys that had action in Panama that weren't in my platoon. But most guys were just fresh. And then you think about even guys that were in the first Gulf War, the chances that they were in some of those scenarios that had, like, legitimate combat, A, the chances of that were very small. And B, even if they were in that, it was like isolated incidents, you know? Even guys in the SEAL team that were in the Gulf War that got in firefights, it was isolated.

Like, they got into a firefight. Right. It wasn't sustained combat operations. that obviously we were about to move into as a nation. We had a very good healthy mix of guys who served. Back then, during the Gulf War, they were BFCs and Lance Corporals, and they were all infantry guys. So, you know, we got guys from being mortarmen to machine gunners,

and, you know, we got guys who were supply guys. So we kind of got the idea of, you know, more of a bigger picture of what to expect as far as how the living conditions were there. What was the mindset, you know, know, of being, because most of us, we're just, hey, we're finally on active duty. This is so freaking cool, you know, and, hey, let's go ahead and fill sandbags. I love filling sandbags, you know, because at home we don't fill sandbags. But, you know, we were very lucky, very, very lucky to have the people that we did. And thank God we had them just because, yes, they had that

leadership experience, but also they prepared us very well to handle the pressures that we're about to come. Jumping ahead a little bit. Only 22 miles from the Iraqi border, Camp Coyote was a gigantic U.S. military installation of open desert terrain, populated by small encampments named after different Marine Corps battles, which dotted the vast open Kuwaiti landscape. From California to Ireland to Cyprus to Kuwait International Airport,

to Highway 80, to Camp. Coyote and now finally our long trip of 30 plus hours ended on Camp Tarwa. We were exhausted but still excited enough to check out our new digs. We quickly unloaded our gear off the truck and we were directed to our assigned white tent just like the ones at the airport. It was hard to believe that we were actually in Kuwait standing on the line against a despotic dictator. Somewhere across these desert sands, he was waiting for us and by all accounts with weapons of mass destruction. was only going to be a matter of time before something big happened

that would change the whole world. Only time would tell what would happen next. Now, of course, people like to talk now about the weapons of mass destruction, which, you know, there was isolated things that were found, but, you know, he never attacked U.S. forces or coalition forces with weapons of mass destruction, but you guys had to think

that was coming. Oh, we knew it was coming. and we already resigned ourselves off. If it was coming, that most of us wouldn't make it. When the shooting started, they pushed us up there. Each of our trucks out of the three units, the three teams that we had, each of us had 1,200 remains pouches or body bags. They're expecting us to fight and keep on fighting until we died

in the other two units that we trained before we left the U.S. those guys were supposed to come up and clean us up with another 1,200 remains, you know, body bags after them. So they were expecting hellfire. And we're the first time that we were honestly looking at combat resembling World War I stuff, but with worse stuff on the menu. You know, VX nerve gas. Yeah.

I mean, all the prospects was just... It was dire. It was bad. You say here, we moved from Camp Tarwa to Camp Iwojima within our first week. And soon after we arrived, we were notified that every unit on Iwo Jima had to build at least one bunker as a defense against Saddam Hussein's ballistic missile inventory. Within our first week of being on Iwo Jima, we are assigned to our area to build one scud bunker. Our days consisted of filling, throwing, and neatly stacking 35 to 40 pound sandbags from first. light until late evening all by hand.

We were reservists. It was a brand new thing for us to do, and we turned everything into a game and had fun with it. We would laugh, joke, and sing-sons as we accomplished our task, and the senior leadership of the active-duty platoons watching us would stand in awe of how well we worked together as we performed our medial tasks such as sandbag duty. On occasion, I heard a few of them ask our leaders what their secret was to get all of us troops to be so motivated.

Gunry Sergeant Ballantine. I say that right? Ballantine. Valentine would only shrug and smile and I had to put that in there and there's so many things you know again I got to select what I'm going to read out of here But just that attitude of we're going to have a good time absolutely is the best attitude turn everything into a game and this roll with it You get your kind of first kind of your first taste of what's to come when a black hawk crash occurred and You say here it was quite a trek while riding across the desert in our home vs, but we finally arrived and set eyes upon the crash scene.

It was nothing short of shocking. The helo was spread across the distance of a football field and literally thousands of twisted, burnt, and melted pieces. From our vantage point, the scene looked so much more complex than anything our World War II era manuals had explained recovery scenes to be. There was no way that all that classroom work and in-field training could have ever replicated the amount of destruction that lay upon the field. Now, this is interesting, but since this was considered a peacetime accident, the National

Transportation Safety Board had the lead on the investigation, not the military, and they dictated who was allowed on the scene and who wasn't. And so you guys show up, and they kind of let you guys do, like help them, help them out. Exactly. We're with their manpower. Yeah. So you say, we found several. portions of human remains scattered throughout, as well as a few personal items such as fragments of a watch,

we kept finding a hard, glass-like substance resembling thick, burned sugar or melted glass in the sand. This substance was found in large pools and spread throughout the crash site, and we had to chip away at it so we can continue to search for pieces of human remain fragments and pertinent identification media. Once asked, the NTSB agent informed us that the glass-like substance was actually pools of blood that had been exposed to high heat and then crystallized. It was something that we never had been taught, and all the literature did not mention how bodily fluids such as blood could caramelize and resemble burned sugar or melted glass.

It also didn't mention that when sections of the helo burned or melted, they can resemble bone or burned flesh. The most valuable lesson that I learned that day was how to use an everyday item such as a screwdriver to tell if questionable items were indeed human remains versus burned metal, insulating foam, or melted plastics and silicon. Just tap the item with a screwdriver and one can feel the difference. This was definitely something that was not taught or even mentioned. And one day in the future, this new technique would prove to be very handy.

So what is that, what is that, what's the difference? So you come across some fragment and you want to know if it's human remains or if it's part of the, Aircraft. These vehicles, helicopters, there's so many components that are made with all these different composite materials and plastics and rubbers and, you know, metals that they all look the same. They all look like human remains that are burned up and mangled. And it's very, very hard to tell the difference. I never knew that until we worked with these gentlemen. They pulled out a screwdriver and they showed us how to do it.

And, yeah, just like I said in there, you can feel how, if you tap it, because if it's like, like I can't, you know, you could feel that, all right, that's a solid piece. But if you tap it's something that's burnt flesh, it has its own kind of makeup to it. And you could tell. Because, I mean, when these catastrophic scenes are like this, you literally are looking at millions and millions of pieces. And to narrow things down, that was just a thing. the trick they showed it. And I've never seen anything like that before.

And we were very, very fortunate to work with those guys. So you guys are in Kuwait, and obviously this whole time there's the tension. We're waiting. You're waiting. Not knowing what's going to happen. And one night you're asleep, and I'm going back to the book. I heard the shuffle of boots scraping the loose sand against the plywood floor, and it caught my attention. But I kept my eyes closed just in case it wasn't for me.

I heard a flick of a flashlight being turned on a normally a normal nightly occurrence in the of the fire watch waking up his relief for duty I heard a cot squeak as the fire watch was trying to wake someone sergeant bustler the whisper seemed too loud against the quiet of the dark tent I opened my eyes and found the beam of flashlight shining in my face and another MA Marine three cots down over here webster what's up man We are going to war bus President Bush just told Saddam That him and his sons have 48 hours to get out of his country Or we will forcefully remove him He excitedly whispered those words

But it seemed as if he had yelled it out for everyone to hear Because he said all the key words That made everyone's ears perk up out of a deep sleep So there you go And a little while later You know that the announcement comes in the loud announcement come in. You know, hey, somebody turn on the fucking lights.

Wake up. Wake the fuck up. I don't care what unit you belong to. This shit applies to you. The president of the United States has just spoken. And he's given Saddam Hussein and his son's 48-hour deadline to pack their shit and get out of the fucking country. If they do not comply, the president has given us the green light to evict their asses. So that's it.

Now you guys know. Continuing on our unit divided up into three official teams. We received the final gear check. The extra ammo had been disseminated. But there was a giant deficiency that was blatant and everyone saw it. We had no vehicles to transport us north. We had no night vision goggles to see in the dark. And we had no crew served weapons to set up proper defensive positions.

The entire Marine Corps was going to war and no one had thought to give us bodybaggers the needed assets to support them. So no night vision? Nothing. No vehicles. Nothing. We were literally begging. people as people were gearing up they're loading up their vehicle they're you know everybody's loading up you know ammo water chow and everything high-fiving each other you know hugging and

here we are staring at everybody you know sitting on the bench you know waiting for every hey can me please go hey guys you know we like to play too luckily there was some uh maneuvering going on going back to the major in the gunny the major and gunny ballanty time finagled a deal with the camp commandant back at Iwo Jima, so Colonel Higgins is giving us three five tons with trailers. It took a while, but our three vehicles rolled up, and each of our teams strapped our packs onto the outside and hurriedly prepared our areas in the bed of the trucks.

And again, jumping forward. The convoy headed north on the highway, past the Toyota trucks with large machine guns mounted in the back of the Kuwaiti police. We made our way into the desert, past Kuwaiti T-72 tanks patrolling their side of the Iraqi border, And after several miles, we arrived at our destination. The sun was beginning its trek toward the far horizon. And as far as my eyes could see, there were military trucks and Humvees all spread out with hundreds of yards of yards in between them.

Ballantines team three truck sat about 200 yards away, and I could see them digging in. All right, guys, Sergeant Davis spoke up. We are now well within, well inside Iraqi artillery range. We need to immediately dig skirmish holes to sleep in and change. over into our mop suits make sure that you keep your gas mask on you at all times because we don't know when the Iraqi army will start hitting us with gas Orient your holes north is that way and remember where everybody is do not get out of your holes unless you absolutely have to and there's 100% light discipline because light travels out here and we don't want to give the Iraqi something a shoot out good to go good let's get it done So you're putting your mop suits on which is your chemical biological radiological protection allegedly suits.

I always thought to myself, how is this thing going to stop anything from going from, I mean, you don't, it's, it's just like a jacket with some charcoal in it. Yeah. Some activated charcoal.

Some pants with activated charcoal. You're wearing your regular boots. I guess we had boot covers too. I did one op where we did it. We were hitting a suspected weapons of mass destruction site. And so we went in mop level four, Gas masks on Wow boots the whole nine yards gloves

We were not as effective as we should be I can tell you that And I was putting that thing going You know how is it's just it's just You're putting on a pair of pants and a shirt Not like some airtight thing No not at all It doesn't make any sense when you're putting it on

So I don't have a lot of confidence on those things But like I said It's interesting that you know The quote that you give from Sergeant Davis is is we don't know when the Iraqi army will start to hit us with gas. It wasn't like if they will. It's like when.

Yep. We fully expected it. Jumping forward, under the pitch black sky of a Kuwaiti night, I finally surrendered my conscience to slumber. I no longer feared the unknown. I was willing to accept my fate as it came. It was time to prove ourselves

and rid the world of a monster. Next chapter is called Into the Breach. Holy shit. Look at all the impacts up there. Corporal Kaler, am I saying that right? Corporal Kaler said, I almost fell asleep until I heard the jets flying over. God damn, brother, we are at war now.

This shit is for real. We are at fucking war. The morning crept in. And then it comes, gas, gas, gas. Oh my God, fuck. The other trucks, 100 yards from us screamed out. I closed my eyes, held my breath, instantly reached down for my gas mask. My adrenaline shot through the freaking roof.

Did the bastards actually drop gas on us? What we thought was a fast time to put a gas mask on back in Iwo Jima now had just been beat. We rushed putting on our mop suits, cinching down the Velcro straps around the rubber boots and around the wrists. The black rubber gloves came on last and suddenly I could feel the warmth of the sun soaking through the rubber suits infused with charcoal lining. That gives it away right there. The Velcro straps around the, like that's supposed to help you? You know, it just doesn't seem to make sense going forward. It was a false alarm, one among many that day.

As soon as All Clear was sounded and we could hear the rest of the Marines down from us carry out the order, gas, gas, gas would be sounded again. It repeated itself and became an all-day game. As soon as we opened an MRE for Chow, the alarm would be sounded and we had to suit up. When the All Clear came, it was sounded once more. I started to think that maybe I shouldn't have been eating my open. MRE. Literally, as soon as one side would be saying all clear, the other side would be saying gas, gas, gas.

And it was just chasing each other all day long. And it would be got stupid, you know. But we found out later on was they were monitoring the Iraqi scud missiles. And whenever they flipped the radar on so they can get prepared to launch, they would call a gas attack. Got it. And so it was literally somebody up there was flipping off and flipping on, flipping on, you know. And as far as I know, from my position, you know, they didn't send any.

But it was very, very annoying all day long. Yeah. And the reason they have to flip those things on and off is they flip them on so they can kind of see where they're shooting them and prep them. And so I'm sure. And then as soon as you do that, you know, Americans are going to bomb. Exactly. Bomb you big time. So that's, I'm guessing what that's what it was.

Although I guess Scud's just surfaced air. You could have it pre-dialed in it. Maybe you don't need to give a signal. Who knows? But that's the kind of thing that happens in the military. You don't know. There's just things that are going on that you don't fully know. Continuing on, everything that we had trained for and been in preparation for was this exact moment.

We'd honed our skills, sharpened our mind, strength, and our bodies and prepared our spirits for this fight. We had committed our lives to the winds of fate. Our futures were now uncertain, but our determination and resolve would see us through whatever hard ships and challenges lay upon that horizon ahead. Contact with the enemy had already been initiated, and we were moving northward toward the sound of guns. We were heading straight into the breach, and the end of Sodom's rule begins tonight. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic creeping along Highway 80, making our way to the fluorescent

lights of the U.N. border checkpoint. We slowly made our way into the pitch black of an abandoned village. The only sounds it could be heard were the idling of our engines and the nervous complaints of a lone dog barking in the night. It was the very first time I'd ever witnessed a regimental artillery fire mission in action. And it was truly a beautiful sight to behold. Yeah, these are the perspective that you have

when you're going into this stuff for the first time. Yeah, it was just incredible. You know, and I really could look at these rounds being shot out and it looked like shooting stars going up in the sky. and they see him crashing down to earth on top of Safuan Hill, just do, do, do, do. And I could look at that scene playing out right in before us and mirroring it to, you know, Iwo Jima or Okinawa, your D-Day.

It's like, wow, that's just incredible. And it just felt so connected to this brotherhood of a long line of people fighting for freedom. And, you know, it was just all inspiring. Yeah, that's When you, like you said, you grew up watching this stuff. You know, I grew up watching this stuff. And so when you see it for real happening and you know you're a part of it. Oh, yeah.

Man. Yeah, it's very. Am I allowed to say that's a good feeling? Because it's a good feeling. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. That's a good feeling when you know you're part of something that's. And, you know, you do a great job in here discussing why we were going there.

Thank you. What type of person Saddam was. And it's a great section. And it's one of the reasons that makes the book powerful because you give some historical background about the whole situation. You explain who this guy was, what kind of, I can't even say what kind of person.

He was an animal. He was an animal. His sons were just savages. And they were horrible, evil people. And so when I say it feels good, well, you've got to have that historical context about who the enemy is. And then you realize, okay,

we're going to liberate these people that have been living under this oppressive regime for decades, and we're here. We can make this happen. And yeah, you know what? That does feel good. That feels really good, especially when we crossed the border. We started seeing people. They're welcome us in.

Kids, literally, you would have these kids no shoes on their feet, and you would not see a structure as far as the eye could see. you would not see a car or a donkey or a motorcycle or nothing and they would walk all the way from wherever they came from all the way to meet us at the road and welcome us in and whenever we stopped because over there the convoys were all mashed together and all jammed together so we'd sit there and they would even though we tried to keep them off our vehicles they climbed up and they were so excited they came up and was kissing our hands and you know kids were waving at us and stuff

and one in particular, I wish I could find this picture. It was a little girl that they had dressed up in the best clothes that she had. She had a pink dress, white, frilly laces on it, and white patent leather shoes. And her dad was crouched down behind her, and she was just waving at us. And I realized what that American flag means to them. because these people back in 1992 revolted against Saddam Hussein and he crushed that rebellion and diverted the Euphrates and Tigris rivers away from their homeland. So they didn't have any farm fields anymore.

They didn't have anything. He was trying to snuff out a 5,000-year-old culture, and that's what he was doing. So those people will welcome us in because we were their only hope at their survival of their culture. And then at that moment, it just struck me. Like, wow, we are here for them. And we are, that American flag means something. So something that people take for granted every day.

You go down the street, you know, you see it over there outside of a building or people's front yards. And you don't realize how impactful, how powerful, how powerful that symbol is. until you see somebody who is literally their culture is weathering away. And we were their only hope. And it was just incredible. And as I said, that feels good. And you have to know that context, but that feels good to be a part of that. No doubt about it.

I guess I'm not apologetic for that. You guys are moving forward now. Our ground pounders up front were putting a world of hurt on those Iraqi combatants who decided to stay in fight. We passed Iraqi tanks and armored troop carriers that seemed to be knocked out effortlessly by the Marines ahead of us. Some were still on fire with rounds popping and snapping inside them. Some had their turrets slapped off their chassis with a steam of curling smoke rising from their mechanical guts. Shot up pickup trucks with mounted machine guns were leaking engines. fluid, mixing with blood of their former occupants.

