Jocko Podcast - 398: Storming into Conflict Zones and Protecting People. W/ Former Navy Seal, Ephraim Mattos.

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Ephraim Mattos is the founder of Stronghold Rescue & Relief, a non-profit organization that protects and cares for families in conflict zones.He is a former Navy SEAL, and the author of “City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul”.You can support Stronghold’s mission at www.strongholdrescue.org .Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 398 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willinkin. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Waiting for Isis to come popping out of the threshold, I leveled my rifle and watched the doorway as David prepared a grenade from across the courtyard. He waved it to signify he was ready, and I nodded. He crept around the corner of the hut toward the door. My finger on the trigger, I aim no more than a foot away from David as he tossed a grenade into the room and darted back around the corner. I ducked behind cover and counted out loud 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, boom.

David was already rushing toward the smoking doorway as I turned the corner and hurried to get behind him. He put his rifle on automatic and sprayed the room with lead. Jam, he yelled with his rifle momentarily disabled. He ducked out of the way. Batter up. I had practiced this scenario a hundred times in the military. As soon as David was clear of the doorway, I was unlawful. already shooting my own rifle in.

I walked in an arc directly in front of the doorway, being sure to shoot into the room at every possible angle. Reloading, I stepped back and slammed the fresh magazine into my rifle. David rushed into the room and I hooked left. I followed in and went right. As we entered an Iraqi soldier rushed up and grabbed a BKC light machine gun that was laying on the floor. Entering the house's tiny kitchen, I quickly scanned for threats, Kill count clear. There were no shoot targets. Open door. I moved to the doorway toward the dirt floor that lay across the threshold. Tunnel. I cleared the room and fired into the tunnel now at my feet, then took further stock of the room around me. Isis sleeping pads and gear. IEDs, homemade grenades, and other explosive components littered the floor. Screw this. It seemed like everything in the room was designed to kill me. They're all in that tunnel.

and there's no way I'm going down there. David, of course, thought otherwise. We need to clear that tunnel while we still have the initiative. Handing his rifle to Shaheen, David drew his pistol and hopped down into the tunnel. I shook my head in disbelief. I had read about the guys in Vietnam called Tunnel Rats who would go into Viet Cong and NVA tunnels.

I explicitly remember thinking those guys were the balliest guys on the planet and that I wanted nothing to do with it. But I took my medical bag off, Left it with Shaheen and followed David into the blackness. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called City of Death by Ephraim Mattis. Ephraim served in the SEAL teams. And when he got done with the SEAL teams, he joined the humanitarian group called Free Burma Rangers,

where he fought in the Battle of Missouil. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experience. his lessons learned, what he's doing now with stronghold rescue, and everything that he's got going on. Ephraim, thanks for coming down, man, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Good to be here. I apologize that this took so long.

I dug up, I'm holding a letter in my hand that you wrote to me in 2018. A nice, cool letter basically saying, hey, I've got this book coming out. I've been doing a bunch of stuff. I'm still doing a bunch of stuff. It'd be cool if I could come and share with you and let people know what I'm doing. people know what I'm doing and the letter and the book went into a pile with a bunch of other books and letters that I get and finally got it uncovered.

Andy Stumpf hooked us up. So there we go. I apologize for it taking so long, but I'm glad you're here now. And I know that you're kind of just getting warmed up. You're still doing a ton of stuff. So this story still needs to get out there, especially about what you're doing now. So thanks for coming, man. Yeah, thanks. And no worries, no worries. That's all good.

It's like it's only been five years. It's no big deal. It's all good. You're busy, man. I don't think I've been busier than you. All right. So, um, I guess we can just start at the beginning. So with this book, you kind of talk about a little bit of where you came from and stuff. Yeah, we'll get, we'll get to it. I'm going to go to the book. So the book, again, the book is called City of Death. It came out in 2018 or 2019? 2018. 2018. It's been out for a while. Let me jump into this. Going to the book, my name is Ephraim. Like my own, like my brother and only sibling, Zebulon, am I saying that right? Zebulin. Zebulin. I'm going to get that one wrong over and over there. Zebulin. My name was taken from the Old Testament. We grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, part of a middle class family in middle America. We couldn't afford frivolous things. And occasionally there were hard times, but we were always had a loving, happy family. Our neighborhood was safe. And I spent my, much of my days riding my bike, building forts, and playing until dark.

My father, Lonnie Mattos, is a kind, gentle man. I can't recall any moment in my childhood where he lost his temper or yelled at anyone in our family, even when his small real estate business bankrupted the family in 2008 after the financial collapse. My father didn't complain or ask for a handout. He simply got back to work and eventually dug himself out. Dad also loves his country while working a blue-collar job at Milwaukee, Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport for most of my childhood.

He also served in the local Air Force Reserve Unit, the 440th, airlift wing as a flight engineer on the massive C-130 Hercules cargo airplane, the workhorse of the U.S. military. After 9-11 in the evasion of Iraq in 2003, dad along with the rest of the 440th, answered the call and went to the war. He flew dozens of combat sorties over Iraq, carrying troops, supplies, and evacuating the wounded. My mother, Bernice Maddos, is a terrific homemaker, and during dad's multiple deployment, she doubled down her efforts and put all of her energy into her two boys on top of her domestic responsibilities. Mom took a job at our school as a full-time secretary, earning less than half the pay just to support the family. While I was growing up, mom was a devout Baptist, and you have devout italicized.

So it's like, I guess that means real devout. Yeah, yeah. As a result, my childhood centered around a small, independent, fundamental Baptist church in Milwaukee. We attended church services Sunday mornings and evenings. There was a Wednesday night service. And on Saturday mornings, instead of playing ball with the neighborhood kids, Zebulin and I worked in the inner city outreach ministry. And if that wasn't enough, even the school we attended was run by the church. There were usually no more than 75 students enrolled kindergarten through grade 12.

That's a small group. Very small. church practices were notoriously strict, governing most aspects of daily life. Movie theaters were forbidden, and so was music with drum beats. This is the first time I've ever heard of that. Yeah, true story.

All music with drum beats, which is, what does that leave you with? Classical music, I guess? Pretty much just Christian music and classical music, yeah. Okay. I guess is bluegrass, some bluegrass? What if something doesn't have drums in it? What if it's a Metallica song without drums?

Metallica song without drums, that's going to be a no-go. it's really a no-go so even though they said no drum beats you weren't able to find some waivers around that I listened to a lot of classical music actually growing up and some stuff like that yeah you know here's a self-admission

I think when people would say like well don't you like classical music and I think part of me my ego would think that that would sound smart to be like well yes of course I like classical music but then I thought to myself I'm really lying because I don't like it So at a certain point, people would say,

well, what about classical music? Do you like classical music? No, it's boring. So I recognize now that it's not, but you just have to listen to it a little bit more. Since there's no drum beats, it makes it kind of hard to follow for knucklehead like me. But so here we go.

Although the restrictions were a bit severe, this is the only life I knew. Alas, the two great influence of my youth were the church, my mom, and the military, my dad. Mom and dad mix the two worlds together very well, And this unique mixture made me who I am today. A fighter who has no problem going to toe to to with ISIS or the Taliban, but also a humanitarian who cringes at the very thought of hurting someone innocent. So this is your life growing up.

So you didn't have an Instagram page. You didn't have social media. You weren't going to school dances and chasing girls or anything like this. No, that was no, absolutely not. There was Facebook was around a little bit. so we were able to use Facebook a little bit. But then sometimes they would get mad at us for having Facebook, but then some people at church would have Facebook.

And, you know, it was all a bit odd. In the end, I think, I think actually, I'm actually very grateful for how I grew up. I think it's actually really good. I don't know if I would call it sheltered. I mean, to an extent, I was definitely sheltered, but I think it was actually really good. I needed that discipline. And as I got older, I realized, wow, it's actually really good that had that discipline growing up.

and it kept me probably from a lot of trouble and a lot of things I might have gotten into. But you're also going into the inner city to work with like community outreach programs. Yeah, absolutely. So that's got to be an eye opener as well. Yeah, absolutely. So every weekend, we would go to the particular area that I worked in was the heavily African-American part of Milwaukee. And that's where I would go into. So I would go into the houses and we would meet the kids.

It was like it was an outreach for kids primarily, bringing them to church. and you know and so yeah so I got to experience and see like a totally different side of life I got to see what it was like for people who didn't have what I had and I got to see I was exposed to to all of that and so I got to see like hey there's a there's a not not everyone has it like you have it and there's a lot of you know reasons for for that and so I was I was I was grew up I grew up not sheltered thinking like my way was the only way or like living on a commune it wasn't like that at all it was it was very much hey this is

how we live, but we're also a part of this world. We're also a part of everything else that's going on around us, and it's our job to try to help in what ways we can. And that was primarily religious, but as I've got older, I translated that more into. When the financial crisis hit, did you guys lose your house? Yeah, so we actually, at the time, we owned, my parents owned two places. When the financial crash hit, we lost the house that we were living in and had to move back into our, into our first home and then bankruptcy and all that stuff. So it was, yeah, it was definitely a rough time. And I didn't understand it at the time. I didn't understand any of that stuff. And like I said, my dad is just my hero. He's just the greatest guy ever. He, yeah, he just

put his head down and was like, all right, cool. I'm going to go, I'm going to go work. And he works for Coca-Cola. And he's been working there for, yeah, basically since 2008. And, and, yeah, and he just works his butt off and he's just, he's just the best human. And, yeah. So you were raised in this church And then I have a little note in the book here. It says, but. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit. And you say, I began to question everything. And again, there's, you're, you explain a lot of this stuff.

But this is, um, you know, this is like post 9-11. You're kind of wondering how is this happening. Uh, so you say, I began to question everything. What's the deal with music? What about movie theaters? And I realized that, although well intentioned, the adults in my life had applied their interpretations of the Bible as if it were biblical, as if they were biblical law. But now I understood God gave each of us the ability to interpret his word and I could navigate a course accordingly.

From then on, when a preacher or a school teacher told me something, I took it with a healthy dose of skepticism. So you had a little bit of rebel going through your heart. Yeah, I think in one of the chapters in the book, I think I call it, I respectfully disagree. And that was, that was ultimately what my attitude was. I, for me, it wasn't about, I didn't want to like sort of, you know, break the chains that bound me and go do crazy stuff. And that wasn't my intention at all. I looked at it and I just said, like, that's, that's not correct. Or that's a little bit odd.

And so, you know what, I think in the future, I'm not going to, not going to, you know, go down this path in particular. But at no point, I don't remember as a kid at no point did I get like angry or bitter or, you know, again, like rebellious. That wasn't my intention at all. I was like, I was like, there's a lot of really good things here, but there's also a lot where I'm like, dude, this isn't, this isn't how, how life is supposed to go, or at least not for me as I get older. Yeah. And in the meantime, you see Black Hawk down the movie. Yeah, yeah, of course. And band of brothers the series. Band of brother the series. Now you start doing research on the internet. Yeah. You start researching the green berets. You start researching, you know, the PJs and force recon. And then you get to research. to the SEAL teams. You start researching them. You write that it seems like it would have been impossible. Like you didn't think you could make it.

Because what sports were you playing? So we actually played mostly basketball growing up. Because we had a small school. So basketball, you know, five, five men team is the best option that you have. So it was actually good. I still got to play. Athletics still got to be physically active and whatnot. The issue, it just seemed impossible to me because a lot of the water stuff.

And I could doggie paddle. You know, I could, you know, find my way around a pool for a minute before I drowned, right? Same as most people. But when I looked at it, I looked at all these different units and I thought, you know, I could do that. I could put a rock on. I could walk. I could do all these different things.

But then when I, every time I would look at the seal thing, I'd go, how, I just kind of put it out of my mind. I was like, oh, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. But then I thought about it and I realized what kind of, what kind of soldier would I be? What kind of Ranger would I be? What kind of Green Beret would I be if I was just walking away from the, the, the, the, the challenge of being a seal. You know what I mean?

Like if I'm going into those units because I'm like, oh, it's too hard to do something else. I'm like, then I'm probably not going to do well in those units either way because it has nothing to do with the physical ability has everything to do with the mindset.

And I was like, well, okay, I'm going to learn how to swim now. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to become a really good swimmer. And so one day I just sat there and I decided, so my attitude, I was trying to, I was explaining this to a team guy,

buddy in mine and he was just sitting there laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I told them, I was like, look, when I went to Buds and I did all that, I honestly didn't think I was going to make it. I had no intention of quitting. I didn't think I was going to quit, but I was like, they're probably going to kick me out for something. And again, I wasn't, you know, I'll poo-poo.

I was like, I'm going to give it my best. I'm going to do everything I possibly can to succeed. But I was like, they're probably going to kick me out because I'm like, who am I? This is a strange attitude. It's very strange. But I was like, I'm not going to give up. I'm like, they're going to have to drag me out of there, but I'm going to go for it. Because I was like, I'm not going to live the rest of my life regretting and not have,

And regretting having not tried. And I was like, this is what I know I want to do. I want to be this. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But they're going to have to kick me out. I'm not going to leave on my own. So when I went in, I was kind of almost relaxed because I was like, you know, running down the beach.

Like at some point, they're going to pull me out of the line and be like, you're out, you know. But they, you know, they never did. And I just kept going. And I was like, oh, okay. How did you, how did you train? Like, what were you doing to get ready? So I had very little background in, like, actually, like, working out, properly. So I didn't fully understand how to work out properly. So I got one of Stu Smith's,

you know, was it 12 weeks to buds prep or whatever. And so I would follow that relatively close. I did lots of swimming, lots of running. I was all of my PST scores and everything were, were like barely passing, you know, like I was not by no means was I a stud. And I talk about that later on the book too. Like it was that was like always a struggle for me because I just didn't know how to get faster or stronger. I did no idea because that wasn't a part of my culture going up. I had no idea. We would just like play basketball, you know. Um, so So that's what I did and I joined. How, what year was this?

What year did you join? I joined the Navy technically in 2010. Yeah, right after high school. Bro, I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw this out there, man. I talk about the fact that we didn't know about working out, meaning me and my buddies, and this was like in the 90s. There was like no internet, there was nothing. Oh man.

So for you in 2010, you should have Googled like how to get in shape. Yeah, well I did and that's why I got Stu Smith's book and I was like reading it. I was trying to, I was trying to do it. But yeah, the struggle. The struggle was definitely real, no doubt. And then how did your parents feel about it? I mean, your dad must have been good and your mom. Was she good with it?

She eventually was good with it. The thing was, so I grew up in that school. And so in 10th grade, I, during that year, I sort of like had this coming out of the closet moment where I was like, hey, you know what, I'm actually not going to go be a pastor or something. I'm actually, I want to be a seal. And there was a little bit of kickback, not like crazy persecution. I'm not going to, you know, exaggerate it. But it was like, everyone was like definitely not happy with my mom. mom thought I was going to go off the deep end.

So all the ladies at church were praying for me. Like the prayer group was like praying for me because they were like, oh, he's a good kid. And like, why is he going off the deep end? And I then decided in 10th grade, I was like, I'm not going back to school. And I'm not going back to the school in 11th grade. I'm not going to do it. I was like because I was like, I want to go in a different direction with my life.

My parents refused to let me go to a public school. So I had to homeschool myself. So they didn't, they weren't able to like tutor me. So I spent my 11th grade year. And that's because they were working? Yeah, they were working. but then also too I was dealing with like 11th grade you know level level stuff and being able to you know prep for different standardized tests and things like that so they just they just didn't have the

ability to to mentor me on that so basically I had 11th grade I taught myself algebra I had to teach I like read books and figure out all the stuff using this online curriculum and whatnot trying to figure out how all the stuff worked and so 11th grade I had to put myself through basically I was my own teacher for a year I worked at McDonald's third shift 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. And then I would leave I would leave there and my grand plan to learn how to swim was to become a lifeguard at the YMCA Because I was like well that's going to force me to learn and so ironically it actually worked so I joined the lifeguard class and I just Everything they told me to do I was like okay. Okay. I just was like I'm going to keep swimming just keep trying keeps trying They eventually figured it out and became a good swimmer and after that I was able to leave McDonald's and and

and continued teaching myself algebra and everything else from books. And then was able to make it through my 11th grade year, was finally working at the YMCA as a lifeguard. And then my senior year of high school, my parents let me go to a public school. Because they saw I wasn't off doing drugs. I wasn't off going crazy. I was working toward a specific goal

and what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be a seal. And so they eventually let me go to a public school. So my senior year, thank God, I was able to go to a public school. It was actually a really positive experience. and then, yeah, a few months later, went off to the Navy.

So you got one part in the book where you haven't left your religious school yet, and there's, if I remember this right, they're basically having church, you're at church, and the pastor's up there saying, like, he's like saying, we don't need any more. We need more pastors, we don't need Navy seals, and everyone's kind of looking at you.

Yes, that was a chapel. Your 10-year-old kid or whatever, or 10th grade kid. Yeah, yeah. That was one of the experiences. Yeah. I like totally got called out again because there's only 75 kids and it was in school chapel. So to be fair, it wasn't church with all the adults. It was just like all the, it was all the like 75 plus students. They're just looking at you with scorn. Everybody like looked at me. Evil are you. So you went to public school. You didn't get dragged off by like, you know, some girl that was, you know, little Mary Jane that was like, I really, you're so cute. You didn't get to go down that path and get sucked into that? No, I absolutely did not. I was like, I was like, I was. I was very much focused on what I wanted to do. And I was still trying to show my parents like, hey, I'm not trying to rebel against everything I've been taught. And I agree with a lot of it, you know, at that time.

And I was like, I want to behave myself. I'm not trying to go be crazy. I'm trying to be disciplined. I'm trying to, at the time, my thought was to actually be an officer. So I was like, I want to go to the Naval Academy. That was my original idea. And thank God I didn't do that. But, but yeah, so like that was my thought process.

I was like, no, I'm trying to stay on the straight and narrow because I've got a goal. I'm trying to reach it. So at what point did you decide you weren't going to go to the Naval Academy? I think at some point during my senior year, I actually spoke with the Naval Academy recruiter. And he looked at my grades and we looked at everything. And he said you have a pretty good shot. It's like obviously nothing's guaranteed. I get a pretty good shot.

You're in top 10% of your class. You're taking these classes and all this stuff. Your extracurricular is like, you're a pretty good shot. I said, okay, that's cool. But the more I thought about it, the more I looked at it, I kind of looked at the wars going on. And I was like, these wars are going to wind down and I want to get some. So I was like, I'd rather, I was like, you know what, I just want to go to Buzz. I just want to get this over with.

I want to go do this. I want to go do the job. I don't want to go to school right now for four years. And I love school. I actually personally enjoy school. I love reading. I love figuring things out. I love education.

And so for me, I thought, you know what? I'm going to go, I'm going to go being listed. And later on, I looked at there was the different programs. I was like, listen, if I stay in the Navy, there's the different, you know, Seaman Admiral program at the time. And so I can go do that later if I, if I really want to. Yeah. But you end up enlisting.

I ended up in listing. I was still 17 at the time. So both my parents had to go in and sign for me. And at that point, they were totally cool with it. They both fully supported it. They all thought it was great. They saw what it was doing. And yeah, so I listed, and then a couple months later graduated from high school.

And then a couple months later went off to boot camp. I heard a stat recently that the graduation rate from Bud's under 20 years old is less than 5%. Really? Yeah. Wow. So. I can see that. It's yeah, all those guys that are like you, like me.

I was the same way. And Jason Gardner. There's a bunch of guys, but it's rare because you don't have the mental, I guess, maturity and fortitude hasn't been fully developed. So a lot of people when they're that young, they just, they just quit. Just that's what happens. Yeah. So what years that you take off? 2010, late 2010, go off to the, go off to the Navy.

And how's boot camp? Boot camp was weird. So again, I was, uh, I was, uh, You know, very, um, uh, to an extent, like I hadn't, I hadn't intermingled with, with other guys really from, from the world. And so now I'm here, I'm, I'm thrown into this, you know, cesspool of like, there's like 105 guys in our, in our boot camp division. Um, and so all these different guys from totally different backgrounds, like totally different concepts of like, right and wrong and morality. And I'm just like, I'm hearing. I didn't, I didn't know what dip was.

I didn't know what dip was. So guys were like, oh, man, I just wanted to chew. And guys kept on doing the little flick thing with everything. Like, oh, man, I need a dip. And I need to chew. I'm like, what are you guys talking about? You know, so that was, that was interesting, you know, meeting all those guys. And it was actually, it was, in the end, it was actually, I have fond memories of it. It was, it was very interesting. But, yeah, so that was, that was, that was, that was boot camp. It was, again, just very strange to intermingle with, with guys.

I just had no, nothing in common with, except for the fact that we were American and we wanted to be seals. Yeah. Because out of the 105 guys in my division, 100 of us were going specifically for the SEAL program. Oh, so this is back when they had a program. The 800 division. Exactly. Where you got to be with all people that were going for some kind of special program. Yes.

100 guys for seals, five guys for Navy diver. A hundred guys for seals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check. Yeah.

How many of them even made it past like the first screening or the screening test to go to Buds? I would say, so we had Buds prep after that. So after after boot camp, which is two months, then we had two months of Buds prep. Bud's probably. All you do is workout. And I would say, yeah, I would say probably 90% of the guys, like, we're, we're, I'm just kind of pulling that number out of the hat, but I think probably 90% of the guys qualified to go out to Buds and actually go to go to go do it. So it was actually, it was actually pretty good because again, they're not trying to weed us out at that point. You had some, you know,

you know how it is like, just some of like the weirdos. You're like, dude, what are you doing here, man? Like, why are you here? But they would, you know, kind of get weeded out a little bit. But then by time you go to Buds, like everyone's fit and everybody's, you know, able to meet the standards. So now it just comes down to the mind game. Everyone who shows up during the time that I was there, everyone had the physical ability to do it, everybody. What's your first impressions when you get in buds?

So, well, actually, I'll back up just a little bit. So my, I'd never met a seal before. I'd never, seen one in real life. So, like, when I was going through, when I was in the delayed entry program in the Navy, they had, like, dive motivators who would, like, who would work with us and train us. the closest thing they had to a seal

was a guy who had made it to I think Tuesday of week three in Buds and had quit. That was the closest thing they had to a seal to like help prepare us for buds. And so like for example, his advice was always, he sat me down one day and I remember and he was like, all right, all right, Mattos. When you quit, this is what's going to happen.

He said, sat there and went through this whole process and explaining me this whole process of what was going to happen to me when I quit. And I was like, okay, man, like I don't know why you're telling me this. Like, all right. Anyway, so I'd never seen a seal. So when I went to boot camp, because we had the 800 division, there were a few seals who were assigned to put us through workouts a few days a week and things like that. So I remember sitting there and this guy walked in and we were just sitting there doing administrative paperwork and this guy walks in.

And I'm like, I was like, oh, that's a seal. It's like, I just know. It's like I know that's a seal. He's all tatted up and like in good shape and such. And I was like, I just knew it. And sure enough, he ended up being one of our instructors. Fast forward, 2014, he's my squad leader in Afghanistan. Oh, right on.

Yeah, so it was really, really good. That was my first impression of SEAL. So when I got to, when I got to Buds, we did Buds Prep. Oh, not Buds Prep, pre-Bud's. No, is that Buds Prep or Pre-Buds? Is it Indoc? Is it in-Doc now? Probably Indoc.

Once you get to San Diego, it's probably Indoc. Because prep is what you did in Chicago. That's right, that's right. But they didn't call it in-doc. I think they called it like buds something. I don't remember. Basic orientation? Basic Buds orientation.

Okay. That's right. That's right. That's what they called it then. So yeah, we did three weeks of basic buds orientation. And my thought process, 90% of the time I was like, okay, you know, this isn't that big of a deal. We're still kind of waiting for buds to really hit us in the face. But my first impression, for example, when we did the, when we did the boats was, dear God, I'm not going to make it.

I was like, this is so bad. I was like, I don't know, like, how anybody has the physical ability to. to carry these things. So we did our first boats on heads and that's something when people talk about steel training they don't fully it's it's such a unique soul-crushing spine-crushing experience that literally spine-crushing yes and it's so weird you're like how do you explain to somebody like no no it's like we got these boats on our heads and they're like how bad can that be and you're like no it's it's awful it's like put a 40-pound ruck covered in sand on top of your head and go run six miles with it in the soft sand

that's what it's like right and this boat is like you know this thing is bouncing in your head raw so we did that if you tried to design something to be just shitty and uncomfortable. You couldn't come up with a better thing. I think so. I think honestly, the most uncomfortable thing I've ever had to do in my life was just boats on heads. Just carry that boat on your head.

Yeah. But so we did our first evolution with that. He was just crushing me. This boat was just crushing me. And I was like, dude, and I uniquely was like having a very, very hard time with it.

And I was like, dude, I'm like, what is happening right here? What is happening right now? Long story short, what I ended up finding out was one of the guys in our boat crew he was a petty officer

so he had actually been to Buds before and he had quit but he was now back for his second attempt at Buds and he was boat ducking and that was my first experience with boat ducking and I didn't know and he was very good at being able to do it so he was like hiding it somehow and so all this extra weight as soon as he got as soon as we rotated teams and that guy

was out I was like oh okay now I can carry my weight like it still sucks I can carry my weight like this isn't so bad but I realized I was like that dude was ducking boat and he wasn't carrying his weight so like I'm carrying extra weight for him and that's and that's why it was crushing me And then that was like my first lesson of like, oh, okay, teamwork, got it. Like, yeah, like that guy, that guy's neck carrying, his weight, and everyone else is suffering. And I was like, I'm not going to be that guy.

It's the way it goes. Yeah. So I'm going to fast forward a little bit in the book here. You get to after your 19th birthday, you go into Hell Week. And for Hell Week, you got you've got VGE, which is a thing. It's not a thing. I don't think it's a thing anywhere else in the world, like a thing that you would talk about in normal conversations. Yeah.

They call it Vege in Buds. VGE. What is it? You got it here, viral gastroenteritis. Basically, your gut is a disaster during this thing. And you had it. What? Before Hellweek, you had it? Yeah, so I got it Friday before Hell Week. So Hell Week starts on a Sunday. So Friday, right at the end of training for that day, you have Saturday off and then you go into Hell Week on Sunday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening. So right after training on Friday, I was like, oh, man, I was like, I'm not feeling good. So I went to my room and I started vomiting and a diarrhea and all that. And I was like, oh no, I've got the VEG. And I know VEG lasts about five days. It's like, this is going to be in your system. You just got to suck it up.

