Jocko Podcast - 350: Someone Must Walk The Point. With Marine Corps Major Tom Shueman

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Marine Corps Major Tom Schueman. "Always Faithful: a Story of the War in Afghanistan, The fall of Kabul, and the unshakeable bond between a Marine and an interpreter.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 350 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Sergeant Humphrey's squad secured a path and established a position from which they could overwatch second squad as they re-entered friendly lines. As Humphrey's Marines were breaking down their Overwatch position to move back to Fob Inkerman, the rear element of the squad was pinned in a canal by heavy and accurate machine gun fire from Taliban, hit it.

in a tree line. I ran to Sergeant Humphrey shouting, let's go, we got to move on that gun. Staff Sergeant Henley and I were converging on Sergeant Humphrey as we rushed to develop a plan to relieve the pressure on the pinned down fire team from the Taliban machine gun. I looked back to see, Zach was on my heels.

There would be no need for an interpreter where I was going. He just saw me start running, and he did the same. Then Sergeant Humphrey stepped on a pressure plate IED. The sound and force enveloped me in a sensation. All went black. I have no idea how long I was out, but when I came to, the first person I saw was Zach. He knelt beside me, over me, my rifle in his hand, protecting and supporting me as I fought to my feet.

I imagine we looked like a. filthy Madonna and child in the moment. As Zach helped me rise, I looked to my left and saw Staff Sergeant Henley. He lay in a heap, a tangle of his own limbs, himself struggling to rise. He had also been knocked out and was shouting at me, unaware that blood poured from his own blown out eardrums. I could make no sense of what he was saying. Then I saw Humphrey and stopped trying to.

When I got to him, Sergeant Humphrey's right foot was completely blown off. All the muscle and tissue on his left calf was gone. His left thigh lay open from a piece of shrapnel. Later I would learn his jaw was broken, but for now, he lay at my feet, screaming. Doc Collins and corporal Matt Bland rushed to Sergeant Humphrey and began treating his grievous wounds. I called in a medevac as I held the meat of his kid. To the bone as Neerkirk wrapped it with Corporal Sean Leahy directing the squads fire upon the enemy Corporal Spivey swept the kill zone for more IEDs and then swept a clear path to the point at which the medevac aircraft would pick up Humphrey

Through it all, Sergeant Humphrey remained poised directing his own treatment and movement as we carried Humphrey to the medevac helicopter all I could think was what a bad day It was insufficient for the moment, but it was all I could think to say. They tried to put me on the helicopter, but with Staff Sergeant Henley and Sergeant Humphrey both wounded and gone, there was no way I was leaving. When we returned to Fob Inkerman, the CO handed me a towel to wipe the blood off my hands in gear and said Sergeant Humphrey is going to lose a leg, but the surgeon says he will live. But what happened out there? I looked at him and exhaled. I don't know, sir. That file is deleted.

There was little else to say. So I turned away and went back to debrief of my platoon. I was tired and sad and likely concussed, but I had a job to do. Zach always did his and more. I could do the same. Bringing out the collective narrative in the debrief began to bring back the details from me. But Zach standing over me, ready to kill to protect me, stood out in stark relief from the start. That vision, Zach silhouetted against the dust, still swirling from the explosion that flattened me,

color and detail, becoming clearer as my consciousness returned, is one I still see sometimes as I wake. It says something about Zach as a man, as a battlefield interpreter, and as my friend. It was common to hear Americans say of the Afghans, we can't want it more than they do, but it often seemed we did. Zach was a huge exception. He was not a soldier, but he was there to fight. He understood our missions in a way that other interpreters did not.

Most interpreters were like specialty items in our packs inert and just riding along until it was time to employ them for their purpose. But Marines are utility players capable of addressing a war, wide array of circumstances and expected to prevail in each. Like a Marine, Zach was an active member of First Platoon. He did not shy away from any danger. He did not question doing whatever the mission demanded because he was committed to it for Afghanistan.

Zanula Zaki ran to the sound of the guns in a way that would have made a Marine infantry instructor smile. standing at the debrief talking through what happened as is expected after every operation. I told the platoon that all of us were going out the next day for Humphrey's revenge. I thanked Zach for his willingness to always be where he might be needed, particularly when it was protecting my life. I had already come to see Zach as more than an interpreter, but now there was no way to call him anything. but a brother. And that right there is an excerpt from a book,

which is called Always Faithful, a story of the war in Afghanistan, the fall of Kabul, and the unshakable bond between a Marine and an interpreter. And this is a book that was written by that Marine and that interpreter. The Marine's name is Major Tom Schumann and the interpreter,

an Afghan national, his name is Zanula Zaki. And they served together in Helmand Province with three, five Marines during an extremely violent deployment. And they had each other's back on the ground there. And they continued to support each other even as Afghanistan fell apart. And it's an incredible story of how all that went down. and it's an honor to have the Marine from this story, Tom Schumann, here with us tonight to share his experiences and his lessons learned from the battlefield and from life.

Tom, thanks for coming down, man. Sir, thanks for having me, Echo, thanks. And you're just right up the street at Camp Pendleton. That's A-Firm up in San Mateo on the north side of base. Active duty Marine currently serving, and you're the, what, X-O? Operations officer. Oh, Opso.

Not quite X-O. Still in the trenches, hooking and jabbing. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming down, and thanks to your chain of command for allowing you to come down here for the day. I know that's not always an easy thing to pull off, but appreciate it.

And I always, well, everybody knows I love the Marine Corps. So I appreciate that. We're getting a little love from the Marine Corps today. It's outstanding. Let's just get into this. This is a this is a great story well parts of it are a great story parts of it are are rough I like to start at the beginning kind of figure out where you came from and How you got to this point in your life today so I'm gonna go to the book

It says I grew up steeped in chaos surrounded by weak men who wouldn't control their temper didn't consider consequences and Bullied women through their body language or by getting even louder than loud women. My mom did what she could to provide stability, but in my childhood memories, but in my childhood memories, there is a through line of angry screaming, holes punched in walls, thrown, glasses shattered. The effect of that has been for me to seek the opposite in all things. It's almost incalculable to me that someone does not consider consequences. I am very comfortable in chaotic situations, but control over myself and my surroundings is second only to my faith in Christ in defining the essence of who I am.

My mom was a good kid left to fend for herself. The South Side offers a million ways to get off track, and by 13, she was feral, drinking, and drugging for the remainder of her teenage years. At 17, she was waiting tables in Chicago to pay for partying when my father showed up on a motorcycle with a guitar and long blonde hair. He chatted her up and played her a song. She put down her order pad, hopped on the back of the bike, and rode off with him. Then he decided they needed to move to Georgia.

By 18, my mom was a pregnant high school dropout who quit using out of duty to me, her unborn child. Three years later, she was married with two kids living 800 miles away from her family. Things got bad fast. My earliest memories are of them fighting. When my mom confided in my father's sister, I have to get out of here. I can't raise these kids in all this. She agreed to take the three of us to Chicago. My mom packed three-year-old me

and my three-month-old sister, Jesse, into my aunt's yellow Dotson hatchback and ran back to the south side. When we got there, we landed in my great-aunt's house. Mom called my father in Georgia and told him we wouldn't be back. Well, it's a wild way to get started. Yeah, it was wild times there to start off.

And I think it really ended up shaping who I am. And to some degree, it probably helped me professionally, you know, this idea of equanimity that calm in the storm. And when there's constantly chaos and emotion all around you, I found that I would go inside, get everything inside of me ordered and restored. And to be able to, you know, there's a great line in Gates of Fire by Stephen Presfield where the platoon commander, Diankees, he talks about the role of the officer is self-composure. And it's to fire your troops when they won't go forward and it's to rain them in when they've gone blind to rage.

And so this idea of self-composure was really a survival mechanism for me early, but it translated later on into, I think, being helpful professionally. And just to me, men who cannot, men who resort to physical intimidation or to raising their voice is its weakness. is cowardice. And if you can't logically compel someone at a conversational tone of your point, then you probably don't have a very good argument. Or maybe you're just talking to the wrong person, you know. And so, yeah, it definitely shaped me.

But I think when we're talking about cowardice, I think we can juxtapose that with courage. And that's my mom's courage. One to have me when she was 19. I mean, I look back and I reflect on that decision often, that how scared she must have been, the uncertainty, and for her to go through with it and to bring me into this world at 19, I will always just be so grateful for her courage there.

And then the same thing, just to, what every parent wants for their child is an opportunity. And you're going to see that, you know, when we start to talk about Zach and what he did towards the end of this book. And she understood that the best way for us to have an opportunity was, again, required courage. She's 22 years old, two little kids and drives 800 miles back to Chicago with nothing. and, but that's a conviction.

And so, yeah, really, that was my first example of courage is, is my mom. Yeah, the, um, as far as, one thing I talk a lot about with leaders is, you're basically, there's a mob, right? Your team is a mob, whether it's a platoon, whether it's a troop, whether it's a sales team, it's a mob. And just like any other mob, like, they can get going in a certain direction. and your job as a leader is to make sure that the direction that the mob is going is correct. And the two classic examples kind of ones you mentioned a little bit, but my team does great, right?

We go out and do a great mission and everything goes smooth. That mob mentality can be, hey, look, we're unstoppable. We don't need to rehearse very much. We don't need to worry about planning because we're so good. You as a leader need to go, actually, hey, we did good, but here's some things we can improve. Here's what we got to watch out for. So you've got to pull the opposite direction of the mob. The other time is like, oh, you go out, the mission goes sideways, goes bad.

And you can feel the mob start to get dragged down. And then it's your job to, as a leader, say, hey, yep, we made some mistakes. We paid for it. But here's what we're going to do to fix it next time. So that idea of, and look, there's sometimes where the mob's going in the right direction. You can just, yeah, that's the easy. That's the fun part of being a leader. The mob's going in the right direction.

You get to just cheer them on and say, hell yeah. So that's a very important thing to pay attention to. You can't do that if you're getting emotional. You just can't. You'll be in the mob, and in the mob is not the place for you to be in a leadership situation. Yeah, the yelling thing. I think it's one of the interesting stereotypes that the military has the stereotype

that you yell and scream to get things done. Part of it's because of boot camp movies, right? How many times have you watched the first 45 minutes of full metal bracket, right? I mean, it's just, oh, that must be the way leadership is. And as you and I both know, there's plenty of leaders inside the military that do yell. And they do scream. And that goes back to the book, the psychology of military incompetence and what attracts the military to people like that and attracts people like that to the military. But, you know, I always have an interesting, you know, with a guy that worked for me and wrote these books with me, Leif Babin.

And he's worked for me, you know, for 18 months, workup deployment, and then we've been working together for another 15 years or something like that. And he'll always ask a crowd of people, you know, how often you think Janko yells at me? And, you know, depending on how much the people know about me, you know, oh, you must yell at the all time. And he's actually never yelled. I've never yelled at him one time. And Leif usually gives the caveat that he gave me plenty of times where I probably wanted to yell at him. But it's just bad leadership. And again, the same thing you just said, if I can't convince you of my idea, my idea is probably not that great.

And your idea is either that or my idea is not that much greater than yours. So my default is most to go with yours. That's easier. It's going to make everything more efficient, effective. So going back to the story here, so this chapter, as soon as I got this chapter, the chapter is called a hippie cops. son. So you being the son, your mom being the hippie cop, talk to us through the transition of your mom going from being a hippie that's jumping on the back of a chopper with a random dude with long hair and going to Georgia and having kids to coming back here. And plus you mentioned,

you know, she was drinking at a young age doing drugs. And all of a sudden she does like a 180 and she becomes a cop. What was that all about? Yeah, I don't think the hippie part ever fully transitioned. I think it was she was duty bound and she and the duty was you and your sister. Yes. And so she didn't grow up with her dream job being a Chicago cop. It was there was health insurance and she had two hungry babies and that was who was hiring. And so I think yeah, if you talk to my mom today, that hippie part of her is still alive and well and was never quite, um, subordinated by her time as a cop. The hippie comes out quite a bit as you're going in the Marine Corps,

as you're going in the infantry. Oh, yeah. It comes out. Sorry, Mom. For sure. And so, yeah, my mom had two rules. You know, don't join the military and don't get a motorcycle. Did both and then crashed a motorcycle and I've had quite a interesting Marine Corps career.

But, yeah, it was simply a matter of necessity and duty for her children. And so that's why she became a cop, not because she was watching bad boys, bad boys or whatever, you know, the 90s. That was not a, it was, yeah. And I imagine single mom being a cop, that's, I mean, how the hell does that even work? Yeah, she's. What kind of hours are she working? She's a small lady too, you know, she's tiny. And she's a cop in Chicago in the 90s.

It was tough, tough gig. but at the end of the day, she had something that she was serving that was bigger than herself. And service always comes at a cost, or it's not service. And service always hurts. And if it doesn't hurt to some extent, then again, I would argue maybe it's not service. And so I think she's working nights on the south side of Chicago in the 90s. And kind of raised by a village there as a kid getting passed off between my aunt and my grandma, you know. And, but a little collective effort there.

But yeah, it was, it was, you know, all my mom, my sister and I all slept in the same bed for like the first five, six years when we got back in a room in my aunt's house. I mean, it was, it was tough. Meanwhile, as that's going on, your dad ends up going to jail when you're eight years old. How's that go down? Yeah, I was still visiting him during the summers for a couple years after we went back Chicago. I'd still go down there for the summer. And then just one summer I wasn't going.

And yeah, I think he was something with drug, drug related. And I, what's tough for me about that when I think about my dad, I look at, pictures of me when I'm a kid and I'm the age four or five you know six years old and I think you know you've got a choice and you got this little kid this little boy and uh how could you not choose him and that's like what will sometimes to this day when I when I just come across and this and now that I've got my daughter just turned four you know and I and I and I just think I will always choose you. And there's that a boy needs a dad, period. And, and my mom was super mom and she did, she taught me how to throw football and she played catch with me.

She was not my dad. And that, that was something that, you know, you don't want to go to the father, son banquet with your friend's dad. And fortunately I had, you know, some guys who, some of my friends' dads who looked after me. But that took a long time to still, I'm still kind of probably working through some of that. But yeah, he got out of jail when I was about to graduate junior high and I went back for the first time to see him. But, yeah, that absence was painful.

and yeah yeah you describe it in here um going back to the book here you say i followed my mom into a room after dinner and sat there while she tried to decompress from her day she was folding clothes that she tried to talk to me i was non-responsive she looked me straight in the eye thomas tell me what's wrong i was suddenly crying so hard i couldn't stand i lay on the floor i just want a dad i said over and over through the gasps and sobs eventually my best friend's dad started taking me to the father's son events. He wasn't my father, but at least I was with a man who cared about me. I want an autographed picture of Chicago Bears wide receiver Tom Waddle at one father and son banquet. Winning that 8 by 10 black and white head shot capped off the best night of my life. Then my best friend's dad hung himself in his garage. My father was imprisoned three states away. My supplemental father figure killed himself. and most of the men in my life were unaccountable.

It made me mistrustful of men. And it also left me such that now when I perceive a void or a gap, I feel a compulsion to fill it, to make it better. Put less positively, I'm unable to resist trying to bend a situation to my will. I've never been the smartest or most talented guy in any room I've been in, but I am relentless for better or for worse. Yeah, as I was reading this, We'll get to some of these parts where you are determined, a little too determined,

the kind of determination that'll get you in trouble. It's the kind of thing when you have kids and you're like, oh, Mike, this kid's pissing me off. And you realize, oh, that's because it's a strong-willed kid and you actually want those things. You actually want those things. You mentioned your dad got out of jail when you're 13 years old. And this sounds, and when you talk about in the book, this is sort of like, kind of a little bit of like sounds like you're living the dream a little bit. You're down there in Georgia for the summers.

You got horses. You got four wheelers. You got jet skis. And you're working hard. So that was like a good experience. You're learning a lot. Definitely a little best of both worlds. Going to grow up run wild in the alleys of Chicago.

That's kind of where we hung out in the alleys playing basketball, playing whatever, getting in trouble. And then, yeah, the summers, I get to be a little pretend cowboy and ride a horse, almost fall off it, you know, crash a four-wheeler and go out on the lake. So, yeah, it was a nice little. blend it to kind of get to experience both things. And undoubtedly, I did learn some things about hard work, working for my dad. I worked for him for four years until I was 16, like all summer. And I'm my 16th birthday, he said, you know, you've, throughout these last four years, you've

saved up enough to get a car. You got a 1985 Nissan maximum wagon with 250,000 miles on it. Hell yeah. So, like, definitely learn to appreciate hard work. And so there were some good lessons learned. And you did, you went to an evangelical Christian camp down there. Yeah.

And, you know, Southside of Chicago is all Italian and Irish and very Catholic. And so I was kind of raised in and around the Catholic church. My dad was Southern Baptist. I went to the Southern Baptist camp and very different. I was going to say that.

That's very different, right? Definitely, definitely different. But, you know, the most important day of my life happened during that camp, and that's when I accepted Jesus Christ, my Savior. And undoubtedly, that camp and that moment, I'm only here today because of that encounter. And to be, I've always had a father. You know, and so I've always, men in the church, you know, may abandon you. I've always had a father.

And that father has, you know, when we talk about the title, always faithful, that's always faithful. And so in my darkest, most hopeless moments, there was always little light of hope. And that's thanks to what started that day when I was 14 years old down on Jekyll Island at a Baptist church camp. I'm talking a little bit about just because the way you said that, but also because you may have been born again, but you're not a saint at this point by any stretch. We'll get into some of that stuff. You may not have been always walking the enlightened path along the way. That's a fair assessment. So you roll into high school and you're six to 140 pounds, which I was 100% sure that was possible.

Echo Charles assessment. Yeah, that's thin, but yeah, it's skeletal. So what's your deal in high school? What are you thinking about? What's going on in high school? Riding the bench, playing football. You know, I was basically 6, 240 pounds in seventh grade,

so I was the big and then just never, and no additional development there. But I knew I wanted to get. out. I knew I was getting somewhere and I knew that the chaos and the dysfunction of my childhood that I was getting out. And initially, I viewed that as you go to college is how you get out of this situation. No one in my family had been to college, but I knew that my friends who seemed to have more stability, like their parents went to college. And so that was really the the goal and then I thought you know I don't know what jobs professional jobs are I know there are

doctors and lawyers and so like I know I'm not going to be a doctor so that means I could be a lawyer and and so I would I would do the debate team yeah you each team yeah you went full nerd right is that is that a oh 100% your national honors society drama club speech and debate team Treasure of the Service Club, president of the ecology club. Yeah. You went full nerd. That's the hippie mom part.

That's how I got the president of the Ecology Club. Plus, my AP bioteacher was the, and I wasn't doing too well on AP bio. So, I, yeah. Is this a Catholic school? Yes. Boys only? Yes.

All boys. Yeah. How was that? Loved it. It was a blast. I mean, there's no egos. There's nobody trying to improve. impress anybody. It's just guys being dudes and haven't like, it was a ton of fun. I absolutely

wearing a uniform every day? Yes. Where'd your mom get money for this school? Yeah, so she took out a loan her first second mortgage for the house for us to go to school. And that's why I always felt like I had to honor, you know, her sacrifice because she's worked. her ass off and making all these, you know, sacrifices that I felt, you know, in turn, a duty in obligation to her. And so I took my studies really seriously in high school and I was doing whatever I could to make sure that her investment in me was, there would be a return on it. And so that's part of while I was in all these clubs.

But yeah, I thought I'll go to college. I'll be a lawyer and then I'll be able to take care of everybody. and that's kind of what I was thinking in high school. Now, September 11th happens. What year are you in a sophomore? Sophomore. Did that start to make you think about joining the military? It's why I'm in the military.

It made me think, you know, at that point, it was still the age of innocence or ignorance. You didn't know that, at least I didn't know, that there were bad people in the world who wanted to do the U.S. harm. and so it was initially very confusing. But by the end of that day, I knew at some point I'll do something about that. And so I knew I'd serve. I didn't know I joined the Marine Corps.

I didn't even probably know there was a branch called the Marine Corps. I wasn't G.I. Joe, I wasn't, you know, didn't have a dad in house, wasn't doing, like, man stuff. I just knew like, hey, somebody's got to do something about that. You should do that. And that has put me on that trajectory of where I am sitting here today. So you apply to college, you get into Loyola University, Chicago. Is that a good school? I don't even know.

I'm sorry. It's all right. Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good school? Yeah, pretty good school. Hard to get into? I don't. I mean, I think maybe.

They're going to be, your alma mater is going to come at you. You'd be like, hell yeah, it's hard to get into. Yeah. It's super hard to get into. It's elite. So you get in there. You're kind of stoked, but you don't have any money to pay for college. And this is where you first kind of discover NROTC.

Yep. Yeah. It's the Ivy League of the Midwest. There we go. Okay. Yeah, I, you know, no one is, no one, I'm not able to talk to kind of anybody about going to college. I don't know anything about going to college. And so well after all the scholarship applications are already passed and well after I'm like, oh, like, okay, so I'm into college.

Like, how am I going to pay for it? And so I Google, well, there wasn't Google on AOL, you know, looking up college scholarships. And I find that there's this thing called ROTC and that they pay for your tuition. And I say, well, I want to serve anyways. This could be a thing. And when I call them, they're like, yeah, the scholarship window closed like six months ago. But you could do it for free. And maybe if in a couple of years you can pick up the scholarship.

And I thought, well, I got no other, nothing else going for me. So I'll try this. And so that's how I ended up in ROTC. It sounds like you were a little unimpressed in the book with the Navy when you, like what you had in your mind for what military service would be like. And then you showed up in the Navy. you didn't really impress you too much at the ROTC branch at Loyola, Chicago? Sure. The only thing I still kind of thought I'd be a lawyer.

And my grandma had a big crush on Tom Cruise, so I'd seen a few good men. Dude. And so I think, well. That'll make it happen right there, huh? Yeah. And so my mom is really against it, but she thinks, oh, well, you're going to be Tom Cruise in this movie. It's maybe not terrible.