It seemed like the large black flies knew that Task Force Ripper was in town. They had been waiting patiently for the enemy dead, and by the time we had passed their remains, a small cloud of black flies had already began their feast. The sight of the enemy dead was so routine that they no longer captured our attention. They became as common as roadkill back home and regarded the same way, inconsequential. It was truly a sight to see. Because no matter what direction one was to look along that road, all one saw was the world's finest fighting force moving north toward Baghdad,

removing all Saddam's bathist henchmen, and waving all at all the friendly people rejoicing in the streets. And now you get into this, and I remember when this happened from stateside. A tempest wind started to blow gradually, increasing with strength as time progressed and whipped up loose sand and rocks into the air, painting the scorching hot gusts of wind into an ever darker shade of orange and red. It was a storm unlike anything that I had ever seen, and I would consider it as close to what I had imagined a windstorm of biblical proportions to be.

The order was passed to halt in place after a rumor that an M1 Abrams tank was lost, crossing the Euphrates River. Visibility beyond 10 feet became impossible, and it was hard to tell if a dark shade of red was a vehicle cruising by or dust in the wind. Some of the speeding trucks almost rammed into us as we stopped coming less than 10 feet from our trailer before they swerved. So you guys are in that massive storm. I remember watching the news as everyone was pushing up. All of a sudden it was all stop.

Yeah. And everybody was on top of everybody. We had no idea whoever was next to us. Literally, a vehicle would pass by and would not see you until it was almost too late. We couldn't go out beyond an arm's distance because it was that bad. I had never seen anything. It was just a gigantic wall of orange dirt. Did it come in one wall like that?

No, no. It started off slow. The wind started picking up. And it was like, okay, now it's starting to get that, you know, where you put your arms up like this and you can start to pick up your suit and start doing this stuff here. Oh, I'm sorry. And then it just got brown and then darker than orange and then red.

and then so thick you couldn't see anything. And it literally felt like it was piercing my mob suit. It was that strong. And it was miserable. Miserable. And how long were you guys laid up for? For two days, three days? We moved the very next day.

Oh, okay. So it was just till the next day. Right. We moved. But it had that sandstorm that whole night. And then after that, our tent had our tent but our canvas for our five tonne ripped and it was blowing in the wind and we had no place to hide then all of a sudden it started raining on us a cold rain and we just sat

there and just took it and it was miserable all of her weapons were jammed up full of full of it it looked like wet concrete coming out of those things and then we realized that we were still surrounded by bad guys with AKs and RPKs and you know RPGs and you know we knew that their weapons work in this stuff and ours has a little bit of a problem

with wet concrete inside of it so yeah it freaking sucked but we moved that we moved the very next day and it was all all a gigantic wall of fog weather

does not cooperate's Murphy's law. So you say it didn't take too long, but the kinks of the overlapping convoys were slowly worked out and we were off this time swirling curtains of a delicate mist. It was impossible to figure out exactly where everybody was in relation to us. The fog was way too thick. Our units were strewn out and visibility was at a minimum. The only way that we could make it through this area expeditiously was to provide our own security as our convoys leapfrog each other. That meant that our convoy would halt and punch out Marines to provide security. And then the convoy behind us would leapfrog through us and stop once through our lines and provide security for us.

It was an all-day affair of getting out our vehicles, quickly setting up and to provide security within a reasonable distance to allow communications, but to be dispersed enough that one mortar RPG round couldn't take out multiple Marines. Once signaled, we would mount back up, take accountability to ensure that no one was left behind and roll out. So this is just classic cover move. Right. I always have to highlight a little cover move. And then at one point it was once again our turn to provide security. The Marines got down, taking up their normal positions, just as they had done dozens of times thus day that far. The first sergeant screamed, contact rear, contact rear, 100%.

Get off the fucking trucks. Contact rear. What the hell is he talking? Oh, shit. I was in denial that we were actually being shot at. I grabbed my helmet and rifle and then quickly jumped down onto the asphalt. and look for any micro terrain that I hope would serve to shield me against incoming gunfire. The reports increased slowly and built up tempo like popcorn and popping in a microwave.

The order was given to form a straight line 90 degrees off the highway so that we could trap the enemy in L-shape, otherwise known as a crossfire. They say that you never know how you will react in combat until it happens to you. I could hear others nervously cracking jokes. One guy to my left by the road was vomiting, and one guy further down the line from me said that he shit his pants. I've never found out if that was true or if he was just joking. But who would want to find out? It sounds silly now, but all the training that those drill instructors at Paris Island had pounded in my head 10 years earlier had kicked in. And I was in calm and as

focus as I could be. I just sang a little country song to myself, the same one that the troops were singing just a short bit before. Travis Tritz, it's a great day to be alive. I quickly checked, rechecked and triple check my fundamentals of marksmanship, proper body alignment, proper breath control, found my natural point of aim and ensure that my magazines were readily available. This was my one time, my one opportunity to get some. So don't fail, don't fuck up, and don't die. A Marine from the convoy further down from me was in a full-on hyperventilating panic. She was in the prone position.

Her weapon laid impotently in the sand before her. Her hands cupped her face as she tried to hold back uncontrollable tears. We tried desperately to calm her down, shouting words of encouragement. Now we were down one gun for this fight and peering into a fog that held an actively engaging force. An urge to walk over to her and put that M16 into her arms had only been stopped by the increasing tempo of the incoming rounds. The 762 by 39 rounds had formed into black streaks against the white background of the fog. When the rounds got close, they sounded like angry hornets just overhead. When they got too close, they snapped as loud as black cat firecrown.

which left a high-pitched wine in my years rocket propelled grenades flew between us and exploded off in the opaque mist behind our formation if we were to meet the enemy let them come Marines on the line started congratulating each other prematurely yelling out hell yeah Marines combat action ribbons Silhouettes faded in and out of the mist as the fog shifted it was very confusing and my concern over a friendly fire situation grew I knew we were I knew where we were I knew where the road was, so that was the base of fire. But I had no idea what the other convoy was doing. Were they setting out an L-shaped on their side? Were they locating, closing with, and destroying the enemy by fire and maneuver? Were they going to do squad rushes into the Iraqi positions, therefore crossing into our fields of fire?

At that point, I had no idea. I was absolutely positive that I did not want to shoot at a silhouette and have it turn out to be one of our Marines hooking and jabbing with a bad guy. Okay, somebody figured this shit out so we can punch. These dudes. Then out of nowhere there was a boom that shook the ground followed by a quick rocket sound. I screamed out what the fuck was that? I was afraid an RPG would hit an ammunition laden truck on the road and have all those 155

millimeter artillery rounds explode just dozens of yards away. A voice called out from the road and said, it's okay. We are hitting them with tow missiles. Apparently anti-tank missiles on top of the gun trucks had thermal vision capability which The gunner just happened to exploit. The tow gunner was pointing out to which area to shoot and some of the Marines on the line started to fire a few rounds in that general direction. I could see shadows in the shifting mist, but I still didn't want to shoot one of our Marines

by mistake. The sergeant, the first sergeant yelled out, you first five Marines, shift fire to the left, get up and move toward the road. They're gonna try and cut us off. We repeated the command, shift fire left. Aye, aye. Wait a minute, stop. I look to my left, I look to my right.

The incoming machine gun fire made a roll. passed my head and made me feel like a gigantic target I just wish I could crawl up inside my helmet I had to do a gut check and remember saying to myself well Chris you've lived a good life fuck it and I resigned myself to the winds of fate in the hands of God and just got up and ran as hard as I could but it was one of those little moments in time when life flashes before your eyes and time seems to slow the fuck down the angry black streaking hornet seemed to get a little closer and the mud seemed to get thicker and my boots seemed as if I had a heavy cast iron weights tied to my legs.

I could now see the first four marines starting to hit the deck and low crawl to cover with splashes of impacts dancing around them. For a moment, I had cursed myself and started to wish that I hadn't been so motivated when all this started and I ran so far out. I looked over to my right toward the enemy and snap. A round almost hit me in the helmet. God damn, I yelled to myself. And automatically my body went to the ground.

But before my left hand could reach the ground, snap, another round almost hit me in the face. Fuck! A couple more round. snapped around me as I high crawled like I never high crawled before I got to my destination behind a pile of mud and I just lay there looking at the four Marines who were watching me PFC Ramos said holy shit sergeant I saw those rounds coming out of the fog and I thought it was gonna watch you get shot in the face Yeah holy shit so did I Ramos And that's a D I that's a detailed description and I actually I actually skipped a blind me there's you give some great details in there you end up talking

to another kid from, where's he from, was he from Thai? He was from Cambodia. He was from Cambodia. He was from Cambodia. He, him and his family escaped Cambodia. And they lived in a refugee camp on the Thai border. He comes up, you know, I run down there.

And he looks at me and goes, hey, you look like you, you like Southeast Asian. Yeah, my mom's from Thailand. My dad's white. And today, here I am. So we were just catching up and see, how you doing? You know, and meeting it. And my Ramos is like, hey, how the hell can you guys talk about that shit? right now. Can you see what's going on?

You know, it's like, well, shit, if I'm going to fight and die, might as well know the guy next to me. Right on. So, yeah. Continuing on. At that point, the ground started to rumble and shake and down the road came a couple of M1 Abrams tank and a couple of amphibious assault vehicles

which split off the road into the fog. The tank commander on the lead tank was firing his mob deuce, 50 caliber machine gun, and the main gun shot off around into the fog, illuminating his tank in the mist. Our convoy, the passing convoy in these tanks and tracks had become intertwined and they were dispersing a lethal mixture of chaos and hellfire. On the receiving end of this was an enemy that had clearly picked the wrong Marines to shoot at. An enthusiastically given base of fire

and crushing armored counterattack from the nation's finest had been something to behold in person and I wanted to witness more. You know, I always try and profess my love for the tank. And that's the type of situation. Yes. When you hear tanks coming, it is glorious. Oh, yes. I can say from my own experiences that I love tankers. I love tankers.

Yeah. There's a few times that they definitely was very welcomed onto the battlefield. Yeah, that's a, that's a classic. You're in a gunfight. Yeah. And you get your brothers to bring a tank to a gunfight. That's a beautiful thing. Because, you know, at that point, it was all foggy.

You know, nobody knew where everybody was. We're still kind of, you know, separate ourselves. And all the grunts and all the, you know, the tanks were way ahead of us. So when we started getting hit, they're like, oh, there's a unit out there. We forgot. So they rerouted them and thank God they got there right at the right time. And, yeah, took them out. And we ended up being dug in on the side of the road a couple days.

And the guy who the tank commander came up, jumped in my hole and thanked me for pointing out the bad guys. He goes, yeah, that makes 80 for us now. All right. Yeah, you know, you were also, I got to give you a lot of credit because you were very cognizant of the confusion, right? And I've said this before. In Romani, there was times where there was Blue on Blues with Humvee versus Humvee, which is, which just should, I mean, there's no more recognizable vehicle in the world than a Humvee. and the enemy does not have Humvees. So can you imagine the mindset of a soldier to shoot at another Humvee?

Like that's what can happen when things start getting crazy. And so you were really aware of the fact that, hey, look, I don't know where everyone is. Right. And I need to keep myself in check right now. I stayed calm. And that's one thing that I've been, I just thank my drone instructors for because they pounded in our heads that all this chaos, war is that. War is chaos.

It is confusion. You're trying to make you panic. As long as you don't panic, you can keep your head above the water and not sink and keep on fighting. You know, stay in there. You know, get into that mood. Slow your heartbeat down. Make good decisions. And, you know, I learned that from my senior, you know, instructor from,

who now I stay in contact with, which is pretty crazy. And, yeah, I took that onto the battlefield, and when everybody else was panicking around me, I was just seeing Travis Tritt to myself. And, okay, here's my ammo, all right. You know, okay, my point of aim, shift it, I'm good to go. Anybody pops up there, I got them. Yeah, that ability to take a step back,

detach from all that craziness and mayhem. That's the difference between having a blue-on-blue, Cratcher side and not that's that's the difference right there you especially being all excited being your first time in combat That's the kind of thing that leads to that excitement You get wrapped up around that emotion and all of a sudden you oh cool I got a target for the first time in my life I'm gonna take this shot and then you you realize it's a bad shot it's the most horrible thing that could happen And no matter what you do not ever want to put yourself in that situation It's better to make sure that what you're shooting at is a legitimate target then make

the wrong decision for sure somebody their lives yeah well you did your the people that trained you did good and you did good that's what the Marine Corps does moving forward a little bit they instructed us to dig fighting positions

and called our new phase of war an operational halt this meant that all forward progress had stopped in the latest greatest from the powers that be said the rations were to be cut to only two MREs a day and our fresh water had been depleted Out of fresh water, huh?

Yeah, everything they were giving us tasted like bleach. They were pumping it straight out of the water that was around us. And they dumped all the bleach in there and it was basically drinking laundry water. It was nasty. But, you know, that one thing, when you get in fights, for me, I stopped becoming hungry. I didn't care about eating. I was just, I just needed water. Yeah, but thirst is not, you can't go without water.

That's all this too. You can go a long time without food. You can't go a long time without water. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here, but I thought this was an important section. You get into an area, and I think it was by Nazaria, and you are kind of pushing through an area

where there was a bunch of dead Iraqi soldiers by the time you guys showed up, by the time you showed up there, and you are talking to one of the Marines that's there, and you said, do you know if these were Republican Guard or Fedain Saddam? And so at this time, those were kind of the, the Republican Guard was kind of this allegedly elite unit of Iraqis. And the Fedayin Saddam was this other group of, and you know, you heard that they were criminals and there were thugs and they were murderers and they were completely loyal to Saddam.

And so I know when I got over there, it was all about, hey, are these guys fedayin Saddam? It was this big kind of deal. And so you're asking the guy who these dead enemy were. Was it Republican Guard or Fedain Saddam? And he says, fucking conscripts, brother. The grunts over there captured a Fedain officer the other night after their attack, and he spilled the beans. He said that all these dead guys were forced to fight us.

The Fedai'in Saddam had gone through the local town back there and recruited these guys by gunpoint. If they had refused, they would show. their children. So there was a ton of suitcases on the other side of the berm. They brought them because they didn't know how long they were going to be away from home. And there are some briefcases over there too. Some of these guys were recruited right off their bus on the way to work. These poor guys were just given uniforms and weapons and forced to attack us. If they were to turn around, that captured officer was supposed to execute them.

But the dumb ass was too chicken shit to go down with his troops. So again, you know, I just had to call that out because that's the kind of, evil regime that was in Iraq, just forcing people how you can come fight or we're going to kill your children. And that's why a lot of them surrendered as well. I mean, there's a ton of, a ton of Iraqis that surrendered at the beginning of war because they were in those situations. Continue on the fighting of Baghdad was prevalent on everybody's mind. And every single one of us knew that it was going to be a hell of a fight. It was sad to know that several of those Marines would not survive that battle. And I mentally prepared myself for the worst case scenario. So you guys are

thinking Baghdad is going to be. Oh yeah. It's the big ball game there. You know, right at that moment, we were fighting in Nazaria. So we had a whole task force that was bogged down down there. And we knew that Baghdad was going to be one hell of a fight. It's the biggest city in the entire country. Yeah. And so, yeah, it was going to be street to street fighting, house to house fighting. And there was a little taste of that in Nazaria. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember, you know, reading the reports and it was like bogged down and nozare was the like legitimate mount you know military operations urban terrain fighting and you get a little taste of that and you realize what that's going to be like and then you look at bagdad with whatever six million people you got to think you you're thinking this is

going to be a bloodbath fast forward a little bit our time with task force tarwood come to an end and we and we were to detach ourselves from their convoy once we hit lsa chesty an old Iraqi Air Force base a few miles southeast of Al Kut. And again, I fast forward to this point. By the standards of what we've been used to, this base was absolutely huge. The C-Bs had done a great job building the hard pack earthen runway for our C-130 Hercules cargo plants. We could hear their engines roar across the base. And it was a wonderful sound because it meant supplies were coming in. Zep Sergeant Anderson's team was already there and it was a great surprise to see them again. Dude, they've got showers here. Everybody instantly got excited.

We had spent the past 23 days living in dirt and filth sweating profusely under our thick mop suits My hair had been matted down by wearing my Kevlar helmet and there was a thick greasy layer of sand stuck to my scalp I think that I had sand in every orifice of my body and as I looked upon that beautiful shower tent She beckoned me to enter I was happy to oblige I felt human again This is after you get out of the shower I felt human again. I smelled civilized and I felt I felt like a brand new man. There was also going to be hot chal served that night. The first time that we'd received any since we left Bougainville. And I absolutely couldn't wait. So you get to LSA Chesty and you kind of settle in. And then this happens. I was awoken by a serious hushed conversation

just outside the STP, which is the shock trauma platoon surgical tent door. And I heard someone lifting up the camo netting to make her way into our sleeping area. Staff Sergeant Andrews A whisper rang out among the sound of crickets and generators not so far away. After a short whispered discussion, Staff Sergeant Anderson said, absolutely, ma, we can help. M.A., get on your feet. We hurriedly walked down into an open field to pre-stage ourselves in the darkness. And in a few minutes, the unmistakable sound of an incoming helicopter grew louder. Out of the dark Iraqi night, flickering lights were flipped on as a CH-53 C-stallion descended into a

cloud of dusk with the lowering of the ramp the crew chief signaled for us to advance we charge forward into the hot turbine exhaust and deafening noise into one huddled mass taking the beating sand against our skin to quickly move up the tail ramp a green light illuminated the back of the helicopters we ran up the helicopter crew in the back pointed to several occupied litters that held the severely wounded clad in bloody bandages and it was a very sobering scene. Each of us grabbed an end of the litter very carefully and carried them down the ramp and away from the helo as their ponchos on top of them violently snapped back and forth against the gusts of the still spinning blades. We made her way up to the

small incline toward the open tent door of the STP. And inside a fluorescent world, doctors were preparing their hands with red iodine streaks running down their arms. I heard the Marine who we were carrying mumble something and I couldn't make it out. Stay strong. We have you at STP buddy. You're gonna be all right. I gave him words of encouragement though I had no idea what his prognosis was But the more I looked at his bloody bandages the more I was getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my belly that he might not survive the night We crashed through the doorway to put our wounded guys onto the litter stands But the rear doors were sealed and the only way to get out was the way we came in So we stood there trapped as the other wounded servicemen were still being carried in and we got a small glimpse into the world of

of another kind of hero. The nurses and doctors of the STP immediately assumed their duties and started to cut the uniforms off the casualties and throw them into a bloody pile on the floor, start intervenous lines, and start to speak loudly to the patients trying to get their attention. And of those four that you brought in, three of those did not survive,

and that was where I started the podcast today was reading that excerpt of you and your team. seeing dead American servicemen for the first time and again you know this is just um that opening of you seeing this for the first time and and you closing out by saying it was a tough night for the first time I'd ever seen to see servicemen as much I had prepared myself mentally and physically for the job I'd never prepared myself emotionally I kept thinking about those guys the scenes kept playing over and over again in my head And that's 23 days into it, something like that.

