Jocko Podcast - 361: You Can't Change The Temperature Of The Ocean. It's Gonna Be What It's Gonna Be. With Vietnam SEAL, Gil Espinoza.

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Fire Fighter and retired Navy Frogman, Gil Espinoza.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 361 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In March of 1969, the Rand Corporation, a semi-private think tank that specialized in research and analysis for the Department of Defense, published a report titled the Navy SEAL Commandos, a case study of military decision-making and organizational change. As far as I know, the first academic level study of the SEAL teams. The report's author was Francis J. Bing West, a former force recon Marine and Vietnam War veteran whose investigation had begun a year earlier and whose research had produced a raft of documents, dozens of interviews, and the firsthand observation of several seal missions into the Rung Sat and May Kong Delta. From this research, West had produced an 18-page report whose introduction provided a brief description of seal training. Training he estimated at a cost of around $14,000 per man, plus an overview of the seal's commitment to Vietnam at its height, a commitment that never exceeded 150 seals or roughly 1,150 fewer than the in-country height of the Green Beret's total complement.

It was a commitment that stood out an even starker relief when placed next to the author's obvious admiration for the seal's progression from lackluster coastal raiders to the war's most aggressive direct action commandos. Admittedly, commandos who had had no business becoming such and thus had drawn the interest of the same preeminent think tank that it created the U.S. military defense strategy. Intended as a study on organizational change, the report's true purpose had been to discover how the Navy could have possibly succeeded in creating a land-focused commando force, a force that even the Viet Cong had reportedly dubbed the men with green faces, a color not normally associated with the Navy's traditional medium. It was a puzzle of personal importance to the author as the Marine Corps, the far more likely branch of service, had never succeeded in creating anything similar. Ultimately, the author decided the most important factor in the SEAL's infringement was owing to the seals themselves and the culture that weighed upon them. drawn from a notoriously selective training program that produced few qualified candidates, the SEALS naturally had had to find a mission that kept casualties low, a circumstance that might have pushed them,

like the LRPS or the Force Recon Marines, into a reconnaissance role. Had they had anyone to pass the intelligence too? They hadn't. Nor had there been any great pressure from the Rivoreen force to engage in any sort of green beret style advisory duty or civic action organizational orphans with no larger force to support or control them and possessing no love or admiration for the Vietnamese the seals had set out into the swamps not to prove themselves their training had already done that said the author but because not to go would have been inexcusable to the others they had developed

a collective value system which emphasized physical hardiness and courage and they liked to fight. So when the tactics of patrol and ambush had proved unproductive, nobody not a seal, meaning no blue water superior officer had ordered them to try something else. They had just done it. What strikes me as most remarkable about the seal's story, the author concluded, is that the author concluded is that, their performance and their ability to learn and adapt in a decentralized, sub-optimizing environment. The Navy's traditional latitude and the UDT's traditional adaptability created what several unidentified seals soon described to a documentary filmmaker as the war's unsung soldier, and what we consider without question the best troops that the country has.

Both descriptions notable because they didn't use the word sailors and just short of the reader's digest appraisal that had dubbed them the war's super commandos. By the end, these would be assessments that were next to impossible to dispute. And that right there is a little excerpt from the book by water beneath the walls, a book written by Ben Milligan. He's been on the podcast a couple times. He's a former seal. And this is indisputably, speaking of indisputably, this is the best book about the history and the emergence of the seal teams that's ever been written. And that section that I just read is from a section of the book called culmination,

which is where the roots of the seal teams finally grew into what we ultimately became. From our frogman forefathers, it was in Vietnam. where the seals proved their medal as a maritime direct action force. And it is an honor to have one of those Vietnam era seals here with us tonight. Mr. Gill Espinoza to share his experiences and lessons learned. Gil, thanks for joining us. Good evening. I heard you kind of smiling at some of those descriptions to that in this book with

what was going on. Yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting of how I think even he looks at us. He's in the teams. He looks at us. But every frogman has his own way that he looks at things, every single one of us, right? And I'm just thinking about other people, you know, they'll say even Roger, right? His whole mindset and how he looks at it can be totally different, you know, and even operational. Yeah.

Even combat. You get done doing something. And years later, you're bullshitting with somebody. And it's kind of like, no, we didn't. do that. We did this. Oh, bullshit. I'm sure it was generals. No, I think it was tax collectors. You know, go, are you sure? The whole history, right? Yeah. And then you have a guy who goes, was it generals or was it tax collectors? And another other teammate go, well, that cat wasn't even there. So some of our stories, I think some of our stories get conflicted with other people's

stories. But you do remember the ones that were specifically yours that came from here. And we're talking about the heart of the frog man, you know, that, that I see where he's, he's writing from, you know. Yeah. No, he does a great job. And, and actually, it's pretty incredible. Some of the stuff that he documents, for instance, there's a scene where rangers are being overrun, and he's got quotes of as they're making radio calls, hey, we're being overrun,

we need more support. God, you know, the commanders, not with them. And he's saying, do the best you can. Godspeed, that kind of thing. And you read it, and you're thinking, oh, you know, he seemed to have done a good job, sort of coming up with what the dialogue would be. And then you read the footnote.

It's not something he came up with. It's documented. There are people writing down the radio calls, and it's exactly what these guys said. So he's just a very, it took him seven years to write this book, incredible book. But nothing better than the horse's mouth. And since we got the horse here.

I've been trying to write a book since I came, thought in my head as, you know, leaving Vietnam or being on the fire department and wrestling in college. I mean, the whole thing coming back home and looking back into where it all began from being a little boy. Well, let's get into it. Where did it begin? Let's start at the beginning. Well, you can tell I'm not as big as Echo or you, right?

And then when you go to class, you look around, I mean, like guys like you and I went, I was like, what are you doing here, right? But as a little kid, I was raised in Boulder, moved from Rocky Ford where I was a little kid to Boulder and I left all my family, my grandmas, my aunts, my, all my cousin, everybody, everybody in my family and we're moving to Boulder someplace I never knew. And this is with your mom and dad. Your mom and dad. Right.

And my. What made them decide to move? Economics. They actually were migrant workers. My dad became a succor contractor. And then later on, it just got really hard. And we had an uncle that owned a barbershop in Boulder. So the family moved where the family was, right?

Just like now, right? Everybody moves to where you have somebody to get a foothold in. And so in kindergarten, this kid beat me up, right? So my brother, I'm kind of whining. My brother said, what happened? What's up? What's up? I said, well, that guy, John Amaya, beat me up. John Amaya, I know his brother. So they drags me to his place. And my brother was my hero.

When I was like five years old, five years old, I was doing chin-ups. When I remember when I was one, he'd hang me on the door and walk out and leave me. He'd come around, and I got to one or two, and finally he had to look around. And I remember I was like three or four, I could get my elbow up on the door, right? And he'd have me doing chin-ups. We had a rope for a swing. he had me climbing up that rope when I was five. When I was five, I could.

What year is this? So this is like 1953 or 19, because you were born in what, 1947? Yeah. So, yeah, so I was five years old. It was 53. So your brother had, your older brother had like an early start on the physical culture. Yeah. He was a wrestler.

He was a wrestler. He was a wrestler. And then when he went to Boulder, he's kicking hell out the guys in Boulder, but there was still the underlying racist stuff. And so what? And so what? you're Native American? Well, from the Pickeries, probably my grandma's Pickery's,

but we identify mainly as Spanish, right? Not Mexican, not Mexican, because our people did not come up from Mexico. They came from Spain. From Spain, through California, then to New Mexico, through establishing through the Spanish land grants, and then with the mestizos, right,

the Native Americans, the blended culture, right? And so then everything, subsistence living, then the good. government comes in and says you got to pay taxes. It was all subsistence. So how are they going to pay taxes when they never really made any money,

but you would trade 10 chickens for a cow or whatever. So they were doing old school barter? Old school barter. And then they had to sell their land and then move. And my dad's family had some Spanish land grant stuff. So his stepfather, my dad's dad died when he was like baby. My dad says the government came in and gave all the men shots. Deputuri shots and, you know, guys died.

And so they moved and got up to Rocky Ford and established themselves as a community. All my cousins lived on one block. There was my uncle, my grandma, my other uncle, my followers lived on one block. And literally, there was a train track in the back of our yard. And there was one, you know, it was kind of like a cul-de-sac that went out to a main road. And on the other side was a ditch, water. smelled kind of like the Maycong man so when I was in Vietnam

I said that I'd well what kind of smells you know kind of smells like that so I was between a railroad track and a river right and we were always told don't play on the tracks and don't play on the river six five years old we had a pipe that went across

that river right it's a slow a slow ditch our deal of manhood or whatever it was as cousins were all about the same age was to go across the ditch, hanging upside down, growing up, and then it was not a swim. But that's where I'm getting to the point of being the young boy, little boy, right? No fear.

You don't have that until somebody tells you, don't go into the ditch, you're going to drown. You don't know what drowning is until somebody, until you do want a bit of swimming pool, you go, I could drown, right? But you don't have that fear, you know? You don't know that you're, you don't know that you're black, you don't know that you're brown, You don't know that you're white. You don't know any of that stuff. You're a kid, right?

Intelligent, loving, caring, that natural curiosity and zest for life, that powerful person as a little boy. Well, I got my ass kicked by John Amaya, right? You didn't know you get your ass kicked. I didn't know it. I didn't know what that. Right. Kick your ass.

Yeah, I had climbing ropes. I was having a good time. I'm a kid. And I think all kids are like that, right? Initially, we're all, they're all like that. And so my brother takes me over there and he says, had this kid come out. He yells at his brother, they come out. And I'm like, you know, in order to maintain that part that you're intelligent, loving, caring with that natural curiosity and zest for life,

you have these natural physiological releases which are laughing, talking, crying, shaking, sweating, yawning and all that stuff, right, to keep that intact, right? So I'm going through all that stuff with my brother. I had a warrior brother, right? He wanted to make sure. He knew I was going to get my ass kicked when I was a kid. So he took, because I'm sure it happened to him. But he was my older brother.

I didn't know that stuff. How much older was he than you? Nine years old. Oh, dang. So that's a big spread. So he's a real, like, hero to you. Oh, man. Yeah.

He's a chief, retired Navy chief. He went to the Navy. How'd I wound up in the Navy? So this kid comes out and my brother next to me. He goes, now remember, remember that little, he showed me a duck under, right? A duck under and a high crotch in the throw. He said, just do that. I'm going to go.

Because, I mean, I couldn't really do it to one. my brother, but he would show me. I said, all right. So I came up, the kid coming underneath, I grabbed me to him with duck under, threw him, threw him down. He says, and when you throw him down, sit on him and make him say uncle. That was an old rule of the old days, right? Threw him down himself, say uncle, you know, the okay, uncle.

My brother, you know, then he says, don't ever let anybody, you know, don't ever let your brother mess around. Anybody mess with my brother, you just let him know I've got his back. So I go to school, back to Liberty, right, grade school in Rocky Ford, and everybody, what job? that little guy, you know, they called me Tuffy, you know. I didn't know. So then when we left Rocky Ford, I'm crying all the way from Rocky Ford to Boulder,

and my dad gets tired of it. He says, God, did I give me? He stopped at the overlook. You ever been to Boulder, Colorado? No. When you come down into it, it's beautiful. I didn't. So I'm crying, and my dad grabs me, pulls off the side of the road, grabs me, and throws me in the back.

I don't know if I'm going, right? As we were coming over this hill, I'm thinking, I don't have anybody, that aloneness of being alone. Like when you start training, right, or you go in the Navy, where you feel that you're alone, or any time that you left islands, right? And for a little boy to be alone, that was the beginning of being a frogman. I look at it now, right? And so when we came over, I looked, I peaked up because he threw me in the back of the truck, got tired of me being inside.

in here. And I think the thing is we, those of us who are introspective or really searching for what is who we are, right? That little boy is always who we were, but it gets covered up by all the bullshit. Well, when I went over and I looked,

I saw these mountains and in my heart I heard, no, we're here and we'll be your friends forever. And it was a squaw and a brave. I look at him, I could see the silhouettes of them. I went, I looked down and I saw the shining lights. It's the same thing that I got when I saw Point Loma, when I was going to Vietnam, right?

And I saw Point Loma and the finger is pointing that way to Vietnam, right? But when I sensed that, I went, okay, so I go to school in Boulder, and I got dang, Charlie Mestis beats me up to Thursday. You know, and my brother was like seven or eight. And I didn't want to tell my brother because I didn't, you know, I didn't want to go. Didn't want him to set up another prize fight for you. Right. So I got my ass kick for five days.

Figuring it out. And that's when I understood the inside warrior. The inside war is the one that talks to you that goes, boom, you get hit here and it's kind of like figuring stuff out. It's like your first wrestling match or jihad. who were your first appointment, right? And I felt that that's what I was doing. I was sensing and understanding it. And then one day the outside warrior came in.

I grabbed old to Charlie, man. I hit him with that high cross, dropped him down, you know, and just started two times in my life. That time when I started beating him badly, another time when I came back from Vietnam and gotten a fight with a guy, it felt like, you never see the Patriot, you know, when he,

hacks up that guy that kills his son. When I saw that movie, I started crying because that's the way I felt, right? That's totally not out of control. You don't ever have these flashbacks where you're totally out of control. And it's always, the outside warrior always understands what's happening and what he's doing. It's just that when does he feel like stopping? And the inside warrior says, that's enough. But they both cover up the little boy, because the little boy,

would have never wanted to have that fight in the first place. He wants to be a little kid. So rather than asking myself, and I did ask myself, what's wrong with me? That's not even the question. The question is, what's wrong with Charlie? Why is he jacked up? You know? And then later on, I kind of became Charlie.

But when you find out that you can wrestle and you're a pretty tough guy, then you're picking on guys that you know you shouldn't even be picking on, but they don't know how to wrestle. They're big guys. They don't know to wrestle, but you do. So I won that fight, and then what happens? Another guy named Terry Fox, big guy, you want to beat the hell out of me. So I'm like, what the hell?

Trying to figure this out. And that was the very first time that an ally came in. And he was Mike Martinez. And he said, hey man, he says, he's too little for you to fight. He said, when you fight me? I understood allies, you know. and so I called him Uncle Mike and let everybody know he's my

he's my nephew. What grade are you in at this point? That one, that was in second grade. Dang. You know, so that happened. So that was my life, right? And then I came into this group is called the Goss Street neighborhood, right? It was right after the war.

We were all born in 47, most of us. The poor whites, the Jews, the blacks that worked on the radio, on the train, the Polish, the guys left over from World War to the Mexicans and a couple Japanese guys, right? This is your neighborhood? That was my neighborhood on God Street and Boulder, right?

So when people say it takes a village to raise a child, that's bullshit. Because it takes, if I haven't got not picked up something that wasn't mine, Miss Toledo sitting on the front porch. Is that yours? No, man. Then put the goddamn thing down. You put it down.

Or you're cutting school. What are you guys doing over here? You mean, you know, were you supposed to be in school? Yeah. So there was always this, my mom said, what were you doing over there? And I'm going, well, I wasn't there lying right away, you know. Kind of like going through seal training, man, you start, lie, cheat, steel, do whatever you can do to get through this training. But don't get caught, right?

Oliver and Chief Allen, don't get caught. That's Ms. Toledo and Ms. Martinez and Ms. Mr. Rannis, you know, don't get caught. And then when you got caught, my mom, how do you know that? Little bird told me. So I'm like, who in the hell is this little bird? It's a little bird called a rat. It was all of them, you know, but there was that neighborhood of caring people that really care about you about what's going on.

Not because you're Mexicans or not because you're Spanish, not because you're white, because this is your neighborhood, this is where you belong. This was my, and it isn't an identity thing. It's a belonging thing that you know they're invested in in you. And the deal was all of us are going to go to school. We're all not going to cut school. There was a black guy, and we had to give up our language. Those of us were Spanish, right?

Don't speak Spanish in school. So we're getting ready to go to school. Well, this is in high school, but in junior high, it was the same thing. I'd go to junior high. There's this guy Nick Crispin, right? The badass kid in school, the ninth grader, and I'm seventh grade, little. Beat up this kid. I said, I don't even know that kid.

Well, if you don't beat him up, I'll beat you up. It's just like, oh So I don't want to get beat up so I beat up a kid that I beat him up And so then but then what happens inside right that heart that that thing that comes in goes this isn't right So I went up to the guy and say hey look man I said we might as well fight now because I'm not gonna do that again Oh no, you're cool you're cool And inside I was crying because I beat up a guy that I didn't and oh no you're cool and so then I understood a bully and I know, I'm cool and so then I understood a bully

I understood what they're going to make me do if I don't make a choice, right? So I go through that. I go to the bathroom. Nick's a guy named Nick, this guy named Chuck, and this guy named Rich. I won't say their last names because they're all dead, but I don't really like those guys anyway. So I'm in there taking the league, and the guy comes in and say, what are you doing here? And I look up and I says, oh, seventh grade, right? It's this innocence, right?

The innocence. And I said, so who are you? I said, I'm Gilal Espinoza. Well, yeah, I said, who are you guys? Well, we're here to beat the shit out of you. I'm like, come on, man. I'm so little. I'm so little.

It's about like this. I was like four foot. I was smaller than Hurley shorter than Herbie Corral. Herbie Whirl. That's why he and I are, we're good buddies, you know, because we're both little guys. Because there are little guys in the teams. For sure. And then there are little guys in the teams and big little guys like Kirby Horrell is a big little guy.

You know, there are other ones that are. You know, they're like, you guys were shrunk down. I was just skinny guys, 120 pounds, you know, carrying 90 pounds of gear up in the Makwa. When I was working with the Prues and working with the Vietnamese Seals, I carried an M60 with 800 rounds when we went heavy on the border, right? So. And so. So what happened?

So do you fight these guys? Well, so then what happened, this guy, Bruce McDowell steps in. He was from Hawaii. And he steps in and he goes, what's going on in there? And I'm going, those guys want to beat me up. And he goes, oh, he's, he's, hey, guys, you're way too, big friend. But the little Nick, he said, he looked at me, he's really cool. He says, if I stay here, you want to fight that little guy?

And I'm already, I'm shaking, man, I got tears in my eyes. I'm like, I'm alone. And you're in seventh grade. I'm in seventh grade. I'm alone. And all the guys from Goss Street, we came. to school together, we didn't realize that the classism was happening. There's classism and racism, right? Well, the classism took all of us poor people together, right? It didn't matter

with you a white or whatever. That was, they called our street, Sin City. We didn't even know it until we're already men. We didn't know that that's what they called our neighborhood. And so, going, yeah, he says, well, okay. So I hit him with that move, man, high cries come around, boom, hit him, put him in the urinal. And next thing, you know, I, outside warrior was working, man. It was high order, right? I love the word high order when we went in the teams, man, because that means your high order.

It's a high order detonation, man. I was in it. I took him, I put his head in the toilet, and I sat on his back and started flushing it, and I was screaming. You know, like when you're in the cold water, that whole thing, you know, just, keeping your shit together, right?

I'm screaming. Next thing I'm picked up out of the, off this guy. Bruce McDonough takes me over, it takes me in the corner. So breathe, and I'm like, you know, breathe. He tells those guys get the hell louder, and I'm like, and so he says, hey, he says, it's calm. You know, it's calm down.

And I'm breathing. He says, do you ever wrestle? I wrestle, my brother told me to wrestle him, but he went in the Navy and I'm alone. He said, look, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He says, do you ever think about wrestling? We have a wrestling team here.

He said, no. He said, well, and you'd be wrestling guys your size. Not big guy, little guy's your size. He said, you ought to come out. Maybe. Right? So that I did. And that was the beginning of another evolution, right?

So I went to wrestle, but I found out I was wrestling, I was wrestling for all the wrong reason. I was wrestling to learn out of fight. Wrestling learned out to protect myself. Wrestling so that I didn't have to, if the bully came, I didn't have to bow down to him. that I didn't have to serve anybody. Those seems like actually good reasons for me to wrestle.

I don't know. You said those are the wrong reasons. I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, I tell kids to wrestle all the time, and I tell them you're going to be able to take care of yourself. You're going to get good shape. I'm like, those are good reasons. Those are good reasons.

But I wasn't happy doing it. Do what I mean? Got it. There are kids that are happy. They love the sport and all that was a two-time state champion. I took fourth one as a sophomore. Do I, everyone's going to run around all the stadium and everybody's side-fiving me?

I'm like, well, there's one doubt. My next year is the next year, and every son of going to have to wrestle. I'm going to kick the shit out of everybody until they know I'm there. And so that's the two things, right? Ego and heart. And you're what you want. Right? What do I do them out of?

A lot of us went into teams out of the ego thing. Those cats, there were the swimmers and all that kind of stuff. They were successful because they beat guys who were the same as them, and they happened to have a little bit more talent. So they win. What was the ego? Was it hard? When you're a wrestler and you go out there and you're getting your ass beat every day.

Like I had so much respect for the kids that weren't as good as I was, but showed up for practice for me every day. And I'd make them hurt. I'd make them cry because that's where I was getting my stuff, right? My wrestling coach was the UDT guy, right? So what was his name? Harold Ashton Brenner. He helped start the museum in Fort Pierce.

So was he a World War II guy or Korea guy? Okay. In the gap of Korea and Vietnam, right? Actually, Russell Campbell, who wrote the book, Russell Campbell is called Seal Team, was his instructor. He didn't even know how to swim either. He had to walk on the bottom of the pool carrying rocks until he learned how to swim. That's the other thing about the teams.

A lot of these guys didn't, they didn't swim well. They swam long, but they didn't swim well. There were other guys that could mouth. It's number one swim pair without fins. You put fins on me, I went to number 10. And those guys with big legs. Yeah, yeah. Shit, they kicked up and they were number one.

I'm out there freezing in the water, you know? But, yeah. So you figure out about wrestling, and was there a wrestling team in seventh grade? Yeah, well, yeah. Okay, so you immediately, or very soon after you, you started actually wrestling. Yeah, actually started wrestling. And now you started to learn and you took to it really well. Oh, obviously.

Yeah, I did. Yeah. And I think of my brother, but there was always that thing, you know. Wait, what thing? The thing of I want to be able to protect myself, want to be able to kick people's asses. Yeah. And it was a little bit more ego-driven. Survivals.

I was going to say maybe just protection of, of like you said, not wanting to have to bow down to people. Right. Yeah. So your brother had joined the Navy. Yeah. And what year did he join the Navy? in 56. And on that wrestling,

see, he was on Boulder High Wrestling team that I eventually went to, but he was kicking shit out of the doctor's son. So they said he had a heart murmur. And they wouldn't let him wrestle? They wouldn't let him wrestle. But when my brother went into the Navy, he had no heart murmur.

My brother was a cormant. He finished up over here with seal team, right? And in Vietnam, he was working medevax. A couple of seal team guys got hit. I'm there at the same time. We were both Vietnam. time right in 69 and he was 67 or 68 and in part of 69 and he sitting there checking all these guys out you know the helicopter bringing in he said I started looking at just shit I couldn't

tell him but they all looked alike right he says then I thought what the hell am I doing looking at these guys my brother's like this he's he's a Kirby Horel you know he's a little guy all these guys you know the guys see because they it wasn't just the guys were wounded but they actually actually did the extrication right so they just they flew them out So he was a corpsman, and it got him. So did you, at what point did you start thinking about joining the Navy? Well, my brother went in the Navy, and so here I am. When I graduated, when I came back from Vietnam, I've been back about 10 years.

I thought of Harold Ashenbrenner. So I called him up. Hey, do you remember, I was a 103-pound state champ, man, 95 and 103 pounds. When I went into the teams, I weighed about 112 pounds, 115. A little. That's crazy. And there's still two guys littler to me, the Waller Wonder Brothers. They're in Team 2 or something like that.

And there was like Mike Walsh. He wrote a book. Mike Walsh is about like me, but he's about like I am now when he went through. I weigh more than I did then. You were 112 pounds in buds? Yeah. That's freaking crazy. I was 120 pounds.

I got burned in Vietnam after the water and all that stuff. Karen, 90 pounds of gear, trying to keep up with everybody. But I was selling them water. Because I drink water and they're sweating and stuff. You didn't need any water. I didn't need water. And wrestlers don't need water. In those days, we didn't drink any water and we took salt tablets, right, before practice.

All this stuff to kill you, right? So I had a big triangular water bat, you know, so I'd sit there and we'd be operating. and Asper, you got some water? Yeah. And they were all outranked me. So I'd have them in the water and they'd take drinks and I'd count the swells. One, two, three bucks, five bucks, ten bucks.

You know, so I'd make money on patrol. And then I'd borrow money from them because I didn't have any money when we were. And so it kind of balanced out, you know. So you get to high school. Did you play any other sports besides? Cross country. Okay, so you were a good runner.

I was a good runner. I was too light to play football. on a low-eight-weight football team, but when we played in the green field, I mean, just no pads, no nothing, I was one of the fastest runners, and I'd hit you so hard I'd almost knock myself out.

So they didn't want to come around the corner because I don't want to come past me. And we would have, we would play football, and that football would eventually turn it into a fight. You're going to fight somebody, right? And they wouldn't move with me too much because I was a good wrestler, you know. Are you getting good grades?

I was struggling with my grades. I didn't understand. And that's why when my kids, when they're growing up, I said, how do you teach? Because I found I'm more of a hands-on learner, right? A visual learner. So concepts that would get in my mind would be kind of hard. I found that out when I went through training.

All the shit I needed, everything I needed to know, the diphysiology, anatomy, and all that. I was kind of struggling with that, right? But I got it because it was the body, right? Triceps, biceps, heart, and all that. I dug that, right? But the demolitions, right, Mark 23 Mod 1, Banglor Torpedo, HBX, rate of fire, this and that. I'm going, oh, shoot, took the first test.