And so what I actually did was I like went and got a hotel room. And I just basically, I couldn't keep it. You can't eat any food. You can't keep any fluids down. Honestly, I should have gone to see the doctor. I don't know why I didn't. Probably because I was in buds. And I was like doctors with a plague because you might get booed from training.

And I was like, that's not going to happen. So, yeah, I went and sat in a hotel room and just just vomited. and had diarrhea all weekend, all day, all night, until there was just dry heaving and, you know, there's nothing else in my system, which ultimately ended up being okay. So then I show up to buds on Sunday reported for work, and I'm still sick as a dog.

And then they put us in a room where you sit there for about anywhere from 8 to 12 hours waiting for a hell week to start, and you just sit in this room. And I started feeling a little better. I was like, okay, this isn't so bad. I was drinking some gatorade. I was like, okay, not so bad. I had a couple pieces of pizza.

I was like, all right, I'm getting some calories in. As soon as HAL week started, literally the second, I step out of the tent when they start the machine gun fire and everything, you have to run and hit the surf. I didn't even make it to, I didn't make it three steps into Hague and I vomited all over myself. All the Red Gatorade, all of that. To this day, I don't drink Red Gatorade. I can't stand it.

So I vomit this stuff all over me as I'm running into the water. I'm like, oh, no, this is not good. And so then I vomit before we get to the water. And then we're on the grinder, you know, crawling around, doing pushups and, and, and, all that stuff is they're spraying us with hoses. And I'm just a continuing, I'm continually projectile vomiting. I probably vomit on myself a dozen times within that first hour. And all my fluids are gone.

And I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I'm like 45 minutes into this thing and I'm already smoked. My one saving grace was that VG is highly contagious. So there was a bunch of other guys who were also sick. And so because of that, no matter what boat crew you ended up in, there was another guy who had VG. And some of these guys, they were on their first day of it.

So they're crapping themselves. And so you have guys with diarrhea running down their pants, guys vomiting on themselves. The instructors straight up do not care. They would just, no, seriously, they were like, all right, go get in the water, go clean yourself off in the ocean. That's what they would do. And we'd be getting surf tortured and there'd be guys you'd look over and there's a guy just, you know, diarrhea just coming out of his butt, standing up in the surf and then that water's like

washing coming down towards you. Yeah, guys were getting sick. The only was horrible, but they just didn't care, you know? And it was like, hey man, this is the real deal. like you put up or shut up, now's the time. And so then Hell Week started and I was, you know, sick as a dog. I think I couldn't keep any food down for Monday and Tuesday of Hell Week. I became completely emaciated.

The one thing I think that kept me going, though, was because I think my body was just absorbing water. My skin was absorbing the water because you're always wet. So my body was getting hydration and electrolytes, I think literally from the salt water. And I don't know if that's scientifically accurate or not, but something. We're going with it. We're going with it. Yeah, science. Yeah, so they ended up making it through and surviving.

Yeah, you say this going to the book here. At some point in the middle of the night, I reached my breaking point mentally. My vomiting had been reduced to constant dry heave unless the instructors gave us water, which I puked up within minutes. The pain in my back had worsened in my left hip locked up. My muscles felt like they were tearing as they tried to protect the injured areas. And this was only a few hours into Hell Week. I still had five more days to go.

And then it came, lying in the oily, filthy San Diego Bay, I began to feel sorry for myself. We were doing rocking chairs, an exercise where you lock arms with the students next to you. Roll under your back in shallow water until your toes touch the submerged ground behind your head and then roll back over. Coming back up, salt water and sand rush up your nostrils,

burning like nothing else. And that's just one rep. It was too much. And with the instructors busy, on the far end of the line harassing some other student I stopped even attempting to do the rocking chairs which were nearly impossible with my injured back I stared at the black night sky shaking my head as my body sent overwhelming signals to my brain that it couldn't possibly endure five more days I scrolled through the reasons not to quit your country needs you and what will dad think but nothing worked the pain

was blinding then a strange thing happened in the midst of my misery At the darkest moment of my life, I had a vision. It was as clear as anything I've ever seen. A Vietnam-era U.S. Army helicopter flying low between two jungle mountains with a lone soldier standing on its edge. I couldn't see his face because it was looking toward the battle he was about to get dropped into. He was the only person in the aircraft besides the pilots. And as my mental camera panned around the side of the helicopter, I saw the man's face clearly. It was me, alone with a rifle, about to plunge into some God-forsaken jungle.

to complete some kind of mission to this day I have no idea why I saw it except that it mentally fortified me as I lay freezing in the water sick and injured I suddenly felt that I was meant to pass this test quitting never crossed my mind again my previous determination to continue training until I fell unconscious resumed and from that moment I was at war the instructors were my enemy and I would push forward no matter the cost five days later I was still standing as the instructors raised the American flag and shouted hell week is secured as soon as the words escape their lips several students fell to the beach unconscious and had to be dragged off in stretchers I hadn't been the only one sick with Vege and the hand hanging on for dear life

some wept some cheered I just stared in disbelief so there you go yeah dude you had the freaking vision that you were Rambo yeah no that's that's I was like I look back at that and I go like what was that like what was I what was I what was I what was what was my brain was in such distress I had no idea what was going on I have no what he was going on in that moment but it was it was yeah it was just 15 second 10 second even just image visualization of something of what my future could be or whatever I don't know and I was like no this like this is what you're supposed to be man you don't you're not going to quit and it was yeah very strange very very strange

Yeah. So you end up getting rolled for your back injury. Yeah, I did get rolled. How long do you roll for? Four months. Four months. So two classes? Two classes.

Yeah. And then you get into second phase. Yep. Everything cool in second phase? Yeah, everything goes well in second phase. Past pool comp on the first attempt somehow, made it through. So that was good. Not too many people do that.

No, no. They actually broke. So when they do the whammy knot, the final nod that you're not supposed to be able to get on. Somehow I got it undone. and so when they hit me again to tie the knot in my hoses, they tied it so hard that they actually snapped it. They broke the hoses. And so they went through all the emergency procedures

to have me crawl out of the pool. And so I thought I'd failed because they were going, they only do those emergency procedures to crawl out of the pool instead of go straight up if you failed your test. So I crawl out and I'm like, all right, cool. I failed. I still got three more attempts. And I stand up.

And then the instructors are kind of like laughing at me actually. They're like, how do you think you did? And I was like, I don't know. I know I messed up one thing. But they were like, they hold up the hose and it's just completely snapped in half. And they were like, Maddos, 20 minutes, pass. And I was like, oh, thank God. All right.

And then third phase, all good? Yeah, third phase. Third phase, no issues. Yeah, made it through. Definitely. I mean, it's as the, as the instructors put it, you know, third phase is medieval when you get out to the island. But once you, yeah, once you get through that, yeah, then it's smooth sailing into smooth sailing into SQT.

And SQT, this is, you're probably getting trained by, what is this now, 2011? Late 2011, early 2012. So you've got a bunch of veterans, a bunch of guys that have been Iraq and Afghanistan and stuff. Absolutely. So all of our instructors, I'm very fortunate, the time that I went through, everyone was, yeah, everyone was a veteran, everyone had combat experience. Everyone could tell us real world applications of, hey, man, like, I've done this before, listen to me. And there was also this certain level of intensity there. And again, I only have my one experience with the teams and going through training.

But there was a certain level of intensity there because they knew and that the guys that they were training were going to be their new guys on the next deployment. When they were done with their training cycle, the dudes who they're putting through training are going to be with them going through the door on their next deployment. And so there was a sense of, I don't know, a sense of urgency. There wasn't a ton of, there's a little. A little bit of a little bit of cocaine and joking around, but I mean, it was, it was, it was like, it was very, very serious. I remember it was very, very deadly serious because we were going to, we were going to be working together in the near future. I mean, that's the way it goes. Like, you, if you're an instructor at Buds, you literally get done with your instructor tour and you're going right to a team and you're with X number of guys that you just put through training that you either allowed to get through training or you supported getting through training, but they're going to be there. Yeah.

And you're going to be working with them. So that's a good way to keep those guys honest for sure. Yeah. And then you end up going to Team One? Yeah, did Team One. Did two pumps at Team One. So in 2014, so this is also another reason why it's really good that I didn't do the officer route because I did one of the last West Coast deployments to Afghanistan in 2014. And so when we were there, we didn't even do a full six-month deployment.

We did like a three-month deployment or like four-month deployment because the position that we were at, the outposts that we were at was literally getting shut down. So I left a couple weeks before they shut down the outpost because I had to go to the Middle East, a different country in the Middle East, because to backfill some guys who had to go into Iraq because there was this new terror group called ISIS and we're like, what's ISIS at 2014? I had no idea was going on. But anyway, so when my platoon left Afghanistan, they literally just got in helicopters in the middle of the night and just left the Afghan allies and just had to get out of there because their mission was just to shut down the base. And so it was right at the end of the war.

And I think, you know, obviously within a matter of weeks, no doubt the Tallinn took that position. Yeah. You say this in your book, and I wanted to call this out because I think it's pretty cool, just from a being humble perspective. You say, seals are expected to be excellent everything they do, but on a physical level, this was a constant struggle for me. On two separate occasions, I failed to climb a double-length caving ladder during pre-deployment training. Once while hiking a jungle mountain with a foreign partner force, both my legs cramped due to my inadequate fitness and my knees were completely locked out. I was ordered to give my ruck to a junior seal who carried it the last few hundred meters to the top.

To say this was the most humiliating moment of my life would be an understatement. And yeah. And then you go on to say, but I never let my team or country down and heat a battle. And because of that, I can sleep peacefully at night. So you're pretty humble to just throw this. to the book that you had to have someone carry your gear for you. Yeah.

And just so you know, you're not the first and you're not the last that has had, you know, had their M60 or their Mark 48 taken away from them or, you know, giving up their radio or their rock or their med pack. That stuff happens, man. Like guys go down from heat or whatever. And so you weren't the first. You won't be the last. You might be the first that openly admits it in a book.

So good on you, man. Yeah. Well, I think the most important thing. is, you know, you know, later on in the book and even in life today, it's like, I make mistakes all the time. I'm not perfect. And I think there's, I want to always try to avoid trying to sit there and pretend like I'm some perfect person because I know there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast and listen to other podcasts and who look at what I do and they go, man, like, it's, it's inspiring. They're trying to learn. They're trying to be better. And so when you always

present yourself as you always present your best perfect self, like, oh, I'm perfect. I'm, you know, I never make any mistakes. Like, I need to be the role model. Well, in reality, you know, nobody's Superman, right? So if you can present yourself as a role model or you can explain the challenges that you've been through as a human, everyone else is having those same experiences. Like, they're failing, whether it's in their marriage or their business or their work or whatever it is. Like, they're failing and they want to be better or they've made mistakes and they want to be better. And so I just felt as important to be honest about this and say, like, yeah, I've messed stuff up.

And you want to know what we keep going either way and you improve and you get better. better. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm Superman because Lord knows I'm not. Yeah. Well, that's the opening chapter of the first book that I wrote is talking about being in a blue on blue and I'm the guy in charge and it's freaking, it's an awful nightmare. And, you know, it's interesting. That chapter wasn't in the book. And I used to, it was, I retired before you came in, which is a little crazy, but I retired in 2010, right? But in when I came home from that deployment, in 2006, I would brief all the teams on what happened during this blue-on-blue and how to prevent it from happening and what mistakes I made and all that stuff. And that was part of when a team

would start their work-up. I would give them a whole like combat leadership brief. And that would be one of the sections of the brief was like, hey, we had a blue-on-blue with my guys, here's what happened. And as we were right in extreme ownership, Laif was like, hey, you should put a chapter in about that because that was a huge impact to guys. going through training to know that, oh, this could happen, it happened to you and it could happen to them. And so when I got done writing that chapter, I was like, hey, yeah, I wrote the chapter. And I'm like, I think it's the lead chapter in the book and probably the name of the book, too.

So throwing that, you know, admission. And I mean, look, this is what happens. Like you said, no one's perfect. Like combat is freaking crazy. And the crazier it gets, the more opportunity there is for you to do dumb mistakes and have things happen that you didn't expect. and things that you look back and go, I should have done something different.

But the hope is I can explain that to you and you can go, oh, this happened to Jocko. Here's how he stopped it. So let's make an adjustment. All things that are important. You, you're a new guy, and you guys, you know, you're getting some gun fights. You have some, you talk in the book about Afghan,

one of your Afghan soldiers gets wounded. Yeah. You've got actually there's one part where you guys are basically I think you get into a gun fight and then you go into You back off a little bit and you're kind of setting up a You set up a perimeter and you're sort of expecting you're hearing probably radio reports that the enemy is going to attack Yeah, and so you're in a perimeter and for those of you that don't know what that means you're basically in a in a position where you've got 360 degree security You've got guns pointed in all directions you try and get in a good piece of terrain and that That's kind of where you're at.

You're hearing reports that the enemy is going to attack. And then I'm going to go to the book here. It says movement. 50 meters away at the tree line jutting out to the open field. The unmistakable bobbing of heads caught my eye. That was fast. Looks like they're here. Should I shoot?

No, wait until you see a weapon. The bobbing heads were moving swiftly. I placed my finger on the trigger and gently pressed. Come on. Let me see your hands. The heads made their way the final few feet to the edge of the tree line. The crosshairs from my weapon's scope waited for the fighters. to emerge. Adrenaline coursed through my veins while I tried to slow my breathing. Aim center

mass. My finger tightened on the trigger as the two little forms came out from the tree line and sprinted toward me. What the hell? Are those girls? One was maybe eight years old, the other one no more than six. My scope filled with their faces. Tears streamed down their cheeks as they ran toward me. Both were wearing pink backpacks, IEDs, suicide vests. And this is earlier in the story, there's a backpack that is an IED that was found. And these girls are wearing the same type of backpack. I leveled the crosshair on the oldest girl's face and began screaming and waving my left arm at them. If they got much closer, I would have no choice.

Go away. Get out of here. My voice screeched with desperation as they ran at me. Stop. Ten more feet and I was going to kill them both. If they detonated their bombs in our lines, they'd certainly kill me in my entire fire team and more seals would die trying to evacuate our bodies. I kept screaming my finger on the trigger and scope leveled at the first girl's face, but they kept coming. My heart broke in half.

Exhaling, I began pressing the trigger when the girl suddenly stopped. I'll never forget the look she gave me. Shock and horror. She knew I was going to kill her. I held the trigger and pleaded one more time. Run. Get away. This time she got the message and grabbing the other crying girl by the hand.

She turned and they both ran back toward the Taliban lines. no Taliban attack ever materialized. The little girls were the attack, reduced to such by a culture that felt no shame in sacrificing them to slaughter, ultimately using them as propaganda to recruit more terrorists than to feed the Western media a narrative about baby-killing Navy SEALs.

I fumed as I watched them, their pink backpacks bouncing as they ran back to their caretakers. I thought back to my childhood when I had been taught that you could harbor hatred and murder in your heart, even if you weren't acting on it. In my head, I was certainly committing cold-blooded murder. I wanted Taliban heads to roll, and for the first time in my life, I understood what it was to truly hate.

I began to deeply hate the Taliban. I hated them for what they did to those little girls. I hated them for putting me in a situation where I had ultimately chosen to kill those little girls if only they had taken another step. Several months later After more close calls and violent firefights I returned home The world around me was the same

But I had changed I was a seal and violence was part of the job And that part didn't bother me in the slightest But my encounter with the little girls Had flipped a switch in me Unlocking a hatred for the enemy That continued to well up That's a

As you described like That's an act in your head That you committed. I don't know if that makes sense. But as I read it, I was like, oh, you are 100% ready to kill these girls and thinking that you're about to have to do this. And by the grace of God, they stop and turn and run away.

But this left an impact on you. Yeah. I, you know, this was, I don't know if I mentioned it, but this was, this was my second mission ever. We'd been in a mission a couple days prior to that. That was my first combat operation. This is my second time in combat ever. We were setting up the perimeter because one of the Afghan allies had been shot.

We were setting up an HLZ to call in Helos to get the wounded guy out. And yeah, I... What was your job in the platoon? I was just a 46 gunner at that point. Yeah, I could get some. Yeah, I was just chilling. God bless the machine gunners. Yeah, at the time.

And then I ended up becoming the radio man again. But for those first few operations, I was just carrying a machine gun, which was great. And so, you know, I'd seen, you know, movies and whatever about, you know, suicide bombers and this and that and the other thing. And as you alluded to earlier that day, right before we got into this gunfight, we had seen an IED on the side of the road in a girl's backpack. The dog sat on it,

meaning like, yeah, there's explosives in there. We blew it in place. And this is why the Taliban attacked us because they knew exactly where we were after that bomb went off. And so then these little girls come running at me and they're wearing the same exact kind of backpack. Now,

I don't know for sure that there were suicide vests, but I have to, I have to treat it like a threat now. And, yeah, this left a huge impact on me because, you know, I'm, I'm looking for Taliban in my head. I'm like looking for some, you know, some dude with an AK for me to shoot. And all of a sudden now in my head, I'm fully committed. I remember I was physically squeezing the trigger like halfway waiting to put that last

little bit of pressure in. And I was like, I'm going to kill these little girls. I'm going to kill them. And literally had they gone any closer? I was like, I have no choice. And so, yeah, this left a huge impact on me. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe that.

I knew in my head, I knew conceptually that evil existed. I knew in my head conceptually that bad guys would send, would do these kinds of things. But just to see it in person for the first time was, yeah, left quite the impact on me. And that's a big reason why I do what I do now. We'll get to it later. But I started stronghold rescue and relief. It's because I realized, man, these civilians are caught in the middle of these wars. And they have no one to protect them.

They have no one to help them, and they don't know what to do. They don't know which direction to run, and it gets them caught in bad, bad situations. Yeah, and one of the underlying themes in the book, you say here, I didn't realize it at the time, but humans are not capable of handling hatred. It's an infectious crippling disease, spreading from person to person, bringing unknowable amounts of violence and death. It's a selfish and cruelty that causes all forms of evil which plagues our world. So and it's like this now you have this sort of plague of hatred that's welling up in you And again

I'm touching on points of the book get the book so you can read all the details of this I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here you say about a year after returning from Afghanistan I lost consciousness during a dive training exercise in San Diego Bay when my equipment malfunctioned I nearly drowned My teammates some of whom had the same equipment route functioned But regain consciousness saved my life I woke up to a fellow seal doing chest compressions on me after having been unconscious for about five minutes. During the ride to the hospital, I was extremely confused. And although I had gone unconscious underwater from hypoxia, I thought I had suffered an AGE, arterial gas embolism, which can cause brain damage, heart failure, and even death.

As I lay there essentially paralyzed from having had convulsions while drowning, it seemed to me there was a 50-50 chance I was going to die. But the truth was I didn't care. I had no fight in me to stay alive because life meant nothing to me. I spent two nights in the hospital and was then driven home by a buddy in my platoon. I spent days alone in silence trying to get my lungs to work properly. This was the lowest time in my life. And the idea of suicide crossed my mind more than once. What was the accident?

Would you guys have bad Soda Sorb or something? So we were testing out a new rig. And so what happened was the actually wasn't Sotasorb. This is crazy. We had these brand new diving rigs. And so for the listener, the way that these diving rigs, works is you have 100% oxygen put into the system. You breathe 100% oxygen and then you have a chemical that scrubs out the carbon dioxide and other things that you exhale. And then that way

only oxygen gets put back in your system. So we got these new bottles, brand new bottles. And we were trying out these new rigs. The problem was the bottles had only had ambient air in them. The brand new O2 bottles had not been purged of the ambient air. So they had like, I don't know, 2% ambient air. And then they had been jammed with O2. So when we did our pre-dive checks, when we did everything, Nobody had symptoms because there wasn't enough, there wasn't enough bad air in the system to have any, have any kinds of issues. And so what happened was, is during the dive, the, the, the, basically, everybody started getting hypoxia.

The guys with the bad bottle started getting hypoxia without realizing it, but you only felt it at depth or like, you, it was like less sphere at depth. And so when we came to the surface, the, everything expanded and then the, everybody had basically shallow water blackout. So as I came to the surface at about, at about the last thing I remember was at, I checked my dive. I checked my depth gauge. I think it was nine feet. It was nine feet was where I was at.

I looked up, saw the bubbles, making sure I wasn't going faster than the bubbles as I was ascending. The next thing, there's a guy, there's a seal doing, doing chest compressions on me. And what had happened was I passed out underwater. My dive buddy saved me. We also were carrying extra gear and like these like propellers and stuff on our legs because we were trying. testing out this new equipment. And so, like, I totally would have just sank to the bottom. So he grabbed me, you know, inflated my vest, got a bunch of guys together.

There was three, there was, at that point, there was two other guys who went unconscious as well as soon as they hit the surface. But I slipped back under at some point, drowned and bit my tongue, craft myself. And actually, I read the official report from the OIC, the officer in charge of the scene. He was one of the guys who was diving as well. And he was watching the whole thing. He wrote in his report, something along the lines of, I looked at Matos, I saw that he was dead, so I decided to move on to other guys who I could actually save and could help because the guys were

working on me. It was totally blue and white, and so they thought I was dead. They were just kept on doing compressions on me, and I woke up, thank God, was paralyzed, had no idea was going on, and then ended up, yeah, getting basically medevac out to one of the hospitals. It's about a few days there. Yeah. Check.

So you are not feeling good at this juncture. You meet with a psychologist. You know, you're talking about what you're doing with your life. You pretty much wanted to go back to war. And again, you provide a lot of details in this that people should get the book for. But ultimately, you decide you need to leave. the Navy. Like you just not going to do this anymore. You start doing research to figure out what you should be doing and you find out about the free Burma Rangers. How did you find out about

the free Burma Rangers? Actually, my brother, my brother mentioned them to me because my brother's done a lot of world travel and had done like humanitarian work in a bunch of different places. And I said, like, is there any place that I could go to to use my military skills to some effect? But more importantly my intention at the time was to during my second deployment we were down in southeast Asia and we were actually in Thailand and particularly while we were in Thailand for like six weeks I was very frustrated just with life in general and I and I understood the global politics why you can't just have seals go in and start crushing souls in Burma but I knew that we're you know we're at one hour helicopter right away from villages where people are being raped and murdered

and massacred and I keep in mind in Afghanistan those two little girls you know caught in the of that crossfire, that was a very, very, you know, that was a very important point in my life. It was a turning point in how I, and how I view the world and how, and what I wanted to do. And so I was like, hey, man, like, we have a full platoon of seals here. We have our weapons. We're sitting here in Thailand. Like, just put us in. Like, put us in the game.

Like, we're, we're right there, right? And again, I understand the geopolitics, why that doesn't work. But at the point, I was like, well, I have to, I have to step out. I have to step out. How well were you tracking what was going on in Burma with, like, the ethnic cleansing that's going on. Where did you catch on to that story? Just from, um, just, just from, um, just, just from the news and just different places. And I was just looking at like, hey, like, what's going on in the world? Um, I wasn't,

wasn't tracking it super close. I didn't know all the internal politics of it or anything like that. But that was, you know, I knew that there was stuff happening there. I knew there were stuff happening in other parts of the world too. But in that particular case, I was like, dude, we're an hour ride. We're an hour helicopter ride away, right? Um, and so because of that, I, what I decided, I was like, I want to start some kind of an organization, some kind of a company. I didn't know the difference between a for-profit or non-profit. I had no idea how this would work. But I was like, I want to start something because I wanted to start something that could hire former team guys or spec ops guys to go in and help and help these people.

We're not looking for a fight, but like if we can help these people in conflict zones, if we can help these people protect themselves, that's what I want to do. Like, why would I, like, these people deserve, these people who are under horrible attack, they don't have seals to protect them. They don't have Rangers and Green Berets and Socom to come in and protect them. They don't have the Marines. They don't have that. They have a dude with a musket, maybe a dude with an M-16 from Vietnam, you know, some black market rifle. And that's it.

And then there's this overwhelming army coming in to crush them. Rape and murder your wife. Kill your kids. Take all your stuff and just leave you destitute. That's what's happening on a daily basis in this place, right? In Burma in particular. And so I was like, I can't save everybody, but it's like, you know, what if we go in and we help in some sort of way?

What if we help them protect themselves? What if we bring in the, the aid that they need, right? So I wanted to start an organization and that would do that. I didn't know what that was going to look like. Ultimately, it ended up becoming stronghold rescue and relief, what I do now. And I'm back in Burma, very, very heavily involved there. And so at the time, though, I was like, I don't know how to get into this. I don't, I need to get educated. I need to go travel. I need to go. Just go there and help. Just figure out a way to go there and help. And so that's when I'd heard, I'd asked my brother about it and I heard about FBR. So they work, obviously,

in Burma, but then at the time they were also working in doing volunteer work in other locations as well. But your first, your initial venture into this was actually into the Thailand Burma border, right? So, excuse me, yes, I did go there just to meet these guys and see like, hey, like what's going on? Introduce myself. Like, what do you guys got going on? Like, how can I help? I want to learn. I made it very clear. I was like, hey, I'm here because I want to start something to, you know, for veterans to go do this as a profession. And so, yeah, I went to, you know, I went to, I went to Thailand and I ended up going along the Thai Burma border in a boat to go check out one of the refugee camps with one of the guys who was volunteering with FBR, a guy named Paul. And so we go up, we go up the river and we go to this refugee camp, which I've never been to a refugee camp before.

And I'm walking around and I'm like, man, this is this is rough. This is your life. There is no, there is no out. There is no way out. This is your life now. And the refugee camp was literally right on the river that separates Thailand and Burma. And then right across the river, there's a Thai army outpost, basically there to help protect the civilians, to help to protect these refugees. Because if the Burma army comes in, they could go in there and massacre all these people.