So in all those fire fights, you know, you'd seen a bunch of dead Iraqis on the way up there, hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them. That wasn't thousands. You know, maybe 100, 100 plus on the sides of the road. But, you know, not as thousands. But, you know, when we passed first part started passing by him, you're like, oh, look at that, look at that guy there. Oh, well, look at this. It's burning tank over here. But when we got to finally the 23, 24 days when we had those three guys in there,

it became real, even though it was real. But this whole time you prepare yourself and you don't want to do our job. We never want to be the ones that were busy. And it was the first time that we had went through and had had to. to face that realization that we were needed. And the guys that we were bringing in, you was instantly you can connect to these people because they're wearing the same uniform as you.

They just have the same wants. They want to go and do the best job they can and go home to their families. And then all of a sudden, what made me start to feel guilty is that I knew that they were, dead and I could see the pictures of their family members that they carried with them and I see all that their family members don't know that this guy now was gone you know especially when you see pictures of their children and it really kicks you square in the teeth now so

um yeah that night it it just made us realize that we were in a job that was really important, but you had to be tough in a totally different way, a way that we haven't prepared ourselves before. So, yeah. And it's an interesting turn of events or the way that it kind of washes out because that happens. And then pretty shortly thereafter, you guys get told that you're going home. So you cover that here. We were notified that M.A. Team 2 was to rotate back to Kuwait because the other companies that we trained back in Georgia and Washington, D.C. in January, needed to get some experience before the war was to end. And that left us a little raw.

We started this war four weeks prior, watching the very first rounds impact by both air and ground campaigns. We transversed back and forth across this country, supporting whichever unit was expecting enemy contact. And now we were being pulled out of the conflict before we could. could get across the goal line in Baghdad. And this is another just interesting perspective of war at the time. Here's someone, you know, some senior person back there is going, you know what? This war is going to be over pretty quick. We better get some other people experience.

Yeah. And by the way, this is April 13th, 2003. This war had another decade. Yeah. Almost. I guess another, what is it? another seven years of fighting, thousands of American casualties.

But that just shows you, you know, we looked at the first Gulf War. It's over in 72 hours. You know, we're the strongest military in the world. We need to get some other people, some experience. These guys have had some. Cool. We'll rotate them out.

You say now we were climbing aboard a C-130 on a one-way ticket out of combat, and we felt as if, and I felt as if we had been cheated. And then this aircraft that you get aboard, for whatever reason, it takes you to Oman, which is like the straight up rear echelon. Yeah. And as you guys pull into this rear echelon command and get off,

you say this, airmen who were lifting weights just stopped. Females and T-shirts and shorts who were playing volleyball just stopped, and people who looked as if they were heading somewhere in a hurry just stopped and whispered among themselves as we passed. I guess they were not used to seeing Marines straight from the front lines in all our filthy glory, Even though he had taken showers just a couple days before our weird sun tans from wearing our helmets our dirty raccoon faces our sweat-infused Camys and four weeks without fresh haircuts made us really stand out But to us I guess they stood out too after four weeks of combat where death was so common that it no longer passed in conversation

We changed enough to know that the normal world would never be normal again It was as if this trip to Oman was a lucky windfall We had a rare opportunity to look through the looking glass of a magical mirror. And in the reflection, we could see ourselves when we were so innocent and naive. Not so long ago by days, but forever ago by our experiences. Yeah, that's a serious contrast. Yeah, we were there at Camp Chesty, and the guy sitting at the white table, he was supposed to be the air traffic controller, said, that's the bird you need. Here's your number.

Get on. We got on, started taking off, supposed to be 45-minute flight, about two hours into it. We're like, where the hell are we going? And we weren't the only ones. We had CBS News crew and a Navy Chief Mattress, or Navy, you know, so, yeah, E-9. So we got on there, spent about six or eight hours on the ground over there. And there's another funny story. So it was the first time I was able to call home.

I called my dad. So it was in a phone trailer. I'm sitting back and I was like, dad, man, this was so crazy out there. I saw this, I saw that. I was here when this happened. And, yeah, I watched the very first bombs happen and stuff. And my dad was always glued to the TV, especially with anything was going on, you know. And I knew he had been watching.

And so I'm telling all these stories and I sit back in the chair and stretch and I look down in this, nobody was talking on their phones. Everybody was glued to what I was saying. So he had these 20 people watching me, and they were like, oh, my God, look at the, wow, that's crazy. But, yeah, huge contrast between our services and their position, their role as for us. You end up, you get back to Kuwait eventually, and then we finally left Kuwait in late May. We returned home to our heroes welcome back in Dayton, Ohio, in early June. I returned to my job at the post office to find that my fellow carriers were excited to shake my hand and welcome me back and I genuinely felt appreciated.

That's it. As my buddy Johnny once said when we were in my first deployment, he goes, dude, we were getting ready to go home. He said, dude, you know, tomorrow we're going to get on an aluminum tube and we're going to wake up and be back in San Diego, dude. That's awesome. You say in November, and again, jumping ahead a little bit, in November, the unit called looking for any non-military police volunteers to help fill holes on the roster for the military police deployment. Several of us, MA Marines quickly volunteered since we were pretty much non-school trained MPs anyways. And again, they say, well, no, maybe we don't need you. And then you, of course, volunteer again.

And then finally, you get, they say, yep, we're going to. to take you yeah yeah where to take you for a for a mtt yeah military mobile training mobile training mobile training team um our role was supposed to be to impart western style policing to the Iraqi police who were who rumored not to do them too much beyond sitting there and collecting any bribes drinking tea accurate rumors yeah yeah so well and let's just say also if you weren't the Iraqi police there was also a decent chance that you were going to get murdered and your whole family was too so it wasn't the only people that were doing it were, well, it was a hard job in that respect.

And then there wasn't a lot of positive reasons to go out on patrol. That's the other thing is don't think of Iraqi police as a crime stopper. These guys were supposed to fight the insurgency inside their own country. So it's what we needed to do is build their security in their country. And one of the ways to do that was by strengthening the Iraqi police. So they were doing these mobile training teams to get these guys up to speed. but it was a tough job. Right.

But you get the call to go, and then ever since I got the phone call on Monday, I had a really bad feeling about this whole deployment. Something just wasn't right. I couldn't tell what it was. And then March 1st, 2004, it had been 19 days shy of a year since I first crossed into the breach.

In the many months of my absence, the constant conflict had changed these highways into vast expanses of nervous tension and the balance of favor into the hands of the... the lawless. So again, Americans, most Americans, myself included, we thought the war was going to be over quick and now all of a sudden we're a year into it and it's not getting better. It's starting to get worse. When is this May of 2004 or March of 2004? Yeah. Yeah. So I was in Baghdad when you were going and you were heading up to Haditha. Yeah, Haditha Dam.

Matter of fact, I might have done an op to her up in Haditha. That was a nasty time. man yeah we came up to haditha one time we drove up there from Baghdad and did an op and I'm trying to think of when it was if you guys were there or not but regardless as you guys are driving up there it's the same roads that last year were chalk full of smiling and waving civilians were now filled with IED blast craters and splintered shrapnel gunny sergeant Ballantine corporal Freichler Frysteller. Frysteller. Lance Corporal Mazurzak?

Mazur? His name is Major sack. Major sack. Yeah, it's spelled like Major Kack, but it's Major Sack. You've got to give these guys

nicknames for me. Sergeant Uppam. And I were designated to be military police mobile training team. Now, what's weird about this is this is zero to do with MA, to do with mortuary affairs.

You're going on a combat. deployment now right to be and by the way when you do these mobile training teams you're not just training them what you have to do is you have to go out patrol you have to show them how it's done this is a dangerous dangerous job continue on it's gonna take us three days to drive up from the Udari range in Kuwait to the Haditha Dam you drove that yep located in west where'd you stop did you stop stopped in Baghdad that was our first stop and that was like a little

refueling place with huge gigantic concrete barriers. They're probably four or five stories tall in a really small area. And we stayed the night there and a different story. But I met a corporal who was with a with a L.A.V. And I was like, man, I've never seen these things up close. I want to check it out and stuff. I got called to go to a meeting. and later on

he was already racked out so I missed my opportunity but it turns out that I found out later on just recently that he passed away within like a month or two and in one of my talks that I gave

my book presentation down in Kentucky his wife was there showed me a picture and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I met him there at that But we stayed there at that refueling area. And then we drove all the way out to Al-Assad, spent the night at Al-Assad.

And then from there, we went out to the... How many vehicles did you have with you? Wow. I can't even tell. So it was a bunch. It was a bunch of people. I was with third and time, fourth Marines, weapons company. Got it.

So we were all moving in. Got it. And we're taking over for the third ACR for the Army. You go here from overpass to overpass and everything in between my 240 Gulf spun in circles. my anxiety was thick trying to anticipate the enemy's move before it happened. I don't know what the, well, the fact was the enemy would use bridges to like set up IEDs, to ambush you. And so every bridge was like a threat. And actually, I just talked about Johnny talking about the aluminum tube.

Well, that was another thing. Every time, because he would ride my vehicle, and every time we'd be coming up to a bridge, Johnny be in the back going, Here it comes, Jack, are you ready for? Here it comes, bro. This is it. And he could make this weird noise like with his mouth, like a loud clicking noise,

but it was really loud. And you've got to be loud to be able to hear it in Humvee and with one headphone on because I'm listening to radio, got a radio going. And he'd be, you know, and then we'd get through it and he'd go, got lucky on that one. And then, you know, four minutes later,

you're going under another bridge. And Johnny's going, oh, this one doesn't look good, bro. Jack, are you ready to get some? Here it comes, bro. And then, and we drive through. So because they use it, man, the going under bridges gave you a definite, a definite.

Especially when you did you guys have armored home viz? We did not. Yeah, we didn't either. Everybody else, basically the day that we were all stacked up, ready to go, they just came over with a pallet and said, have at it. and all these guys started grabbing everything, bolting them onto their weapons, onto their vehicles. And I was just cleaning my weapon,

and then they were like, hey, we've got a couple pieces left over here. You want it? And we might as well not even take it. It's just like maybe half a door or something. So basically, we just sat there, unarmored vehicle, and I was on the up gun. I was on the 240, almost the entire trip. I tell you, going on to those bridges,

I was always looking up. Oh, yeah. You know, expecting to see an IED sitting right there to blow down. And when you get people, you got people up top or cars parked off in the distance somewhere. Oh man, bad feeling, bad feeling. Just sit there and just grit your teeth. Yeah. Hopefully you just, hopefully don't, they're not accurate.

Yeah. Were you guys traveling the day or night? A day. See, we would, during that first one, we'd only travel, well, pretty much as much as we could travel at night. We traveled super fast, totally blacked out on knots. So when we got ambushed a couple times, they always catch the tail end of us because it wouldn't be. effective because we would be through it, you know. But having that many vehicles during the daytime.

Yeah. We actually broke down in Fallujah. Oh, that's fun. Right there on the highway. No shit, man. Because I'd ever heard of Haditha, you know, we were down in Kuwait. And everybody was talking about Fallujah. They had, Fallujah's the nasty town, man.

You know, that's where the big ball game's at, you know. So I only knew Baghdad and Fallujah. So we finally get there to Fallujah. right there on the highway and wanted to hum these bring down. And I'm on the upgun and we punch out of security. I got the radio up in my chin strap and I'm circling around. I'm seeing people run around us on the building setting up on us. And I'm calling up.

I was like sit rep over. Sit rep over. You know, nobody's saying anything. I'm like, what the hell? What's going on? And we finally, after it seemed like forever. and the lieutenant gets on and he goes, it's okay.

When we punched out of security, before we hooked up to tow bars, somebody punched and tripped over a wire. He leached over and cut it. And it was an IED that was five feet from his damn door. Yeah, that was very, very, very lucky. But we hooked up two bars

and we finally got back on the road and scary situation, but narrowly averted because nobody at that time, every convoy was getting hit. And we were one of the very few that didn't get hit.

We were expecting death and destruction on that. For sure. Freaking road warrior shit. You say here, the geography of the western province of Al-Lambar was very different from the scenery that I had already known in Iraq

from my last trip. No longer did we see the vast, flat emptiness of the sand seas that held sporadic atolls of green life in small ancient communities. Here were rolling hills that contained the bustling population centers of Fallujah Habanilla hit and Aramadi. All extremely dangerous cities in the spring of 2004.

Intelligence reports indicated that al-Qaeda fighters were being funneled in through the Syrian border, town of Al-Qaedaeim, and followed down the ancient spice trade routes now paved into a highway that U.S. forces designated as MSR, Michigan. kidnappings, executions, assassinations, and torture were commonplace in the back alleyways of most any towns along the route, resembling the layers of an onion. It was several wars encased within a larger conflict. We now found ourselves struggling to keep the peace and order among sworn enemies from factions that held no loyalties but to themselves. Their only common enemy was us, which they fervently attacked whenever given the appropriate opportunity. So this is, yeah, this is this is how long.

Lombar. Yeah. Lovely Al-Lambar province. You finally get up there. We had driven to the base of the dam, and I was taken aback by the enormity of this megastructure. Yeah, that dam is freaking huge. It looks like something out of James Bond flick. Yeah.

It's crazy. How awesome it looks. You could imagine there's a rocket in there or something, you know, some evil guy carrying a ball. You know, a little cat and stuff. Mr. Bigel's worth. You know. You go forward a little bit here. I took in this rounding landscape and enjoyed a cool, light wind,

and looked at the two towns of Dam Village and Hadith in the distance. That was where the enemy was hiding, and that was where he felt comfortable. Because we had control over the dam, and the dam was such a prominent structure, and you're looking down at everything. It's got a great, you know, high visibility. Fast forward a little bit.

A high-pitched whistling sound coming from the outside caught my attention. What's that? I asked myself, get inside, get inside, scream the weapon. Company Marines that I just hung out with on the patio. 20 guys piled on top of one other, pushing each other to get out of the way through a double set of doors. Caboom!

Caboom! Splash! Splash! But lights flickered, dust shook off the ceiling, and the concussion resonated within my chest. Enemy mortar rounds fell out of the sky and impacted the compound area, some being overshot and impacting the lake behind us.

We were inside the biggest bunker on this side of Iraq, so I felt safe hanging out inside my room. Naturally, our attention was focused on all of his Marines that ran in. Is everybody okay? Someone asked. The consensus was equal across the board. No one was hurt.

It took just a few minutes until the ward was spread that we were going to get up in a few hours earlier than what we'd expected in the morning. The bad guys had just sent the challenge of Red Rover, Red Rover, send the Marines over. We are going out in force before first light. And the Marines of weapons company, third battalion, fourth Marines were chomping at the bit to answer the call. And I was happy to go out with them. So you're going out on your first patrol. So how many days have you been at the dam before your first patrol? Was it just like a couple days?

It was just a couple days. There with a lieutenant Colonel McCoy, he had a very aggressive policy. You know, he wanted to make everybody known in the area that we were in town. So that we were doing that. Here we come. First patrol with a hand signal, our darkened figures emerged from the mist like ghosts upon the land to move. is one changing the pattern of the formation to have every weapon barrel cover every angle around us trust in no one or no thing outside this circle of men question every step every loose piece of

trash every bump in the sand or anything that looked like it didn't belong we were heading directly into harm's way and every inch of our trek could be paved with bad intentions iEDs could take any shape and be left out here waiting patiently to take life or limb that was you know you guys you guys do your first patrol and you know again buy the book because you give really good detail you explain what it feels like in a you know in a way that I was reading it going yep yep that's it right there so you do a great job with that I'm gonna fast forward a little bit and I think this is your next patrol lieutenant Dana raised his arm as to signal the patrol to advance forward it was time to step off and do this thing I clip my radio handset into the

trench strap of my helmet so I could free both hands and still monitor the radio, tucked the antenna into the straps that lined the front of my flak vest to keep my radio low profile, stuck the butt of my rifle into my pocket of my shoulder and put my game face on because it was time to do work. Like the gears of a finely tuned machine, each command was quickly followed by precise movements. All the while, each individual expertly adjusted his own tactics to fit his own threats. If a window or street corner posed to endanger the team, it was quickly recognized, communicated, and then covered by one or more rifle barrels.