And then I go to my little ROTC. orientation week and we go up to Great Lakes Naval Base and get marched around and yell that. And it's just clear like the Marine staff, the Navy staff, and then the midshipmen who are first class who are going to commission the Marine Corps and I just said, I don't know, but it looks like these guys have, these guys have something that this other group doesn't. And so I think I want to go. And so that was my, still not knowing anything about the Marine Corps, not knowing that what infantry was, not knowing expedition. none of this kind of stuff,

I just know that, like, it seems like they got their shit together, and I want to be like those guys. He picked Colonel Jessup. Oh, yeah? Yeah, you know, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who's a regular Navy guy, and he said something.

You know, we were just, he's deeply involved with the SEAL community now, but we just had a quick conversation about, you know, like the Navy versus the SEAL teams because when people go to buds, if they don't make it through buds, they're in the Navy. And the job for someone that wants to go to buds that doesn't make it and ends up in the Navy is not the job that they're looking for. If you go into the Army and you want to be a special force soldier and you don't make it, cool. You can be a rifleman in the 80-second airborne, 101st airborne, or that's still an outstanding job,

and you're doing something proximal to what you want to do. The Navy is not like that. And he said, well, you know, that makes it sound like my job. It was horrible. And I said, no, not at all. It's just that there's certain people that are attracted to certain jobs. And I told them this story that I've told 100 times about I'm on an LPD, you know, amphibia ship out here off the coast of San Diego. We're 30 miles off of Pendleton.

We're about to go do a hydrographic reconnaissance. The freaking waves are huge. It's raining and miserable. And I'm standing there getting these, you know, getting ready to lawn. our zodiacs off the back of this LPD and this Bosen's mate first class and it's you know it's whatever 10 o'clock at night storms and he looks at me and he looks out there and he looks back and he goes man I'm glad I don't have your job and I looked back at him and I said well I'm glad I don't have yours so there you go you like everyone's got their own little thing

so that's why when you look at people that are in Navy ROTC they're a different type of person than the type of person there's people that look at Marines and go oh hell no I'm not doing that because they look at the Navy people like, oh, they look like they're going to be doing some finance and some working on engineers and like this kind of thing. It's just a propensity of job that people want. And you looked at the Navy guys and said, they look like they're going to be engineers. And these guys over here look like they're going to carry machine guns. And you're a machine gun carrying type of dude. Affirm. So, but you still have, so you still don't have a scholarship yet. So you're at this point

you're working at Costco, you're changing tires, which is a rewarding job. Yeah, someone brings you something. It's damaged, broken, and then you give it back to them and it works again. And I thought this was cool. You had a guy, so now it's your junior year and your gunny, gunny steel

tells you that your grades aren't good enough for a scholarship. And he says, you know what? You better do is you better go to this platoon leaders class. So explain the platoon leaders class. There are a couple different ways to commission as an officer. You can go to the academies are one commissioning source. You can do it through ROTC.

And then you can do it through OCC, meaning you've already graduated college and you can just do a little 10-week thing. Or you can kind of hit two summers during your college year through this platoon leader's class course, PLC. And so you do two six-week hits. And so since I still didn't have a scholarship going into my junior year and I wanted to be a Marine, I was advised that this was probably the route I would need to go. And so I went to what's called PLC Juniors, and it was a very good learning experience.

We talked about learning experiences before we started today. Yes, we did. People still learning all the time. And, you know, I'm so jacked up, like, you know, more effed up than a football bat, as they'll say. know, I probably needed an extra go. And so I think ultimately there's a lot of benefit in that six weeks. But, and I think my gunnery sergeant recognized that I probably could use a little extra training.

And so I think he withheld some information there until graduation rehearsal. And he said, you know, it's human. You had the scholarship. I just didn't tell you. So congratulations. So instead of spending six weeks hanging out with your friends or whatever, you spent six weeks doing Marine Corps stuff. Yep, down in Quantico. Is that Aquano?

Yep. How was that course? When I went in 2006, it was tough. I don't want to tell too many OCS war stories because I'll get heckled. But I thought it was this guy, Colonel Chase used to stand at the top of the hill and just say, like, quick candidate, you shouldn't be here. You're worthless. And then when I went back in 2007, it was a new CEO. And I think the surge was happening.

So we needed to make sure people got through. And so I'll tell you, you know, one thing that I'll never, you know, I'll always remember from that 06 is I had this mean as hell sergeant instructors, EFO. He was a mean, mean man. And every night we would hold the M16 by the front side tip between our thumb and our index finger, fully extended straight. forward. And he would say, discipline is, and we scream instant willingness and obedience to orders.

And say, discipline is, instant willingness and obedience to orders. And so we just do that over and over again. And I've always thought, you know, that's shaped how I think about discipline. And, you know, close order drill is the most basic form of discipline. It's the most rudimentary basic form of discipline. It's the most rudimentary, basic form of discipline that we have that we build off in the military. Then there's, then you do battle drills, which are another form of discipline. You do immediate action drills, another kind of, it's all, all this ties into just instant willingness and obedience to orders. A drill is so that you don't have to think about it, you know, and so thumb, clip, twist,

pull, pin, frag out, right? And so that's a battle drill or contact left. And it, and it's all predicated on a drill, something that you do over and over again until, it becomes less thinking. And when you, why do you do this? It reduces the need of physical courage. When something is drilled into you, it's, you're not relying so much on your physical courage in that moment.

And what I've been thinking about as I continue my career in the Marine Corps is, is when you become more senior, you actually need a lot. more discipline than when you're a PFC or last corporal or junior officer. When you are a PFC or junior in the organization, so much your life is dictated to you. So there's not a lot of opportunity to do things that are undisciplined. And as you become senior, you have more opportunity to discern what you, what route you want to go. And the thing is that as you get more latitude or more freedom, you have the potential to be less disciplined.

And I think when you think of the hard thing is usually the right thing. And the right thing is usually the hard thing. And as you advance in this organization, it requires you to have discipline to continue to do the hard and right thing. And it's not that you would do the right. wrong thing, you would just do the less right thing. And so I can just cut this little corner and be like, well, you know, like I've been here for 15 years.

Like, do I really need to do? Like, I'll generally kind of get it in the box, but I don't have to like do all these little. And so I find that that discipline in your habits and your actions and in your thoughts, that helps because otherwise you're relying on moral courage. And so if physical courage, if you rely less on physical courage through battle drills and immediate action drills

and close order drill, you rely less on moral courage when you have disciplined, thoughts, habits, and actions in your life. And so that way, it's not, I don't have to say, I don't need to put myself in a position where my moral courage has to carry the day

for me to get up in the morning. Like my boss, like we have to be at work at 630, PTN. No one's checking if I'm there at 630. Like I'm the opposite. I could probably come in at 640, 645, you know. But by having the discipline of getting up when my alarm goes off at 5am every day,

I reduce the need to have the moral courage to kind of make that decision. And same thing with, you know, if you don't put ice cream in your freezer, it's not a matter of discipline at that point. I had the discipline not to buy it at the store because otherwise if it's in the freezer, every time I walk by the fridge, it's a matter of moral courage. Do I have the moral courage to- You're talking in Echo's world right now, man. To do this thing or not do this thing. Echo also equates moral courage with a void in the ice cream. You know, let's say it's always surprising, or not always, but a lot of times people are surprised that in basic seal training,

you have weekends off. You can go do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. You can go get drunk. You can go party. You can get crazy. And that's part of the test. Because once you're in the SEAL teams, there's literally no one cares if you're showing up to PT. Now, if you go out on a rock comp and you can't hang, you're going to get destroyed. But they want people that find that that will discipline themselves, that have the self-discipline. And there's been plenty of people that didn't make it through SEAL training because they were, because they didn't want to have discipline on the weekends just to do what they should be doing and said they went and did what they wanted to do. So that, that's interesting. The other thing is, man,

As you get older and you get more senior and you can start cutting some corners, every single person below you in the chain of command can see it. This is, they were where I got very lucky because I was, I was prime enlisted, so I was the youngest and most junior guy in my first two platoons, which, thank God, what a, what a freaking incredible opportunity. But I would watch my platoon chief. I would watch my platoon commander. And if they were three minutes late, I was tracking it.

If they forgot a piece of gear, I was tracking it. If they needed a little extra something to get, need a little help getting up the ladder, I was tracking it. So when I moved into a leadership position, I always felt those eyes, man. I felt those eyes all the time. And I didn't want to let those guys down.

So that's something that always weighed on me. And then the last thing, you know, when we start talking about, you know, immediate action drills and battle drills, what's really awesome is, because sometimes people think, Oh, well, so what you have is a bunch of robots. You know, you've trained a bunch of robots to just do whatever you say.

No, actually, you get these battle drills down. You get people. It's like, do you play any musical instruments? Negative. So, guitar, which I play. I'm not good at it. But Jimmy Page, who played for the band Led Zeppelin? Echo Charles?

We good? Sir. Okay. He was a studio musician for years, which meant he went into a studio. He was very well known as a studio, meaning they would tell him, exactly what to play and he would play the notes that they wanted him to play and he did that for forever just highly disciplined mechanical playing of the instrument and that's how he made a living for a long time and because he had all that discipline because he knew every fret and every note and how to bend

them and how to how to manipulate them he knew them so well that when he got into led zeppelin now all of a sudden he could take those things and break rules so what you end up with like in a seal platoon Especially like a new guy in a seal platoon, they're a robot for a little while. You want to make sure that their weapons always point in a safe direction. They know exactly where the other people are during an immediate action drill that they're doing the safe thing. So you drill them. So it becomes mechanical. And then once they start getting it, now all of a sudden they can start saying, wait, I know I'm supposed to be over here, but I can provide better cover for my other squad.

if I scurry up this little this little mound of dirt a little bit and it's still in a safe zone because I'm not getting in front of anyone I'm not cutting off anyone's field of fire so boom and so you even have the the front line shooters the new guys after a little while they're starting to think but they know the rules they know the rules so well that they can really think they can go right to the edge of that box they can go they can go right up to the edge of that berm that they know if they go any further they're going to cut off someone else's field of fire they know that so you get them so well trying to and so well disciplined that they end up with a bunch of freedom and then that goes all the way up the chain now the guys that have got two Putoons under the belt they can start making little adjustments with their whole fire team and then eventually you get a platoon commander that goes oh Here's the rule right now and here's what I should do but I actually see something that I can do that doesn't Break the rules but it bends them and it's going to give us a better opportunity to get a a bigger bite on on this on this battlefield right now So those immediate action drills and like close order drill boom like we are done doing without thinking. And you've got to have that.

But then when you get to the actual immediate action drills, people start to understand the concepts of what we're doing. And then they understand the parameters. You know, there's certain notes on a guitar. If you play this note, then you play this other note, it's not, it doesn't work. Literally doesn't work. The whole world will go, that sounds like shit. Like everyone will think that.

So when a guy's good at IADs are good at moving through a mount environment, when they're good at it, they understand, oh, I can do this right here. I can actually play this note. I can play this note over here. I can't play that note over there. It's not going to work. And that's what we want. We want people, we want thinking shooters.

We want people that are understand that are so disciplined that they can actually have more freedom out there. And that's what always is the goal, you know. And in the beginning, that means we need to be highly disciplined and never. When you're going through basic seal training, if you make a tiny mistake, it's like you're getting swarmed by instructors. They do not want you to make those. Like you will not sweep someone. You will not. Give a seal that's, you know, in his first platoon.

Give him a squirt gun. And you give him that squirt gun and he's going to like immediately have the best muzzle discipline. If you've ever seen, like he won't point it at his kid to squirt him. You're like, it's like a physical, like, yeah, I can't point this squirt on it, my son, because it just doesn't feel right. That's how, like, ingrained it is, and that's what you want. That discipline is embedded in their brains. And then over time, they go, okay, now I have such a good foundation to work with.

My mind can be free. That's the goal. Right. So you got some of that stuff drilled into you. I'm going to jump into the book here for a second. In my senior year, with a scholarship, I was over the hump money-wise, but there was a new problem. My metabolism slowed down and my regular diet of pizza and beers suddenly started yielding

different results on my perennial skinny frame. I wasn't prepared for the metabolic cost of that in the appearance is reality, Marine Corps, where fitness is a virtue superseding most flaws. In the core, fatness is an unpardonable sin. Gunny Steele again took me on as a personal mission. He was a picture perfect Marine, thin, haircut high and tight, multiple meritorious promotions because he was genuinely squared away Marine. I still kept my eyes peeled for him whenever I was at Northwestern trying to avoid him

and heavy objects. But one day he called me on my cell phone. There was no avoiding him. He ordered me to come to his office. That was never good. This was no different. Schumann, Schumann, you must. you might let yourself become a fat piece of shit, but I ain't.

We ain't commissioning a pig to lead Marines. Normally I would have at least offered I-I, Gunny, but I was stunned into silence. He continued, you were going to come here, come in here every morning for PT. After that, you're going to have a uniform inspection every day. Every day of your life is going to be the worst day of your life until you conform to standards. Boom. There you go. Yeah, I was lacking some discipline for sure.

And it caught up to me. And we talked about, again, before we started about how good friends tell you what you need to hear. And nobody told me I was getting fat. So I don't want to not take accountability for my own fatness. But like, I didn't think it was possible. You know, I'd always been a rail ski. Like when I would go up in waist size, I was like, I guess it's this time for new pants. Like it was, nothing was clicking that I was getting fat.

And like the slow, the boiling frog, right? That doesn't notice that the water's. He looks like a size 42. Yeah. And he got me squared away. Yeah. I had one of my friends, he's in the SEAL teams, and he had a guy that was not to standards. And he brought him into his office and says, hey, bro, there's no fat seals.

And you're fat. And you're going to start taking the PRT until you're good to go. So sometimes that direct approach. What's PRT? Physical readiness test, which. Again, in the SEAL teams, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not people tracking you. And there was years that go by where the guy, a guy can, you know, oh, I had a trip, wasn't there for the PRT. Because like a command, like, the SEAL team would do one PRT a year. And you'd see it, you know, months in advance. Like, oh, the PRT's on October 15th or whatever. So if a guy's like, cool, I'm taking leave or I'm going to go on a trip, October 15th, he's not there. You do that three years in a row. Your, your pants size can be a 46. You know what I'm saying? Well, what is it, though? Like a performance or...

Physical, no, it's like a three-mile run, push-ups, pull-ups, swim, something like that. So technically you could gain a bunch of weight, still pass that thing and be good to go, or what? You could, but you probably wouldn't be able to pass it. Yeah. And you know it's weird, too, like this goes back and forth. The Navy has a PRT, the regular Navy, and the SEALs for a while used the Navy PRT, but that one you probably could be out of shape. like from a seal perspective and still be able to pass.

So then the seals made their own PRT that just to make sure you don't have anybody that's a, that's not, you know, because there's no fat seals. Like just to enforce that rule without having to tell anybody, like here's the PRT. If you don't pass it, you got to get on the run program, homie. Yeah, but it's not like the kind you're measuring body fat or nothing like this. And be like, hey, you're over, you know, 14% or whatever.

We do have that as well. Oh, for real. If you're out of there, there are height and weight standards. And every year you're supposed to get heightened weight. And if you don't make weight, you get taped. And if you're not within tape, then you get put on the BCP program, what we call. And basically you're on the fat body program and you've got to do weekly check-ins. What's tape?

What do you mean? They measure your, to get your body fat percentage. So they'll measure like your waist, your chest, your arms, that kind of exhalion. I was wondering if there's a way you get involved in that. Could I do a pose down? No, I mean, like the body weight, I got taped my whole career. Yeah. Because if you're like, if you're bigger and stronger, you're going to get taped.

Because, you know, like for me, the max body weight or something for a guy that's 511 was like, you know, 178 or something. Or something like that. And I would, I weighed 225. And so they tape you. they go, oh, yeah, you're just, you're just a big stronger. Oh, so it's probably like a ratio then. It's not like, hey, your waist is over this, therefore you're out kind of thing. Because, you know, you get these bigger guys who can, you know, they can do the PRT.

Yeah, yeah. But they're, yeah, 225, 235, but they can perform at that, you know, like you can't measure it like that, you know? Or it's like, oh, but you're overweight. Doesn't make sense. Yeah, no, they have a ratio and then I never like had any issue with. with the tape at all. I mean, it was like, good to go. What about the PRT?

Ever had issues? No, PRT, good to go. Good to go. No, you got to be, if you work out regularly, you're going to pass the PRT. You got to be a slacker, dude. And like, they're not that kind of, this is a rare dude in the SEAL teams

that just gives up on the work. I mean, you're not wearing a shirt, like 87% of the time. Like, if you're not in the field, you're not wearing a shirt. So if you're, you know, you're walking around. every day and you're just putting on the LBs.

There's not too many good. Occasionally it happens. Occasionally it happens. But most of the time, and not to mention, like the actual physical part of the job, if you're not in good shape, you're going to get fired.

Like if you can't go out and walk around the desert with, you know, 100 pounds and do it and hang, you're going to get fired. You won't be in a platoon. So no one. And I guess if you don't want to be in a seal platoon,

which is a, weird thing to even be. Right at that point for sure. So you got on the run program. Yep. Gunny Steele straightened your ass out for a second time. Sure did. We appreciate. We appreciate him. Love him. This is the this is the, the non-commissioned officers that make the, that make the Marine Corps what it is, make the Navy what it is, make the military what it is. Absolutely. By keeping the young J-Os in line and often the senior O's as well. Yeah. So you end up graduating, which is awesome. And you had to get lazy eye surgery. So you get commissioned.

They cover that. But that makes it a little time for you to go to the basic school. Now at the basic school, are you still thinking you still might be Tom Cruise at this point? It seems like in the book you were still thinking it could be Tom Cruise. No, you've got to go into that with a law contract. Oh, okay. And so pilots and lawyers aren't competing at the basis school. they've already got their contracts ahead of time.

Got it. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I was heading into the basic school. It's in there. I discover pretty quickly what I wanted to be. Field exercise one, right? That's what changed your mind. Tell us about field exercise what. So, you know, even though I got to do little summers with my dad and pretend to be a cowboy,

I still didn't know anything about being outside. I didn't know how to camp. I didn't know how to. and we got our class picked up in October so our first field exercise is sometime in mid mid-November and it got down to five degrees and everybody canteens were frozen no one knew like put the canteen upside down or put it in your sleeping bag with you like you try to bite in the MREs like breaking your teeth off like all all our like cold weather gear is super old sucks and like don't know how to layer, don't know anything about how to live outside of the cold, at least

the majority of us. And so, you know, up into that point, everybody kind of talks about, oh, we're going to be infantry, I'm going to be infantry, going to be infantry, and at that point, I don't know what I wanted to do, like tank sound cool or this sounds cool, like artillery sounds cool. But at the end of FX1, field exercise one, no one wanted to be infantry anymore. And I was just like, well, shit, if you all don't want to do that, that makes me want to do that. And so it's kind of like just a response to my environment. When people don't want a challenge or when people don't, I want the opposite.

And so I was like, well, now I do want to be infantry. And that was my, I still had no idea what that actually meant beyond that it was a response to what other people didn't want. It wasn't until I got out in the woods that I knew at Adams Javs course. I said, yes, yes, this is the right place. But that was still to come. And how was the basic school for you? You know, the call it the big suck. I mean, it was challenging.

It was not like extremely challenging. It was more a grind than anything. It's just six months is a long time. And so I think. I've gone back to Quantico a couple times when I've taken them in Chitman down there

and I've got to talk to some of the instructors and see their P-O-I down there now. I think it's really good. It was just long. It was long. That's what it was. Now when you're going through that,

are you getting, is it like Ranger School where you like get put in leadership position in a patrol? You take it out, you get graded. Then the next one you're a machine gunner. The next one of your appoint man.

Yep. So you're getting good experience in the field. Sure. Yeah. There's several fields. exercises, everybody's getting rotated through leadership billets. And, you know, the goal is to make every Marine officer able to lead a basic rifle platoon. That's the intent of putting, we're the

only service that puts, you know, our pilots and our lawyers and our adjutants all through this course where they're, we're going out and training as riflemen. Every Marine's rifleman. Was it hard to get selected for infantry? Yeah. So, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, by, but, by, but, By the time selection came down, I don't know what's like 300 in a one class alpha company. And I think there's maybe 30, 40 infantry slots out of that. And I mean, I remember I was first platoon and we were when the SBC, the platoon commander was reading out who got what MOS. There was a dude who was solid. His dad was Sergeant Major and he didn't get it.

I thought, oh, well, he's like way more square away than me. Maybe I'm not going to get it. So, yeah, I think it was competitive for sure. Is that because, like, the talent spread thing? Yeah, so it's top third, middle third, bottom third, so that you have a quality spread across. That right there, that concept is what shows you that the Marine Corps puts the Marine Corps first.

Oh, yeah. It really is. So what it is, Echo Charles, is when you go to the basic school, you'd think number one guy would get the number one pick. What does he want to do? Number two guy get the number two pick. But then everyone would pick the jobs, like the good jobs, the cool jobs, and the people at the bottom would get, you know,

whatever is considered a crappy job. So instead, what they do is they cut the class up into thirds. The first guy in the first group gets the first pick. The first guy in the second group. So out of 100, this guy might be the 100th or the 1001st guy. Is that right? Yeah, out of 300. No, the 201st guy gets the second pick.

The 3001st guy gets the third pick. So you end up with this quality getting spread through all the different jobs in the Marine Corps. So it's not like there's some category of Marines, of Marine officers that are all just like, oh, they're just like the lowest ranking guys. They're just terrible. No, it's you get an even spread across. the board. And that is a thing that tells you that the Marine Corps puts the Marine Corps, the whole Marine Corps first. That is one of the clearest indicators in history that we want everyone in the Marine Corps to have an opportunity and the Marine Corps comes first.