Basically, the Thai armies are there to stop and prevent that from happening. So we go into this refugee camp. It's quite the experience. it was actually very peaceful but I realized it's like these people have no they have no way out anyway we come back down the river

and as we're going back down the river these guys stop our boat and they start our boat pulls off to the side and these guys come out and start loading rice these big bags of rice into our boat and I'm not really sure I don't really know who they are I'm just

kind of like all right whatever I don't know anything about this situation and we get back down the river and as soon as these guys are done loading rice into our boat, the guys I was with were like, dude, that was Burma Army. That was Burma Army. They literally just stopped our boat and loaded rice into it. And that rice that they have is stolen from the,

from the Karen people in particular along the border there. That's stolen from the Karen people. And now, like, we're transporting it for them into Thailand so they can sell it for the Burma Army. And so the Burma Army is the oppressive group that is, they basically run Burma. And they, so was that just like an indige boat? Like a random indige boat?

Yep. I just hired a random indige boat to go up the river. Yeah. So they, so the boat driver knew whatever was going on. Yeah. So he was probably the deal was like, hey man, next time, next time some, some white dude comes up the river. Don't worry out.

We'll get free transport for you down the, down the river. And so I think that's what happened. Yeah. How long did you spend in Burma on that first, or Thailand in Burma on that first trip? I think maybe a week or two, not much. And you're still. not out of the Navy yet. I'm still technically in the Navy.

I'm technically on leave. By the way, this is not recommended for you young, active duty military personnel. Yeah, don't do this. This is not highly recommended. Yeah, definitely don't try this at home. So, yeah, so I still had

two months of regular leave saved up, and the option was you can sell back your leave, you take terminal leave, and then you use, like, if you have 60 days, you can take your last 60 days, you get out of the Navy. But when you do terminal leave,

you lose all your special pays and everything like that. It all goes away because now you're no longer serving. Or the other option is you can, just continue to stay in the Navy until the end of, until the end of your term, and then you can sell back the time or whatever. They'll give you a paycheck or something for that. And I was not cool with either. I was like, no, man. So what I did was I just took regular leave. I don't know where I was saying. I was like, I'm going to go to Wisconsin. I took regular leave for like 29

days or whatever it was. Ended it on a Saturday and then started my trip to Burma. Yeah. And then ended, but the way I did the paperwork was, uh, end, end the trip on a Saturday. And then my next leave chit starts on Monday. And so I just, I'm like, all right, I hope in the middle of this that on the one day that the one day that like left in the Navy like but it's a weekend I just hope I don't get called yeah because I'm not going to be in the country so yeah so I went to went to Thailand and then I ended up at that 30 day mark during that weekend I actually ended up being in Iraq so within 30 days had no intention I had no idea how I was going to end up there ended up in Iraq yeah on leave on leave on leave on leave on leave on the day's technically I was

I was still on active duty, not on leave. You were UA. I was speaking. You were UA. So you get to Iraq. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here in the book. You say the procession of Humvees came to a halt outside Garbala as the BMPs finished spreading out to their battle positions, like setting pieces on a chessboard, General Mustafa,

the Bathist era general from Saddam's army, and the commander of the 36th brigade walked beside his Humvee shouting orders into his radio, while his entourage of assistance and junior commanders followed close behind in a huddled massive camouflage rifle and notebooks. David Eubank stepped out of the Humvee directly in front of us and grabbed his rifle, motioning to follow. They would support the assault on foot. David providing immediate care to troops on the front line and guiding our ambulance into the chaos if needed.

And Shaheen, our lethargic yet somehow brave interpreter would be David's mouthpiece to the Iraqis. You talk about the fact that you are going to be kind of hanging back for this initial Well, the initial plan is you're going to be hanging back a little bit sort of as a reserve component, which you don't like very much because you want to go get some. And again, I guess I fast forward a little too much. This is we're setting up for a big massive assault. Well, this is on Karbala, right? Yes.

And you, again, you go into the details in the book. Get the books. You can learn about this stuff. But you say the assault began with an earth-shaking volley of fire from the Iraqi 36 brigade, big clouds of exhaust. the rumble of engines filled the air as the first wave began to move on the village. Iraqi soldiers in giant metal machines were bearing down to destroy the ISIS defenders and liberate the people of Garbola. ISIS returned fire immediately.

Mortars and rockets impacted and exploded in sporadic plumes of gray smoke within the assault. Tracer rounds and heavy machine gun fire raked the tanks sending bullets arcing at obtuse angles across the battlefield. Fast forward. Boom. Another explosion rocked the ground behind us. We both spun around. as the Humvee we'd been using for cover less than 30 seconds before exploded.

The driver's side wheel right where I'd been positioned had struck a mind. I should be dead. Fai'is and I immediately began to hurry back to the Humvee to treat the wounded. We tried to stay in the tracks made by the tanks as much as possible, looking for more minds as we moved. To say it was terrifying, moving through a field with now confirmed minds would be an understatement. We reached the Humvees. The Humvee as the vehicle's occupants were crawling out.

Tears streamed from their dazed eyes. They'd obviously gotten concussions, how severe we couldn't tell, but they were otherwise okay. I ran over to check on the FBR ambulance directly behind the exploded Humvee to see if they'd been hit. All good, Kevin said with a quick thumbs up. The ambulance and the people inside were still intact. Boom, another bigger explosion. A fiery mushroom cloud dwarfed the BMP in the assault wave that Fai'is and I had been running towards. Car bomb.

We had not turned back for the men in the Humvee, or had we not turned back for the men in the Humvee, the shrapnel from the second explosion would have sliced Fais and die in half. I should be dead again. So you break, this is just chaos out of the gate. Chaos out of the gate. Yeah. And your job,

I mentioned that you were going to be in the rear with the reserves. Obviously that would work out too great for you. Your selection of your rear position wasn't all that accurate. No. You guys start receiving mortars and car bombs, you know, almost immediately. But your goal is, is to provide support, primarily medical support.

That's the alleged mission. What you're going to try and do is you're going to try and provide medical support for the Iraqi troops that are assaulting Karbala. Yes. That's what you guys are doing. But you guys get so close to the front lines that it ends up,

you just can't, you can't not get engaged in combat. Exactly. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. The top hatch of our, BMP flew open and a few Iraqi soldiers popped their heads out smiling and shouting at us in Arabic. None of them were wearing helmets or paying attention to the whole ISIS menace only 100 meters away. I threw up a peace sign and they did the same.

They seemed to be having the time of their lives, gritting and waving at the two white Americans taking cover outside their tank. You guys are going to get sniped any second now. The soldiers then began yelling yala, yala, and waving us away. The BMP suddenly twists on Axis. David Faiz Shaheen and I jumped out of the way as the BMP roared to life and sped off leaving us exposed less than 100 meters from the Garbalah and the hidden ISIS fighters fighters without saying anything we ran David led the way and I brought up the rear pushing Shaheen forward and dumping rounds from my AK-47 and every dark village window facing us

cover and move the rifle kicked into my shoulder as I watched the bullets tear through the doorways and slam into walls cover and move we made it to the BMP at the edge of the just as the Iraqi soldiers were dismounting to begin clearing homes. As soon as the soldiers had jumped out, the BMP sped off again. So what are you thinking at this juncture? Are you going through your decision making process and maybe questioning it? So fun fact, this particular battle that we're talking about, this was actually technically my last day in the Navy.

In the US Navy. In the US Navy. The next day was like my day after whatever. So when I got to Iraq, our main, mission was to, I was working with this other group of volunteers, FBR guys, and basically our mission was to provide medical support for the Iraqi army because Iraqi army didn't have medics at all. And so the Iraqi army was charged with clearing ISIS out of, out of Iraq with a little bit of, there was a little bit of U.S. Special Operation support, but not a full, not a full support.

So this particular battle was, they were clearing a small village right outside in the outskirts of Mosul and the plains of Nineveh. So it's just flat. open ground, flat open, dried desert all the way to this little village and ISIS is in there. So as the book describes, there's basically a World War II style tank assault. The Iraqi unit that we're working with is a tank unit. So they have a bunch of armored Humveys. They have a T72 and they have an M1 Abrams and they have a bunch of like Russian BMPs. So these are like armored personnel carriers.

And all of these, all these tanks are at the same time just firing, dumping rounds into the small village and then they just rush across the open. ISIS is in there, they're shooting back. So again, yeah, our mission, I was with an Iraqi soldier named Fais. So he doesn't speak a look of English. I don't speak a look of Arabic. It's me and him. And, you know, the previous few weeks I'd been in Iraq at that point, we'd just done

humanitarian aid. And that was like, why I was there. I was like, let's do humanitarian aid and let's see what we can do to help the people. But now we're doing medical support. So as we go across this field and assault into ISIS positions, we realize that we're in a minefield. and so the vehicles are blowing up. The T-72 ended up blowing up having its tracks knocked off. And so I was right next to, I was using a Humvee for cover because we didn't realize there

was anti-veh for cover. So I was using this Humvee for cover. And then the medic I was with, the Iraqi medic I was with, there was maybe 200 yards between us and the front line of the first line of troops. And this Iraqi medic, he wasn't really a medic, but he just was like the medic guy. He was signaling to me to go forward with him. He wanted me to go forward with him. He just takes off running.

And my job was to stay with this guy in particular. So I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So we leave cover. We leave the cover of these armored Humvees and tanks to run across several hundred yards of flat open ground. We can see, we can see Isis positions right there. Rounds are coming. You know, mortars are dropping. And so as we're running across the open, that's the part where you read there, all of a sudden, the 10 seconds later, 15 seconds later, the Humvee that we had both been standing next to, the tire that I had been standing next to for cover, that particular tire hit an anti-view.

mine blew the entire front of the Humvee off only because it was up armored. The guys inside survived. So I would have been blown into a thousand pieces. So I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. So then we turn around to go treat those guys because we think there's going to be wounded. As we're running back toward the Humvee that's been blown up, the position that we've been running toward before, a car bomb comes out to hit the BMPs, so to try and blow up the BMPs. So that then blows up. And we're like, oh, my goodness, you got to be kidding me. So then we run back. So the continuation of the stories, we then run back across the, the field again to go see if there's wounded.

So I'm just following around this like super brave little Iraqi army guy. And he's and he's no idiot. He's, we're staying in tank tracks. He's, you know, he's pacing himself. He's like looking around. But it's his job to be the medic. And so it was my job just to follow him around. When we got to the edge of the village as the, as the, the tanks then have to on

have to, the armored personnel carriers have to get, let their troops out to go clear the village. Well, they hadn't gone in to clear the village yet. So ISIS is still in these buildings, 50 meters, 100 meters away. and the Iraqi soldiers then, you know, finally get out of these BMPs, and they go in and start assaulting the buildings, and they're horrible at it. Zero training. These are tank drivers.

These are truck drivers. These guys aren't even infantry. They just are sort of like, all right, man, like your turn, I'll drive now. You go clear the building over there. And so we end up just total, total mistake, or not even mistake, just the way it was. We end up mixed in with the Iraqi army. So now we're just Iraqi army infantry, basically. going room to room clearing stuff.

And they're just shooting wildly. There's no unit deconfliction. They're shooting this way. Other guys are shooting that way. There's IEDs everywhere. There's trip wires everywhere. And then that's when at the beginning of the podcast, you talked about how we ended up going into the one building

with the grenades and stuff. That was in the middle of all of this because we were just like, so Dave had been a special forces officer and a ranger before. And so it's like me and him were like, all right, looks like we got to kind of take point here and just. And like if either we take point or like everyone's going to die anyway. So we got to do what we got to do. There's a whole underlying element to this entire thing that is not going to be clear to people that weren't in the military and maybe even didn't serve in Iraq.

And that is there's like a layer of, you know, when you're dealing with the Iraqi army, like if this was a story about you and you were with an army, you know, armored battalion. and going into the city, you'd say, oh, I joined them and they would look at you, and you'd kind of have some kind of mutual understanding about what the world was, like about the way things function inside the military. There's like a general baseline, like, understanding of what we're doing,

what our mission is, how we're going to support each other, what it means, you know, what you and I working together as a pair. And this is with special operations to the Army, to the Marine Corps, Like I worked with the Army and the Marine Corps all the time.

You walk into a room and there's a there's a baseline level of understanding of what we're doing and what we know and what we understand as American fighting men. And it's a certain level of of order. There's a certain level of order that just exists. With Iraqis, that doesn't really exist. With the Iraqi soldiers like there's it's a lower level like there's a lower level like there's There's going to be crazy things that are happening. Like, you're going to see, like, this Iraqi medic that you're talking about, brave as could be.

And, like, he might just do something that makes no sense whatsoever. And other people are doing things that don't make any sense whatsoever. So it's like a decentralized command. With decentralized command inside the U.S. military, there's still a thread of, we all kind of understand a baseline of how we're going to work together. Sometimes with the Iraqi army, you'd just be like, what is this? What's what of this way? There's a tank over there. They're going in the opposite direction.

I have no idea why this is happening. And by the way, it's like things are going to happen that are just not, even less expected. Look, combat is crazy and crazy things happen. And troops do things that you don't expect. There's another, there's another multiple of that happening when you're dealing with the Iraqi army in my experience. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm totally confused. And, you know, this was also, this was also difficult, not difficult, but it was just very strange for me.

Because, you know, literally still technically, it's like, I'm still technically a Navy SEAL and I'm used to like a highly precise, like highly coordinated group of like military professionals and we have our way of doing things and we're very, very good at it. And so it was so strange to be working at that level and then hop on a flight and all sudden now you're in this like heavy actual, honest to God combat. Like things are blowing up. This is insane. What is happening right now? And you don't have SEALs with you. You don't have the U.S. military air support. You don't have the, like, it's just you and some guy who volunteer for the Iraqi army who has basically zero training.

Like three weeks ago or something. Like three weeks ago. Or even if he's been around a long time, he doesn't have any level of training. He doesn't, you know, there's no standardization, as you're saying. And so everything is just total chaos. There's no command and control. I was looking for it because I wanted to make sure we didn't have a blue on blue. I wanted to make sure because like forces are entering the small village from multiple directions.

I'm like, dude, someone's going to shoot, like we're going to end up shooting ourselves or we're going to end up shooting some of our own guys. And so then because of this, yeah, Dave and I, we just basically had to just, you know, no words, no words needed spoken. It's like, hey, man, we got a job to do. All right, let's, if we're going to survive this, we just have to, we just kind of have to take point. And that's what ended up happening. We did it up kind of like leading in some, some sectors, like the assault into the city because it was like, if we don't, we're going to die. Yeah, there's a, I'm trying to think of a way to describe it. Maybe this is a way.

There's some, there's a little bit more of a level of every man for. himself when you're dealing with like the Iraqi army where look they know that they're together but that at a certain point they're just like oh no no I'm going to do this and so they might take it's every man for some but it might be like this squad or this platoon they're just going to like go and do stuff yeah and you're sort of like what's going on what are they doing what are they thinking so yeah this is mayhem um and again you detail this stuff in the book get the book i'm going to fast forward a little bit towards the end of this thing you say there've been a few other brushes with death that day. Finally the next morning, the Iraqi soldiers in Garbalah told

us they'd heard two explosions beneath the tunnel shaft that had been filled in. This is the tunnel that you guys cleared. Trapped ISIS fighters were blowing themselves up underground. That meant they'd been with us in the tunnels the whole time armed with explosives. They'd hidden themselves in the elevated passageway above our heads, only to be buried alive as soon as we left. Seeing me shake my head in disbelief, David just chuckled, welcome to the free Burma Rangers Ephraim. I was technically on vacation during the assault of Garbala using

saved leave time. I'd opted and I had to take terminal leave two months prior. It wasn't until April 8th. The day after the assault, my time in the U.S. military officially ended. Fast forward a little bit here. And again, I apologize. I'm going to read 7% of this book or 4%

of this book right now. There's so many wild stories in this thing. The girl was maybe 10 years old. She came with her father. She was beautiful fair skin and sandy blue blonde hair light colored features making her somewhat exotic in that part of the world her father motioned toward me She burst into tears back in away and this is that you're like clearing doing your following on follow on medical support Her father motioned her toward me and she burst into tears backing away and shaking her reaction was eerily similar to Ranger Our self-appointed guard puppy who had been abused by people before. Hey, I said pulling off my gator sunglasses and smiling I knelt down and held out my hand, gently speaking after a few months.

She stopped crying and cautiously walked over to me with a shy smile. I knew it wasn't appropriate to hug her, so I shook her hand and gave her a packet of sweet crackers. I asked Shaheen to come over and translate. The girl's father explained the problem to us. He says the girl started peeing the bed for no reason. Shaheen said, Shaheen and I shot each other knowing glance. He says he doesn't know why, but I don't believe him. We both looked at the father who couldn't understand our English.

This is not good. Shaheen went on. Not normal. Something's upsetting her. Do you think I trailed off? But Shaheen knew what I meant. Someone had been molesting her. The father?

Maybe. But Daesh was here for a while too. Either way, the father definitely knows or he's a complete idiot. I forced a smile at the father, even though I wanted to kill him. The little girl and her father disappeared back to the village while we moved on to the next patients. In a war zone, follow-up medical. Medical follow-up simply don't exist.

rather than answers or solutions, you often are left with only doubt, confusion, anger, and sadness. So you're going into these places after ISIS had been there. And, you know, it's a freaking nightmare. Yeah, and so there's all this trauma. There's all these different injuries. We would walk in, and I remember one lady, she was, yeah, she was like light-skinned, exotic lady. Again, exotic for that kind of part of the world.

basically she had been just repeatedly raped over and over and over again by different ISIS fighters. She'd get him been pregnant by an ISIS fighter as well, and that they'd also tortured her. So she showed me her hand, and they would cut off like one knuckle at a time on different fingers. And so like both of her hands were all, like a lot of the fingers were like short and some of them were completely missing because every once in a while they would chop off one section of her finger at the joint. and they would just do this repeatedly. And I obviously never got that lady's full story because she didn't speak English and whatnot. But we gave her food and what we could.

And the baby she had was an ISIS baby. And yeah, so like ISIS was going through it. And when we used a term Daesh, dash or dash, that's what the locals called ISIS. So everyone, nobody said ISIS. Everyone said Daesh. And so we were going along on the outskirts of Mosul. This is all happening around.

Mosul, this assault on Garbalah, all these humanitarian aid stuff and all this relief. It's all the people who have just been affected by ISIS around Mosul as we're clearing the area leading into the city. And so we're seeing all these atrocities. And as we get closer and closer and closer to the city, things get worse and worse and worse. And we see worse atrocities and we're hearing these horror stories. And eventually it leads into, it leads into, we go into the city.

And then things exponentially increase in violence and horror. Yeah. it's like I don't think I've actually ever seen one of these movies but I know the basic plot the movie saw have you seen the movie saw? Yeah so so have you seen the movie? Yeah I've seen them

yeah there's a bunch of yeah yeah but like you take that and it seems kind of you know that's some guy that plays like whatever sick and twisted games with people and makes them kill each other and makes them torture each other and kills them but this is like this is what's happening It's actually worse than that. It's like the worst horror movie that you can put together,

and that's what's going on. I'm going to get here real quick in the book. I had been in Iraq nearly a month. My visa was going to expire, decided to fly to Italy for a few days of R&R. Even though seeing Italy was a great experience, the tourism luxury felt so gluttonous. And my last night in Rome,

I felt I slept fitfully longing to get back in the field. FBR had become my purpose, my team, my family. I arrived back in Urbiel. on the afternoon of May 1st and my brother and Sky were there to pick me up and I'm doing a really bad job so you've got these characters in here we've already mentioned the first one

that I was mispronancing his name Zayas Zais Zais Zase? Which one's? You got a bunch of characters in here but I'm not doing a good job of explaining you got Sky who's a former Marine Yeah, yeah, been a Marine, yep Your brother is actually here

So how's that happening? So like I said, my brother had done a lot of humanitarian work in a lot of different places. And he'd spent like a year traveling. And so when I got there and there was, you know, the big humanitarian need was there, basically was like, hey, man, like, why don't you come out and join us? And so I vouch for him. I was like, yeah, he's a good dude.

He was no military background or anything. And so he came out and was like an ambulance driver and a truck driver. One of the things about FBR is at least at this time and even, even now today, it's like pretty much like anybody can kind of show up and just go out there. And it's, you know, it's interesting to say the least because you end up with a lot of, you end up with guys who have, you know, special ops background, and then you end up with, like, some school teacher from Kansas or something who has, like, who just like really, really wants to help. And so it can be this weird, like, unprofessional mix that doesn't really

accomplish the mission as effectively as it, as it possibly, as it probably should. So there's some of those, some of those issues and things like that. But in my, with my, with my brother's case in particular, yeah, he, he was, he did actually really great job. So he basically became an ambulance driver and would just transport, wounded, page. and things like that, especially when we got into the city. And so that's why he was there. He was there volunteering as well. Yeah, I'm going to fast forward a little bit again.

It had been six weeks since I first set foot in Iraq, and we are now heading into Western Mosul, the heart of ISIS resistance in Iraq. Iraqi army battle takes and BMPs from other brigades stayed to the left of the field, which was certainly mined in a column in a column and advanced toward the back end of Musharifa. They were tasked with enveloping the western Mosul neighborhood

from the rear while General Mustafa and the men of the tanks of the 36 were tasked with a direct frontal assault against a well-entrenched, mind-protected ISIS fighters. BMPs on the left flank erupted in violent explosions from mines and ISIS car bombs as we advanced across the open while enemy mortars and rockets redoubled and exploded around us. A hundred meters to our left, a BMP hit a mine that blew off one of its tracks. Sky and I sprinted across the field to see if anyone was wounded,

but the thick armor had saved everyone inside. We reached the top of a small hill with a trench and downed power lines strewn on the ground. Musharifa was just 300 meters away now, and the bullets, rockets, and mortars were too thick to continue advancing on foot. Justin, Sky, David, Chaffin, Shaheen, Kevin, Zow, and the two new Karen Medics, Silverhorn and Slowly, who had joined us all loaded into the Humvee on loan from the Iraqi army to follow the first wave of tanks into the outskirts of the city. So again, you've got all these characters that I'm reading right now. They're all, you describe who they are in the book.

So get the book so you can get some of those details. But here you are. You guys are going into this. Again, it's just a freaking assault. And I will say this, and I recognize this as the assault was happening, watching it on the news from back here. Even though I was just trying to explain this sort of underlying chaos that exists within the Iraqi army, it was very impressive to see the level of sacrifice that they were willing to make.

You know, in the Battle of Ramadi, there was, that wasn't going to happen. Like, there was a whole battalion that fled the battlefield. They like they just left they just up and left they just were done fighting and they left I think they had an attack on their commanding officer They had a couple guys get wounded a couple guys get killed and the battalion just left and There was a another Company that got took a mass casualties and they just disappeared like So when when I was watching this from You know the safety of you know my air-conditioned house in California I

I was very impressed the fact that the Iraqis were in the lead and they were taking heavy casualties and they'd go back again and they'd go back again and go back again. That was a totally different. That was actually a totally different army than we dealt with. Now look, where they're brave, some brave Iraqi soldiers in the Battle of Ramadi? Yes, there were, absolutely. And there were some really good small elements of people of soldiers. But broadly speaking, they weren't ready to do what was going down here. So it was nice to see that some of the effort that had been put into training and selecting

the Iraqi military forces by America turned out to it seemed to have work because they were willing to make sacrifices. Yeah, absolutely. That was one thing. I was, I was very skeptical going in as well, you know, working with, working with the Iraqi army. I'd never served in Iraq during my time in the military. And so this was this was a whole new culture, a whole new experience.

for me. And my only experience had been in Afghanistan where, again, like you said, basically the same exact story. Most of the guys at that point in 2014, most of the Afghans we worked with, they didn't want to fight very much. And we have like, I have like helmet camp footage of us in like in firefights where we're completely surrounded by Taliban, literally on all four sides, calling in air strikes to keep the Taliban from overrunning us. And the, uh, the Afghans are just sitting in a trench, just chilling, like eating food and just relaxing. And it was the most strange thing to me. So I kind of expected that from the Iraqi army. But I was extremely impressed as well when I went there and I saw the level of sacrifice and the level of courage. The skill was not there.

The tactics were not there. The proficiency was not there. The willingness to do the work was there. And that's how they made it happen. And they did take mass casualties. They did take heavy, heavy casualties. And I remember particularly this day before we walked, before we did the direct frontal assault into Mosul, which was just like the attack on Garbal. times like five. So there's way more troop, way more, way more Iraqi army tanks because it wasn't just the 36th brigade. Now it was like the entire first Iraqi army. Yeah, division. The entire division is there assaulting across maybe like a three kilometer wide area frontal assault straight into Mosul. But that morning as we've been moving toward the city,

getting into position to make the attack, the first BMP in the column drives up this hill and an ISIS car bomb comes out. We watch it. Ice's car car bomb comes out, hits the first BMP, blows into a million pieces. The column of tank stops for a minute. And then you see the next tank in line. You see the smoke coming from the engine as it revs up. And it just drives around the rubble and keeps going.

That one, that tank, another car bomb comes out. Hits it, boom, blows it up. The next tank in line gets in line and just drives straight around the rubble. They don't stop for the wounded. They don't do anything because everyone in there is dead. And they just keep going. And I just remember watching this thinking, like, wow. Like that's, that's like that was true courage.

And they were, they were actually a real pleasure to work with the Iraqi soldiers. I was, I was shocked. I was not expecting that. They were wonderful. Yeah. In 2006, that would likely not have happened. You know, you would not have seen continued pressure like that and follow on death. You'd see probably one tank, maybe in the second one, but there.

it wasn't going to be, the assault would get stopped. It was just not, it was just a different time and they weren't there yet. So that was good. And maybe that has to do with the fact that this was them in charge and it was their, their deal, you know, and they're, you know, we always would kind of think to ourselves like, why should we die for your country? And probably they might have been thinking, why should we die for your operation, right? Yeah.

So now this is their operation. Maybe that will something to do with it. I don't know. Fast forward a little bit. I poked my head above the trench and held my breath as a family of women and children inched across the battlefield toward us no more than 200 meters away. Dear Lord, what are they doing? Bullets, airburst rockets, and mortars impacted at random in the open field beyond the trench

where the Bradley and I sat with a dozen Iraqi soldiers. Nazaheen, the Iraqi soldiers said. Bradley, what does he mean? He responded like he already knew I was going to ask. It's the word they use for refugees who are no longer at home in their country, in their own country, just like the Karen people in Burma. watched as small as the small family of Nazaheen moved towards us. They had nowhere else to go. ISIS fighters were pouring an ungodly amount of fire into the advancing Iraqi army lines.