I already gone through Hellweek, I already went through Dive Phase. I already went to everything. Hellwick was a trip. But I learned that because, you know, Crawford? Okay, so I'm sitting there struggling. Was he in your class? Yeah, he's my class. Crow, Daddy.

Hey, we were in the same boat crew in Hell Week. He told me a story about Hell Week that I did, that I didn't know that I did, but he remembered that I didn't. He was my ex-O when I checked into team one. Oh, really? Yep. I love him. Yep.

Fregan awesome. I think I might even giving him that name Goddad. I even changed the other guy's name from John to Jonah. And he still goes by Jonah. But, yeah, I said, what's going on? I said, man, and I'm sad. Two guys died out there before in San Clemente in my training class. right so these guys that drowned get uh

gregle mccall yeah on a um yeah on a japscully yeah gregal mccall so he asked me and says hey cry I said I'm gonna drop me and I said why so I can't that the demolition test so he came over and got a piece of paper says okay right down man we had to and there was just old barracks man we had to under under a blanket with a flashlight mark 133 mod 1 133 mod 2 Bangler Torpedo All of the demolitions that we were going to be tested on I wrote them every night

For a week Every night on a piece of paper He said that's what that's where it's all about I said okay and then what they were used for right So I go take my test Let's go get you guys got one hour to get your test done So I grab my piece of paper and I start writing it out Instructure by Spinoza says you got an hour

I said I know You got an hour I signed him. Just look and he says, fuck you. And he takes off, right? And I got it done. So then what I could do is I could take that paper. I could look at it, see the question, read the question, look at the answers, answers right there.

But for me to get it, you know. And then when I went to college, well, that's a whole other, that's later. But I didn't believe, I graduated with the 3.95. You know, I want to be a teacher, right? But there's the reasons I wasn't a teacher. So I understood that was my way of learning. But it took, so in high school you weren't doing great. No, no.

But you graduate, what year did you graduate high school? 66, 65, and then I went in Navy in 66. What'd you do in the, in between time? In between time, I had a wrestling scholarship to University of Northern Colorado. Okay. So, well, actually, Northeastern Junior College, so I was wrestling, right? I went home on break walked into this bar

and one of the wrestlers that was one of my heroes named was Johnny Manzanaris from Lafayette He was just went to junior college He was a tough guy So But go back to Herald right This is your UDT wrestling coach He says did you ever go into teams

I said yeah he said Do you remember what I asked you're going to do When we were in the wrestling room You know like when you're wrestling And you all just kind of laying around I said no He said I asked you what are you going to do when you get out of college

high school and you said well I'll go in the Navy and then I asked you coach asked me what makes you think you're man enough to be a frog man and I told him coach if you're man enough to be a frog man I know I'm man enough to be a frog man which is one of those things right just one of those things and so so so you said you were

home on break from your wrestling scholar ship. Yeah. And you said, did she go, went to a bar? Went to a bar. It was called Grandma's Bar. And we all told them to tell them, but where are you going? I'm going to Grandma's.

They all thought we were going to Miss Toledo's house, right? We all going to a bar sneaking in, 17 years old. But I was in college, right, you know, as a freshman, walked in and I see my buddy, Ronnie Manzanera, say, hey, man, how you doing? It's, like, from Lafayette. They used to go, wrestlers from Louisville, Lafayette. We'd go to Boulder and we'd wrestle because we're all in three different leagues, and we'd prepare ourselves for the state tournament, right?

because we're all, and that's when we really knew that we were state champions because we could whip those guys, and they were state champions, 1A and 2A. So I'm the real champ, you know? And so, yeah, it was, I said, how you doing, man?

He says, start crying. I said, wait, what's up, man? You okay? He said, they killed my brother. I said, what? They killed Johnny. He was the big red one, man, small arms, you know. And they grabbed,

It was the first time that I'd lost somebody from my family. You know, when you talk about family, it's just big. And from Louisville, Lafayette, Latinos, and I hugged him, and we cried. And then we sat down and lit him in a beer and said, yeah, and pretty soon he was telling the stories about his brother. And we were all laughing and crying and everything. So then I went, after Christmas break, I went back to school. And I was wrestling real well, and I was just, doing real well. And when I went, it was just like I had to tell the coach, I said, I'm not coming

back. He said, why not? I said, I can't. If you think about, I was raised when President Kennedy got assassinated, right? That's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. I always felt that my brother was serving in the military. My uncles were in World War II, right? An uncles that were in Korea. And we all served in the military. And, um, we all served in the military. So then it was like, what am I doing here? Wrestling, which wasn't real, trying to get laid, and my friends are dying. So I said, I'm joining the Navy,

but there was the other side of that. My brother had gone around the world, and I'm going, well, I won't go around the world before, because I'd taken the test, you know, UDT in boot camp, and I passed, all that. But I wanted to party. Well, I got stuck on a ship in Long Beach. That's where I got that, right?

17, 18 years old. So wait, so you get to boot camp. So I get to boot camp. And you, so you had the plans of going into UDT? I had the thoughts about going UDT. Yeah, I wanted to be a frog man. It's just because of my wrestling coach. Because he's talking about the cool shit, man,

blowing stuff up and, you know, dropping pickup and jumping out of it. airplanes and I go, whoa, that's an end. The one thing I like best of all of it, man, you get to wear aviator shades, work out, lay in the sun and get to wear swimming trunks, and chicks dig you. So I'm going, oh, I could do that. I used to say, man, I used to be a 35-year-old man and didn't put a shirt on at work unless it was like inspection day, man, just never, why, you know? Parashorts, that's it, man, pair of shorts and jungle boots, living the dream.

That's right, and we had a blue and gold, man. We had the original blue and golds. It was it. Guys would wear the blue and golds off duty. Then they'd say, you got to be wearing less a uniform. But we would wear whatever we wanted to wear, you know. So you take the screening test to go to Buds? Yeah.

In boot camp. I took the test. I was the only guy out of my whole company that passed. One other guy went with me, but he had false teeth. So he about drowned. He didn't make it. So then when I really decided to do it, I was on a ship, man, I got tired of it.

I was a machinist mate. Stinky. We did our sea trials and all that stuff in the hole and everything like that. But even then, I was doing chin-ups on the steam deals and I was doing push-ups. I'd go work out by myself on why you're doing that stuff? Part of it was the wrestling thing. Part of it is, right? It's always there.

Part of it was your brother hanging you off of a door when you were four years old. I mean, you pull-ups. There was part of that. I mean, it's stuck, you know. And if you think about it, when you're doing that stuff, that is the time that you're revealing yourself to yourself. That that little boy, you're always, and when I'm doing that, even now, what worked out over at the amphib base, I can, I can, I feel the young boy. I feel the little boy coming up. I feel that, that spirit of peace that I have that is young and that is strong.

Even when I got a jacked up shoulder, I got a left knee replacement, my ankle, I'm looking at that, you know. It's, and so, yeah, it was, it was, I was looking out at the end of that ship, and here come these guys swimming by, because I'm sitting on that ship, seeing what the... Where was that ship stationed? Well, it was stationed out of Long Beach. Okay, so you were in Long Beach. But we did sea trials, and we pulled into San Diego. God. So we're over on 36, over by the bay, when guys used to do the training in the bay. And I'm sitting looking out there and stinky and everything.

We had to help the bored him and blow the tubes so we're all black. And I looked and here come these guys swimming by. You know they're heading to a keg too. Yeah. Who are those guys? You know, those are UDT guys. I'm like, hell with this. So I put in for it.

And my XO wouldn't let me go because I was too little. Or you're too little. You'll never make it. God, I hated that sabotaging belief. From the time I was a kid, you're too small, right? You're too dark. Even when I was wrestling in high school, my wrestling coach took a team to Japan. I was a two-time state champ.

They didn't take me or a guy named Joe Silva, right? And I said, well, why? What's the deal? Well, Gil, you really don't look like what the Japanese think Americans look like. I'm like, what? I didn't understand that, right? What? And so the sabotaging belief like that, right, is it ego or what is it?

But it is something that says, uh-uh, you're not going to make me beat up somebody. going to make me do those things because that little boy that's in there knows who he is right is being revealed is being revealed that was part of that pain of hearing that was revealing right so I'm looking at these guys swimming so I'm going to do that and that coach said I mean the ex-old said you're too little or whatever next thing you know there I am over the training right I had it I had to do this they took us this is once you go down to do a hyperbaric chamber test that's okay I did that in Long Beach do the PT test again, the run, the swim, and all that stuff. And then we want you to go down to the tugboat, and there's a diver down there, class A diver.

I'll say, all right, so I go down there. And there's a chief, those old chiefs, the diver chiefs, right, the hard hat helmet. What you're doing, kid? I said, I don't know. They told me to come down and I want to go in UDT. Oh, yeah, come on over here, sit down. So they put that, the big old boots, right, the big old heavy boots, and they folded all the the, was the class one dive suit?

Yeah, the old school dive suit. Whatever they call it, you know. And then they put the helmet on me. I'm sitting there like this. I go over there, go to the ladder, go down, and just walk around down there. There's some eels over by some rock. Just kind of make yourself at home,

and we'll talk to you and check you out. I said, this was your first dive ever? Ever. First I've ever been underwater. I didn't know anything. So I go down and he's like, how you doing now? I'm doing fine. This is, uh,

Everything good? I said, yeah. I said, well, you know, there's water coming in my left leg, you know? Oh, yeah, don't worry about it. It says water will come into your left leg. I said, all right. He says, let us know if it goes into your right leg. So a little bit, I'm still walking around.

It was 15 minutes, right? So I'm walking out because of my left leg. I'm my right leg and I'm going, hey, you know this suit's leaking. Yeah, okay, we know it. Don't worry about it. Let us know if the water gets up to your chest. I didn't know anything about pressure, right? The pressure in the helmet is not going any deeper.

I'm going. I said, hey, you know, the water's up in my nose. neck. Nothing. Nobody talks about it. Hey, the water is up to my neck. Maybe you guys might think about pulling me up. Nothing. So then it was like, I'm going to die. So I went over to some rocks. I laid back on the rocks and I reached back. I thought, well, if I can grab the ropes, if I can grab the hose, I'll pull myself up. But they had it tended so there's no way I could I can reach it. So in my mind, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with the, I'm going to die.

And then the next thing is, it's quiet. I didn't pray it out loud. They pulled me up. Yeah, you pass, kid. So about three days later, and then they had already had my orders, and I show up at the area. So show up the area, and I look at guys like Echo, look at guys like Jocko. I'm going the same question. Like, what the, what am I doing here, right?

I'm just a little guy. I'm wandering around here and I saw another guy. Latino, Greg Lee Garcia, I looked at him in the eyes. Hey, man, how you doing? This is two little guys. Good. Where are you from, man? I'm from Fresno.

I'm from Colorado. He goes, you speak Spanish. He said, no, me neither. We're like, you know, but we're the only two. And that was in 41, right? And so we begin. So you're 112 pounds. Yeah.

That's freaking crazy. Well, give me the advantage, 120 pounds. Even 120, man, because I'm just, there's so much physical stuff they have to do with like carrying logs, carrying boats. Yeah. And so people would sit there and say, like, I was under the boat for a while and then they go, you're two little guys, me and Greg your guy to see them, we're in front, right? And then they got two medium-sized guys and then there's two tall guys. So our boat was like this.

So going up Mount Sarabachi was cool because it stayed level. But when you come down the other side, the first three times it wasn't good because we would crash. And then we really got to run fast. I mean, we just, it was sprinting downhill in order for us to make it, you know. So what's your introduction to buds like? Or it's UDT, T, T, T, T, T, T, T, R.A. UD.S. R.A. What was your introduction?

When I first got there? Yeah, like, you got there. Well, when I first got there, is everybody just kind of wandered around, you know, we're like, this was in 41, right? In 41. This is class 41. Class 41. And this is going to share something with you

that was really painful for me in 41. And so there's another little guy, his big mouth, man, another guy. And then there's another guy, Black Cat. Beautiful. Man, look at you on going, Jesus, craminy, man. And there was another little guy, Mel Tanaka. He graduated. He's a teams.

And Artie Reese, I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's another little guy. And so... You guys had a little mafia. We did. Little guy mafia. There were little guys. But they outweigh me by about 10 pounds, 15 pounds.

But it was... It was... It was... I didn't have any focus. You know, I was just along for the ride doing whatever they were going to do. And so it was like... There was no like... this prep stuff.

It was like we got there for one week. Everybody kind of got to know each other. The second week, we're running. We're in class. We're in training. And we're doing all that whole physical thing, getting us ready for Hell Week, right? And so during Hell Week,

it was the last day of Hell Week before you secure. It's a Friday afternoon. Is it Saturday they secure? Right? I think they secured on Saturday. When Hell Week is over, do you mean? Yeah. It's been Friday and it's been Saturday,

depending on like what era. Well, it was Friday, and then that Friday night, they do a paddle, and then they secure Sunday, right? So that, we were doing a swim. So this is in Hell Week? This is in Hell Week. Okay. We were doing a swim. And down and back, down and back.

And when I got, me and Gregory Lee got out, we got, these guys were getting out of the water. So I'm glad, too, because it was cold. we get out of the water. When we get out of the water, there's Chief Allen. He says, okay, you effing quitters over here. And I'm like, well, I didn't quit. He says, you're out of the water, aren't you?

He says, yeah, he said, get back in the water. By that time, I was cramped up. There were like about 60 guys got out. I mean, almost the whole class got out. And so I said, why I didn't quit? He said, get in the water. And I went, I couldn't. I didn't know that if I had got back in the water,

that I would have felt warm. I didn't know that. So I went with everybody else. So that night, that was Saturday night, I could see him coming around for the last paddle. And I looked out the back window, and I just started crying. I said, I didn't quit, man. So I went back to the instructor's check.

And there was no bell. It was on the door. Espinoza reported, and went to speak to you, Chief, Chief Allen. And so what do you want, Espinoza? I said, Chief, I didn't quit. I said, I got out with everybody, but I didn't quit. I said, you fucking quit. I said, I didn't quit.

I said, I won't back in. He says, you can't get back in. I said, I got to get back in. He said, I'm going to tell you this. He says, there's only one way that you may have a chance. He says, you've got to go talk to the captain, Captain Myers, command. All I am, fib base, right? The whole command and talk to him, maybe you might have a chance.

But I doubt it. So what day of hell week was this? It was the last day of hell week. We'd already gone through Hell Week. We've already gone through all the rolling around and all that bullshit. So you're done with five days of Hell Week? We were in the six day of Hell Week. So it's pretty much over.

It's pretty much over. It was the last evolution. It was the swim. And then we get in boats and then we paddle. Right? It was late in the afternoon, probably about five or six o'clock at night. Just, you know, like out here, the sun starts coming down by six. So you guys finish the swim.

Well, those guys that finished the swim, those guys that were with me that I was with, we were out. They're all quitters, right? I couldn't. I said, I didn't quit in here, right? So I went and I told Chief Allen, I said, I didn't quit. He slams the door and says, get the fuck out of here.

So I went back to the barracks. And I was broken, man, because I wanted to be a frog man. And so that was Saturday morning, Sunday, came and all the guys in the class were barely walking and they're sitting there looking at me you know and I'm looking at them and like and I'm sure they were saying they fucking quit her you know and I don't really want to say that word but that so that next day I put on my dress blues man I go to say I guess where you going I said I'm getting back into training so I went got breakfast went over to the

knock on the door we go in and these other guys say we'll go with you right about 20 guys go with me Coddad knows this story 20 guys go with me these are guys from your class

the guys that had made it no that had quit all the quitters right all the guys that had made it to that page of hell week and there were even some guys in 41 that quit after hell week forget it see people

it's just This is the training, man. It's not the real world ops. So when people talk about, oh, go under Frog Manor, oh, yeah, I did Hell Week and all that bullshit. But you go, then you still got to do world ops. That's what they don't, that's what they don't tell you about. That's what you don't see. That's what the hero bullshit is bullshit.

But when you get out, like Roger Hayden, does a trip with UDT, gets shot, gets a Bronstar from there. Then he goes to the SEAL team, and they look at him and say, eh, a new guy, huh? he's like because when I met him he goes those sons of bitch and seals he said they sit there because I'm a UDT guy that I didn't do anything and you know Roger so he's those sons you had that some big balls to call Roger Aid a new guy

yeah he was a new guy well he was yeah he was a new guy I'll tell you something more about that later on but so I'm in there captain walks in so did these 20 guys that came with you did they also want to get back into training yes So they all come with me, right? Skipper walks in, we're waiting, told him what we wanted. He goes back out. The one day, for five days, he never talked to us, never acknowledges nothing.

So from 20 to 30 guys, people say, fuck it, they ain't doing this. They're gone, right? At the end of that week, there were six of us. Me, Schellenberger, Mo, Steele, Garcia. right and uh... McGee so the next week that that Friday he had us come in

we came in and said what do you want I said I looked I looked at the guys you know I looked at them and says I didn't quit so what about you guys and they just looked and it was like I didn't quit either right six of us says well we wanted to get back into the next class

get out of my office so we leave weekend So the next week, I show up with the guy, said, what are we doing, SP? I said, going back. So we go back Monday. He comes in the whole day. We sit there.

He walks in, walks out, walks in, walks in, leaves. And then he comes in the evening. He says, okay, he says, I'll see you Friday. Don't come in. See you Friday. So that was another week. We came in that Friday. He said, I talked to your instructors.

I told him who you were. I asked them about what went down and they're willing to give you a chance. But I have a condition. We're like, okay. He says, one of you quit or get hurt for any reason, you're all gone. So I'm like, I looked at my guys. I said, look, guys, this is important. If you don't want to do this, don't do it because I got to do it.

Right? I don't want to, I had a hard time being a loser. I had a hard time like letting guys, you know, even when I was getting beaten up, the inside warriors were going to go now, you're going to figure it out. You're going to take care of this. And I wanted the chance to push it all the way, right?

And it was like, no, we're in. We all agreed, right? So the first day of 42, first day of 42, Oliver comes out. Espinosa, Garcia, Schallenberger, Steele, McGee, and Moe. Lester Moe. He was the one who went out of our class that got killed, second class torpedo men.

Out of the six of us, two of us became SEALs. We were drafted into SEAL team. We didn't go UDT, like you used to have to go to UDT training. And then you go to do tours of UDT and then you volunteer for SEAL, right? So did you go, did you reclass up? Did you start with a brand new class? Yeah. So you went all the way back through first?

phase again. Started all over and here they are. We're up there in front. We're front and center. They said about face, facing the class, these motherfuckers are quitters. Don't walk to them,

don't talk to them, don't be around them, don't hang with them, because that's who they are. So everybody's kind of looking at, all the cats are 42, right? And so they put us in the same boat crew. And it was miserable,

man. I mean, it was, but me and Garcia were the two little guys in front and Schaller and Steele were a little bit higher and McGee and Moe were taller.

So our boat was pretty, it was a lot better than like this. It was kind of like this. And they put, they put it on us. And I look at some of the guys like now in my class. He said, and they said,

look over us and see what was happening to us. Like, well, shit, they ain't quitting, you know. And so then we get ready to go do Hell Week. So I'm looking at my guys. By the way, it takes like months and months and months to recover from Hell Week.

So you had been through Hell Week all the way until the last day. Yeah. And then you just went right back into a freaking class. Then there was like about, I don't know like there was probably about the three weeks or something like that

and it was the next class. Dale. We still had blisters on our ass and our feet. You know, in our hands were still jacked up. So, so we're looking at each other and said, okay, this is it. What's going to be painful?

But what they did then is the officers picked people in their classes. That's how I got wanted with Croddad. Right? Mr. Kirkland, picked me Cradad Courtney

Engelina and Palselt What for like their boat crew? The boat crew There were six of us Me and Pasalt were two little guys And then Courtney and Crawford Were a little bigger And then Mr. Kirkland

And I forgot the other guy was They do it all by height now So they take all the smaller guys Put them together They take all the tall guys put them together Ours were pretty much together There was six of us in the boat crew Not seven.

And we were the number one boat crew. We won. We won this. And I was, Crowda tells the story of when, because we did all those harassment things. Well, I did one who had to run on my knees like this. And the guys were,

Chief Allen comes out there and standing in front of me, knocking us around. And now, you know, hey guys, help me. So we as trainees, right? In 42, a lot of guys think outside the box. There's a lot of guys in 42, but we are the ones that challenged,

our instructors. Olivera sing a song, Indian guy, right? One little, two, little three little Indians, bang, bang, bang. Oh, you fucking think that's funny, do you? You know, it sticks us out on the swimmer line, right? We're out there on the swimmer line. He goes, all I need is one of you to quit. So I'm way at the back end.

F you, Oliver. Have me, I'll have you. You sons of bitches will be out there all night. And we were because, you know, the tide goes in and out. And then Chief Allen is sitting there. There used to be a lady called Wolfman Jack. was one guy that was going on. It's a wolfman Jack.

I'm doing song music. And then there was a lady named Sister Margaret, Black ladies. Do you have problems? Do you have pain in your heart? If you don't know what you're doing in your life, Sister Margaret, call her at 355, 3585, and it was like, F you, Sister Margaret.

Our guys were fighting, we're fighting back, right? We're fighting back for that humanity. We're fighting back to reveal that. That's why 42 is a pretty tight class and big, you know, because the nature of that class was set like that. And when we went through training, those guys helped me get through this evolution. Chief Allen lost his glasses. Crop Red Dead said, we went out looking for his glasses, and you went over, oh, I got it over here, killer whale. We called him killer whale, right?

And I stood up in the front of the sand and I stomped on him. Damn. I picked him up and I go, here you go. He looked down and he goes, straightens him up,

puts him on, goes, cool, walks off. Crawford disease his heart fell through his ass, well, he's going to kill us. But that's what they want.

Your structures aren't there to kill you and make you. They want, now I see it is totally different, not break you down to make you. You didn't hear a lot of these seals, right?

Well, they break you down so we can mold you right back. Uh-uh. I'm seeing it now. They were breaking me down. So that little kid, that little warrior Espinoza in there, the young kid that wants to, that is peeled off, right? Through the hurt, through the fear, through the mistreatment, all that is pulled off. I'm not ever going to be the same as those other, however you become a success. But that little boy, I want to get back there because that's the whole incomplete person that I was.

So when I strip off all the bullshit, right, without the socialization that comes in, through the society, or the socialization that happens in your own family, the pure thing, you know, your kids fighting each other or brothers fighting each other or in your neighborhood, Bobby Servani's, you know, going to pick on him because he's black and he looked like cocheeson. And he was the target of every teacher we had through racism and classism and everything else. How is he going to get power to fight back? Right? How are you going to take somebody that is in a community? If you were to take in our family, our community, our seal community, our family community,

we all fought back. So that's why there were so many of us, and that's why we were all, even though later on in our lives we do things that cause discord between me and you as a teammate, the bottom line, the one thing that we did have was that relationship of understanding that we were being revealed, not created, but being revealed that, yeah, well, In order for me to do this, in order for me to be, I notice you don't have a Rolex, but the old SEAL team, real SEALs got them.

No, I just got a TimeX. I'm not in the real SEAL category anymore. Yeah, in Vietnam, we'd sit and we pull the covers off our Rolex. Did you guys get issued? You guys have got issued those? Tudor Rolexes, yeah. See, that's, you know. Yeah.

I got some, I'm going to file that with the complaint department, man. You should, you should. I got Jack. That's how we knew who we were, you know? Matter of fact, I'll tell you the story about this. thing but but you know that well I always say that well when people ask about you know buds which was buds for me it's UD-T-R-A for you like they don't teach you anything and they don't teach you mental toughness you just the people that don't have it go away right you sort

it's sorting itself out in you yeah and in and and you know the beautiful thing about it too is when you're both doing that and you and I are in the mud and we're crying we're sitting in a about like this and you look up and I look at Garcia and go okay all right and then moku crowd at right you know or pat on the ass or hey we can do this you know and and Chief Allen you set especially on the race piece with that about who I am as a human being right the great spirit that I am the light that's in me that that that moves forward right me and Gregory Lee Garcia because we got rolled to 41 right we're sitting there looking at each other well shit man we're we're screwed you know yeah I know did you ever know

McIntosh yeah so McIntosh yeah so Butch comes walking in now he's in my class he comes walking in he goes hey you guys under 42 go yeah he goes oh so am I it's just and I'm glad I'm glad to see you guys man because we're like why is that says well we got to stick together I said we need we got to stick together he says because we're minorities I said I said hey man I says me and Garcia we know one minority but you're a white guy because he's his complexion do you know butch no it's megata oh yeah that's right because he's from like the islands St. Thomas V.I yeah he's from the Bahamas so he's sit there and he says no he says I'm not a white guy

I said yeah you're you're white he goes no man he says I'm from St. Thomas VI so Gregory Lee goes what's the VI? This is the Virgin Islands. We're Fresno and Colorado. I said, you mean there's virgins on the islands? He name is that. No, man. He says, it's named after red beard or black beard, the pirate.

He says, the days of the Caribbean. He says, rum and lobster and the islands. That's where I'm from. My mom is, I said, but you're still a white guy. No, he says, I'm black from my mom. He says, and I'm Dutch from my papa. I says, but I said, you're black. You're a white guy.

He goes, no. And he takes his foot like this. He stomps it down. He goes, no. I'm a soul, man. So I go, I go. I don't know, man. I think he's so a white guy.

He says, no, no, no. So the very first day of training chief, Alan gets up there. Espinosa Garcia, front and center, right? The six of us, right? The other four, we try to be shallow. We try to sit in the silence. We don't want to be. You don't want to profile yourself.