Oh, yeah. Wait, so what do they base that on? Like the, yeah, throughout the six months, it's academic, there's a leadership score, there's a PT score, your rifle score. So there's There's several kind of scores that are calculated into your overall class ranking, largely academic, but definitely like leadership evaluations, all kind of. I always say, like, I only think that I got it because we were in the defense and the ground was frozen and my SBC and I was a machine gunner and I just had a pickaxe and I was right next to a tree with big roots and he walked by and he's hitting this ground and literally not just the shovels bouncing off.

He's like, what are you trying to do there, Schumman? I'm getting a chest deep fighting hole, sir. Not on that ground, you're not. I'm like, chuckled and walked away. Several hours later, comes by. How's that going, Schumann? I'm like, two inches deep. He's like, I'm away, sir.

And then by day three, he goes by. And he's like, this guy's maybe just stubborn enough to be a grunt because I'm sitting in a chest deep fighting hole. And I always think, like, maybe that's, I think that's my, how I got selected. Dude, I got this story from Hackworth that I read. the other day and I got I got to like do more with it but he's in Korea and he's freezing and he wants to go home and he figures out a plan in in like when the sun goes down he starts

to freeze he's like I'm out of here how can I get out of here so what he plans to do is he's going to dig a hole big enough to put his leg in and he's going to toss a grenade into this hole and blow his leg up, get some shrapnel, and go home. So the sun goes down and he's a load in this fighting hole. He starts digging, man. And it's the same thing. He digs. And he starts digging, and he's digging, and he's digging through the night.

And right as he's finishing up this hole, and he's getting to a point where he can finally throw this grenade in there and go home, the sun starts to come up. And he's like, you know what? I got this. But it's a good thing to remember that when it really is, sucks the sun's gonna come up at some point and you'll start to get warm again push through it and it's a good lesson learned it's not easy to dig and frozen ground

so Kim all might just to dig a whole big enough for his leg to toss it it's funny to hear a guy like Hackworth who is you know a very brave person just based on his action but he was done he was done it's like dick winners you know dick winners after everything he did in World War II they brought all they got recalled for Korea he showed up to to the boat there in San Francisco and they're like hey if you're a combat vet from World War II you don't have to go he's like cool I'm out that was Dick Winners I mean who's gonna question Dick Winters courage but he was like yeah I'm going back to my farm in Pennsylvania um have good luck gentlemen and that was that um all right got to go to the book here

we got to get got to get mom back in the picture here um every time I visited my real home it was a fight over the Marine Corps when I was selected for the infantry my mom lost it I remember her the hell you are that's not fucking happening you'll be used as cannon fodder she mentioned something about shooting me in the kneecaps she swore this was just some macho shit because she was a cop she said it wasn't just me i was dragging down this road i was forcing her to travel it too but a young man has to live his own life and i realized that mine was the marine infantry so mom was not stoked on this whole seat it was every time i came home and it was for the first maybe 10 years.

And it was, it's like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George Bush, oil. I'm like, mom, where's the detergent? Like, I came home to do my laundry and you're yelling at me about Donald's, like, I don't know anything about all these kind of things. I want to be a Marine infantry. I want to fight. And right now I just got to do my laundry. So it was, it was always, she's always on a 10, always yelling about it.

And, you know, I end up going to a pretty dangerous place. And then it's like, okay, you're going to get out. And I think I'm going to stay in. And then, like, you know, my tour comes up again. Like, okay, come back, be a fireman, do it. I think I'm going to stay in. Awesome stuff. Way to listen to your mom.

From basic school, you get infantry officer school. How long is that course? Three months. And you and I were talking earlier about when I had, James Webb on the podcast. Yeah. And he like gets done with the basic school, gets done with the infantry officer course, goes to Vietnam. They like bring him out in the field, point up at a ridge line.

They go, your platoon's up there. Who am I relieving? Oh, it's just a sergeant. You're the other platoon commander was wounded or killed or he, Kazavak. You got it. And he rolls up there. And the first night he's in combat, he's just calling for fire. I mean, just getting after it and really leading a complex scenario.

And, you know, I said, how did you feel like you were prepared for that? And he was like, yes. And I can only imagine that you going to, now what is it, 2007, 2008? I started that course, 2009. Okay, so 2009. So we got two wars going on, got all these veterans teaching you. that must have been about as squared away as a course could be. And I would answer same as Secretary Webb.

I would say yes. You know, that course is an incredible course. And more than anything, it prepares you technically and technically to lead Marines on the very first day. It definitely helps you become mentally and physically tougher. There's a lot of mental and physical development that happens there, moral development that happens there. and the instructors, as you alluded to, were all Iraq guys.

And so the quality of the instructor is super selective there. And then just the actual curriculum there. You know, two of my buddies, our final exercise is in 29 Palms. And they didn't come back with us to graduate. They went to patoons that were in 29 Palms and deployed, you know, a week later. And so this, you know, this web part is still happening. And, you know, when I showed up to my platoon, I know that I know that I have a lot to learn about leadership. I know that I need to listen to my squal layers. I know all these

things. I also know that I could lead this platoon today. And that is a great testament to the infantry officer's course. Is there one on the East Coast or one on the West Coast? Are they all? It's just in Quantico. Just in Quantico. You just fly out for the final exercise out to 20-end palms. Okay. Go out there and get some. This is also where in the book you start talking about, you start really forming your bond's brotherhood now. You got a bunch of names, bunch of guys you list off Ty Anthony, Alex Pearson, Vince Young, Cameron West. You got some prior enlisted guys, Johnny Epps, am I saying that right? And hey, to all the Marines who I'm butchering your names. That's all good. I'm sorry. Joe Patterson. Robert Kelly. So this is Rob Kelly. This is the son

of General John Kelly. John Kelly. John Kelly. Enlisted in 1970 eventually became a four-star general if you recognize his name It's probably from when he and you're not in the military. It's from when he when he was the White House chief of staff Rob was a prior enlisted guy like his dad fought in Fallujah These are the guys that you're now Forming a bond with and This is kind of like where you Really start to become a Marine

Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's where I it's where I everything up to this point was hypothetical. Like I think this is, you know, it all started when I was a sophomore. I said, oh, I should go do something about that. No idea what that was. And then like, oh, I had Navy Marine guys, like those guys. They've got something. And then like, oh, no one wants to be infantry.

I want to be. And so all this stuff is just a theory. And then I get to IOC and it's like, no, like these are the people I want to be around this violent, aggressive stuff that we do. here like it speaks to me in a very and so you know again grew up with a mom even though she's a cop she's still this hippie like there's no like talks about being a warrior's no I and so it was I you know in in reflection there's there's something about a warrior calling that was inside my heart and inside my soul that it finally resonated it felt validated when I'm running through those woods like a

wild animal just attacking and shooting machine guns and rocking. all day with this group of savage men and for the first time I said like yes like you've made the right decision and this is these are your people this is your shit and uh and you know it taught me this many lessons but one is that you know it's all it's all hard it's all shitty work it's all tough work but when you're doing it with the right group of men like you just talked about like those are the good times and and you wouldn't rather be anywhere else and So, yeah, I mean, that list of names that you just read off. All those guys went on to combat.

All those guys went on to do incredible things. And then, you know, if we get back to November 9th where we opened with my squad leader, I mean, that's the day that Robert Kelly was killed. And to have Rob Kelly as a mentor and a friend. And, you know, I didn't know his dad was a general until he was coming to speak to us. You know, that's the kind of guy Rob was that he never would mention that. and just, I hope we, maybe, I don't know if we're going to come back to him, but when we find out about the deployment, you know, so I'll hold.

Yeah, actually, as soon as I was reading that section, because the way you had it broken out on the book, you're like, oh, we had these guys that are all just done with either OCS or OTC, and we're all, you know, went to the basic school, and then it was prior enlisted guys. And you mentioned Johnny Epps and Joe Patterson and Robert. I was like, I was like, Rob Kelly, son of a general, was prior enlisted. I actually went and looked that up because it was, amazing, right?

That this guy whose dad is general was like, oh, cool, what are you doing? I'm enlisting in Marine Corps. Like, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I was going to college, so I went to college. I had to go to college. Once I got commissioned, did a couple deployments,

and then I had to go to college. And I was in college. September 11th had happened. And I'm talking to, I went to the University of San Diego and I had one of my professors, I was an English major. One of my professors was a nun. And I'm talking to her.

and she says like, like, you know, are you going to be able to stay here longer? And I was like, what do you mean? She says, well,

don't, don't you want to stay? Can't you maybe try and get your masters? I was like, what are you talking about, sister? Quite literally. I said,

what do you mean? And she just couldn't comprehend. And she goes, well, don't you want to stay here? And, you know, isn't this like,

in her mind, this was the greatest thing ever. I'm this guy that was in the, Navy now I'm just gonna have to go to school and I was like no I want to go back I'd go back tomorrow if they would let me and she says why do you want to go back she's just like why do you dumbfounded why do you why do you want to go back and I in some awkward way because it sounds bad to say it I was like well I go back there and I get to be around a bunch of dudes like me that we listen the same music we like to do the same stuff we're

interested in the same thing we laugh at the same jokes we we that's where I want to go I want to get back there and you know for you showing up there with all these studs it's like yeah this is this is where I'm supposed to be did you have any challenges there was there anything that you any major lessons learned if you could go back and square yourself away I had the benefit of having a couple months between when I graduated TBS and showing up to IOC so you know Joe Patterson would P-T us each day and I'd work out with Ty Anthony and so Steve Trisna. So we, I showed up in pretty good shape, thankfully, because it's hard to maintain or

improve your fitness at the basis school because it's just 06 to 1900 every day and then you're studying on the weekends. And so thankfully I had a couple of months. And so I, I, the lesson I learned at IOC is, is how. to embrace the suck. And I would say the only thing that I would say is like, it would have been better if I learned it sooner. But I was out, we were doing a patrolling exercise at Fort AP Hill.

And I was just GP holding security and been days without food, July and Virginia at AP Hill and just ticks. And I'm holding this security and just flies, landing on my face, ants crawling up my sleeves, spiders repelling down, gnats in my ears on my belly's grumbling, and I got chafe everywhere, and I'm just trying to fight all this and kind of so sad and just trying to survive moment to moment. And as I continue to kind of fight nature, I'm on security for 30 minutes at this point, and all the gnats are still there, all the ants are still coming, and I just finally said,

like, you can't, you're not going to defeat nature. You just got to accept it. And in that moment, I'd stop swatting the flies. I didn't care that the ants were crawling out my sleeve. And it allows you to thrive. And when you, when you, when you, it's good, you know. Embrace the Stuck is the Marine Corps version of good. It's, it's the Stoics version of a morphate, love your fate.

It's, it's this idea that whatever the circumstances are, I accept them and I'm going to find opportunities within this current environment instead of circumstances rather than just try to survive in it. And it gives you power. It gives you agency, autonomy. You know, you no longer just become this like this leaf that's in a brook that's getting tossed around. Now I have a vote. It may be pretty restrained options based on the circumstances, but at least I can say, how can I best use these challenges?

And I think of somebody like Stockdale, when he's in prison, they say, well, was I a victim? No. You know, you think of Solstinstein when he's in the Gulag Archipelago, and he says, thank you prison. You think of someone like Paul, who, when he's in prison, he's rejoicing. I think of Sergeant Ian Tauny as he's dying.

He turns, his last words are, is everybody okay? And so it takes all these moments and it allows you to just to take ownership back. And so, yeah, I think that is, I probably learned that two-thirds of the way through, and I was probably feeling a little victim throughout most of that curriculum. And then finally I said, you know, good. And now I'm like crazy because, you know, when I'm going up to mountains in Bridgeport, I just wish it was colder. I just wish it was some more snow.

I'm so happy that's so hot out here in 20amp, I promise. If it was hotter, it would just be a little bit better. And, you know, but you got to say that kind of stuff. And you've got to try to at least believe it. Otherwise, you just powerless. Yeah, otherwise, everything really sucks. It sucks when it sucks, but if you can't accept it, it's going to suck a lot worse. Now, this whole book, and by the way, obviously I'm only reading highlights, get the book so that you can get the whole story.

But it's not just your story. It's about half of it is written by your interpreter, Zach. And it's really interesting to hear his perspective. because we as Americans, we have a really hard time picturing what, we just picture a stereotype of what we think in Iraqi is or what we think an Afghan is or whatever. We just have this stereotype in her head and that's kind of what we blanket over. And I know I always have to reiterate what an Iraqi person is, what an Iraqi dad is, what an Iraqi mom is, what an Iraqi family is.

Oh, they're a family. Actually, the way I usually described is to say they're like you are. So if you're sitting here listening to me, What's an Iraqi family? Like, oh, it's a family. There's a dad. There's a mom. They want to look out for their kids.

They're trying to grow their business. They're trying to get by. They're trying to fix their car. They got payments due. Right? That's what they're doing. And it's really interesting to hear Zach's story in his perspective. He's one of nine children.

He's from Kunar. He's a Pashtun. He talks about the Pashtun Wally, which is their culture, which some people have heard a little bit about. He goes into some details. Hospitality for visitors, right? Showing courage. That's just the way they roll.

You have to show courage in daily life, and you have to show courage and bravery defending their communities. You've got to show loyalty. You've got to show kindness. You've got to show respect. Then there's also, they have a code for revenge. They don't tolerate insults. They're expected to take revenge if something goes against them.

or at least negotiate some kind of compensation if something happens to their family or to their community. Zach's mother's father worked for President Najibullah, who they called Dr. Najib, who was the President in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union was driven out. So in 1989, the Soviet Union leaves. and this guy, Dr. Najeeb, takes over as a president. And that's where Zach's mother's father worked. Zach's father was a soldier who worked for the government in Kunar.

After he got out of the army, he worked as a clerk for the Red Cross, worked for the Red Crescent. The Dr. Najib's government collapsed in 1992. By 1996, the Taliban is expanding out of Kandahar province. they eventually capture and execute Dr. Najeeb. They take him and his brother and hang him from light poles in front of the presidential palace. That's what's transpiring during, you know, as Zach is growing up, this is what Zach's growing up in.

And I'm going to go to the book here. And again, these are, this is a section that's from Zach's writing. And he says this, I was only five years old when they came from Kandahar with their long beards and black makeup surroundings. their eyes to take control of Kunar, but I knew that my parents were scared. I remember life was very hard when they were in power. In Kunar, we Pashtuns were already very conservative, but the Taliban declared controls over everything in our lives. Each night I heard father tell my mother about the new rules imposed by the Taliban. Every day there were new prohibitions. They have declared television and music on Islamic. Then they closed the newspaper. Then, they closed the newspaper. Then women may no longer work or go to school.

Father began to grow his beard. My mother had to wear a burqa covering her entire body outside of our home. Even her eyes were hidden behind a screen. She was prohibited from looking at strangers and could not go out of the house without my father or one of her sons. It was strange to me that I had to escort my mother. Except for the madrasa, there were no schools, no university. Electricity was scarce. maintenance of roads and buildings stopped.

There was really no access to any of the basic life needs a government is supposed to provide, except guns. There were always plenty of guns. The Taleb's carried AK-47s and rocket launchers everywhere they went. There was Sharia law, of course. That was a form of government the Taliban were interested in. They cut off the hands of thieves. Talibis from the Department for the Enforcement

of right Islamic way and prevention of evils, the religious police enforced laws about modesty with sticks. They beat people in public who said they were not following the laws, especially women. Many people were killed by beheading or stoning as punishment for their violations. There was no real court, just the Taliban. Although they were from a very different part of Afghanistan and had very different accents, the Taliban and Pashtun like the people in my village. So some of our neighbors were for the Taliban.

My father was not and he suffered for that. Power shifts suddenly in Afghanistan. Who you know and support matters more than who you are. It has always been that way. My father lost his job because he'd worked under Dr. Najib. He grew his beard even longer so that he would not attract Taliban attention. Without his clerk job, he became a farmer. In our family, any child old enough to walk was a farmer.

We grew enough vegetables to feed ourselves with a little leftover to sell in the village market. We grew and sold flowers, too. Red roses. Afghans love flowers and plant them everywhere. Maybe they represent hope that something good can grow from dust. I was only 11 years old on September 11th, 2001. I did not really understand what happened that day. We really had no concept of America or the West.

We were told that the people there were infidels and that they would try to make us stop practicing Islam or living in an Islamic way. I certainly did not understand their governments or laws or the things to come soon. After the Americans began their invasion, I still farmed and played cricket in the forest, but our village was growing more and more frightened every day. people were scared that the Americans would kill us with their planes, especially those who worked for the Taliban or al-Qaeda. My father had the radio up to his ear all the time.

The day the American bombs started falling across Afghanistan, the president of the United States said, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine, and supplies to the starving and suffering. men and women and children of Afghanistan. The world had finally remembered we existed. The Americans came with more guns and more trucks and more planes. We hope they would bring

good things too. Afghanistan had nothing. After two decades of war, there was no government. We had no schools, no police, no military. Literacy was 18.6% in 1979. In 2001, no one

knew because no one had asked. There was nothing. to make us a nation except our hopes. So I think it's really lucky that Zach kind of got to see, you know, he understood freedom, he understood education, and maybe that's not the best section of read, but he definitely understood freedom, he understood education. He saw the oppressiveness of the Taliban. If he wouldn't have seen that, he might have not had this place in his heart where he

wanted to really help out America. And again, almost half the book is his words. So get the book, we'll read some more, but get the book. You want to get the real details of what it was like on the ground for these people. That's a great place to get it. But September 11th happens. America enters Afghanistan. And for him, that's a good thing.

That's an opportunity and he talks about that's an opportunity for freedom again like he sees that and eventually he does end up getting a job as an interpreter and we'll get there to that. But going back to you, you get done with IOC and you get assigned third battalion, fifth Marines, three five Marines and anyone that listens to this podcast knows about three five Marines from well from with the old breed by Eugene Sled. Eugene Sledge, 3-5 fought in World War I. They fought in Nicaragua. They fought in World War II, Guadalcanal, New Britain, Pelu, Okinawa. In Korea, they were at Incheon. They were at the breakout and withdrawal from the chosen reservoir in Vietnam. They were in Way City. They were in the Kaysan Valley, the Death Valley.

They were in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan. So you get orders to 3-5. hallowed unit. You get there and you get assigned the little quote from the book, Second Lieutenant Schumann, First Platoon, Kilo Company. That's what you get told. How does that make you feel?

Yeah, excited. I have been reading with the old breed and with E.B. Sledge there and that's, that's Kilo 3,5. And just one thing that we as Marines do, we do a very good job of preserving our history, our heritage, our legacy. It's drilled into you everywhere you go. And then, so it's, it's alive.

It's a lie from the stories that your sergeant instructors tell you at boot camp and Officer Can at school. And then, and, but, you know, you check in, you walk outside of the 3-5, the Kilo office and the CP for 3-5, there's a pitcher of Kilo on Pelaloo with a note. from E.B. Sledge. And like, just the, this the idea, like, that you have a responsibility and an opportunity to carry that legacy forward. I mean, it's more, it's all you could ever dream of.

It's all you could ever hope for. Second Lieutenant Schumann, first platoon kilo company. You've been, how long have you been in the Marine Corps for at this point? A year, nine months. So you're nine months to a year in the state. This is everything you've been working for through college and you get this. But that being said, there's also like some, and it will be weird for people to hear this. There's also some bad news, and the bad news is that you're scheduled to go on a Westpac deployment,

which means you're going to be on a ship going around the Pacific Ocean, not going into combat. That was the plan for your battalion. Yeah, all I want to do is fight. I mean, you leave IOC and it's just basically this controlled aggression and this is maximum violence. And all your instructors have just left Iraq and it's what you've been seen for the last several years and you're ready to do that. Alan Iverson, you know, he says, we're talking about practice.

We're talking about practice. You want to get, it's time for the game. And you want to go get back. validate it. And so when you find out, hey, you're going to go to O'Connell and float around a little bit, you think, well, shit, that's not what I was trying to do here. So yeah, definitely initially disappointed. I got, I was, I guess that disappointment to an extent persisted. But once I started working and leading Marines, I mean, every day I'm living in San Clemente, driving down, Al Camino Rio, past Tresselps Beach, into the north side of Camp Pendleton to go shoot machine guns with 35 savages. Like, it's a pretty good deal. And so, like, pretty quickly, like, my little sadness was mostly taken care of.

But, yeah, still a little disappointed for sure. Any challenges when you were doing your workup preparing for deployment? Undoubtedly, the start, these, so 3-5 last went to Iraq and 08. and so the senior Lance Corporals all had done the Iraq deployment and some of the sergeants and then the platoon that I picked up had just gotten back from Okinawa. They were the first time that 3-5 hadn't been in combat in 10 years. And so they are all feeling. So infantry Marines joined for one reason.

They joined a fight. And so all their seniors have been to Iraq. they've all been to combat. They had to live with this that they didn't. Then they, of course, like always their leadership is saying, well, we could go, we're going to go, we're going to go. And then they don't go. And they just, you know.

And so morale was low, discipline, very low. There was, I mean, it was very tough. leadership is always challenging. And so like the midshipman kind of when I want to teach in Naval Academy would kind of like, you know, bitching complain about different aspects of leadership or timing. And I can't think of a time as a second lieutenant in the over 245 years in Marine Corps where it would be, oh, this is this must have been an easy time to be a second lieutenant. It's always a tough time to be. It's in in Hue City and Kaysan, I bet it was pretty hard to be a second lieutenant. tenant, you know, immediately following Vietnam in the 1970, probably pretty hard to be.

And so there's no time where it's easy. And it's just those challenges are different based on peacetime, garrison, war time. But those Marines were disgruntled, low morale, and not disciplined. And that's what I'll stepping into initially as a platoon commander. Now, when we found out we got we were headed, you better shape up or you're going to put on the bench. But you did much of your workout thinking you were going on Westpac, right? About six months.