The bullets and rockets that didn't hit their targets zipped into the vast sea of green before us. The entire field was a giant bullet catcher. We've got to do something. They're going to die. At this point, you have the phrase, uh, discretion is the better part of valor. And that came from your, what, your basketball days? Yeah. Talk us through that. So in this particular situation, as the Iraqi army gets, they get into the first houses in Mosul, they get into the very first line of houses. There's just a large open field and then houses. As they get in there, the civilians who've been under ISIS occupation for three years at this point,

they're ready to go. They're ready to get the heck out of there. And so they start running. They have their families with them and they start running toward the Iraqis, but the battle's still happening. And so as ISIS and the first line of Iraqi army troops are fighting and battling it out hard and there's still suicide bombers going off. There's car bombs going off. The ISIS forces deeper into the city, maybe a kilometer into the city.

They've got all their mortar tubes and everything's set up. So they're dumping mortars and covering the, you know, covering the frontline ISIS guys. And in the middle of all that, you have civilians running around trying to get out of there. And there's kids, like women and old women, kids, and they're trying to get across. And so this is what I saw. These civilians were running. And the Iraqi army, or excuse me, the Iraqi term for, people who are what we would call

IDPs internally displaced people, people who are running from their home, but they're still in their country. They call them Nazaheen, so these are civilians running away from the fighting, and they were running toward us, and so we decided we had to go out and help them. They were struggling, they were walking very slowly, they might hit a mine, we just don't know. There are bullets

landing everywhere. The longer they stay out there, the higher chance that one of these random bombs or bullets is going to hit them. And so, myself and Bradley, we run out into the middle of the field to basically grab their bags, grab the kids,

grab the old lady, and like, let's get to, let's get them to cover. So the reason I talk about the, you know, the discretion is the better part of valor. That was one, that was one thing that my basketball coach

told me growing up, and I never, I never forgot about it. Because, you know, I would constantly, you know, I was always very aggressive when I would play,

but I wasn't, I wouldn't always play tactfully or tactically. I would just be like, as long as I try hard, right? So in war, or that'll get you killed. That'll get you killed in two seconds. And, you know, as we talk about in medical scenarios, particularly if a sniper

shoot somebody in their wounds in the middle of the road, you don't go get them. You just don't. Or you put together some kind of plan to suppress the sniper or something. The last thing you do is run out and try to save the person. Because you're going to get shot now, too, right? So you're not courageous. I mean, you are courageous for running out there to get the guy, but you're not going to survive. You're not going to survive.

You're not going to survive, but you're not effective at getting the job done. And if you don't get the job done, are you really courageous? You just, you know, like, no, you just, you know, you just died for no reason. So you got to think through what you're doing first. And so, um, in this particular case, I was thinking, I was like, man, like, do, do we run out there and potentially get ourselves hurt? Um, or do we just kind of like, watch and see, see what happens? And I was like, no, at this, at some point, you just got to put all cards on the table.

And, uh, like, we're just going to go for it. And we, we got to get it done. Because if we don't, like, there's a higher chance that they're going to die. Our job here is to protect these people and to help these people. So you got to risk it sometimes. And so, so. sometimes you just, and then you have to think through the scenario. Like I knew the statistical likelihood of getting hit running out there was,

was fairly low. I mean, there's still 120 millimeter mortars going off. There's still rocket fire and machine guns and airburst rockets and stuff going off everywhere. But I was like, the chances that we can get them to safety before somebody gets killed is better than if we just leave them there. Yes, I'm at a higher risk now, but their risk lowers. And that's, that's my job.

My job is to lower their risk, even at my own, even to my own debt. to get them out of that situation. So Bradley and I ran out there and helped get them into the trench and get them to safety. Okay. I'm fast forward a little bit. Ranger one, this is Ranger two, we're moving into the city. I set into the radio.

I sat shotgun in the front of the armored ambulance as Delo. Is that how you say? DeLoh. DeLoh. D'Loh drove toward the edge of the city. Columns of smoke in the not so distant horizon as random airbursts explosions dotted the sky. with small spheres of black smoke.

They look like explosions from World War II style anti-aircraft guns. We made our way to the high point on a small hill and started over the edge toward the city. This is full on, man. Fast forward. Again, like I'm reading little highlights, little just you could basically throw a dart anywhere in this book and you're going to end up in freaking mayhem combat. And if it sounds like if you're listening to, this and it's like oh wait wait what's happening yeah get the book so you know what's happening

fast forward a little bit Kevin opened fire with the machine gun from the turret of the fbr humvee like a professional he suppressed the enemy was short burst but things were quickly going from bad to worse bullets now began to smack the side of our humvee the Iraqi soldier with the head wound huddled with us trapped and wounded but calm I'm running up there sky said no sooner were the words out of his mouth when another bullet slammed to the side of the humvee as it finally began its ascent up to the top of the hill. ISIS was getting wise. Our time was up. We're going to the top of the hill too. Justin yelled taking charge. Medics get in the Humvee. Sky was echoing Justin's command when a bullet snapped past me, clipping Sky's leg. He jumped back and began frantically feeling for blood. Are you hit? Justin asked.

He reached and placed his finger on a bullet hole in Sky's cargo pocket. Sky simultaneously did the same thing but poked his finger into a different bullet hole. One bullet, two holes, no blood. I laughed in relief as Sky let out a whoop of joy. The bullet had gone into his pocket and out the other side. The thought that ISIS had just about shot Sky infuriated me. Besides Kevin's short bursts of suppressive fire in the general direction of the invisible sniper, no one was returning fire, and that made me even more heated. We were pinned down behind a Humvee and about to get murdered if no one did anything.

The enemy generally uncontested from our position had the upper hand. I switched my AK-47 to fire and stepped out into the line of four. fired dumping half a magazine into the building where the shooting may have originated from. It was a small effort and probably did nothing, but I wanted them to know we'd fight back. Stepping back into cover, I saw Sky hold up his iPhone. Beside a tiny scrape where the bullet brushed his leg, Sky'd come out unscathed, but his iPhone had not been so lucky. While passing through his pocket, the bullet had also passed through his phone.

Sorry if I don't call you, babe. Even now, Sky could lighten the moment. Good dude. Fast forward again. How many do you think there are? I asked. Looks like there could be easily a thousand. Justin replied.

We stood at the aid station and stared across the open field at a trail of civilians more than a mile long in the distance. They were survivors from the city fleeing in the wake of the 9th armored division advance on our flank. The civilians poured out of the city like a stream meandering upwards towards the high ground. In the distance, the stream disappeared up the road we had advanced down earlier in the day. The people carried everything they could sharing the load. Men carried their family's valuables on their backs and in both arms.

Women carried the smaller children. Children carried backpacks. Scattered among the people were carts, wheelchairs, and wheelbarrows containing the sick and elderly. Wow, that's a lot of people, David said as he joined us. We need to make sure we get that documented. DeLowe's phone rang and he picked it up listening first, then speaking a few rapid sentences in Kurdish. DeLoh hung up the phone and slammed it on the accelerator.

Whoa, whoa, I put my hand out to calm him down. Easy, buddy. It's Shaheen, Delo said, and burst into tears. I told him to wear body armor. What? Shaheen is hit. They shot him. Okay, buddy, I need you to stay calm and focused, I said.

It's our drop to help Shaheen now. DeLoe wiped the tears from his eyes and frowned bitterly. He was trying to be strong. Good job. Ephraim, we need you guys to send up help. David's voice came over the radio again. Why is he not using call signs? We are pinned down in our Humvee,

and we have patients on board. Send help now. Copy that, David. I said, I'll send help at ASAP. Where are you? I could feel the panic starting to build up inside me, but suppressed it as best I could. We're right over the hill where the BMP got hit,

David said. Our Humvee is too shot up to move. We are receiving effective fire, and we have two wounded civilians with us. Copy that, David, on the way. We reached the top of the hill, and I jumped out of the ambulance, immediately seeing Shaheen laid out on a stretcher.

White bandages wrapped around its waist were quickly soaking through with blood. Gut wound. I wanted to run over and talk to him, but the words from my platoon chief in Afghanistan rang through my head, prioritizing to execute in order not to be overcome by events. Shaheen was in good hands. My priority was now to help the rest of the team stuck on the other side of the hill. Delo, get over here. I screamed. Delo jumped from Shaheen's side and ran over to me. I'm going with Shaheen to the hospital. He said, no, you're not. I need you here. My tone was calm as I could make it. Delo clearly shaken up was on the verge of a panic attack. I knew if I

raised my voice at him he might break listen buddy i need your help the rest of the team is trapped i pause for a moment to make sure he was paying attention when a man is terrified it is often wise to give him a task where others depend on him that may seem counterintuitive but giving a terrified man an important mission allows him to look behind his own needs and focus on others this is where true courage comes from the ability to put others before yourself i need you to tell the iraqi's that i need two humvees with machine guns ready to fight delo looked into my eyes a veil of calm and focus dropped over him okay he nodded and he sprinted off toward the nearest bombed out building which was being used by General Mustafa as a command post

De Lo came running back into the street as gunfire and explosions echoed in the background they cannot send Helm V's down there they will get destroyed to to Delo said out of Brothel will send a tank to push them out okay but make it quick I said moments later the M1 A1 Abrams battle tank roared to life and drove off to rescue our stranded team members. Ephraim that tank is no good David said over the radio We need Humvees with tow ropes. Tell the Iraqis we have wounded.

Understood, David, I replied. I'm trying to get these guys moving. I was standing in the rubble of the HQ building with General Mustafa. I informed the major that the tank couldn't do the job, and he rolled his eyes in dismay. He wanted to help David, too, but he also had to prioritize an execute. I was beside myself, but tried not to lose my temper. Time running out, Justin, the former Marine, who had been wounded three times in combat, and an Iraqi soldier named Haidar jumped into a Humvee without orders and drove straight into the firestorm.

I watched in awe as their vehicles sped over the crest of the hill and down the other side toward David and the rest of the team. They were knowingly driving into an active killing zone that had decimated one Humvee already. David, you've got help on the way, I said into the radio. A Humvee is coming. Part of me felt ashamed. I wish I had the brains and courage to think of that myself and hadn't gotten bogged down in the bureaucracy of the battlefield. There is nothing worse than watching your fellow soldiers ride into hell while you sit and watch from safety and comfort It could have been better to die with them the minutes ticked by like hours as I waited for a return call that another Humvee had been disabled

Then I heard it the screaming engine of a Humvee pulling more than its fair share of weight I stood up from the rubble and watched as Justin and Hyder's Humvee pulled the damaged FBR Humvee with a tow strap the two Humvees drove in a low lying sea speck of land off the side of the road and everyone dismounted. I jumped from the middle, I jumped from the rubble and sprinted across the field to reach them. I could hear the commotion on the other side of the Humvee as I ran around to get to the other side of what and see what was happening. Get an IV. Get an IV. Hold her. Stop that bleeding. Get a turnicant on him now. She's unconscious. Where's my IV? A middle age man lay on the ground groaning. He'd been shot multiple times in the legs. Next to him lay a little girl,

maybe nine or ten years old in a bright yellow dress. She had undoubtedly been, she had undoubtedly been, She had undoubtedly picked her favorite and prettiest dress for today because today was supposed to be a special day Today after three years of living under ISIS rule she and her father were supposed to finally be free But instead of freedom she'd been shot in the head by an ISIS sniper Her yellow dress was stained with blood as she lay unconscious But alive in a twisted heap of dirt Sky slowly and silver herne were already working on the man and his daughter There was nothing I could do to help so I knelt down beside the little girl

and fixed her dress to cover her legs. I tried to hold back the tears, but it wasn't working. I took the little girl's limp hand in my hand as tears began to run like rivers down my face. Who could do such a thing to an innocent little girl? This was the first time I'd ever broken down and lost my composure in a combat zone. What's wrong with me? Snap out of it.

I quickly realized that I had not emotionally or mentally prepared myself for what could happen that day. What I thought would be a simple stroll through the countryside that morning it turned into some kind of hellish nightmare of death and blood and I hadn't readied myself. Once I realized this, it took me a split second to suppress all the bad things and push them into a dark hidden corner of my soul where they would fester and infect me until I dealt with them. I could take care of that later. Right now, I had a job to do. While the team loaded the little girl and her father into the back of an ambulance, two elderly

Iraqi women and black hijabs were brought to us by a few Iraqi soldiers. The woman hadn't been able to make the long walk back to the rear assembly area and they would need to be transported. David helped one of them into the front seat of the ambulance while I steadied the other. Before she climbed into the vehicle, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and kissed me on the cheek. Shokran, she said. Thank you. So this is like, you know, this is definitely one of the, it seemed like one of the sketchiest situations in the book that you guys have.

had to deal with, you know, a downed hum V. You get the call that you're taking effective fire. And just so people that are civilians understand what that means. That means you're taking fire that can kill you. And there's a reason that people tell you you're taking effective fire, as opposed to we're taking fire or it's a hot LZ or whatever the case may be. When you say you're taking effective fire, it's a very specific situation where we're getting shot at and the shooting that we're receiving is effective and can kill us.

and if you show up here, it can kill you too. As you look back on this, what stands out? The thing that stood out was, you know, first of all, it was the courage of the team I was with. So everyone's volunteers. No one's paid to be there. So Dave, is there another guy, Kevin, who's a former Green Beret.

He's there, volunteer, not getting paid, seven kids. Sky, former Marine, Justin, former Marine, had actually been wounded three times. in Fallujah. All volunteers, no one's getting paid, everyone paid for their own flights there. And now we're, you know, in this battle, we're just supposed to be there as medics,

but we end up on the front line. And so in this particular situation, the team was trapped in a Humvee because they went to get a little girl who had been shot in the head and her father had been shot multiple times. And so the ISIS sniper was basically using the wounded people as bait.

They would intentionally start gunning down civilians. one to keep to keep civilians from running away because the civilians are sort of their human shield, right? Because there is coalition aircraft above head or overhead that will drop on their buildings. And so the coalition aircraft

are going to do less of that if they know there's civilians around. So that's one reason why. The other reason, too, was explained to us later that the ISIS guys, they're extremists. And so they saw anybody

who was leaving the ISIS caliphate, anybody who was abanding them, these people are now apostates, which now you're, you are worse than a Jew or a Christian or whatever in the ISIS mind because now you're a Muslim who's a fake Muslim. Now you're an apostate. Now you're leaving the caliphate to go to the, you know, the apostate Iraqi army, right? So in their mind, they're completely justified with gunning down all of these civilians.

And so that's what they were doing. And the team had gone over to rescue this little girl and her father. But the, but ISIS had hit them so much, had hit them so much with machine gun fire. And I'm not sure. I believe there's also RPGs and stuff had hit right next to the, right next to the Humvee and completely disabled the Humvee. So the team is inside. It's an armored Humvee. The team is inside with two wounded patients, blood everywhere.

The little girl, she's bleeding out. She was shit, she'd been shot in the head, but she was still alive. And so they're trapped in this Humvee, five or six guys, bullets rattling off of everything. And then the only way that they could get out there is if they had someone come down to help them. And it ended up being Justin. He jumped in a Humvee, went down there, ran out under fire, hooked up a toe strap, and hop back in his Humvee, bullets bouncing around him the whole time, jumps back. And he's been hit three times before.

He's like his three Purple Hearts. He knows what he's doing. This isn't the courage of the naive. This is the courage of someone who knows full well the cost of what he might be doing, of what he is doing. And he pulled those guys out. And so, so, you know, when I, when I saw the patient, so that morning when this, when this big assault happened into Mosul, we had kind of settled into this relative pattern with the Iraqi army where they would go out and fight or they'd push for, you know, maybe three hours and then stop at lunchtime and then that was it. And so the morning of the attack, this massive assault with a full armor division into Mosul, we didn't know what was happening. We had no idea this was going to happen.

We thought we were getting up to go on just a normal, you know, two-hour process. push, we're just there on medical standby. Next thing we know, we're in the city. Civilians are getting shot in the head. And so in my mind, I realized that I hadn't actually, I was, my, my mindset was too lackadaisical. My mindset was too, yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't fully comprehending, like, hey, what I was about to walk into.

I was just like, okay, we're going to go on another stroll and maybe there's a patient, maybe there's not. And it's just another day in the office. However, it turned out to be exactly the opposite. And I realized that I hadn't mentally prepared myself. And that this was sort of taking me by surprise. And then I was like, dude, what are you talking about? Like, what you need to be always mentally prepared?

How are you not mentally prepared for this? And so that's why when I started crying with this little girl, and of course, it's heartbreaking and horrible. But in a war zone, you don't have time for that. Nobody has time for that. The battle's still raging. This is, you know, I don't know, noon or one o'clock on day one. This went around the clock for three days straight as the Iraqis struggle to get a

foothold in the city of Mosul. So, and they're gunning down civilians. This stuff is repeating. We're treating countless wounded. Thousands of people are running out of the city. We're there with the Iraqi armies, like, sleeping on the front line with them. Counterattacks are happening. And so you don't have time to sit there and have this sort of mental breakdown.

It's okay. It's okay to be heartbroken at the side of a little girl injured. And I think, I think part of it, too, was, you know, going back to the story from Afghanistan, you know, I was out there. are two protect little girls, right? Like in the most literal sense, that's what I was, that's what I was there to do. And now there's just little girl bleeding out, you know, with two bullet holes through her head and, you know, just blood covering her bright yellow dress. And so that was a moment where I had to, I had to snap out of it and just say, hey, man, you're no good to anybody if you don't get yourself under control. And it was just one of those momentary things. And then from that point forward, I saw much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse things than what I saw that day. And. And I never lost my composure again because I was like, okay, now I'm mentally prepared. Now I understand what I'm getting into here. And I just had to flip that switch. And you still had this Iraqi woman saying thank you.

It's like they knew what the hell you guys were doing and what you're going through to try and help them. You know, I'll occasionally talk to people that, you know, they'll give me the talk about how we were invaders and all this stuff. And it's like, no. I mean, it's the same thing in Ramadi. The civilians in Ramadi absolutely 100. 100% wanted us there. They did not want the insurgents. They didn't want Al-Qaeda running their city.

The Al-Qaeda was raping and torturing the civilians there. They wanted them killed. They wanted them out of their city. They wanted them dead. And so, you know, clearly the same thing going on here. Just, you know, you mentioning that, she's like, hey, you know, thank you. Yeah. Powerful.

You know, it's interesting as I was, as I was like making notes for the book, I'm going from like chapter to chapter to chapter. And I was trying to use the dates as like a reference. But it's like so many chapters, it's the same day. Like this is May 4th, 2017. This is like the next chapter. It's this past like four chapters. We're all May 4th, 2017. Like it's just chapter after chapter after chapter of this freaking mayhem going on.

Going forward a little bit. sitting there sporadic bursts of muffled gunfire and the occasional explosion still echoing from somewhere in the distance I'd realized I'd lost any in all illusions about the adventure of war The initial flurry of action had passed the adrenaline was gone and all that was left was a harsh bloody and exhausting reality Until today war had been nothing to me but an object of excitement Sure there'd been fear and danger but had always been on the side that won without taking any serious hits War had been a chance to prove my manliness and courage it was a game to be played but today while I helped wrapped a bandage that held a soldier's guts in

the illusion of that game began to fade while I wept and held an unconscious little girl's limp hand that illusion was erased forever war was real and it could only truly be described as hell so there's a little I guess mental transition that you make as well yeah because one of the one of the things you know from my for my time in the teams, we did that deployment to Afghanistan. We didn't take any, we didn't take any hits. Our sister platoon had one, had the EOD guy got around through his hand, and that was it during that entire time. And we had been in fairly heavy combat, like fairly heavy close quarter combat, but we were so good and we had so much air support that we never took any casualties,

no one even got wounded. It was, we were, you know, basically got off completely scot-free and killed a lot of Taliban, and it was great. So it was this war to me was, it was this, yeah, was this grand adventure to an extent. And I didn't realize how much of a grand adventure I thought that I had sort of internalized it to be. And the only horrific sort of situation had been in that situation where I almost had to kill the little girls, right? But we didn't see the mass death and carnage like I was seeing.

I didn't see civilians shot in the back of the head. I wasn't putting soldiers' guts back into their body and wrapping them and sending them off before going to the next patient. And this was now on this day one of our time in Mosul, which went, which went for 30 straight days before I ended up getting shot, um, was, it was,

it was this nonstop, just insane violence. And, um, yeah, so it was a, very, very different, um,

experience, very big mental shift that I, that I, that I had to go through, um, that very, very quickly, uh,

in that, in that day. Did you, uh, start thinking you might die? Yeah, absolutely. Um,

and then, you know, fast warning really far, like the day that I did get, the day that I did end up getting shot. I, um, I knew,

I knew. I knew. I was like, I think we had like 10 or 12 days left in the city. I was like, I don't know if I'm going to die or not. I was like, I know I'm not making it out of here without getting hit. I'm going to get wounded or I'm going to die. And it was that certainty. I've heard about guys in Vietnam who talked about that after extended combat.

They knew guys would know like, hey, man, like I'm going to die tomorrow on the mission or like, hey, man, I'm not going to make it through this. And they're not being pessimistic. They're just like, hey, man, I just know. And I knew that later on. I was like, I know I'm going to get hit. I don't know if it's death or not, but this is going to happen. And that was very strange. That was a very, very strange experience as well later on as the intensity of the combat increased

and as the prolonged exposure to the combat increased. Because keep in mind, when you're done with the day, you don't go back to your fob. You know, after you're done with two or three days, you're not going back to your fob and air conditioning. And all right, guys, let's debrief it. Like, no, no, no, you're sleeping in the rubble. You're smelling the rotting corpses of civilians and ISIS. You're like that's where you live. You're living like you're under constant threat of counterattack.

There's mines everywhere. And so there is no break. There is no going home. There is no going to the rear, really. You're just in it. And this is your life now until it's done. Yeah. I was wondering when you reach that point like talking to a bunch of guys and guys on this podcast

and the one that stands out in my mind right now is a guy named Dean Ladd, who is a Marine in World War II, who did the Pacific. campaign and he was going into Tarawa and you know like they're looking at the battle plan for Tarawa and they'd already he'd already been on two campaigns I mean he'd already hit like I think one two maybe even three other islands like he knew what the deal was he knew what they were going to do and you know I said like did you were you scared and he's like no it's going to happen to somebody else so there's that attitude of like which I definitely know I had for a long time which is like like nothing's going to happen to me like it might happen to someone else and then you make a

transition where it's like oh no this 100% can be me and you got to be ready for that and then you know I I again not a fatalistic thing but like in Ramadi I didn't necessarily think I was going to get wounded or killed but you are just running the numbers in your head and the odds and, you know, every time you leave the wire, every time the guys leave the wire, there's, you just kind of have to run the odds. Even if you're subconsciously doing it,

you know, that's what gives you the knot in your stomach is every day. It's like, is today going to be an IED? Is today going to be random machine gun fire, an enemy sniper, like, what is it going to be today? And it's, that's just what, that's just the way it's going to be. You know, so that sort of acceptance, and that's what I was thinking about with you, because in reading the book, I knew,

see, there's no going back to a fob. There's not even any getting out of this thing, like you're there, which is also an interesting dynamic. Actually, it's not true. Like, you guys could leave. I mean, essentially, if you could get off the front line, you're like, hey, I'm done. You're a volunteer there.

Yeah, yeah. They could say thank you and you could leave, which is an interesting dynamic as well. It's something that, in that book, who's the guy that made Restrepo? The author, you know what I'm talking about? He made Restrepo, the movie. Yeah, I've seen Restrepo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the famous freaking author. And I can't think of his name. Sebastian Younger? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love all of his work. Yeah, I was thinking of Ernst Younger, who wrote, you know, Storm of Seal, so I got a little bit confused.

But Sebastian Younger, what he writes is, and it's a really cool thing. It's a really humble thing for him to say. He's like, hey, I experienced a lot. I'm paraphrasing, hey, I experienced a lot. I was a reporter. If I wanted to leave, I could leave. These young army soldiers, they didn't have that opportunity.

So, you know, that's kind of a little bit of what you had gone, except for that you guys were a, you guys had formed a bond that leaving would have been unacceptable. Yeah. So you may not have been literally, mandated to stay, but your own very principles mandated that you stay and finish the job. Absolutely. And there were no other medics. That was one thing. And you talked about two, you know, in Ramadi there's, you know, like what's going to happen today, what could happen today,

right? And I experienced that as well in Afghanistan. But in this situation, it was, it wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh, what's going to happen today? It's like, who's going to die today? Because with the Iraqi group that we're with, there's a 100% chance, there's a 100% chance that somebody is going to die that day. You just don't know who it is. And it might be you. It might be the other guy. But there is every single day you are seeing someone dead. Every single day you're seeing somebody horribly wounded. You're seeing both of those every single day for weeks on end. And so the Iraqi soldiers, they know this too. This isn't, this isn't like what if this is like this is going to happen. One of us in this group of 30 is going to be dead today. Yeah, that's, you know,

know, and Ramadi was about, there would be wounded or killed every day. And what's weird is, and this is not a sad thing to say, we counted Americans. Like, we didn't really, like when Iraqis got killed and wounded, it was almost like,

they didn't go in our numbers. Like, I've, matter of fact, it's sad to say this. I rarely talk about that fact. I rarely talk about the fact that, like we always talk about the Americans that were killed in Ramadi,

we never talk about the Iraqis, because if we did, it'd be a whole different number. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was like every day. And, you know, every day guys are getting wounded and killed. And that's why you're like, hmm, guys are going out. There's a chance.

Yeah. And it's not a small chance either. Um, you know, there was seven, there's a two mile road, maybe two and a half mile road that, that went down the center of Vermont. And it, it had seven to ten IEDs on it a day. And so like you're, and guess where the road that you leave base is that road. Exactly. Exactly. Like it's, so that, that builds up.

That builds up. And you're in an even more extreme example because this is, you know, dozens of people getting wounded or killed every day, you know. And you're in the absolute midst of it. So it's, it's an exponentially more intense scenario that you're in. Yeah. And also at one point, too, I think, I don't know, I don't remember how far it was into the battle.

I ended up getting sick as well. but I started feeling like this level of combat stress I'd never felt before. A lot of it was just because I couldn't sleep. I couldn't reset my brain every night. And so it got to the point, I think a week or two into this, into the battle that my hand started shaking the whole like, you know, saving private iron handshake, you know, where the Tom Hanks' character's hand was shaking. That was happening to me.