You don't want, sometimes you are profiled. It's just the way it is, right? Understanding that it is, that it exists, right? So he yells at us front and center. Huya, Chief Allen, Fireman, Espinoza reporter, the chief. Whoia! Erma and Garcia report his order chief. Yeah, you guys, he's looking at us.

He goes, I'm going to use the word N, right? Espinoza, you see. He's big, black, and beautiful. He's like you, right? He looked at him and goes, you see any ends around here? There's got to be a trick question. Sounds like a trick question. It sounds like a trick question.

Could be a set up. Because that's what you do. The whole training is that. Think about it. The whole training is it. When an instructor has an event with you, there's something that they want out of you. They're guiding you or they want to provoke you either anger or whatever that stuff. And I learned it's always better to cry when you're in pain than to be an anger because the results of anger is hard.

deal, right? So I said, no, Chief Allen. I said, I don't see any. I don't see any around here. Garcia? No, Chief Allen. I don't see any around here. He says, well, from now on for the rest of this class, when I want an end front and center, it says, when I want an end, you two come front and center, right? Do you understand that? So I'm going, well, Chief, and we just got done with the, you know, we're right with the swimming trunks on our boots, right? I said, I think, I think, I think, I think Macintosh. So he goes, who? McIntosh, he goes, where's he at?

We're all out there, right? We don't have suntans yet. We're out there and he goes, I said, the guy, we're on the far left, he goes, far left. He goes, yeah, he said, McIntosh, front and central so McIntosh. He doesn't run out there like we do, you know, in military stuff.

Magintosh lobes out like a gazelle, jumps out loping, comes out for, comes out in front of the chief. Herman McIntosh reported a door to Chief. He goes, McIntosh, are you an inn? No, Chief Allen, I'm a soul. Chief Fallon looks at him, he goes, turn around.

So he did an about face, looks at his back of his. Turn sideways. Turn sideways. Turn sideways again. So he turned sideways to the other. He looked at him, he goes, yeah, McIntosh. says, I think you are an end.

As a matter of fact, you're the ugliest mother-in I've ever seen in my life. Hit the bay and take these other two ends with you, man. So there we were. We would be in class. We'd be in class, Chief Allison said, hey, we'd look. All you ends hit the bay. We'd run hit the bay, get wet, and we come back. You know, recover, right?

We come back and sit in class. So that's what he gave us. You know, he gave that to us to say, It's kind of like a letter that I wrote to a girl that I thought I was breaking up with, you know, about, oh, I love you, da, da, da, da. And somebody says, oh, and she didn't come back to me, right? But they say, oh, oh, she gave you a beautiful gift. I don't know, what kind of a beautiful gift is this?

We still broke up? No, the deal is you wrote how you can love somebody. That's what you're looking for. That's what they did. They gave us stuff and put us in that pain so that we would, reveal ourselves so we could say well and then one day he comes out he says all you non-ends hit the bay well me i knew who i was right i'm standing me and garcia we're standing there and all the white guys gone and the two Koreans and two turks man they're in the water too they're in the water right

so so that happened a couple times a couple evolutions right and so finally yonki too comes up he's a Korean guy, he goes, epi, epi, yeah. I said, I know understand. I don't understand. And, none, in? Mr. Chong, we water. I said, you from now on, you and N. Oh, okay. Okay.

Okay, I understand. And so then the two Koreans stood, the whole class went in the water, and Mark Schallembert, who looked like, howdy-d-dudy, he's got little blue eyes, you know, got teeth that actually later on in Oliver and broke his teeth. pushed on his head on a on a on a swimming pool right and the water is deck and hit his teeth chief allen comes up to him goes shallenberger oh yeah chief allen i said i thought i said all you

nine ends hit the bay who yeah chief ellen i said all you non ends hit the bay shallenberger stood up he says chief ellen today i am an end he looked at me goes cool walks off so then the rest of the The rest of the class are going, what is going on with this stuff? We told him, hey, tell him, he says, hey, I'm... So then after that, everybody knew and the Koreans knew, but we didn't tell the two Turks. So the two Turks were in the Bay. Then we finally, we told them.

But, you know, and the very first day of training, like in 41, Olivera comes up, right? He comes walking up, got his ball cap, chew here, scarred there, little blue slicker, caught off, you know, the instructor shorts, the big diver's socks with his shiny Cochran boots. He comes walking up, got an umbrella, walks up, and we're all standing out there, and he looks at all of us, walks out, cocky,

looks at all of us, says, As you can see on my slicker, this says Big G, little O, little D. There's only one Big G, Big O, Big D, and that's a creative of the universe. and he's the creator of you and me but God's not here but I am so for the next 18 weeks when I tell you to run you will run

when I tell you to drop you will drop when I tell you this shit I'll tell you what color he did an about face popped up his umbrella and walked off that was another one of those espinozae what the hell are you doing here right so those two instructors

were Moy's picture You know, and you ask Moe about when he, you know, he's told a couple hilarious stories about... What class was Moyer? He's probably like, he's probably about two before me, maybe 39, maybe 37. You know, he's an older guy. You know, I think probably 37, something like that. But anyway, he did his stuff, and he tells a cool story about being with Olivera.

They lost one of the boat crews somehow, because they were trying to. during Hell Week. So they went out in a vehicle trying to track them down find out where they are and they ran. They'd buried themselves under their boat in the sand. So boom, they hit it about lost control of the vehicle and they come back around and everybody's up and about, you know, and he says, it's so cool

because all the birds just come and says, yeah, we catch you hiding like that again. He says, and we're gonna run over you again. You know, he'll kill you. He said, we didn't know where they were at, you know. But there's a lot of that stuff, you know. but yeah so those those two instructors and so then when we graduated right we went through the training you know and we were in different boat crews and I did and I assume all six guys all six made it and two of us went in the seal team we were drafted in the seal team when when I met you for the first time you were telling me about um but one of the instructors saying to you can you change the temperature of the water that was all where what happened with that Tell us that one.

I'm freezing my ass off, right? You're 120 pounds, right? I grabbed the big guy. It wasn't a homophobic thing at all, man. I was, you know, they're putting off heat, man, and I wanted some of it. So I'm sitting there crying. Oliverer, come up.

Esplanosa. Who you, Oliver? What's the temperature of the ocean? The temperature of the ocean? The temperature of the ocean is too warm, Olivera. And I'm crying. I got tears because, and I'm glad I was wet. because I don't, no man wants to see him another man cry.

So I'm crying. He says, can you change the temperature of the ocean? And I'm thinking, well, if I piss in my wetsuit a little bit, but I'm not, I'm not wearing a wetsuit. So, and I don't want to be a smart ass, right? Because this don't want to be a, all these guys that said, oh yeah, I told you, instructed this when I went through training. And I, like, bullshit.

I mean, if they wanted to hurt you, they could hurt you anytime they wanted to, right? That's the power. It's like society. There are some people that are here that are here. How do you want to function in it? You can be in it and be in pain, but you're not going to give it up. So I'm there in pain. And I said, no, Oliver.

He looks at me and says, and it doesn't matter what the fend temperature of water is does it. And it's a thousand. Two days later, I'm freezing again. Kind of remind me when I was crying and the little kids are going to beat me up. You know, okay. Can you change the temperature? What's the temperature of the water, Espinosa? It doesn't matter what the other water is all over there.

He goes, Espinosa, the temperature of the water is a toasty water. So then I understood, right? I can't change the temperature of the ocean, right? And the thing about the teams is the only easy days yesterday, right? Those two things in my life were very powerful Same as that fire that hit me, right? But that is that piece I'm telling you It was being revealing.

The one thing I did have, though, was to say, I can't change the temperature of the ocean, but I'm here if I, without being with my six guys, right? That not one of us gave it up and that I can't give it up. I'm choosing to be here Because at any time I can leave, anytime.

Nobody's telling me to stay here. Nobody's telling me to be whatever. All the hurt and fear, I've changed. I'm changing. I'm evolving. And that day it was like three choices. One, I can quit. The second is I can be here in misery.

Or I embrace it and say, this is the cost. I see, what would it cost? And in order for me to be where I want to be, there is going to be the point where, and I think guys get it after they've graduated and go into downrange into the combat area, I'm going to die to do this. I would rather die than quit. That is part of the cost. And that's what I love about my brothers.

When I look at it, man, we come to all that point, right? And we go out into our world and we understand that and we bring that into ourselves. And then those cats that have all these bad behaviors, the racism, the sexism, the heteroth, all that bullshit, all those really weird behaviors, at one point in their life, they were clean and a child. They were for real. And then after that, they go back and they pick this shit up, bring it back, because that makes them feel comfortable of where they were. They don't want to live in that spirit of being free, of being who you are, because it makes you a kid. accountable to everything that happens to you.

Good or bad, psychological bullshit. When I got on the fire department, I was dead. I'd become inhuman. I remember my getting in Vietnam. My dad, I said, give you. I always remember you're a human being. And I almost lost that. And I remember seeing a jar of ears, right?

Wasn't my platoon, don't know who did it or whatever. But my officers, being leaders, came up and, oh, Boas and Campbell, man. He was an enlisted guy. enlisted guy who became an ensign, retired, actually as the lieutenant commander, I think. He says, see this shit? We're all like, what is it, you know?

And then we, he says, we don't do this. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, get rid of this jar, we don't do this shit. Anybody we kill is gonna have a weapon. Or if they're collateral damage with people that have weapons, we're gonna do that, but we're not gonna do this kind of stuff afterwards. I guess it was one of the things

with the Prew program, it was kind of weird, because they kept body counts like that, you know, that inhumanity thing, that whole CIA bullshit, you know, the whole Poo thing, you know, that they were all cowboys. You could do whatever you wanted, you know. And, you know, I think when I was there, a man's inhumanity to man, you know,

I was with my buddy Noisse, right? We were working for the company and doing stuff, and we took a break. went to Saigon to party Huffton a helicopter took off I'd even leave my cousin with the Poo program

It was crazy But party with this I saw this I was always practicing my skills My language skills And I saw this little Vietnamese I looking at me I'm looking at him

I said Hey lady Comes over Antenier What's your name Hottotente You know I said

Ah A te un beer You drink beer? Yeah He looks at On me I said yeah Yeah

No, yeah, me, yeah. So his friends came, we sat and we drank, liked him. You know, we connected. You know, sometimes you don't even know somebody, but you feel good with them, right? We did that for two days. Third day, we had to leave. And when we left, because he was trying to learn English,

I was trying to learn English, Vietnamese, and hugged each other, catch you later, and we take off. Noice was going, oh, shit, I'm in this Vietnamese. They all know I'm an American. But we were wearing civilian clothes, and they don't know who you are. You know, but so Bill is sitting like this, you know, looking around. But we spent three days there.

And when we took over this group, which was a Green Beret group, which was the Prue program, my cousin was a Green Beret and another guy. Matter of fact, when we flew in, he was flying out, did the Green Beret, had a sleet wearing his aviator shades and stuff. And this guy is a black sergeant. Can't remember his name, but he said, oh, you just, you just miss Captain Pacheco. and I'm like, wow. And I said, what's his first name?

He told me. I said, from Oklahoma, California? He goes, yeah? I said, that's my cousin. Oh, bullshit. I says, his mom's Aurora and his dad's Celestino. Yeah. I said, yeah, he's my cousin.

So when I got back, country, right, I started asking, I said, you ever hear this? I mentioned the name. I mentioned the caseworker. I mentioned the sergeant. and the name of the city and he goes,

why are you asking me this? I said, do you remember when you got relieved and you handsalued some cats coming in civilian clothes? He goes, yeah, so it was me and my mate. Falshit, you know? Then he asked me, he says, what about there was a guy with the white scarf

of a Viet Cong? He said, did you ever run into him? I said, yeah, he shot the shit out of us, you know, but we were using army tactics. We weren't using seal tactics and how we would patrol and our warning orders they were

you know doing a fast a warning order and the brief op and then and going we never left we never it was like right away it wasn't like

an hour going an hour later we popped out right away because we knew about that the intel leaks and so we when we got back we decided

to do a quick op and said let's just go out work. So we grabbed like five guys and we took off. Didn't even tell the rest of the group. We went out night, early in the morning, got a hit. We went and checked the bodies. And there's a kid with the white scarf. And the kid with the white scarf was the kid that we drank with in Saigon. I looked at him, man, and I got, you know, I get emotional. And I told him,

he said, come here, man, so Billy goes around looks and he goes, man I think his name is Tran but yeah he looks at me and goes you know and that's when I understood

that warriors right that the ideologies of countries right use us that we go fight these wars we go do whatever that is

but I wrote it you know my God I wrote it on my phone right now I'm kind of Well, someone on the other side is doing the same thing. Doing the same thing, but we're human, you know? There was that connection that we as soldiers are fighting these wars for other people's ideologies,

but if they'd have left us alone, we would have been best friends. So when I got on the fire department, guys are playing, oh, you got to remember where you're from. You know, all this bullshit. And I'm like, did you ever kill a commie for mommy, mother? You know, like, no, you know, there's a whole thing about how I've, fit into the fire department. But I would tell them, it says,

I've killed a better man than you. And meaning it. Because that guy and I would have been friends. We laughed. We drank. We smoked cigarettes. And when we left, we felt sad.

That it wasn't going to work. And then you meet him on... That's a small world, man. You know? and my heart broke that day, you know. And I told the story to my grandson, and he put it in, like, in a poem, but he said, and his heart was crushed.

And that was, that was, that was hard, you know, other than, and then getting connected. There's a guy named Tick, Vietnamese guy, our point man. We got jagged up one time, That's me. I said, let's go. We go kill communists. So let's go.

Buzzed. We went out, we set up on a river waiting. Nothing happened to the world that could ever see. But him sitting beside me, right, and thinking, okay, we're going to war. And if it happens, we are together. Didn't say a word, but the connection, the spiritual connection, the blending of us as warriors, You can't you can't buy that shit You can't create it

You can't form it It exists in spiritual sense you know Let's go back to Just to cover this part of your history To win you graduated butts Because you mentioned it but you didn't go into too much detail About that you were one of the few guys They got selected to go straight to

Seal Team One without going to UDT At the time the normal procedure was guys graduate buds they go to udt the underwater demolition teams they do deployments there and then they can volunteer to go over to seal team which is going to be more land-based still still foot in the water but going to be more land-based but you went straight to straight to straight to you got order straight to seal team one right why do you think that was well captain shyble um not actually called captain anderson was the commander when we were selected

He actually lives in Ignacio, New Mexico, no, Colorado. And when you get together, he'd say, he says, yeah, I asked him, he says, I picked you, you, and Shikowski, and all, he knows all the names, right? I said, what was with that? He says, we weren't getting, we weren't getting the guys that were volunteering from UDT because we were getting shot up. I mean and I think even Roger Hayden

that's why Roger I mean he got shot up and stuff in UDT if he goes he said I want to get my ass shot if you're doing UDT I want to go into SEAL team

and figure this shit out I want to if we're going to if we're UDT guys are going to be running SEAL ops I want to know what I need to know to do that and so the whole switch up in operations

from the waterwork to the land the guerrilla warper right UDT all the waterwork explosive up to the berm line and then we're from the hinterline in as far as we can go now you guys see you're going in big old huge helicopters taking them going hell no man I'd rather be in the jungle you know just and and they weren't getting them and so what he did is he

he had the instructors start hand-selecting guys that they think could transition and then they took the they took the volunteers they took the volunteers the UDT guys and it's really God you know the way things work out guys like from 38 and 39 are marrying up with guys from 42 and 41s right so a lot of the guys in those classes like um like Crawford right he was part of the dirty dozen right and his instructor was one of all our structures was Barry Enoch, right? And then some of the guys that were with him, too,

were out of class 38, 39, and the guys that I operated with, like Hyatt and Richards and De Angeal, they're from 38, 39, right? So this whole group, when you talk about only 150 guys, I mean, they're making multiple truths. I'd have made two, but I broke my leg

in a platoon workup, right? And I about cried. I did cry because I was in Babboa hospital and it felt like that damn hell week when the guys were going around in the paddle and going to finish up hell week, I'm not going. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I want to do.

And there were no doubts. And I think if you had the doubt, and I don't know how guys work now, if you have any doubt, you don't be long going. You know, take off. I told guys on the fire department, you don't want to do everything. Take off the damn Maltese.

If you don't, and all we had was the little goldwing, But I remember Chief Stone, we're going through seal training, seal cadet, right? We're out there in Nilead. We lived in box cars. There was only two girls in the bar. That place was Lunar Face and Crater Face. And everybody was hot on them, and they make them feel like Queens, you know. Well, the desert boys didn't like that.

So one day, like, either the desert boys came down and there was a tussle in the bar, right? I don't know where Chief Stone, he's a little guy like me. He's a Korea guy. He is a Korea guy, but also a raider. Wow. Army, you know, the Army Raider guys, right? Ranger, whatever, you know, because there were the Green Beret guys,

but there were also the Rangers. I'm sitting there and having my little beer, and the guys are all laughing and everything, and he comes in there. God damn it. He says, you am at first, and he's the guy, he's the guy when we're standing, going with training,

and he goes, yeah I want two rows of corn here two rows of corn here I want my M60 man over here my M16 here my Grendi Dier's over here my stoner man and if the officers with your M16s I want you assigned right He said when that left foot hits

You got the M16 I want Dutut He says and if you're on the M16 He said you're on the M16 He said you're stoners I want some singing He says and the officer every once you're up boom And then you grin the deer I want to you every fourth time your left foot hit, I want boom.

You understand? You're all like, yeah, we understand. So he'd stand behind us, okay, let's move. You know, we were like a rock and roll band, man. But really looking at the rate of fire and the intensity of it, right? So we were trained in that small group of what it felt like to be powerful. Powerful, invincible, right? And so they would grab the guys from UDT.

They would marry us up into this sealed cadry class. And there's a book, Vietnam Seals or whatever in Vietnam. And my cousin found the book at Annapolis. She went to Annapolis. And you can see up there it says, SB and Mo, the boat, although we were assigned, and they're doing the instruction, that's how basic it was.

You know, because they weren't getting guys to do it. So he wanted, and I think that was the beginning of trends. the UDT teams. I mean, the kids that are going through buds now and just saying, well, we can save this time. Because when we went to jump school of SEALs, right? The UDT guys had already gone through jump school. But those of us who went through the SEAL CADRAA

that hadn't done that trip, weren't airborne yet. So we go to jump school. And we were in shape, man. So we were out there doing the runaround. We ran at least three or four guys into the dirt. You know, they sit there. They'd get 10 chin-ups and I'd do one for the Army. I could do 50 of them at that time because I was a little guy, right?

One for the Army, one for the Navy, one for the Marines. Oh, yeah, smart ass, give me a couple more. And I'd get all the way up to about 47, 45. And then I'd yell, instead of yelling who, yeah, I'd yell airborne. Airborne, you know. They didn't know who we were. I always thought the other thing was so cool about being in the team. They didn't know who we were.

we uh matter of fact me and my partner uh we went in we didn't talk to anybody right didn't talk to army guys you know is that airborne school airborne school yeah we didn't talk to anybody and they assigned guys that put us up into this barracks where we were at so are you guys where you from just walk away just hey come on man and you guys talk and you guys talk to each one of us and we just don't say anything and you know and then we turned our head and we're like You know, just playing that, whatever that role is. But nobody had to tell you. It just happened.

It was just like everybody would pick up on the energy of everybody else. That's the other thing that's created in the training class. You can see them. There's a group of kids from Team 8 when I went to a golf tournament. I could see when they came in, they're all picking up on the energy of each other, all wearing shirts that they got from Walmart. One has a cat. One has a bird.

I mean, you know, wearing their flip-flops. I mean, that whole, they're so out of uniform that they're in uniform. Does that make sense? Yeah. You could tell who a frog man is just by the stuff that he doesn't wear to not conform, but he is conformed, right? So, you know, but anyway, back to Chief Stone, he yelled at it, says, you sons of bitches are living on the reputation of dead men.

Get all the money you got out of your pockets, leave it for them, and I'll meet you back at the area. And then we just had a big old hole in the earth that we threw wood into the Northern Ireland. We built a fire in, and then you sleep in these box cars with these springs, and you put your bed in there like a mummy thing. And we wake up in the morning, there's a damn snake in there with you. But that night, we operated it all night long.

I mean, it was kind of like an almost like a two-day-off all-night thing where no sleep. And you were glad that you went through Hellweek because you could operate like that. You could do that. And he never scolded us after that. You know, he told us, some of the bitches are living in a reputation of dead men,

made us hurt. And he says, you're not seals yet. I understood it. You're not seals yet. So I finished seal cadre, right? Those of us have made it through, and Garcia and McIntosh, hey, I meet you at the trade wins.

Trade win bar. That's where we all hang out. right I said all right so we we show up we show up there and and the night before I'm gonna meet them next to the night before I'm sitting there and I have me a beer and the lady comes up sits beside me and she just sits right beside me and I'm like you one of those FNGs I'm like I don't know this man says FNG is I don't know what that is it's a fucking new guy I'm like well yeah I guess I I guess I got my Rolex, right?

I got my Rolex. Yeah, I'm almost a new guy. I got my Rolex. Well, I'm Chief Gustav's wife. Someone tell you something. I can out-drink you. I can out-fight you. And I can out-f you.

I'm like, oh, ma'am, can I buy you a beer? The Chief's wife? And I'm, what, 20 years old, I'm sneaking into the bar. right and so she says FNA right so you know you can have mine I just got it but anyway she says I'm gonna tell you something she says the chief has three tours of Vietnam it's never been hurt never got anybody killed he says we lost a couple guys and I think by that time funk had gotten all the guys had gotten killed around stupid shit like funk they had him hadn't tied and they were

going to show these senators how we do stuff when we capture people. The boat broached. He went into the river, found him four or five days later, and the way the water runs is so dark, and the current killed him, right? We kill our own. For stupid shit,

or guys drooling out in 82 millimeter water and it kills guys. Mike Korman, they went to Vietnam with this. He switched out with a guy that was a regular corpsman that was with Marines. He switched out with him so this other guy could get his pay, right? And Doc Bainer's walking.

with another guy that goes off. They're walking by and kills both of them. A guy named Van Hoy who had like, he wrote everybody, man. He had his shit together, right? Dr. Maynard, that's how you lose guys, right? But, um, I last try.

So what did she tell you? So she told me, he said, yeah, thank you. So don't get him killed. And if you don't want to do this job, If you don't know what you're going to go, and this is if I'm a wife, right? And sometimes, I guess, my understanding is some of the wives take on the personality of the officers, wives start their little stuff. You know, my daughter is the wife of an officer, Marine Corps officer. And but she let me know the human peace, right?

This is a family. I mean, they have, there's their family, and this is what it means to her. And I'm responsible for myself to make sure he doesn't get killed. to learn that stuff not just for me and I understood that that sometimes in the teams just I don't want to let anybody down right it isn't that at all if I would do anything like that and then you let yourself that I have I mean I'm not sinless you know but I know that when I when I come to that point where I do something I don't want to do and don't do the things that I should do the greatest

disappointment is me because I don't have power over that or I chose to do whatever I did and so I looked at her and I went no ma'am I said if I if I I don't know what I'm going I mean I just graduated sealed training I don't know where I'm going I said I promise and Chief Guestable was a cool dude you know he was a good operator and everything so I got that so next day told McIntosh Garcia said well meet you you know all right you know So we get together. And it was early in the day. You never, there was a trade win bar when you went.

Is it an IB? No, it was right. This was the little, it's on Orange Avenue. Down from McPee's between Danny and McPeas. It's where the ice cream place is. Yeah, no, it was gone. But anyway, it had swinging doors. You walk in there, you walk in.

And a lot of character and a lot of who we were is the, Not just the operational piece, but the interpersonal piece, right? So we walk into this place, swinging doors, and we looked down, and there's this guy, got chaw in his mouth and smoking cigar. He's by the bathroom, and you weren't sure whether he was, the bathroom had a problem with plumbing or whether it was him. He's eating boiled eggs and drinking beer, and he went to the head. It was like, ah, and he had a full growth.

And I'll just, the guys and those guys in the team will know that there was tobacco, right? Because he had a lot of tobacco, right? So he looks down at us and me, McIntosh and Garcia. And so says, hey, you guys the FNGs? I already knew who it was. Ms. Gussolwold already told me what was. And we go, yeah. He says, that's all we need in the teams is more FNs, Mexicans and Ns.

So I was like, who yeah, you know? So we just looked at each other But the cool piece about it We already knew who we were Chief Allen already established it for us Oliver already established it for us I don't know who this cat is But he's an operator and he has every right to say

Whatever he wants to say to me because I've Not done anything right So I miss my first platoon I go over do my trip Do my Vietnam thing Well what happened on your You broke your leg In your first workup Were you parachuting or what was you parachuting or what

we do. That's why I tell everybody. I was a parachuting and repelling was one of the other things. When I got to Balboa Hospital, it was like, how'd you do that? Oh, I'm sure I was repelling. How far away from deployment were you? Two weeks. Oh.

Two weeks. You're getting ready to go on deployment. What happened? So what we were doing was doing a compass course, right? Alpha brow, you had these different legs. And we went by ourselves like about four minutes behind. each other so we'd cover each other right not didn't go in pairs we went singles and so I'm like a 10 mile deal right so I'm up on this rock and I'm looking thinking oh shit I got another

maybe a mile to go down this other rock I have my black face on have all my stuff I got my weapon in this hand I got my compasses and everything and I'm looking and here comes the guy on a horse I said, hey, he says, how you doing? This is good, how are you doing? He says, doing it's a nice ride today. I said, oh, light, cheat, steel, do whatever you can to get through, but don't get caught, right? I said, you don't happen to be going by that rock down there. He says, I'm going right by that rock.