3-4 had a proud history from the earliest days of the Pacific campaign in World War II throughout the Vietnam War and to the fall of Baghdad almost one year ago. Then you talk about Lieutenant McCoy, 3-4 strived to be the hardest infantry battalion in the Marine Corps. Just no easy feat.

You guys are continuing on this patrol. There was a small gray car that turned down our street and started to drive toward us. No one attempted to stop it and have it turn around away from our formation. It just kept coming closer and closer and closer until it broke the integrity of our patrol. What the fuck?

What if this was a car bomb? It would most definitely wipe out most of us, I said to myself. The car drove down to the road until it was close enough for me to touch, literally. The man had a gray and purple long-sleeved shirt that had stripes that went across the arm similar to a rugby shirt.

I looked quickly inside to see if I could spot any weapons and waved at him with my left hand. He waved at me with his left, never turning his head to look at me. I turned to step away, and he extended his first finger to touch the dashboard. Within a fraction of a nanosecond, I felt a sudden and massive overpressure

that made my eyeballs want to pop inside the sockets. The air in my lungs sucked out, and a torn of dirt rushed past my head, and then blackness. I never heard a blast. I just felt it. What the? I lay there.

My body numb and tingling, slow to accept my senses and cognition. I opened my eyes and at first the light seemed to hurt and then the focus waved in. Through the high-pitched whining in my ears, indecipherable shouts were coming from my left behind me. Then I noticed a taste in my mouth of blood and I had a burning inside my chest

as if I'd been the quarterback with a shitty offensive line and had the ever-loving shit stomped out of me. Sluggishly, my head started to release the dazed fog and my thoughts were starting to once again form and regain clarity. I looked around and noticed that I wasn't where I was just a second before. Where the hell am I asked?

I found myself face down in a ditch a dozen yards away from the road and my heavy pack which contained the radio and extra gear had slid up my back now rested on the base of my head driving my skull into the mud. What the fuck happened? What was that explosion? Did the car blow up?

Why am I not dead? Or am I? I spit out the dirt in my mouth and looked up to my right and saw that I was at the bottom of a hill. At the top of the hill was an outdoor goat market with a bunch of merchants who were grabbing goats and throwing them into their cars to get out of the ensuing crossfire.

Oh shit, where the fuck is my rifle? Marines had been taught from the very first days of boot camp that you never lose your fucking weapon ever. For a second, I acted like that awkward First Battalion recruit on Paris Island that I was even 11 years before. I almost shit myself in panic. Okay, there it is. Thank God.

Then like a flash of lightning, the sudden realization hit me and fear gripped my heart. I was at the bottom of a ditch with no place to hide and no cover. They were going to start shooting any second. If I wanted to live, I had to get out of here and I needed to get out of here fast. I started to crawl up the hill toward the elevated road, burying my feet into the loose dirt to gain traction. It seemed like the harder I tried to call out, the further I slid back into my hole. My muscles ached. My lungs still burned.

And I was already exhausted before the fight had even begun. Suck it the fuck up Chris suck it up and push on get out I had to stay low I wanted to stay low if they were going to start shooting I needed to not be a target I crawled up to the crest and found that there was no other place to hide up here either But I rejoined my fellow Marines and that gave me comfort I totally expected to see the burning wreckage of an exploded car But when I surfaced out of the ditch there was none it must have blown up and threw itself off the road I said to myself It was pure chaos Marines were running around trying to regain control the situation and And the civilians were desperately trying to get out of the way.

Where the fuck is it? Where the fuck is it? I screamed while prone on the side of the road. Where is what? Someone yelled back. The fucking car, I said. What fucking car? The fucking car that blew up.

I retorted. I don't know. It was the fucking telephone that blew up. It was an IED. I heard someone to my right screaming in the middle of the formation. I saw a Marine who was lying on his back and kind of circling in a circle, kicking in a circle and grabbing at his arm. I'm hit.

hit a fuck a tall Marine was quickly walking over to him with his arms outstretched to grab him and hold him down I could hear a couple more people to my left yell out that they were also hit there were people all around screaming a blood curling yell cormin up cornman up I lay there watching the tumult surround me as if I were the access point of a fucked up war movie and everything just kept revolving around me I was still dazed but everything still imprinted upon my mind in high definition like the turning gears of that finely tuned machine that I had mentioned earlier, each Marine or small group of Marines moved at their own quick pace for finding cover, helping the wounded, running up the road

to pass orders, setting up fields of fire, and preparing themselves for a fight. They moved without orders, and it was automatic. These guys were so rehearsed that their default went straight to kill mode. I was highly impressed. The shock of the blast alone should have jangled some nerves and delivered a hiccup into their plans, but these men were true professionals. I then felt something hot pouring down the inside of my left calf. I reached down to touch it in my hand, brought back a large amount of blood.

I had no idea where it was coming from. My whole body was numb from the blast, but it just kept pouring out from somewhere. An overwhelming feeling of dread hit me and the thought of my mortality stirred within me for a quick second. Then the fear for my fellow wounded Marine survival of this situation set in, And I hope that no one was critically injured. I thought if there was more Marines hit like this, then we are fucked.

The bad guys should have been shooting by now. How in the hell are we going to get out of here? I shouted, oh shit, I'm hit too. Lance Corporal Naume? Naume. Lance Corporal Naume, a three, four Marine who was qualified as a combat lifesaver, came running over. And he yelled out, I got him. I got him.

He proceeded to pat me down looking for wounds. He asked, where are you? You hit. I replied, I think it's my leg. How bad is it? He cut my pant leg from the boot all the way up to my belt line looking for the wound. You're okay, Sergeant. It's really not that bad, but don't look at it.

He looked over his shoulder, Cormin up. Then he looked back at me. You have a huge hole in your leg, but you'll live. Well, three four Marines. Salute. Yeah. Some bad asses. I was very lucky to have been assigned to them.

those guys are definitely professional. How much interoperability training had you done with them prior to going on this deployment? Nothing. So you showed up and went on deployment? Literally. I got the phone call at night on Monday when I was delivering mail. I said to them, all right, I'm going. All right.

Pick up your orders on Tuesday. We're leaving on Wednesday. Pick up your gear Thursday. and early, early, early in the night, like two, three o'clock in the morning and on Fridays when we're picking up our weapons and we're getting on the plane. It was that one, two, three, go. And so the whole time when we got stuck with three, four,

it was language classes, meeting some critical guys who was going to be in our team, you know, rehearsing. And then we're punching north. And it was literally one, two, three. We're now in Heditha. You know, from going from Springfield, Ohio to delivering junk mail, you know, in, you know, February of 2004 to walk in the streets of Hiditha and getting blown up.

And just to great, you know, again, the book is great in this section here. When you're talking about, like, you anticipate, once you get blown up, you're waiting to get the gun fight. Because that's what the enemy, that's kind of standard operating procedure for the enemy. They hit you with an IED. While there's that chaos and confusion, they hit you with small arms fire with some kind of an ambush. And that's what you were waiting for.

And fortunately, it didn't happen. Right. Because we were on an elevated dirt road. Surrounded, no one says it, but we were in a horseshoe of all these buildings around us. There's no reason why they shouldn't have been lighting us up. They would have had us, you know. But they didn't shoot.

And thank God they didn't because, you know, we had our QRF that was out in the desert and like two humvees, three humvies maybe. But it was a light patrol. And the closest help was hours away. So what was it that it was an IED on the phone? It was an IED on a phone pole? In a phone pole, it was the base of the phone pole, a telephone pole. I remember walking up and seeing this trash. This looked like it was put there purposefully, you know?

And because we were walking, this area was nothing but like a dump. And with the road, but everything in the old area had sand that was on it, dust. And it looked like it's been there for a while, except for the base of this phone pole. But I'm the new guy to this unit. I'm thinking, what are they doing? That doesn't look right. But I'm like, okay, well, these guys know what they're doing. I'm going to keep on growing, you know.

And then what caught my attention was them letting that car go in there. And I'm thinking there's only 18 guys in my patrol. If that thing is a car bomb, we're all dead. So I'm saying, all right, roll with it. Go up, check out the vehicle. And then when I waved at the guy, boom. It goes, and I thought it went off. you know and and when I got blown up my entire body went numb I didn't feel anything

and when I was when I said that I didn't know if I was dead I was looking at my arms and legs seeing if they were still attached I had no idea what was going on so the guy who came in he said he touched the dashboard like what was that to activate or I don't know my guess is totally unrelated coincidence I'm thinking it was because, you know, he was just, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And when I, when I yelled out at, hey, you know, where's he at? And everybody's like, what are you talking about? The freaking car that just passed us.

You know, my entire team, minus one, who was still back at the dam, all of this were hit. The only person that wasn't hit was, at the time, Gunny Ballantown. He ended up retiring at Sergeant Major Valentine. But he was about to walk over to my side of the road. He was waiting for that car to pass by. And that IED, that car stopped all that frag from hitting him. But years later, and the book is already out. I'm giving these presentations.

He sends me a picture of a part of a radio. And he goes, hey, bus, you know what this is? I'm like, no, what's going on? What is that? He goes, it's part of your freaking radio that got blown off of your back and it embedded in my flag jacket across the street from you. So, yeah, he's got that little trophy. But yeah, my handset was cut up, cutting two. My antenna was gone.

Yeah, you go into that here. Super lucky. And again, skipping a little bit, but a hulking figure dragging his leg, definitely resembling the movements of a zombie was making his way up. the road. It was the friendly Ukrainian-born Navy corpsman that I had spoken to a few times. We had planned to get together. He was going to teach me how to speak Russian in our downtime, and I was looking forward to it. But now the back of his uniform was a solid, dirty plum from all the blood lost because he had received very painful shrapnel wounds to the back of both arms, both legs, neck and buttocks. And he was still dragging himself down the street to get to me

as if he had just stepped out of a John Wayne movie. The lieutenant yelled, Doc, hey Doc, don't worry about him. We'll get him. He just raised his hand and dismissed the notion as if he had turned down a drink at the bar. In his cool-ass Ukrainian accent, he just said, no, no, I can get him. He reached into his bag and pulled out a thick field dressing

and began to read the directions. And you do a pretty funny little section in there about him, reading the directions that he's supposed to be treating you. I was like, what the fuck? Talk, just put the damn thing on. I'm bleeding all over the place. It's like, no, no, no, I'm going to make sure I get this right. Major Petrucci, is that right?

Petrucci. Major Petruci slowly approached me and asked, hey, hey, Marine, are you okay? Yes, sir. I'm just really fucking pissed off right now. They blew us up, ripped my trousers. I'm bleeding all over the fucking place, and I've been trying to raise Kilo company, and my radio doesn't seem to work. I think that I, I think that I got it shut off.

when I tumbled down into the ditch. Can you check it for me, sir? He agreed and I turned around so you could open my pack and check out the radio He didn't even have to open the pack. He said well Marine here's your problem. He grabbed the cord to my handset That was in my chin strap which was now freight and cut away from the radio by the blast threw it over my shoulder and said your your antenna is gone too and you have a bunch of large metal debris embedded and sticking out of your pack You're awful lucky Marine. It was the understatement of the year the major was right I was lucky as hell I should have been decapitated because my my antenna and handset were gone, and they just, and they rested just mere fractions of an inch away from my head on both sides of my neck. If I didn't have the radio, I might have been gored by the large metal debris sticking out of my pack. And if I had not moved at that exact second that I did, that I did, and my leg was one more fraction of an inch over to the left, I would have had it blown off, or the pieces of shrapnel could have hit me in the formal artery, possibly causing me to bleed out.

I think at that exact moment, I was among the luckiest people on the planet. I had possessed the winning golden lottery ticket for the rest of my life. So, yeah, the major was right. I was lucky, I guess. Yeah. I ended up, it looked like an ice cream scoop was pulled out of my calf, outside of my calf. I still have a piece of shrapnel right next to my femoral artery on the same leg. from there, which was super lucky didn't go any deeper. But as big as that blast was, I'm very, very fortunate to be here.

The guys in the ass end of the patrol said that it blew up more than out. So the differences was that they buried it too deep. If it was 2005, I wouldn't be here. But 2004, you know, they were still trying to figure out how to use these against us. So, yeah. Back to the book, it probably took,

It probably took just a few minutes, but it really felt like hours had passed. The QRF Humvees quickly rolled down the road, and the brakes squealed to a stop. They get you to like the battlefield treatment center. The medical staff was highly rehearsed at taming the confusion and staying focused. They darted around each other, grabbing medical supplies, filling out paperwork and rendering first aid to each of us wounded guys. Like a dance of highly choreographed medical professionals, their battle was to ease the suffering of the maimed and sustained the heartbeats of those who needed critical care. They were honorable and gallant guardians of life,

slapping away the hands of death daily. They won most battles, but lost some. For those who tirelessly heal the wounds of broken warriors, and for those who selflessly dedicate themselves in pursuit of easing pain of suffering, I will always be honored to be in the presence of such nobility. I gained a whole new respect for medical, you know, being on those deployments and seeing what these guys actually do in war. You know, because at peacetime, you're like, oh, okay, you want to get to go hang out at Doc's place and, you know, who needs more IVs and that kind of stuff.

But these guys, and you see them and doing their jobs there, it's just, it's awe-inspiring to see how they can be as calm and leveled head. when chaos is just right there on their table. Yeah, and as I said, opening this thing up, I mean, they're facing death all the time, and they can't save everybody. And so there's got to be some level of guilt every time you can't save someone. It's like, that's got to chip away at you.

Yeah, totally heroic. Totally heroic. Our military medical personnel. And luckily, they're there. they get you guys extracted and you say we floated away we floated on high among the angels inside a rotary winged workhorse known as the UH60 black hawk medevac helicopter my war was over and i was regretfully delighted my guilt was that i was leaving my fellow marines behind to continue the fighting as i was going home i knew it wasn't the case but i had an unbearable feeling

that i was abandoning them in the middle of a fight against insurmountable odds I wanted to be there alongside them. I wanted to bear their burdens. I wanted to fight in their fight and I wanted to share in their misery because they were my Marine brothers and they were in harm's way. I wasn't eager to die. I was just eager to serve alongside my brethren when the chips were down and it was time to prove our medal. You make it to welcome to the Baghdad Combat Support Hospital, what we all called the cash. You can relax now, Marine. You're safe. We're going to take good care of you. So you get a nice, smooth, relatively smooth extraction. And then a little bit, fast forward a little bit. Sitting in the spotlight of a humming fluorescent bulb, I dialed the phone and the connection led to failure. I dialed the phone again.

It again failed. On the third try, she answered. We both had been accustomed to carrying out our phone conversations at an accelerated pace. We had always been limited to just a few minutes and now without missing a beat, she continued our dialogue from the past several days. I just let her speak. It was good to hear her submit the woes of life a million miles away. That life seemed so foreign to my reality, and I longed for it once again.

I reluctantly informed her of the events of the day. Life seemed to stop, and the phone nearly hit the ground. My words caught the midnight breeze evaporated into the night sky, and a world away. They manifested and struck like daggers in her heart. For me, this day was done. For her, I imagined a day filled with anxiety and angst. The father of her child, her husband, was wounded and unsure of his days ahead.

I promised myself, from this day on, I would never take life for granted. And from that day forward, I never did. How long did it take to heal up? It wasn't that long. I stayed over at 29 Palms for maybe five, six months. It wasn't that long. Got my skin grafts done. I spent most of my time just sitting there hanging out with the guys.

Because there was not even a wounded warrior regiment at that time. They just basically said, oh, you're wounded. Well, here's your barracks, and here's a bag full of toiletries. And that's it. It's poured in every Thursday. Keep a room clean. And so the rest of the time, we were just sitting around and drinking and all. And I didn't know anybody at 20-Up Holmes.

Everybody was deployed then. Where was your wife? My wife was at home. In Ohio? In Ohio. So I was there with a can of comet and cleaning my floors, making them white, drinking a six-pack. Well, I'm glad we have the wounded warrior.

No, but things. But after I came back from my convalescent leave, as soon as I came back, the barracks was over flooded with guys. Because when I was on my convalescent leave, that's when vigilant resolve happened. The first push into Fallujah. And the guys that I was with, 3-4 was with them, too, along with 3-7 and 2-7, I believe.

And that's when I heard came back, that's when we heard about Jason Dunham. Everybody was talking about Jason Dunham. Once you were healed up, was it back to your reserve status? I went back to my reserve status. I went back to delivering mail. And then that's when they were saying, hey, we're thinking about going back over, this time back to mortuary fairs. And I put my hand up, said, absolutely.

If my guys are going, I'm going to be there next to them. You know, at that point, I was one of the most combat experience. guys for the mortuary fairs. So, I mean, I shoot, I was just right there. So I knew more of the lay of the land and how they're fighting. And so I figured if we got to go outside the wire, I can impart some things that I know that might help them, even though that I had a bad feeling about this whole deployment as well. Did they give you any kind of choice?

Were they like, hey, look, man, you just got wounded, your back? It's a mission critical on OS. They are happy to take anybody who puts their hand up. So you got guys who, I was one of the most senior guys in this MLS. I was in it since 1993 when I first came in the unit. So for years of not being utilized and trained, you know, properly, to all of a sudden we were at the forefront at recovering guys. And we were handling remains almost every day.

going and making stuff up on the fly because there was no there's no there was nothing to guide us. When you raised your hand to volunteer, what was your wife's reaction at this point? She wasn't happy, but she understood that she married a Marine and my heart is with them. my heart will, you know, if she was to give me an ultimatum, that I would take that. I would say, I'm going, goodbye. Because I needed to be with my guys. I needed to be in that fight. So she understood that from the very onset of our relationship.