And I was like, what is happening? And mentally I felt fine, but my body and my brain was like, no, dude, no, you're not. and like you're starting to like break down. And so I started having shaking hands and things like that. And finally I was actually, I actually did. I was like, hey, I'm pulling back for a few days. I slept, came right back and was fine going forward. But yeah, it was just shocking.

That's a whole other conversation about sleep and the importance of sleep. But yeah, that's what this was leading up to. It was just full on like your body is starting to shut down from the constant stress all day, all night. Patients coming in all day, all night. You're getting woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning. to go put some, you know, try to help some guy who's been shot in the head. So that's, that's your dream. It's not, it's not a nightmare. You're waking up at two o'clock in the morning with somebody screaming at you to try to help them and you're, you know, you're trying to patch them

up, but you don't really know what to do or they're already dead and stuff like that. So it's, yeah, that was, that was life for weeks. I mean, this was the, definitely, I mean, I guess Ukraine is going to come back with some more intense combat, but this is the most intense serving combat since World War II for sure yeah yeah this is kind of continuing with the same thought that you were that I just kind of went from the book it says the city sat quiet black and gray columns of smoke rose at random intervals as fires slowly burned themselves out I looked out onto it all listening to the breeze as it whistled and howled through the bullet holes and leaky windows and empty rooms of another abandoned home in the city beneath me I could see entire

houses laid to waste in rubbled heaps of ruined and debris I wonder if this house is next Would I die quickly and painlessly if it collapsed on me? I knew there were dozens, maybe even hundreds of people buried alive under the rubble in the streets beneath me. I didn't want to die that way, slowly and pinned down. That thought made me sick. What am I doing here? Now that the desire for action was gone, all I had left was my desire to help. But was that enough?

And was I willing to die for it? No matter what good I did here, I knew there would just be another war. We all knew the Kurds and Iraqis would go out as soon as ISIS was defeated. So what's the point? Those are some deep questions to ask while you're sitting in a freaking rubble down sitting away to die. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, for me, my thought process with, from my time of the military to everything I do, even up to done in the past and up to today, for me, I'm not, I'm not an action junkie.

I'm very much driven by the desire to help. And so I'm constantly questioning, do I need to be here? do I not need to be here. And that's one thing that I'm actually grateful for is that I'm not an action junkie. So the desire to get into combat, the desire to sort of get after it is not a driving force because I don't need the adventure anymore. To me, it's no longer an adventure. You know, my interpreter just a few months ago, like one of my best friends in this world, you know, I just had to drag his body as he was slowly dying off the battlefield for hours and hours and hours and hours. That was, you know, right before getting overrun by the enemy.

This was just a few months ago in my current job. And, you know, so like for me, it's not, it's not an adventure. So I'm constantly asking, like, am I doing this for the right reasons? Am I, am I, does what I'm, is what I'm doing as effective? Is it as effective as possible? Is it going to have a long-term impact? Is it worth dying for? Ultimately, at the end of the day, especially, you know, continuing with the work I do now.

It's like, is this worth dying for? And you have to ask yourself that every time you make a, make a decision. Yeah. Interestingly, I just did an event and an ER doctor asked me a question. And the question was basically, I think he was an ER doctor. But he was some kind of a doctor. And he was basically saying like, hey, I'm doing the best I can, but I can't help everyone. And I can't treat enough people and I can't save them all.

Almost gave me like a what am I doing type question. And again, I apologize for not being able to. repeat the question perfectly but but the but the answer that I gave him is it was and it was front of a big crowd of people but I was like hey you help one person like if you help one person as a doctor or an EMT or a firefighter or a police officer or a person in the military or a lifeguard or a school teacher or a human being in life if you help one person if you help one person that's a win.

And if you focus on the people that, the millions and millions of people that are in terrible situations that you can't help, if that's where you focus your energy, I mean, don't do anything, right? Just don't do anything. Just go freaking, you know, drink a beer and watch Netflix, I guess, and be a loser.

But if you help one person, you want. So, you know, clearly that's something that you're, that I would guess, is your driving force to be, you know, you can look at the world and see all the people that are in terrible situations throughout the world. You can't, you know you can help them all. You can help one of them, you can help four of them.

You know, you can help seven of them. In this case, you help, you help one woman get off the battlefield and she's never gonna forget that. She's gonna be thankful, like, you did your job. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when it comes to war as well, because of society, we're always, everybody's looking to fight the last war,

like, but this will be the war to end all wars, right? And we're constantly looking, for the final war that that'll end it all, you know, and we'll finally have peace, right? And, and so, you know, I would often ask myself that question, like, when in Afghanistan or even Iraq or whatever, you know, it's like at some point this war is going to end, right? And, but it's, the war is going to continue on, so why even fight it, right? It's like, so you have to ask yourself that. But basically the answer I came up for, for myself was, you don't go to war to war to purchase a limited amount of freedom for a limited amount of people for a limited amount of time.

And then you got to do it again. And if not you, someone else has to go do it again and again and again. And that's just how it works. One of the founding fathers said something along the lines of the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots every once in a while, right, from time to time. And that's just a simple reality of it. This is an ongoing thing you have to do to maintain. So that doctor, yeah, man, you can save that one patient. And then the next day, you're going to save another patient. And while it might seem futile, think about it this way, you get hungry today.

You're going to eat a sandwich. Well, why eat the sandwich when you're just going to get hungry later, right? Well, you got to sustain. You've got to keep the mission that has to keep going. Like life goes on. Life continues. And so you do what you can. Yeah.

Going back to the book, bullets slammed into the building just above our heads. They're going to start flanking us any second. I was trying to hide the panic in my voice, but it clearly wasn't working. The others started to stare with hollow looks on their faces, Ready for a fight all we could do is wait hey where are they going Justin asked as he pointed to the rear He already knew the answer but the site was so difficult to comprehend it that it was worth wondering out loud Spanning the field we had crossed earlier that day were the tail lights of a dozen are Iraqi army Humvees and half as many BMPs I wanted to throw up multiple Iraqi army vehicles with their machine guns guns

Ammo soldiers were retreating The enemy fire doubled bullets began to ricochet off the power lines connected the off the power lines connected to our house and spin off into unpredictable arcs knowing if ISIS reached us they'd be coming from our direct front I leveled my rifle in my field of fire at the flimsy front gate I could already see into the future knew exactly what was going to happen there is no mystery in war dude if the Iraqis are leaving we need to leave too we're going to get flanked and then assaulted and we all know how that's going to turn out I said keep my rifle

pointed at the gate less than 10 seconds later after the words were out of my mouth, bullets began to snap and crack from our left flank. I was surprised at how right I had been, but outwardly, I acted confidence. See, someone needs to go talk to David now. Kevin's already on it, Justin said from behind me. We definitely need to leave, but I know David, he loves this stuff and there's no way he'll agree to it. Justin's tone was not whiny, but matter of fact. I shook my head in frustration and glanced over my shoulder.

I heard someone run up behind us. Hey, guys, Kevin stood at the gate. David says we're staying. an RPG hit the second story The building next door Less than 20 feet from my head It struck on the wall Exactly where I'd taken my shot earlier

The explosion Through me to the ground And temporarily blinded me I cringed while I tried to blink Away the bright flash Waiting to get peppered with shrapnel My ears were ringing as I stood up Looking for the rest of the guys

Who were also emerging from cover Guys, I'm willing to die tonight I said too deaf to hear my own voice Above the ringing But I don't want to die for nothing Just because the Iraqis don't want to fight Anger welled up inside me and I couldn't tell if I was shaking from rage or from the blast. I wasn't sure if I was angrier at the Iraqis for running away or a David for not agreeing to leave. Boom, another RPG flashed in the same spot next door and sent me to my knees, ears ringing. I stood up and shifted over to guard the front gate from a different angle that would shield me from the shrapnel. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. You know the deal. Okay, I'll try again. Kevin turned his red tacked the light on to see his feet. He quickly. walked back to the armored ambulance. He emerged a few minutes later with David. What's going on,

fellas? David asked, as if everything was normal. For a moment, everyone was silent. David, we're going to get overrun. They've gotten to honor to our flank and hit us with multiple RPGs, I said, and then repeated what I said earlier. I'm willing to die fighting tonight, but I don't want to die because all the Iraqis ran away. Everyone else nodded in agreement. Well, David said, folding his arms, this is what the free Burma Rangers do. He pointed over to the five Iraqis I'm not here to win the war for Iraq. We're here simply to stand with them. The rest of the Iraqi army has left us here with no support and no medics.

No matter how bad it gets, we do not run if there's anyone left behind. That's part of the creed of the Free Burma Rangers. He paused a few moments. Tracers continued to light up the sky and snap just feet above our heads. Despite the noise and danger, David spoke clearly and calmly. It's too late for us to cross over no man's land tonight to safety, but in the morning If anyone wants to leave, they can go. No one has to be here.

David, no one's saying that we don't want to help these people. We just don't want to be foolish and waste our lives for nothing, Justin said. I don't want to die either, David said calmly. And you have to remember that neither do the Iraqis. Trust me, they don't want to die. Their tactics and decisions are strange to us, but that's just the way they fight. The general and his entourage never sleep on the front line. Them leaving night at night is nothing new.

The bottom line is this. We will not be led by fear or comfort, and we will always stand with the people who everyone else has written off. We are not leaving these soldiers. I nodded my head, feeling ashamed and cowardly. Our mission was to stand with these handful of Iraqi soldiers, even if it meant our deaths. Am I really willing to do that, though? I thought about that for a moment.

Is it worth having my life snuffed out at age 24? Is saving these guys really worth the pain my parents will feel if I die? Is it worth all the help I could have given to other people if I had lived? Normally, I would have taken the sign of caution and lived to fight another day, but there are moments in life when you must simply choose courage and love over fear and selfishness, even though it makes little sense when added up. Heroes are only born when we rise above ourselves and choose to lay down our lives for the good of someone else. There's no math in that.

The gunfire and RPGs continued until well after dark and we remained braced for an enemy assault, but eventually the ISIS fire petered out and the city became relatively quiet. They must have decided if frontal assault wasn't worth it. we were relieved at their lack of initiative to assault us it probably saved our lives and you go on to say that they actually had left you weren't as abandoned as you thought you were you don't want to explain that um but this you also say this i resigned myself to being willing to die for the liberation of this city it wasn't a crude or somber thing in my heart i decided i would no longer be just an American spectator and helper.

I was now in Iraqi. I adopted these people as my people. They were my family now. I would give my life for them. I'll stay. I'll die with these guys. In that quiet moment in my soul, I knew. And so one of the things you mentioned earlier, like all these chapters, this is all day one.

Yeah. This is all day one of 30. And I'm only reading little tiny briefs points of it. There's freaking dozens of pages about this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, so this was my first time in war without the American, well, you know, this trip was my first time in war without the American military and nobody's telling me to be there. No one's telling anybody to be there. And so you have this certain level of soul searching and things that you have to go through to justify why you're there. And you have to really, really get very specific in your own head. Why am I doing this? Why am I here? And you have to answer those questions. And if you don't answer those questions, you're not going to last long. And so this was this was actually a very good. experience for me at the time as well because it led into, you know, what it is that I do now with stronghold rescue and relief. And we have that same policy that I learned from Dave.

It's like we're not we're not leaving these people. And it's and it's difficult to understand. I didn't fully accept that or understand that until I was in the, until I was in the in this situation and had to was literally forced with this with that with that decision. Do I leave or do I stay, right? But it's one of those, it's one of those things where you have to, you have to decide what it is that matters to you. And you also have to, you have to shift your brain and like,

you can't, you can't just sit there and go, well, I'm an American, this isn't my fight. Because I, I hear stuff like that all the time. Like, oh, that's,

that's not your fight. You're an American. Why are you helping in, you know, Burma? Why are you helping in any other place? Like, why did you go to Ukraine? Like, why would you go to that? You're not,

you're not from those countries. It's like, yeah, well, I'm human and they're human. So therefore, those are my brothers and sisters. Those little,

those little kids are my nieces and nephews. Why would I not go help them? What, like, what are you talking about? That's the warrior creed. I'm going to, I'm going to help anybody

who needs my help, especially the people who no one else is going to help. And this was one of those moments where that was solidified in my heart. You can sit there and say all day, I'm a warrior, I'm a defender of people,

I'm a this, I'm a that, I'm a seal. Are you in your heart? Until, until you're getting thrown to the ground by RPGs, you know, slamming into the ground around you and into the buildings around you

until ISIS is flanking you and the enemy, and your allies are, running away, you know, are you going to stand? Are you going to run? And it's a, it's a, it's a tough decision. It's a tough decision. And there's no wrong answer. If you do run away, like, that's fine. It's not, you're not, you're not an evil, coward, horrible person. That's a sensible thing to do. But if you want to call yourself a warrior, hey, guess what? This is what war is. And like, it has a meaning. War means death. War means sacrifice. War means, you know, this could end very, very badly for you. You could get burned alive. You could get paralyzed. You could have your face.

shot off. You're going to watch your friends die. You're going to watch people you know die. And you want to know what? Two years from now, three years from now, a hundred years from now, no one's going to know. No one's going to care. But are you going to do the right thing in that moment? Yes or no. Binary. Yes or no. Black and white. Which one is it? Make a choice right now. And when you're forced to make those decisions, you're forced to see who you really are and see what you really believe. You can say whatever he wants on paper. But as you know, until the chips are down, you don't really know. Do you think that this, um, Where do you where do you put when you pull the thread on this

Passion to help other people where do where does it land where does that thread lead to? Where does it lead to or where does it come from where does it come from I guess Honestly what if I really look back at it I think it comes I think it comes from my time as a kid going into the inner cities and Seeing you know like the North side north side of Milwaukee it's a basically all black area. And I think that's where it came from. Because I remember as a kid going in and seeing these neighborhoods decimated by drugs and crime and bad policy and and all of that and realizing, wow, people don't have it like I have it. And having, and my parents instilling the desire

me to serve, my mother through, you know, through the church. That was where obviously I was there as a church ministry. My father serving. He went to, he went to Iraq. You know, he was in, He was in Mosul flying or flew aircraft into Mosul and stuff with the Air Force. So service and thinking of others was something my parents instilled in me, but I also had the opportunity to see it at a very young age and see, hey man, like, you need to go do something. You don't have to do everything, but you can do you can do something. Yeah.

Fast forward a little bit. You get to a point where after that night when you guys do like make a stand, it leaves an impact on the Iraqi army. Right. They saw that you guys were there to help and that you weren't going to run away. And that's a really powerful thing. And this is something that, you know, even in Ramadi working with the Iraqi soldiers, there was a similar thing of like some of the theory was, well, don't just train with them

and then have them go do the operations. And it seems good in theory because why would you, again, I already said this, Why would you risk Americans to go out and do an operation or you could just send the Iraqis out there? And it's the same thing that you talk about in the book is like you got to, they got to see that you mean what you say and that you are with like with them, not just in word, but indeed. Like we will be out there with you. We will take casualties with you. And we are here to support and help you rid the town, run this. the city of these of these terrorists and insurgents and evil just evil sub-humans um there's a there's a

statement i don't remember where i heard this i heard somewhere growing up it was uh people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and it's the simple reality is you could have someone giving you the best advice of your life in front of you if you know that they don't care about you if you know that they don't give a damn it's like you you you don't take it to heart you don't you don't really you don't really hear it it just goes in in one ear and out the other so letting people know, hey man, I care. Hey, man, I've been there. Hey, I'm with you in this.

And also, too, that's how we run my organization now, Stronghold. Like, we're in the fight with you. We're not there to fight. But, yeah, we will protect you. We will protect ourselves. And we're getting mortared right next to you. We're getting shot at right next to you. So we can mentor you in the field.

We're going to train you how to do this medical stuff. And we're going to be there looking over your shoulder as you're putting a turning it on an actual wounded soldier as as as bullets are flying and that's that's what we do yeah mortars don't they don't discriminate they don't they don't care they don't care uh you got a a little tank versus sniper situation which is nice i like to read about that this is something we were in big support of in romadi is you know like people would talk about anti-sniper like sniper versus sniper and all this stuff and our our chosen methodology was oh they have a sniper cool we have a tank Exactly.

We'll send the tanks out there. Exactly. You know, you talk about this, and this is something that, you know, we got to see on the news a little bit back here. You know, you say it seemed the day would never end as hundreds of civilians flowed through our lines, gruesome casualties poured in both military and civilian. And then fast forward here as the day turned a night, the stream of wounded finally stopped or slowed down. Fast forward a little bit This is now to May 6th So a lot has happened in two days bro

I need water I sat up in my sweat soaked makeshift bed And scratched at the fresh mosquito Welts peppering my face My bone-dried tongue tried to make sense Of the moss coating my teeth Day three In the early dawn light

I could make out a few Iraqi soldiers On their bed rolls rifles Sweaty arms reach away Someone was talk Was walking past me now bits of glass and concrete crunching beneath their boots Despite a poor night's sleep the dehydration cramp in my side and the thudding artillery in the distance I was in a cheerful mood though we didn't have many details dr osama was able to get word to us that our previous report on Shaheen had been false and again This is all like part of the plot of the story that I didn't read the whole thing and it's

Integral part of the story and incredible part of the story he was in the hospital but still alive like the rest of the team I now felt no indescribable sense of relief. No matter what happens today, at least Shaheen had made it. You guys have gotten to report that this guy, this heroic guy, had died. Yeah. And now you're getting...

He'd been shot through the stomach on day one. And yeah, we thought he'd died and now he was alive. I laced up my boots, nearly gagging from the stench. I sure wish I'd brought my hygiene kit and a pair of extra socks, grab my rifle and went outside the courtyard where soft voices of Nazaheen could be heard making their way past the aid station.

And you get into just more, there's more fighting. There's more life-saving. There's more work that you guys are doing. More risk that you're taking to save innocent people and helpless people. I mean, just a phenomenal story. Fast forward. And this is something that you kind of mentioned, you mentioned already when you got sick. Next morning I woke up really sick.

Fever racked my body. So you go through that and and Take time until that that fever breaks but What's interesting is even even as that's happening you feel like Guilty that you're leaving and you just want to get back there Which is powerful And this is when you say I wrestled internally and tried to deny it but I knew deep down inside the constant sickness Sleep deprivation hunger thirst terror and death were taking their toll on me

When either the mind, body, or spirit is damaged, the other two faculties rise to the occasion and provide strength to heal and push through. A person running a marathon overcomes the pain in their body by focusing on positive thoughts with their mind and using their spirit to remember why they're putting themselves through such a painful trial. However, when two of the faculties are damaged, it becomes exponentially harder to push through. Imagine a marathon runner whose body is in pain 10 miles into the run, and they also can't remember why they're putting themselves through this painful ordeal.

They will most likely give up. If all three parts of a person, the body, mind, and spirit are damaged. It's only a matter of time before that person breaks. I was at my breaking point. I could feel it. Mind, body, and spirit were shattered. The uncontrollable shaking in my hands was an undeniable indication of that. The sickness and sleep deprivation had destroyed my body and mind.

The screams of the dying, especially the children, had drained the life from my spirit. I was on the verge of a total breakdown. David, I need to go back to Urbiel for a couple of days. He turned and looked and me confused. Why? What's the matter? He asked. David is a machine.

He's a robot that feels no pain, never gets tired and is always smiling. He has an iron wheel as an easily the toughest person I've ever met. David is a textbook extrovert, revitalized and recharged by people in action and noise. I'm a textbook introvert. Give me a few hours or even days alone and I'll be ready to conquer the world. I understood David couldn't understand. And his look of astonishment made me laugh. I'm still sick and it's only getting worse, I replied.

He nodded a bit. I just need a few nights to sleep in a little mental break. I'll come back in a couple days good as new. The rest of the day was quiet. I prepped my bags and asked anybody if they needed me. So you go to Erbil. After three days of rest and eating small amounts of food, my body finally began to heal,

so I geared up to go back into the field with the next supply in a few days. Then came the worst possible news. Shaheen was dead. At first, we thought it might be another case of false information. Bradley called Muhammad Ahmed, who was at the same hospital as Shaheen on the phone. We heard Ahmed weeping as he spoke to us in his broken English. He told us that Shaheen had died suddenly from an infection in his wound.

And you end up kind of doing the Kako duty, right? Like the casualty notification. Not the notification, but you go and attend the funeral, meet the family. That had to be a little bit, that had to be, what's that word? Surreal. Yeah. Yeah, it was very surreal. So Shaheen was a Yazidi.

So he wasn't Kurdish. He wasn't Iraqi. He was Yzidi. So he was one of the tribes that was completely decimated by ISIS. ISIS particularly targeted Yazidis. And so when I went to the funeral, one of the cultural things that they do, and I'm going to get this a little bit wrong. But basically the women from the tribe, the mother and the sisters and stuff, they go into a tent in the wilderness. us and they sit there and they scream and cry for several days. And we walked in to see this.

So the women mourned separately than the men. And so we drove up in a vehicle, myself and a couple other people, and we went in there to talk to the family, talk to the mother. And because I'd been there, I'd seen him get, I didn't see him get shot, but I'd been there when he was, you know, when he was injured and I was there for the whole situation. And so talked with the mom. And I don't remember how that conversation went, just sort of formalities and through an interpreter, and it's tough. But it was like taking a step back a thousand years. Women in, you know, like Middle Eastern garb, standing in a tent in the middle of the desert, screaming and wailing. And it was, like you said, very surreal.

And so we went to talk with the mom, and then we went to the funeral where the men were, the men of the tribe were. We went there and met the father and brothers and such. And then, yeah, then it was back out to the front. Back out to the front. The city grew eerily quiet as we stood guard at the nearest intersection to the house. Roasting in the afternoon heat. I can't believe him on the front line of a suicide bomber watch in Iraq right now. Completely exposed.

Both Sky and I understood that we would be maimed or killed if a suicide bomber ever did show up. So you're basically guarding an intersection. But that was part of the risk. Within the FBR Wolfpack, David was the Alpha and Sky and I were fighting. It was our job to defend the women and children, even if it cost us our lives. We knew our job and we accepted it. Within minutes, a man appeared walking down the street toward us. I pulled out my scope and eyed the man in the distance.

The mirage from the heat made it impossible to tell if the man had anything hidden under his clothing. As he approached, a few more men appeared and walked toward us. I readied my rifle and aimed down the street. Here we go, I said to sky as we waited for the man to get closer. Did you ever have to do stuff like this room when you were in the Marines? I asked. Oh yeah, all the time. You? Hell no. We had Marines for that sort of thing. I joked. Seals are too valuable for this grunt work.

You should have stayed in the Navy, man. Sky laughed. You could be hanging out on the beach in San Diego right now, making good money and living that seal rock star life, not having to do anything except shoot guns and train. You're the idiot. Good point, I grinned. My finger now resting on the AK-47's trigger. The men were getting closer and their gaze was fixed directly on us. But in all seriousness, I said I'd rather get blown up right here, right now. helping these people than living in safety and comfort back in San Diego. This is where the war is, so this is where I belong. Same, said Sky. We can't stand by and do nothing. ISIS is our generation's Nazis. So to expound on that a little bit, the reason we were guarding that intersection was because there was reports that two suicide bombers were going to come hit our building where we

were doing food distributions. And at that point, Dave had his family. out there like his kids. Yeah, like high school and like middle school age kids there with him and his wife. And so they're there at the house. So they're all in the center of the house hiding. And so we're waiting and all the Iraqi armies, the Iraqi army soldiers, we all spread out looking, you know, waiting for the suicide bomber. Well, as we were standing there, you know, we were like, all right, it looks like there's no suicide bomber.

We started making our way back to the house. Behind us, maybe 50 meters behind us the entire time, an Iraqi, you know, an Iraqi, you know, or see even an ISIS fighter had climbed onto the buildings and was looking down at us and looking, he was trying to get closer to shoot down into the courtyard of the building where we had been doing food distributions. And so as we walked back to the building, so 50 meters away, there's an ISIS fighter right up there. He starts dumping around trying to shoot us, but they're going over our head and they're slamming into the, into the Humvee as we, as we're walking right past it, and then everyone else starts

returning fire. And ultimately, I think they, I don't know if they ended up finding the guy and killing him or not, but we get into this point-blank shootout with this ISIS guy who's on the high ground, you know, now at this point, 10 yards away, he's just right there in the next building, just shooting down at us.

And so the threat was real. There was a coordinated effort, and they did, the Iraqi army did find a guy with a suicide bomb on him. He didn't detonate it, and they captured him. So there were two guys coming to, coming to hit the building.

And so, yeah, this is just, again, just volunteer, just volunteer humanitarian work. And, you know, finding yourself in these crazy, crazy situations. Just so everyone knows, there is humanitarian work that you can get into where you won't be exposed to high ground ISIS with AKs. Yes, yes. Fast forward a little bit.

The Humvees packed with dead and wounded civilians began pouring into the aid station one after the other. What happened? Small groups of civilians coming from ISIS held territory began to trickle in from up the street. Despite their escape from ISIS, they were absent of Jewish. There was no waving or smiling to indicate liberation. They just walked past with empty hollow eyes. Women sobbed and hung their shoulders while men mumbled to themselves their heads down. We handed out water bottles and you could tell they were grateful.

But otherwise it was as if the dead in small sullen groups were marching past. One of the men mumbling to himself led a small group of weeping women toward us. Pulling out my pirate scope, I checked the hands from a distance and studied the women to see if their hijabs contained any any odd shapes or might indicate a hidden weapon or suicide vest. There were no children. David walked into the street to greet a man as the group came closer. The man looked at me and then at my rifle, his expression unnatural in its desperation. I slid my finger to the trigger.

He's ready to die. The man looked at David. His eyes dropped to the ground and his shoulders began to heave. He loud at a terrible cry and fell limp like a rag doll into David's arms. Clear the way, clear the way. David held the man and gently guided him to the shoulders. shade beneath the young tree the man began to wail with sorrow he lifted his eyes skyward and started to yell in arabic dolo what is he saying david sat down behind the man and put his hand on

the man's shoulder trying to comfort him he says that isis was killing everyone all morning delo began they went into the street and started shooting every person they could the man continued to tell his story through his sobs they shot his daughters right in front of him he watched one of his daughter's heads get shot off delo listened as the man continued to speak there was a massacre everyone ran we stood in silence knowing the only thing we could offer him was to bear witness to his grief Allah and Islam one of the only words I could make out as he shook his finger as he shook his fists in anger tears streaming down his reddened face he says that ISIS are not

true Muslims the Loa was translating quickly they are not true Islam Allah does not approve of ISIS the man continued to weep there was There's nothing I could do but walk back over to the Humvee and continue to stand guard. So this is just an atrocity, just a full-on, no-holds-barred atrocity. This was the morning of June, I believe June 1st, 2017, and I looked it up before. I forget where I found the source. I should have kept the source, but basically there was somebody who was tracking the amount of casualties that happened during the Battle of Mosul. So again, at the time, like, this was the deadliest urban battle in the world since World War II.