And yeah, this is when guys are like, well, we got to do this again. We're just going to go sit on a boat. Not cool. But as you mentioned, things changed. So you guys get together. It's around Christmas time. You get together, you gather for your Christmas leave, a safety brief where they're going to tell you not to be idiots. Battalion.

commander has some word to put out. And here's what he says. Here's what you say in the book. As we gathered for a safety brief prior to releasing Marines for Christmas leave, Lieutenant Colonel Morris stood in a circle of more than 1,000 Marines, all impatient for the freedom of the leave period and prepared for the usual tired exhortations about tire pressure and not drinking and driving. Those came in as expected.

But when Morris announced we would no longer be deploying to Japan, the air became suddenly charged like the ozone smell before a lightning storm a thousand Marines collectively leaned in to hear his next words when he announced that dark horse which is three five when he announced that dark horse was instead deploying to the sangan district of helman province afghanistan there was a roar so loud i felt it as much as i heard it i could not have wanted anything more for christmas I felt a surge of heat through my body, a charge of adrenaline and excitement, and deep down a tiny cold pit of fear. I looked over at Rob Kelly expecting to see the same excitement on his face, and I did not find it. I gave him a, come on, man, look.

He looked back at me with half a smile and said, I was ready for a mew, meaning the Japan deployment. Mine was the fire of the unblooded. Rob knew Sangan meant we would bury Marines. Yeah. That's what's happening. It's hard to explain to civilians that the young men

that sign up to go to war really want to go to war. And it's hard to convince young men that are really excited to go to war to be careful what you want. wish for. At this point, we haven't really talked about this yet, but you have long-time girlfriend at this point. Andrea. Is that right? Andrea. Andrea? Andrea. So you got Andrea. How long have you been together with her at this point? Close to 10 years. And so you met in high school? Yep. And so this is a lot, I mean, you don't get much more long term in relationship as a 20

or whatever old year guy you are at the time, than 10 years. That's a long time. And you weren't a perfect boyfriend. No. But you'd still been together for a long time. And you decide that you're going to break up with her just before deployment. Yeah, I couldn't get my shit together.

I knew it was the right thing to do. She's my high school sweetheart. We met at youth group. She'd always been good and loyal. and devoted and she's beautiful and she's everything I could ever hope or dream of. And the right thing to do for a girl that's been dealing with your crap for, you know, 10 years at that point is... A decade, by the way. It's to make an honest woman of her, you know.

And so we go ring shopping. This is all pre-deployment leave. We go ring shopping, we're talking about it, and I don't have the courage to do the right thing. And so we pull up to LAX. We're about to deploy the next day, and she's about to fly back to Chicago, and she thinks I'm about to ask her and marry me, and instead I say, you should find a new boyfriend while I'm gone. And she just, she had a fountain drink in the cup holder, get me a little fountain. and drink bath and told me that I was real piece shit and that was it and um yeah uh terrible terrible

thing i did there and um you get done with that you spend the last day um back in back in california you go over you go with cam who's one of your buddies and you go with rob you go to general kelly's house and you have a barbecue. It's like pretty poetic scenario for you guys to be rolling out. It's kind of crazy. You're going to General Kelly's house for like the going away, right? So there's the cabins on Palton and we went down to the Del Mar beach and those cabins there. And Cam and I, after the little fiasco with Andrea, we got hammered drunk.

And like the next morning, it's like the day we're going to get on the buses that. night but Rob's to say you know stop by have some lunch and like it's got to shake still from from from and uh general Kelly you know they like to drink PBR and it's like have have a beer Tom like well what are you going to say you say yes sir and so uh yeah I mean it was I mean it's it's always when you're second lieutenant and you're around a four shard general it's uh there's there's it's a little bit weird uh but really despite the hangover, what was really captured my attention is just the overall family dynamic of just a family really centered around service and duty and then just the love

and how so much of that love was through Rob and emanated from Rob. And just as a guy who never had that, it just was always remarkable just to kind of see that. From there, it's go time. Going to the book. From the battalion headquarters at Ford Operating Base, Jackson, 3-5 was responsible for almost 37 square miles of Sengen District and almost 60,000 people living throughout. I was in Afghanistan a week and at PB fires for 24 hours when I received my first mission on October 9th, 2010. I had everything I thought I wanted. Now it was time to find out the truth.

I left patrol base fires with a mix of 96 Marines and Afghan National Army soldiers to look out three areas the 3-5 headquarters wanted to know more about. In addition to first platoon, I had a host of attachments, four Marines from 3-7 to give us their insight into the area and their experience within it, an entire squad of engineers and two explosive ordnance disposal Marines to contend with IEDs, the primary threat in Sangan, a section of six snipers, the embedded training team, Detailed to work with the ANA, three interpreters to help us communicate a joint terminal attack controller to get us air support, if any of the Taliban who typically operated in groups of three to four men wanted to challenge a group of 96. Sangan was primarily dirt and blowing dust, but irrigation canals stretching out from the banks of the Hellman River created verdant fields of corn and the pink and red splashes of opium poppy. on trails, roads, anywhere we would be forced to pass, the Taliban hid IDs by the hundreds. They buried yellow plastic jugs containing pounds of homemade explosives triggered by pressure plates that completed a circuit when someone stepped on them. IEDs were indiscriminate weapons, killing Marines and Afghan civilians alike. Their density demanded we move single file with about 30 feet between each person to keep an IED,

from getting more than two or three of us at once. Patrol base fires was at the center of it all. Walking single file is the best way to mitigate an IED threat, but it is a horrible way to encounter your first ambush. I was at the front of the formation, moving among the jade leaves and whispers of wind through a cornfield, stalks towering over us all and concealing our movement when machine gun rounds from a nearby building began ripping through the corn.

I dove behind a brush pile that concealed. Me from view but would not stop a bullet much less hundreds of them the size of our group and the dispersed formation Men our element was in a firefight before the remainder of my patrol completely exited from P.B. Fires I was going to die before I got the second half of my unit out of the base I looked to my left at one of my Marines Sergeant Joseph Nickirk Nickirk Nykirk Nykirk and shouted I'm gonna stand up and some suppressive fire through that window you fire grenade through it I stood and fired at the window as quickly as I could while still retaining any kind of accuracy

Nykirk followed with a grenade that silenced the machine gun we both dropped into back into the corn where the 3-7 lieutenant acting as our tour guide turned to me and said sarcastically Lieutenant Schumann you got your combat action ribbon now make a decision I was angry he was a fellow lieutenant not some not an IOC instructor I was the new guy so I just quiet and took it. But I did think to myself, make a decision. I did make a decision. My decision was not to die in the impact zone of a machine gun and kill the guy shooting at us. I thought I wanted combat, but finding myself in a complex ambush with half the platoon still in the patrol base seemed

like a bad way to start. Suddenly the combat action ribbon seemed less important. Less than an hour later I knelt at the edge of a cornfield as the ANA, their American advisors, and the three interpreters spoke to a local elder to tell him we would need to use his compound for 24 hours. Like Most in Helmand, it was a mini fortress made of thick walls, six to ten feet high with a sheet steel gate. Goats and children would almost certainly roam within while women in Berka stayed out of sight. Inside homes made of the same mud brick as the walls. As I waited for an update from the compound, a single shot rang out, followed by Sergeant Decker coming at me in a run. Sir, Teague, is it Teague?

Sir, Teague shot someone. I took a breath. Okay, did he have a gun? Decker nodded his head. Yes, sir. Is he dead? Very. All right, well, tell Teague he did a good job.

That's when the reality of Sangan hit me. We could kill people here. It was a notion that would soon become prosaic. But in the moment, it was striking. So that's the kickoff to deployment right there. Right into it. Right into it. I always say that I got very lucky in my combat experience that it was the most gradual, nice escalation over time.

Sure. And that's just pure luck. And you did not get that gradual escalation. Baptism by fire. I had a guy that was one of the Sante Raiders on, special forces guy. He did one mission in Vietnam. They flew from America. He was a brand new special forces guy.

His first combat operation was the Sante raid. He got off the aircraft and five seconds later was killing a dude. Like, stepped off the aircraft and killed someone and 20 minutes later they were gone. And that was his whole experience in Vietnam. But it was a pretty intense really 20 minutes. That's the kickoff to this deployment. And this deployment is an extremely kinetic deployment for you guys. And, you know, this is true of all wars.

I mean, depending on where you are and when you're there, it can be anything from a deployment where you're sitting around to chow hall, eating whatever gourmet food from some contractor, or it can be this type of deployment. This is a hardcore deployment. How much did you know when you were going in? How hot was it when you were showing up there? You knew what you were getting into? Not really. We were still very coin-centric. So, you know, the final exercise that a battalion does before they go out to deployment is called EMV or a handsome Mojave Viper. Now it's got a new name, of course. But like that final exercise that we're doing was all about kissing babies. There's a big key leader engagement where you're sitting with the village elder and he's shaking hands with him. And so it was like Shuras and KLEs and. When I ran training, we started doing key leader engagements, right? And they were going to go bad 100% of the time.

It was so awesome. But we had great actors and people would come out being the key leader guy. And, you know, oh, it's very nice to meet you. And the spider hole would open up and out would come people with machine guns. But it sounds like maybe you weren't getting that treatment. You were getting the treatment like it was going to go. Like, hey, that's what you're there to do. So we still did our live fire training.

but the emphasis was, you know, to try to recreate the Iraq awakening, you know, that was the playbook. And about a week before we left, though, the company commander of the A.O. That we were going to rip out. He's now a battalion commander, Ryan Cohen, Ten of Colonel Cohen, came, and he'd been medevacked. And he's like, shit is real. And this was the first guy that kind of say, like, hey, you're going to go over there and fight where did you guys know you were going where you were going specifically we did but the intel

briefs were pretty spotty the a r's there there there's not a whole lot of are you communicating with guys directly so i i think some guys have sipper maybe talking but you know second lieutenant no not getting read in on really much of this stuff and still i mean to the point that the book that I'm reading on a flight over is three cups of tea. And that's an appropriate reaction. And then, you know, we're doing the cultural courses at Leatherneck, the big base before we fly into out to the patrol bases. And I've got like a little smart pack of like, how are you?

How do you do nice to meet you, sir? And I'm quizzing all my squad leaders. And I'm like, no, you don't know how to say nice to meet you. Like, let's do it again. And like, that's still really what I thought. We were headed into, and it very immediately was apparent that no one was going to drink tea and everybody was going to try to kill us. We, when in Ramadi, we had guys, like our friends were coming to relieve us.

And so we're telling them what's going down and what's happening. And they're going to do like my guys are coming home wounded. They're going to my guys' funerals here. It was a it was a rare occasion for you know that tight turnover into like really hard combat But you know they came over they they knew what they were getting into doesn't a lot of times it doesn't doesn't work like that Three cups of tea I had a one of my Senior leaders who's a friend of mine and but you know he was really hyped on three cups of tea and we were not

especially coming home from Ahmati we were especially not hyped about three cups of tea and When that book turned out to be a big lie. Boy did I have fun with that one throwing it back in his face Did you when you during like those final exercises and stuff? What was the attitude with your guys where they like okay. Well that's what you know that's what the boss is saying we're gonna be doing we're gonna be drinking tea with the locals No one had a any Afghanistan experience. And so, you know, some of those guys had been in the Flusion 08, where it was kind of that, you know, clearhold build.

It was really more towards the build phase there. And so that 08 IRA experience was kind of reinforced some of the stuff that we're doing. And so, you know, we're all hoping for a fight, but we're Marines and we're going to do whatever we're told we've got to do and do it well. And so if it's kissing babies, you know, then we'll do that, you know, and that's kind of what we're... So what was the mission that you guys were tasked to do, like broadly? Yeah, secure, provide security for the saying in district A.O., increased security. I mean, increased security.

That's it. And your company commander was, when you write about him in the book, he had an aggressive attitude. He did, but it was hard to know, like, what his tolerance or willingness of risk assessment or, you know, risk tolerance was or what he would accept or what he wouldn't. But he was, we, Kilo company, Sledgehammer, E.B. Sledge, historically always had the aggressive reputation. And we had hardcore sergeants that work up. And, yeah, so we maintain this, which it was enabled by our CEO, is this really a great. aggressive company for sure. And then in order to maintain or establish security, you're going out on patrols. Yeah. You're taking A&A with you all the time? Trying not to. Initially, we would often

forget them at the patrol base. But towards the latter half of the deployment, we were bringing them always bringing them out. But we, that first mission had like such high visibility because it was a, we were carrying battalion objectives and doing a three-day operation that we had to have the A&A with us. But the A&A were happy to not go out, and we were happy to not take them out. And so it wasn't towards the latter half of the deployment that we really started kind of employing them consistently. But yeah, those first patrols were conventional fighting. I mean, it was the enemy who was in the defense in depth with obstacles covered by machine guns. And we were on the offense and just straight assaulting into an enemy defense.

And so anything about improving local security or doing any kind of counterinsurgency was, no, just go out there and kill as many guys as you can. Yeah, well, that's actually part of counterinsurgency is killing a bunch of bad guys. And that's a very effective and necessary part of it because you can't build schools while you're getting blown up. and security for the populace is the way that I, for lack of a better word, pitched it up my chain of command what we were doing. Hey, we're going to provide security for the populace. Well, how are you going to do that?

We're going to kill all these bad guys, or at least as many of them as we can. What was your opt tempo like? So how often are you guys going out? How long are you staying out for? I mean, every day. I mean, we're doing platoon-sized patrols every day for the first month or two, and that's because you needed a platoon-sized element to effectively fight,

the types of fights that were engaged in. And then it was a squad. But it was tough because you had a squad on post, you had a squad on QRF, and then you had a squad patrolling. And the QRF squad almost always got called out. And so that rest squad was really never resting. And so you're either on post patrolling

or responding out as QRF. So it was a, that tempo was pretty brutal. And so the troops were out every day. I don't know if this is the right word, but it sounds like it might be the right word. You kind of gotten a little bit of trouble up the chain of command. Yeah.

You got counseled for your cowboy attitude and this kind of thing. Break that down a little bit. What mistakes did you make? What could you have done that better? Where were you right? Where were you wrong? We were out on operation and we've been out until two or three and I and I called into the main, the CP and I said,

hey, we're going to we're going to turn our radio off for a couple hours. Conservative battery will be up at 06 and call on with the radio check. And when I turned the radio back on at 06 a couple hours later, it was like broken arrow, where are you, sledgehammer? Have you been overrun? Like sledgehammer one. Call in. I'm like, hey, we called you guys got rogered up that we were turned.

the radio off and the night watcho said that was good to go so and it's like no you're not in the log book I'm like so yeah when we got back you know my my CEO was there and he said you know I'm going to kick your ass and you think you don't have to call in and you don't think you don't have to report and one of my squad leaders we were in a fight and they had shot some ardi or a high mar and the main kept calling for a sit rep. And he said, what's the BDA? What's the sit rep? And he said, how about you guys just grab a cup of coffee,

take a seat, I'm in a fight. And, you know, we had this company gunny, Carlisle. He was a savage dude. And he's like, what did you say, you motherfucker? Like, they're fighting over the radio. And so my guys were, yeah, my guys were, it's like kind of that common tension between higher headquarters and the dudes doing the fighting.

And so yeah, we got rained in and we got, but, you know, it was punishment that had to go back to the company position from being out at a patrol base just as the platoon by ourselves. But it turned out it was a reward because the area around the company hadn't been patrolled aggressively. And we had been patrolling now for a month, month and a half. So we kind of created a little security bubble. We were having a harder time getting in fights. And so they brought us back. The first time we go out, we kill a ton of dudes and come back with some AK-47s. So we're like, yeah, sledgehammer once here now.

You know, here's his AKs. And so, yeah, I could have had more tact for sure. Yeah, I was probably light on tact. Yeah. One thing I used to tell my guys was the like the next, the next echelon is always messed up, right? From our perspective, the next echelon up the chain of command is always like, they don't understand. Well, here's the deal. Why don't they understand?

They don't understand because I'm not doing a good job of pushing them information. And I'm not seeing what their perspective is because they're probably got someone screaming at them going, what do you mean you're dropping already into that? Tell us what's going on. And they're asking. And that's how these things, that's how you get a little disconnect. You get a disconnect between the guys that are fighting and the guys that are not. There can be some animosity there and it can be a problem.

If you're not careful, especially from a leadership position, you know, for you guys that are out there, you're going to be the one that translates. things up and down the chain of command. And that is not an easy job. But it's a really important job because if we have a real disconnect, then we're not getting the support that we need. And it causes all kinds of problems. So don't take anything personally, right?

When they're asking you what the hell's going on, just do your best to try and tell them what the hell's going on. When they're asking you stupid questions, it's because you didn't tell them what you know how you were going to do a Kazevac in this particular scenario or what you how you were going to handle this particular type of threat they're asking you this stuff because they want to know because you didn't tell them and just do your best I know it's hard and for senior leaders out there when your folks are in the field they're working on some shit and as soon as they get the chance they're going to tell you what's up but leave them alone

as long as you possibly can leave them alone and let them sort their shit out and then they'll get back to you and you can you can get your numbers and get your update and get your sit rep and all that just try and understand each other's perspectives please it goes a long way yeah i think that was a good summation of lessons learned um all this fighting going on um it's gonna there's going to be a price. Cam, your buddy Cam gets severely wounded by an IED, lost his right leg, injured his left leg, or sorry, lost one leg, it really injured the other one, right eyes messed up. That seemed, at least when I read it in the book, it seemed like that was a little bit

of a reality check for you because we are young and we feel like invincible. Yeah, Cam was this kind of larger than life. John Wayne kind of figured to me a guy, big, strong dude that we all looked up to, charismatic. And when I came in the patrol base that day, you know, Will Donnelly, the second-matoon commander, meets me and says, I don't think Cam's going to make it. And we were taking casualties at such a crazy rate. and I'm like, man, if camp can go down, I mean, like, and I hadn't, I was good in a firefight, I could still kind of compartmentalize and focus on the thing

that I needed to focus on in that moment to make the right decisions. But I was, I, there's another great scene in Gates of Fire where the Spartans before battle will break the twigs and they'll put half the twig in the basket. It's like symbolic of a dog tag. And so that if they get so disfigured, they match up the twigs at the end of the battle and they say, okay, this is this guy. But there's another aspect of that is they break off their humanity

because their sons, their dads, their husbands, and they're about to go have to stick a zyphos sword into somebody's guts. And so they've got to separate. And I still had not separated my humanity from the violent warrior killing. in death that I was so intimately. That was the world that I was living in. I think of like, if you think of it as like the river sticks, you know, we had crossed the river sticks

and we were living in Hades. And I kind of had one foot on one shore and one foot in hell. And I was kind of just, and when I found out, when I heard Cam wasn't going to make it, he did ultimately make it. But when I found that out, I just, I broke down.

And then I went back to my room. and I had stored away a little Snickers bar at the bottom of my ruck. And I thought, on a rainy day, you will need this for your morale. And I didn't think that rainy day was going to be like a week and a half into the deployment, but I go to dig in my ruck and I find that these little Taliban mice have been living and shitting in my ruck and they ate my Snickers bar. And I had no more resilience left, you know? And so that was like the, and so I got sick.

I was puking, emotional, not in front of my troops, this was all, you know, private, but it was at that point that I said, you can't be feeling these things anymore. Like, you have a job, and so you separate from, you detach from that humanity, and everything is compartmental, actually, in that moment forward, which makes you super effective under fire. The issue is if you don't reconnect to that humanity after your deployment, you become cold, emotionally unavailable. You don't experience the richness and fullness of life.

It's a really safe way to live very compartmentalized because I don't get too happy. I don't get too sad. But it's not a very fulfilling way to live. And the longer you, and I was right back in Afghanistan 12 months later, and so the longer you kind of keep all those nerve endings dead so that you don't can't feel anything. Longer, it's harder to turn them back on.

And also you start to get afraid of like, what will I feel when I do turn all that stuff back on? Because I've been packing stuff in the C bag for a long time here. And so what I convinced myself is, is like, hey, you don't have time. You got troops to lead. You got stuff to, like, you don't have. And really what I found is, like, I didn't have the courage to turn it back on.

I didn't have the courage to feel the things that I needed to feel to figure out what the hell was going on. And I basically told myself a lie that said, you're too busy, you're too busy. But really, I was too scared to unpack that sea bag. And as like I said,

good way to be in combat, a bad way to live. Well, I think it's important to, a lot of times things are going on around us and we just don't know if they're happening. So like you pointing that out, it will help someone else go, oh, I know what's going on.

Like I know, my wife, I was on deployment, my wife sent me an email. This is before FaceTime and stuff like this, but she sent me an email and said, the kids want to see a picture of where you sleep. Can you send a picture of where you sleep? And I said, yep, got it.

And I remember I took a picture of, you know, like my little wooden plywood cot thing. And I looked at it and I was like, oh, this isn't good. And I pulled out, you know, from some dug down in some backpack. grab some pictures of my wife and kids hung them up around the bed took a picture took them back down put them back in the folder and back in the rucksack because the last thing I needed to be doing

was thinking about my wife and kids when I got guys that are you know counting on me to make decisions and I think that that was like a physical representation that I knew what I was doing and I think that when I got home, I kind of knew, okay, you can put these pictures back up now in your head. And I think a lot of times, like just you, the way you're describing that, other people will recognize that, oh, they took those pictures down.

They put them in a folder. They're not looking at them. When you get done with that deployment, you can open that folder back up and it's going to be okay. Important stuff to learn. At this point, you meet Zach for the first time. Seemed like you guys kicked it off pretty good, hit it off pretty good or out of the gate.

Yeah, initially very transactional. He was a good interpreter. He knew his past two. He knew English up to that point. The only interpreters who were left either didn't speak English or didn't speak the local dialect, and so they knew they weren't going to be able to get a job, so they hung around. And what I was finding is that every interpreter was quitting, or they were such a liability under fire that we'd have bounded a couple hundred meters.

years like where's a turp and we got to go and uh and so we had had a rough rough uh go with our interpreter so yeah he shows up he's fit he's healthy he's not a coward and yeah it's good meanwhile you're pushing going to the book here in our first nine days of operations first platoon had killed 15 Taliban we were fighting harder and killing more enemy than any unit in three five by extension that meant we were fighting and killing more than any unit in an afghan I saw that as in keeping with my CEO's direction as I understood it. But pushing that hard can create political and personal issues that people more removed from the sharp end of things can perceive as unnecessary risk. They may even be right, given the clarity that distance can offer.