And not to say I didn't love my family, but my heart was over there. And if I didn't go and something was to happen, and then she knew that, even though I wouldn't have, but she didn't want to be put in a place where I would have blamed her. So it was easier to let me go over. And plus, I didn't like delivering mail to tell you the truth. I loved being in and making a difference somewhere, because anybody can deliver mail. because when we show up to the next day, you're still going to have a mountain of mail to deliver.

But over there, I felt like we were making a difference, that we were doing things that were important. And my lessons that I was given to the troops and showing them how to patrol, how to, you know, how we do things in certain situations, it mattered. And I was grooming and mentoring leaders to take my role, because I knew I wasn't going to be in as forever.

And now under the mission, it was still going to continue. So I said, yeah, send me back over. It's America right there. And your wife being supportive, that's America. So you guys end up going to TQ, what we all called TQ, out to Catum Air Base. And you say here, I was crazy to volunteer for this again, this being my third trip, there in three years. I knew that I was putting a lot of strain upon my family back home, but the real world no longer made sense to me anymore. Here in combat, I felt alive. Here in this

ugly world filled with all its letalities and bloody ends, all this made sense to me. The rules were very simple. Do your best at your job and do your best to stay alive. Yeah, there's a, there is absolutely a simplicity in combat where nothing else matters. Right. Now I was back to be the Platoon Commander for our Mortuary Affairs Detachment in TQ. You check in, and here we go. This is you kind of getting your first visual on what you guys are going to be doing. The double doors were held open, and suddenly it became very sobering moment to watch the four Marines carry in a litter with a large black vinyl bag on top.

There was no mistaking what it was. All of us were here for the explicit purpose of taking care of those who were inside of them the best way we possibly could. Not a whisper was uttered. Not a sound was made before the remains were lowered to the litter stands, and the processing team was ready to begin their work. We stood out of their way, paying particular attention to the reactions of our Marines,

shadowing their team to see if they could stomach this kind of work. This was the second day of our changeover. We were just there to observe their Marines and ensure that our Marines were asking all the pertinent questions to assure a smooth transition for the transfer. of authority so far they were doing just fine just fine I noticed it immediately and after contemplation I like the reasoning behind the idea their major explained that remains were no longer called remains rather they called them angels that simple change in

the lingo encompassed how we felt about the fallen and altered how others outside our tight circle viewed them as well now the official reporting and radio traffic had changed and instead of calling out what that we had KIAs inbound over the radio it was changed to angel flights or three inbound angels on the next helo it was respectful to those who lost their lives and those units who lost that member of their team and I think that it truly helped those of us who did this kind of work to cope with the after effects a US Army staff sergeant stood in the back of our small crowd of staff and officers kept to himself and watched the

Marines on the processing room floor work. It was easy to see that the realization had not fully settled in yet. And through his glassy expression of exhaustion, he thanked us for taking care of his major, to which we replied, we are so very sorry for your loss. They had both belonged to the same U.S. Army Reserve Unit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and had both been out here, out there for a few months shy of a year. They both were out together on the desert roads this morning, inspecting the many IED craters for repairs, trying to earn the trust of the Iraqi people and deny al-Qaeda insurgents places to hide their bombs. Everyone in their unit knew that their job in Iraq was extremely dangerous, but they still did it without complaint.

Just like the hundreds of times before, they'd walked up to the crater to inspect it for repair before they could commit any of their vehicles. and this morning all seemed normal, but within a clap of thunder, he watched his major disappear into a cloud of dust and sand. Now, at the end of a long and terrible day, he was tasked with escorting the remains of his brother-in-law, home to his sister's family, who, at this moment, didn't know what had happened yet. We all felt terribly sorry for their loss and sacrifice.

It was time for us to pay our respects to a fallen brother, we all gathered around the angels flag-draped transfer case, both units and the staff sergeant. The chaplain stood at the field of blue and white stars and begin with the Bible verse John 1513. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. It is within these holy words that our minds were left to wander to try and make sense out of the terrible tragedy that lay before us.

The chaplain continued, and I reflected upon the words that he chose. This major was a courageous man in service to our country, a man who loved our country so much that he was willing to risk death to protect it. This morning, his dedication had been realized by giving his life for those he loved. And that's, what, 24 or 48 hours after you guys get on the ground? Pretty much, yeah. and this is 2005, August, summertime, 2005. It was, yeah, right outside of Ramadi, it was a really, really nasty area. Little did I know when I got assigned to that place that was the busiest area.

And, yeah, that was just one among many, many stories that, it was like that almost every day. Yeah, it's interesting because, You know, you are in the reserves, and here you were. You'd gone on three deployments. You'd already been wounded. The, it was the 228 iron soldiers out of Pennsylvania. That was the brigade that was there in their National Guard unit. And, you know, they suffered massive casualties because they were in Ramadi when I arrived there.

And they were just doing an incredible, incredible job taking the fight to the enemy. And they were, you know, they paid the price. You say this, we were only three days deep into this deployment. and I already could see the contrast between this deployment and OIF1. This time around, we were to learn much more about the angels than what was comfortable. Each was to have his or her own distinct story

explained by the personal effects that he or she carried. The brothers in arms who wept for them as they dropped them off and the stories of valor in which the angel met his fate. It was within these events that the paradox of a mortuary affair as Marine in theater rests do we keep the angel disassociated as much as possible to minimize the after effects of such work or do we embrace the angel's stories honoring their sacrifice and revealing

our true feelings of empathy to those unit members presence present no matter which path we were to take it wasn't hard to see that this deployment was going to be an extremely long and difficult one with how dangerous Alambar province was, it looked as if we were going to be extremely busy for this deployment. You guys take over, you have a conversation with your gunny, gunny ski.

You said, did you happen to see all those wrinkles increases on the Angels flags from a couple weeks back? He nodded his head. Yeah, well, I mean to change that. So you noticed that the flags that were being put on the caskets were... They were taking them straight out.

out of a cardboard box and placing them on through the transfer cases and tied a white court around it. And it was not anybody's fault. It was just the way it's always been done. And I, when I was with three, four, I had found out that a bunch of guys that I had met had gotten killed in Fallujah. One in particular was First Lieutenant Oscar Jimenez. And I didn't really know him, besides him chewing me out once.

I had no idea he was a lieutenant. He was walking around without his blouse on. And we got called to a meeting. And I was trying to get in. He was trying to get out. He told me to get a gangway. And I'm like, who the hell are you? And I found out who he was.

But when I was on convalescent leave, the day I left to come back to 29 Palms, I noticed that the USA Today had a mural of everybody who got killed, and his picture was pretty much dead center on that. And I noticed a lot of faces of the people I knew, and particularly was him because he was wearing his dress blues in that picture. And it was pretty much a big kick to the stomach to know so many people that was on that page. So going forward, now I was in charge of the very building that they're running. that their remains went through. And I had a connection to that sacrifice because I knew several guys and went through.

And it kind of hurt to think that if that is the flag that gets handed to the families, it needs to be treated with the utmost respect. It needs to be treated as something that is befitting of a hero because they sacrificed their lives for us. for us, the rest of us. Not only that sacrifice,

but I wanted to honor the sacrifice that their families were soon to make because it's them that continue to live without that family member, you know? These flags is not just another piece of cloth. It's something that it's handed down from generation to generation to generation. It's something that people put up on their mantles.

It needs to be treated with the utmost respect. So after I saw what had happened, you know, with that U.S. Army major, I started going down to the PX and I bought one can of starch, and I bought their only iron and only iron in board. You're not supposed to use starch in combat, you know. So, you know, we're trying to look good for the enemy. So I took it back. Next day, there's two cans.

Next day there's four cans, you know, they kept on doubling up. And one day the lady said, hey, what are you doing with all the starch? You're in here at the same time, just every day. I said, ma'am, I'm iron and starching every American flag before we put them on the transfer cases. We even came up with our own fold because before the flag was in danger of touching the ground. And I wanted to treat them with the utmost respect. So we tied the white cord first, tucked it down the sides, and then it was out of the way for the honor guard. And it stayed.

And eventually got adopted by all the branches. That became the standard operating procedure. We would iron it so much that when you walked around it, it would gleam in the light. And so back in 2009, I'm back in Ohio, and I get a phone call from Staff Sergeant Kenley, and he's there in D.C. And he goes, hey, bus, Brigadier General, so-and-so was there at Ramstein, and he's watching a ramp ceremony, and him and his entourage, and the first one comes off and has done the old style. The second one comes off and has done the old style.

He goes, the third one comes off and it's done your style. And he goes, damn it, I know Marines did that. I'm going to find out who and I'm going to find out and let them know what it means to me and my entourage. So he called up Chief Warren for Idis in D.C. and she said, yes, sir, we call it the Bustler method. Bustler started that back in 2005. We adopted it. We now made it that everybody that we handle, and the Marines handle, we do it this way. He goes from now on until the end of the Marine Corps, when the country no longer needs a Marine Corps, we are going to do it this way.

Anybody gets killed in combat or dies overseas, they're going to come home this way. So it was adopted. First, it was the Army, then the Navy, and now the Air Force. So if you watch the guys get unloaded from Benghazi, that's my ceremony. That's my flag. The guys ramped ceremonies nowadays.

It's done that way. The guys coming home from North Korea, being repatriated from Tarawa, it's done that way. So it was my little 15 minutes of fame, you know, my little thing that I did. I never got to add a boy at it or anything. But I didn't do it for that. I did it because that needed to be done.

I needed to be, these guys needed to be honored at the best way we could bestow upon them because they're heroes. if you see sacrifice every day as we did, the ultimate sacrifice every day, and it really sticks with you. And so I'm glad that I had my little hand at that that now this will live on with those guys. So as you mentioned earlier,

talking about going out and setting up security and recovering from on scene, this is not a job where you're always in a safe and secure area to do to conduct your procedures at one point you get called out to Ramadi to help recover remains from a Bradley fighting vehicle and you arrive on scene there and I'm going to go to the book on scene there lay a sickening black smudge of charred Butchery of a burned out M2A2 Bradley finding vehicle. It stole my breath.

It broke my heart. And my soul earned another shade of hate to know that there were five men trapped in there when it was blown up by an IED inside the city. Out of those five, there were still three soldiers unaccounted for, buried among that twisted, burned mess of steel and wire. This was the reason why we were flown out here to Camp Ramadi to recover the remains of these three fallen heroes and return them home. with honor.

The Bradley was placed upon a low flatbed trailer and transported there to the Pennsylvania National Guards compound. And again, you do a really good job detailing how this unfolded, but to get into some of it, you say there is a process to such complicated manners and approach to methodically separate the angels from ruin and to make sense out of such a horrific carnage. One section, one bucket, and one shovelful of debris at a time. This was painstaking work requiring us to dig by hand, sort through the debris with a homemade sifter, and capture and document each tiny piece of human remains or personal effects found.

It was going to take a little time, the right tools, and a whole bunch of luck to find the right pieces of these guys that still had enough DNA material that was usable to positively identify them. Our approach had to be rooted in science, and we had to treat this as a crime scene because in the end it was. Our job was to capture every article of personal effects and every particle of human tissue that was humanly possible. We were to create a topographical map of the recovery site to document their locations inside

the burned out Bradley so that anyone who read my report, even years later, could see the exact layout of how we found it. The difficult thing was that there was nothing recognizable left to document. The Bradley had been literally blown apart from the floor up and when the lightweight aluminum composite armor melted in on top of itself. You described that here a little bit. Fueled by Magnetic temperatures, the fire melted metal like wax. In the interior, thousands of metal teardrop shaped pools lined the wreckage. Their sharp pointed ends greeted us like hungry daggers. The Bradley fighting vehicles, mortal wound, a blast opening several feet wide,

crossed the left side undercarriage just behind the driver's seat. Molten metal escaped through the wide crevasse and quickly cooled into a very thick layered puddle of shiny alloy metal beneath the Bradley. Springs ejected from magazines, splintered metal components and mangled weapon barrels protruded from the slag as if a river of wreckage were frozen in time. Brass casings from a multitude of calibers littered the floor, covering the back of the troop compartment from a few inches to greater. The ammunition boxes or magazines that once held them had burst open and were punctured from the inside out. Fire ravaged junks and boxes had been ripped from their homes

and now lay in the tangle, their conduit and wires hanging limp and frayed. The smell was an overpowering bouquet of burned electronics missed with a slight ashy smell of an all-consuming inferno. This fire was so intense that it turned everything into a light, wispy dust. In the troop compartment, the thick conduit and wires that stretched throughout the scene were pulled back and cut. The metal junction boxes were inspected and stacked among the refuse pile. The thick blanket made of twisted debris and top grayish ash was slowly pulled back one bucket at a time only to reveal the grim story of the two warriors that were found in the rear of this Bradley.

These two angels were documented on the site sketch as R1 and R2. So this, and this is, I talk about this, um, I talk about this, many times this vehicle graveyard that existed in Ramadi of I it's probably 75 to 100 vehicles easy and just every one of them in various states of destruction and when you bypass that and for whatever reason they put that vehicle graveyard on the road I mean I guess they did it because it's the simplest place you get back in the compound you take a left and there's there's the vehicle graveyard but just kind of FYI every time anyone rolled out the gate, the last

thing they saw was that vehicle graveyard. And there's no possible way you could be sitting in a Humvee or a Bradley or an Abrams and go by that vehicle graveyard with a hundred destroyed, burned out vehicles in there and not think to yourself

okay. Could be the day. You guys are doing a ton of work to rip this thing apart all by hand. with sledgehammers. We had never seen anything like this, ever. As far as I knew,

nobody had ever seen anything like it before. Nobody had ever shared that with us. So we're looking at this stuff, a melted vehicle. World War II manuals, you're talking about all steel vehicles. If it blows up, it's in pieces. But this is melted totally casing things, people. You know, and we literally, were swinging and breaking things with a sledgehammer

and they made, they fabricated tools for us to go out there and try to pry the layers apart. And we literally took what was left and made them into, you know, separated them into piles. And there had to have been millions of pieces, millions of pieces that we went through. Nobody ever prepared us for that. Then it's taking you days.

Yes. and this hard labor prying this thing apart, and then you go to this point here. Slowly the layers of melted metal and debris gave way and revealed its secrets. The heavily damaged remains of one U.S. Army soldier. Inside the tight confines of where the turret would normally have been,

was a charred torso lying on his back, semi-embedded into the once-viscous metal floor. His right shoulder and right upper arm reached out toward the hole where we were able to recover his forearm up to the elbow the prior day. Just inches above the torso buried deep in the amalgamation was the back half of a human skull minus any fragments or facial or lower mandible bones. Only the interior fossa down to the posterior cranial fossa were present.

Just a few inches away from that, also deeply buried with a remnants of one burned Kevlar helmet. The atmosphere was electric, but then quickly turned to. into a somber tone we had found R3. So this was a just kind of a different kind of mission for you guys because you, was this your first time picking apart a scene like that other than the helicopter? Yeah. Yeah, we had never seen anything else like it before.

Most of the recoveries are going to be, were similar situations, but most of the remains that we would handle were coming to us. Only if the unit was engaged and couldn't break away or the scene was too catastrophic they would send us out. And this was a scene that they had no idea how to determine what was what.

And I was expecting, okay, well, why can't you guys recover when you're telling us over the phone? And then when we showed up, it was, you totally understood from what a giant, gigantic armor personnel carrier to all of a sudden being, you know, maybe chest high. The only thing that is as high as its tracks. Everything else was gone. Well, you guys, and there was the gunner and the driver or the gunner and the VC had been thrown from the vehicle and recovered.

Right. It was the driver and the VC and then he had two guys in the back. We were still looking. the driver, the VC, two guys in the back, we're still looking for the gunner. And we had no idea. Because when we first got the word, we were looking for three.

We're looking for three remains. So we fly out there, we find three remains. What you're looking for, and what counts to you as an angel, is not your head or your arms. It's your torso. So we find the remnant. of three torsos.

And we go back, and two weeks later, we get a phone call that none of the DNA is matching up to their gunner. And we're like, that's impossible. Out of all those millions of remains, pieces, fragments, there's nothing coming back for your gunner. So we go out there again and there's, look again, break it apart further, nothing. and we go out there maybe a total four or five times and five weeks later they ended up finding a person and at the very end of this long mystery it turned out that what we thought was

R3 was actually a part of a guy that recovered on the scene when the initial explosion They said that his front half blew up, but his back half fell back in and got encased in metal. So we were both right that they treated the one out there as a torso as an angel, and we did too. And what had happened to the gunner was the IED breached right behind where he sat. and when the vehicle melted, it carried the bones out underneath the vehicle and it got encased under 12 inches of slag metal underneath the vehicle. And it's the first time we've ever, ever seen anything like that. You know, we hit that piece, sledgehammers try to break it and stuff

and it wouldn't come apart. But, you know, with logic looking square in the face that said, hey, we feel found three. We were breaking, you know, we can't find any more remains. And so what had happened was they decided that they were to send this, the rest of this vehicle back to the States and looked through it by a mass spectrometer and try to find any voids. And when they were lifting it up, the bottom piece, all the runoff, when they lifted that, it broke in pieces and all the bones were falling out. But I remember, you know, right before I was the call of the initial recovery, and I didn't feel right about it.