I said, how about a ride? He said, sure. So I get ready to shift my hands over to a weapon to reach up to grab me. He goes, oh, no, he says, you're a little enough. He says, I'll just pull you up. I said, all right, so I put my foot in, put my, that's the other thing. You learned is don't let anybody else have control over your shit, right? You just don't.

Don't do it. You got to do your own stuff. So he reaches down, grabs hold him, he slings me up. Next thing, he falls sideways, so he lets loose in my hand, so I take my hand and I grab up like this, and I grab hold of the saddle. I have my weapon here, and I stick on this side. That horse takes off. Oh, no.

Next thing, I'm running. Next thing is like, oh, this is. thing in my leg. I look at my feet. They're both above my heads. I have my maps here. I have my weapon here. And when I hit, it was like, and I went, oh, shit. So he scampers off. Then he comes back. You okay? I said, no, man, I don't think I am. He gets off his horse and he said, well, let me, and he got his little bag and he cuts my laces off and looks at my leg. And then I took my little 38 I had, you know, hand weapon. Doc Maynard was my. It was my little. Mike Corman, right?

He's when you swapped out. He's a guy who got killed. Doc Maynard comes down. And by that time, another guy comes by on a horse. And he says, what's going on? He says, I think this guy's got a fractured malalias. You know, looks like a diso fibula break.

He's got petal pulse. And I don't know what any of that stuff was. I'm just a soldier, man. And so, so what's going? How do you guys know this? It's all, we're doctors. We're up here on a little. I said, no.

So they split it and everything by the time Doc got there I was already squared away. He says, you have any drugs? So no, we don't have any drugs. He would give morphine, but then with the morphine shred, he always had to do the dog. He didn't want to do that. And so the dog said, well, here, and he gives me a pint of peach brandy. He said, just drink this. Got in a little Jeep that the dog kept me, this kind of kept track of us. By the time I got to Balboa, man, I was jacked up. So they had to wait, give me a block. And so then my platoon came, because I was in the hospital and they all gave me a kiss goodbye man and I was and this guy Alan took my my job and I hated him I was so envious and so hurt and so pissed off that

he's got my job with my platoon and in that platoon I with Mihach MiHatch and I were the appointment in that platoon right and I wanted I wanted to go work so that means I had to stand down again and all these guys that I was with right so then I had to do I took me too much. So I'm in Balboa Hospital. I get my foot up like this. His seal team on it once they found out who I was. Guys from Kason were coming in. They were shot, jacked up, man. I'm sitting there watching them come in and they put this guy beside me. This little machine is going in. I mean, people were jacked up. I saw war from that.

I saw the damage. This machine goes off, stops. A little light. So I pushed the button Start it back up again So it happened about four times It was like in the middle of the night I pushed this button By myself, my team's gone And

Pull the court for the cormon He doesn't show up Finally when he does show up I said what do you need? So what's this? He went off What did this happen? I said I've been for four hours

So he grabs him and takes off Then he comes back This guy comes back about two days later. He's a Marine. He's got a patch on his eyes. The leg is jacked up and he's got wounds in here. He looked at me and says, you're the guy who's pushing the button? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. He said, I was drowning. This is when the button would go off. He says, I would start drowning. He says, you push the button and suck that stuff out of my lungs. So he and I became good friends. and I was only there for another. I went back and checked him out.

Later on, he had like a floppy leg and his eyes missing. When I went back and saw him, he says, how you doing? He said, I'm doing great, man. I said, I said, I'm going to send me to MCRD. I said, really? Marine Corps Recruiting Station, right? He's going to receive troops.

He says, yeah, he says, and check this out, Despy. He got his patch on his eye. He goes like this. Rain Corps emblem inside his eye. He says, I'll be receiving those guys. He says, look me in the eye, boy, you know. So it was a cool guy. So, yeah, I miss my platoon.

And so then when I'm there, I have SEAL Team 1 on there. And this guy comes walking in, got his Rolex, got his bald cap. And I look at Cochran Jump Boots and shit. I'm going, oh, it's a team guy. So I said, hey, man, I was at the Gidunk with this CB. This is at the hospital? At the hospital. I said, I look at this guy, and I say, hey, man, sees you in the teams?

Yeah. I said, so am I. He goes, so. So what the fuck? And walks out. So I'm like, are you rude son of a bitch? You know, I mean, I'm pissed off. So I'm bet in about another month there.

And then I left, right? Went back to the SEAL team area. So OK, S, you're back. Here, Lockers 69. I said, go take it and change, put your new gear and stuff. I said, all right. So I go over there and look at the lockers. They were like this, you know, like these spaces here.

And there was a window at the end. And mine was at the end. So I go over there and I look There's When I go in I walk by the lockers There's that guy That told me so what the fuck

So I walked by him He just kind of looks at me I don't know if you've just kind of looked at me I kind of looked at him and I went and there's a name up there so I grabbed it Pulled it off and I threw it in shit can And he goes That was a good man

And it says so what the fuck He looked at me man And it was like We're going to wrap We're going to dance. We're going to dance. And I backed up into the corner, and he just looked at me, and he goes, fuck you.

Turns around and walks out, and I went, wow, that was pretty intense, you know. And so then we go out, and they said, okay, we're going to start signing a patoons, Alpha Bravo, Delgado, Charlie, Echo Patoon, right? So they start naming names, Echo Patoon, Espinoza. I'm going, oh, shoot, man, that's cool. So it goes on, ta-da-da-da-da-da. And then they call that guy's name. he comes walking to my platoon, I'm going, oh.

And you guys are both in Echo Patoon? Both of us in Echo Patoon. And I pulled that name tag and threw it off. Then later on, I found out that he was with a guy named Anton that had gotten killed in a firefight. They McGuire rigged him out. He got hit two times. They went on two helicopters, two and up, and they dropped everybody off. So they were patrolling.

they took Anton and moved him up forward and never really was never was really a point man right but they hadn't moved him up out of out of his out of what he normally does he stepped out and in a jungle there's a lot of times you just step

out and it's a base camp right and if you're not really quiet they know you're coming and so he stepped out they got engaged he got shot killed the two Vietnamese another American and two guys wounded.

When I talked to my partner, and I learned about this, so that was what the op was, right? So I didn't know that Antonio had gotten killed, and then I understood what had happened. We were in the same platoon for three months and didn't talk to each other. I didn't talk to him, he didn't talk to me,

we'd work and do stuff, And there was like the visual connection about what we're doing. But it was like hard. It was hard. I'm not going to. It was like, I don't know. Like two invisible forces that had no way to communicate. It was like a big wall, you know.

And then one day I'm walking to the trade winds to go to the trade winds, to have a beer, and he pulls by in his car. the reason he was in there because he'd gotten drunk and broke out his teeth. That's why he was there. And the only words he ever said, Espy. You go, yeah, he says, where are you going? I said, I'm going to the trade with. You want to ride?

I said, I hate walking, man. I said, yeah. So I get in there. Didn't say a word. We drove up to the bar, right? Parked right in front. We get in, there's nobody in there. Right.

Well, except for Tobacco Lewis. We're tobacco, right? The guy. I'll tell you about, I'm kind of digressing, but in the same place when me, Macatosh, and Garcia came in there. And when he said, all we need is, his team's more ends, right?

So I told you about that, right? Yeah. So that was Tobacco Lewis? Yeah. Okay, we ratted him off. That was that goddamn tobacco Lewis. And so we come in, and I could,

and he's still sitting down there, right? So we walk in, and he just kind of looks at us, and Hyatt says, you want a beer? I said, yeah, and there was a keg in the trade runs. And as high at the name of the guy that you had not been able to communicate with. Yeah, I love him. And now he says, hey, you want a beer? He's my best friend, yeah. In the teams. Yeah, I shouldn't rat it him off, but he's okay.

So he says, you want a beer? And he said, yeah. So he pours a beer, pitcher. And guys would buy kegs of beer for getting divorced, getting married, getting promoted, getting demoted, getting killed in Vietnam, coming back from, anything. There's always a cake in the afternoon. Monday, you know, Wednesday. Yeah, so there was always one there. So there was always a keg. So like 3 o'clock to probably about 5, I mean, guys get in there and drink a bunch of beer.

And then it would go on. So we drank that picture of beer And then he said Hey you want another picture? He goes yeah sure So I poured him a beer We sat there Sitting at the corner I'm sitting right here He's right here the door is right there

You always I always sat there because You don't ever walk in that door either Without kind of check because you could get hit pretty easy I mean there some good fights in there It was a wild place And He said, you want to hear about Anton? He said, yeah, so he told me about the helicopters,

about getting hit and getting out and saying, man, I don't know how we flew out of there, you know. Everybody was wounded, the helicopter was shot, everything was. And he didn't get hit. He's never been hit, right? I was with him, anyway, you were sharing that story with me, you know, and he's crying. And I'm crying.

And guys, it was so beautiful about the bar, man, the other guys would come in, they'd go, they got a thing going on. Not to interrupt you and not look down on you. Guys were having their own memorial times for themselves in your own space, in your own, and respecting it. You know? That was kind of like the womb.

I mean, that bar was kind of like where guys would come in with pain. They would come in with anger. They would come in proud that they have kids. It was a place that everybody felt safe. You know? And so he, that's when he became my teammate, you know, of him sharing that with me, you know. And we did a talk one time for Sea Wolf Gunships, you know, come to Texas and he says, Espy, you want to tell me that story about the Seawolf gunships? And I go, well, you tell. He goes, oh, no, you see, you like talking. You see, you tell them.

So I said, all right, so we got shot at, you know, we were on a dyke and these guys shot at us. And Hyatt had his shit together. The officer we had was a young guy, right? So he's like, do we engage him? You know, and we look out there and he goes, that's, see, that's. You mean engaged? I mean shooting.

Engage here. The guys that were shooting at us on this little, kind of like a little dike. You know, we were up on top of the dike, so they were shooting up at us. Well, the first thing is somebody shooting at you from down below, they got something. You know, but he was a brand new officer. Actually, he relieved Bosen Campbell who'd stepped on a booby trap. That was another op that we were on. Lit him up.

Pointman got some strap on his ass. And Doc Maynors was with us, and he had me walk the point out. But I'm kind of getting a little crossways here. But where was I at? So, I mean, just basically you were talking about the trade wins and how that's kind of when you guys got tight. And I mean, I suppose the next thing is, so you're doing a workup and preparing to go back to Vietnam

or preparing to go your first deployment to Vietnam. Right, right. And what's that? Was that like a six-month cycle? You go to Nileland. It was a six-month cycle. You go to Nilewanda. You go Kuyamake, do the jump thing.

You do just mostly, you know, patrolling. And how many guys you got in your platoon? Is it 14? Yeah, 14 guys. And he told him, he says, ESP, he says, you stay with me, you won't get hurt. He said, all right. This is my C daddy, man.

He's my partner. Does he Hyatt? Yeah. And so, matter of fact, I have this watch because of him. We come back from Vietnam. We go in there, he says, how much money you got? I said, I don't know. So catch your money out.

So I got the 125 bucks. He says, grabs it. I say, hey man, says, give him money. He said, we're going out and partying tonight. I said, nope. So you're coming with me. So we go to the PX. I said, I didn't nothing in the PX I want.

He says, yeah. So we go in there. And he looks at the lady, he says, I want that one and that one. Two Rolex, says she puts them up. I said, the lady says, I don't want a Rolex. So she puts it down. He said, the lady says, he wants a Rolex. So she puts it up.

I said, Lady, I don't want to roll X. So she puts it down. So finally, he says, lady, she puts it up. I said, lady, and she goes, little fella, he's a lot bigger than you. And today you're buying yourself for a Rolex watch, you know. It was that kind of a thing. And we went, we took a break one time, went to Naba, is where he had operated. This was his third trip, two with the SEAL team and one with UDT.

And they threw us out of the base for fighting. And so we had nowhere to stay except for places that he knew. Like out in town? Yeah, out in town. Yeah. So we were out in town hiding. We were out there hiding, right? And so at night, during the day we'd kind of hang out,

and then at night the Viet Cong would come in. So we'd be sheltered in these places. And the Viet Cong would be in these places that we were at during the day, partying and drinking and dating girls or whatever. And we were hiding. And then in the morning, the Viet Cong would leave, and then we'd wake up, you know, for three days we did that. That close to the enemy is cool.

You know, they don't even know that you're there, you know. and so that was our that was our relationship so when you're uh you finish your work up and now it's time to now it's time to fly to vietnam now it's time to fly man did you leave from north island we left from north island what like a c130 see one yeah the little one little c1 17 oh dang okay cargo plane right so that's that's what we went and we staged all our gear and everything we get in there and the um like he's loud and it's what year was this 69 It was March. March of 69. March of 69.

So we're getting ready to roll, looking at the rivets and stuff, looking at the chief that comes in there to fly to airplanes. Big old belly and got his chief's hat. And he's the pilot? He's the pilot. Oh, that's pretty cool. And you look out the window and like the airplane has all this grease and oil and stuff. We go flying like this.

Next thing is like, it goes like, what the hell? You know, we turn off and. And so we get ourselves back together. I go, what's happening? He says, oh, I was looking at the lights. So I was looking, the green light and the red light. The green light and the red light, pretty soon I said, well, the green light and the red light, they're on the wrong sides.

He wasn't following it. He's coming right at him, right? So he turns off. So I'm going, oh, man, I don't even get to Vietnam that's happening. So then we get to Hawaii, right? So we go in and hi, hi, it says, hey, Spie, let's have a Mai Tai drinkie contest. Is it cool? All right.

We go in, man. Next thing, you know, I'm waking up. I look down, and there's a tomato stuck on Hyatt's face where I was on the upper rack. And I'd thrown up, he was on his face. Bosen Campbell, we could hear him. You sons of bitches, I told you. We're kind of looking around and Hyatt gets up his hair sticking up in the air, you know, and I'm looking at him. He said, I told you guys we're leaving at 0-600.

You guys are late. the chop I mean the hairplane's rolling up and the number now he says on the rest that goddamn but too never told you guys got to get your asses

and we're like grabbing stuff you know and like grabbing my boots putting stuff on and I and I asked post like I said hey bozza who won the mitai drink he got to

who won the my tie drink cause you son of a bitches he says you guys got drunk then you got in a fight in the bar they threw you out and then you guys stole a damn bus that the and if you buzz

You know, they were driving around. And we threw the sailors off the bus, stole the bus, and then the shore patrol tracked us down, and we got in a fight with those guys on the bus. Then they arrested us. One night in Hawaii right there. It was one night in Hawaii. They needed to get you guys to Vietnam stat.

Oh, yeah. And there's another platoon that was before us. I think it's, I can't remember who's a platoon. I don't think it was caught atz. But anyway, their officer was in Vietnam waiting for them. Well, they got in the same fight, But there was the whole bar in that fight. And I went to Barbara's point to see that bar.

It's now a gym. But they got there, and they got in a fight, and the officer sitting over there back in Vietnam, waiting for his guys to show them. And where in the hell they at? And he gets this communicated comes and says, we don't know who they are. We don't know where they came from.

But we know they're headed your way. And those guys have gotten in a fight, and they started a fire in the bar. And the whole, I mean, and if you think about it, right? Think about somebody that's going to go to war. You're internalizing that shit. And so you are loose.

You know, it's like, and so you want to try to take these people and tell them that, no, you, it's... Follow the rules. It's an hard one. You can try. That is something that in the military, certainly in the SEAL teams, you know, you're like, you're parachuting, you're diving. And they're doing a bunch of dangerous stuff.

And when you're young, you're like, well, you know, I could die tomorrow. So I'm going to have a good time tonight. Right. That's true. That's what we're doing. And the consequences, right? The consequences of mistake are brutal. They're not, you can, if you're working on an office, you cut my finger, whatever.

But we fuck up out there. We mess up out there. And the same thing when it came on the fire department. You know, two guys got killed in my fire training. And I thought, okay, Vietnam, probably going to get killed. Got on the fire department? Maybe. But this is really it.

kind of a lame kind of job. You fight some fire. I saw it totally different when I got there, right? It transitioned. It changed for me, especially when I went up in rank, it's like being a platoon leader. You know, the other guys do whatever they want to do in the platoon.

But as a platoon officer and the platoon leader, then as a battalion chief when I was in the fire department, I'm responsible for them to keep them alive. I become Chief Gustafel's wife. You know? And so, yeah, it was, you really transitioned a lot about what that means and those consequences and what's real. And what is it to be a real frog man, right? There are the machismo crazy cats out there.

But they are they good operators? Are they running on their ego or are they running on the teams? Do you love the teams or do you love yourself? Right? And a lot of cats that love themselves wound up in trouble. They're willing to make that or create that for some reason. I look at some of the events, you know, of how guys are getting killed now. And I'm thinking, it's like when Hyatt, when we got shot at,

and then the officer says, we take them under fire. We look at him and go, are you fucking crazy? If we take them under fire, they're going to know how many of us there are. Right? So then we start receiving fire. So we caused an extraction. There was nobody coming to get us. Sometimes the Army slick guys would not come in, but a sea wolf.

They're coming. Well, they're coming, ma'am. I've had quite a few sea wolf pilots on here. Yeah. It's freaking awesome. And so when they lock and load and they're dumping their ammunition just to get four cats up, I mean, that whole thing is on fire, right? So we're running.

So we had no air support until those Sea Wolf guys said, well, we're coming. And a couple of Air Force guys. Yeah, we're in our little phantoms. And if you need some help, we can help you. And so I'm at the back end, right? Everybody's running. Blow everything up on the backside of the blue strobe, right?

So I got a blue strove lit up. And I'm running. I got an M.60. I'm running an M.60. And Hyatt's up in the head of me in Richards. He married his Richard's sister. Hyatt married Richard's sister. And we're all, we're a good mates, man.

I mean, there's some bars in San Diego that remember us. You're still not allowed in. Oh, just by being crazy, yeah. So I'm running, and I fall in a hole. I mean, and these guys, Air Force guys, are coming and flying like this, right? And when they're lighting their stuff up, it looks, it looks like it's certainly like about 10, 15 feet up of the air because you're running. But they don't tell you, like you see.

the movies, I mean, they don't, and you're getting support. They don't talk about the, in those days, the links are rolling out. So you're running along and a thing, all the caseings and stuff, you mean, it's beating the hell out of you, and you're running like this, you know, try not to get them down your shirt, and you're running, and they're flying, it's like, two of them, fume, fume, in the water, and, I mean, the casings, and I fell in this hole, and it wasn't even that they could hear me, because the whole world behind me, I could feel the heat and everything behind me blowing up. they just stopped

they ran back one grabbed the barrel the other one grabbed the butt lift me out of the hole they took off running and I'm like your feet aren't on the ground every once in a while one would hit and finally I got my feet you know and then we got over to the

on the sea wall was locked loading dumping all the ammunition on the other side the side that we were coming on they weren't right and so we jumped in and then they started dumping it all and then that holligar was trying to and everything everything's going well I told that story and then when and Hyatt told me to tell it with the Seawolf guys right is in Texas and so then he says you tell the story I said all right so then I feel okay I would tell the story and I'm as close as I could get it

because everybody has their own story and then I saw Hyatt get up and he walked over up to the podium you know when I was there and he comes up beside me. He says, well, that opted. As we just told you about it. He says, I didn't realize how much that helicopter meant to me and how safe I felt once my hand touched that helicopter. Then I knew I was okay. And I never ever thought that, because he was always so calm.

We all, our platoon, we were a bunch of calm people. you know and and when you have that in your platoon except when you're yelling and they're running away from you know I'm in a goddamn hole you know like you know everybody is like that it's that calmness that keeps you right and if your officer's calm me even post a camera when he got lit up you know he really did a real easy transferred to Doc Maynard and they they an Air Force helicopter with doctors happened to be coming in

we were in a booby-trapped area so we're trying to secure the area and we're receiving fire from a little hooch down there and me and hiat lit that up there's that whole thing the whole dynamics of like when I wrote that piece about the flash right the flash of war you know that whether you're creating it or whether it's being created for you the the inside warrior's working and figuring it out the outside warrior is non-forgiving and violent right Right? And they're both standing out. And I think, you know, the little boy in there is watching that happen. And I think the whole war piece is totally alien because that's not where we really want to go.

So those of us that pay that price, you know it's going to cost you something, even in the training, because paying is going to cost you something. When I got back from Vietnam doing my out in the world, I thought that was me. That's just a way that I am. I'm fighting, and all that kind of stuff. That's who Espinoza is. It was all my behaviors. I confused my behaviors for who I am. And I let loose of it because then I was alone again.

I lost all my teammates. I wasn't in my platoon when I lost them that time. When I came from Vietnam and I left, right? I'm alone again. Right? And it's taking me now to come back to that space of understanding my life, right? That's crazy.

I'm 75 years old trying to figure this stuff out. And then I look at guys like you. You got your podcast, you got your thing going, Jitsu. If they'd have had the M.M.A. when I was coming back from me, I ought to have been a... I was going to fight points in Denver to fight mostly black guys because that's where the danger was.

They had guns and knives. And that was... You get into fight in Boulder, right, with the hippies. I mean, they're just... There wasn't much satisfaction. It wasn't too much. So you might go to this place called Peggy's Highlo and you get a hookup with a cowboy.

You know, at least when you're fighting those guys who's in the dirt, you know, but and I remember going in there and this one, Big Brother's in there. He goes, I'm looking, because I'm checking security, right? The other thing is looking at the environment. Those challenges, right? I'm looking at the bar.

Where's the security? Where's these guys? Who am I watching out for? It was like working with the Pruh program and knowing that you had, another of the 50 guys you got, there's probably eight or nine of them that are Viet Cong, that are two hoys

or they're working both sides. That was exciting. That was the cool thing about when I was with my partner and I, working that program versus working the Vietnamese Seals. Vietnamese Seals, we knew, and I did that with two East Coast guys first. So I worked with them, and then they took another West Coast guy in my Patoon

that worked with those guys with the Vietnameseals. And then they said, oh, by the way, you guys have that expertise. Why don't you and me and Bill, we went and worked for the Prus. We did that. That's where I leave my cousin, right? That whole thing, that whole challenging thing about depending upon the spirit and the understanding and awareness about who you are is exciting. You know, and I wasn't getting that, you know.

So I was creating the tension. Outside warrior creates the tension so that, and that's who you think you are. And so then you live your life out like that. You're a frog man. I'm a genuine, I'm a genuine, I'm a genuine, beryl chested, anti-magnetic, chrome-plated Rolex wearing,

K-Bork Air, and Root and Toon, Pyrusoon, I have it from Frogman who can, you take 40 men, 40 days to track me down, I can see in the dark, breathe under water, and I can fly, you know, that whole, that whole thing, you know. and so it's so that's who that's who I thought it was

when I got on the fire department I'm going to look at all these these guys don't even train you know and then two guys get killed in training then they're blaming everybody oh you know you got this and this and that then none of you guys wanted to train

this is our fault so then when my buddy got killed is kind of like what do I do here the word sacrificial responsibility comes up right sacrificial responsibility. Right.

Christ. Jesus, man. He didn't have to die. He's God and everything else. But he's going to go, I got to die for these morons. Because they ain't going to figure it out. Right?

And so here you are. I'm going to Vietnam. I'm going with these guys. Why? That's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. So you go, okay, I'm it. Where can I go?

my coach told me about being a frogman, right? Then you get there and you see these guys and you see these instructors bigger than life and nobody knew who a seal was. I knew what a frogman was. I wanted to put up a wormhole and get a sun tan and all that stuff. Then there's the choice.

You want to choose to do that or not? Are you going to choose to be part of this family or not? And there are kids in their own families right now that are choosing they don't want to contribute to about the reputation of your family. My dad told me it one time, and said, Gibby, said the only thing that I ever gave you was my last name, don't being dishonor on it, right?

And this is the same guy in fourth grade education, right? The biggest thing that I learned from him was part of preparing me for the teams. We were hunting. And my dad said, Gibby, we shot an elk. We tracked him down. It's getting cold. It's night.

I'm freezing. We're poor. We may have cotton gloves. There ain't any of this Cabella shit and all that, right? I'm wearing two pair of Levi's. It's cold. I'm 10 years old. I'm with my dad.

We shot him. We got to find him. We're Indians. We don't leave stuff out here. We'll track him. We'll find him. I didn't realize because of our subsistence. We killed an elk hunting in the wintertime, and we fished all summer long.