In my aggressive approach to the area of operations, I followed the rules of engagement, but I was not particularly attuned to political liability that increased the farther anyone got from PB fires. but I was consciously absorbing a lot of physical risk. It made me short of patience with people I saw as less engaged, which, to be honest, was everyone who is in Afghanistan and not in First Platoon. When I got back to P.B. Fires that day, the CEO told me he was pulling First Platoon back to Fob Inkerman over his concerns that I required closer supervision. We were moving, but thankfully, Zach was coming with us.

we kind of address that the fact that that little disconnect showed up between you and this is like I mean how many books can you read movies can you watch about that disconnect between the rems the rear echelon motherfuckers and the people on the front line there's a lot of documentation about that you You just, you get back to Fob Inkerman, like you said, and the ops continue. The ops are still going on. Back to the book. That command is lonely, is a trite observation, but it is no less true for the countless times it's been observed.

It should be paired with the fact that leadership hurts. Every time you discipline a Marine that you love, every time you watch them bleed, every time you watch them breed their last, it hurts. I was 24 years old and living a reality that I now look back upon and wonder if some of it even truly happened. I want to deny that humans could be so callous as I became in the destruction of people put on this earth by the same God I was. I was convinced I would not survive Sengen, but I had realized that life is a gift and if I did survive, I had some growing up to do. I prayed to God and asked that if I did survive, he would help me live a grateful, meaningful life that would do honor to the people denied that chance. I was largely incapable of making any objective decisions myself beyond where to patrol next

and how to fight through the next ambush, but I was ready to acknowledge I was not the man I professed to be. I called Andrea and told her I wanted to be a better man that I could only do that with her beside me I apologize for mistreating the woman who loved me and begged her to take me back She agreed though I still thought it unlikely I would ever live to see her again The idea was something to live for at some point that evening the CEO came in and told me that my friend and mentor Lieutenant Robert Kelly was dead Struck and killed instantly by an IED earlier that day I rolled over and stared at the wall

I thought about Rob, Cam West, and me spending the last day before we deployed drinking beer at Del Marr with Robert and his family. The next day was the 245th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. First platoon killed four Taliban. It didn't bring anyone back. By Thanksgiving 2010, most of my closest friends in 3-5, Rob Kelly, Cameron West, Will Donnelly, and Gunnery Sergeant Carlisle had been killed or wounded. Only staff sergeant Henley and Lieutenant Vic Garcia who replaced Cam at P.B. fires with third platoon remained. I only saw Vic in passing. Another IOC classmate, James Biler, had been horribly wounded, losing both his legs.

The death or grievous injury of friends with whom I had been living, training, and fighting for two years left me feeling dead inside. I was just waiting for my body to catch up. We'd arrived in Sengen in October 2010 and settled in two years. a life of brutal sameness. We patrolled through suffocating heat and penetrating cold, sometimes multiple hours long patrols in a day. We engaged the elders.

We did post-blast analysis. We responded to ambushes. We called in medevacs. We called in air support. We zipped our friends into bags for a final ride home. They were men I loved because I knew them or I loved despite not knowing them for the simple fact that they had volunteered to serve

as marine infantry men in a time when that meant war. but it was harder and harder to feel that emotion as the toll of dead and wounded grew and I felt increasingly ground under the wheels of war so this is the uh burden of command that you're talking about and as you mentioned it's a burden that leaders have to bear alone and what's interesting and it's an interesting I mean this is what the book is about is that you actually had an outlet for this. And that outlet

ended up being your interpreter, Zach. He wasn't a Marine. He was, there was no, um, there was no mask to put on with Zach. How did that relationship grow and develop?

Out of necessity for my sanity is, is kind of how it came to be. And, um, you know, this, this idea that, wars both heaven and hell and that each day you're experiencing the worst depravity that you can imagine but then you're seeing no greater love that has a man who laid down his life for his friends

you're seeing the greatest forms of love manifested where someone willingly lays down their life of their friend and so you get these little glimpses of heaven and hell and through that you know you start to grow and mature. And, you know, General, General Mattis kind of talks about his, he got his PhD in combat, you know, that you learn so much about life, um,

in, in five minutes and a firefight that maybe could take five years outside of it. And so I'm refining my character. I'm growing up finally. I was a little boy. I went to combat a little boy. And I finally start to say, it's time for you to be a man.

And you, none of this is guaranteed. and if you do make it, what are you going to do differently? Because what you profess is not congruent with your actions. So first time I get the sat phone, I call Andrea a little cry and a little sad. You know, I know I broke up with you. Please forgive me. Take me back.

And then, yeah, you kind of hinted at this idea that as the junior officer, you are the dam. You're the between two rushing tides, you know, higher and then your troops and your subordinates. And so you are in the middle of this. And so you're trying to keep all the crap from rolling downhill on them.

But at the same time, you got all this stuff bubbling up because you got a bunch of 18-year-old kids that got stuff going on in their lives that are losing their own friends. And it's all valid. It's all valid. It's almost all valid, I should say.

And it's you. who's the mediator of all this higher, the pressure from higher and the bubbling up from your sportness. Plus you've got some stuff going on in your own life. Like you're trying to get back with your girlfriend, like your best friends getting killed or injured, right? And so like you've got your own, and you've got to be like this person, this intermediary, right,

in between all that. And the pressure, you just keep absorbing pressure because you don't want to pass it to your troops and you can't pass it to higher. And so an outlet was critical. And because you can't, like my platoon sergeant had been through enough. Like I couldn't, he was dealing with all the same crap. And so I didn't want to put anything else on his plate.

And there was really only one person who I could vent to. And that was Zach. And yeah, it was, it really would help me maintain my sanity. So this book, again, I'm reading less than, than 10% of it. We've been even 4% of this book. You have a ton of experiences here that you talk about. I'm trying to get some of the high points. You develop this awesome relationship with Zach, who's a good listener and who you can talk to about what's going on. Fast forward a little bit. Actually, fast forward quite a bit. This is a, was this a seven-month deployment?

Yes. So it's a seven-month deployment. I think we covered maybe one or two operations. I'm going to go all the way forward to, I think it was your last op, or certainly one of your last ops, this is a turnover operation, which is always a, which is always sketchy anyways because you've got a bunch of people

that are coming in, they have their ideas, you have your ideas, and if that's not a good, if they're not open to your ideas, it's going to be a lot harder. There's an area outside the wire that's called the golf course.

And when you guys go on patrol, you stay away from the golf course because it's filled with IEDs. You guys go out on patrol. When you leave to go out on patrol, you guys are going through the village where there's a bunch of Afghans running around so you can't put a bunch of pressure plate IEDs,

so it's a lot less IEDs. New lieutenant. So on this op, is it mostly your guys or is it mostly his guys? No, it's the last of the left seat, right seat. So it's just me and two sergeants. And all his guys. And it's all his guys. He wants to go out patrol through the golf course.

You strongly recommend that that's not a great idea. He decides that it is a good idea and he's going to go out, going to go out, going to take the patrol out to the golf course. Guy hits a low, low order IED out of the gate. What happens then? So Sergeant Nykirk was one of my three Marines that was, or one of my two other Marines that were on that patrol, I see him go up in the yellow smoke,

and I think, you know, son of a bitch. And when I get up to him, he's standing on top of a 105 shell with a yellow jug underneath it, and the yellow jug just as barely cracked open. And we're only 100 meters outside the patrol base at this point, so we call EOD to come from the company position. They come out, and they say 105 shell on a 40-pound jug

would have killed, you know, A couple people in front, a couple people in back. You know, Nykirk, you would be in little pieces. And they said, this is actually a trip wire ID. This is the first time we've seen this in this AO. We've never seen this little fish line that you kick in the, and it was so two little branches, and you kick the little fish wire, you can't see it.

And that's what closed the circuit rather than a pressure plate. And so they reduced the IED. Nykirk has HME, the homemade explosives all over his face. He's been doused in it and he's all jittery and he's like, can I go back with EOD back to the CP? And I'm like, yeah, go ahead. And Decker, my third squad leader turns to me and says like, can I go back with them too because these guys, they're going to get us killed.

And I just had a son on this deployment and I haven't met my son yet. He named his son Maximum Danger, Decker, by the way. And that's the kind of guy. he is. He's still in. One of my heroes. And I'm like, hey, Decker, like, if stuff goes sideways out here, I need at least one other person that I know that I can rely on, like, sorry, you got to stay.

And he's not happy about it, but Roger. And you still couldn't convince the new lieutenant. Like, hey, bro, remember when I said this was a bad idea? We just got the absolute luckiest thing we could have ever hoped for. Yeah. let's backtrack and try this again tomorrow. Correct. Couldn't talk him off crossing the field.

What I was able to do is convince him that, hey, send the engineer who's already on the far side to sweep back through the field because he's clearly missed at least one IED that should have had a pretty big signature coming off a 105 shell. So he's going to resweep if we're going to push through this field. And as that guy starts to sweep back, goes up. and immediately huge ambush. I mean, just firing from everywhere. And this is this unit's first time in contact. So they're, you know, just heads down, just not looking where they're firing,

just, you know, blossom, shooting everywhere. And there's only one Marine who's standing up, running into the field to go get the guy who got this blown up, and it's Sergeant Decker, the guy who just said a few minutes before, hey, sir, can I go back? Because I've never met my son. And I'm like, okay, well, now he's going to be dead. And the last thing I'm going to live with forever is that this kid will never meet his dad.

And so I'm able to flag him down. I'm like, you're not going to go. I'm going to go. But just getting across the canal towards the field, I mean, the canal looked like it was like a hail storm with just the bullets ripping through the water, hitting all the sides of the dirt. And so just it was. And so I'm running along the line. I'm like, where's the corpsman? Where's the corpsman?

Where's the corpsman? Finally one little hand goes up. I'm like grabbing by the troop staff. I'm like, you're following me. I'm like, Decker, you call him the medevac. I'll go out there and get this guy. And I'm the only guy standing up. And so the machine gun, the P-CAM is just following me through this field.

And as I enter into this field, I'm like, 105 shot on top of a 40-pound jug. Like the kids told us that they said they saw them at least put 15 to 20 IDs in this field. We were on a big op. We had just left like a skeleton security. It was in, and this place was in like low ground. We couldn't see it. And so the Taliban puts at least 15 to 20 IDs in there.

We've been in this field for five minutes and hit two of them. So I'm going to this field thinking best case scenario, no legs. ML COA, most likely quarter. of action here you are dead and then a lot of pieces people are picking you up with a vacuum you know and i'm also like the pk m is just following me the whole way through you know i'm a tall guy with a big head they're just like yeah that's an easy target uh shoot that thing and uh and every time i put my foot down i'm like mother fucker you know like uh and we get to the casualty start the treatment on the casualty uh he's got it looks like it looks like it looks

lower dead it again, but it heaved him up and slammed them down. And he hit a compound fracture. His arm bone was sticking through. And so I'm like, okay, that's good. That's not a big, good deal. Doc, you got that. And I've been carrying them M32 for a couple weeks. And it's a six-shooter grenade launch.

It's like a revolver that shoots grenades. And I'm like, yeah. Get some. And so I got to pop some nugs, you know, six-piece nugs, nope, 12-piece nug. How many nugs do you need before you quiet down? and, you know, I'm able to get these guys to break contact. And but now I'm thinking, like, okay, now I've got to walk back with this guy.

Because when I'm running out, I'm thinking I'm going to get shot. I'm thinking I got to go help this Marine. Who I don't even know this Marine, right? He's from the different unit, but he's a Marine, so it doesn't matter. So, like, at that point, I am thinking with every step, like, little pucker factor for sure, but there's a lot compelling me forward, like not getting shot and trying to get to this guy. And now I'm like, okay, well, now we've got to walk back. And this is the engineer.

So he's the guy that sweeps the ground. And so, yeah, it was a, it was a, the tailband did not treat me nice. I'm a way out, that's for sure. You get back, you get the wounded guy back to the line. You look at the lieutenant and you say this patrols over, at which point he admits, I guess I should have listened to you about the route. it's that's the thing about combat it's so unique is that everybody can live the same experience but have a different version of it and so like this guy's a super talented guy way smarter than me

he did great stuff with that baton so i have nothing but great stuff to say about him he remembers some of the these details differently so i will i will put that out there i remember this clear as day to me from my perspective is this how it happened. But yeah, we agreed patrols over. He said, yeah, that was maybe going through the golf course wasn't the right call. I said, yeah, I think so. And when I smoked my first cigarette. Did you talk to him while you were writing us? I posted something about it one day. Again, not indicting him, not calling him out, but just kind of talking about talking through this patrol. And he, you know, he had sent me the message. He's like, well, you know, here's how I saw that

all kind of unfold and and again there's no there's no animosity there's a ton of mutual respect nobody knows well besides Vic Garcia I think who was the my adjacent platoon commander out there out there in the northern green zone like nobody else can empathize with what we were doing on the edge of the empire and the most kinetic area of operations more than this guy so like there's a lot of mutual respect but yeah we had our difference of opinion there um um um You smoked your first cigarette after this operation. You said, and that's it, right, for this deployment. Yeah.

You leave Zach. You talk about the fact, you talk about what that's like when, you know, you're leaving Zach basically on the tarmac. You had this great relationship with him. He ends up getting a job, another translating job. He ends up leaving that A.O. as well. but we'll get into some of that. But it's you at this juncture returning home.

I'm going to go to the book. On April 20th, 2011, I landed back on U.S. soil. I was 25 years old, had it just lived a lifetime on Fast Forward. My body was battered and my brain was traumatized by multiple blasts, the type of injuries sustained by so many of us in the post-9-11 war. But I also came home from Sangan, exhausted, embittered, angry, and unsure how to express any of it. There was no way to physically represent the moral injuries I had sustained, and I did not know a way to talk about them, though they were evident to anyone who knew me. I was still angry at what I had felt been what I'd felt had been Kilo Company headquarters punishing me for aggressively implementing orders I was given.

I was depressed by the death and injury of my friends. I was physically wrung out from seven months of insomnia, long daily movements under load, and the accumulated stress of leading young men in a place where someone was trying to kill all of us every day. Strangely, like an addict, having withdrawals, I still missed the almost daily combat of the first four months of our deployment.

worse yet just as an IED does invisible damage to Marines as its shockwave passes through their soft internal organs people in my orbit were suffering from my injuries in the week before we got back my mom was counting the hours through sleepless nights at work her inability to stop crying in a bathroom stall got her sent home for the day to recover when she met me in southern California on return she tried to talk to me about how I was feeling. I didn't want to talk about it. My desire not to talk never really mattered where my mom is concerned, especially after she took it upon herself to read my journal from Sangan. I was angry at the violation of my privacy.

Thomas, I can't understand what happened over there because you won't talk about it. Mom, I'm fine. Then please make eye contact with me. When I'm talking to you, would you just let it go? Thomas, you're my son. my best friend you have been since you were born it's like you're not there anymore you're just this angry person and i'm on eggshells i'm not letting anything go what do you want to say to me mom i said i'm fine so doing just fine huh uh you weren't exactly fine a lot of stuff going on in the head

yeah i i undoubtedly are tons of benefits of those experiences. At that time, still a little bit raw. I think ultimately we get to post-traumatic growth. But before you can get to post-traumatic growth, you've got to get to gratitude, and you've got to find a way to be thankful for that adversity, thankful for that hardship. You've got to get to your good. And, you know, initially when those tough things happen, you don't say, oh, I'm so happy that this tough thing happened, you know, whether it's a car accident or cancer, you don't say, oh, I'm so happy. But the thing happened. And so at some point, you can either continue to be a victim of that thing, or you can take your agency back and say good. And when you do that,

you can say, I am thankful for the things that I've learned from having this experience. And that's why, you know, I know many amputees and lots of, and this is the cycle, you know, initially bitter, angry, but even the double amputee, triple ampute, these guys I know, they'll finally get to a place where they say, you know, I wouldn't trade that experience because of the things that I've learned and benefited from and the man that I am today because of that. And so you get to gratitude and then you finally can kind of get to that growth. But undoubtedly in this moment, I'm still very hurt and offended. I don't know, offended.

But again, there was, there felt like sort of some betrayal, do this thing. But then like I'd come back in and be like, why your hands bloody? Why you got, you know, why you so you got a lot, look, you kind of seems pretty messy out there. Like, yeah, you go out there and tell everybody, we go kill these guys, go do this thing. And then when the generals come, we're like, hey, sludge you. or kills everybody. And then you call me in and say, oh, well, are you sure that guy had a gun?

Like, yes, what are you implying, sir? Like, and so, and it's, and, uh, you just carrying too much weight already to have, did not feel like your chain of command has your back. And, um, there were times within the company where I felt extremely betrayed. And so, yeah, I think I was dealing with that. Ultimately, though, I think I was thankful to have porcelain toilets, California britos, pretty girlfriend, San Clemente doesn't suck, you know. So, like, a lot of things to be thankful for at that time as well,

but still trying to figure some things out and maybe not doing it that well. What was your like enlistment status at this point? Like where were you at? Did you come back thinking maybe you'll get out? Did you come back thinking I'm definitely staying in? No, I thought I was going to get out. I mean, I didn't know. I didn't have this lifelong desire to serve.

I didn't grow up as a kid thinking, oh, I want to be a soldier someday. You know, I didn't, I never thought, oh, I want to be a general or a colonel or any of this kind of stuff. I thought I should do something. And then I thought I should be a Marine. I thought I should be an infantry Marine. And then once I finally figured out, yes, I should be an infantry Marine,

I thought I should fight. And I did that. And I got the lead, you know, the best men in this nation. And so I had met my career goals. And then with the amount of crap that I had experienced, I said, maybe I'm out. And so there's this thing called career designation that you're offered as a lieutenant and you've got to accept it.

And I was not going to designate. because I was really disenchanted or just disappointed with some of that company leadership. And so I was going to get out. I was serving as an ex-o and an adjacent company. I got, so- Is this when you went to Lima Company? Yeah. You know the frustration that you're talking about like with the leadership, right?

How did you work through that? During the deployment, not well. I mean, between my company gunny who ended up getting medevac and Zach, like, I would say there were times where I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was never the Taliban. It was like, I've been training to shoot silhouettes of men for years. And now I'm shooting. And so, like, I am only happy when a Taliban is dead. Like, that is no problem.

And I also am not personally offended that the Taliban. Taliban is shooting at me. Like I know that that's what the Taliban does. They shoot at us. And so I've been training for that. Contact front, contact left. Like I'm training for the to be shot at. And then like Marines get wounded. Well, why do we have turniquets on? Why do we do turnicates? Why do we do in all these combat lifesaver? It's all these things you expect. And if you're paying attention and taking your training seriously, you expect that there will be casualties that you will have kill people that you go. And so all of that was okay. And when you go outside the wire, you're in the yellow. You know, you're alert, you're scanning your baseline, you're waiting for

that. And so when you're in the yellow and you're alert, you can respond to things fluidly, adaptively. But you leave the wire, condition one. You leave the wire in full PPE, flack, caval, because you know you're going to a hostile environment. When you come back inside the wire, condition four take your flack off take because you're so now you're within friendly lines and that when you get ambushed within friendly lines that's where you're vulnerable and that's when you can really get hurt and uh those moral injuries i think often outlast the pain um associated with with those physical injuries and so what i did when i got back to to the states is i just ran i ran and ran and ran in those fire breaks outside Camp Pelhampton,

I just, every morning I would just go run for as long as I could, for as far as I could. And then I would just pour myself into my work as how I was dealing with things. How did you come to the conclusion that you would stay in? I had a new boss and the new Lima Company commander came in. He's my current boss. and he was everything I'd hoped for. He was, there was IOC instructors, you know, had such high standards,

and they were so challenging, and they were so good. And I was like, man, a Marine captain, that's something. That is a Marine captain, that is really something. And then I found myself disappointed throughout my workup and deployment and disillusioned. And then this, and so I'm thinking I'm out, I'll go back to Chicago going to be a fireman, took the fireman test.

Then this guy came in, and we want to be Marines because we want to do hard shit. We want to be challenged. I wanted to be a Marine because they had higher standards. I looked at Navy, I thought it's high standards. That's what I want. And this guy came in and he emulated all those high standards. And every day I had to be at the top of my game.

Every day I had to get better. And that's all I want. a leader who emulated what he espoused, a leader who was accountable and who held me accountable. You know, as a lieutenant, I had very little oversight, which in some ways was awesome because I just got to go run and gun all the time out and do my thing. But I needed somebody to mentor me. I needed someone to hold me more accountable. I needed someone to develop me and coach me and teach me. And he did those things.

And I said, okay, well, I'm not. want to do this what he's doing for somebody someday. And so I said I'm going to stay in. But as we grinded towards the Mew, I saw a flyer at the gym that said, do you have what it takes? Come try out for recon. And I said, yeah, maybe this XO staff life isn't for me. I'm going to try to go fight again with some troops. Yeah, I guess no matter what industry you're in, whether you're in the Marine Corps, Army,

IBM, you name the company, you're going to have some good bosses, you're going to have some good bosses, you're going to have some bad bosses. And a lot of it has to do with what I was talking about earlier. Like if you're not doing your best to understand the perspective of the person above you in the chain of command, it's going to be hard. And here's the thing. There's at least a 50% chance that they don't, they're not trying to understand your perspective at all. There's a 50% chance that they just think you should just be conforming to what I'm telling you and complying with what I tell you. There's a 50% chance you got a boss like that.

And in that case, you can sit there and be mad like, why don't they understand? Or you can say, okay, I got to work with this. I got to make, I got to make sure I do my best to make them understand. I got to paint a better picture. I've got to do a better job. And again, it goes back to, you know, that gives you some kind of agency. over your life to think, okay, my boss is an egomaniac. My boss has a bad temper.