And I kept on feeling like I need to be drawn to this blast hole. Even though logically they looked for three, I found three, that kind of thing. But it felt like it wasn't finished. And after the five weeks of recovery, you know, I think back, maybe it was his spirit letting me know that here, this is where I am. Don't quit. Don't quit, you know, now. But I know it's not my fault or anything, but I still blame myself for putting his family through, you know, five weeks of hell.

Just because, you know, I should have listened to my gut feeling. But, you know, that's... It's things that we take away from it. Yeah, I didn't go into too much detail, but he actually got reported as missing in action at some point, which was like the second missing in action. So it was a, like you said, it's a nightmare. It is a nightmare being on my hand.

And I'm thinking all of the things that could have happened. Like did his remains get ejected? Were we waiting for a video to show up with, a captured set of remains? Were they going to booby trap his remains and for us to go out there and find them and try to get more of us? Are they going to ransom it?

You know, what are they going to do? And all these different scenarios are popping up. And all of them were viable, but we had no idea. It's like he just disappeared. You know? Nobody ever.

thought that a person could literally melt through a vehicle and what we were looking at it. Crazy, crazy stuff. You guys, and again, this just kind of goes to the nature of the war that was happening in Al-Lambar province and in Ramadi. You guys go back to Ramadi again to get another blown up Bradley. And you say here, and this one, you actually go on scene, right? Yeah. You say here that fuel-laden earth and oily ash made dark smudges upon my uniform as the distinct pungent smell of the still smoldering M2A2 Bradley fighting vehicle lingered heavy in the air.

Its complexities of varying distinctive stenches ranged from burned wires, burned diesel fuel, burned ammunition, and the heavy, greasy smell of burned people. My team and I had now been up for nearly 30 hours straight, and I was miles. beyond exhaustion from the nearly continuous pumping of adrenaline through my system. And this is because you're on scene. You're in the field in Ramadi. What had happened was is that we got word that an incident happened. So they were playing this, all right, we're going to bring the vehicle back to TQ. We're not.

They kept on going back and forth. And so my team is ready to do a, you know, for just like how we did in Ramadi, the other one, for them to bring the vehicle to us on a low board. and for us to work. So we were up the whole night prior working on other remains and getting those guys going home. Then all of a sudden, we're standing a team up.

We're going to go out. Then we're like, okay, we are going out after many, many hours of this back and forth. So we were exhausted, you know, 30 plus hours of being awake. And we show up to the scene and we show up to this, you know, another incident that claimed seven.

Why did they send you guys into the field to do the recovery instead of putting it on, like having an 88 bring it back. They tried, they were putting it on an 88, but they had seven guys in the scene was too catastrophic. They got hit right next to a big open field that had like wheat or something growing on it. So they were afraid that remains were out there

or they didn't know if remains were under it. And plus when they have that much fire in this vehicle and the tool missiles are going off in the back of it and it's melting, that regular, You know, people can't tell what is what. So what they think is a piece of plastic silicon could actually be bone. And so they wanted people who were experienced to know what is what and be able to capture everything that we could.

But that scene was literally catastrophic. It was the biggest IED creator I've ever seen. You say here, I was shaking from the cold, shaking from the declining adrenaline, shaking from the overconsumption of coffee, and shaking from the terrible fear of my impending death. My stomach turned a nervous caffeine-laden reflux up, my digestive track that only pride kept down. I had taken too many chances in my tours over here. I'd overplayed too many hands, and this was my last of nine lives. This was Ramadi, the devil's playground. Luck has a shelf life, and mine was set to expire. My only two hopes were that when the end

came it would come fast and my body would be viewable so my family at home could have the luxury of closure each breath i took felt borrowed and every check of my watch brought disbelief that we had lived a few more minutes longer you get a little um you get a little briefing from the army captain we came from that direction and we were heading in that direction toward those buildings early last night the u.s army captain vehicle commander of the bradley that transported us here said gesturing with knife in hand. This was a joint U.S. Iraqi security force patrol, so there were five Americans and two ISFs in there. The vehicle commander was ejected when it happened, so we already have him

recovered. He was a good man. What a fucking shame. He pointed down the road that led off into the indistinguishable unknown of the delicate mist. Be careful. The security team walked in that area a couple hours ago and the insurgents tried to get them by blowing up another big ID down that way. Those guys got lucky and nobody got hurt so don't have any of your guys go down there and stay off the sides of the road we don't know what's in that area the IED crater was the biggest I'd ever seen taking up the entire road and it was just as deep as it was wide the Bradley had suffered such a catastrophic blow that it was in several pieces the heavy diesel

engine was ejected its turret now lying 40 yards away and upside down and there was a whole several feet wide in the center of the chassis the vehicle was held together only by half of the frame. The EOD professionals slowly yet cautiously worked their way towards the smoldering mechanical carcass, deliberately picking up the unexploded rounds along the way. The rounds were meticulously collected and set into a pile of a short distance in front of the Bradley. My S&R team readied the body bags as I began to wonder if we'd brought enough of them for all the pieces of these poor guys. The vehicle was actually going this way.

And the IED went off, and it ended up going that way. It was pointed in the total opposite direction of the way it was traveling. The turret was popped off of it, and it was open. I mean, literally, you can walk in from one end to the other end with your arm straight out and not touch a thing. It was totally wide open, just like the other one was. And, you know, and there was remains, you know, pretty much everywhere. It was just a bad scene. It might have taken maybe 30 minutes before EOD was done.

We had to start counting the remains so that we had all seven accounted for. Sergeant Kinley, Corporal Thomas, and I began to search the incident site while each of us counted out loud, cautiously crawling into the Bradley, barely able to distinguish human remains from the charred remains of the tangled mess of burned wires and jagged metal. The vehicle commander is already recovered, so that makes one. There's the driver he makes two. A few seconds went by. There's three, four, and five.

A few more moments went by. And six, I think. Yeah, that makes six. We walked around looking for number seven and he was nowhere to be found. Again, I'm fast forwarding a bit. You guys continue to search. And then finally, I think I see a heel of a boot under those wires there. Hey, Kinley, come here and check it out.

Can you see what I'm pointing at? I said, he leaned over and pulled some wires out of the way. Bingo, I think we've got him. We found number seven. Hey, Thomas, help me out here. Shit, he's stuck. 20 minutes passed slowly, 20 long minutes of watching the exhausted ebbs and flows of tattered emotions of the faces of those present,

trapped in a riptide of fatigue, uncertainty, and disgust. I knew him. He was my friend. The M-88 tank wrecker operator confided in me as the boom of the colossal machine easily lifted the turd into the air, freeing the trapped angel. My guys quickly freed him from the wires and began to carry him away. He didn't deserve to die this way.

This is fucking terrible. I took my eyes off the scene and looked at him. The tank wrecker operator tears had tears streaming down his face and he looked over to me and shook my hand. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you and you guys are doing to bring him home. Really thank you for everything you're doing for all. all these guys. You guys come all the way out here and risk your lives to get my buddies out. I cannot thank you enough for doing this. It really means a lot. And then,

kabum, Brown shook. My heart stopped. The ripples of concussive shockwave went through my innards uncomfortably tickling my stomach and my anxiety shot through the roof. Everyone got down and took cover behind anything that could serve as protection. The tank record operator still kept walking on the open road back towards the record, not at all influenced by the explosion. His was struck by grief the blast might as well have been a cool breeze and he looked as if he didn't care there was another IED that blew up on the tail end of the perimeter no one got hurt just a little shaken no one could relax but how could we every inch of this road could be wired to blow so you guys wrap up that you

guys finally have everyone and now well there's a situation that unfolds here's the problem staff sergeant we only brought enough vehicles to transport my security team out of here. We were already out here at the scene last night, and nobody at higher headquarters told us that they were going to fly you guys all the way out here to join us. Hell, we didn't even know that you guys, that you guys were even going to be here until you showed up at Camp Corregador. We just do not have enough room to take the remains and all of you back to base.

We need to figure out a way to do that, and we can't make two trips. So basically, you're all out there. You've got the remains now, and there's not enough room in the vehicles to get everyone in the vehicles back to Camp Corregador. And eventually you guys come up with a plan. They wanted to put the remains on top of the vehicles, and I shot that down. And I wasn't going to give the satisfaction to the bad guys to let them use that as a recruiting tool. That, you know, they just messed up these guys, and I didn't want them to know how much. You know, how bad they hurt these guys.

So I said, no, no, we're not doing it. You know, we'll find another way. So we chose another way. And then in other way, well, you explain it to your guys. There is no other choice, brother. Kinley and I are going to ride in this Bradley here. We're just going to have to stack all the body bags and gear on top of us. This here is the shit that nightmares are made of.

And I would never ask you guys to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. The team just looked at me with wide eyes, standing there and looking perplexed for a second. It was a cardinal rule to never stack the remains and always treat the fallen with the utmost respect, but the reality of the situation demanded that we do this way. There clearly wasn't any other choice in the matter. We had to get them and us home.

Kinley and I climbed in. Come on, let's start getting these guys in here and get this shit over with. The angels were stacked on top of us from floor to ceiling, and their uncomfortable weight crushed my legs, causing my feet to fall asleep, Little rips had formed in the corners of the black vinyl body bags From the difficulty of maneuvering inside the first and now the second Bradley

Allowing some of the viscosity's to escape We were ready to go and I couldn't wait to get out of here As you guys are driving back you described this we passed a couple of M1 Abrams tanks at an intersection They were blocking traffic for us the entire way back to combat outpost Corregador was guarded by one of the most beautiful sites that I'd ever seen a US army platoon of heavy armor taking over this side of the city ensuring our way home holy shit we just might make it I looked over at sergeant Kinley to tell him but he was passed out sleeping I just shook my head in disbelief yeah there's some times that when when there was a wounded guy or whatever the well I know the 2-28 would do it

and I know that the ready first brigade they would do the same thing like they would lock the whatever section of the city down to ensure safety. I mean, you can only do it for so long, but that's what they do when there was something like this going on. It was a very welcome sight to see because we had lost three Bradley's in three weeks. And, you know, and now we're taking care of those guys and getting them home. And the whole time I'm thinking we're getting lit up to. And, yeah, when we saw, I could look out a little periscope thing, you know,

bulletproof glass and see, oh, wow, they're locking this city down. That's awesome. You know, from being all the way on the bottom to all of a sudden, like, wow, we just might make it. We just might not have to be blowing up inside this vehicle. Yeah. People might think that you have a feeling of safety and security inside of a tank or Bradley. I never felt secure inside of a Bradley. You're just a big target.

Yep. And those, you know, and I very seldom would ride in Bradley, but the Army soldiers were riding in there every single day. I got to hand it to those guys. And like I said, every single time they rolled out, they're rolling past that vehicle graveyard. Yeah. You know you're not invincible.

So I'm going to jump forward a bit here. And again, you give great detail. I think you called it a mystery a second ago of unrattling that first, or unraveling that first Bradley, the missing guy, the MIA, and you do a great job of going into those details. That was a powerful story that you cover. I wanted, I knew I was, maybe their family members or the members of that unit would pick this up and would read it. And I wanted to know, let them to know that what, how we saw it from our end, that we weren't trying to not do our jobs, that we were doing everything humanly possible to get him home.

And we just were exhausted all of our means to do it. We had no idea until that very last day, then five weeks later we found him. I'm going to fast forward a bit. Back to the book, the door swung open and the major promptly stood before us. He had clearly been upset about something, and the stress showed in his eyes and his tense stance. Everyone sit down. He was folding his hands into one another, and his eyes never made contact with any of us. I've just gotten some bad news.

My mind immediately drew up a mental checklist. I had to figure out exactly what equipment and personnel we needed if we had to go on another recovery mission outside the wire. But this really had to have been something truly special. I had never seen the major so visibly shaken. Today, this morning, Master Sergeant Angus got killed. What? I mumbled under my breath. He was out on a mission.

he said as he continued looking at the ground and they set up a trap for him and his EOD team my worst nightmare had come true I was about to process a friend and I was ill prepared in the hundreds of times that I had rehearsed in my mind I had never thought that it would come to this but it did just a day or two before

Master Sergeant Angus's whole EOD unit was here to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and he had stood where Gatewood was now standing, chatting with me about trading some of my Motown music from my computer. Now the very thought of him being dead seemed surreal. Sergeant Clinton Kinley and Sergeant Sean Johnson show up and I told them what to expect as per the information that I had at hand. Sergeant Kinley prepared the S&R packs

and ensured that the recovery team member and weapon systems were ready to go at a moment's notice. Sergeant Johnson readied the processing room floor and assigned a couple of Marines to iron starch and IP the flag in preparations for Angus's transfer case. I called the main armory to set aside an appropriate amount of ammunition required for a recovery team heading into harm's way, and then I prepared myself for whichever scenario came first. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, and each clock movement thundered as if it was a heavy wooden door being slammed in a vast chamber. The major informed us that the EOD team had recovered his remains and was en route to our mortuary affairs collection point. He advised us to prepare ourselves.

This one was going to be especially messy. I went back up to my loft area, which overlooked the processing room floor, changed into my camis, and sat down at the computer. I still had work to do, reports to write. I didn't want to seem impacted by this. I wanted to be the pillar of strength for the others to look upon and be encouraged for the situation ahead. But I'm sure that my false facade was easily crumbling in front of the onlookers as I sat high in the loft for everyone to see. I was tired of this shit. I took his death personally and the knowledge just burned me up from within.

I just stared blankly at the computer screen. The world continued to spin and darkness crept into TQ. D team arrives and by teams of two, the MA Marines quickly grab each end of the body bags, placed them onto litters, and hurriedly moved his remains into the processing room floor. I helped grab the last bag out of the Humvee and noticed that it sloshed around the bottom of the compartment, which held about two inches of blood. The bag was very heavy and sagged in the middle. Jagged bones, sharpened by the blast, protruded through the bottom.

and a trail of blood was left in the dusty driveway. My heart sank. We placed him onto the litter stands, which each had a thick mound of sawdust below to catch any bodily fluids, and locked the doors behind us, cutting off his unit members and gathering onlookers. They did not need to see what we had to see every day.

It was our burden to bear, not theirs. Team gets started with the processing. And you go in to check in with the major. You knock on the door and he says, come in, Bustler. I opened his door and entered. The air changed from the cool openness to a sweat-laden cordite smell, a very familiar female EOD sergeant, still wearing her ballistics vest,

and clearly in shock from the sudden and devastating loss, was sitting in the chair against the wall, with her shoulders hung and a heavy brow. The major sat in front of her, leaning over, with elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, trying awkwardly to console her. But his attempts were futile. I had known her as the Marine martial arts instructor who led all the martial arts classes for the EOD team and for the 372nd Helicopter Squadron.

Often they had invited our unit to train, and those of us who accepted found that she was a true professional and confident leader of Marines. She was pure entertainment to watch in martial arts class because of her things. short frame yet she took warriors many times her size and introduced such searing pain that was simply best describes as shutting off all brain function or a neural override but here she was wearing the expression of absolute horror beyond any that I'd ever seen before the major and I had to get a statement of recognition from her to aid in the tentative identification of the master sergeant and doing this

made me feel beyond terrible. But she had to tell us the story of what had happened out there. Between sobs, she began to relive it all over again. Her eyes flickering as if she were watching a movie that only she could see. Then she began speaking. We were out there and found the first IED.

It looked like a trap from the beginning. They blew up the robot. There was an abandoned car, and the master sergeant volunteered to check it out. he walked over to where I couldn't see she started crying which subsided into a whimper she continued he walked right up and and it's okay sergeant what happened I asked that's that's when oh god she started uncontrollably sopping for a minute then through her tears she conjured up enough strength that continued they called cormin up cormin up and then doc ran all the way over there from

the backside of the perimeter. He ran up thinking that he could save his life, that he was hurt, that he was still alive. We all did. We didn't know how bad it was. We ran up asking, where is he? Where is he? They just pointed at all the pieces on the ground. She fell back into shock, and that was all we could get. But that was enough information for the statement. And then after a few minutes when she asked to leave, she did by the front doors by the duty hut. The major and I walked out to the processing floor and witness something that to this day I would never forget, something that has haunted and will always haunt me to the end of my days. Black vinyl bags of nothing but a friend's body parts.

Torn bits of camouflage clothing and destroyed gear. Out of all the deaths that I had been surrounded by in all my time over here and in all my tours, never had I seen anyone in such shape so catastrophically shattered. I really think that in that long stare across the floor, which took maybe only a minute or two, I instantly felt myself age. In a flash, I felt as if all my youth and vigor for life had been sapped from me by one horrific scene.

In those 120 seconds, I knew that I never wanted to devote myself to such ugly work ever again. In those 120 seconds, I knew that I was sick of death in all of its forms. And in those 120 seconds, I knew I would never, ever be the same. It doesn't stop. And four days after Master Sergeant Angus died, the rear door slammed as they entered interrupting the unusual quiet

and gaining the attention of all of us who called the CP home. Just as they did over a hundred times, the team on duty carried in one litter with a large, zipped-up black body bag on top. And then gently lowered him onto the litter stance. The processing was moving along. I checked the penmanship line by line to see if it was all legible, if everything was spelled correctly,

and if they had used capital lettering for each entry as the regs mandated. Okay, his name was William D. Richardson. Okay, he was a Marine Staff Sergeant. Okay, wait a minute. What? Oh, my God. Did you see what unity he was from? A sense of dismay hit me.