That's how we ate. And we would plant stuff in the garden, and we'd raise chickens and rice. rabbits. That's how we ate. That's not a bad diet, but hell man, you get tired of getting eggs. You get plucking chickens and skinning rabbits and he has me up there hunting, right? I'm going, oh, Dad, come on. You know, it says, nope. So we track him down. There he is. There's the elk. So we're tracking. You can see a little bit of the blood. The wind's blowing. It's getting cold and everything else. Sometimes I was fishing with him at night. I didn't want to be out there. I'm freezing my butt off, man. And it's when I was getting.

cold out in Coronado, man. I remember being a barker damn freezing my ass off with my dad. But I never thought about what the temperature of the water was, but I knew that it's cold. So I'm, we find the oak. And he says, okay, Gibby, says, now you got to go back and get the hunters, get the rest of the guys. Mr. Chavez and my brother and Mr. Gomez, you know, I was going, Dad. See, Dad, I says, I don't know. you know he says look he grabs me looks at me right in the eyes he says listen

what you're feeling is fear and I understand it don't be afraid okay so I take off you know and I went and it isn't like left and right so then when you're talking about the the spirit of God right this this whatever is that guide you and when you're in combat whenever you're doing stuff a lot of guys a lot of guys have this a lot of times they think it's them, but then there's other things that put you in a different place. And the only thing that you survived

and other guys didn't is time and chance, right? And making a decision one way or the other to think however it gets you there, whatever it is, and you can't feel sorry that you survived and they didn't. That's life, right? So my dad sends me to go find these guys. I'm going, I'm looking at the track,

and it was like, I don't know where to go. and then in here it's like and I go and I find it I find hey my dad shot an elk and I grab them and they come oh yeah okay and they follow me out they grabbed their guns they grab poles we go out there and we find my dad and he's out there

smoking cigarette looking at him and it's Jeff you know they're all that's a big elk you know and my dad had me we always carried a little bag that had a hatchet bone saw and his knives in there That's what he gave me before he told me,

go get the hunters, right? So I went up to where my dad was, and he grabbed my face like this, you know, looking down at me. He says, I knew you could do that, you know. And when I read like in the, that where God, when Christ got baptized, right, the word says that,

so this is my son, of who I'm well pleased. I thought when my dad grabbed my face and told me that and I thought, wow, man. It was my responsibility.

But my dad was sacrificing my life for a deer to go get those guys, you know? But you know what I'm saying? It's like, yeah, and people say, well, it's a calling to be a frog man. Well, there's a thing I think our egos, well, can I make it? Can I not?

Some guys can say, I never had any doubt, right? That they've been supported with their families all the time, right? My family supported, when I were writing a letter when I was going back into 42 about, Mom, I really want, I want this more than anything in the world, right? And my mom knew now 50 years later, right, they did that class on 230. My mom says, I knew you were in Sealting, but I didn't know that's, I didn't know that's what you were doing, right? That's even after Vietnam, right?

I didn't know that that's what you were doing. But I do remember my mom, actually my sister said, oh, give me, he said, yeah, Mom almost got in a fight with Miss Martinez. What, really? She says, yeah, she said, she told him you were going to Vietnam, and she said, well, all he is is going to do is be fodder. You told me my son. father and I'll kick the hell out of you.

You know, not always supported. My mom was kind of domineering and kind of mean, really. But I knew they were always there for me, you know. And even when I came back in Vietnam, my dad, you know, after my workup, after I did all my stuff, Vietnam Veterans Against War, the Young Socialist Republic, I'm going to school at CU. I got a letter when I was getting back from Vietnam to write. wrestle at the University of Colorado.

A dream of I thought was already gone. I wrestled 118 pounds, right? So I'm barely making 100, I didn't really have to cut. I'm still just a little guy. These guys, my kids, we go to reunions, they sit there and looking and they finally got to the age where they went, Dad, you know, he's just, you're the littlest guy here.

I'm the little guy in my life. But, you know, when I got that letter, it's like a whole new thing. I didn't fit. I wasn't brown enough to be brown. I wasn't white enough to be fight. I was a Vietnam vet. I just got done killing and calumie for mommy with my teammates and stuff like that.

And they're telling me, Viva la Rasa, Azzlan, and all that. It's like, I'm an American. You know, my people have always been from here. And it doesn't even have to be that they're from here, but this is what I feel in here. It's from my heart, from my soul. It didn't come.

But it did. The ego is, yeah, I can be, I'm going to be one of those frogmen until you start getting shot at and then you're aghastering yourself and going, what the? What am I doing here? And then you come out with all your teammates

and everybody, you know, like after the op, right? You all sit there and look at each other and go, wow, that was, some guy was, well, that was pretty intense, you know? And the guy that was always pretty cool was Lou. You know, when I got hit, you know, Well, he was pissed at me.

He was madame. When did you get hit? I picked up some shrapment up by Cambodia. We'd be on these barges and they'd float down river and we'd operate off him. So is this when you got there that was the first thing you got tasked with? What was the first thing you got tasked with when you got on the ground? What was your job? Did your platoon all operate as a platoon or do you immediately get shaved off?

No, first of all, like for the first three months, you know, we were all operating. It was all platoon operations. down in Sadec off of PBRs, right? And what were you guys doing? Were you guys doing? Ambushes, raids? Ambushes, prisoner snatch. We'd, like, find out where the tax collectors at.

We'd use the intel and capture them. Who's getting the intel? Were you guys getting it yourselves? It's mostly, yeah. Well, we had, like, the Nilo out of Saigon. Some of our officers, Captain Shible was, where Anderson was there, some other team guys. They were getting the information.

So you'd get a target package, like, oh, here's, here's a grid location for a little village somewhere. Yeah. And they'd be like, it's this hooch over here is where this tax collector is, this Viet Cong tax collector? The VCI, yeah. This is where he's supposed to be, right? So we'd go down and get him.

Or we would just go sit and watch and sit there for two days and see what boats come, where they come, just hidden. So you do just like a reconnaissance, just wait and watch. Do an assessment, wait and watch, how many weapons, How often? Were you mostly going in by the water in this first three months? Yeah. Like just waterborne operations?

Yeah. On PBRs and our own LSSCs and LCPL. It's a big boat with a mini gun on the back, a couple 60s. And so would you insert at night? They just kind of drop you off? Most of the time at night. We liked operating at night more than during the day. And then we'd sit during the day and watch it all.

We wouldn't even know we'd even know we were there. How many guys would you have out in those recons? Well, would you take the whole squad? Yeah, we'd take a platoon depending upon, like if we were expecting something big, or we'd just do seven-man teams. And were you usually a point man? That's point and rear, kind of like go back and forth, you know. But when our point man went on R&R, he went to Australia, and then I ran point for a while.

What did you carry for a weapon? Did you carry a stoner? Yeah, a stoner. Except when I was with the Vietnamese, and I carried an M-60. How come you carried an M60 when you were with Vietnamese? How can you switch from a stoner to a 60? Because I just wanted something bigger. Something bigger.

Like the son, like they had their M16s, right? They didn't have stoners. When we worked with Vietnamese, they didn't have stoners. They was all they were 16s. But I just felt a lot of something big. Yeah. You know? You want that big.

Yeah, and with the two Vietnamese, there was another Vietnamese guy. There was only one, well, M60. So I made two 60s. right and that's just I don't know if it's a rule I don't know if it's a logical thinking but that's and then my buddy bill he was a radio man so working with the Vietnamese as an advisor I dug you know yeah when you were doing the first three months so you're doing ops you guys are carrying compared to what we have to carry now the modern guys with body armor and rain everybody's carrying the radio everyone's carrying body armor everyone's wearing a helmet everyone has night vision it's like even the weapons because you get your weapon but then on your weapon you put a laser and you put a scope and like it is if you put a light like everything's just you guys look like super slick compared to us we were we were quiet yeah we're a pair of Levi's a couple you know our stuff where our some guys wear the stuff on the outside but if you went around the wrong side you'd want to put your stuff on inside to keep it from getting muddy put your bandoliers on the inside, keep it clean?

You'd wear your, your, oh, your web gear? Well, we did, if you carried, if you, if you, if you did it like this, right? If you strapped them on there, you didn't really wear web gear, right? You could wear the harness, right? Just the harness. And then other guys had their vests made up. Like what you wear now, the vests. Guys would go to the parachute loft and have them created, right?

for their M-16 magazines and things like that. So you were wearing jeans, though? This is the one bullshit thing about all these guys, these Frogman SEAL team guys, right? Oh, yeah, because it was better than the BDUs and all that. Bullshit. You wear Levi's, and they're wet, and they're muddy, and they're heavy, and you get chafed,

and all that other than you try to take a shit with a pair of Levi's, you know. So why did you wear them? Because it looked cool. Combat qualified, man. You want a combat qualified pair of Levi's. So when you got home, right? It makes more sense, right?

When you got home, you walk, hello. Let me see. I like my Levi's, man. You know? That was the main reason. These are from the Delta. These are from the Delta, man. These are whatever word is on five combat ops, you know?

I mean, that's what it was about. I make a pair of jeans right now, and we call them Delta 68's. Oh, yeah. Yep. We take a pair of jeans and we call them Delta 68's in honor of you guys wearing them back in the day. That's cool. That's cool.

Yeah, so yeah, we, that's, that was why, you know, because there's nothing, nothing cooler than walking downtown San Diego or downtown Coronado with four guys that have combat qualified Levi's on. And you're going to run into some Marines. You're going to sit there and look at you like, it's just, you know, even these watches would get you in the fight with the. I was sitting at the, you know, the daylight cafe down in Coronado? No.

Oh, the day and night cafe? The day and night cafe, the little long booth? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've been there. I'm sitting there with me and me and Hyatt, right? So we're eating, and this guy comes up behind and says, oh, so you look like you're one of those little wet back frog man. So I'm like, oh, shit. It's going to be one of those nights.

It's going to be one of those nights. And Hyatt looks like it. Hey, motherfuckers. The only one would call him when wet back could be me's is not you. And I don't call. him that. I told I said, Lou, I said, be cool, man. It's all right. So when I get done here,

I says, I'm going to kick the shit out of him. He says, okay, Espy. And I just almost finished. So I finished up and I turned around. Big boy? Oh, that's a big guy. I went, hey, man, I'm going to tell you something. And so when I did that, I just went to him behind his neck and the other one

underneath his throat. Not hung on. Right, he moved. My heels were still arced on the wall, you know, like this. And I hung on, and then hi, jumps on top of the bar. Karatey, right? So, yeah, stay way out, motherfuckers. You know, and I'm just hanging on, you know,

all this kind of stuff, you know, and those guys are looking at Lou, you know, and he's like, no! Like, wrist, Lee, whatever thing, and they all like, like that, you know. So finally, the guy, they choked him out, right? They hung on and came around, I choked him out. Now I got mad.

Back hands him. my watch pops off into the street, right? Oh shit. So I kick him and my shoe goes off into the street. You secure your gear better. Hyatt just looks at me like that, you know. Come on, ask me, let's leave this joint. So we go out and I pick up my shoe and I put it on and grab my watch and put it on and this way.

So we, you always thinking, right? So we walked to the corner and we get out there and he says, let's look. So we picked around the corner and said, they coming? So not yet. He says, well, let's get out of here before that big son what bitch wakes up. He says, because I got him by surprise, you know. But that's when you grab hold, it's like grabbing hold of the tiger, right? You know that if you let loose, he's going to jack you up, you know.

So, you know. So you guys would run recon, look at a target, and then when you were going to go hit the target, what was that, what was the normal profile of a mission like that? You take sampans in, did you go in the night? Tell you, cool up. We did work for the Poo program. This is an operation, right? So explain what the Pru is.

It's a province reconnaissance units, right? So these are Vietnamese? They were Vietnamese. They were not seals. The SEAL program had its own stuff, Vietnamese SEALs. So they had Vietnamese SEALs, and then they also had the PRU, the Peru. Province Reconnaissance units, and they worked for the company, right? They had a caseworker that used.

in charge of them in senior officer, American officer, or an enlisted, right? My buddy and I relieved those guys, and he was E4, and I think I was E4, right? But we were operators, right? So how many people are in a PR you? How many Vietnamese did you have in one of those groups?

There was about 40 in the group. So there's 40 Vietnamese, and there's two of you. Two of us. Two American advisors. Right, and then the caseworker. And then an interpreter, maybe two interpreters, and out of that 40 probably about five or six of them you can count on being

Viet Cong. Did you live with them? Yeah. Lived with them on a bay, like a villa type thing. And yeah, you just stayed with them. And then what was the opt tempo like? Probably, you know, we'd go out, it depended on the, that was what was spooky about it because a lot of their intel came from them, right?

So they could set you up. they could set you the guys in the company could set you up to be hit so you had to kind of figure things out and that happened to us a couple times and we got hit and we figured out

that was two guys that were kind of when they were around things happened when they weren't around so what did you do about that? Well I told the one guy my interpreter I says

I'm still in unlock Sawah You know I'm like him I think he's a very bad man And says if you see You know And then did you see

What's happening with this guy He goes Come go to Chi He says I take care of it So we have another op The guy didn't come back So because he My interpreter

That guy was And he works with my cousin Right was Good and trustworthy And he That's it. See, some were good and trustworthy. Some have, they're there, the sacrificial responsibility, the thing that they feel from the heart was right on. And others, and others were victims.

They were in the military by being a victim. I mean, the war is going, where are they going to go? Yeah, where are they going to go? So you were about to tell about an op, like a standard op that you did with the PRU? Okay, yeah. One of our guys, SEAL Team One guy, comes up to us and says, hey, I need some gunners, right? I have two boats, probably about six guys in each boat. We're going to do a Pruop. We're going to go get these tax collectors, right? All I need you guys is to be shooters.

All right. So my officer, well, my LCPL Black Mac was with me. Me, Hyatt, Black Mac. And I don't know if McIntosh was on it or not. But so here we are in the sandpans, four sandpans, right? There, two, Black Mac, another guy, and me and Hyatt. And we're going to take the bodies. We're going to tie them up, and we're going to take the bodies.

Launch off of a PBR in Sampans. Cruise up this little river. It's nighttime? It's nighttime. Are you guys dressed like Vietnamese? Are you guys in black? No. Or are you guys just...

Well, see, that was our platoons, too, though. Some guys wear black, sometimes wear black pajamas, were Levi's. other guys would be wearing green tops So you're just, you're kind of mixing match. Always. We did a blocking force one time and the army guys says, who in the fuck you guys? You know?

Hyatt says, well, we said, we're frog man. But there's a whole, we're going to, we were going to kill a colonel in this helicopter, you know, but we didn't. I'm glad he didn't. So as I, Hyatt was sitting, hey, gun up like that. And I'm going, oh, shoot, we're all going to shoot this guy. Why? What was the colonel doing?

We got ambushed. We were doing a blocking force behind an army unit. That's the other thing, too. We'd work with some armies. So we were doing a blocking force behind an army unit. They got sniped on. So this guy and the colonel comes flying over and he throws a CS grenade out. So the CS grenade goes out and it pins his guys down. They're getting sniped at the rest of us.

And we're in our different shit, Levi, some of us, we're laying up along the bank. And the helicopter lands right outside of us, right? It lands right outside of us. So he comes walking along us, we're laying up to bank, and he walks by Hayek. He's sitting there looking at us, and Hyatt says, I guess you're the dumb motherfucker that you do that C-S grenade out. So he looks at him, and he goes,

guys, who are the fuck of you guys? I said, we're just the blocking force, you know? And so he said, well, I'll talk to you when I come back, right? So he goes over there, and these guys, they didn't medevac they got these guys out they were wounded one guy got killed

but so then he comes back out he says yeah well we'll see who you guys are you know and he says I don't give a shit who you are you said but you throw another CS grenade out of there he says I'm going to shoot your fucking helicopter

out in the air he just looks at him goes back to his helicopter and when he gets in he sticks a CS grenade out the blue sends up he's got his stoner and he goes like this and I go on all shit

so I grab mine and the other fire guys they grabbed theirs we're up there and I'm thinking he pulls the trigger that guy's going down he pulls it back in and leaves those were the guys I was with and we all yeah it could easily get out of control yeah you know but everybody did maintain all right so so back to this PRU or Pru op that you were kind of like saying was a good one to highlight yeah um The Pruh advisor, team guy, got this information, right?

He says, I just need you guys to come in and back me up. Because we had the stoners. He had, I mean, some of those guys, all they had were the carbines, right? M2 carbines. And maybe 1-16. And with those guys, with the Vietnamese seals, you might find an M-60. With the Prue's, you wouldn't. When stuff went down, he can't call any American Air Force or air support or any of that stuff.

And they don't fly support for anybody. And they were doing everything like from the bush, right? Kind of like guys that worked with the mountain yards, right? So he says, I got the Intel. He says, we're going to snatch these guys. He says, you set up security. He says, we'll throw them into boats. You guys package them and we'll get our way out of there.

We'll grab one of the, because we could use our, but if we're going on the app, he can use our boats, right? Tie the sandpans alongside of them and they can go. So here we are Espinoza and Hyatt in the back with the sandpan. You ever paddle a sandpan? No, I have not. They're like P-Rows.

Did the P-Row, like the guys in the Cajuns down in Louisiana? No, I haven't bett it one of those either. They're a bitch, man. So we're paddling. Is it like a, so it's like a canoe. I've been in a canoe before. It's like a canoe, but the sandpans are like, they're like flat bottom little thing and they go like this, and they're pretty tilty, right?

And you got to paddle him. And I thought he really knew about, well, we were both figuring out. We're sailors, right? We're a frog man. We can figure anything out. So we're paddling. And the rivers aren't very, very wide. We hit this bank and kind of going like this, and we're following these guys up.

So we're stroking trying to get up with them. So then we go into an area, and it was like, here's where the hooches were, right? The hoochers right here. Hootches are along the bank of the river. Right, along the bank of the river. So we came in, we set up support, set up security for them. He's got his prus up here. And then he's, he says, okay, it's the same four-corner security, right? Anything that comes out the walls on the two corners, you shoot them. So we're all right, you know, because that's how we did it, you know, because in a hooch, if you don't have your free-fire, you know, the two-corner, you know, the two-corner,

somebody's going to get hurt. So when anyone comes out here, you can shoot them. These guys are going to shoot, you know, the four corners. It's all right. So we're sitting down here. We've paddling in. It's supposed to be quiet. It turned out to be a John Wayne fight.

Oh, do my luck you know. Guys. So a John Wayne fight is where they know you're there? It means when they got inside the cats that were in there were fighting back. You know, because there were Vietnamese. They were the Peru guys. They weren't team guys. You know, they weren't, they weren't us.

So the prues go into the village. Go into the hooch. And they get into a gunfight? They get into a gun and fight. Fighting. Okay. So the guy comes flying out the hooch and the guy's in the corner, you know, kill him, right? And so then there's this thing going on.

And then one guy comes out on our side, running right in front of us. Black Mac, this is the very first time I ever saw this, right? had an M-70-an grenade launcher, right? And usually if you're going through the, like, dance jungle, you carry the flichette rounds, or the, you know, like canister rounds, right? Well, this was kind of going to be in an open area,

so he did an H.E. round. And this cat goes running, they popped one flare. Then in the firefight, the river goes around like this. There were some people down here in Vietnam, right? So when we had the firefight, they were getting hit over there. these guys are running out the back Black Mac shoots this guy in the back

with that grenade launcher and all I saw was two hands and two feet flying to the air and I remember going wow man wow you know how everything kind of goes slow motion

and there's noise but it seems like it's quiet you don't you know you you uh I don't know you disconnect or whatever but anyway it's all just happening and and uh

but you know you're okay right and everybody's calm about it and the guy that was running the op captured his two guys right so when we had them packaged up these guys start opening up to where we were so via Kong start engaging you guys the via kong that were a little bit off the target right they're engaging us but we need to go out over here so we grabbed the two bodies they threw them in because there was there was four guys this is the op where one of my friends said oh yeah I's He says, didn't we capture some generals? He wasn't even on the op. And it was in a Memorial Day, it was in a Memorial Day thing. He shows it to me, and going, so I called hi. And he said, was it generals who we captured? It wasn't just some VC, I think it was two VCI guys and a tax collector.

Because, yeah, that's what it was. It says, well, you see, why? I said, because the guy who told me about the story, he says, he said it was general. See, he wasn't even on the office. Stop. Because your stuff get, and not that anybody's taking credit for it, there's another opt that one guy did try to take credit from me. It's called the donk story, but.

Okay. And another. So in the meantime, how do you get, so you got it, you got to leave the area of operations and you have to go by this group of Viet Cong that are engaging you? Yeah, and they're shooting over here, right? So then we didn't know that there's other guys on this side. So they start shooting back at these guys. So we had friendlies.

Those are friendlies up there? No, they were Viet Cong too. Oh, so there's Viet Cong on both sides of you. On both sides of us. Here's the place we're going out. We have these guys here, and we're paddling out between them. So you're going to paddle out between Viet Cong on both sides.

Right. This is not good. This is not good. The one thing that was good about it, though, it was a black night. It was a dark night. So we weren't silhouetted on the river, right? For the short time that the flare went up, we saw what was going on.

We know we were going out. So we took off. But they had this thing going on, and it was like, another one of those, what the hell are we doing here, right? But by the time we got out on the river, because there was the two Vietnamese sampans, and then Black Mac and two Vietnamese, and that of the third sampan, me and Hyatt with our guys, we passed everybody. we were waiting out on the river for these guys to show up it's like I'm going to are we lost where are they at he said oh no and then the boat

because the radio was with with Mac with Black Mac so he had to call Black Mac the platoon commander or the assistant and he made chief why'd you call him Black Mac because he was a black Mac we had Black Mac and we had Pink Mac Mac Mac atash he called Pink You called Macintosh Pink Mac? Yeah, Pink Mac. And we were talking.

Ambimony, too. So I was, you know, Echo was asking about McIntosh. And he was like, you know, he goes, wait a second. So was McIntosh a black guy? And I said, I was like, no. No, he's a white guy. He's white as me. And then he asked you the same thing.

And you're like, no, he legitimately had, his mom was legitimately black. Right. Well, for me, this was news. And I knew him, like, for a long. time he had freckles his last name is macketosh he looks like a complete white dude i mean it makes the story even funny you have to concentrate on his face yeah you'll see the black features if you really start looking close i mean i knew him for a long time and hung out with him i if you would ask me i never would have said that guy's black other than the fact that you know

everyone knew he was like from the virgin islands right and that that's what was that's but i just figured he was some white guy, you know, that grew up there. If you think about it, that's the way seals are. We think we know who they are, but they're not. Yeah. Yeah, we don't know. But anyway, we got there, those two guys out, and it was a cool op. And then the guy that was running the app, he was just so happy because he'd been trying

to catch those guys for a long time. So stuff changed. It was always a dynamic. The intel was always dynamic. So something that was good today. was different I think it's kind of like symbolic

or kind of like the way the Afghans is what I'm understanding is they're moving all the time Yeah well you always have to adjust for that And it's interesting you know The fact that You know we're working with Iraqi soldiers

Or the I didn't fight in Afghanistan But guys that did work in Afghanistan Had to deal with the same stuff You know you got these You got these partner forces That you're working with Some of them are Most of them are good

And but you got four or five of those guys that are definitely suspect. You've got two or three of them that are bad. And, you know, one of my friends got shot up pretty bad by a guy that they thought was, you know, was there to go and do a mission with him. He's a special forces guy. What about the, what about the donk op?

What happened with that one? Oh, that was going on to football island, man. And me, Tick, the Vietnamese, the kid that was sitting beside me. I loved him, man. He was a guy who told me, he said, S.B., I'm off from my country, what your country has for you. He says, you know, he says, you seals, you come, and then you'll go.

I said, but I'm going to die here. I'm going to fight here. I've been fighting before you got here. This is where I'm going to die. Hell, no, tick. He says, we're going to be together. I'm going to get out. I'll become an officer and I'll come back.

And I was even going to join the Vietnamese Navy SEAL team, right? That's where I was going with it. But I needed a break, too. I wanted to get out of, you know, there's a thing where you realize that if you're not all in, you're going to get killed. And that's from my respect for the cats like you and guys that have been in for 34 years that, like Hayden, like Hayden, Chaldecas, guys, like Frisk and Croddad and, you know, those guys. sometimes there's the little break of war between after Vietnam that space

but then there's more of it but for me it was like I need to get I need to get out and I had the officer to wrestle at the University of Colorado so there was with Tick and so he says Football Island was there was a bunch of cats

there and we wanted to pull an op on it so what we did is we did three people three seals and Tick got a little sandpan went up to football island is not any wider than this the room. So like 10 feet across

12 feet? This is how big the river was or how big football island was? No, that's how big the river was. Okay. Football island is probably about three clicks wide, probably about two clicks. Three to two clicks, you know, wide and long. But we didn't have a lot of intel on it. And then during the day there was a lot of, you know,

they would move around. round right so what we wanted to do is find out how many were there so we went in at night went in with the tide sampan just the four of us went in crawled up the still river then then it narrowed to probably about that wide so like six feet six feet right but way out was the big river and that's what we came in on we came in with an LSSC right with the sandpan attached to it so they launches they cruise on up the river and then we We turned in and did our area bob. So we're in there and we're sneaking peek.

We got up there probably. When we first reached the mouth of the river, we heard just do-to-do-to-do-cum. So it was like, uh-oh. Is that them signaling? That's them signaling, right? But it was right near the bank where we were going up. So we're sons of bitches.

I mean, they're right there, right? So we stayed low, low paddle, paddling up, just kept going, went by them. probably about two minutes, three minutes up. You know, not that far up, maybe about five minutes. So then we got to where it was easy to pull in. There was like a shallow bank that we can get in, so we harbored up the boat.

And then we crawled up, picking up, like picking up and looking. Jesus, those cats were smoking, cigarettes. They had their weapons kind of stacked and talking. And then there was this thing that went like this. How many? probably about 50. That's a big group of cats. That's a big group of cats.

You know, there was, did you have a stoner? Did anyone have a 60? We all had, no, no, no. We were going, that's, so four stoners? Three stoners and, and tick with the 16.

So we could, we could have, we got a fight. Yeah. But we don't, we're not there for that. So we'd hear this, you know, just but it was like a, like a dog,

it was made like a real hollow sound. It was a little, piece of wood, little piece of wood like this, had two serpent's heads, had a hole drilled through it, and then there was a line that was cut out that would make that hollow sound. Oh, okay. This is almost like a percussion instrument. Yeah, but it had a place where your thumb would fit and when your finger would fit. I didn't know it at the time.