My boss doesn't understand my perspective. My boss is looking to, you know, get promoted and that's the main thing he's felt. Like all those things, all those horrible things. And we've all worked for people like that. And you go, okay, cool. That's what my boss is like, all right, here's what I'm going to do. Here's how I'm going to build a relationship with my boss. Here's how I'm going to build trust with my boss, regardless of what their situation is.

So I'm just saying, I like the fact that you are. We're able to get to a point you say, okay, you know, there's good bosses, there's bad bosses out there. Of course, everybody, try and be a good boss. Try and support the people in the field. That's 100% in it. But when you're a subordinate and your boss is maybe not quite what you dreamed of, good challenge, build a good relationship with them, and things are going to get better. That's the way it works. In the meantime, you get married, right?

You make that decision. You finally say, all right, I'm going to do this. Is that before you screened for recon? It was before I screened. It was right when I got back. Right, when you got back, you closed the deal. Court wedding, yeah. She put up with me dumping her right before I left,

and then all my sad phone calls, and I ever get the staff phone, I said, you know, you better go do the right thing. And so I did a court wedding a couple weeks after I got back. And then you go to recon, and you got some cool, you had an interesting, day of getting selected for recon, which was actually a pretty cool story. We won't go into it now.

People can read the book for that one. But you end up getting selected for recon. But do I get, do I have this right? Instead of going to reconnaissance school, they have recon on deployment or going on deployment quickly and they say, hey, you're not going to recon school. You're going to go be an advisor. So the battalion was deployed. So when I showed up, the battalion was deployed.

I'm the one guy back, a couple guys back. And I was supposed to go to school. And then it's called an IA. An individual augment came down. And they said, hey, we need one dude to go advise the Afghan on how to be recon. You're all we got. Even though you haven't been to school, you're going to go advise these guys how to be. And so I joined an advisor team that was mostly guys, senior officers who were going to advise, like, a brigade level.

So like staff stuff. and me and a recon staff started and we're going to go out and advise the Afghan recon company. So you've been back home for how long at this point? I was home probably for about five or six months when I got the word that I was going to get the individual augment. And then you, July 2012, you go back to Afghanistan. You're out at patrol base Long Beach.

What was that setup like? It was an old artillery firing position. It was just a triangle, tiny, tiny little firing base outside of Marja. And it was July and the human factors, if it, like the human factors of the first appointment was the losing the guys and the, and the fighting and the grinding every day. This was, I mean, not that I had any amenities really on that first deployment,

but this deployment, I mean, it was a cot, a camionette, a pout of water, and a pallet mREs. And that's it. And I was living with the A&A, right down went from the initiator. it was like the plagues of Moses coming through that place like bugs coming through and waves blocking out the sun I mean it was a it was hard hard living out there in July and then yeah I'm going out I'm fighting with an A and A and then I'm a I'm a JTAC so I'm like a freelance JTAC so anybody who needs a guy for an op they're calling me and I'm getting to go on some pretty cool ops how many A&A are you out there with

about 50. So it's you. How many American advisors? The one other staff sergeant counterpart, and then we'd pull like four or five grunts from the AO who would kind of help stand security. So it was very lonely. So this is a totally different kind of deployment.

Again, the disparity of different types of deployment you can go on is insane. For you to be out in the middle of nowhere now with a bunch of freaking Afghans. God. Did you, so was your mission just to train these guys up? Yeah, train the Afghan, partner, advise, assist, and then, you know, go out with them on operations. And, yeah, it was, but I mean, at this point, those guys had been trained for a really long time.

So, I mean, really, I'm just kind of talking to their leadership and then going out on operations with them. What's the opt-am polite? How often are you guys going out? We're going out every day. But it's not reconnaissance-type missions. It's like they're just basically better infantrymen than your average Afghan soldier. And so, but we really patrolled from like 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. because by, you know, when the sun came up, it was over 100 degrees. And so for the first couple months, it was just real early morning patrols.

Not too kinetic with those guys, but again, a company going out would say, oh, we can have a J-TAC just jump on this op. And so when I was jumping on these ops with the different marine companies, we were getting it. really getting into it. Freelance J-TAC in Afghanistan. What did you take away from a leadership perspective on this deployment? Leadership is lonely, which I've

kind of already knew, but it was particularly lonely when it's a couple of Lance Corporals are the only other Americans around. And so you could only talk about the things that Lance Corolla was talk about for so long.

and so that was really a lot of time to think by myself that you know one of the things that I'm advising these guys and one of them turns me and says well you know when you leave is the Taliban is just going to take Afghanistan back anyways and I'm like what are you talking about you got a whole army you got 10 years of training you got millions and and I was like I want Afghanistan more than you want Afghanistan. And there's a really important lesson for me that you can't want something more for someone

than they want it for themselves. And that applies to many different areas of life. And so that was kind of hard to accept. And I found that I am happiest when I'm under fire. And like it when when you have a purpose and that is being a warrior or combat leader, and you're good at that thing, there is nothing more rewarding or are satisfying than when you get to. And so got right back in the game and right back in my first firefight. And I'm like, okay, here's what I don't do like, you're going to do this, you're going to do that.

And so, and then I was an enabler. And that was a weird role for me because I'm used to being a commander. And so when I'm the J-TAC, I don't have command of anybody. I'm just there to support a commander. And so it's tough because you see like here's what we should be doing, but that's not your role. And so like staying in my role as enabler was different for me. And so I got to appreciate maybe that role a little bit. You get orders go back to Pendleton.

It's now March 2013. When you get home, it's safe to say at this juncture, your work-life balance was not in balance at all. I just only did brain stuff. Andrea at this point, she had moved back to Chicago. Yeah. one of your buddies pulls you aside and is like

do you want the Marine Corps or do you want marriage? Like which one of these two things did you want? Because they're mutually exclusive. Like it doesn't sound like you'd be able to do both. You decide marriage. That's the thing you're going to work towards. And you tell your wife, I'll get out of the Marine Corps, we can go home, we'll figure it out.

She says Nope, not it I still don't want to be with you So this is a rough This is rough eventually You get her to come back She comes back out Back out here

Yep Doesn't end up being Once again It's still not It's still not where it needs to be With her And you eventually find out That

She'd been unfaithful to you while you were on deployment with one of your fellow Marines, with a Marine that that lived with you. How do you get through that? So I talk about ambushes, that life is full of ambushes. And, you know, like sometimes combat veterans will try to say like, oh, well, I was in an ambush with bullets and bombs. And so you connect. And I'll tell you that my worst ambush was that was my worst ambush in my life, you know. And, and so I tried not to establish higher, like everyone trying to compete in who had it the worst or who had, and, and so, in combat veterans think that we have this, or veterans in general, think that we have this

special kind of, you know, people should feel bad for us because we did this. Like, first off, I volunteered for those things. I wanted those things. I sought those things. No one made me do that. I was trained and prepared for those things. I wasn't trained or prepared for that. And that was a moral injury that took a long time and maybe still presently one that you heal from. And, you know, much of my motivation in life is a response not to repeat the same mistakes that I

experience when I was growing up and one of those was divorced and so I thought you know no matter what I'm not going to get divorced but at that point I thought yeah this this is this is over and I want to just make it very clear that ultimately that that those actions from my wife are not not representative of who she is as a woman. And that she has been the greatest blessing of my life outside of my Savior. And so I wouldn't be here today without her. But I was hurt. I was angry.

I lost my mind a little bit. I went crazy. You know, I, not like crazy, like yelling or screaming or, but just kind of went on a bender. of doing unhealthy shit for a long time. But through it all, I dated and did whatever. But they're always inside me. I was so happily married, and I was so much looking forward to starting a family.

And there was no one else that I wanted to be the mother of my children. There was no one else that I wanted to grow old with. there was no one else I wanted to do life with more than her. And so even though I met some great people along the way and had a lot of fun along the way, at the end of the day, I'd always come back to thinking about her. And so I kept trying to stuff other stuff into that. And finally I said, you know, maybe you stop trying to force. And so she had been so forgiving with me and so graceful with me and so merciful with me.

and I have gone wayward many, many times. And yeah, I'd finally call there and I said, yeah, let's try this again, which was probably the best decision I ever made because now I've got the most beautiful, loyal, devoted wife and most phenomenal mother to my three children. And so I messed a lot of things up in life. I think doing a re-attack on that was, it leads to some really interesting conversations at IPAC. You know, when you go to the S-1 or the admin

and they're doing your S-1 audit, they say, like, do you ever get divorced? And they're like, okay, who'd you divorce? And then like, are you remarried? I'm like, yes. And like, okay, who's in it? And it's always like, this Lance Corporal's like, oh, my, I just keep pushing,

last couple of this to keep pushing. Yeah, no, I mean, again, I'm only reading a small part of this book, and you give a lot more background on the whole situation on, you know, you take ownership, a lot of your behavior. And I think that's,

you can kind of, as I read the story, I was like, yeah, well, that's to be, you know, you can see it. And then even the reconciliation, you can see it as it's, as it's being put together, that you had to square your shit away and that's what was able to

allow this to happen but again I think it's just like man I mean the SEAL teams has like a 90% divorce rate it's like it's insane because of all this stuff you're gone you're it's just it's just mayhem I don't know what it is

in the military at large but it's really freaking hard on relationships really freaking hard on relationships so I think it's just a way that you spell this stuff out, you talk about it, is really important. It's going to help a lot of people when they're

going through this kind of thing. So appreciate you putting it in there. 2014 winner, you're assigned to the school of infantry. You're become the director of combat instructor's school. So what does that exactly mean? So the school of infantry is where

all the privates come after they go to boot camp. And so If you're going to be a non-infantry Marine, you go to a course called MCT, where you get like six weeks of basic infantry stuff or four weeks of basic. And then if you're going to be an infantryman, you get three months of your basic. You're a rifleman, machine gunner, mortarmen. And then from there, you go out to your unit. And so the combat instructors are the ones that receive those privates and PFCs

and train them in their craft. It's also where we have all the advanced infantry school. So if you come back as a squad leader to go to the advanced squad leader, advanced machine gunner, the combat instructors are the one bringing the squad leaders in and teaching them the advanced tactics. And so, but before you can be an insurter there, you've got to go through a course, combat instructor school, and then you go out and you train the privates or you train the sergeants. And so I was the director of that school, which was just a phenomenal position, and working with the highest caliber sergeants and staff sergeants in the entire Marine Corps.

And it was really, really refreshing and good for my soul to be around 20 to 25 dudes who are at the top of their game every day and just doing grunt shit. It was a great time. And were you teaching as well? I did a little bit of the platform instruction, but I was more like the principal. And I had combat instructors who taught combat instructor school. And so, you know, hike with them, go out on the range. Oh, I see the range. Do a little class here and there.

But generally, my instructors did the bulk of the teaching. I always feel like you learn so much when you're an instructor role. And I was very, very lucky to have been in that role quite a few times. I was an E5, man. I was an E5 teaching immediate action drills. And you've learned so much, man. You're detached. You're watching it happen.

You see that officer that's looking down his gun instead of looking around. You're like, hey, what are you doing? And by the time you're in that, by the time I was out in position, like, it was frigging awesome to have been through that from a detached perspective because you're watching it over and over again. Sir, you're doing that.

Meanwhile, Zach is carrying on, by the way. And again, I'm, I'm, Zach's not here. We're, we're, uh, not reading much of his story, but he's, he got married. He married a woman named D-WA. Is that right, D-W? They're having kids. He graduates from a school.

Of course, the Taliban still gaining power. And that's not good for him. Not good for his family. 2016, they're receiving night letters, which are just straight up death threats from the Taliban to kill him, to hurt his family, kill his family, anyone that helped America. I mean, it's like a nightmare for him.

He decides to apply. for the special immigrant visa program. That's a long process, still not even complete for him to this day. So he gets poisoned. At some point, loses his pancreas. So he gets poisoned. He's, you know, his guts hurting. He goes to the doctor.

The doctor's like, hey, they're poisoning people. The Taliban's poisoning people. Lose, like I said, loses his pancreas. I mean, it's just horrible. Meanwhile still no real progress in In his SIV you know to get his visa to get over here Meanwhile you are going through your career

You take command of Lima company third battalion fourth Marines Lucky Lima So now you're kind of back in the game back to leading troops You're gonna go on a Deployment was the whole deployment plan for Australia? Yes. Damn.

I never. When I was in the military, man, the guys talked about Australia as if it is like the promised land, heaven. And I never went there until I retired. And it is. It's freaking amazing.

There's a place called Nusa. Have you ever heard of this? I was there. Yeah. There's not too many places in the world I would move to like tomorrow after. But that's a one of them the freaking waves there they got like the most incredible waves There's a place in California called Malibu I'm sure you've heard of it

There's like 10 Malibu's in a row like all just different little spots and you can walk walk down You ever been to the San Diego Zoo the one right here in downtown? Yep It's all like All really manicured these nice paths and it just looks like this is like the most like like like Jurassic Park scenario. You can walk around. This thing at Nusa is like that. It's like you're on this Jurassic Park,

a beautiful, nice little trail, and then you're just watching these beautiful, beautiful waves. So you're going to Australia, your company commander. How was that? How is you like being in command again? Yeah, when I was at the school of Memptry,

there was one regiment, the 7th Marine Regiment, which is out in 29 Palms, and they were the only ones doing the special person Magtaft, so they were going to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. and so I contact the monitor and I say, hey, I want to volunteer to be a company commander because I know my time's coming up.

I want to go out to Southern Marines. Not a lot of people volunteered to go to Tijuana Palms. And so within like 30 seconds, he writes me back. He's like, you got it. And the monitor is like a person who's always impossible to get a hold of. You know, you're right in time.

And this instantaneous. You got, you want to Tijuana Palms? No problem. You got it, man. I'm like, cool. He's like, you're going to go to three, four. I'm like, okay, cool. and then I find out that they're not even a bat,

they had deactivated because of force cut structure and then they had reactivated. So there's only an H&S company of 3-4 right now. And I'm like, okay. And by the way, they're going to Australia. And so I call them on her back. I said, hey, I said I want to go to Tonya Palm so I could go on one of the deployments to Iraq.

And he's like, you said Tony-N-N-Palms? You got to go. And so I was initially. a little butt hurt, but ultimately, yeah, Australia, it doesn't suck. There are a worst places to be deployed. And so had a good time there. Company Command was awesome.

I mean, company command was awesome. It's just 150, just savage, aggressive, out in 29 palms, just attacking, shooting shit, blowing shit up. And great lieutenant's, great platoon sergeants, great squad leaders. I mean, just an aggressive company, aggressive workup. It's an infantryman's Disneyland out there, you know? And so every day you get to go do great infantry training. And so workup was a blast.

It was a great team. I was very, very fortunate to have the team that I had. And then, yeah, we had a good time in Australia. Any major leadership lessons learned there? A whole lot, for sure. I think I become very obsessive in how I approach training and command. And it's because at a very young age, I gained a great appreciation for the consequence of this profession. That it's not called duty.

There is no responding. And that when these kids are dead, they're dead forever. And that the whole that is left is felt for eternity. And having had that shape me at some, So that's how I approach everything that I do. It's like I will not stop until I know that these Marines are as lethal as possible and it had the best opportunity to come back to their moms, you know, and their wives and their children.

And so push, push, push. And also I'm very competitive. And so, like, I want to be the best platoon. I want to be the best company I want. And so with that in mind, you know, we were the main effort company. we got during all the big exercises and then on deployment we got to go to Queensland and I got to become part of an Australian battalions

that my boss, where the rest of everybody stayed back in Darwin and so it's like staying in Indiana or being in Malibu, you know? So it's like you want to get, and so Queensland is much nicer and I was a senior Marine in Queensland. So a lot of this like was pretty good.

but I didn't have all that came at a cost where I drove my Marines so hard that I burned them out, I pissed him off, and I could have had a more harmonious approach to leadership. And I look at you either, I'm either looking at you professionally or as a person, but not both at the same time. And so if you come into my office and you could be anybody and say, hey, sir, my mom got breast cancer. Okay. Whatever I can do to support you right now. How can I help you?

Like, you have my undivided attention. I care about you. And so I will still treat you very much like you're my son. And but outside of that, I'm just, I'm ruthless. Like, I don't want you to be sorry. I just want you to be better. I don't want your excuses. I just want your results.

the solution is generally just work harder and be more aggressive. And so I drove, you know, redlined the company, and that's a long workup, a long deployment, and by the end of it, I'd really wore out a lot of those Marines. And I think I could have had a more harmonious approach to leadership and try to at least keep them humans and Marines kind of, a little bit at the same time. But so, you know, if I have an opportunity to be a battalion commander,

I think I'm going to try to be more mindful of that. Yeah, it's definitely something that you, you, a lot of these great leaders or allegedly great leaders or even mythological leaders that we have in the military, you see that's the thing that shines through about a lot of them, that you don't see on the surface. But when you read about them or you read their books like chesty puller like oh, this is just the ultimate hard ass But when you read about him and how he treated the troops and how much he cared about them

You know Hackworth the same way like the like the hardest dudes you could ever imagine and yet they would completely Know when they were pushing too hard pull back the reins Protect their guys from stupid shit and like that's why these guys were so Totally beloved by by their troops because they the truth Troops want to get pushed hard, but they don't want to do dumb shit. And they know, and they're humans, and they need to get treated that way. So that's definitely some great advice for anybody that's in a leadership position in any scenario. Yeah, you want to push hard.

Yeah, you want to win. Yeah, you want to do better than everybody else. And one of the ways to get the most out of your people is to treat them like people. You come back from that deployment. Is that when you get, you actually get remarried is after that deployment? Yes. So you get remarried. All's looking good.

You are now driving across country. Get your next set of orders. I'm going to go to the book here. You're driving across country. Now I had a lot to think about. I'd been to war twice. I had married, divorced, and was about to remarry the same woman. I had commanded a company of Marines,

and the Marine Corps had seen fit to select me for a promotion to major. I was now a career Marine on my wife. way to spend three years molding future Navy and Marine officers. This is when you're headed into the Naval Academy via some schooling. As I crossed our nation, I visited the graves of nine dark horse Marines. Where and when I could, I visited their families. They were still living, breathing men to me. They certainly were to their families.

As I began to turn my thoughts to training and educating future officers, I felt it critical to visit and reflect in the presence of some of the men who had made me who I am. Corporal Tevin Nguyen. Sergeant Jason Peddo. Pito? Sergeant Jason Pito. Lance Corporal Alec Catherwood. First Lieutenant Robert Kelly. First Lieutenant William Donnelly the 4th.

Corporal Derek Wyatt. Lance Corporal Arden Banagua. First Sergeant Christopher Carlyle and Sergeant Matthew Abate. All about Sergeant Pito and First Sergeant Carlisle died in Sangan. Sergeant Pito made it back to Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland before he died. First Sergeant Carlisle survived his wounds the day Zach and I watched from a distance, then got promoted, retired, and was killed in a motorcycle accident.

I owed him much of my sanity while in Sangan. I needed to tell him that. Matt Abate was the heart and soul of 3-5. A recipient of the Navy Cross, the second highest award for valor presented by our nation, His death in combat stunned every Marine in the battalion. He was a scout sniper who spent much of his time in support of Kilo company. He was the one, the one of whom Heraclitus spoke, the one who will bring the others back. No one was cooler than Abate.

No one cared more than Abate. He was the author of The Gun Fighting Commandments, Posted on the Wall, at P.B. Fires and now inscribed on the back of his grave marker. Quote, Thou shall never leave the wire without bandana containing at least four inches of slack. In any situation, thou shall blaze. Nothing matters more than thy brethren to thy left and right. Thou shall protect no matter what.

When going out in a hail of gunfire, thou shall pop them nugs until the body runs dry of blood and look hellas sick i found a newspaper article about abate said sergeant james finney 25 served with abate and sangan when he heard of his friend's death he had the same reaction as many of the marines in the battalion how do we win this war without them. As you're driving across country, as you're stopping by gravestones, as you're talking to families, how is your perspective changing? These Goldsar families are incredible. And the loss for them is as present today as it was the day they lost their son. And the pain doesn't go away.

And we have a collective duty and responsibility to carry their son's legacy forward and to do everything that we can to honor their sacrifice. I have a personal responsibility to honor of these men and how I live and a responsibility to the families. And so, you know, Tevin Nguyen was killed December 28th, his son. He'd been there for the birth of his son right before we deployed, and that was it. And so going to see little Tevin Jr.

Arta Banagua, his first generation American, both his parents' immigrants, was killed when he was 19 he was the of that engineer squad attached to Kila Company he was the 12th Marine that was injured or killed and I got to tell this family like your son is my hero

and your son is the reason I'm alive and that everybody in his position before him who was walking point through a minefield either died or lost or limb. And your son, when he was 18 years old, still grabbed his pack, grabbed his rifle on a metal detector, and walked out in front of us.

Never once turning to me at 18 years old and saying, sir, can somebody else take this responsibility? My son is his namesake. And the idea that these men knew the consequences ahead of time and win anyways. And then if you told them how the story ends, every single one of them would be right where they were. fighting next to their brothers.