What's up, bus? Something wrong? Gunny Gatewood asked, leaning over my shoulder to see the paperwork that I still had in my hands. I handed in the paperwork. This is not good, Gunny. This is Sergeant Kinley's buddy who he was hanging out with just yesterday. He was in charge on the security detail from the S&R a couple days ago. Describe how you kind of connect the dots.

and then you realize that Kinley's not there at this time and somebody's got to go tell Kinley what had happened. He was up the whole night before with Richardson going through the after-action reports and they were catching up on old days, you know. It was his own platoon sergeant. And, yeah, Kenley knew Doug's wife. you know he knew

he would spend all this whole time together and didn't even know that each other the two of them were on the same base and then we were already associated with the EOD guys they were our buddies they would come over and hang out with us we'd go to their place

and until you know after Angus got killed and they hooked up and then yeah once I realized who it was You know, I had to be the one to tell him because if any of my buddies got killed over there, I would want a friend to come and tell me and not just anybody.

You know, hey, you know, your buddy's dead. You know, I wanted to be there for him and to be there to support him. And because I knew it was going to be a huge deal. our job isn't an easy one and when you realize that your buddies are there being worked on that takes it to a whole new level

yeah so you you go and find him and he was supposed to have duty he was supposed to be there on that team that morning and since he stayed up the whole night before they just let him sleep Going back to the book, I didn't know why, but I could barely get the words out.

I'm sorry, brother. I hate to be the one to tell you, but we have your friend, Staff Sergeant Richardson, at the CP. There was a Humvee accident out in town this morning, and I am so very sorry, brother. I knew that he had heard me, but it was as if his mind refused to accept it. You could see the thought rolled back in his mind and a look of emptiness solely replaced his sleepy expression. He squinted as if he was concentrating on a deep thought. Then looked down to put a pinch of dip into his lip, stood up and said,

Okay, Staff Sergeant. And he walked straight out the door on the far end of the building with a blank look. I wasn't sure how to take his reaction. I looked at the gunny, and he just shrugged. We waited several minutes to see if he would come back, but he never did. So we turned out the light and closed the door when we left. The wind still blows. the sand still shifts, the stars still fill the sky,

continues to spin even though it may feel as if it has been shattered for your friend. You go into a great section here, you know, about Kinley and what that did to him. And it's something that everybody should read. And it's, you know, he had reached his, limits for that deployment for that deployment he went back to three other times afterwards and you guys had to take care of him which is what you did right and you took care of him and you did it the right way got him the break that he needed and this is something I talk about all the time is just like a car if you the check

engine light comes on you got it you got to you got to get it off the highway you got to get it serviced and if you get it served It'll be okay check light engine goes off. You can take that thing back out on the road again If you keep driving it when that check engine light comes on and then the temperature gauge comes on and then the oil pressure gauge comes on and you keep driving that thing You're gonna destroy that vehicle. Yeah, and so you guys did the right thing and as you could see He was able to get that check engine light fixed get the refit and go back and continue on Once again that's America Yeah, he's a hell of a guy

He was in Fallujah, Phantom Fury. He worked at the potato factory there where all the remains were coming in. He did all the search recoveries going in there, pulling out all the dead insurgents. And this is when EOD could not fulfill all their commitments and stuff. So they were out there with hairpins and putting them in grenades on their suicide vests to make them where they won't blow up and then take care of them and stuff

and then you know this here's his second tour is with us I mean the guy is one of the best and that chapter is the strongest man among us and he definitely was like I said it's worth reading so that people can understand how all that unfolded and what you can guys did what how it affected him how you guys took care of him um and and obviously the the outcome

is positive i guess there's no other way to say it because i know it's not a positive situation but the outcome is positive you know he was able to continue on going more deployments continue to do his job going back to the book 17 weeks had passed since our arrival here to tq and over that course of time i had watched our mission here take a toll upon each and every one of us in the platoon. Our mission of processing angels had slowly bled the color out of our lives until the one day when we woke up to find the whole world gray. There was nothing to look forward to but the slow grind of our work and the end of our deployment, which still seemed so far away. Our day-to-day reality

here was filled with an ever-increasing level of gruesomeness with the opening of each bag just when you thought you had seen it all there would be one more unimaginable horror that would take your breath away it was said that there was no tougher duty than this mission and that there was no greater honor than mortuary affairs duty but there was nothing about this mission that would be motivating to any of us because no matter how you looked at it at the end of the day you are putting the broken pieces of yet another American hero into another black vinyl bag to be sent home to another family who would soon have their world shattered and with each set of remains that we sent home a little piece of ourselves went with them deployment and when it

again jumping ahead when it finally comes time for you guys to go home you call this chapter more than ready it felt as if all of this had been a dream That this day truly wasn't here, and I would soon wake up to find that we were still back in September, and we would have to redo this whole deployment all over again. I was miles beyond exhausted, both mentally and physically. The experiences of the past six months had left me battered and defeated, and when I looked deep inside myself, it felt as if my soul had withered and turned gray from being exposed to so many gruesome deaths. This had been hands down the toughest of all my deployments.

And now you're getting, you're getting ready to actually leave. And you say, I threw my sea bags down onto the gym floor that the major had bestowed the name, House of Pain, back in September. And I had thought that his bravado was misplaced. To me, this whole place was one big house of pain. From up here in the loft, I had watched the Marines open the black vinyl bags of so many fallen heroes. The floor of the gym had been our overflow area for a mass casualty situation in December. The front desk was where I had first met Master Sergeant Angus, and the processing room floor was where we saw him off.

Our storage area behind the floor was where I witnessed the immense weight of our job, crushed the strongest man among us. And out in the reefer was where I touched the blue field and white stars and said a quiet prayer for all 158. angels who left my custody. This building held so many memories that had now been seared into the cerebral pathways of my brain, and I was a flurry of tangled emotions. I quietly closed the door behind me as I made my way out, shutting out the world that would forever haunt me before I climbed aboard the Humvee. Are you ready to go, Staff Sergeant? The driver asked me. I replied, more than ready, brother. I heard that, he said,

and just like that, we were off to chase the sun across the sky and to wake up in another world. Soon thereafter, you were getting on an aluminum tube and you were back in the States. Did they have any decompression for you guys? What was your process coming home? Get off of active duty,

go back to you in regular lives. There was nothing, no gradual time. You know, I let them know that our first sergeant, that I wasn't ready yet, you know. And he goes, I don't care. By the end of the day, you're off my books. So I went back to delivering mail. And then I started having all these problems with PTSD.

It felt like I was always on patrol. My mind would click off. I would still walk for blocks. I wasn't sleeping. Everything that I repressed over there in combat, all the remains that we had taken care of. I'd still dream about it and stuff. And it took over my life.

I ended up leaving the post office, got raided at 100% permanent in total with the VA, and went to a big, deep depression. I ended up coping with everything by drinking seven days a week because that was the only way I knew how to get some sleep. And I got lucky because I met people who actually cared and roped me in. One of them was my PTSD therapist, Bill. He was over at the VA just retired out of the Air Force and he was there in Iraq with the mental health assessment teams. So now I finally met somebody that I didn't have to explain when an IED was

Because he traveled the same roads So he helped me through You know it could be three o'clock in the morning and I can call him it didn't matter But what really also helped me is a was a corpsman from Vietnam did two tours over in Vietnam And over at the VFW when we were sitting there and we're drinking and stuff And we used to have all these big philosophy you know philosophical conversations.

And he goes, you know what? I know what you need. I'm like, what? And he goes, you need to start writing. I'm like, nah, bullshit. I'm good, man. I'm not a writer. I barely passed high school English.

So he goes, no, that's what helped me when I came back from Vietnam. So a period of time goes by, and I ended up picking it up. I said, why not? I woke up from a nightmare and said, I am not doing anything else. Why not? So what I did is I started writing down the stories, and my very first one was Angus. I did what he said. I would write it out. I would say my goodbyes. I would have my little toast to them. And at the very end, I would burn it in a bonfire. And symbolically, I gained power over that. But was an immense weight upon my shoulders now had a numerical value. And that experience now was worth.

worth 20,000 words. And I could change things around and change the perspectives and stuff, but it gave me a chance to pull out that trauma and pull it out. And instead of being a big jumble, I pulled it out and being able to diagnose it. And I started writing and I would take those stories into my therapist. And years later, my wife suggested, why not try to publish it? And so that's what became the book. It started off as just me trying to get a handle of all the stuff that we had went through,

never ever expecting to publish it. And now it is what it is now. It's the second book to have ever been written about this subject, about mortuary affairs. But the first one that ever dives into, you know, the emotional side and how it hits us. It connects Generation Kill to taking chance, that whole blank area in there. And it has opened a lot of doors for myself as far as being able to overcome what I thought was my weakness. And I found it is actually my strength. my

I have the answers that a lot of families, Gold Star families want to know they want to know if how was their son or daughter taken care of when they lost their lives and in my book tells that that they were surrounded by the ones that they loved

and who loved them and I wanted them to know that the very last hands to touch in Iraq were caring hands. We were the ones willing to die to make sure that they got home. So, yeah, this book has become a lot more than just a collection of stories.

It's now providing, by example, a way for other guys to find peace. If I was able to sit there and write, maybe somebody else can figure out that they can get there, sit there and write and be able to find peace after all of this war and multiple deployments and stuff. So, you know, everything will, other people will pick up on it. When you go to the therapist that help you, what's that process like?

What are they asking you? What are you telling them? What are they telling you? He, we would sit down. and we would just say how you're doing. And I would say, hey, I'm having a really rough time. I haven't slept in three days. You know, every time I close my eyes,

I would think about this situation, that kind of thing, and fighting with the wife again, and I can't connect with my kids, and I feel like that, you know, my kids are afraid of me, and I think, and then we just go off into, from there, he would talk about whatever situations that would have happened. He had a really good way of eating,

into over there and how they connected. I still do have a food aversions just because I don't sometimes the food reminds me of the stuff that would happen over there and and so we would talk about that situation and work through those and when I first started going there was seven days a week eventually now it's going to one day whenever I need to talk to him. But I know that if I was to give him a call three in the morning, he's always going to be there.

And I think that's what really is the key behind other people. They need to have that family around them of support that they had a wife that she never gave up on me. She always was there to... to make sure I was taking my meds and make sure that I had somebody to talk to. If I needed to talk to one of the, she would call up one of the Marines, Bedlack, he would come over and I needed somebody to talk to right there who was there. And so I think it takes more than one person to help people get back in their minds, you know.

And so the combination of talking about it with therapists and friends, and then writing about it, getting it out and seeing it as, what'd you say it was a product, like something you could calculate, it was 20,000 words. You took this pain and transferred it into something that had value that you could look at. And then you could understand better. You articulate it right. You start seeing it from a different perspective because when you read something that you've written, you see it from a different perspective.

Now you can understand it better and the better you understand it. The more power you have over it. Right. It is no longer a weight holding me down. And something I would try to avoid thinking about. Now it's something that I was focused on. Something that it wasn't that weight. It was something that means something because of this moment.

I was talking about Angus. And now I'm bringing in this chapter into Bill. And he would say, okay, let's go over what had happened. And we would work on that. And then I would burn that after I was done with that story, and I would rewrite it all over again. And it was just that going over and over and over that same stuff. But I think also what really helped me is going on some of these veteran trips

to let me know and connect with other people who may have different experiences than I did, different kind of traumas. but we built a little network of people. And I finally realized I wasn't alone. You know, at the very beginning, I felt that I was alone, that everybody else is still deploying, and here I was, and I was the broken one. And I was ashamed of that.

And then after all of these years, now I don't look at it as it was broken. looked at it that I was, I just, I was injured. I, you know, I can be put back together. I can heal. But you have to be patient. It's not just flipping the lights and everything will be okay, like I expected it in the very beginning. It's something you have to work on. And so after all these years of, after I published it now, I'm back in school, becoming an electrical lineman. something when I thought my life was over and I'll never be you know that husband

that father that man and now I am reinventing myself and it's through you know people who love me and you know and people that I've met and they've always been there for me and going through the book and pulling out that jumble

of experiences and pulling it out like a thread and being able to work on that. And it has really opened up my future. Yeah, it's very, very, very fortunate. Yeah, the idea of having a new mission is, again, something that I talk about a lot. And as soon as you said, how did you terminate at the postal service? Did you quit? I quit. So as soon as I heard that, I'm like,

because, well, A, you know, it's like, okay, at least you have to do something. But if it's not something you care about, then it's not any help anyways. But, you know, as soon as you said, I'm going back to school, I'm going to come alignment, I'm like, yes.

And, you know, I needed that break. I needed to focus on me. I looked at going to therapy as my job, my full-time. job and I needed to do it because I want to be the best father I can be for my kids, how to be the best husband I can be for my wife, you know, and I wanted to not be a sad story. I wanted to be able to get back into living again, not just being trapped inside my own four walls. So through the book and through therapy and the end of the book,

I'm thanking all the people that really, you know, sacrifice their time because they thought I was worth it, you know. When did you lose your dad? 2011, February of 2011. We would go into work just like how we did before the war started. We would, you know, I would pick him up and we would go in. When there's days, I would drive over to his place. over to his place and then he would drive and he had always catch me staring off into

nothing we would meet for lunch and I wouldn't say a thing my mind was still over there and and he was always hey you know I could talk you know if you want to talk about it you know I didn't see anything that you like you saw but I'm I'm always here and so When I started writing was after he passed, about a year after he passed. And I think that you need to have somebody that you're writing to. And that's what helped me get out of my shell about writing, was I was writing it as if I was writing it telling him about all the things that he wanted to know.

You talk about that and, well, it's worth closing out here. You say in the end of the book, for years and years, I have struggled hard with post-traumatic stress. and I've been through the gamut of self-medication, contemplation of suicide, survivors' guilt, sleepless nights, hypervigilance, flashbacks, and night terrors. But it was the open hearts and kindness of the strangers and friends

that helped my mind return from the battlefield long after my body had found home. It was the friendly faces of Bill, Janine, and Bonnie at the VA. It was the open ears. of my neighbor Chris it was Derek and the Richie boys in Mobile Alabama and also Ray Bobby and Tom in Jackson Hole Wyoming Chris Brenda and Josh up in Delta Wisconsin Lisa with the Semper 5 fund Bill and Dave with Operation Healing Waters Don and Diane in Cambridge Maryland Mo Mike Luke Ashley with three gun four vets

Larry Drawn, am I saying that right? Larry Drawn Jr. for teaching me that there is no such thing as giving up even if you had lost your legs in Afghanistan. My wife Wendy for always believing in me even when I gave up on myself. And last but not least, my dad, Larry Bustler. I wish you were still here to see this day, Dad.

I still remember you asking me what I was thinking about all those times that you caught me staring off into never, never land. I told you nothing because I didn't want to talk about it. And you would laugh and tell me, when you are ready to tell me, I'll be here. I wrote down all the stories that you wanted to know. I just wish you were still here to read them. And I also want to just, you have the book dedication here. It says this book is dedicated to those. who had shed their life's blood and defense of our nation,

to those loved ones who wept for them, and to those who ensured that they were returned home with honor. So, you know, as much as I talk about the immense cost of war, there's really just no way capture and describe and properly communicate the impact that war has. And I think one thing that one thing that we have to do is we have to make sure that it's not only a negative impact. It's up to us. It's up to us to ensure that those sacrifices, those incalculable sacrifices by the fallen, by their families. We got to make sure that those sacrifices were not made in vain.

And we do that by living our lives to the fullest. every second, every minute, every day for those heroes. Make your life count. This book will absolutely give you an appreciation. It give you a glimpse into these, I mean, give you a glimpse into war. Give you a glimpse into these sacrifices. And as I said at the beginning of this, the sacrifices aren't, they don't end on the battlefield.

In many ways, they start on the battlefield because the families have to carry on. And like I said, this book will remind you of what you got. You got a website called No Tougher Duty, No TougherDuty.com. You're on Twitter. Facebook. Twitter is no tougher duty. Facebook is no tougher duty, no greater honor. Instagram is no underscore tougher underscore duty.

I'm sure people are going to want to reach out to you. and communicate with you and talk to you. Absolutely. You've been through some, you know, you've been up close and personal with a nightmare. With a nightmare. And it's not just me. It's a whole bunch of other people

who sacrificed their lives to ensure this. They've dedicated their lives to this, to this mission. And I'm, thank you for allowing me to, to be that voice for them as well, because throughout history, it's always been an unsung heroes that they dedicate their lives

to make sure these guys get home. You know, and thank you. Any other closing thoughts? I would like to thank the 0445 club, Ms. El Zarca, my brother, Sean Bustler, Paul Slade out there in South Africa, you know, thank you for all the support that, in reaching out and getting me out here and keeping up with me at home. And I'd just like to let everybody know that you can get this book,

No Tougher Duty, No Greater Honor, on Amazon, on Kindle, and also on Audible as well. And we'll link it through. And, yeah, the fact that a bunch of people on Twitter, a trooper group, I guess, is what we're calling it. Guys got together, girls got together. And kind of, FYI, you, that trooper group put together the money for you to get out here. You didn't need to do that, but you did. So what we're going to do here is donate that same amount to the Semper 5 Fund. to try and help out, you know, Marines.