Obviously, Ukraine's going to totally swamp this. But at the time, that was the case. And June 1st was the deadliest day of this deadliest battle. And that was because of this massive massacre that had just happened that morning, that we were now seeing the people who had survived the massacre. They were now in Iraqi army lines, and they were coming to us. And they were, that's why everyone was so shaken. They weren't even like that happy to see us because they had all just witnessed this slaughter.

And so at the time, we didn't fully, we didn't know this. We didn't fully understand that there was a massacre. We didn't fully understand what it happened. We knew that ISIS was shooting people. We're like, yeah, it's another Tuesday in, in Mosul, man. Like, yeah, of course ISIS is shooting guys. So we didn't fully understand what was going on or the level of what was going on until the next morning when we were the first ones to come across at the very front of the front line come across the actual massacre. and come across all the bodies.

And it was hundreds, hundreds of people had been slaughtered in the street. Women, kids, babies, pregnant women. I saw a baby. So both of the parents had been shot in the back of the head, or had both been shot in the back about six feet before being able to turn this corner and get down to safety because you can see where the bullets had come from. They're about six feet from the edge of safety,

but they'd both been shot. and the story, you could tell the story of how they had died. The mother was to the right of the father. Both the bodies were laying there, and the mother had like bags next to her, and the father had nothing next to him except for the child. So the father had been carrying the child, the mother had been carrying the bags.

When the parents had been shot, the father had fallen onto a pile of rubble, and the baby's head had been cracked open and bashed open. And so the baby, its head was completely exposed, a giant hole in its head. and like maybe not even like a six-month-old baby, just a tiny little thing, laying there in the rubble six feet away from safety.

And so we saw the level of death and carnage in the next morning when we saw all this stuff, so less than 24 hours later, so maybe, I know, 16 hours later, we came across this massacre. And the man who had told us about his daughters being killed, we don't know for sure if the two bodies we found were the daughters, but they fit the description.

It was two girls. who would have been about 15, 12 to 15 years old. Both of them had been shot. One of the girls had been shot in the back of the head, and her entire face was gone. She must have been hit with a 50 or something. I don't know. So she'd been shot in the back of the head.

And her face from her, from her hair line, down to her jaw, and then out to her ears, the whole thing was just a big black hole of black, dried blood. And that's how she died right next to another girl, and they'd both been running. And so this is what these Iraqis had seen. is what we saw. This is what we came across the next morning. And piles, piles of bodies. Not intentionally piled, but people had been shot and other people had been running over the bodies and then had been shot and fallen down. And then more people had tried to get over those

bodies and had been shot and fallen down. And so there were piles of bodies where people, basically a small wall of bodies had been sort of piled up as people tried to get to safety. And it was all just unarmed, unarmed civilians. I saw a man in a wheelchair. He was just slumped over in his wheelchair. I saw another man. He'd been at the top of his head was gone. And his whole brain was still intact, sitting like in his head.

The whole thing is still intact. But the whole crown of his head was gone. Like I said, pregnant women, kids, like young kids, two, three, four, five years old, in with all the bodies. And it was in the middle of all that. as we looked at this, we saw movement. We saw that there were still a few people alive. And one of the, there was a wounded man, there were two wounded men and a little girl.

And the little girl was like hiding under her mother's body. And it was about 36 hours into the, after the massacre when we launched a mission to go rescue that little girl. But so, you know, you see this. We talked about the nature of evil. We talked about the experience in Afghanistan where I thought, man, like this is so evil. why would these Taliban guys and these little girls? I remember looking at this massacre, which is right in front of ISIS headquarters.

So we're looking at it through the rubble of buildings. We're looking at it through bombed out holes and things like that in the concrete. So that way we don't get shot as well because ISIS is still there. They're 50 meters away looking right down on this. And I remember as I turned the corner and poke my head out and saw these bodies, it didn't make sense to me because I'd never seen images like this. in color, I'd only seen them in black and white, a killing field of bodies. This was something that happened in Vietnam. This was something that happened in Cambodia. This was something that

happened in World War II. This doesn't happen today. And even in my brain struggled for a few solid seconds to kind of make sense of what I was looking at. And then I realized, oh, wow, like I'm looking at a massacre. And it's something I never thought I would ever see in my entire life. I never thought I would see something like this. And there it was in full color. And survivors still hiding in the bodies, including like a little girl who's maybe, maybe three years old, hiding, huddling under her mother's hijab. And yeah, there was some of the news around this time, even prior to this, but, you know, the news was, there was, like, the recruiting for ISIS. Like, they were just, if you were a freaking psycho or a sociopath,

in the Islamic world in 2000 and you know 2016 2015 it was like we hey we got a job for you and we're going to take care of you you're going to be able to rape women you're going to be able to do whatever you want you're going to be able to fight kill like I dread to think how many just truly sadistic evil people showed up to be part of this to be part of ISIS at the time I would love to go back and look at what kind of recruiting they did to bring just people that are willing to fight and kill and rape and murder. It's like it's a it's like that's what you need for for to carry out this kind of thing. You got to get sick, sadistic, evil people and then brainwash them even more. Exhaustion.

That was all I felt as ambient sunlight began to filter through the hazy skies above Missouri. Zool and light in the abandoned living room we'd slept in. I stepped into the early morning light and saw the blood and iodine-soaked bandages scattered across the ground where we had treated the wounded. Today is going to suck. Fast forward. Hey, we got bodies over here. More bodies, as Sky said, peeking around the edge of the wall to see more of the highway.

He pulled back for a moment and looked at us shaking his head. I stayed where I was scanning the rubble across the street, looking for any movement from a nicest gunner. It's a whole family, Bernard said. His shoulders hung heavy as he held his camera and reviewed the photos. As we climbed through the rubble of the house to get a better view of the highway, I suspected we were all sensing the same thing. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Reaching a large second-story room with massive windows, a highway of death rolled out before us like a movie in the big screen.

The decimated road below was littered with dead civilians. Warriors don't gasp and gawk at death and destruction. They remain composed and stoic. Remember, fear, panic, and rage are contagious, so a soldier must rise above them and remain disciplined. Inside, I wanted to put my fist through a wall and scream, but instead I moved silently to the edge of the window and peered down the highway below as if it were any other logical assessment.

Sky and David also warriors behaved in the same, calm manner. Everyone count how many bodies you see, David, I'm gonna report this I began counting across the highway bodies lay and twisted heaps of flesh and clothes against the wall One two three four two little girls were faced down in the middle of the highway Shot in the back five six I choked back to yours seven eight nine ten We got a lot more dead over here sky called from deeper inside the house He'd found a room where you could see further down the road toward ISIS but still concealed from the sniper There's at least a dozen wait there's we've got movement some of them are still alive

I moved to take a look as sky pointed them out to us peering through my pirate scope I took a took in the ghastly scene a large pile of bodies lay up against a wall bloated and rotting in the sun heaped in a morbid tangle of blood and body parts images of mass graves sprang into my mind pure evil movement a little girl stood up from the pile drifting like an apparition from body to body she stared at each body for a moment with an emotionless hollow face and then moved to the next one her clothes were matted with sweat and dirt and dried blood you cowardly savages i said beneath my breath the thought of slitting ice his throat engulfed my mind i wanted to kill i wanted justice you damn cowards more movement one two three four i see four kids moving around that pile of bodies one two and two men we were all seeing the same thing a little five-year-old girl and what appeared to be her three-year-old brother sat huddled next to their dead mother's hijab the wandering little girl only a few feet away meandered through the

bodies and sat next to a little boy who was slightly older than her he gave her the last of his water she drank it and then she laid down on the ground the boy laid a shirt on top of her to shield her from the scorching sun he then laid down next to her that was the last time i would ever see them move a couple iraqi soldiers who had now joined us desperately screamed at the children to run across the highway to us the children glanced in our direction but seemed to be staring a thousand miles past us they had passed beyond reason they were dying we have to do something fast forward a little bit bullets rained heavier i turned and looked in the direction of the incoming fire the hospital was visible again i need to start shooting effron david screamed to me he

never screamed like that unless something was very wrong. Turning away from those black windows I wanted to be filling with lead, I saw the old man had slipped from the table. He was just too weak to hold on now and tank tracks were about to run him over. Stooping down, I rolled him to the side, but the highways median prevented him from rolling far enough. There was nothing I could do. The old man's head was up and he stared at the machine that was about to flatten him,

starting with his feet, up his legs, spine, and finally his skull. Then, for the first time during our backward movement, the tank adjusted its core. and missed the old man by no more than a hands width the old man stared at the tank as it rolled past him and turned his head back toward me The smoke was dissipating and bullets were flying everywhere moving outside the cover of the tank was suicide The military taught me never to attempt a rescue under fire without cover You're no good to anyone dead Over the past month I'd made my fair share of decisions that had directly resulted in people staying alive This was my first time I had to make the decision to let someone die I was sorry but felt no guilt

We didn't kill him Isis did Stepping back to my place on the flank behind the tank, I walked backward. Crack. I felt like someone had just teed off with a sledgehammer against my right calf. I'd been hit. The many stories I'd heard from guys who'd been shot instantly flooded my mind. It's just like they described.

Like half of me was a spectator watching the other half of me fall in slow motion. Bam, the ground came up in full force. I'm hit. I yelled. And I sat up to look at my leg. Did it miss the bone? Unfortunately, the bullet had entered through the right side of my calf and exited the left. Wait, what the hell is that noise?

I glanced over my shoulder. The tank. Damn it. I sprang to my feet. Two seconds before getting crushed. My leg burned as if someone had stabbed a burning shot, a burning hot metal rod through it. But I could walk. Just don't bleed to death.

Reaching for my tourniquet that I kept easily accessible, I walked backwards, trying to stay within the tank's small cone of cover while cinching the tourniquet. Grateful for the many times I'd practiced. We were finally in line with the street. that was our escape but we still had to cross a hundred meters of open ground to get to safety and my leg was quickly locking up the muscle seizing as the adrenaline wore off with the smoke all but dissipated it would be near suicide to attempt to run across the street the burning pain doubled then tripled hum v david screamed at the iraqi soldiers who watched us from cover bring us a hum v he waved one arm frantically i joined in screaming in arabic it was no use they weren't

going to budge and they probably couldn't hear us anyways we needed someone to run across and carry the message my head began to spin and breathing became more difficult I started to feel lightheaded I'm losing too much blood if I pass out here they're gonna try trying to carry me I need to be the one I needed to be the one who would run across the open ground and tell them we needed a Humvee and I knew that my Karen medic friends toe and leah leah leah elia would be there to treat me the tricky part would be just making across the open ground without getting shot again David I'm feeling lightheaded I'm gonna move across I started to get in

position to hobble across the open use the Burma's cover David pointed out a small pile of debris that lined the highway and almost useless cover but better than nothing I sprang out damn it that hurts skipping was my best option as I tried to pick up speed across the open ground I says gunners immediately open fires bullets snapped and cracked past me impacting the walls and rubble around me and kicking up the dirt at my feet I struggled to run tow and Leia had hudd by the wall waving me in and I locked eyes with them trying to not to think about a bullet striking the side of my head and ushering me into eternity. They need a Humvee, I screamed as I cleared

the wall to safety. They echoed the call, their medical supplies ready to treat me. They were on me in a flash trauma shears cutting away my pant leg as another tourniquet was ratcheted down on my leg. Dust, dust, I screamed as a Humvee sped past us no more than two feet away, kicking up filthy mazooled sand and dirt. The medics leaned in and shielded my wound from debris that would will certainly cause an infection. I didn't know it at the time, but the heroic driver of the Humvee rushing out into the battle to rescue the team under fire was the French journalist Bernard Ganeer. Had I indeed needed, he had indeed needed to learn how to drive the Humvee, which is from a previous section where you taught him how to drive a Humvee.

My happiness that the Humvee was rescuing my team was short-lived. Alea drenched a piece of gauze and iodine and twisted it into the entrance of my wound, clutching my AK and burying my fore. head into the dirt I grunted under my breath I'm not gonna scream no how bad no matter how bad it hurts She trenched the more gauze and iodine this time forcefully twisting one end in the raw flesh the exit wound I gritted my teeth and tried to maintain my courage as suddenly as it started it was over Moments later. I was in the back of the armored Ambulance with Daryl and the Mennonite at the wheel driving away Out the back window I saw the Humvee come to a screeching halt and a crowd

of medics and Iraqi soldiers rushed to help. I was beyond relieved. Mission complete. And oddly enough, this whole freaking, well, not this whole thing, but this event was captured on video. And it's on YouTube. You can just look up your name and look up freaking getting shot or something along those lines.

And you can see this thing unfolding. It's actually captured from a couple different angles. Yeah. There were multiple sort of war correspondents in the area who were there documenting ISIS atrocities. And some of the FBR team, their job was just to document atrocities. So they get all this footage of things happening. And none of us knew that everything was being filmed.

We weren't like we weren't even thinking about that at the time. But yeah, everything from, you know, there's a very famous video where Sky and I give covering fire while Dave runs out and grabs the little girl because we had driven down that road. Or an Iraqi army tank had driven straight down that road. into ISIS territory. We'd actually convinced the American military to give us a smoke screen. So they were firing white phosphorus air burst to try and give us a smoke screen into the city. And so we're behind the tank on foot.

And we give covering fire. Dave runs out and grabs a little girl. We tried to get the two men. We were able to get one of the men. But the second man, we were basically dragging him on a, he was wounded heavily in the shoulder. She couldn't carry him because he was going to bleed out. And so we were dragging him on a.

a piece of metal that was in the street. He fell off, almost got run over by the tank, and that's what I described. So I literally moved him out of the way, four or five inches from the edge of the tank tread, and then five seconds later, I get shot. And the moment I get shot, that's on camera as well. I fall down, and you can see me turn around.

I look at the tank. It's about to crush me, and it was like, hey, man, you just got to get up and keep moving. I had already read this book when I watched the video. So this was within the past week, and I was like, oh, I'm going to go watch that video. And having worked around a lot of tanks, tanks don't care what they run over and they can't stop and they can't see anything.

So it is just like a, it might as well be the force of nature, just an unstoppable. So even knowing what was happening, even though I was getting ready to talk to you in a couple of days, when you got shot, fell down. I still had like my gut went like, bro. Like you're going to get run over, get up. And sure enough, you barely got up and you're able to get out of there. Yeah, and the one thing kind of tying in that, so as I was, as I was walking backwards, I was walking backwards trying to keep my eye toward the enemy, my eyes toward the enemy, and I was putting my tourniquet on.

As I was putting my tourniquet on and walking backwards, the guy started screaming at me again, and it was too late. I looked down and I tripped over the bodies of one of those little girl, the girl had been shot in the back of the head and her whole face was gone. So I looked down, you know, there's blood pouring from two holes in my leg. There's dead bodies everywhere and I'm sort of stepping in and stepping on this girl's body in her her lifeless face or lack of a face or the hole where her face used to be is just staring straight up at me as I'm like tripping over her body and we're still taking fire from the flank we're still taking

ISIS was also dumping mortars and stuff so there's random mortars going off none of those none of the mortars were caught on video I don't think and yeah so then we just had to we had to get out of there and get a Humvee. One of the one of the cool things where I do, probably one of my favorite parts of this is there's a French journalist, Bernard Gineer. He, he, he, so not a, not a, you know, just an observer, just an observer. He was the one who hopped in the Humvee and drove out under fire. After seeing me get shot, he watched the whole thing. He drove out there in an armored Humvee. Everyone, they threw the little girl and the one man who was able to, who we were able to rescue. They all hop in the Humvee and across that open terrain that I had just run across. And, yeah, just like as civilian as civilian can be. And he did that. And I was like, dude, right on. Like, that's just the best. I like, he's his, that one little part is like one of my favorite is this one of my favorite things.

Just seeing this total civilian guy just drive straight. Like, dude, you are in Iraqi, excuse me, like you are in ISIS territory now. Like the Iraqi army ends here and you're now out there with blood and death and carnage. And I was, yeah, I just thought that was one of the best things. And yeah, a huge shout out to him. Yeah. And it was incredible. Was it you that taught him how to drive the Humvee at some point?

So I wasn't the one who taught him how to do the Humvee. I was assigned to do it, but I ended up having someone else do it or whatever. But the conversation had, he had come up to me a few days before that. And I'd been like, hey, man, can you show him how to drive a Humvee just in case? I was like, yeah, no worries. But then when I went when I followed up with him, it's like, somebody else had already showed him. But yeah, he'd like, he's like, can you guys show me how to drive one of these humvies? Just in case.

And I cracked the joke. I was like, dude, if you, it's like, if you have to drive the Humvee, things have gone really, really wrong. I just, we were both laughing. He's like, yeah, I still want to know anyway. I was like, you know, of course. That's like the Hollywood foreshadowing moment, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

But he did an awesome job. And then, so that night I ended up in a hospital in Urbiel, like a Kurdish hospital, and a ward filled with guys who'd been wounded in Mosul, all Peshmerga. So there's no Iraqi army there. So when I, when I got brought in, I spent the night there. And in the middle of the, so it was the most bizarre thing. I still don't understand like what happened or how it happened or like what was going on with the human psychology of it. But when they shut down the ward that night, they turned off the lights for everyone to sleep.

The doctors left the room and they, so we're in this larger, I'm with maybe 30 or 40 other wounded soldiers just by myself. and the amount of screaming that started going off, like it's still like echoes in my brain to this day. These guys screaming for their mothers, these guys in horrible pain. Other guys, much much. I mean, my injury was, you know, literally just a flesh wound, right? It wasn't that big of a deal.

These other guys had shot in the hip and shot in the shoulder of broken bones, and they're just laying there screaming in pain all night. And so I'm just listening to this. Of course, I don't sleep a wink and just listening to this screaming. In the middle of the night, a guy walks in into the ward with a flashlight, and he starts going person to person. He starts shining this flashlight on everybody.

And then at some point, he's looking at this folder, and he points the flashlight at me. And I'm down all the way at the end of the room. And so then he just keeps the flashlight on me. I can't see him. And he just walks all the way down this dark ward where everyone's like screaming, and he comes right up to me. And he speaks broken English, and he says, He's like, I'm with Kurdish intelligence.

I need to ask you a few questions. And at the time, you know, and I, like in the U.S. like special ops, like we all want to grow our beards out because like that's what we like to do. Like where we grow our beard out and that's needed in places like Afghanistan. Well, in Iraq, it's the exact opposite. ISIS has beards and the cool guys have, you know, Saddam Hussein mustache. That's with all the cool. That's the thing everyone does is the mustaches.

So I'm a white guy with a beard who, alone, who'd been shot in much. Mosul. So I fit perfectly a foreign volunteer fighter who'd come to fight ISIS. I fit the profile perfectly. So they were coming to make sure that I wasn't ISIS. To fight with ISIS. Yes, excuse me, to fight with ISIS, correct. So they thought I might be ISIS. And so this guy comes in to interrogate me. And so I'm laying there prostrate in this bed completely helpless, my leg raised. And so he starts asking me a few questions and my identity and where I'm from. And I was able to provide him documentation, who I was and whatnot. And so eventually he just kind of folded up his folder and just kind of set it on the desk

next to me and just sat there. And I, and he was like, he just kept on asking me questions. But like he wanted to know. He kind of set it aside. He stopped taking notes. He realized I wasn't a threat. And he just wanted to hear my story. And so I sat there telling this Intel guy in the middle of the night with the flashlight.

My story, everything I'm telling you guys right now, meanwhile, there's like crying and screaming in the background and then he was like he's like oh man thanks for helping that's that's really great he shook my hand at some point an hour later and then just walked off into the darkness and never saw him again um and that's how the whole ordeal basically ended yeah in iraq at least yeah um yeah you get medevac flown home you go through that stuff you say here and i'm to close this out with the close out the book um with this and again i covered 3% of this book uh get the book you say when i returned home i spent several weeks decompressing from shell shock after the incident on the plane which is like this is on the plane you

basically like woke up in a flashback scenario um i knew i would have some demons to purge my sleep was fitful i wouldn't want to talk to anyone for days at a time my head ached for seemingly no reason sudden noises made my heart rate spike there were dreams filled with screaming children but slowly my sleep became better i began to open up to my family about what i saw the headaches became less frequent and my nerves calmed down eventually I evened out and became my old self again as much as I could be and the dreams of death and destruction melted away I gave up the hate and that's again you know what we'll kind of wrap the book on um that was 2017 2017 that was a long time ago yeah six years ago um how was it when you got home

So this was, you know, you imagine if you get wounded in the military, you come home and you've got, you know, the full military support structure. There's nothing. I literally just had some crutches and I got a book to flight home and flew home. And it was, I was in line. It was funny. I was in line to get on the plane. And there was a bunch of other like military contractors there. And so they just assumed I was a military contractor.

And so I just was in there. I had my crutches. And they let me board the plane first. So as I go to get on one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, uh, contractor guys he's like oh like workplace injury you know like meaning like did you like get hit by like a forklift or something you know and I was like yeah something like that and I just laughed and then I got on the plane so I did like you know no idea um but yeah getting getting home um so I flew back to Wisconsin and my parents picked me up at the airport actually I flew back to

technically Chicago my parents picked me up at the airport and we drove back to Wisconsin and yeah it was just surreal it was just this insane amount of violence and everything and then And all of a sudden, now I'm back in the States with my parents driving back to their place, you know, and I've been out of the military for a couple of months at this point, you know. So this is June, like mid-June. I just got it technically my last day in the Navy was in April. And so getting back, the initial decompression was was rough initially just decompression from everything. It was really good to be home.

I've like great relationship with my parents. Like they're just the best, nicest people in the world. But, you know, and the book, there I talk about how my sleep eventually got better and I was able to decompress from that initial sort of battlefield stress that you're feeling just initially right off the your nerves are all on edge because you're in fight or flight mode. But it wasn't until a couple of years later that really a lot of that stuff really mess with me and yeah, it had a lot of issues with like, yeah, just depression and all this different stuff that would just come out of nowhere. I'm like, dude, like life's

good. I have no reason to complain. Like everything's fine. Everything ultimately is fine. But there was a lot of just like just dark demons and stuff. And again, like you said, we talked about 3% of the book, all this other stuff that I had seen and experienced. And then continuing on, like I'm still like to this day, still working in conflict zones, not to this same exact level. I mean, recently I wasn't something to this level. But, you know, now I run a humanitarian aid group called Stronghold Rescue and Relief. And we go into conflict zones. We seek out these places and we provide rescue and relief services.

And it's primarily emergency medicine, refugee protection, and just standard humanitarian relief. And so I'm still constantly going back to conflict zones, and I have over the last few years. And, you know, so the decompression is still this ongoing thing. And it's less of ability to decompress and more of a – you have to learn to cope with it. That's one of the things I'm personally struggling with even now at the moment is because I just basically got off a six-month combat deployment in Burma. You know, and again, I'm not there to fight necessarily. I'm there to help, but you end up, you end up in the fighting.

I watch, like I said, several times now. It's like I watched my best friend die, you know, I watch a bunch of guys around me get shot and killed and we're treating lots of wounded and things like that. And, you know, I'm going back in a couple of months again for another five to seven month deployment. So it's this, it's this constant deployment cycle. and it doesn't, to an extent it doesn't end. So I'm still at this point where I'm trying to figure out,

okay, how do I balance that? How do I not go completely crazy? But also how do I continue to help? Because that's the other thing too, is how do you walk away? When you see, when you talk to villagers and you make friends with the guys I work with in Burma, you know, and you hear their stories,

yeah, the Burma Army raped and murdered my wife. Yeah, the Burma Army killed my father. Yeah, the Burma Army tied me to a tree when I was a 12-year-old, beat me half to death, and then made me watch as they chopped my father's head off. These are very typical stories of these guys that you talk to. And so how do you say, hey, man, like, I need a break. I'll be back in a couple of years, you know, whatever.

How do you not help them? How do you not go back? And it's difficult because you want to help everyone, right? But also at the same point, too, you're going to burn out. And so, like, in 2020, I had quite the experience with burnout. I talked about it a bit on Stump's podcast, but I realized at that point that I actually was, very, very much addicted to like bread and sugar.

And I know that sounds very strange. But I became, I was, I was like, honest to God, full blown addicted. And that was, I was, the addiction started when I was in the teams. That was one of the issues that helped, or that was causing my, some of lack of physical fitness at that level. I'm still in good shape, but not like seal shape like you need to be in, right? And that was because of like full blown addiction. And I was my way of like dealing with stress. I didn't realize it at the time.

But going forward, it got worse and worse. And then in like 2021, I realized it's like, dude, like, what the hell, man? I was like 110 pounds heavier than I am right now for like, for like a year. What the hell were you eating? Everything. The answer is like literally everything. And I was, I was depressed and angry. How much did you weigh?

I weighed at the high. Like over 300? Yeah, yeah. I was at 325. Yeah. I was at 325. Yeah. Yeah, not good, not good.

So my point is then I had to go. through this whole process of like, all right, dude, I got to deal with addiction. I got to get over this. Ironically, Russell Brand's book helped me get over the addiction because it's basically the 12 steps program, but with Russell Brand, his point of view on it. So he's more fun. Oh, it's hilarious. Dude, it's honestly, it's, even if you don't have addiction, like listen to it, it's the funniest thing. But yeah, I dealt with, I dealt with that and I realized that I was using food or whatever because I've never been much of a drinker. It just, you know, that's typically what a lot of guys

they over, they overdo it with the alcohol, right? You're about those Oreos. I'm about those Oreos. And then, yeah, and then all of it in those Chipoli burritos. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So you have an Instagram, and this is what I said on the Instagram, November 10th, 2022. You said, over the past two years, I've had some major demons to process and deal with primarily

operator syndrome, catastrophic burnout, and also addiction. I was under the impression I'd already dealt with the mental and emotional repercussions of war and was good to go, but I was very wrong. In 2020, without warning, a multitude of dormant, deep-seated issues suddenly resurfaced and put me down hard, humbling me and showing me an internal darkness I've never experienced before. I knew I simply wasn't going to make it if I didn't lose, if I didn't focus all my energy on facing these issues head on. Because of this, I've mostly stayed off social media to focus on myself, not because social media is bad, but because I needed to maintain my focus on other priorities.