Matt Abate, when he got his Navy crossed, the squad leader got shot and one Marine goes to help the squad leader, he gets blown up, the Corpsman goes to help the Marine that gets blown up, he gets blown up, the next Marine goes to to help the corpsman, he gets blown up. Finally, everyone recognized, we're in the middle of a minefield,

and every time somebody moves, they're killed. So people stop moving. It's a normal thing to do. Everybody but one Marine. And he runs, and he treats, all the casualties. He coordinates the medevac. He grabs the metal tector, sweeps to LZ, doesn't not train to do that, just proofs the minefield with his feet, repels the enemy, calls in that helicopter. And so when I talk to these families, it's so heavy, but it's so important.

and I just thank God that men like this lived and then I had and just for a little bit, just for a moment I got to know them. And not only did these men die well, but they lived well. And they're meant to celebrate. And it is my lifelong duty to continue to honor these men. every opportunity I get. I know I eventually told Mark Lee's mom a story about Mark. Very similar to what you're talking about. So I start off by telling her that in Vietnam,

like the point men would rotate because your walking point, you're going to get ambushed, you're going to get blown up, you're going to hit a tripwire, and they would rotate those guys. And in Ramadi, being in a lead vehicle, you're the one that's going to get blown up you're the one that's going to hit an ID and especially being the gunner no one now you're not in any

any armor and you're just totally you're exposed and we'd line up the vehicles and Markley you know he's a new guy and so guess what he is turret gunner in vehicle one

night after night and when you leave the gate at Ramadi when you when you drive towards the gate to go out in the town there was a vehicle graveyard and there's like 75 or 100 vehicles out there and they're ever just twisted and gnarled they've all been dragged back and every one of those vehicles represents one two three four five casualties wounded killed you know just just heinous and that's what I don't know who the I don't

know who the hell decided that was a good place for the vehicle graveyard but it was a shitty place for the vehicle graveyard because that's what you saw and same thing with mark man never asked for somebody else to take his spot bro with dudes for sure and did it with a smile on his face I'd go how you feeling hey mark what's up man how you feeling and like his favorite response he liked to gamble a little bit he'd say I'm feeling lucky sir so that's the guys we get to work with now this you're taking all this with you to be a professor at the Naval Academy, which is a pretty, I mean, you've got all this awesome combat experience, and I don't know awesome might not be the right word, but you've got this

real experience, and you're going to take that back now to the Naval Academy. How did you, how did you end up getting that billet? How did that billet end up coming about? Yeah, I think it was a mistake. I was deployed to Australia and I said, you know, when's the last time you read any fiction? All you do is read biographies and you used to be in high school you were smart. You like to do AP literature. You're kind of, as you pointed out, nerdy. And then progressively got dumber through college and maybe try to read a book that isn't just.

And so I googled popular works of fiction. And the first one that came up was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I read that and I said, oh, I like this. And a message came out and we said, we need someone to teach English at the Naval Academy. I don't know anything about the Naval Academy and not an academy guy. I'm not an English major. I failed English.

And I said, well, maybe that's me. Sounds like a good pick. And so I'm a guy that, you know, shoot your shot. and put my hat in the ring and yeah clearly the Marine Corps needs to refine that selection process but uh they they picked me um and uh before I knew it I was at Georgetown uh in an MA English MA program get in my ass kicked uh not qualified to be in that program and I should have been in the T-ball league and I showed up at the All-Star game how how long were how long was that course of instruction. So it was supposed to be a two-year program. Marine Corps likes to keep the morning

tight, so 12 months. So I did the two-year program in one month, our 12 months. So yeah, working on a compressed timeline, been in the fleet at that point for 10, 11 years. And so just got thrown in the deep end of the pool, didn't know how to swim. But it was an incredible experience. It was an experience I really needed because I very much. was just a hammer and that's all I knew and I had no other tools in life and um studying literature and writing and it really uh it helped me work out a lot of things that I'd not unpacked yet and uh so I knew I was going to be outside of my comfort zone I didn't know quite how out of my comfort zone I was but I was outside of it and uh from like orientation to when we're going around

the table where I think you just tell people what's your name. It's like, I'm Tom from Chicago. Like, no, from orientation, I was already out of my depth through conclusion. But I had some great friends that I met there that helped me and had some great professors. And yeah, then a year later I show up and I start teaching English. And how was it when you showed up at the Naval Academy? Did you ever even been to the Naval Academy before? No, I couldn't even told you where the Naval Academy was when I applied for that position.

Just, I just thought, what I thought is like, they're going to pay me. me to go read books and I got to write a little book report on it. That's why I thought like an English program would be. And then we're having these discussions in class and I'm like, what the hell are these words? Like this is supposed to be English and we're using all these words that I have no idea what anybody's talking about. Like we're doing this close reading and literary analysis and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, I got up to Annapolis. It's beautiful. And it was an awesome, awesome job. These midshipmen were hungry. They're good, good Americans. And I got to pick my favorite books and then talk to them about my favorite books, you know?

So we're doing Fields of Fire and Maddoorn and Gates Fire and Starship Troopers. And so that course was not offered when I was an English major. I didn't get to do any of those books, unfortunately. And so, yeah, teaching these midship and poetry and composition. But I was teaching a little bit about leadership, literature. I was teaching a little bit about composition, and I was teaching a lot about leadership in the classroom. And it was a super rewarding tour

and really, really enjoyed my time there. Now, one thing that you talk about in the book is as you start teaching, Justin McLeod, who's one of your Marines, dies of an overdose. And in the same month, two of your other Marines, die by suicide at this juncture, ask for and get counseling, professional counseling.

What did that consist of and how did it help you? So McLeod wasn't my first Marine that I lost to the war after it, but McLeod was tough in a lot of ways. I just, I still have a hard time coming out of the yellow, you know, getting in. to the white and being vulnerable. And but when I would sing my daughter to bed and she was one years old at the time, I'd always try to just be real present and vulnerable with her and seeing, you know, this little light of mind with her. And then I'd just finished that and then I come to my room and one of my Marines from saying,

and says, hey, got to call me. And McLeod, he had shown up to 3-5 in 2008. He had gone on the Iraq deployment. He'd gone on the Mew deployment. And so he'd done our workup, but then he was going to EAS. He said, you know, I thought I was going to extend, but I just had a son. I'm going to EAS. And I said, you know, you're my best shot.

You're my best nav guy. Like, I know you just had a son, but we really need you. So do whatever you need to do. If you want to EAS, EAS, but I hope you extend. And he comes back and says, you know, sir, you're my family too. A few months later, the engineer steps on the pressure plate that McLeod is over the charge and they both get hit and I'm about like five people back and as I come up uh as I come up one of my Marines hands me

McLeod's fingers and uh I look at McLeod and he's missing his arm and his legs and like uh it was Teague and I said thanks Teague and now I'm in this like weird position I have these body parts with a body part that doesn't exist anymore I put him in my cargo pocket and uh my engineer is going into shock so I all I have is my frog tops I take my take my blouse off I wrap him in my blouse and I've got nothing on under my flat jacket and I go back to McLeod and initially he's like real calm and cool uh he's smoking a cigarette saying like kill these mothers, you know, whatever. And, but we're having a really hard time landing the medevac bird.

And there's probably five or six guys all working on them. When you've got an amputee, it takes a couple dudes to patch up, you know, each thing. And so what I would always do is the first thing is I would take a junior marine off. And once I had security set, once I had the medevac in motion, I would take that junior marine off so that they can hold security. And I get my hands in that Marine's guts. And so, but it was dusk. and they were having a hard time tailing a laser or smoke.

They couldn't see where to land. And so, and then every time they'd come in, the zone would get hot, the Taliban would start shooting at them, and so they keep waving off. And McLeod starts to succumb to his wounds. And like I said, IOC and the Marine Corps training is just so good. It's phenomenal. It prepares you to do the things technically and tactically.

but there's nothing that can prepare you to have a conversation with a guy who you convinced to extend who said I'm going to get out because I want to teach my son to play baseball because McLeod had high school scholarship or college scholarship to go play baseball but he enlisted and said and I'm saying hey you got to stay here for Desmond because someday you're going to teach him how to play catch and you get and knowing that what is he going to be able to do you know, He's got no arm, no legs. And he starts a flat line. And I'm just like, everything in me wants to cry for this Marine.

But everybody's, you know, as a leader, like you said, everybody is looking at you, how you're going to respond to this thing. And I got to keep trying to talk to this guy about finding that will to live again for his son. And very, and the will to live is a powerful thing. and he stays, but he never stopped fighting that battle and 10 years later, saying and claimed him. And so that's what got me on the road to Pibia Bate, but it also, I was still very destructive in my tendencies,

in my thoughts, in my actions, and in my family was, of casualties. And so I was still fighting the war myself in a lot of ways and being selfish and being harmful. And my family was the one suffering. And, you know, I thought, oh, I just push, push, push. That's how I deal with everything you push.

And, but you've got to look at this as we know how, if you were a, if we, we, we, we, we, We do a really good job of teaching or Marines and Sailors how to treat casualties physically. If you're routine, we know it's self-aid. If your priority, it's buddy aid. If you're urgent, you've got to get to higher echelion of care. And so if you've got a sucking chest wound, we say we've got to get you to the dock. We don't say just, hey, you've got to suck a chest wound. You can probably just patch this up.

You'd be okay. No, we say we got it. But what we don't do is say these invisible wounds. Are you routine? Are you priority? Are you urgent? And so, you know, if you're routine and you're just having a bad day, that's normal. Everybody has sad day, funky day, whatever. And you just whatever you got to do, put on a jocco podcast, go for a run. You know, you get out of it, you know. If your priority, you need some buddy aid. Hey, I'm going through this thing. You share it with your buddy. You know, your buddy can kind of fire me carry you out of that thing. But sometimes you got sucking chest wound

And talking to your buddy or going for a run is Those are helpful But they're not going to heal that wound And I've been bleeding for a long time But I lacked the self-awareness To be able to triage that one I also lacked the ability to And so I needed to go to it

Just like if I had to suck chest wound I want to go to a doctor I need to go to a doctor And so, yeah, I finally went. And there's a C-PT, cognitive processing therapy, I think it's called. And what it does is it brings you to the traumatic event over and over, which is a super dangerous thing to do by yourself. You know, you can't, you don't, those are all volatile.

and you need a trained professional to open up your sandbag and start to unpack and pull some of those things out. And through like that repeated exposure, you start to kind of be able to negotiate or navigate that. And so my wife says, and I had to distrust her judgment, that that was what saved me in a lot of ways, saved our marriage. And so yeah, that was kind of how I ended up there. And it was, yeah, it was very helpful. How often do you go? Well, I went for about nine months while I was at the Naval Academy. And, you know, you're supposed to do, I don't know, 12, 15, 20 sessions of this CPT.

And mine got a little chunkaded because I got orders to the Naval War College. And I haven't been back. but it's at least to a point where it's I'm not I don't think I'm an urgent casualty right and so I think so probably still benefit from it but yeah and and it's it's one of those things where it's the self-delusion where you just say oh I don't have time for it I don't have time for it I got I got Marines lead I got it's like man if you don't get to the root cause of some of the stuff that you're doing you're gonna so make it a priority.

And also mostly, by the way, you're just scared of dealing with it. And so you're making excuses because you don't have the courage to deal with the tough stuff that's going on inside you. And so, yeah, that was kind of my experience with all that. You mentioned really quickly that you established a charity organization called patrol-based abate, pbabate.b.com. and that was in November 2020. What's the purpose behind that?

Yeah, so I, I've always been like a person that if there's a problem, you should walk point. Like, you should try to figure out how you can contribute. And I said, this suicide thing, whatever we got going is, it seems to be not working. And so I said, let me go read all the VA suicide reports. So I pulled up 10 years of EA suicide reports. And what I kept coming back to is that the leading possible cause of veteran suicide

were feelings of disconnectness and isolation. So that veterans who are disconnected or isolated are more vulnerable to suicide. Okay. And then there was a little stat that kept showing up that was really surprising and that there's no correlation between combat and suicide and veterans. And that people generally have a like, what, really? And that was my same reaction. But as I thought and reflected on that, when you transition, the thing that you're missing is that tribe and that purpose.

And you can find that in other ways, jiu-jitsu. There's plenty of ways where you can find that tribe, find that purpose again. But not everybody is able to fall into or find that thing. And I think when I think of an air crew on a C-17 or C-130, when I think of a motor T-cru or comm section, everybody in that unit has said, I'm willing to die for you. And everybody in that unit understands that keeping aircraft flying is like that's important. Keeping trucks rolling, like that's important. The ability to communicate important. So everybody, when you look at a mission, a mission is a task and purpose.

And so the military quite literally issues you a tribe. Here's your squad. You're in first squad. And then they give you a mission, which actually has a purpose built into the mission statement. And so then as you transition, there's this identity crisis because over your left heart, you've got a name tape that says Navy, Marines. And it's like we just hand you a piece of paper and say, you're not that thing. You say, well, man, I still, I've been indoctrinated into this. this thing, and there's not a process of indoctrination out of it.

And so I said, what is out there that is getting people, if isolation and disconnecting this are the two big risk factors here, what is out there that's getting all veterans in community and getting all veterans connected because if it's not just a combat veteran problem? And what I found is like the overwhelming majority of veteran service organizations out there, and there were many, are dedicated to supporting our special operations, our wounded, and our golds are families. And I am so grateful that as an American that we recognize the people who have made the most sacrifice, our Special, our Navy Steel Foundation, our Green Beret Foundation. I'm so happy that we say these people have paid the most cost.

They've given a limb. They've deployed seven, ten, twelve times, special forces. They're goals. I'm happy that that's where we've resourced and invested in because these people deserve it. But what the data tells us is that there's more to this picture. And so I didn't find an organization at the time that I felt was inclusive or accessible to everybody that's raised the right hand.

And there was always some kind of. barrier to entry. It said, you know, you got to, you don't, you're not disabled enough to be eligible. You're not, you don't have enough of a disorder. You haven't been to combat enough. It's always this barrier or check this box, check this box. And then, or they're like very reactive. I've overdosed. I've had a suicide attempt. It was right to bang. Now, now that you're right to bang and that you're in your moment of crisis, now you're eligible. And I said, well, what's preemptive, what's proactive, what's left of being in this, and I didn't find a whole lot. And I said, let's create a space where your service is your price of admission.

That you don't, I can check a lot of these boxes, by the way. I don't want to be defined by a disorder or by my disability or by, you know, I just want to say, hey, I'm Tom and I could use some community and I could use some connection. And so we went and we got 350 acres up in Montana and we said, we're going to do the things that you like to do, veterans. So what are the things that you want to do? Well, let's build around a shared common interest. So we've got a fight club that does jiu-jitsu. We've got a strength club that does powerlifting.

We've got a music club that's been up there. We've got an art club that's been up there. We've got a book club that's been up there. We've got a hunting club that's been up there. And so a lot of these organizations are predicated around fishing, for example. And I think that's really good. A lot of healing can happen during that. Not everybody is in to fishing, you know?

And so like you and so we want to say, I want to say, hey, if it was up to me, I'm a grunt who likes to read. So like I like to hike and I like to read books. And so like I would just have PeeBBati be like the hiking book club. But that's not everybody's thing. And so we want to say whatever you're into, if you're willing to walk point, we'll resource you and we'll build a club or club around you. And so, and we're going to fly you up to where our dojo is is on the side of a mountain in a Montana River Valley.

There's no more beautiful dojo in the world to roll than on the side of that mountain, the Pibbate. There's no better place to lift weights or, and so, and we fly you out free of cost, we pick you up, we feed you, it's all free at cost because it's all this idea of so many veterans, especially GWAT veterans or post-911 veterans, are conditioned. this thing where, well, I was just A, and they use this just. And we've really, I think largely through social media, constructed this hierarchy of what it means to serve.

And if you weren't in Ramadi or if you weren't part of this organization, and it's this weird competition and this redefinition, redefining of what service means. It's like, no, service means you raise your right hand, you sworn out to the Constitution, you did that for four years. And honorably, that is what services by definition. mission. And so you serve something greater than yourself. And so we want the airmen, the sailor, the soldier, the Marine, the National Guard, the reservist, active duty, PFC. If you raise your right

hand, you're eligible and you're in. No additional quality. And like many people, when we would say this, they'd like, wait, me? I'm just an, nope, I'm just an airman. I'm just a motor T's like, nope, we actually built this place for you. Like, for me, well, I would go, but I can't afford it. oh good because it's free cost. Oh, I would go, but like I don't do that. It's like, what do you do? Well, let's go do that thing. And so we've run two, we call it the return to base program.

We've run two summers of it. And, you know, the pillars are getting around the fire because I really think that connection forms around the fireside chats, getting out in nature because I think, I believe good things happen outside and then getting back into service. And so we do a service project around there. And then we sustain that through local chapters. And so we just say like, what sandbag do you want to fill?

We need somebody to walk point. And we created this space for you. And we got a big tent. We got to see for you at the table. Come on, get in community, get connected. And that's what we've been doing. And it's been pretty incredible to be a part of it. How many people have you put through in the two summers?

About 150 people up to Montana. and then we're still running another program this fall. And, you know, if we can't do the thing that you do on a side of a mountain, I'll find a way to support you. So somebody said, hey, I'm into scuba diving. Can't scuba dive on the side of the mountain? So, okay. So I found a partner down in the Bahamas,

and we're going to send 15 veterans out in October. And so about 150, but people who have been through our local chapter programs, I mean, thousands, right? And so every month all around this country, you've got P.B.A.V.A.B.A.B.B.A.B.B.O.B.O.S.O.R.S.A.R.S.A.R.S.A.R.A.R.A.R.A.A.R.A.A.R.A.A.R. To support it's the best way. Trying to follow the book a little bit here. By summer of 2021, meanwhile, while all this is going on, Zach and his world is falling apart in Afghanistan. The Taliban is taking over. Time is short.

Again, you detail a lot of stuff in the book, but you go into like full combat mode, but administrative effort to get Zach and his family out of there. and you're going down. I mean, you're taking everything you can possibly do to get this done. Social media, fundraising, senior military leaders, politicians to try and get something going to get him out of there. And, of course, this is no small task because at the time there's tens of thousands of other people that are also trying to get out of Afghanistan as all of this stuff, as it starts to fall apart. And just to give a little bit of Zach's perspective here.

And again, I'm fast forward. There's so much more detail in the book. Get the book. This is from Zach on July 16th, 2021. When Tom told me I needed to get to Kabul and explained why, I had to stop and sit for a moment. I was relieved that more people than just Tom and I cared about the survival of my family, but I knew chaos was coming.

I just needed it to be still before it began. I just need to be still before it began. Even when you've been planning for it, the thought of leaving your home forever is overwhelming. How do you say goodbye to your family members when you know you may never see them again? How do you kiss your mother for the last time? How do you keep from forgetting the smell of her hair after you do?

I sat on the terrace of our home where so many of the simple things at the center of my life had happened. Childhood, marriage, my children taking their first steps. They were moments as tied to a place. as I was. Now I was being forced to leave them behind with my home. For all my sadness, there was no hiding from the situation. Life for regular Afghans was bad and getting steadily worse. I was living in hiding. The Taliban's messages, which had long made it clear they were looking for me and would kill me for working with the Americans when they found me were growing

bolder and coming more often. I could not live in Kunar. I could not survive there. More importantly, My family could not. When I learned that the Americans left Bagram in the middle of the night on July 2nd, I thought about my own times flying in and out of there. I remembered how the air base felt like it could not contain all the planes and helicopters. It seemed like America's power was without end. I had placed my faith in that. I did not see then how the Americans and our government would ever let the Taliban come back.

But here the Taliban war. leaving me messages at my family's doorstep during the night. So it's just awful for him. And at this point, the book kind of turns into a suspense, espionage, spy political thriller. It's mayhem, but it's not a novel. It's what's really going on and what's really happening to this real person and his real family. and one thing that's cool is the way the book is set up

it's telling it both from your perspective and then you hear his perspective and then you hear his perspective and you hear your perspective as you're trying to coordinate this movement and linkups and bona fides and messages and like dying batteries on cell phones

right which you think you know when you're in a first world problem you know oh no my cell phone died and I'm not going to be able to get a message until I get to my car and get it charged, right? You know, keys out there, his batteries low and he's literally standing at the wall trying to make comms.

It's a crazy scene. And again, we all, I mean, everybody watched this on the news, but to hear somebody that was on the ground, their perspective as they're trying to escape, this is Zach again, the airport wall so he's at the wall trying to get into the airport a Taliban fighter stood closer to the wall and was watching the crowd an AK-47 hanging across his chest he saw us looking up at the American on the tower roof he looked in the same direction

and reached out to alert his friends I saw him look up at the American again I could tell they made eye contact with each other the Taliban put his pistol put his hand on his pistol grip of his AK the American reached towards his hip But another American standing on a half wall below him reached out to grab his leg. He shook his head, no. And the one on the tower moved his hand away from his hip. The Taliban below made their hands into the shape of pistols and pointed them at the American as he carefully climbed down and stepped back over the wire. I kept my eyes focused on him.

I could not see his face. I did not know if it was Major Jared Lefevre. Is that right, Lefevre? Major Jared Lefevre. but I felt in my heart that this was the moment. Then I saw him lift his hand to his mouth and speak into a phone. A message arrived on my own in the group chat with Tom and Jared. The text said, put your son on your shoulder.

I lifted my son over his head, over the shouting, sweating, mass of people. He was wearing a bright blue shirt as John Shaddock had told me to have him do early that morning. the American waved me closer. I grabbed my family and we fought through the crowd to the base of the wall with our new friend following. As we pushed my countrymen aside, I was nodding at the man I knew now was Major Lefevre. He shouted me, do you have your family? Yes, I yelled back and one more.

Major Lefevre turned to the three Americans next to him, all large men and heavily armed. I could not hear them all talking, but from their gesture I could tell they were trying to decide how to pull seven people up and over the wall. wall. They began to attract attention from more of the Taliban. Drowning people will reach for any hand they see. The crowd was beginning to move toward the base of the wall below where they stood. The Americans finished conferring and began to move. My eyes were locked on Major Lefevre as he sent me a text. We have to figure out how to get you to us at the door to your left. And that's the way this book goes. Reading things. Through this, it's, it's agonizing and you just, you just don't know how this is going to end.

Other than the fact that the title of the book indicates that, you know, we have to keep the faith. You keep the faith. Zach keeps the faith and ultimately the servicemen and women on the ground remain faithful. And Zach does get through all kinds of gates and wickets to. get him and his family out of there, gets out before the attack at Abbey Gate, which happened a few days after he left, where we lost one U.S. Army soldier,

one U.S. Navy corpsmen and 11 United States Marines, perhaps the last to die for that particular cause and that particular nation by that particular enemy, or perhaps not, only time we'll tell. But Zach made it out and made it to America. And, I mean, it's very powerful. It's very powerful to hear his perspective. Let me just give you a little bit of that.