Awesome. Around the world. And thanks to the trooper group for putting that together. And I know it took a while to get out to get you finally out here. Everybody probably thinks of the worst human being in the world when they're trying to get on the podcast or because it just, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of, there's a lot of people. And so it's, and, you know, I'm sure it doesn't seem like a, what, a big deal to coordinate it all.

but when it's just me and Echo and when there's a lot of people on the list and we only do it once a week. So I'm sorry that it took so long to get you out here. I thank you for having me. It means a lot to me to be able to sit here at this table knowing the people who sat here before me, Kyle Carpenter and General Mokiyama and people that I've always idolized and just find inspiration behind their stories. I'm very humbly honored to sit here. I also wanted to thank my wife, Wendy. There's no way I could even be at this point in my life without her.

And my wife and my kids, Lauren and Ava, I keep on striving to be a better person because of them. I've come a very, very long way from who I was when I came home. And if it wasn't for their support, Who knows? But I want to be a better father and a better husband for them. And I thank you very much for being a part of my life and sharing their love with me.

Well, awesome. You know, got to have that family support, and it's awesome that your family's there for you. And, you know, we've been here for three and a half hours. I just want to say thank you for coming on. Thank you for writing this book that tells the story of, you know, it's not just your story. And you just pointed out it. It's not just your story.

It's a story that so many people have gone through. It's a story that if you don't know it, you don't know it. And that's a problem. So many incredible sacrifices. So thank you for coming. Thank you for writing the book. And most of all, thanks for your service and your sacrifice. And to close this out.

Of course, Semper Fidelis, brother. Semperfye. And with that, Gunny L. Christian Bustler, Chris Bustler, has left the building. And heavy. Very. Heavy subject. Time for a little decompression, which you're in charge of, Echo Charles. Yes, sir.

Proceed down the path. of decompression for that though I so the one of the many parts that stood out that kind of made me think about even more was the you know when when he talked about okay the he called it the bustler method right of putting the flag and you know so he would iron him right iron the flag so there's none of those those wrinkles like the new shirt wrinkles you know that right and that makes sense because you know one like let's say you see someone like with a new t-shirt on and they have those wrinkles it's kind of like you can almost see like the product it's a product on him you know a product that gets packaged and shipped and it's this

product it's not like part of the i don't know whatever the other in a t-shirt scenario i don't know what the other feeling would be but it seems more like it's deliberate custom it's foreign if it's if it's brand new with creases it kind of looks foreign yeah foreign to the to the human that's wearing it yeah Like if you see me wearing a brand new t-shirt with creases in it, you're kind of like, oh, this is not really part of him. Right, right, not part of him. Exactly right. It doesn't mash. Exactly, exactly, exactly right.

That's what I'm saying. So the creased or folded creases in the flags that have been packaged how he said out of a box or something. That feeling is really prevalent when you see the creases in something. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, it's just this packaged product now that you're throwing on this, you know, this very heavy and intense and spousy. and special scenario. You know what I'm saying? So that made sense. That made a lot of sense, actually.

And then you can kind of imagine the difference, you know, especially when he was talking about the guy who saw the, he saw one and he saw another one. Then he saw the real one or the real deal. And he was like, man, I need them all to be like that. That makes sense to me. Yeah, for sure. That he would think that that's a huge deal.

He would feel it that way. No, it's important. For sure. For sure. Heavy. Very much. Also, yeah. Okay.

What are we doing? Improving ourselves. Yes. Fitness, jiu-jitsu, work, family. Those are four things, I think. You know, that maybe it would take a lot to disagree. Didn't you have another one in there too? No, no, no.

You're thinking of the eight pillars. I had seven and you added one, eight. That's different. Oh, okay. Have we discussed those? Yes. No. Not on here.

Not on here. Yeah. What one did I add? Um, it was essentially, I forget what name we arrived at, but it was like the basically the spirituality element of it. Wow. I gave you that. Yeah.

And what did that mean? What did that mean? Like, so they're all in pairs. I don't think we should go too deep into it, but they're all in pairs. So there's. You know what? Let's do a grounded podcast on it. Okay.

So we'll do a grounded podcast. Because I'm real curious how I got to spirituality. That's yeah, but it fits perfect maybe that's not even the right word for it but it fits for what was what did the spirituality part mean just explain that It meant did it mean doing good for other people? Yeah, it was along those lines Okay, because that I could see me saying because I believe you you get more when you give more right like that's kind of my Not a secret, but that's something that I know is true for me right if I help someone it makes me I get more out of that than if I help myself. Yeah.

So it's more about the getting more like to basically improve the quality of your own being kind of thing with whether it be giving others more or being in touch with like your temper and like it's basically like who you are on the inside kind of thing. Like, wow. These are really weird coming from me. Yeah. That's very strange. Like more.

We'll have to cover this on grounded. Yeah, yeah. It goes deep. Anyway, the foot, which is different. That was the eight pillars. This is just the four. for areas of functionality? That I was focused on at one point and may or may not be still.

Anyway. Okay. So they are? There's one time someone was asking me something and I would say, well, it's easy to simplify your life when you only care about four things. Right. And it was those four things. And they are?

Fitness. Fitness. It's health fitness, that kind of functionality, capability, blah, blah, blah. That's one. Jiu Jitsu. Work. Jiu is one of its own. Yes, it's different.

Okay, cool. Work and family. Work and family. Yes. Okay. Okay, that's legit. Anyway, that was my answer. There's a lot more to it.

Unless. What's cool is, Jiu-Jitsu will help you with all of them, right? Even though Jiu-Jitsu is its own category, it will also help your fitness, it will help your family, and it will help your work. Yes. And technically, kind of, again, we could go deep into it if we allow ourselves to, but they all improve the one of the other. Right, true. Also true. So that's kind of like my own little formula.

What's the basis of the, I can't say pyramid because it's got four. but what's the base of the square? Jiu-jitsu? I think they rotate, you know, because they're flexible. They're all flexible to create this one unit, if you will. Nonetheless, you did mention it. I said jiu-suitz.

So when we're doing jiu-jitsu, what do we need a ghee if you're doing ghi? If you're doing no ghi, you need a rash card. You should need a rash card. Yeah. I think they're good. Rashcards are good. Where are we going to get that?

We're going to get them from origin because origin factually has the best keys and they happen to be made in America from the fabric all the way up to the end product. Well, we don't want to use that word. It's not even product. Yep.

It's an, um, and don't look at me, bro. Come on. You can't look at me for support here. You walk down this alley, man. The end situation. How about that?

It's a catch-off. That is a catch-all. I use it a lot. Not only can you get geese and rash cards, which are factually, according to Echler Charles and many other people, many, many other people. I think everybody is the best, are the best.

You can also get other clothes there. You can get T-shirts. You can get a heavyweight sweatshirt that is legitimately heavyweight for Montana, for Michigan, for Maine. Do you need it in Southern California? Probably not. You can also get jeans for your legs. And you can get, there's two different kinds of jeans. heavyweight called the factory genes

and then there's a lightweight genes which are called the Delta 68 genes so if you you know you have genes you need genes you might as well get the best genes genes that are comfortable

functional durable and they happen to look how about that that's acceptable So if you're going to put something on your legs, put those on your legs. Yes. Agree.

Also, through our workouts, fitness, jiu-jitsu as well, we can use, we can utilize supplementation. Got to be good supplementation. Hard work, clean, fuel, clean. I was thinking about supplements and how much of a part of my life supplements are. Specifically, every single day I take joint warfare. Every single day, I take krill oil. every single day I have discipline and I drink milk every day

that's a lot that's a lot of daily the one discipline I don't necessarily drink discipline every day I got to take that back because there's some days where I don't drink discipline or take discipline go but if I don't do that I usually have some jaco white tea I get that little hitter is jacquo white tea a supplement technically no right it's a food item okay well certified organic by the we got some we got some stuff

that you can put in your body on a daily basis that will make you better in Jiu-Jitsu, make you better in health and fitness, make you better with your family. Because I'll tell you what, you give your kid some warrior kid, Mulk, you're a better father. Yeah, you're in good with them too.

And work, of course. You get that focus from the discipline. Your whole life is improving. That is true. Which is factual. You can get them at vitamin shop. By the way, we just kind of, partnered with the vitamin shop

so that you can get cans of discipline go without having to pay a bunch of what's it shipping so you can check that out and all that stuff's available at origin main dot com also jocky tea as you mentioned

that's a good one certified or certified organic in the can and available for brew what do you call them dry yeah dry I guess whatever you know the tea bags you see what I'm saying Anyway, that's a good one. Also, if you want to get this book,

no tougher duty, no greater honor. Don't worry, I got you. Go to joccopodcast.com on the top tab menu. It says books from the episodes. Boom, we got all the books, including, but not limited to this one on that page. Boom. Click through there.

It'll take you to Amazon. You can get it. Have you ever had anybody lie to you on the internet? No, never, ever. Okay. There's some people that. But like I think they're meaning to be cool, but they'll ask me a question after telling me something like,

hey, I listen to you all the time. Is there a list somewhere where you have your books? And I'm always like, yep, it's at jorcoopodcast.com. Go to books. And I'm always thinking you had to really not be paying attention for a long time. If you're in the game and you don't know that. I mean, people just ask me some just questions that I get asked thousands of times. Yeah.

And they'll ask it and be like, which I don't mind. But if they try and front load it with the fact that they're like, hey, really love your podcast. Okay. If you love the podcast, then you know that I've written kids books, right? Yeah. You know, you don't say, hey, you really love your podcast. It'd be great if you could do something for a kid's book. Right.

And I'm like, yeah, I've written. I mean, it just happens. I don't know. I guess that's not lying. Maybe they're just trying to be nice. I'll tell you what it is. I would imagine it's a spectrum. I would imagine.

I don't know, but it seems like it is. Where you got some people were just blatantly like kind of lying. Okay. Like, hey, I love your podcasts. Or maybe they do love it. But when they say,

I listen to all your podcasts and love and love it, you know, like maybe that kind of thing. That technically is not true because you didn't listen to all the podcasts. Even if you did listen to all the podcasts, you're kind of misleading. if you did listen to all the podcasts, but you didn't listen to the whole thing of all the podcasts.

Because if you did listen to... Somebody hears the support kick in and they're shutting it down. They don't hear this right now. They don't even know they're violating. And that makes sense, you know? Because they're like, hey, podcast's over, when this support mode is listed on the things. It's like, boom, next episode.

I get it. Yeah, yeah. We're moving on. It makes sense even though. There's a lot of value. Yeah. So you technically miss like a... What percentage of people do you think

they're done after they hear Echo, tell us about whatever and then you're like click I don't know Brad it might be I suspect that it's possible as far as possibilities go that is pretty high I actually beg to differ yeah because there's so many people that say first of all there's people that have straight up said I listen to the podcast to for the supports now of course they're being a little bit sarcastic but that's still a statement right it's not it's not nothing yeah right and then there's plenty of people that say the only advertisements that I listen to are you know when you and echo doing it and well first of all I say what's not really is it is this considered an

advertisement you know I mean as far as definitions go yeah I'm sure maybe I don't know I don't know okay but okay that makes sense because I have heard that so I'm thinking that more people than you think I think people are listening right now about to click anyway so yes we got the book on jaco podcasts for those who may not have known before got them all listed by episode

also jaco is a store it's called jaco store and this is where you can get t-shirts rash cards hoodies hats tank tops merch as it were that's representative of the path disciplinical freedom good stand by to get

So get out, you know, all these. Victory, MMA and Fitness. Victory, MAA and Fitness, you want to represent? Oh, yeah, big time. There's people that roll out deep with Victory MMA and Fitness T-shirts. Oh, yeah. I see them in Ohio. I'm like, you know, represent.

Just straight up in the game. It's good. But yeah, it's jocco store.com. What about that Jocka white T-shirt? What about it? Is that on there? Yeah. Because you sent, that is a dope T-shirt.

Yeah, that's like one layer deep in the game. cool, you know, when you were a kid and you'd see like a cereal box and it just has the thing on it. And you're like, dude, no creativity whatsoever. That's the jocco white tea t-shirt. It's just the can. Yep. It's legit. Yeah, but those kinds of shirts are legit.

Like, you remember the old school like Pepsi? Yeah, because otherwise basically you're trying really hard, right? Yeah. Like if we made a jocco white tea t-shirt design. Right. It'll have like a tea. We'll leave that to Pete Rom. Roberts.

The creative. He's a creative. He's what it is. We don't know what that is, but we know that we're not it. All right. Yes. So yes, jocco store.

dot com. That's where you get this stuff. Don't forget to, speaking of this podcast, which you may or may not be listening to, we're leaning towards not. You're probably not listening to it anymore, which is fine.

If you are still listening to it, you probably have subscribed to the 1% of people that are listening right now that still haven't subscribed. You could do that because for some reason that's on this piece of paper that I wrote. Yes. Leave a review, which is funny. You can leave a review that's serious or whatever, but why, that's not a good interaction with me.

If you say, hey, it's a good podcast. I like the information that they put out. This will do nothing for me, for Echo, for anyone that reads it. If you say this podcast is the only podcast that has support. advertisements that are of more value than the entire podcast itself. Have you said, see, Echo just laughed. I laughed a little bit. Whoever reads that will be like, oh, what are those, what that's all about.

So subscribe to the podcast and then leave a review that will entertain us. And by us, I mean everyone. Not just, not just us two idiots sitting here talking. But everyone else that's listening. True. I agree with that notion. Also, grounded podcast, speaking of podcast, ground a podcast.

And apparently now we owe a grounded podcast about the four focuses of life and then the eight pillars of justice. Yes. Well, there are pillars of life. Yeah, justice. Sure. Yes. Okay.

Yes. So that one will, that would be what if there's seven out now. Number one, cruising. Number two, cruising. Oh, man. Rather, they make sense. Okay. Anyway, grounded podcast.

Got a new episode out. We will focus on making them more consistently with no promises. We will. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast. We'll try making some more of those as well. Yes, sir. And then with a Warrior Kid podcast, don't forget about the Warrior Kid himself, Aidan, who's making killer soap. That's actually what it's called.

Have you used it? No. It's legit. It's funny because every time I get like one from them, part of me doesn't want to use it because it's kind of like I'm saving one bar and now I'm gonna open it and use it

yeah yeah once you use it and we've got we got that on the website yet not yet that's what we're finalizing where are we? We're finalizing it will we be finalized by next week as far as deadlines you know I know you're not really

appreciate things called deadlines we're finalizing that one how about this soon soon you really boxed yourself in on that one Yes, I'm going to put it on Jocco's Doordown. Until then, Irishoaks ranch.com. Get some soap and stay clean.

Yes, sir. Also, we have a YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast and excerpts. Excerpts if you don't want to listen to three, four, five hours of a podcast at a specific time or whatever. You listen to the excerpt lesson. Take the lesson with you. Share it with somebody. Boom. That is YouTube.

Also enhanced videos. Put some music on there. Green screen. I didn't need screen. Oh. CGI. Sure. Did you just learn that green screen thing?

Because it kind of seemed like you just learned it. Yeah, kind of. All right. Psychological warfare, if you need a psychological hitter to propel you over a obstacle, a mental obstacle, yes. Even a physical obstacle. Hit psychological warfare.

Put that donut down. Yeah. And then we also have flipside canvas, which is a visual representation of discipline. That's run by Dakota Meyer. So check that out. If you want to hang something up on your wall. For books, we got no tougher duty, which we just went through. Go get it.

Chris Bustler, you just heard him. I mean, you can see that book is literally written from the heart. All kinds of stuff in there to learn. I read a tiny fraction of it today. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual, apparently the number one book of some kind. Appreciate everyone getting that book. And what I really like is the feedback that I'm getting from people

that you're taking what you read in there and immediately implementing it and it's helping. So that's great to hear Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The Warrior Kid Series, one, two, and three, get your kid on the path. the dragons, get your little kid on the path, discipline equals freedom field manual, get yourself and your relatives

and the people around you on the path. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Learn to lead, foundationally, written by myself and my brother, Leif Babin. We also have a consulting company called Eschelon Front where what we do is go into companies, teams, and organizations and solve problems,

any problems. I know that sounds crazy. Any problems that you have at your team in your organization, in your business, they are leadership problems. And the way you solve them is by fixing, aligning, and educating you and your other leaders. So check out echelonfront.com. If you want some online interactive training, then go to eFonline.com and you can learn the principles in an interactive way on the interwebs. Don't forget about the muster. We have the muster coming to Orlando, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona, and Dallas, Texas.

Every single event that we've done is sold out. So if you want to come, go to Extreme Ownership.com and register as quick as you can. And, of course, we also have EF Overwatch and EF Legion, where we are taking military leaders and putting them into civilian organizations to help civilian companies, businesses win. So check that out. Again, if you want to connect with Chris Bustler, you can find him online.

He's got a website, no tougherduty.com. He's got Twitter, no tougher duty. Facebook, no tougher duty, no greater honor. Instagram, no underscore, tougher underscore duty. and for Echo and I We are also on Twitter, on Instagram and on El Fischbook. Echo is at Echo Charles?

And I am at Jocko Willink. And once again, thanks to Gunnery Sergeant Chris Bustler for coming on. And of course, Chris, thanks for your service to our great nation. And also thanks to you and your comrades in mortuary affairs for taking care of our fallen heroes. And a salute to all our servicemen and women

who pay such a heavy price in so many different ways to protect our freedom. And to those that protect our freedom here at home, the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service, thank you for what you do every single day. And to everyone else out there, life is short.

It is a finite thing, and the clock is ticking. So what are you going to do about that? Where are you going to go? Who are you going to impact? What legacy are you going to leave? Ask yourself those questions. And don't forget, what those of us who have seen death closely.

Our time is short, so make it count. This is Echo and Jocko. Out.