Ultimately, I feel stronger now than before this unpleasant journey began, and it's now been, more than a year that I've been back to functioning at 100% going forward I plan to post occasionally and hopefully share some of the principles which have helped me through this process So operator syndrome this is like bad sleep this is hormone dysfunction this is chronic pain headaches substance abuse in your case freaking Oreo abuse depression suicide family dysfunction This is this is a pretty new term operator syndrome caused by like all the stress, the blasts, like all these things. And you were definitely feeling this.

Yeah, absolutely. I was, somebody sent me an article at some point. I was, I basically read through what operator syndrome was. Because I'm like, you know, yes, I've had whatever traumatic combat stress related stuff. But like everyone does, you know, if you're in this line of work, that's going to happen. I'm like, do, why is this affecting me so, so, so much? Like why, you know, just this total burnout and all the different things. So I went through and I read through the operator syndrome stuff and I can't quote.

it off the top of my head, but I went through and I was looking at all of these symptoms. I'm like, dude, this is me. I'm like, I'm like, I know dudes that have this who've never been in combat though, too. That's the thing. That's why I was like, oh, this is the guys who are in the teams who haven't been able to deploy to combat zones. They're like this. They got these headaches because they've got all these other issues.

And it's because of all of the micro concussions from all the explosives, from the shooting the Carl G's. So like all this stuff, right? And so I realized like, oh, you know, this is definitely something I've, yeah, definitely something I'm definitely experiencing. And I think even today, I'm still, I'm still experiencing it to an extent because like I'm by no means am I done. The war continues.

And so it's something where I'm trying to figure out, okay, how do you, how do you cope with that? How do you keep, you know, keep it under wraps and still continue to do your job and help people? What was the catastrophic burnout? I,

is this also known as watching a lot of Netflix? So the, yeah, that's true. The catastrophic burnout came from as I was starting stronghold rescue and relief. I'd spent a bunch of time overseas. I spent months living in the jungle by myself with being the only foreigner with this tribe of people in the areas I was working for months. And I've been trying to get my organization up and running.

And as you know, starting a business, starting a small bit, it's a lot of work. And again, granted, what I do is not a business. It's a nonprofit. And so I'm not getting paid. I'm working my butt off. I'm trying to do. I'm trying to raise funds. I'm trying to get back there and help these guys.

And I was just pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing myself and not being healthy, still dealing with addiction. All of this stuff made this perfect storm of eventually. And then the back injuries from Hell Week and all that stuff hit me again in early 2020. So it was just this perfect storm of just everything hit me all at the same time and just totally flattened me. It just absolutely just, I was just burned out. I was just done. And all of that stuff hit me at the same time.

And that's what I mean by just catastrophic burnout. I've been working so hard to get the organization going. Things were not going well. I mean, things were going fine, but they weren't going well. I couldn't support myself doing the job. And, you know, I needed to be back there helping these people. And I wasn't able to. And that's also, that also adds on to the issue.

So a lot of, yeah, just basically a ton of stress. I would say chronic stress. It would probably be a better, better term for the burnout. And so you just felt like you were kind of done at this point. You are having trouble. with your organization that you started, you're freaking weighing 300 plus pounds. Was there like a wake-up moment?

Was there something that, you know, something that shocked your system back into like, dude, get your shit together? So every morning I woke up and was like, dude, get your shit together. I'd be staring myself in the mirror. I'm like, well, why can't you? And this was part of the issue was, I would look at myself and I go,

dude, like you're freaking seal, man. Like, you made through a hell week with VGE, back injury. like you fought more like you've been like you got shot you just like literally stood up and walked it off right so you're tough your discipline so what is what the hell's a matter with you like what is the issue what is what is the real issue here and um ultimately ultimately it ultimately is the single biggest thing was the addiction that was the single biggest factor that was the domino that was messing everything up the one thing that finally shook me out of my of my issue uh and where I started to heal was in early

2021, I basically was like, dude, I'm at my last leg here. I don't know how to fix myself. I don't know what's wrong with me. And I just don't, I don't know. I don't know what to do. So I drove from Wisconsin to Florida and I went to Jacksonville Beach, Florida. And I got a hotel at the, I think four points by Sheridan, you know, just use my credit card. I got a top room at the, at the Sheridan facing the ocean. And I sat there for a month. I just sat there for. for a month and I just stared at the ocean. I was like, do I just need to sit here and like think about my life and figure out what the hell I'm going to do moving forward.

I'm not giving up on stronghold. I'm not giving up on myself. I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to go commit suicide. I'm not going to do any of that stuff. I'm going to lose this hundred plus pounds. I'm going to figure out how to get this stuff down. I'm going to figure out because I'm fighting to get back to these people who need my help.

I need to do this. I'm going to figure it out. I don't know what the answer is. I sat there and I stared at the ocean for a month. Over the course of that month, my stress levels just slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly started decompress. My brain started opening up. Everything started making sense. And I was able to at that point, a couple of months later, was able to make peace with the fact that I was an addict. And that was what finally set me on the trajectory to fully heal and get back to get back

to 100% and better than I was before. What was the first move to overcome the addiction? Or like even the few moves and the 12 steps that Russell Brown, I'm going to link you up a with Russell Brand. He would love to hear this for me. Okay. I would love to talk to him. It would be great. He's his,

his book, his book absolutely changed my life and is helping. How did you, how did you connect? All right. This is an, like a real legitimate addiction. This just isn't me like,

liking snacks. This is a freaking addiction. This is a problem. It's controlling me. What was the mental transition there? The mental transition was I had, I got to the point where I'd lost like 25 pounds. And I was like,

all right, cool. I'm like, I've got a good diet. Like at this point, Now I know how to work out. Now I know how to do nutrition. You know, like, I'm a grown man. Like, all right, cool.

The breaking point came where I was doing really good. And also, and I just did another binge. I just went on to binge for no reason whatsoever, even though I just hadn't. I was like, I had been so good for like a month or two. Like, what the hell's wrong with me? Like, I just totally go off the deep end. And I sat there. I was like, this isn't normal.

This isn't natural. Like, what the hell's the matter with me? So I just started, I was like, dude, I have to be an addict because like, I'm acting like, I'm acting like a heroin addict. My brain, I know that what I'm putting into my face right now is killing me. It's not only killing me. This is stopping me from being able to go to help people who are being killed. This is stopping me from being able to, like, people are dying.

Right now, I know as I eat this 57th burrito today, people are dying because I can't stop eating this damn burrito. People are dying. And it's that simple because I'm not there to help them. And I'm still doing it. Why am I still doing it? I was like, that's an addict. I'm thinking selfishly.

Something's wrong. So I started Googling or just, you know, researching like, okay, what's the deal with addiction? What's the deal with food addiction? What's all that about? I'd heard of 12 steps. You know, it helped so many different people. I didn't really know what it was.

And so then I kind of looked it up and I was like, okay, this is all, you know, this is all well and good. It seemed all a bit, you know, a bit intense and super serious. And then, you know, I listened to like, you know, Rogan or whatever. And he had some, obviously he has brand on from time to time. And I'd listen to that. And so brand, you know, I've been a fan of his for years, right? And so then I see him go from, you know, the drugs and stuff.

I love his documentaries about drug, about the drug epidemic and how it's a disease, not necessarily a crime. And like if you shift your mindset, anyway, those are really good. So I loved all this stuff. And so then I saw that he had a book called Recovery. And I thought, oh, I can, like, perfect. I'll get that. So I got the audio version of that.

And I sat there, I think, for like two days. And I just went through every, I listened to every word. I did all the different steps. I did the initial like four or five steps, which is really the addiction, getting over the addiction portion. The other steps, if I'm remembering correctly, have more to do with like fixing the damage in your life

that the addiction has caused you. And if you get through the first like four or five steps, like that will help you control the addiction. Are these four or five steps that you do like immediately? Yeah, yeah. You kind of go through. It's a mental thing. So the first one is you have to admit that you have a problem, right?

Which I know sounds really simple, but it's like, no, no, do you really have a problem? I don't remember the next steps in specific order. But basically, in Russell Brand's book, what he's doing is he goes through and he asks like a series of like, I don't know, 50 questions. What stuff along the lines of like what is this, what is this addiction taking from you? And so, but he asked that same question in like 25 different ways. What is this taking away from your life? Right.

And then the next series of like 50 questions is what would your life look like very specifically if this addiction was suddenly gone? Like, what would your life look like? And so I went through all of these steps. And I remember at different points, I was literally sitting there, like, tearing up. Because I was like, man, I was like visioning this beautiful life I know I could have, which is the life I have now. I'm married. I run a very successful organization. I'm helping a lot of people.

I'm very happy. And I know this could be my life if I just get over this addiction. So that's the first couple of steps as you go through, you go through that. And eventually, I don't remember if it's like step number four or five, total abstinence. That's it. today going forward there is no more you do not have the substance anymore if you're an alcoholic you don't you don't ever have a drink you don't ever go oh well it's just it's my birthday i deserve it zero zero total absence most people can do moderation addicts cannot do moderation and you have to make

you have to make peace with the fact that you're an addict you don't you don't get to there is no cheat day there is no um i'm gonna you know just it all things in moderation you know oh be balanced all that stuff like no no no you have to be extreme and all the exercises you had done before is you having to sit there and write out all the things, the ways that your life sucks because of this addiction and the way that your life could be if you just got over the addiction or like control the addiction, that always comes back into play.

You always think back to that and you go, oh man, yeah, now, now I get it. I'm not going to touch this anymore. I'm not going to touch this. So for me, from that point forward, this was, I think like July 9th, 2021, I want to say. I think it was 2021. Since then, I haven't had like bread or sugar or sweets or anything like that. With the exception of a couple different times, there was like literally no option, like in Burma to like eat this food or like the village elder is going to be like very, very offended and like it's going to cause problems. So bread, sugar, sweets.

Just bread and sweets basically. So like white flour stuff. So like white bread, tortillas, stuff like that. If it's like corn, it's fine. I don't fully understand what it is on the chemical level. I don't know. So sometimes like I'll have something and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that tastes too good. And I'll immediately spit it out.

And I'm like, I can't have that. because I get this, I get this physical reaction. I can feel it. I can feel the physical reaction in my mouth. I can feel it my brain starts to go crazy. Like an ultra dopamine, like happiness crazy. Like this is so good. Yes.

It's like meth or heroin. You're just like mainlining freaking good taste. Yeah. And you know it. You know you can't handle it. I know it. And I know this. And so for the rest of my life,

I'm not going to have those things ever again. And that's what I do. And the last two years, I haven't. And that's what I plan. What's your diet consists of right now? Pretty much. I try to keep stuff. pretty much as natural as possible.

So I'm very lazy with cooking. So any kind of meat, vegetables, and like a massive amount of fruit. I just love fruit. Because I still have that sweet tooth, but I can have the fruit because it's got the, you know, the, you can't binge it. It's not possible. Lots of fiber and all that stuff in it. So, yeah. But like zero junk food, like zero.

I just, I can't have it. Zero. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to try and get you linked up with Russell Brand. He's a good, he's a nice guy. He's a good guy. He would be very interested in this.

Yeah. I haven't heard anyone talk to him about food addiction and overcoming that. Yeah, I'd love to. So how about this like internal deep-seated darkness and internal issues? Like what was this? Was this the food stuff? What is this? So I had a lot of, a lot of anger.

A lot of, I didn't quite give up all the hatred that I thought I had, right? So I had a lot of anger. I still had a lot of the world isn't fair. I'm very angry. So it's one of those situations when you're down on your luck and you're the dude at the bottom of the totem pole just getting punched in the face and life isn't happening well for you. And it's when it's working well for other people and you know you deserve more and you know that you're capable of more. And I don't mean it deserve more in a selfish way, but it deserves more like you're like, dude, I'm meant for more. I can do more.

And things just aren't working out. There's a lot of, there's a lot of anger and bitterness that I was dealing with at that time just toward. Just ultimately it was because I was ashamed and angry at myself for not being at the level that I needed to be, particularly to go help people in Burma and to run stronghold in these things. There was also a lot of, yeah, a lot of demons and stuff, like just from the war and all this stuff.

And you're like, you're having, I'm having difficulty sleeping, with having all this stuff. And each individual thing is not all that bad. What happens is it's death by a thousand cuts. It's you have all these different things, all at the same time, are negative and I wasn't processing them well. And that was on me.

I needed to fix my, my own brain, my own mind. And one of the things that also helped me too with that is like stoic philosophy. I love Seneca. I read letters to Seneca. Not every single day, but pretty much every single day.

I read a chapter or look at quotes and stuff. I study his stuff because it really, really, really, really help me. Just keep my brain, help help help my brain, yeah. So these are the, when you talk about it in that,

in that Instagram post, that you did when you talked about the principles that helped you through this. This is like the Stoic principles. This is the Russell Blan, Russell Brand 12 step principles, either kind of things that you did. Yeah. Sure to get yourself back on track. You're sat in this hotel room for 30 days.

Yeah. And just what looked at the ocean. Expand on that, man. I don't get that. That's what I did. So what I did was I needed to. Did you work out? Did you do burpees in the room?

No, you just sat there. So yeah, there was like a gym at the hotel. So I'd go in and do workouts. I'd go walk on the beach. But 90% of my time was just sitting in the room like staring at the ocean. And yes. So part of that time was I was fixing my diet and I was like, I was eating healthy and stuff like that. So all of that absolutely did factor into it.

I was getting in workouts, you know, not every single day, but three or four days a week. And I basically, I needed to just sit there and mentally process everything. And that's what I did. I just sat there and mentally processed thing. I was like, hey, this is a problem. This is something that's bugging me. I need to sit here and think about it. and I would just sit there in the piece

and just stare at the ocean and think through all these different things and I would take notes on it and I would just kind of go through piece by piece by piece and then ideas would pop in my head and I'd kind of go down that rabbit hole. And I honestly couldn't tell you on a piece of paper what exactly I did for that month,

but I can tell you I sat there and stared at the ocean and just in the quiet and just like let my body and my brain and my mind. You were alone, yeah, yeah. My parents came down and visited for like a couple of days because they were like, oh, you've got a hotel on the beach. Like, all right, we're going to drive down and, you know, enjoy a couple days.

I was like, yeah, yeah, come on down. So they were down there for the last few days as well, which was great to be able to do that for them. But yeah. Yeah, you know, I've been talking about this a little bit lately. Just the, like when you go through a traumatic event, there's some things that are going to happen to you. Most likely. You're going to be second guessing, like some of the stuff you did, right? You're going to have those second guessing.

You're probably going to have some bad dreams because you were. or in a bad situation, you're probably gonna do some big contemplation about the meaning of life and what it all means and all that. You may or may not, depending on the situation, you're gonna have some kind of survivor's guilt where like, oh, I lived and, you know, whether it was an innocent person,

whether it was a teammate, I lived and they died. This is something that's gonna be in your brain, most likely. And as I've been talking to people, recently about this I'm and as people approach me to ask me about these things I tell them that um yeah that's normal like you're gonna feel this stuff and I think that reassurance is very very helpful to people to say oh yeah you were you were getting shot at or you almost died yeah you have a nightmares about that yep that's normal you're second guessing some of the moves that you made yep

that's normal oh you're not sure what the hell we're doing here yep that's normal oh you're feeling guilty about some other people that died yes that's normal like all these things are normal they're gonna take some time to process they're not abnormal though it's not like there's something wrong like if I would have talked to you after this if I wouldn't have taken five years to reply to your letter or whatever you know I'm probably like hey dude you're gonna be feeling some stuff man it's like this normal for you to feel like that you saw a lot of death people aren't meant to see that kind of stuff they aren't meant to see little girls

that have had their face blown out of their heads like that's not normal And for you to feel, think about that and have some nightmares and lose some sleep. That's, you're going to be okay. It's going to take some time. You're going to process it, but you're going to be okay. Because I think people get caught in the number one, there's something wrong with me. And number two, this isn't going to end or it's not going to get any better. And there's something wrong with me because you may still have bad feelings, but like,

understanding that that's normal, you're a human, you care about the world. Like okay. So these things are going to leave a mark, right? These traumatic situations are going to leave a mark on you. And it's okay that you feel a little bit different. It's okay. So I've been trying to encourage people with that. How long did the physical transformation of Ephraim take?

The bulk of it took probably about a year. I would love to say that I did the Goggins approach and got it done like 90 days. That didn't work. But I did try lots of different stuff. I had to get, you know, my diet and everything in order and whatnot. And I was still dealing with a lot of the mental aspects and such. One of the unique things that I actually tried out was like dry fasting. So you would drink no food and no water.

The longest I did was four days and 16 hours, no food, no water. And that was with like two or three workouts in there. We're not recommending that. Yeah, to be very, to be very clear. Like, we're not recommending it. But like I tried some of that, some of that different stuff out, some like different extreme approaches. And ultimately I'm glad I'm glad that I did those things because it was right for me,

but like definitely don't try it. Because it's not the sustainable way to like cut weight. It's like you have some, you know, health and health and exercise and all that stuff. But no doubt. But yes, that the initial bulk of it took me about a year until I was like also was dealing with the back injury. So I finally got all that kind of figured out and was back in the field. And since then it's just gotten progressively better and better.

Yeah. So I'm back to feeling almost at a hundred. 100%. So we're there. And so now the full focus is stronghold rescue. Yeah. That's what I do. This is what we're doing right now. Stronghold rescue. Yep. So talk to me about that. What's going on with that? Yeah. So when I when I was in Thailand during that 2016 deployment, again, I wanted to start something that would basically allow veterans to go into conflict zones to help people. And I didn't know what that was going to look like. I didn't know what a nonprofit was or a for profit. I had no anyone in that stuff was. So my foray into Iraq, which we've just talked to, in depth about. That was me, my mission there, my personal mission there was to figure out like, hey, how does this work? How are there American people here helping in a conflict zone? What does that even look like? What is this? So I learned a lot of like what to do, learned a lot of what not to do, ways that I could, you know, take my organization to do things slightly different. And ultimately, I decided to found stronghold rescue reliefs who are a nonprofit organization. And we basically

provide humanitarian and like rescue services basically to people completely free of charge. We never charge anybody or we provide our services completely free for them. And we send in small teams of veterans and we go into conflict zones. My rule is no more than four of us. We go into conflict zones. Our primary focus right now is Burma, but we've been in like Haiti, Ukraine. We were smuggling stuff into Venezuela through like partner like, um, Venezuela and stuff. Why is your role no more than four? So the thing I wanted to get at was so let's say we do in the future have more than four guys. we'll split them into different teams. And this is what I focused on with Stronghold.

I call it charity with dignity. And so what that is is we go in and our job is to enable and work with the locals so they can build up their own capacity to do these things. What happens, and I've seen it over and over and over again, is well-intentioned but not well-organized groups. You have 20 Americans will fly over to some area to want to help. And that's great. That's a great impulse.

I get that. And if you're, if 20 of you were going to go, that's great. But go split up into three or four different locations. Because what happens is you have 20 Americans show up. You know, every one, each person spending, you know, three to five thousand dollars to be there for a couple of months. Um, plus gear and everything like that. So that those, those 20 Americans, that's, you know, um, if you, if you factor in food and everything, it's like, that's well over a hundred grand just, just for you to exist there. Now, for that same hundred grand, if you were to enable locals who don't have jobs because they're refugees, they've lost their, they've lost their, they've lost every, they've lost every, they've lost every.

But they know how to organize. They speak the language. They already know what's going on. So if you can embed with them, work with them, live with them, mentor them, then now they can run the relief operations. They can run the rescue operations. They can be the ones doing the medical care. And you're there with them in the field, supporting them, not just training them and leaving

them, mentoring them, suffering with them, improving with them. That is much more sustainable because in the end, you know, I'm going to leave, right? I'm here in San Diego right now at this moment. I'm not in Burma, but I'm getting messages on my phone just this morning and last night of patients being taken care of by guys that we trained and organized. And so that's a lasting impact long term. The other thing, part of the other aspect of charity with dignity is you've just had the worst day of your life. You just watch your wife die. You just watch them rape and murder your wife.

Your kids are missing. You're running through the jungle completely alone. You've just lost your home. You've lost everything. And you finally make it to safety. And you, somebody, you know, somebody's going to bring you food or something. Now, imagine if it's some foreigner coming up to you with a camera behind them, taking pictures and taking selfies with you,

to give you a bowl of rice and take a selfie with you and give you some fake empathy and put their arm around you and put a little sad face on as they give you the rice. Of course, you'd be grateful for the rice. Of course you'd be grateful for the food. But the insult and the humiliation of that. We completely avoid that. All of our humanitarian, virtually all of our humanitarian operations

are run directly by local. There's a local on it. So you just have the worst day of your life. Hey, you want to know it? It's a member of the tribe who's also a refugee. They've also lost their family. They, you know, six months ago or a year ago, their family is affected by the war just as much.

They speak your language. They know the culture. And they're going to come help you out. And they're going to be the one to listen to you, to listen to your story, record your story, give you the food, give you the rice, give you what you need. That's what we do.

Buy with and through. It's like the military, by with and through the locals, which is always superior. Yes. And that's cool because if you send 20 people in to do something, then they're basically going to give people fish and not teach them how to fish. Exactly.

So that's an awesome methodology. And then using the locals so it's familiar. And it, you know, it's just like a ego removal, right? Exactly. For the Howley that's out there like, oh, I'll just, you know, cool, I get my picture with the local dude. Nope. You don't get that. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff like that that I've seen.

and I'm not going to go into it because it'll really piss me off. But that's what happens is guys go in there. They've got a little camera guy following them around. They're the hero. And then they like make the, I've seen this. Like they make the refugees who've just lost their home, make them all sit there in nice rows. And they stand in front of them with a camera and they give a nice speech about who they are

and how awesome they are. This is like a white person in like Burma, right? And then they're like, all right, cool. Cameras rolling the whole time. And then like now you've got to come up and I will hand you the thing. So you know, you know that it was from me, the white hero. Like you know and I've seen this stuff. I've seen it happen.

I've seen the videos. I'm like, it makes me want to throw up and it makes me so mad because it's such an insult to the people and it's so ineffective and it's so there's a million reasons.

I've actually had an article I just wrote for Black Rifles Coffee or Die magazine that'll be coming out within the next week or two or so, I believe. But I kind of go into this a little bit, the charity with dignity piece. The example I give

was just a couple of months ago in May. It was May 9th or 10th. I forget the eight off the top of my head. The Burma Army went into a village and they massacred 17 people. Eight of the 17 people were kids under the age of 10. Only God knows what they did to the women beforehand. They then slaughtered all of them, piled their bodies and burned the bodies. I got a video of it about like the next morning after it happened. I got a video of it because

I was about three miles away working in another, working in another sector in Burma when that particular attack happened. And so all these people were massacred. Fast forward, about a month, my team and I, we had been working in this area for this one particular sector of Burma for a couple of months straight, setting up ambulances, setting up a boat ambulance. We have a, we have three ambulances that extract wounded. We have a boat ambulance that goes across. We train the local village defenders. We train the villagers on the medical, medical evacuations. We set up radios so people can communicate between village to village. Hey, where do we run? Where do we go. What do we do? Just like those little girls in Afghanistan, they didn't know where to go.

Or maybe they were sent out by the Taliban, but if they weren't sent up by the Taliban, maybe there was running around scared. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know where to go, right? But that happens on a mass scale where 500 people don't know where to run to, and sometimes they were on the wrong way. And, you know, bad things happened. So we'd spent, we'd spent months building up all this capacity. Well, then in early June, a big attack came. The Burma Army came into that exact area where we had been working and building up the capabilities of the locals in that sector. And they responded, and, incredibly well. The villagers, the civilians who had been trained in the medical stuff,

they patched up their own people and extracted them, communicated on the radios that we provided, and knew where to run. The local village defender guys, they went and defended as long as they could. The villages eventually were overrun. They took casualties, killed and wounded. They evacuated all their guys using the tourniquets that we gave them and put on them, they put those tourniquets on their own guys. They extracted their patients to our ambulance boat, got it across this large lake to an actual ambulance, saved a bunch of people's lives. The villagers, when they ran away,

all the food, all of that stuff was given to them by people, all the supplies and stuff they got was provided by Stronghold and had been repositioned for just this kind of emergency because this stuff happens all the time. So my point is the best part of that whole story is none of my team was in the country when it happened. Not a single member of strongholds, like foreign team, like outsider team was there.

And that's the beauty of what we do. And that's how it works. So people are standing on their own. We give them what they need. We teach them how to fish, but we also give them a fishing pole. Stay with them long enough to make sure that they actually know how to fish. And then when,

when crisis happens, they're able to take charge and control their own destiny. So how do people support Stronghold rescue? So we're a nonprofit. We exist completely off of donations. If people want to help. So we do things slightly different at Stronghold. What we do is we ask people if they,

want to support, give 50 cents a day or a dollar a day. The way we exist is we have thousands of people all across the country and the world who each give us a little bit every single day, or excuse me, every single month, just a little bit every single month. And we actually limit the amount that people can give us per month when they sign up. So the max you can sign up to be a monthly donor is a dollar a day. Because what we don't want to have happened is we don't want people to hear the story and then they go, well, this is so great, I want to help. And then they sign up for $500 a month or something crazy because we've had people do that and you're like, No, no, no, no, that's too much.

That's great. Why don't you give us a dollar a day to support the work that we're doing? And then if you have that in your budget to go help, hey, go help other groups. Go give to FBR, go give to another local charity that needs your help. Go give your local church. We want people to not just give to us. We want people to give to others. So the way that we raise our support is we have thousands of people who each donate just a little bit every month, just like a Netflix subscription.

And whenever somebody signs up to be a monthly donor, we send them a T-shirt with a stronghold logo on. and our motto on the back. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. People can't go to these war zones. They can't go and help directly. People have lives to live. I get that.