We just heard it. So then we get up there and we're laying. Out on the river, we hear this. Well, the boat, and we were up to just. We were just kind of hanging out for probably about 40 minutes, maybe not. We caught it just when the tide was full, and then it started running out, right? Well, the cat's out on the river hooked up on a barge, I mean on a sandbar. So the Vietnamese guys are there and they're going, and the one guy was hitting his little dunk.

He said, oh, sounds like the Americans are stuck. Yeah, and then one guy says, should we go, we should get the guys and we'll go kill him. We're just hanging out here, you know, and let's just take a break. Let's let him live tonight. And so Tick was like,

we're going to have to get out of here, right? So this one guy gets up and says, I'm going to take a leak. So he goes over with the little thing and I'm laying here and high it's laying there and he takes this thing and he puts it down. This is the percussion instrument thing. Yeah, he puts it down.

And so then Hyatt was a platoon leader, right? He's the one he's calling the op. I'm here, ticks here, and Riches over here. So I said, well, let's go. So I'm sitting there and I look, and he laid it, when he laid it down, it was like right in front of me, then he started pissing between me and Hyatt. So I'm saying, they're like this, going like this,

like you know, you can fill the, like, rain fitting on the top of your hat. I'm sitting there going, son of a bitch. So the other guy said, hey, chataisen, hoodook. You want a cigarette? Oh, yeah. So he turns around, goes back over and gives this guy a cigarette. Hi, it's this move. Man, I grabbed that thing, put it in my pocket.

We slid out. And then we're on the low, the current is starting to move out. So it was pretty cool. So we weren't like, we were going out with it. Those boats are, uh-huh. And so we get out there. And then we pass by the guy the shot. You know, it was like,

And I didn't really understand it, but then Lou, he says, I can feel the fucking bullets going into my back, man. He said, I could just feel them all the way. We just get that, it's not reality, right? There are things that, I'll get into that little bit later, but so we went out and it was so dark that when those guys were still sitting there, we pulled the boat up there and we said, hey, you know, So let's push you off.

We pushed them off the bards and then we took off. But I had that dog. I put it in my pocket. So I told this story to a buddy mine, Andy Willingham, right? Team guy. And he said, that's cool, man. And I showed him the little thing, you know, because I brought it back. And he was in class 41.

Tough guy, man. Actually, he had to tussle with the guy. I'm not going to say the guy's name, but he's East Coast guy. the real high end that ran a lot officer that is high profile and shit and we're in the trade win bar and he's starting this east coast west coast bullshit

and Andy Willingham tells him you know you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to knock you out Andy's dad used to bit money with all these guys down in south and he was a relative of Strom Thurman and he used to knock donkeys out with that 16 punch while the guy goes what

out He drinks his beer and says, I'll catch you later, and he takes off. That guy's a very famous East Coast Seal, you know, big name, high name. That's never going to be on the history books. But that's how things happen then. You know, it wasn't, you know, the guys that are high-order top-end dudes

with the big reputations and stuff like that, they're just regular guys. You're just a regular cat. 100%. We're all like that. And I think the sense of, where the media gets hold of this thing and sensationalizes everything about

you know where that we are anti-magnetic genuine and roll I mean all of that stuff right but when you're going to screw with the frog man and you're out somewhere you're not going to just have to kick the hell at one there's going to be ten guys with him you don't have to prove that you know

I mean this is where the power is at everybody knows that right and and when it goes down where's the calmness, you know? And you know the one thing is that in the

millisecond of time you're both a coward and a hero. And when shit goes down and you find yourself somewhere you go, how in the hell do I get here? When you can run as fast backwards as you can't run them forward and each one of the instances look alike,

they smell alike, but they're not alike. You know, it's a totally different thing. And each one has its own evolution is the same as a fire. It has its own character. It has its own. And what I used to say in Vietnam, it's not the thing you see that's going to kill you.

And I tell my guys on the fire department, it's not the thing you see that's going to kill you. What is? That's the thing that's sniffing around with Jocco's name on it. It's going. Where is he? And that's where the training comes in.

And if you have the training, then you have the millisecond of saying, and there's that spiritual thing that says, we're in the wrong place or don't and when I look at ops that you know like our new guys now you guys right the young guys that get killing Afghanistan racks like where was the discussion but that was pretty jacked up from the beginning but because we are who we are we give the space and time to say I wasn't there they were there that's their that's their that's their op and and however it went however it went sour whatever happened it's the thing that was sniffing for them

and they didn't see it. You know, no matter how well trained you are, sometimes it's just not there, you know. What did you do with Mac, with SOG? Did you work? Did you do SOG, any SOG operations? The MAC VSOG thing was the proofing. Okay.

So that they had, that was their. That was their. Yeah, that's their thing, yeah. Got it. And I didn't even know what it was. They just hit me and Bill over there. You go and these guys are leaving take over. like, all right, you know.

And the only reason they sent us for that is because I was with the Vietnamese seals with two East Coast guys. And I worked that. So then it was kind of like, hey, we want you to, because I could speak, I spoke better Vietnamese and I did Spanish, you know. So.

Then you just pick it up from, how to pick it up? From the appointment, from Tick and Kwan and Unlock and all the guys, all the guys that I operated with were Vietnamese seals that all the rest of the Americans operated with. So when Tick said, yeah, I'm going to be here, but you guys are going to leave us, and I'll probably die here.

All of them were killed. Locke, home, Tick, all these guys. So that's how I picked it up. There are guys that went to Vietnamese language school. They didn't send me, I spoke better Vietnamese than I did than the guys that went to Vietnamese language school because they personalized it. McIntosh could speak Tagalog.

because in Vietnam he said had the little thing on learning all the all the Tagalog phrases right and so I was invested with Tick and I was invested with the liberation of South Vietnam and I think there were a lot of I think there were a lot of Vietnamese

a lot of SEAL team guys Vietnam SEALs that that's how they felt and then after it went down I mean I talked to some guys I said well yeah I'd like to go back someday. And I had some partners and so I didn't leave a damn thing over there. There's no reason for me to ever go back there. And I think what happens is there's a romance.

There's a where you romanticize the memories. People romanticize wars. They romanticize of what it is or they think about what it is. I think those of us be there,

the nakedness of it, you know, see the, well, the deal, right, the flash of, that changes your life, that changes everybody's life. And we think sometimes that you can only see that in war, we got people in communities that, that are going through the same thing, of trying, going through post-traumatic stress in their own neighborhoods, you know? And, but what I went through is giving me language to what happened in my life, that I'm now able, through reevaluation counseling is one where I have the picture of who I am as a human being. Advanced reticular therapies, the vision thing that some guys are doing that. They gave me mental pictures of where I'm going.

And then this lady's really helped me with what's her thing. It's called rewired creator. But where I've come to the point where I'm not going to settle for that, like I said earlier, you know, my convictions and my wants need to be stronger than the alternatives that I settled for in the past that it's okay to do this you know I can't do that anymore and and I got to forgive myself for the sins of my past right that's that's a big year and when I when I was in Coronado this last time at the reunion I go there I go to Denny's bar and I have a beer with Mario Maestis I mentored him I was his wrestling coach in Colorado right bad dude and I'd wrestle

him and then be like okay you know when you're wrestling the guy and you know he's getting stronger and tougher and then you go oh shit i hang out here a little bit more he's going to beat the hell out of me that was that was him you know and um i i that that family and that relationship and what we create for each other um it's beyond just the happening it's all it's beyond just being a frogman it's there's the whole spiritual connection to those old udt guys it didn't know shit they went and they picked them can you swim yeah I remember asking one of my old World War II guys I said what did you kind of weapons you carry?

Well I sat at my crippers my swimming trunks and my flare I said what about weapons so we were just doing drop and pickup and says if you miss the boat and says you're swimming in with the fleet you know with the guys that are lying on the beaches and there's usually a marine laying around you can just take his weapon

he didn't care that was their character that was that's who we're born from, right? That's where the tad pulled a frog. You know, that and Chief Stone, man, we're living on a reputation of dead men.

They're going to sit there and say, oh, that's your reputation, right? But each one of our generations, those guys behind us, are building their own generation. They're building, they're building, where's it going to go? If it's left to the people

that operate, that tobacco Lewis and I came back I was by myself he's sitting there in the trade win bar I look at him

I come in I go shit they he's still sitting there hey ASB so I come over to him I say hey man how are you doing

so he grabs pitcher of beer and I understand they're a pretty good badass little operator take my drink right See where it is, the transition, to being called that.

And you couldn't, like now it's called SEAL operators. Nobody would ever have called themselves an operator. The only person that could call you an operator is yourself, is your teammates, the guys that were with you. And when they say that and somebody else says it to you, it never came from you. It came from the cats that were with you. And there are some cats that were never called operators.

They're Vietnam. They're SEALs, Vietnam guys. They're team guys. not at that level. At whatever level that is, and it isn't mean to put one type of operator over another operator. You know, it's just that you are. Not better than all the rest of the operators in the world,

because then it becomes the ego thing. But from here, if somebody calls you that and you almost cry, it means something, you know? And I went, you know, have my drink with him. And, you know, you have these guys that, they say that are bigger than life. And actually they're not bigger than life. They're people that know how to connect with you that are, that give you life more than anything.

You go, yeah, I can do that. I can be this. Oliver, Chief Allen, Barry Enoch, you know. No, I was fortunate, man. I walked with some good people, yeah. Did you guys, did your platoon, did you lose anybody in your deployment? Doc Maynard transferred. He rotated with the Army Corps, who was a Marine Corpsman,

so that that Marine Corpsman could get some money, right, do the shipover stuff. And he was the one that was walking by with Van Hoy. Doc Maynard and Van Hoy were walking by when they drilled out that 82 millimeter mortar and killed five seals. He just happened to be there. It's walking by. And then they'd had

I wasn't there because I was working with the Pruse, but another buddy my name, Dee, they were having a party, you know, they're changing out. I was the other thing that was crazy. But anyway, at that party because we were coming

over and they just had a party and they were and still doing a little bit more operations. And Van Hoy told D. He says, I'm going to get killed here this time. Is that what the hell is about? What are you talking about? He says, these guys are careless. They're dangerous.

Says, and I've talked to him about stuff. He says, but we're going to mess up. And they did. And he had already like three or four trips, you know. And he was one, he was a cool, Van Hoy was, he was a rock star. and you get me

was the very first time we go to Vietnam going to relieve a platoon and they grab me like this

I say hey how you doing your espion look what I think I'm shaking hands with a dead man is what

you think that's funny you know they would do those kind of things you know and so then I did it when I left yeah

So how was it coming home? Did you think you were going back to another platoon? Like, you're going to do it again? At what point did you make the decision that you're going to get out? I got the letter to Russell at the University of Colorado, which was always one of my dreams because I was raised in Boulder. And I thought, man, I'd live to Russell University of Colorado. Babes and booze in Boulder, my hometown, her bombs, bullets, and bullshit.

I kissed hiding on the lips and I said, hey, man, I'm going to catch you later. Because I wasn't ready. I wasn't right. You know, I felt that. I felt that thing that if I go back again, I might get whacked. And I needed that time away, you know. And if I had that space and I had that time and I wasn't ready, then I'm cheating. I may be the wink, link in.

You're letting down the team. In another's operation. So I'd rather not be there, right? And so. Yeah, and saying goodbye to those guys was really hard, you know. And then all the other stuff, you know, there's the people talk about some of the movements that are coming now, about gender and all that other kind of stuff.

You know, we dealt with that in the teams a long time before that, you know. We're gay guys or whatever it is, you know, the, like in community, you know, we allow for everybody to exist, not in the teams. I mean, the teams was all, but we were in California. So, I mean, all the stuff they're talking about now was already all the gay thing, the whole, all of that stuff is, so when I went to school at CU, there was a lot of people trying to surprise you about things.

The Viva La Rasa thing about how violent they are. I'm back from Vietnam. It's like, you know, wait a minute, you know. No, I did, I, Vietnam Veterans Against War, the Young Socialist Republic, the Viva, the Acelon thing, it's like, and I was raised in Boulder, right? All this stuff's going down.

I'm like, what happened? In my life, when I was a kid, felt like my days were black and white days. Vietnam was green and black. When I came home, it was all technicolor, man, all chicks, come and ask you if you want sex. You know, like, what happened? You know, there's free love and all that other.

Like, where's the moral conviction? Where's those things? It was like there weren't any. What year was it that you got out? 69. 70. I got back in Vietnam. So it's just like the height of mayhem in America.

Yeah. Yeah, that whole thing was going down. And I remember at a party, this guy was talking about the Chicano movement, right? As there was another kid there, he was from Del Nort. and I'm listening to him. This guy Falkoan was really an activist. I said, well, I don't agree with it. I think it's kind of bullshit, you know,

because I just killed a comedy from Mommy. I'm back here. I'm from Boulder, and I said, well, you're a sellout. I'm a sellout because I love my country because of what I did. And this kid, Martina, he says, yeah, he can say whatever he wants, and he back-hands him. So that's kind of a cheap thing, isn't it? So you don't like it, let's go outdoors.

It's all right. So we go outdoors. And I forgot where I was, right? So I walked out and as soon as I... Is this the other time that the outside warrior kind of got the upper hand a little bit? Well, what happened was he hit me, right? So I turned and I looked at him. And I said, you...

I've been slapped by women harder than you can. you just hit me. I says, just stand by because I'm going to kick out of these three guys first, your little girlfriends, and then you.

Oh, no, no, man. Then it was reminding me back when I was in junior high. Fight this guy, and then they go, oh, no, you're okay, you're cool. I said, bullshit. I says, you are manipulating

these young kids into what you think it is, but they're not, but they're being manipulated and it's not creative thought. I said, so, I want to tell you what? But no, I know you're cool.

I said, no, no. I'm going to go back in the party, me and Freddie. I says, you come back in there. I'm going to kick you inside there out. I says, as a matter of fact, when I go to a party, if you're there, you better leave. And if I'm there, don't come in. Later on, he got killed by threatening some old guy in New Mexico, right? So I didn't fit.

Ask my dad. Hey, man, I said, did I screw up Vietnam and all that? My dad, I love him, man. He's the guy to grab my face, you know, told me, I was, Don't be afraid, right? And my last name's the only thing I gave you. So he takes me over and he makes me stand in the school. We put tiles in the bathroom, not the stick of the kind, not this court.

I mean, so we did that, and he had me stand there. This is after Vietnam. This is when you asked him if you had screwed up. This is when I was going to school at CU. right? Because I came home and they were still there. Before my dad told me, we're moving. I said, why are you moving? We're afraid of you.

We think you're going to kill us. I see, what? What do you mean? He says, the way you are, the behavior, the way you look at us, the way you carry yourself sometime. He says, we think you could kill us. That's when I understood where the outside where I started looking and go, what the... And there's another couple other things.

I'll get to a little bit later about what happened, But he had me stand there. He says, you know, the way we are is people. He says, the man can say that they own the rivers, the mountains, the valleys, even the buildings that they built. It says the air or the sea. He says, but they don't. But I want to tell you something.

That's quartile that you're standing on. everywhere you walk Gibby that's what I know he loved him when he called me Gibby Gibby's different

than Espy you know and Gil he says everywhere you walk it's paid for by you by the blood

of yours and your friends he says and you did it for your family you did it from your heart so it's paid for us too

he says you'll never be achieved about what you did and who you are because that you own it so when I walk into a village this place right here right now

it's mine this is your these are yours but this little chair here that's mine and I didn't understand that but somebody has to tell you so that you do and my dad

fourth grade education told me in the Indian way you know and he gave me so much power when I I came back, I didn't fit. So when I wrestled, they see you, it was just wrestling. That's what I'm saying, I couldn't get it.

I had to go to five points. I went to the nationals two times. If I beat this one guy, I would have been sixth in the nation, right? But he ran. I beat a national champ that another guy who knows, but they ripped me off. And actually, when my wrestling coach talked to this guy, said, why'd that happen?

He said, I just couldn't let that Mexican kid beat this kid. Right? All right. I understood that. No big, I'm a frog man, you know. I fought from my country. You know, I, uh, I, I was just fortunately, I had a pop that told me that, you know. When I went hunting with him one time later as a man, uh, we killed an elk. I was just back. It was probably, that was later. And we were getting them up. He says, give me, says, uh, You're hunting, he says, you go up over the ridge, and says, and you're scared down an elk, and I'll kill him. I said, all right.

So I'm up there walking up on this room. My mom wasn't going to let him go. But she said, he said, what if Gibi goes with me? Well, if Gip goes with you, you can go. I said, Dad, I don't want to go. He says, you go in me? And said, all right. So he tells me this order.

You go up on top. He says, you chase down the elk and I'll kill him. And we'll be, you know, it's all right. So I'm up there hump And I'm like 47 years old I can fill my heart You know like when you're on ambush or something like that And you feel your heart beating in your head

Your neck you know I'm thinking I'm going to have a heart attack up here And mine is not coming up here And they're going to find me a bag of bones right So anyway I came down And he was driving And so I got in here I put my weapon here

You're supposed to have your weapon But where you're hunting right with you You said well you drive So I went to rock down the truck as soon as I got hold the door I heard the sound man somebody's shooting at us went right over my head

two of them and I said what's going on I said I don't know what's going on whatever's happening they're shooting at us and then I grabbed his weapon so I'm going to shoot somebody

and he goes no no no he says there's the elk it's coming this way so instinctively I drew up I was going to shoot the elk and my day and I said that's my gun and when we went my dad, I said, Dad, I don't want a gun.

He says, no, I'm just going to be with you. No, no, no, you got to have him in case you get hurt some. You got a gun. So, all right. So he locked and loaded the round for me. I shoot, clipped him like this, and I took the second shot. And then I was, I locked and load and I'm running. Next day I'm just running after this elk.

And I heard my dad as I was running. He says, I'm going to shoot him again. My dad. No, no, no. Give you, he'll fall. He'll fall. And when I got there, the elk fell. And I looked at him and the out goes, and I felt the spirit.

It was like, and I saw him die, you know. And I hadn't done anything since Vietnam, right? And, you know, like sometimes when you see those guys and they're gone, when you know that the spirit was there, but they're gone, it was like that again. Those aren't flashbacks. People go, oh, they got a flashback to Vietnam. Those are re-stimulations. You know where you're at.

You have a choice to do it. and whatever. A lot of guys bullshit themselves out. They quit on themselves. They give themselves an out of being responsible for themselves. That's how I think, right? And so I looked and I'm standing there and my dad comes up behind me. And I had my H harness with my K bar and stuff. He says, you're okay?

And I turned out. I looked at my dad and he goes, he says, you're not okay. He says, give me your knife. He says, go get the truck, the little bag that had the hatchet. and the knife and the bone saw and all the stuff. He said, what happened? So I go to the truck, I get to the truck, and I'm like, shaking like this,

and I goes, oh, man, God, you know, wait, what am I doing here? Why did I even, so we grab, I get the truck, I come back over to him. My dad comes over to him and he looks, he looks at me, gives me a hug, got me like this. Well, the knife with the blood, I'm like this going, shit.

So he says, looks at me. He says, forget that Vietnam bullshit. So I need you to help me right now. Hold the legs. So I'm holding the legs, right? Where this place where all the, it was out in like a pasture, right, where they'd cut the stuff down, right? The stubble, right?

I operated up the plate or reeds up by Cambodia, right? And that was a pretty flat place, but that's what it looked like. And I could hear, isn't it like, but I could hear them in the hearts of my mind, right? Thinking and shaking. And so then we gut him up and everything. He shoots a gun, his buddy comes down. We load him in the truck.

We take a gun, get in the truck. And my dad says, okay, he says, now we pray. Right? It keeps the liver, too, you know, an Indian way, right? So we pray and you grab my hand. He says, Heavenly Father, I thank you. I thank you that my son is with me. And I thank you that you give this elk's life to bring him home to me.

You know, I'm sitting here. Pops, man, come on, you know. So then that night, I couldn't sleep. It was in like a little tear-drop trailer, man. It was freezing in there, right? We're cold, my dad's rubbing my back. I said, Dad, I'm going to get outside. So I went outside, and I looked up at the sky.

And up in the sky, and there's two times I've seen it. One, when I did a Native American sweat with a guy that was a Vietnam vet that invited me to be part of the American Indian veterans of Colorado. His name was Wendell Irving, one of the greatest honors of my life. That was the beginning of me stepping out of all that, the oppression of Vietnam, and losing myself, losing the humanness than I was, and that piece of the young boy being revealed, right? I looked up and I went, oh, man, God, this is too much.

These hunting trips are too much. and then again in the spirit the same way those mountains spoke to me and said we'll be your friends forever right and the way that poem almost says I'm with you and that's the way to Vietnam I heard him say I heard the spirit is like

the same way that I gave that elk's life to bring you home to your father I gave my son's life to bring you back home to me it was the beginning of the spiritual thing you know I mean, I, you know, I'd accepted Christ and all that kind of stuff, but it was different

because then it was blood again, like the war, like a Vietnam blood again. The blood sacrifice of things changes things. If people knew what war was and what the blood was, like the people in Ukraine right now, they know. The Americans don't know. I mean, they'll kill guys in the, you know, the ghettos, whatever over meaningless stuff, right? Because you want your car, or you want his whale tail, right?

Right now, I am Jonah in the whale right now because I'm trying to sort things out and where am I going with this 75 years? Where am I going for the next 25 years, right? Where am I going? This is part of that challenge, this is part of it, and where does that come from? That comes from being a frog man.

That comes from not being afraid of being, cold. I hate it. I hate it more than anything, but I'm not afraid of it, right? I'm not, you know, people say I'm not afraid to die either, you know? You're not going to know until somebody's there to kill you. I mean, that's the reality of it. I'm not, I look out there and see all the MMA guys, man. They're going to go out there. The one thing that I'm, admire about all of them is going out there. They're the ones that's going to know. Not the cats sitting around outside that aren't in the arena,

that aren't in there getting their ass kicked. And then even though they are, which is the one that has enough that's going to pull them out, that isn't going to be ego that pulls them out, it's going to be their heart to pull them out. Those are the true champions. There's a guy with all the talent in the world. He can kick shit out to everybody.

But if his heart's not right, man, it's on ego. He's an angry person. And I was that angry guy one time. I sat there looking in the mirror and going, you know, the face of death was mine. Like what? And then I'm going to have kids. I can see some, the guy was with the three union,

the young seal, man. What do I do? How can I do this and still love my babies, little kids? I said, Barry Enoch did. He would sit there and hold my babies. And Barry Enoch was one of the baddest dudes in the valley and one of the nicest guy. You ever meet him?

Barry Enoch. he's a true mentor of teams of he was with Croddad you know and it's bigger so my pops gave that to me you know fourth grade you know then he when I was wrestling in high school he never my sophomore he didn't go see me and and and then one day I was dry told him I need to go to a wrestling I got to lift weights and this and that. I eat some protein. My coach wanted me to do that stuff.

My dad says, well, I don't know about that. He says, I got you a job. He says, and if you make enough money, he says, you can go to your wrestling camp. He says, now, shut up and eat your beans, right? Protein. I went, I said, well, what's my job? He says, hanging drywall. So I was 98 pounds, man, hanging drywall with grown men.

I had to get on a scaffold, I mean on a horse to get on a horse. to get on a horse to hold that up, but there was nobody that ever wrestled. It was stronger than me. And so all of that prepared me for the teams when she had hanging on the bottom ring of a helicopter in the air and on 500 feet, going through training, right, through Bud's training,

we did the drop out of the helicopter and pick up, hanging on, and it's no big deal, you know. That, how do you get there? Right? it's each of those little life things and are annoying that Chief Allen's on my ass

I was doing drop and pick up with him right they were telling you about what that is and I'm sitting there going you ever do drop and pickup? They don't do it anymore but I do it yeah yeah well there was where East Coast guys told me how do you do that stuff just sitting there just jerk you out I said well you got to be swimming backwards he said oh really and they weren't teaching them to do that

you know kick and go so he says yeah it says it's gonna look like the boat's gonna hit you but don't stay there and he'll pull you in. So I'm like this. That bullshit, you know. It's stroked out, boom, the boat goes by. Chief Allen comes back, and the neck around, he says, Espinosa, don't move.

Who yeah, Chief Allen? He takes off, comes back. I swear he's going to hit me again. So then the third time, he didn't see anything. He just turns around and comes over and he going, this is coming at me. It is really coming in. I'm a kickstroking and gliding.

He ran over me with that boat. Boom, man. My face piece was hanging. and down and stuff and then he pulls by last time he grabbed me when that boat grabbed me and I hooked up he threw me all the guys ducked as I fly from the boat's about this big huh everybody's duck and I'm flying through the air and I caught the other side you know I never ever never ever missed a pickup again so what did you do when you graduated from college then you wrestled all all your years of college yeah I wrestled all your years of college yeah I wrestled

four years of college, qualified for the nationals two times. And then it was like Brad Leach was a sheriff. And what am I going to do, right? I was going to teach school. I was doing my professional year teaching school. And this kid comes up, and I was with my mentor, my proctor. And he says, you see this kid walks out of the classroom. He says, hey, get back in class.

The kid looks at this, fuck you. I'm like, what? You know, he walks out. And I said, hey, what's the deal with that? He said, no, man, he says, you can't, I said, you can't grab his head, stuck in a locker, kicking in the ass and tell him. He says, no, no, you can't do that. They'll arrest you.

I said, well, I'm not going to be a teacher. And I graduated. And I was, what am I going to do? I didn't want to teach school. So Brad Leach, she was a sheriff. And he says, how would you like to come on to the police department? He says, and we'll start a die rescue team since you're in the teams. You can shoot and stuff and do that.

So it was like, come down and do the polygraph and give me the whole test. I did everything. Polygraphed the drug thing. I was just from CU, right? He says, you ever done any drugs? I'm going, what do you mean? You know, they gave you those pills in Vietnam, you know, that speed. And they kept us awake all night.