This is when he's back. I was willing to risk my life. Thousands of my fellow Afghans lost theirs. I work for my people and country in pursuit of a better future for all of us. but I also worked with and for the Americans because they came to help us build a better Afghanistan. I would do it again. I would still sacrifice myself for my country, for my people, and for America, the country that saved and welcomed me and my family. Too many good people died for a dream for me to ignore the obligation to pay it back.

The Taliban were not our only problem. The corruption in our own national government was a chain around our collective necks. Leaders must earn their positions by deserving the trust of the people. A government with anything less will never survive and the governed will never thrive. Too many of our leaders bought their way into power as a means of enriching themselves. Too many warlords held on to power by force, placing themselves ahead of the people they were supposed to protect. It was a frail system that fell when the foreign support holding it up ceased to exist. For now, the Taliban own Afghanistan.

The Afghan people are again living in a nightmare. People I love who are still there are suffering. They are starving with no food and no money with which to buy it. Modern medical care is already only a memory. Security and freedom are a dream. When they seized the nation, the Taliban claimed that former members of the security forces and people who worked with the Americans would be safe in a Taliban regime. It was a lie then, and it is a lie now.

The executions and torture have already begun. I knew that was coming. The Taliban told me themselves. And you know those statements about Afghanistan and the leadership really apply anywhere. and corruption and nepotism and arrogance and power hungry leaders are the downfall of any organization, any team, any company, and any country. And we have to definitely be aware of that ourselves and pay attention. When was the first time you saw Zach when he got to America?

I flew out to Minnesota to see him. He had been in a refugee camp in Virginia, I think it's Fort Pickett, a while and kind of tough to get down there and get into the camp and so he'd been maintaining all long that he wanted to go to Texas because his cousins were there and important to assimilate with family his cousins had also been interpreter and got here a couple of years ago and so he was under the impression that he would get to Texas until about 24 hours they said you're going to Minnesota tomorrow in January and Minneapolis in January is not Texas and so he was in a kind of bad spot and so I flew up there got to see him got to see his family and then he'd been waiting for like

a work permit and it's better if you stay within the resettlement process because if you pull out of the resettlement process you kind of get reset back to zero and he had just received that work permit about the day or two before I showed up to Minnesota and he told me I got my work permit I said do you need to be in Minnesota he said no and I said let's go to 10. Texas. So the next day we were on a flight, what was it, seven, seven passengers, eight bags, four car seats with a layover in Denver. But we landed in San Antonio that night. And it was good to see the mission through. And what's he up to right now? He works construction, hanging dry wall at a cancer hospital six days a week, 12 hours a day. And he just, but he just had a son while

we were in New York together. So two weeks ago, he had a son. And so now, uh, Sajad is his fifth kid and, uh, American by birth. Um, I've been having some great conversations with, uh,

Vietnam guys and, and, and some Vietnamese that came over, you know, after the war. And, uh, just their, their work ethic and what they instilled in their kids is just amazing.

And, you know, when you can hear about Zach, like, hanging drywall 12 hours a day, it's like, this guy's going to make something happen. Like, he is going to make something happen. Just an awesome story of, you know, just the unceasing faith that you two had in each other to make this happen. So where are you at now? I'm back at 3-5, get-sum. Get-sum's their legit model, right? I try to research where that came from. When they start saying that?

In Iraq is where it... Jack. So they were in Phantom Fury, Al-Fajur. And so, yeah, I'm Dark Horse 3, and I'm the operations officer for 3-5. So we're training and getting ready to deploy next summer. You deploy next summer. Any idea where you guys are going?

Pacific AO. Pacific AO. Get some. Get some. I guess that kind of brings us up to present day, right? Probably a pretty good place to wrap it up. I know you've got some Marines to go lead. What do we miss?

No, I think we got it. For people to find you. First of all, the book, always faithful. It's available anywhere. Order it. We'll put a link to it. Right? Echo Charles.

Yes, sir. We will. We collectively will do that so people can find it and get it. Patrol base Abate. That's your organization. Go and check that out. P.B.abate.org. I found like a kick-ass little video of Sergeant Abate, too.

It's like 30 seconds long. I don't know if there's any more video. If there is, please let me know. He could just tell he's just like, like whatever percentage of charisma, whatever percentage of just being a badass. It's freaking legit. You're on Instagram.

Yep. You are at kill dot zone, but it's spelled funny. Z, zero. So it's Z and then a zero and then an N and then a three. So at KillZone is where you're out on Instagram. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah, how'd you crash your motorcycle back in the day? I crashed it twice.

Your mom really hates me. Because I try to go too fast too soon. And so about lost my thumb. And that's when I kind of retire from. Just sort of randomly, or was it like a very specific incident where, you know, you made some specific wrong? decisions. Yeah,

too fast in a turn and laid it down. Okay. Everyone that I know that has a motorcycle or had a motorcycle has crashed in, varying levels of injury or whatever. So that's kind of the thing. Yes. I like, you know,

I mentioned Mark Lee liking to gamble. I like to gamble. And man, the odds, when you're riding a motorcycle, the odds are just not in your favor for, for being okay when whatever happens, happens.

And it's happening. Oh, that's what it, I mean, I don't know every single person in the world with a motorcycle, but every single person that I know that had a motorcycle crashed in, including myself, by the way. And I didn't even own the motorcycle. I had my friend's motorcycle for the summer.

I laid it down. So it's like, in my mind. When was that? College. But you didn't get injured? No. I handled. But I still understood.

What kind of bike did you have? Did you have a super bike? Did you have a Harley? I had a, my first bike was a victory. And then my second bike was a Ducati. Okay. Yeah, that Duccott gets way tempting, doesn't it? I mean, that thing just wants you to roll. Yeah, it's almost like one of those inevitable slippery slopes. Well, correct me. I don't know. Everybody's different to a degree where you go fast and you're like you kind of feel the power a little bit, but you don't want to push it. And then you kind of get coming and you're like, oh, I can't go faster. I can't go fast. And it just never stops, right, until you crash. I move to that progression very rapidly.

Well, we're going to support your mom on the anti-motorcycle gig here. Fair enough. Tom, any final thoughts? No, sir. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for sharing your lessons. Thanks for your continued service with the Marine Corps. And thanks for keeping the faith with your interpreter, Zach,

who never let you down in the field. And you did not let down when he and his family needed you and to everyone out there right now that's still holding the line I recommend we remember the guidance from Sergeant Matt Abate

in any situation thou shall blaze nothing matters more than thy brethren to thy left and right thou shall protect no matter what until the body runs dry of blood

thanks Tom thank you And with that, Tom Schumann has left the building. Echo. I would say, you know, when you reflect on just talking about Tom's first deployment, you know, he's a platoon commander, it's just so much responsibility. And that's what's good. If, you know, if you've been in the military, you've had so much responsibility that for people in the civilian sector out there, you hire someone to run a branch or run a, manufacturing facility and they've had this much weight there's a really good chance that

they're going to have some good lessons learned and and being able to do a good job it's just a lot of weight is on the shoulders of these young young soldiers sailors airmen and Marines out there a lot of weight a lot of burden on these young guys and it's it's it's look this this highlights the story of an officer but the young the young corporals the sergeants it's just really is an incredible thing that we send these young men and women to do out there on the battlefield. And I'm glad we were able to capture some of these lessons and share them. And yeah, so there we go. So thanks again to Tom for coming down here and to 3-5 for letting them come down for the day.

Appreciate everyone's support for the podcast if you want to support the podcast. And you want to support yourself, you know, get yourself some of that jaco fuel. Get yourself some of that joccofuel. Have you tried pink mist yet? Yes. How do you like it? I like it. It reminds me of, it doesn't remind me, but it's similar to like the orange where it's like you,

I'm not saying you can't go wrong because, of course, you can go wrong. But it's one of those ones where it's like, it was good, but I just wasn't surprised that it was good. You know, it's like that kind. Yeah, so we're talking about new flavor of Discipline Go. It's called Pink Mist. It's like a pink lemonade scenario. It's kind of hard to make the word pink. sound cool, but when you put pink mask

probably you might be the only way to make pink sound cool, pink mist. So there you go, that's our energy drink. Here's the thing. This is not normal energy drink. There's no chemicals in there. There's no sugar in there. It's literally good for you. So go get some jocco-discipline go.

And it'll really help you out in life. I think it was you doing a speech to a group of people. Might have been life. I don't know. I've been at origin at the camp maybe. I don't know. I don't know. Either way.

But here was one of the many points where there's like, there's companies where they'll be like, hey, let's make an energy drink. And they'll be like, okay, so what are we going to put in this energy drink? Because we've got to sell it. Yeah. I'll tell you what they're going to put in. Whatever the consumer will want right now. Yeah.

So it was. And what's cheapest? Yeah. So you made, you said this more eloquently than me, but I'm going to, I'm going to say what I really gathered from it and it was kind of like it kind of haunted me a little bit where you have a company that's like okay let me make an energy drink what are we going to put in it okay let's put some caffeine in it for the energy right so okay cool caffeine we'll put this much in however much right it goes okay but we got to preserve it or we got to make it taste good and we got to you know

because we got to get them to drink it right sugar seems seems like oh of course you got to get them to drink it add sugar but so let's put sugar okay so sugar we want it to be really good though More sugar. More sugar. And, you know, okay. So, and even at this point, sugar is like, cool. Like, that's nothing new, you know. Oh, no, no.

Let's put, like, some other stuff, some chemical, some preservatives in here. Some stuff that. And then after a while, these things start adding up, right? All these little ingredients. And it's like, okay, has anyone ever thought of like, wow, what this is going to do to, like, a, you know, 17-year-old kid or a person or whatever? If they drink one of these every day, which is kind of the goal. man, if everyone drank one every day, that'd be freaking awesome, right? As far as it...

Okay, so has anyone taken account for, like, what if these people are drinking one of these, two of these every single day? Like, what's going to happen to them? Oh, yeah, we did that, but we don't care about that. We just want them to drink them every day. Oh, what if, what if it's really bad for them? And what if it causes maybe some deaths? Oh, well, we don't care about that, you know, as long as they're drinking them every day, kind of a thing. And that's kind of the picture that was kind of painted there.

We're like, bro, that's true. That's true. It's 100% true. And they can, they cut the corners on the costs. Our drinks like three times more to make. Well, if they cut the corner. Some cases four times more than some of the, then what's the one of these other companies are putting in their drinks.

Yeah. And if they cut costs, that means they pay less for it. That means they get more money when you, you know. Like so it makes, it's weird because it makes sense on one hand, but on the other hand, it's so like sinister, you know? So nothing sinister on our side. Only goodness. Only the goodness.

Only the goodness. The goodness of monk fruit. Yeah. Put some caffeine in there. Not too much, though. Yeah, but just 95 milligrams. But we got some new tropics in there. Make sure you get all the energy that you're going to need.

So there you go. Get some Jock Fuel. Get some milk. I've been on the Mulk train lately. Peanut butter, be honest with you. Been just going hard in the paint with peanut butter. It's so good. It's so good.

It's ridiculous. Agree. So jocofuel.com. You can also go to the vitamin shop. Vitamin Shop has pink mist, by the way. A little exclusive scenario going on with them right now. And also you can get the stuff at Wawa. Hey, by the way, RTDs ready to drink.

Moke. Moke. It's out there. It's a protein meal. It's a protein dessert. It's a protein provider of goodness to you. And it's ready to drink. It's so funny how we had like a little stockpile, like a pre-sale stockpilot camp.

And they were like, oh, this is the, we'll have enough just for the campers and you know just not no well we what we thought was we will reserve multiple pallets it'll be more than enough to last one week yeah dude people went ham because once you taste one you're like I'm gonna have oh I'm gonna have one for breakfast one for lunch one for dinner I'm putting them in my cereal it's all good we're freaking drinking this stuff 24 for and it lasts like two days yeah like two days and that was it yep so we uh we are on the path just trying to produce as much of the ready to drink milk as we possibly can right now to get it out there because it's delicious and it's freaking good for you.

Yeah. Yeah. So good. Drink as many as you want. Yeah, that's all joccofuel.com. Hey, speaking of JiuJitsu, origin, USA.com, we're making jihitsu geese. We're making jeans. We're making boots. We're making hunt gear.

Hey, the Delta 68 has new colors or something like that. I saw like a picture, a little thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, the, one of the wash houses, which is like a giant machine, a series of machines that can wash things at a high rate. So they get like worn. They get broken in.

Yeah. Is that the traditional way? Because you know how you have a lighter color gene? Then you have the freaking dark, dark ones. It's called the wash house. Yeah, yeah. Now wash houses are really hard to build. and we have one.

But ours wasn't working, but the team down there in North Carolina has been busting their ass getting the wash house back up and running. We had to get new machines, had to get them installed, put in there. And now we have like the original washhouse from the golden era of American textile

is back up and running. Are you going to do that? I think we're playing, bro. We're not playing. No, no, no, I don't think you're playing. I know you're not. Are you going to do acid wash? Remember acid wash?

I don't think so. I feel like acid watch. That's 80s. That right there is up there with like hair metal to me. I don't like it. Right. Yeah, it's weird how acid wash at the time was freaking awesome, by the way. Not me. I never liked it.

It was awesome in the time. I'm happy I don't have any pictures of me wearing acid wash jeans or affliction t-shirts. You remember when affliction was all wild and all the companies had all the weird designs? I have a few pictures of us and you have, it's not affliction, but it's like in the that direction, but it was like throw down. They had one. They had one that was a little bit. And also, you know what?

My caveat here is I did wear some walkout shirts. Oh, yeah, yeah. For a specific fighter, for a specific camp, for a specific fight. Which I can't remember may or may not have been straight up just like cheesy affliction. But luckily for me, I didn't own one. So no. You weren't, they're not pictures of me at the club.

Remember the affliction? jeans, dude, that had like weird. They go hard, man. They go hard, those afflictions. You take something. I think the jeans were acid wash. Yeah, they were. But you know the book, the dichotomy of leadership? Yeah, I know. If you take anything and you make it an extreme,

it can become bad. Yeah. So if you take like jeans and there's like thread on them, but then you start going crazy with it, it turns bad. If you put a pair of jeans in a washhouse and they become like comfortable and a little bit faded, that's cool. But then you put like acid on them and they look all weird.

That's not cool. You can't take stuff to an extreme I understand and that's why they kind of stuck in the 80s where you went hard and it was like Freaky out they jump on that trend hard coming back right apparently yeah because there's a show called Stranger Things which I have not watched but my daughters watch or yeah one of my daughters is into it But and do you think it's 80s bro okay and I'm even me just starting to say to ask this question I feel like you're probably one of the last people to ask about this or maybe one of the first I don't know But do you think that like you know things always come back right the retro and it comes back and you know all this and fashion is one of those ones But isn't there always like one two three things that are like that's too hardcore 80s that that'll never come back? Yeah, that's true

But here's an interesting thing first of all the 80s in my mind it seems like it was a few years ago Mm-hmm But it's like 35 years ago So when I was a kid 60s stuff right 60s and 70s like things were like hype. Yeah. But that was only,

I mean, this is in the 80s for me. So they only like 15 years old and they were still hype. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Right, right.

So it's weird that we're talking about things that are coming back, but it's been 40 years since the 80s. Yeah. Just straight Miami Vice activity going down. Yeah. Did you like Miami Vice? Yeah,

here and there, but I guess, that was kind of a big thing. Some guy I used to work with at the valet used to say, like, oh, your tubs from Miami Vice. Oh,

somebody did a, Photoshop of you and me as Trubs and Crocket and it look legit Yeah yeah that's what reminded me They done a good job They did a good job of that That made me laugh And you kind of I will say

You kind of get a little bit of tubs going on That's what they said I didn't gather that At the time but hey cool man If more than 1% I you know Lend it some weight All right so there you go So no acid wash

No acid wash We'll prevent that from happening Right on Also, jocco the store, joccal the store. Discipline equals freedom. If you want to represent with a shirt, a hoodie. What winter, what fall, right? Is it fall right now?

We're getting there. You know, we've got some hoodies on there. Discipline equals freedom. Standard issue shirt is on. It's rolling. Oh, the standard issue speaking of which. Layers. Layers, but people are representing currently as we speak.

So, yeah, look out for that. Also, we got the shirt locker, which is the subscription. People are representing that hardcore. Yeah. I'll just see random people. Oh, that's our shit. That's the locker right there. Full on supporting.

Yep. You get a new design every month. They're new. They're creative. See if you can recognize them. Yeah. Supporting. Appreciate the support.

Subscribe to the podcast. Also, also don't forget we have Jock on the ground. We just recorded a couple of those, what, yesterday? Yeah. So that's where we answer your questions directly. We also cover some subjects that I have been coming up with. You always give me some subjects.

I feel a little bit bad because so far, I think we've done one of your subjects out of 50. Yeah. So I got to open my mind a little bit more, you know, accept what you're putting down. Maybe also I'm not seeing the vision. Like you're putting some, you know, we should talk about this thing.

And I'm not really, I'm like thinking, what is this going to get us? Yeah. And I have to figure that out about you. Like what is it exactly that goes through your mind that says, okay yeah I could talk about this versus I won't um because here's here's a I'll think of something or I'll come across something or something will be presented to me

and then I'll be like hey that's interesting I wonder what Jocko would think about this so then I'm like oh like write it down I've never gotten that vibe from your suggestions for I've only gotten like what is this I've only gotten like why is this interesting yeah you'll be like talk about something and I'm like I don't understand How that's good. We'll do one of my subjects again. Okay. So this is what I'm going to do.

Are you disappointed when you get the notes and you're like, oh, he didn't pick my subject again? You feel like you're spinning your wheels and wasting your time? No, I never do. I never do. But disappointed sometimes, you know, maybe here and there because sometimes, especially the list that I just sent you, some of those were just like a thought that popped in my, and I just wrote it down. So, and I just. Which one is the best one? Best one.

The best idea that you have had. Oh, I don't know. I'd have to look at it. Bro, they can't be that good of ideas if you don't even. remember them. I think they're all pretty good. I thought they're all pretty good. Oh, here's, here's one. I don't know if it's the best one, but like the difference between like pain and suffering. So it's more like the, it's like the concept. I mean, and maybe I won't put it into words as good. But the idea that like, you know how when you feel pain, the natural instinct is to be

like, oh, it's pain, so avoid it. But then every once in a while you have a certain type of pain that you know is not like damage. It's not damage. You know it's like, whether it be for a good cause or it's more for like construction. It's just like, like if you, you know, when you lift weights now. So when I was a little kid, I used to like do pushups or whatever. And then the next day my arms and chest would be sore. And I used to hate it because I didn't know what it was. I mean, oh, I don't want that feeling.

I don't. But then when you realize what part of the process it is, you kind of like, now as an adult, and we talked about this before offline and whatever, where when you have doms, you kind of have like, whether it be from jiu-jitsu or lifting, you kind of have a better feeling because you know you're sort of in the game. So it's like you won't avoid that anymore. In fact, it's kind of like a. So what's the difference?

Like, where's the difference? You know? And can you just flip it over mentally? See what I'm saying? Because certain pain, you can be like, oh, this sucks. Wait a second. Wait a second. You know, see what I'm saying?

I think I'm starting to recognize why these subjects are getting chosen. So I pick the subjects most of the time. We're waiting on some good ones. Echo Charles, I mean, open mind, you know? I'm going to put out a list of subjects that I thought of. And I'm going to see if people want to vote on them. And then I'm going to open the bottom of the list for suggestions. Do that.

That's good. Yeah, that's kind of a good idea. Yeah, so you can, that's jocco underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, just email, assistance at underground at jocco underground.com because we got to have a place that we control because right now we don't control the platforms. We're good with the platforms.

We get along. It's fine. But you never know when things might go sideways. So we have a YouTube channel as well. We got psychological warfare. We've got flipside canvas. A bunch of books. Hey, check out the books.

check out the book Always Faithful by Tom Schumann and Zanula Zaki available will have it linked in the thing Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay

check that book out you want to hear about the war in Iraq up close and personal that's a great way to do it and then I've written a bunch of books of course also have Esselon Front Leadership Consultancy

where we solve problems through leadership so many problems let me rephrase that all your problems in your organization are leadership problems That's what they are. So if you're having issues inside your organization, it's because you have issues with your leadership.

You want to fix them? Go to ascentfront.com. Come and check out what we offer. All kinds of different things, from leadership consulting to events that we put on all through that. We also have an online training platform because just like trying to get in shape,

you can't just go one time to the gym I think you're going to get in shape. You've got to train every day. So extreme ownership.com if you want to come and check out our online academy. If you want to support patrol base Abate, go to pbabate.org. So support what Tom's got going on there for veterans. And if you want to help service members act and retire their families, gold star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee.

She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or do you want to get involved, go to America. America's mighty warriors.org and heroes and horses. Micah Fink up there. He's in the wilderness right now on a horse with 40 other guys and they are finding themselves in the wilderness. And if you want to check us out on social media,

Tom Schumann is at Killzone Z0N3. And for us on the Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook, echoes out, echo draws, I am I, Jocka Willick, watch out for the algorithm that's trying to get you. And thanks once again to Major Tom Schumann for his service into Marine Corps, his continued service into Marine Corps. Thanks for sharing some of those lessons here. Appreciate you coming down.

Thanks to 3-5 for cutting them loose for the day to come down here and share some of those lessons. And to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines that have given their lives so that we can live in freedom. We are forever indebted to you, and we will not squander this gift. And also to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correction officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice to keep us safe here at home. And everyone else out there, there's one more thing in the book.

Tom mentioned it briefly today. It's something that Sergeant Matt Abbate scrawled on the wall of his patrol base in Afghanistan. It said simply, someone must walk the point. And that means someone has to be out in front. Someone has to take risks. Someone has to make things happen. Someone has to look out for threats. Someone has to guide the way.

Someone has to move forward. And it seems like Sergeant Abate was talking to all of us. And he wasn't just talking about war. He was talking about life. So go out there and take a point. This is Echo and Jocko. Out.