I don't expect everyone to drop everything and suddenly care about the people of Burma. Like I do, my wife is a refugee from Burma. I don't expect people to care as much as I do. But everybody can do something. Everybody can do a little bit. And so if people want to support us, yeah, go to stronghold rescue.org. And that's the best way to support.

And that's where we can sign up. That's where people can sign up. To support. Yeah. Ukraine, you went into Ukraine? I did go into Ukraine. I went to Ukraine. The Russians were still advancing on Kiev.

So I was in Kiev during that time. With your fingers crossed? With my fingers crossed. Yeah. So I was in Kiev during that time. My job, we were not, we were in Kiev for, or we were in Ukraine. for maybe just a few months. I think mid-May, I think we pulled everyone out at that point.

So at a small team, I went in solo with one other guy. He had an emergency, so we actually had to leave. So I was there on my own in Kiev and Odessa. When the Russians were still advancing on Kiev, I was there in Kiev. And basically, I found myself helping these civilians who were basically, hey, here's a rifle. Congratulations, you're in the Army. When the Russians come down this road, your job is to shoot at them. and don't leave this road.

That's your job. And so what we basically did was you set out of a central location to do medical training, T-T-T-R-C basic stuff, but not even the full level of T-T-T-Ru-C, and to make sure that they could basically defend themselves and what they needed to do. So I was there basically mentoring them for a short time. Thank God the Russians stopped. So then I went down to Odessa. During that time, I was completely on my own.

The rest of my team was in Burma at the time. So I went to Odessa and did basically the same thing. We set up a full, like, T-R-T-R-C. We brought in an actual T-R-C certifier to come in and certify guys in that. It was set up a school, basically, to start just training everybody. And we started training trainers to give, like, Ukrainian military guys who started training them on how to train others on basic military stuff. So then those guys were able to go out to their units.

And then we brought in tons of, tons of medical supplies. The biggest difference that we made, and if anybody who's, anybody's working in Ukraine, and here's this, get Sked. Skedco litters. Those litters work phenomenally on the battlefield. And there was recently a video that went viral of some Russian or some Ukrainian soldiers dragging one of their wounded guys on a sked. And we don't know for sure.

We're 99% sure it was one of the skeds that we gave. Because there were lots of med kits, lots of stuff like that being brought in. We brought in a bunch of sked litters and got them to front line units. Two of the guys on my team, they, I had left Ukraine at this point. and they were still there for another couple of weeks. They ended up going all the way to the front front line. I was never on the front line in Ukraine. These guys were at the front line doing medical care,

like the front line, like getting mortared with the Ukrainian soldiers. One of the guys, the guy who was in charge out there, Jason, he gave me a call. He said, hey, man, these dudes are about to get overrun. The Ukrainians are about to get overrun. Like, we're going to die here. They're not, like, requesting permission to pull back. And I was like, yeah, man, like, you're on site.

You make the decision. You don't even have to call me. Like, you make the right decision. He was a former ranger, like a real, really awesome guy. And so him and the other guy who's with him, Adam, they had been living in an underground Soviet-era bunker with the Ukrainian soldiers and just, you know, all this artillery coming in the whole time.

Anyway, so they leave. They're like, hey, sorry, guys, we've got to pull back. They pull back, I think 24 hours or 48 hours later, the Russians overran that exact position. And some of the Ukrainian survivors of the attack mentioned specifically that Russian soldiers with night vision goggles went into the bunker where these guys had been sleeping, went into the bunker and killed everybody in that bunker

where these guys had been sleeping, the two stronghold guys. And then they left and, you know, I don't really know. Most of that unit was massacred and everything. So cutting it close to the edge. But that's the courage of the guys on the team willing to be out there in the first place,

but also the discretion to say, hey, man, we're going to pull back a little bit. So we got Burma, and that's just ongoing. Burma's our primary focus right now because we have, like I said, three full-time ambulances with oxygen tanks in the back and advanced life support. And we have a crew of all local guys who have medical backgrounds, like guys who are refugees and stuff who have medical backgrounds.

They're the ones who drive the ambulances and man, the ambulances and provide the care. But we provide all the support and we provide all the funding. We provide all of that stuff. And we organized all of it. And this is an ethnic cleansing effort. Is that a stretch or is that accurate? It's not inaccurate in some instances. So what's really going on is the Burma Army.

me, they are the government, right? It's like if General Mattis or General Mattis or whatever, like just use the Marines and like, hey, congratulations, the Marines are now the government, right? That's basically what's going on in Burma. So what's happening is the Burma, the ethnic Burmins, they want to control the entire country and they ethnically see themselves as superior to everyone else. And so they don't necessarily want to ethnically cleanse and completely destroy, they don't want to murder everybody necessarily. They want to control everybody. And if you do resist them, yeah, then they'll slaughter your entire village. And of course, they see you as lower. So they'll rape you and murder you and do whatever. These massacres like this stuff, like this happen all the time. It's, and they bomb villages, knowing full well, there's no military or defense personnel in those areas. So it is racial in a way, but also it's more like cultural cleansing because they want

you to get rid of your language and speak only Burmese. They want you to get rid of all of your any other religions and stuff. You need to be Buddhist. And so they want to control. in that way. And Thailand's across the river. What's preventing all these Karen people from just leaving? Is it because it's their homeland and they're like, no, this is where I'm from and I'm

staying? Or is it the Thai government can't take on any refugees? What's going on with that? So there are, I don't know the exact numbers, but there's probably, there's millions of refugees from the Karen tribe, but then also from the Kareni, from the Kachin, from the Shan the Wa. There's a bunch of different tribes. there's lots and lots of refugees

and the Thai government has actually been very, very kind and is very supportive and takes care of people. They even set aside like reservations specifically for refugees from these other countries where they can have their own land

and sort of settle and sort of like a Native American refugee kind of thing. Refuge, they can go there have their own land and set up their own stuff for the most part. The Thai government still keeps an eye on it.

So they're, you know, but the Thai government's very, very supportive and actually very kind. The thing is like, the Thai government, you can't go to war. It's, you know, we're going to go to war in Burma, you know, like, so they're not, they're not going to do that, which is, which is, again, is understandable. But, um, yeah, they're, they're actually very, very supportive. It is a safe haven for the, for the, for the refugees to go to. When you go back there, do you bring your wife with you?

Are she already there? She stay there. Um, so she's going to go, she's going to go back. Um, and she, actually, she and I met, she was working at a clinic in the, uh, in the jungle where we were bringing our patients to. Um, so that's, she's, she grew up in Canada. Um, so, um, so she's, she grew up in Canada. So she's, yeah, she's going to go back. She's going to go back with us. We just were recently married. So she'll go back on this trip as well. And she'll also help in the ways that she can. She's very intelligently, a really good teacher, speaks English fluently, obviously growing up in Canada. So that's a big thing that she can do. And she has a degree in science. So she can teach math and science at the clinic where they're training more medics and

things like that. And are you picking up the language too? Slowly but surely. She's, she's teaching She's teaching me. Yeah. I'm just like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. So does that, what else? Is there anything else? Does that get us up to speed? That pretty much gets us up to speed, yeah.

That's why I'm here today. I'm going back to Burma in a couple of months. And we'll continue doing the work that we're doing. So anybody that wants to help us, we, yeah, we truly appreciate it. And, yeah. So it's stronghold rescue. Dot org is where we're at for that. you're also on

Instagram Stronghold Rescues on Instagram Yeah And it's at Stronghold Rescue Yeah You're on Twitter

You have like one post On Twitter So your effort is Yeah basically I just recently set up the Twitter Yeah yeah Yeah if you want to If you want to save them up to

Go to go to more like Instagram So your Instagram is Ephram Matos at E-P-H-R-A-I-M-A-T-O-S Which we were discussing before we hit record Is a Portuguese name Yes So you got some of that Portuguese blood.

Yeah. And that's where we can find you. That's where we can support you. Again, it's a very interesting system. You got like a Netflix model, except for Netflix, weakens you and doesn't help anybody, except for a bunch of weirdos in Hollywood. And this at strongholdrescue.org will actually help people around the world

be free, be healthy, save them. themselves learn it's it's freaking amazing amazing thing um echo Charles yes you got any questions all going back to the hotel stay for yeah yeah looking at the ocean or whatever do you think I know you said that you're you know you're not sure you know trying to figure out why that's even that helpful is further do you feel like it's kind of like and actually asking YouTube it's like a method of detaching like getting away from your like normal routine that that tends to trigger certain thoughts like almost habitually sometimes.

And then you get away from that in an atmosphere of like, you know, ocean kind of brings peace. You know, when you look by the ocean or whatever. Were you high up? Were you on a high floor? Yeah, I was on a high floor. Yeah. Yeah, looking at it, looking at the ocean. I think the detachment getting out of your normal routine and getting away from the different, yeah, the different things that might just sort of set you off in a normal,

in a normal spiral. Yeah, that absolutely is an element of it. I think more importantly, for me in particular, it was it was just quiet and peace and being in nature. So I think going and sitting in a cabin in the woods would have been good. Also, like I said, I'm very introverted in that, not that I'm shy, but like for me when I'm, I do my best work alone. I do my best work. I heal and stuff when I'm alone.

I think maybe this method wouldn't work for people who, you know, are more extroverted and they want to, you know, engage with other people and they want to talk with other people. So I know there's a lot of different retreats and stuff out there for veterans and things like that where guys can go and get away from everything for a little bit with their families and be with other veterans and things like that. I've heard of a lot of those things. So, yeah, I mean, if you're more extroverted, that might be the way to go. I knew for me that wasn't going to work for me. I just had to go sit alone like an angry bear and just stare at the water and contemplate life. Yeah.

There's something about the ocean and being high up that kind of exposes or kind of induces this feeling of openness. You know, especially with, so you're not in the routine anymore. You're not being triggered by habitual thought patterns or anything as much anymore. And then you're exposed to this kind of peaceful openness. And no one's bothering you. You're by yourself. You don't have to accommodate anyone, especially if you're introvert. And then so it's almost like you detach and kind of in a way you can mentally and emotionally set everything out on the table and kind of be like, okay, that works.

That doesn't work, you know, kind of thing in this, almost like this protection of this peaceful. environment. Yeah. And I think I feel that. Yeah, that's exactly, I think, what ended up happening. Because I sat there and I just sort of picking through. I literally had like a list of things on my phone where I was like, all right, I just need to sit and think through this and make peace with it.

And that's what I did. Yeah, just item by item and just that really, that really helped. Yeah, it was just something. I didn't have the idea from that from anywhere. I just was sitting there thinking like, okay, I know me. What do I need to do to fix me in my unique, weird situation? Yeah, and that seemed to work. I felt like I kind of felt it when you said like, oh, I just sat alone looking at the ocean.

I was like, damn, I can feel that right now, now that you just said that, that I can see how that could be held. Yeah, that's very helpful. Something tells me I'm going to get a vacation request here in their future. Echo Charles is going to have to go and contemplate the stresses of his life. I actually do do that, though. Well, what's interesting is if you remember all the conversations I've had with Andrew Huberman, right? And there's a physiological and psychological thing that occurs when you broaden your your spectrum of vision. So if you're focused on something that's right in front of you, that's a signal telling your brain and your body that there's an emergency, basically an emergency going on.

When you're looking at something up close, when you're staring at something, when you're focused on something, it's your, you're telling your body, hey, you've got something you need to deal with. You know, this is how we as cavemen survived. like, oh, you know, whatever, saber-toothed tiger, focus on that. Blood, sorry, breath goes up, blood starts, you know, pulse goes up. Those things happen when you're focused. So what the opposite happens when you broaden your horizon and you open up your field of view. So what you're talking about echo is like scientifically a thing. What you're saying broaden your horizon and open your view, you mean literally, literally, literally, like you're saying, up high, stare at the ocean, it's open.

Literally. That's why, you know why people go? the sunset because that happens and they get that feeling and they might not know it they probably didn't know that until you know more recently I don't know I'm not the neuroscience historian but it was interesting because as Andrew Huberman and I were having conversations about this you know I had always sort of in order to calm down in order to detach which was another thing I taught before I retired in the seal themes like you got to detach you got to take a step back the take a step back I

would tell guys take a step back look around I always did that. I did that because it made me calm down, look around, and I didn't really put the physiological thing together with what I actually did, but it's, yes, it is true. That's why people like to go to the mountains and they like to look, you know,

see the beautiful view of a mountain. There's something that, there's a way that you feel because of that. You feel, oh, I'm not worried about anything. Also, think about this. When you're patrolling through the jungle or patrolling through the city, you can't see everything. So you're a little bit like, hey, hold on.

Like, I don't know what's going to hit me. That is some kind of a little psychological, animalistic thing that you have. I can't see what's going on around me. So I'm a little bit sketchy. But you're in a hotel room and you're looking at the ocean. You can see there's no threats. It's probably one of the few, you know, for you,

this is a huge moment for you to not have any threats. Right, right. You're like, hold on. You know, so that allows you to, as Echo said, detach, take a step back. And now you can start processing these things. Hey, what about this? What about that and think through them?

So those things, it's breathing as well. You can, you can, you can control your physiology to some extent, right? And some of the things you can do is, that's one of them, is broaden your field of view. Another one is you can manually slow down your breathing and that, that calms you down. So again, this is another thing that I've talked about is I would never want to key up my radio and be like out of breath or panicked. So whenever I was about to key up my radio and say something, I take a big breath and slow down. So I was the collateral impact of that was that I had stepped back.

I had looked around. I was taking a breath. What I was doing was being calm. And I was calming myself down. I was forcing my physiological system to calm down. And it made me calm and it made me less panic than it made me able to make clearer decisions. So this idea that you're talking about of just taking a step back, staring at the ocean from altitude as well that's a bonus program bonus program yeah what else

echo charles you got anything else that's it keep up the good work awesome to say the least any any closing thoughts from you ever no that's all i really appreciate you yeah it's been it's an honor it's been fun yeah well um again i i feel like i owe you five years worth of um recognition for what you've done uh and i apologize for that uh but thanks for coming here today day finally and I think you know what hey everything happens for a reason right at the juncture that you're out right now you got your organization you're doing work so Russell Brand has a podcast now Russell Brands coming up he's got a podcast now everything does happen for a reason and and we always look at the positive things

so we'll say right now you're ready for an influx of support at this time and you know I think that people that listen to this these are people that are definitely people that care about the world and care about helping other people out so I think we can see some support there but thanks for coming on thanks for sharing your story thanks for sharing your lessons learned it's been awesome and thanks for your service in the teams you know out there getting it done and thanks for the service that you're doing now since you left the team you know putting your life at risk in order to help other people that can't help themselves can't think of a higher or more pure calling so thanks for what you've done and thanks for what you continue to do man

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. And with that, Ephraim Mattis has left the building. A lot to process. Yes, sir. A lot going on. And as I mentioned many times, I only touched on it here a little bit in the book. And he's got another, what, four or five years worth of these things that he's been through over in Burma. As he mentioned, you know, he's in situations.

These are combat deployments for him and his team. He had one of his best friends and interpreters killed just a little bit of go. So, yeah, if you can support Ephraim, I would highly recommend it. Yeah, so there we go. It's crazy, man. It is crazy how, you know how you say when you kind of come out of the war and And it helps, regardless of your condition, but it helps to find a new mission. Where this kind of, I constantly was thinking that with him.

I felt like, man, this is a guy who's just like, you know what, I'm going to just find this new mission and just go hard and keeps going hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously he has a love for humanity. Yeah. That's just amazing. Yeah.

You know, to continue to do this, continue to risk his life, then pour his entire life into helping other people. To this extent is just, it's, it's, it's amazing, amazing guy. Yeah. For sure. The world would benefit from that way of thinking when he was talking about, yeah, they're like in different countries and all that stuff, but we're all human. We're all humans. So these are my nieces, my nephew, these are my brothers, you know, kind of a thing. And it's, it's one thing to say that, but his actions are like, pro, that's, yeah.

That is what he's doing. Yep. 100%. That's what he's doing. That's amazing. So if you can support Ephraim, please make it happen. It's without a question, a worthy cause. Yes, sir.

There you go. With that, if you want to support this podcast and what we're doing, and you kind of want to support yourself too, you can go to joccofield.com. You can get yourself some go, which I've had to today. Good. by the way. Yeah, I had one. A couple of these cans

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So, hey, it's a new age now. We've got more than jiu-tzeece stuff now. We got jeans, boots. Because we can't, look, technically, can you wear a ghee to the supermarket? Technically, speaking, you can. Sure. Yeah, hell, yeah. But how do you feel?

Let's, well, let me rephrase that. Is that a good move? Under some circumstances, not the best move for sure. Yeah. You know, I might be wearing the jeans. That might be a better scenario. That's why we make jeans. That's why we make shorts.

Because you know, you've got to go to the supermarket. You know, you've got to take your wife out to dinner. Yeah. She doesn't. You're going to go out on a date with someone, you know? You're going to doubt out on a date with a girl. Sure. And you show up.

You're wearing a ghee. Right. Right. It just might not be the message. Might not land. Yeah. So that's where we make jeans. You make T-shirts, hoodies, all that good stuff.

and it's all made in America. So you don't have to worry about, you know, we're talking to Ephraim. He's talking about people that are getting abused, getting murdered, getting raped, terrible. Terrible. That's going on in the world. Slavery is going on in the world right now, too, by the way. There's countries where slave labor is being used to make the clothes that you might be wearing right now if you're not careful. You're taking a chance at a minimum.

You're taking a chance at a minimum, unless you buy from origin, USA.com. then you're 100% not supporting slavery of other human beings. You're supporting freedom. You're helping the national security of this country. So go to origin USA.com and buy a pair of jeans. You're going to support America. You're going to support freedom. You're going to keep people out of slavery.

And you're going to look cooler when you go to pick up your date for dinner. Hell yeah. So that's what I'm saying. Well, I told you actually, yeah, I told you many times my tiered system. of attire, uniform. Let's just call it uniform, because it's kind of all I wear. So the top tier is the origin jeans, Delta 68. The new Delta 68, there's like a new one, right?

Like a new cut or something. I prefer the OG one. Yeah, Pete was very surprised just because the new one, like a lot of people like the new one. Yeah, interesting. I like the new one too, but the OG, that's the one. Well, we're constantly improving them and making them better. Yeah.

So I don't know what you're a little person. preference thing that you're dealing with over there yeah but I can tell right now the new ones yeah sick maybe because I stick with you know if it works I just sort of stick with it you know if it ain't broke don't fix it can I heard that before yeah yeah that's real but judge for yourself people but I should keep an open mind at all times I think so you might be right about that so I get it nonetheless hey they're all good even the factory what did they call them the factory change rate the OG the original ones they have a little bit less

stretch to them or thicker they're just they have the same stretch but they are thicker so it's they probably feels like Yeah, yeah. But hell, if you, if you, let's say you, let's pretend, for instance, that you had a job that required work. Okay. Then you might want the factory jeans. Okay. If you weren't like literally sitting in an air conditioned, you know, office for 20 minutes at a time.

Right. You turn the air conditioning on. You turned it on. Nonetheless, hey, look, you're right, regardless of my scenario. So there you go. OriginUSA.com. Get some. It's true.

Also, jaco store called jaco store. This is discipline equals. This is apparel. Mm-hmm. Discipline equals freedom good You know shirts hats, hoodies that kind of cool so there's a lot of stuff on there so yeah if you like something get something also Speaking the stuff that's on there so it's a subscription scenario for shirts new shirt every month called the shirt locker People seem to like these designs because they go outside the box sometimes

It's true there's been some objections too by the way That's the that's part of the gig Oh yeah a few yeah for sure there's been two objections but with every actually there are There was, no, few. Yeah, but for every objection, there's like someone who's like, this is the jam. This is the one. You know, this is my favorite one.

Because, you know, when you go outside the box, it's like you can go outside the box either in a good way or a bad way. And whether it's good or bad, that's just a matter of opinion, man. Depends on your personality. Toxic productivity, that was one that got some backlash. Oh, really? Yeah. But that's the third one.

So that one, everybody must get stoned, which was about a stoner 63 machine gun. And don't fuck it up. Don't. It doesn't have the word F you see K on it, but. But let's face it. Yeah. You don't have to be a genius to figure out what it says. Correct.

And you said it. Yes, sir. Those are three out of probably what? What are you got, 25, 30 shirts at this juncture? Yeah. So you're rolling about, Echo Charles, you're rolling about a 10% objection rate. But then again, each one of those three shirts,

there was a whole group of people that were extremely fired up. That's their favorite one. So there's a handful of them that people are like, hey, this is my favorite one. Those all three of those by the way were part of that handful of them the other ones was the good high level problems A lot of people like that one there And then that original the one with you on the tank People like down

There's some good ones on there right on so there you go Jocco store dot com there you go jocco store.com speaking of Get some speaking of getting stronger get yourself some steak from primal beef.com This is the good steak Let's face it, steak comes in different levels, right? Yes, sir. You know what I mean? Yes, I do.

You got steak'em that you can get technically, I guess it's steak, right? You know what steakums is? I never heard of it. It's like a little frozen thing. You pull out of like a box. You get it at the supermarket, like in the frozen food sections, right next to the fish sticks and the chicken patties. Oh, is it real steak or no? It's called steakum.

Stakem. Real thin. No. Anyways, that's one on the end of the spectrum. And I don't even know if it's necessarily steak, but it's on the spectrum. Sure. Other end of the spectrum, primal beef. Primalbeef.com, farm raised.

You know, so it's raised on a farm, not in a factory, grass fed, and they finish it. This is a good thing. With fruit and grain, like a little combination, they figured out. Because let's face it, dude. I mean, look, we like lean meat. I get it. I get it. But if you're eating a steak, you want it to be, you want it to have a little bit of marvel.

You want that. You want that. You want that. So there you go. This is next level. Primal. beef.com steak uh shone glass you know Sean glass yeah echelon front team team Eshalon front it's him him and a couple of his buddies kick this thing off and it's

freaking outstanding so check that out subscribe to the podcast obviously subscribe to jocco underground obviously subscribe to the YouTube channel if you want to know what f from looks like you can go check it out on there also Origin USA has a YouTube channel also jaco fuel has a YouTube channel So check all those out. And what else we got? We got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall.

A bunch of books. Obviously the book I talked about a bunch today. City of Death by Ephra Maddos. Get that book. It's heavy. Final spin, leadership strategy and tactics, code of values. Look, I've written a bunch of books too. The ABCs of Jiu-Jitsu.

Check out that book that's written by Adam Mason, Amazing. Coach Adam. All the kids' books that I've written. Those are really good for your kids, man, and your neighbors and your cousins, your nephews, your nieces. Just get them those books. It's such a game changer for kids. Out on the Jocko Live Tour, how many people came up to me and thanked me for those books?

And I signed those books. These are game-changing books for children that you know. So go get them. We got extreme ownership, dichotomy leadership. We got About Face. We got Mikey the Dragons. Just all those books. Check them out.

We got Eshalomfront, which is our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshalomfront.com if you need help inside your organization. If you want to come to one of our live events, whether it's the muster. Next muster is in San Diego, by the way, because the Dallas one's sold out. Because everything we do sells out. So if you want to come and do one of our things, then go to ashlamfront.com. If you just need help inside your organization, go to ashlamfront.com.

We have the Women's Assembly coming up September 14th, 3rd. through the 16th in Phoenix, Arizona, Jamie Cochran. The CEO of Eschalon Front is running that. And it looks like the CEO of Jocko Fuel will be there, Diane. It looks like the CEO of Origin will be there. Amanda. So it's like we got three companies run by females. Jock Fuel, Origin USA.

And what am I forgetting? Eshalom Front. Three companies run by females. They're all in the chief operating officer positions. So they're going to be at that event in Phoenix, Arizona. I probably shouldn't say this, but my wife's going to be there. And my wife is on a panel. They're having like a panel discussion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife agreed to be. And you know my wife doesn't. Doesn't agree for that. I don't talk to anybody about anything. Yeah, yeah. Especially about none of this stuff. Yep.

But she's going to be there. Jamie somehow convinced her to be on the panel. Yeah, man. There's going to be some questions for Big H. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, there you go to Escelonfront.com for any of that stuff. We also have an online training platform because we have techniques. But this is not something we are trying to hang on to. I'm not trying to hide this. I'm not a magician that has magic.

I don't want you to know the trick. I actually want you to know the trick because I want you to be able to utilize this because it'll make your life better. It'll make the life better for everyone around you in your family, in your work, in your home, wherever. So we have Extremeownership.com. Learn the techniques of life. Extremeownership.com.

learn how to interact with other people learn how to get discipline learn how to lead lead yourself lead others extreme ownership dot com check that out and if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families gold star family check out mark lee's mom mama lee

he's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org also check out heroes and horses We got Micah Fink taking veterans up into the wilderness so they can find themselves again. Not everyone has the methodology of going in looking at the ocean for a while like Ephraim does did also speaking of charities if you want to help out go to stronghold rescue.org You already heard for the last three and a half plus hours what Ephraim's doing around the world. So go and check that out

Also if you want to connect with us Or him on the interwebs You can go to at Stronghold Rescue on Instagram Also Ephraim's on Instagram And Ephraim's on Instagram and Ephraim Mattos And of course that echoed at Echo Charles I'm at Joccoa. Just watch out Just watch out for the algorithm

Which is trying to grab you And thanks to all the uniform Military personnel around the world Doing your best to help the world be a better place. And thanks to these types of humanitarian organizations like Stronghold Rescue that are out there risking their lives also to help people around the world and make the world a better place. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders that are out there right now. Right now, there's no break. There's no deployment cycle. You're on deployment. You're there helping us. And we thank you for what you do to keep us safe here at home and everyone else out there. The world's a rough place. The world is a very rough place depending on where you are.

And just about for everyone, for almost everyone, no matter where you are in life, someone is having a harder time than you are. Something to remember. Maybe help you stifle some of those complaints. But also it's a reminder that if you can, when you can, try and help people out. And this doesn't mean you have to storm into battle like Ephraim and the guys from Stronghold Rescue. You don't necessarily have to do that. But you can still help other people.

Maybe you can donate to one of these organizations. Maybe you can donate to Stronghold Rescue. Maybe you can donate to America's Mighty Warriors. Maybe you can donate to heroes and horses. And maybe you can't even do that. But maybe it's just a word of encouragement to somebody that's having a rough day. There's a whole spectrum of things that we can do that make a difference. And if we can all lift each other up a little bit, we can all make the world a little bit better.

And that's all I've got tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.