That was the only thing that I'd ever done. And maybe down in Mexico, a little bit of white pills, you know, just to party for the weekend. But so I thought, okay, smoking grass I did. So how do you justify it? Well, if you take a lid like this and you smoke it and you share with people, you actually only smoke about that much, maybe a quarter of a lid. Oh, other than that, did you do any more drugs? I said, oh, no.

Okay, I passed that. So then Fred Lee says, oh, yeah, he says, you're good. He says, come on, we'll get you the academy, give you a gun, and you can. This is for sheriff. Sheriff. And I went, and I said, okay. So I'd go home Sunday, go to sleep, wake up, and it was like, wait a minute. Ain't no way I could be a cop.

If I can't take crap from a 13-year-old kid, I'm going to kill you. I mean, I'd fight guys at the bar, right? But if I'm going to be stalked by somebody and you're going to pull a gun on me, I'm going to kill you. So I thought I can't do that either. So then the fire department came up. So it couldn't be a cop. Couldn't be a teacher. There was a movie called Kung Fu.

And it was grasshopper stuff. It's kind of like everybody in Boulder was kind of like, oh, the essence of life. Shoot, I've been in all kinds of lines. I could pick up on chicks, right, and talk to people. And going to, you know, in school, kind of. So it's like, what am I going to do? And so then they were having affirmative action hiring

for people of color, right? 200 people are going to hire one guy on the fire department. I didn't know about it. Ms. Martinez, who my mom was going to kick the shit out of calling me fodder, right? She calls it and says, hey, they're hiring firefighters in Boulder. They're going to hire one. He said, why don't you try it?

So I'm like, sea, air, land, and fire. Four elements of life, you know, just like the directions, north, south, eastern. I mean, it was all coming together, and I was really getting sensitized. of this, I almost became a Buddhist, you know, I was thinking about all that stuff. So I said, yeah, okay, I'll try it. So I did, and I was wrestling at CU, right? And I was running 15 miles, you know,

I was in good shape. And at that time, it was push-ups, sit-ups, and all that other kind of stuff. So I kicked everybody's butt on that, right? I had an afro, my mustache, you know, because I had a, you know, you got a little cool up there at CU, you know, It was the whole hippie-looking thing, right?

And so I do the interview and stuff, and they're like, oh, yeah, you really? It was a SEAL team, what was that? I said, well, not really much. I said, you know, you got to wear shades, wear swimming trunks, and just kind of hung out on the beach and stuff. It was red boats. Oh, okay.

Is that the Navy? I said, yeah. I didn't tell them what the team. No, you wouldn't know what the teams were, you know. I did have a jacket, had UDT on it because SEAL team didn't have a, but I had a UDT. tea patch, right? In my fire now, it's all gone. But, and when I hitchhike home from the Navy

when I... When you got out? When I got out, nobody picked me up, because I want to know what I fought for, right? Two old ladies picked me up in New Mexico. These other Mexican guys picked me up and wanted to frisk me. I had my 38 in the back and they frisked me, but I was sitting in the back, I think, I had to pull this thing out and say, okay, guys, everybody out of it. But I didn't. Then when I got, that were into Colorado. Some coyotes were stocking me. You know, I'm going to come back in Vietnam.

I'm going to get eaten by the damn coyotes. Then the guy in a tractor-trailer truck tried to run over him. He thought I was a cow. He stopped and gave me right into Colorado. So anyway, that's how I got home from the Navy. But so I said, yeah, I'll do this, took the interviews and everything. He said, well, yeah, but you got that stuff there, boy.

You know, and I'm all white-haired guys, blue-eyed, you know, from Nebraska and I'll just try it. I say, I'll just try it. I said, well, he shaves off. I mean, my hair's been cut shorter. I can shave my mustache. I'm not.

Okay. So I show up, I was drinking, you know, I was still over here. I didn't know I was going through post-traumatic stress. When you look at the behaviors now, I know I was. But, um.

And the behaviors are drinking, fighting. All of that stuff. Just the whole nine years. Racism, sexism, you know, screw the white guys and whatever. So I'm telling you about, you know, you finalize yourself as a frogman and you're pretty clean about who you are. Right. But then when you don't fit, you don't feel that you don't fit, then you start bringing all this stuff back. Right.

That's the socialization piece because that's easy to fall back into, right? So I got out of the fire department. I was like, this guy says, yeah, kid, you know where you belong? He says, we're going to get a long fine on this department, right? So I put it with that for about. Well, five months later, I was drinking, and I was already at the beginning.

I lacerated my liver, three holes in my duodenum. I got this cut here. I have one down my leg, lacerated my liver, riding a motorcycle. drinking and going back over to Denver. The one thing cool about those guys was they covered for me because I had no sick or vacation. We worked every other day for three days and we were off four days.

So if you'd have 10 days off, you had an off for a month. So 20 guys, 20 shifts were covered for me and I paid those shifts back when I got back to work, but I kept my job. So I'm going, well, it's pretty cool. Waking up at 7 o'clock in the morning, the same thing as waking up at 7 at night if you're drunk. And every other day thing, it was got to call up.

Oh shit, I'm sick. Hey, you know, I'm calling in sick. They go, oh, you're on a four day. You don't come back. I said, when do I go back? Three more days. Oh. So I'd use all my sick, my vacation.

There's times I wasn't coming to work. I mean, it was hard because it was so free. I didn't have structure. Structure. And even when I was wrestling in college, my wrestling coach, I wanted to go back to the, I want to go back to war. I'd be drunk. I smoke a cigarette in a bar.

bar and saying hey man I just want to let you know I want to leave Shelby Wilson Olympic champion he said well Gillis says if you want to quit I'll tell the team you can go son of God so I didn't quit I struggled the last

you know they struggled you know staying in college because of that quit thing I couldn't let them I couldn't let myself down to let them down because I never quit anything in my life right so

So how long did it take, like, as a firefighter, at what point did you start to kind of figure out that maybe all this drinking wasn't so good for you? Maybe that you were, had some stuff you needed to sort out. Well, finally found who it was, right? I'm on the first fire call. I go out, putting a cup of coffee down. We go out and going to call, and there's this guy. Trap like this. In a vehicle or in a building?

in a vehicle, car wreck. So I'm looking at, I'm like, what do I do? I said, here, hold the hose, kid. So we're doing an education. We'll tell you what to do. Car catches on fire, open up. I'm like, all right. So I'm sitting there watching this guy,

and they're trying to get him cut open and stuff. And I remember it had that, I'm not going to drink anymore. I'd had that, I think it's a diuretic. So anyway, I took a cup of coffee, right? First cup of coffee, man, sit there and, boom, get a call. I put it down, we take off. I'm sitting there watching this guy, and all I could think of when I was watching was,

like, man, why don't you just hurry up and fucking die? Because I know you're going to die. My coffee's getting cold, you know? That's where I was. So they cut them apart, and he died, right? So we go back, I grab my cup of coffee, take a sip, and I'm like, it's cold, and I went. Okay. what's happening?

What's happened to me? When my dad told me, he says, don't forget that you're a human being, right? And I saw this go down and I had no feelings. Nothing. It's like getting disconnected over in Vietnam, getting disconnected. This space and time,

and not discharging. Because when you're there, I wasn't discharging anymore. I wasn't crying, I wasn't laughing, I wasn't, I mean, even now sometimes some kids, they say, well, Mr. Espinole really doesn't have a sense of humor, because sometimes I don't, you know, even on the fire department, I'd look at somebody and they'd say, I think this guy's trying to kill me, you know, but, so it was like, okay, that was the thinking about it. And I became very best friends with this guy named Billy Duran.

He was an Air Force guy, right? He's a firefighter. So as I got on the fire department, they told me, you remember where you belong and this and all that kind of stuff? And then about the fifth year, I mean, four years. Because it was easy. I was drinking. I was getting paid good money.

I spent most of my money on a bar tap. I'd buy it for everybody, you know. I wasn't even taking vacations. I was just using my time and drinking and fighting and whatever. And I was not doing. not happy. It's kind of like what am I doing here? So then there was

a training fire. I was the second guy I was the third engine to go in and do this training fire. So the training fire, they set a building on fire that's going to be demoed or something like that? So they're just taking advantage of a building that's going to be demoed. What they were doing is they were doing smoke training. And in the smoke training there was a new lieutenant. So this older lieutenant was trying to

train the new... See how kind of macho man he was, see whether he could really fight fire and what kind of smoke usually he was. I was at another station. Billy Duran and this other young kid had one month on the job. Well, if you burn tires, it's a hydrocarbon.

The temperature's in this chicken coop over the period of time there was three or four other evolutions that happened in that same building. It lowered the flashpoint, right? So at one point, it ignited. Killed Bill Duran, killed the other kid.

The lieutenant. that was in charge, he suffered some burns, the lieutenant that was in charge of the engine company, 80% burns on his body. So he died. You know, he got burned up, but Billy died. And for me, it was kind of like, there was something that was going on too

because I was pretty violent. And previous, you know, when that happened, I got fed up with everything, right? and so one day knowing how I felt about not having any feelings Billy Durand getting killed all this petty ass bullshit was like for instance a black guy was walking with a girl

and I'm sitting there and they go look at that and I said look at what it's that black guy with that woman white woman what do you think about that I think about it is who's me walking out there with that woman, you'd be on the inside looking at me and saying, look at that guy, what's he doing with that white woman? You know, that's what I think about it.

You know, it doesn't mean nothing to me. And so then it was, so then I got fed up with that. So I was in a dive locker, right, because I'm doing diving, kind of trying to reorganize the dive team at my level. And one guy was talking about, he had a little booby trap cleaning up, petty-ass bullshit, you know, kind of like cleaning up. He was an officer, set me up that I didn't clean up the space and on the engineer's room.

So I went up in the officer's room. He didn't clean it up. He got on me for not cleaning up mine, so I got on him but not cleaning up his. He said, why didn't you just clean it then? I said, why didn't you just clean yours? As a matter of fact, I grabbed hold of the door, closed it, he says, what are you doing?

I said, I'm going to tell what, man, today you kicked the shit out of me or I kicked the shit out of you because I'm tired of all your white man bullshit and all of this traditional firefighter bullshit. He goes, whoa, wait, wait a minute, Gil, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean? I said, where are you from?

So I'm from Lincoln. Yeah, I said, where's your people from? Well, we're Germans. I said, were you raised here? I said, no. I said, well, I was raised here. My dad, we're from the Picris Pueblo. So I'm from, I was born in Colorado.

I said, did you ever kill a commie from mommy? It was what? I said, did you ever, you ever in the military? Did you ever have to kill a commie for mommy, man? Well, no. You know I'm not. I'm not in the military. I says, well, they don't give me this shit.

about where I belong or anything else. He said, whoa, wait a minute, God. I don't know where this is coming from. I said, me, I don't know where it's coming from. This is affirmative action bullshit that all you white guys are talking about. It says, and I'm not buying into it. I'm a frog man.

He goes, well, wait, wait, wait a minute. He says, you know, on this fire department, if they have fires, they want you with them because you're a good firefighter. Estrication now, you're good at extrication. They want you with them. they go into a bar fight they go into the bars

they want you with them because you know most of the guys anyway in Boulder, right? EMS, they know you know EMS and they can count on you on the engines. He says, but there's more to being an all-around firefighter

and you're not doing it. I said, what? Yeah, what's that? He says, coming to work on time. Coming to work, not being on suspension and not being hung over. boom man in my mind i heard my dad say give me the only thing i gave you was my my last name don't bring dishonor on it and then he says you know i said well that i don't give you shit i says i'm getting connected to go to

saudi arabia as a weapons instructor got connected to it was called brown magazine a soldier fortune magazine i already got accepted and they were going to give me 100 000 for the year but if i got killed my family didn't get it it was totally discontory connected, total, you know. And I said, that's what I'm doing, so I don't give you shit. And I was going to put my two weeks notice. There was a Friday, I was going to put my two weeks notice in and be gone. He says, well, when you do that, he says, everybody's going to be glad that you're gone.

Because your reputation sucks. So I went over to the door. I opened it up. I stepped out and I closed the door and left him in there. I went over to the dorm where the beds were, and I laid down. And I thought, shit, I can't leave here until my reputation's right. So the next day, I go to Monday, I go to the chief. So I'm going to tell you what, man.

This is I'm going to come to work on time. I'm not going to be hung over. I'm trying to max it my vacation days, my six days. That's what I'm giving you my word as a man. My word, period, not as a man. I'm giving you my word. Okay, Gil, that's cool. Everything's good.

and he actually gave me some space. One of my battalion chiefs told me, he said, Gil, and my cousin Davy, when I beat up a guy real badly, and my bat chief sits there and he says, Gil, I don't know if you need a priest, a psychiatrist, a doctor, a counselor, or what? But I don't know how to deal with you. I said, well, I'm a man, man. I'm what a real man is. I don't need anybody, and there's nothing wrong with me.

The whole world's jacked up, but I'm not. I'm right. Everybody else is, you know. So anyway, I made that commitment to him. Two shifts later, I'm in a fire. I fall in a hole. My lieutenant falls over me, and terrorists later on tore my ACL out.

But I'd give him my word, so I'd strap my knee for a month and worked like that. And so then later, later on we're doing training fire. And I jumped off the apparatus and it caught my leg just right. Ah, man. So then I went to the hospital.

And they said, oh, yeah, you tore your meniscus and your ACL's been torn for a long time. So then I had to, I had it rehab. So that was the beginning of me now becoming a firefighter that I can't leave until I get all this stuff straight. and so then the part of being revealed again when I got on that job when we moved to Boulder my dad's first job was working at fire station two

shovel in snow he was a laborer so he comes home and I said how did you do today dad I was like 10 well it was after the hunting right maybe 11 no I was younger I was like before the hunting thing so I was at the fire department what were you doing so I was working with the fire department

What'd you do? I shoveling snow off the roof. I said, oh, I said, what were the firemen doing? Well, they're in there smoking cigarettes, watching TV and drinking coffee. He says, I think I could do that job, you know? I said, yeah, he says, yes, I could do that job. I said, cool. So I became a firefighter.

My mom, when I became a firefighter, has a piece of paper. It was in a book. It's called First Latinos in Boulder County. And I have a copy of it. and in it is a thing that I wrote when I was in fourth grade or third grade. I was a shitty handwriting. So when I grow up,

I want to be a fireman. I might ring the bell. I'll wear the rubber coat, the rubber coat, the boots, and the hat, and we'll go on a fire truck real fast, and I'll ring the bell, and I might sleep in the fire station.

She gave that to me. And I went, I didn't even know it, right? So my first assignment is Station 2. I walk in there with my bunker goats about my stuff. The same station that my dad was, right? But you grew up there, a kid?

All right, I put my gear up. And I walked into the lounge and looked out the windows where I know my dad was looking in. And in here, right? I love God because God talks to your spirit, you know, those things, and it's always a good thing. It's never ever God telling you,

you fucked up or you're bad or whatever it is. It's like, hey, now you guys are on the inside. Hey, pops. I'm on the inside now. So there I was. It was a firefighter. And I did have a little bit of trouble.

I was blessed by this guy named JJ that became my lieutenant. And when I got there, he says, I heard some stuff about you. And how are we going to make this work? And I already made that commitment. I said, I'm going to tell you what. So you treat me like a man, not like an idiot or a baby or anything else. I said, we're going to get along. I said, but don't mess with me.

He said, it's agreed. And he actually was my mentor as a lieutenant. And then he became a captain. So I became a lieutenant. And then when he was a captain, battalion chief came up. He's the guy who came up and says, I think you should be the bad chief, one position. I don't know what being a bad chief. I know, but you would be the guy.

How many years was this into your career? 10, about 10 years. So you did a good turnaround. Once your first five years of kind of Oh yeah, it was bad. Being a jackass. It was horrible. Once you squared that away, then you turned around

and really got on the path of doing the right things. That commitment, right? That commitment to myself, to not let myself back for my dad, for this gun, I can't do that, you know. So yeah, it was the 10 years. And then I remember, I remember, remember when he told me to go for bat chief and I tested and then I became the bat chief then all the sabotaging beliefs come in like you're too I mean you're too small you're not smart enough

you're not all this all the bullshit that the something going oh here we go again I'm driving a fire truck I'm a bat chief I didn't realize that everybody in the county hears what the bat chief says on the air and that's a lot of pressure that's like being a incident commander right I mean you got the op and stuff all the air ops stuff all the stuff you say everybody hears everybody knows everything that you said or think about right i'm driving down the road i'm going oh my god i've got a panic attack man i pull off the side of the road and going what the hell did i what are you doing here espinosa what the fuck you doing here and so i called up this lady as part of the reevaluation council i told her what i was feeling she said okay this sounds kind of weird but she said

i want you to say this i am totally and completely incapable incapable and incapable and incompetent to be the battalion chief. I said, what? She said, yeah, say that. So I went, all right, I'm totally completely incapable and incompetent to be the battalion chief. So what do you think about that? I said, well, that's kind of, kind of, I don't know.

I said, I'm having a hard time processing that. She says, okay, she said, now say this. And so I said it again, I'm totally, completely incapable and incompetent to being the battalion chief, right? But fortunately or unfortunately, I am the very best person to be the battalion chief. So I said that.

I went, so what do you think about that? I went. Yeah. I probably am. Because it was spooky because at that time, if you became a battalion chief, you weren't in union anymore. And that's why a lot of people didn't want to leave the union. Because if you screwed up, you're gone. That is the sacrificial responsibility piece.

That's the piece that says, okay, I was going to write a book. My book was going to be called Frog Man Out of Water, right? Because that's where I was at. Now it's changed because of my fire. I was going to be Frogman out of fire because there's a whole other dimension about losing everything that you ever had in your life

what I just went through with this fire. Everything I ever had, except my kids. The greatest treasures in my life, right? And being good with them and being bad with them, being a great father with them and being a bad father. with them, being a good mentor with them, and maybe not being as good mentor as I could be. In those three spaces, my dad, he filled those spaces.

I would hope that I can fill those spaces for my kids. That's why even sharing this with you is part of me trying to write my story so that those things, these dimensions, the flavor and texture of my life, they understand who their grandpa is. This is important. That's all I have to leave them, right? what comes from your heart and what you say. When did you end up having kids? I was 33.

So, and my youngest is 40, maybe 41. So were you in the fire department when you started having kids? Yeah, I got on the fire. I met my wife. That was crazy. I was steaming, man. She's a Christian girl. I was steaming.

I was going to. I met her sister. her sister, right? And then she comes in. And it's like, I wrote a poem. It says, she glowed with the light. It was night. I didn't know why, but I cared.

And she led me softly and gently into the knowledge of love. And in May, we three will be one, right? When I asked her to marry me. Because that night, she, I'm like, wow, man, she's hot. And there was a devil fighting with an angel, man. Because the devil is telling me, don't go over there. God's telling me, go over there. I said, find my buddy Andres goes, Jesus Christ, man.

You never have any trouble talking to girls. Go over there and talk to her. So I said, hey, would you like to dance? I said, I don't dance. I said, well, why not? So I'm Christian. I'm a Catholic. I says, but I dance.

I'm not dead. She says, no, I don't. I said, so my buddy is looking at me, so you don't want to lose face. I said, well, you mind if I sit down? I don't know. Sure. So I sat down and said, Well, so it kind of went on.

So finally, she was going to live to dance with me, and that was in the days of platform shoes. So I was a lot taller than her. Matter of fact, later on, she said, I thought you were taller. I love those things. But anyway, we did dance, and then it was like, and that's what I think maybe when we talk in the spiritual sense

where God was trolling with her, because all I wanted to do is get laid. It was it, right? being in the teams the whole sexism thing, the anger thing all of those behaviors and then eventually it was like I liked what she had

I liked what I was missing and that's what I'm saying that even after you accepted Christ or you get into the Christian thing that you'll let loose of it you'll go somewhere else because the alternatives that you settled for in the past if you don't keep it in front of you it's like seals or guys that operate

but they don't keep the basic training in front of their face, and so then they get killed or they hurt somebody, or they don't pay attention to it. And that's what happens. That's the way the world is. It's the way that the world is, and if we don't take care of it, then we are like sheep led to the slaughter, man.

We're going to be taken out somewhere, you know? So doing this is part of that. The fire department saved my life because of that being able to party or whatever that was, and then the responsibility that I had as a bad chief to keep my guys alive, to change, to Atoll a captain, it has 20 years on the job, hey man, I need you to do incident commands, I need you to wear your bunker gear, I need you wear your coat,

I need you to tell me where you're going and this and that, and he's telling me, I've been doing this for 20 years, you've only been on your 10 years, and you wouldn't tell me what to do? Then the frogman stuff comes out, I go, yeah. So, well, you don't know as much as I do. I said, no, but I do know about being in combat. I know about getting shot at. I do know what the war we're fighting.

I do know the training that we need. And the other thing I know is that Chief Gustaville's wife told me a long time ago, if I get you killed, I'm in trouble. And Karen is the one that I'm worried about. And so for me to tell you to put on your bunker gear and everything else is easy. And I'll write your ass up if you don't. You wouldn't do that to me. I said, try it.

Oh, God so good, man. there's a fire alarm. Woody's a grade school, man. They go out on a fire alarm. He gets off the truck. I just follow him. Just two engine response. And then me, I rolled up,

sit on the corner, I didn't go arrive while. I didn't tell him I was responding. I just followed him. And I don't have to run on a fire alarm. So I'm waiting. I watch him get out of the truck, and he looks down the street, sees me,

gets back up in his truck, puts on his helmet, grabs his gear, throws it down, puts on his coat. puts on his stuff, he looks at me, he goes in the building. So he had 25, I think it was 2501 at that time, was engine one. I'm a rival, sprinkler alarm, third floor. So I heard that, nothing visible.

I just left. That night, and this is where I learned a lot about his example, too, was if I'm going to have this stuff going down with somebody, an officer, good officer takes that, especially an XO or something like that, to another room. not in front of the people. So he said, can I talk to you? I said, yeah.

His office, because the captain had one. He said, yeah. He says, you wouldn't have roped me up, would you? I saw you. And this is the guy, I said, yeah, wait. Okay. After that, he talked to me on the radio. Because when we were fighting fires,

he loved to see me show up because we'd gone into some fires where other people are bailing out. So he knew how I would fight. fires. And I gave him that respect. He gave me that respect. And my whole shift after a while, all the promotions were coming off my shift. Because I wanted to do what we did in the teams. I want to teach you to take my job. I want you to be better than me. If you know more than me and you're better than me when things go down, you'll see what I can't see. That's what I loved about the team. So for one of my ministers saying some stuff and then for one of my teammates

going, you fucking crazy? Why are we going to do that? Well, and it wasn't like, who has the bigger sword, right? It's like, tell me why, because of this. Yeah, it makes sense. So that's why when we look at the history of the teams, my era and your era, is that I don't know, and I'll never be able to, but that's what I want back in the teams.

That's what I want on fire departments. I want all my guys know more than me because, I mean, there was like, oh, why do we want to do hazmat? Because I brought hazmat in. Because I was the little guy on the end of the ladder, I did ice rescue way different. That's where the Gumby suits came from me

because they shoved my ass out there with bunker gear on. Well, hell no, I'm not going to do this. There's a better way. Ice diving, we also ice dove in wet suits. There's dry suits. There's stuff that we can wear, right? Swift water, right? Teach guys how to be around swift water.

because if they don't know they die. That's the thing. If you don't learn something, you die. The consequences of our mistakes, the consequences of our business being in the teams, being in fire and being a cop, right? Yeah. And so you mentioned this a couple times,

but it's a very horrible and ironic end to your fire career is that when you retired from the fire department, and you ended up losing everything in a fire. Yeah. And it's the, it's the Marshall fire, December 30th, 20. This is just, just what last year?

It'll be a year coming up. 2021. New Year's. This fire breaks out. You're retired. Yep. You're just enjoying life. Yep.

This fire breaks out in Colorado, wing gusts of 115 miles an hour. There's 6,000 acres burned, 184 184 structures either totally destroyed or

damaged 500 million worth of damage two people killed some other burn injuries and one of the things that burned

was your house how did this happen in Old Town my house was in Old Town Superior they're still looking at the causes of it but they do know

that fire happened and then the wind gusts came in like you said, at 100 miles an hour. And when the fuels are that way, it's like, you ever take like a torch when you're doing heating a pipe? Yeah. And go, that's the kind of fire it was.

It was a superheated, wind-driven fire. And so the contact, it's not only just a conflagration of one structure to the next structure, it's also the heat and fire generated by the winds, right? So did you get evacuated? You know where I was? No idea. I went and got my ex-wife because there's a Marine, a little Marine, Red Ridge.

He said, hey, I said, I'm with the bowling alley. You want to come down and watch me? And he always invites me, but I never go. He's a muffler guy. I'm going, so he says, well, I'd like to see Rose because we were. And this was just a normal night. Like you didn't know anything about a fire because this thing happened fast. Nothing.

Nothing. So just a normal night, he says you want to come watch me bowling. Bowling. Yeah. So I put on my seal trident, put on my Marine, the flight jacket with the seal triton on it. So we're going to go see the Marine, you know, put on a crappy shirt, put on my boots, left my dog, chief in a kennel, right? I put him in a kennel because he eats my stuff.

So I, that night, that day I told Rose, I'll pick you up. Usually she would come to my house, then we would go. If she'd have come to my house, her car would have been burned up. I had little jaguar that my buddy, a team guy, had sold me who was in there. I had my coat, and we took my truck. I'm in Denver at the bowling alley I get this call from the neighbor Hey Gil, yeah

you've got to reverse 911 you got to get out of Superior Did you get it? I said no Reverse 911 is going to make notification that something's coming Well I wasn't I didn't get that notification For some reason I wasn't on the callback

I said really He goes yeah Prior to that the girl that I was dating We'd broken up She called me too and said hey You know there's reverse 91 I said, yeah, I didn't know at that time. She said, well, I can go down, I'm not in town, I can go down and pick the chief up.

I said, nah, I don't want to be beholding to her, right? I'll find somebody. And so then that's when the other neighbor called me up. I said, nah, I didn't know him well enough. I'll call one of the other neighbors, guys that were in my neighborhood. They were all gone. They were up on the hill watching the fire. So then I get the call back from the first guy.

He says, Gil. He says, my buddy that was down there, he says, broke. your door down and he's got your dog. I said, broke my door down because I don't lock my doors. You know, that's that kind of the community. He says, yeah, he said, broke your door down. He says, broke my door down. He said, don't be mad. I said, I'm not mad, but he had to break my door down. He goes, yeah, because I was thinking it was evacuation, not the fire. And so then the other thing, too, then I asked the guy later on when I got him, when I picked up my dog, I said, well, did you close the door?

Because if the door is open, I always leave the upstairs open so that my dog can look out. So then what that does is it creates a draft. It creates a chimney, right? So I'm going to, oh, that doesn't sound good. So two days later, because they wouldn't let us in, two days later, I called one of my firefighters from Boulder and said, hey, says, can you get down there and check it out?

So I'll check it out, Chief. So, and I've already been retired for 10 years, right? 2012 yeah did you see it on the news yeah yeah but it wasn't showing real close-ups everything was from way back you know and that and they were saying that old town was affected but they didn't talk about the devastation because nobody was getting down there and so I'm like well whatever only easy days yesterday man can I change the temperature of the water no right that's what I mean the development of that. The revealing of who I am was that little boy. I'm going, hey, I can only take care of what I can take care of, right? And one of my friend's friends, well, actually, Rose, my ex-wife, right,

her friend said, I can't believe you're so calm about it. You know, other people, I can't believe you're so calm about it. Time and chance, man. A guy gets killed, you don't get killed. What can you do about it? You can have, you can have, feel bad about it. But you can't change it. You can have the emotion, right? When we talk about things, we tell story, and we have these, because it's emotional, right? It's emotional because it starts creating in you

that piece about who you really are. It starts opening it up for you to see yourself to say, hey, I am going somewhere good or I'm not. Well, he told me he was mad at God. Ah, God, why did God do that? I'm a Christian, I'm a bishop, and all that is. the kind of stuff. For me, it was like, why would I be mad at him?

He didn't start it, right? And he's invisible, anyway. It's invisible God. I'm having hope and invisible thing that I can't see anyway. And he's given me another house to live in. He rescued my dog, right? I mean, whatever the deal is. And so, and then the guy tells me.

So now this is the firefighter that you knew that you said, can you go check it out? Oh, no, no, the firefighter that he went and checked out. He calls me up. I said, how are things he is better than you, Chief? I said, yeah, well, it's what's left? He said, nothing. I said, nothing. I said, what I mean nothing?

He said, nothing. I said, what about walls, roof? Nothing. So I went over and I looked with my family. The asphalt shingles are usually around. They were dust. There were no two by fours in the walls. The only thing was left were gusset plates.

Things that were metal like stove. I had a wood-burning stove. the only thing was left was the top, you know, washer, dryers, all gone, everything. I looked at some pictures online, and it's just, there's nothing left but sort of the concrete foundations. Right, and then they took my foundations out. That's the other thing, man.

I felt the full force of water, right? Through the surf, right? And if you're not prepared for that, it'll jack you up. Got to see if it's sniffing for you, right? Fire. Air, you don't have that shoot on, you're going to die, right? Land to land warfare, man, it moves. It's always dynamic, the war piece, right?

All the jumping, just jumping out of boats and all the whole recovery thing. And fire, I thought I knew fire. I put out a lot of fires, they've been to a lot of fires, but that one, it was totally consuming. So when it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah being completely gone, that fire is you know and people would sit there and say well it really humbled you right

no fire the water all that that whole that whole thing the humbling piece was the generosity of people like Mama Lee for her to call me up say hey I understand you've gone through some stuff I don't even know who she is

you know and so I'd like to I always want to confirm your number I want to you don't want to help you out. And when she did, she said, you know, I said, look, man, I said, if you heard get to Colorado, I need to give you a hug. And then something I did, and that's where I ran into you, right? That fire, this other guy came up is,

a revital is the name of the organization. It's a firefighter's deal. The family, the fire family too, right? And the frog family, they set up, they set up the Navy SEAL fund for me, right? A guy Julio Fitzgibbans calls me up Hey, Sby, yeah. Do you know him? Yeah.

Hey, Svee, yeah, he says, Class 42, right? He goes, well, yeah, I said, what were your top medals? So what were your top medals? I said, Purple Heart, Navy accommodation with the V, Combat Action Ribbon. Okay, thank you, goodbye.

So what the hell's that about? So then I get a call from Dozenbach? Do you know him? Anyway, there, and so he says, This is a... I think that's Dozer. Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay, yeah.

It is Chris, Chris, Doser? Yeah, he says, yeah, he says, well, I got your name from Fitzgivins. He submitted your name into the Navy Seal Fund. I said, for what? He says, we're going to do a fundraiser for you. I'm like, what?

And he says, yeah, we'll get back with you. Hangs up. So I'm like, what the hell's going on here, you know? And then this Revital guy, named Jordan Long. He's a firefighter, right? And he was a firefighter that went through some emotional stuff. Quit being a firefighter,

but he since then started intervention for post-traumatic stress, firefighters and cops, really helping them out. And so he calls me up. So I want you to come down to this place. You have any coats? All I had was that seal coat. My best coat was burned up. All my gloves were burned up.

My best. I'm wearing the raggy, most raggedy shoes that I ever had. So I show up and I loved my gray coat, right? So he has a great coat there and the gloves is here. It says, you take these with you. I'm like, it was a warmer coat than my coat. So God gave me a coat that was warmer than the coat that got burned up, right? Give me some shoes that are nice and some gloves.

And so then this is how the world goes around, right? He says, I got this furniture, this firefighter's whatever, the brother-in-law, brother isn't getting married, but he has furniture. And if you want to go up and look at it. I said, all right, up in Dillon, up in Bailey, Colorado. So I drive up there, let's get it to do this. He's, oh, yeah, furniture upstairs, we'll go inside. This is my cousin.

He's in the garage, right? Oh, I said, nice to meet you. I said, I'm Gell Espin. No, he says, no, he says, you're Espy. I look at him and go, what? He said, you're Espy. He says, I know you. said, I know you. I said, where do you know me from? He says, you're in Seal team with my dad,

Tom Dixon. I said, bullshit. He goes, no, yeah. I knew him when he was a kid, right? So there's that Tom Dixon thing, right? Seal, I grab all my furniture, I take it back. The house that I have was referred to by a cop referred me to another guy, and they got the house that I'm renting right now. I'm with my daughter. looking around and she says, Dad, he said, look at this house. I go, yeah, it's pretty cool. It says, no, he says, but the floor pattern,

the floor layout, it's the same as Grandma and Grandpa's house in Pueblo. Two bedrooms on the side, front porch, kitchen, and a little basement. And the chief has a fenced yard. He didn't even have a fenced yard where I was at. I used to have to yell at him, you know. He has a fenced yard.

I got furniture from another team guy. I mean, you know, that knows that guy. And now I'm meeting two old guys in the park, the dog park that I go to. And I didn't really know too much about you, but this kid's name's Artem, right? He watches your stuff. He says, oh, what are you doing? He says, well, I don't know when we go down and do a podcast with this guy, Jocko. Oh, I know him.

Well, I know he knows your deal. I'm going, well, who is he? He told me about you. And he goes, yeah, he says, and there's another guy named Beckle. He's a big guy. I go, yeah, he says, yeah. So I want me bring us some shirts? He says, you better take some extra large.

I go, you don't see how the circle is, right? And there are no coincidences. You know, and that fire, I thought I was a seal. I thought, you know, there's this thing, a friend of mine, she told me, she says, I think you say that you're not a seal, you don't identify with it, but I think you do because you got a lot of seal stuff, you know. So then I started feeling insecure about that.

I thought, well, maybe she's right. But all my stuff has gone, my medals, and people have given me back. I'm consciously, I mean, I got like some coins and stuff. I kind of, I'm hesitant about getting all this stuff back because now I got to keep it, or I got to put it on the wall. I just got this thing from Frogman distillery. It's called the Art of the Spirit distillery. It's named Paul.

we tapped a cake for Mike Thornton and I was there for that one of two seals right now I got a hat you know and I got two bottles of whiskey that now it's like I don't want to get too much you know and because I'm thinking trying to

trying to build my house that's the other thing is recovering the the gap of insurance and all that kind of stuff right and I got one firefighter that's a builder it's going to help me have one guy who said I coached wrestling and he's a big builder.

He's going to help me. But where do I feel comfortable in here? Right? I feel more comfortable with the firefighter. It's going to help me. Nothing against the other guy, but how do I feel in here? And that's going by, I don't know.

That's the challenge, you know. Yeah, that's definitely a devastating story. But I'm okay with it. Yeah, and that's the amazing. thing. I was going to say, it's a devastating story for you just sitting here talking about it, like, not quite with a shoulder shrug, but like almost with a shoulder shrug of like, hey, guess

what? I got a better jacket out of the deal. And Mama Lee, I always mentioned her charity, America's mighty warriors.org. We always mentioned that. And the Navy Sealsfund. Dot org. That's another group that helps out to my buddy Drago. That's, he's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Draggo started that. And his wife, Rachel? Yep. And he's a great friend of mind and just and so anybody that wants to help out organizations that help out these are two organizations at navy seals fund.org and america's mighty warriors.org those are two awesome organizations that help out this is one case of where you know a guy that didn't even ask for it but somehow they figured it out they figured me out it tracked me down you know it's it was wonderful Well, I think that probably gets us up to date of where we are now. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

Yeah, what do you weigh now? About 155. There you go. What's that workout program that you're? Because you're 75 years old, and it looks like if you wanted to step out on our wrestling match, you give some people a run. What's up? What do you eat? It's a Rolex watch.

What do you eat? What do you eat? Just some protein? do a little bit of stuff called the super pump. That's where our supplements go. But I struggle to eat. I hate eating, man. But I eat fish and chicken.

Cool. What about them beans? Your mom was pushing down your throat. I'm done with beans. I do like going to Bob's Diner in Louisville and get myself a, that's my little fix. Wea'o's rancheros with chorizo and sometimes a bloody merry.

What about your PT program? I work out every day. What do you do? Lifting, right? Chest and tries. I do all the splits, old man splits. Chest and tries, back and by, shoulders and traps, legs, something along those lines. Legs front, legs back.

When you're 75, man, it's like, oh. Yeah, I do the front, fronts and back, you know. But I do something every day. My ankle hurts so badly that I don't do a lot of cardio. If I do cardio, it's on the stair-stepper. take it up just one minute at one, one minute at two, all the way up to 10, you know, and then back down. And then that's pretty much it. I don't know.

Like I said, I think genetics, you know, my dad was, my dad was a drywaller, man. He did that stuff until he was 81 years old. On the ladder, on stilts with a cigarette in his mouth. I'm looking, I had firefighters who wouldn't do that. You know, I'm like, are you nuts? So then I had to move him in with me. And actually, Serena went to college at Colorado State University in Pueblo, and she watched him for three years watching him do his, he's amazing, man.

He gave me all that love, I guess, you know. Yeah. Wasn't it, you know, he wasn't afraid to share himself. And I was coaching wrestling for, well, about four years ago for four years. the number one rule don't hurt the coach I get in me wrestling and tussling if they got in someone saying okay

stop stop don't hurt the coach you know and I didn't realize my shoulder was so screwed up you know and so I at some point I need a shoulder replacement at some point I need to do my ankle I'm trying to find this Navy doc if you ever gets that the VA ever helps me

do the community care to get that done but um no it's my brother five years old man had me doing stuff when I hit the team's

climbing that rope or doing that stuff is like a piece of cake you know and uh but it is it is it is it is that time that's mine

you know and I and I do and I do really look at it revealing the little boy man you know because I didn't I was living myself with the outside warrior

so much that I destroyed so many relationships that I didn't have to destroy. And understanding that I am worth loving. I am a good person. But now, where I'm at, I'm back into the nakedness again. It's going to be interesting to see where I'm going, you know, as where my life's at. And looking forward to an Oliver or Chief Allen

or my creator, right? You know, I'm not pissed at him. You know, all he's doing is saying, hey, I want you, and I'm leading you here, and keep your ears open. What's the instructor? Just pay attention, right? I used to do that with my fire, right?

Pay attention. I'd look at him sometime when this guy, Lieutenant Rosaski, comes to the chief. He said, yeah, he says, what did you do, what's his name? I said, I didn't do anything to him. What's up? He said, while I came over and says,

I think the chief hates me, he says, why is that? It's because he just looked at. me and I felt it. He says, and that comes from instructors, right? It comes from the Olivera look. It comes from Chief Allen. It comes from instructor

going, it just lives. And he said, I just told him that's your face sometimes. That's what you look like. Well, Gil, any other closing thoughts? No, I just want to thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

I go that that I'm here. was pretty apprehensive about it. I wasn't quite sure, but then it just... I'm grateful to the Creator that you're here and that we're here together. And I'm glad you made it through. And just...

I just pray a blessing on you. And echo. Well, thank you. Definitely appreciate it. Definitely, you know, blessed to be here as we all are. And just thank you. Thank you for... You know, thank you for laying that groundwork in the teams, the groundwork that you guys that we built off of, that we tried to maintain the reputation that you guys earned.

And we always did our best. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for your service in the Navy and the teams. And, of course, 30, how many years as a firefighter? 37. 37 years as a firefighter. And just that level of service, can't thank you enough. Appreciate you coming.

Thank you. Who yeah. Who yeah. And with that, Gil Espinoza has left the building. And I think makes it pretty clear that getting after it is a lifelong mission. Yes. It's a lifelong mission. And, you know, it was very interesting and awesome to hear somebody that's been doing all kinds of things, badass things,

from being a seal in Vietnam to being a firefighter to being a wrestler at a really high level. And he's 75 years old and he's like, I'm still trying to figure it out. So pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. The parts that stood out to me, which is funny, is the black mac and pink mac. Oh, yeah. And you're like, why do you call him black back? I was like, bro, I know exactly right because he's black.

Yeah. So interesting. Well, you take that. That is the assumption and it's a correct assumption to make. Oh, see in the teams, whatever, whatever like if you're a Mexican, you're going to have some kind of Mexican nickname. If you're black, not guaranteed, but most likely you're going to have some kind of something that has to do with your ethnicity. Yeah. Makes sense.

Because it's like that's just, that's just how. That's just how. Well, in Hawaii, I told you this before. In Hawaii, racial issues is not a thing, not a big deal at all. Everybody's mixed and there's so many races or whatever. So to say, oh, the Filipino guy, oh, the black guy or Popolo guy. You say Popolo guy for a black guy. Or the Haoli guy or the Japanese guy, whatever.

Like, that's not a thing. No one's like, oh, that's racial or nothing. There's no racial sensitivity in Hawaii because everybody's something. So I get. it but so I get that that kind of like commit where if that's funny that they called pink mac because he's because like I said no he's a black guy I'm telling you bro he didn't he didn't not look black you know he might have had a black mom but he didn't look black and he's from the island so he seemed like a howley guy that just you know he had kind of

freckles yeah he had soul he's a soul man but that's a thing too though if you're like if If you're hopper like that and you're half black and you just pull the white side, a lot of times you wind up with freckles. Oh, yeah, there's this guy. One of my friends from college, Gerald Lacey, white guy, holy guy, half black. His older brother's like dark skin. He's like a white dude. He didn't talk like white. He's from Crenshaw.

But to look at him, you're like, and he had freckles. They call him, I think, my dad used always say this. Call us red bone when you're a real, real light skin black person. Red bone For hell, bro so like Also, okay, it's for the black thing

and white thing So my brother Jade's nickname When he was young was Snake, right? And there's a guy in the teams That you know I don't want to

I think he's still in So I don't say his name But his name is Snake too Because he has a Lisp And he's a twin too by the way But so when we moved here So Jeremy, My friend Jeremy

He'd always tease Jade Call him snake Because that's his little nickname from you know When you're a little Keep him To tease him So when we moved here, we met Snake.

He's a white guy. Blonde hair, blue eye, dude. But there's Jade, who's black, half black. Then there's Snake who's white. So Jade was Black Snake. This guy was White Snake. Same exact thing. So I understood exactly what I was.

This guy's black, Mac. This guy's pink. That's another level. It's kind of funny. So I dug it. I mean, I understood. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like I was surprised me.

He's like, oh, he's black. I was like, okay. Yeah. Okay, obviously. But it could have also been like some random story about, you know, oh, we called him Black Mac because he, you know, he got gunpowder on the blah, blah, blah, you know, just whatever. But it's a good nickname.

So I figured we had to get to the bottom of that one. There you go. But anyways, what an awesome opportunity to hear from a guy that's been through all kinds of stuff and is still out there trying to learn. So staying active. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, he's like saying, oh, yeah, my shoulder.

like jam but when you look at a 75 years old when you look at me like bro this guy's like he looks what do you how old is how old does he look if he said he was sick if he said it was 55 I wouldn't be like oh yeah I'd be okay cool you're 55 you know you look like you're aging a little bit yeah yeah look like you've looked like you've been rowed pretty hard but at 55 you're still doing pretty good no I would but he's like no I'm 75 I would look at his body and be like oh you're 55 dang you're still getting after it like yeah yeah for sure obviously you know That's literally what he looks like.

Yeah. Impressive. Hey, it pays, man. Stay active. You know, stay in the game. Probably that's got to have something to do with you staying humble. You know what I'm saying? You're not like taking it for granted.

Yeah. Yeah, you know when mentally you stay in the game. And who is one of the, I think this guy, Tom, he's a wrestler. He trains here. He's, anyway, he said something really important where he was like, yeah, my dad. He would like, he said there was something along the lines of, don't give yourself like the excuse of age to start going less hard or whatever. Hey, look, if you can't go hard, you can't go hard.

Like if you're trying to lift your max or whatever and you can't get it, then okay, you can't get it. But don't be like, hey, you know, I'm 70 now or probably a lot of time it starts younger. So, hey, I'm 40 now. So I'm going to, instead of getting this hard set of 10 with, you know, 100 pounds or whatever, dumbbells. Is I'm saying? I'm going to do like 80s. See what I'm saying? Just because I'm getting older now,

kind of a thing. And look, I'm not saying go crazy and be dangerous. I'm not saying that, but that mindset of like, hey, I'm going to cut myself some slack because I'm getting older

just in general is not that good of an idea where it seems like he wasn't. You know, Gil, like didn't do that. No slack. He's like, he's like 75.

He's like, you know, I'm really looking forward to like, you know, really developing and, you know, like my, Most people 75, bro, that's like,

they're done training. You're kind of done. Yeah, bro. But, yeah, so you can just tell by that, that he has that mindset, you know, and it shows. Right on. Awesome. Well, speaking of staying in the game,

got to stay in the game. Get yourself some jocco fuel to stay in the game. Get yourself some joint warfare. That's the thing that's going to keep you in the game. Well, let me rephrase that. That's the thing that's going to knock you out of the game is when the joints break down. When the joints break down, we break down.

The machine breaks down. It's true. So you got to be careful that one. Jockfuel.com. You can get it there. You can get it at Wawa. You can get vitamin shop. You get everything at vitamin shop.

You can get it to military commissaries. Hanifords dash stores up in Maryland, Wake Fern and ShopRite, Circle K in Florida, H.E.B. In Tejas. Murphy's down in the southeast and Meyer in the Midwest. That's where you can get this fuel. For you, that's good for you.

That's the key component. So there you go. Also, you know, wrestling. He was coaching wrestling for four years. That's going to keep you in the game. Jiu Jitsu is going to keep you in the game. So you should train Jiu Jitsu. When you train Jiu Jitsu, you're going to need some gear to train Jiu Jitsu.

And you're going to need a G. Rashgards, Shorts, OriginUSA.com. OriginUSA.com. Go there, get whatever you need. Get hunt gear. Get jeans. We got to talk about the Delta 68. The funny thing.

See, here's the thing. He was like, we didn't wear those because they were, he said there's no operational purpose. And I was like, oh, just to be cool. He's like, it wasn't even to be cool there. It was to be cool back in America. Right. Now, I'm going to say this.

I'm going to make this statement. If they would have had Delta 68's that we make, they would have preferred to wear those 100%. because they're light. They got a little bit of stretch. Fetigues don't stretch. Yeah. Like fatigue, jungle camis,

they don't stretch at all. Delta 68's got that little bit of, give you a little leeway. It's not even a little. It's all the leeway that you need to move. You want to do a squat, you can do it. You want to do a front kick.

You can do it. So the Delta 68's re-engineered. Yeah. If we could get time travel, we go back in time and just drop off, seal team one, seal team two. They're out there into Delta.

Give him some Delta 68's. Here you go, boys. Yep. So let freedom ride. Wait, so just to clarify, and this is one of the cooler things that I've heard, too. One of many, small, but very cool. So he was saying you wear them in combat just so they're almost like got their street cred when you come back. Where it's like these jeans are the ones that I wore.

It's not like you can wear your helmet or your night vision goggles them just saying, you know, and be like, yeah, these are the ones that are probably why you're going to wear that, but jeans, you can't. Have you seen pictures with guys that are carrying, like, flags, like rolled up on their gear? They'll carry, like, an American flag, like on their gear, like a full American flag. It's the same kind of thing. It's like, hey, this has been on ops with me. Right. You know, I have the little American flag on my body armor.

That's like my favorite flag, you know, little American flag that went out on ops with me. That's what it did. So let me ask you this. And this is maybe I'm out of touch. But, so you know how they would wear jeans, right? Can't is that even possible now? Could you ever go on like a? Totally.

Oh, for real? Yeah. You wear Delta 68's all day. Oh, damn. Like on a real, yeah, world op mission, whatever?

Damn, okay. I mean, sometimes you wear civilian clothes on missions. I've done it, you know? Yeah. Low visibility operations.

Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And if you really, I mean, if you really wanted to, you could wear them in the seal teams

you can get away with a lot. Now, look, if you're in Ramadi and you start mixing match in uniforms in 2006 and somebody sees you and you don't look like a American, that's not a good call. You want to look like an American soldier or Marine, 100%.

I understand. So, yeah, there you go. All that stuff, Origin USA, made in America from the dirt to the shirt. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Get it. True.

Also, jaco's store. Jocco's store. Go to jocco store.com. Dislink, Inc. Shirts, hats, hoodies, some new stuff got shirt locker which is a new shirt every month a lot of people like this one

for real they really like this one you know a little bit different designs but you get a new shirt every month so yeah you can subscribe on there too for that as well jocco store.com subscribe to that subscribe to the podcast subscribe to the jaco underground getting ready to record a couple

of those right now give some people some backside information about the world answer questions so jaco underground dot com if you want to get involved with We got the YouTube channels. We got Psychological Warfare. Flipside canvas Dakota Meyer. I've written a bunch of books.

Hey, the beginning today I read from by water beneath the walls. I was just at the SEAL Team One reunion. I'm with guys. I'm with plank owners, meaning I'm with guys at the SEAL Team One reunion that were the first guys. They were there when SEAL Team 1 started. They were there. And these Vietnam guys were, we were talking about this book. And guys were like, oh, there's so much information.

that I didn't even know. People that started SEAL Team 1 were like, I learned. So Ben Milligan, buy water beneath the walls. Get it. It's just an unbelievable book. And then, of course, Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. That's another book about war. Get you some insight into human nature.

And then, of course, I've written a bunch of books. So you can get some of those books as well. Ashland Front, Leadership Consultancy. We solved problems through leadership. So if you want to help your company, your business, your team, go to Eshalemfront.com. If you want to come to one of our live events, check out the events that we have. Also, we have the Academy where we teach leadership online. We got online recorded courses.

We do live training on their extreme ownership.com. If you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help out their families, Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got that charity organization. You heard about what it did for Gil today. So get involved in that at America's mighty warriors.org. And then, of course, we have Drago's organization, which is navy seals fund.org. And then heroes and horses.

Dot org. So those are some good charities if you want to help the people that help us. And also, if you want to hang out with Echo and I on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook. Twitter's reignited. There's lots of people jumping on Twitter right now. Some people are leaving. I don't know what's happening. I've been there.

I'm still there. We'll see where it goes. But no matter where you are on the social media world, watch out for that algorithm because it'll sneak up and grab you by the trote. And you're not going to like that. So that's that. One more thank you to Gil Espinoza for joining us today.

Thank you, Gil, for your life of service to the Navy. to the teams and to the fire department. We all thank you for that. And thanks to all the firefighters out there. All the firefighters out there on call, keeping us safe, ready to sacrifice your safety, ready to sacrifice your life for us and our families. Thank you to all the firefighters out there.

And the same goes to our EMTs, paramedics. And of course, police, law enforcement, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders, thank you for keeping us safe. on the home front and by with certainty. Thank you to the folks in military uniform who go out, protect freedom and liberty around the world. We are eternally grateful for the protection

that you provide us and to everyone else out there. Like Gil learned during basic seal training all those years ago, you can't change the water temperature of the ocean. it's going to be what it's going to be so don't complain don't whine don't grumble instead just go and get after it and until next time this zecho and jocco out