Jocko Podcast - 416: Step Up, Work Hard, Have Fun, and Raise The Bar. With "Lead Bob" Bobby Holland.

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

"Lead Bob", Bobby Holland. Navy SEAL and entrepreneur. Founder of Hoolie Golf.HoolieGolf.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 416 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The president of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Bronze Star Medal 2, Naval Special Warfare Operator Second Class, Sea Airland, Robert A, Holland, for service as set forth in the following citation. For heroic achievement, a connection with combat operations against the enemy as Naval Special Warfare Task Unit Bruiser, Combat, Advantage. and machine gunner in direct support of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 17 June 2006. Petty Officer Holland displayed exceptional courage under fire as automatic weapons gunner during a daytime presence patrol.

While patrolling a narrow street in a dangerous insurgent-controlled neighborhood, his element came under heavy enemy fire. With complete disregard for his own safety, he maintained his position, exposed in the street and engaged the enemy with his Mark 48-762 machine gun, suppressing enemy fire and allowing his element to take safe cover in a courtyard of a nearby residence. After departing the residence, the element began to fire and maneuver back toward the vicinity of a U.S. Army combat outpost.

As they executed the maneuver, he was wounded by shrapnel in the leg, but continued to provide cover for his teammates. by his extraordinary guidance, zealous initiative, and total dedication to duty, Petty Officer Holland reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of United States Naval Service. The combat distinguishing device is authorized. For the President J.D. Kernan, Rear Admiral, United States Navy Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command.

And that right there is the citations. from one of the awards for Robert Holland or Bobby Holland in one of the situations when he stepped up and led. And he did this over and over again on that deployment and throughout his career. And he've probably heard me talk about how the squad leader makes a difference. That's the Marine Corps. Professional way of saying it. In the teams, you've heard me talk about the E5 Mafia. These are the guys that run the platoon

These are the guys that navigate to the targets They set the breaching charges They prepare the radios, the vehicles, the crew surfed weapons They shoot machine guns that provide cover fire So the platoon can maneuver Bobby Holland was one of those One of those E5s Part of the E5 mafia

And in the book Dikotomy of Leadership Which was written while Bobby was still on active duty in that book Laif refers to Bobby as one of his most trusted seal enlisted leaders because Bobby was in Charlie Platoon tasking a bruiser where he was known as lead Bob and he was called lead Bob because in the SEAL teams whoever leads some aspect of a mission or some part of the platoon is known as the lead so as lead sniper or lead breacher lead climber lead navigator well Bob seemed to kind of lead everything so he just became lead Bob based on his ability to step up and make things happen and lead Bob eventually moved out of

the E5 Mafia into the head shed the dreaded head shed as a leading petty officer of a platoon as the chief of a platoon eventually became a worn officer in the SEAL teams and he spent 21 years there deployed all over the world including both Iraq and Afghanistan and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned lead bob bobby thanks for joining us bro jaco echo thanks for having me man um humbled to be here let's do it yeah let's go uh lead bob there's more nicknames will uncover there's more there's more things out there i don't know how many i want to unveil there are a couple yeah there's a few uh all right let's start at the beginning let's jump into this born and you're california kid born and raised california yep

Uh, raised in Fresno. I actually spent my first seven years in a place called Selma. It's like 20 miles south of Fresno. It's where my parents grew up. Um, yeah, went to Fresno when I was around eight years old and lived there until, you know, joined the Navy, basically. And, and so your mom, she was Portuguese, right? Yeah, we are Portuguese.

Because that was one of the nicknames I remember was Portuguese pig. Yes, the Portuguese pig. Yeah. See, we're already getting into it, man. Yeah, I'm just saying. We're out of the gate. Yeah. Yeah, all right. So Big Pig was one of my many nicknames. Let's get it out. And the Portuguese pig, yes.

So and your mom was what, second generation American? Or her grandparents moved here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So my great-grandparents immigrated from Portugal. I don't know all the details, but what was passed down to me was my great-grandpa, actually, this is in World War I, trying to flee all the shit that was going on there. swam out like a mile to catch a boat. So he wasn't with my great grandma at that point yet, but he was fleeing to America. Frogman style.

Frogman style. Yeah, yeah. And then what was this up with your dad? Would your dad do? Or did your mom work? Yeah. So my mom was essentially raised on a farm in Selma. So interestingly enough, I was back in town last week,

and we went back down to Selma. cruise around and you know she took me by the old farm and all that but she's raised on a farm you know kind of hard living there um she ended up somehow finding herself into the financial services industry and later became an entrepreneur um kind of like a rags or riches story there i don't say richest i mean we're middle class but it felt like riches when you're coming from a farm you know so um yeah just real kind of gritty upbringing for her my dad spent most of his childhood in Selma. He was actually born in Odessa, Texas,

and his mom kind of, you know, took him and his older brother from their dad, left Texas at a very early age, fled to Selma. And my dad, I mean, for lack of a better term, basically raised himself from, you know, 12 on, had a really rough childhood. And this is all in Selma? All in Selma. Yeah, Selma's kind of like a best described as probably like an ag town, kind of a smaller town. Fresno's a lot bigger.

Yeah. And then did you say your dad had a brother that died? Yeah. No, my dad has a story, man. Unfortunately, he's not around to tell that story. You know, we lost him back in 2012. But yeah, his brother. So his brother, I mean, kind of raised him.

He was three years older than him. Got into the wrong crowd and, you know, at the age of 21 was murdered. So it heavily affected my dad, you know, his entire life. My dad struggled with that and, you know, the, you know, being pulled away from his dad and his mom kind of abandoning him. And rumor has it. I mean, I don't know, but that guy who, murdered my uncle.

My uncle was my namesake. I was named after him. He was handled with some country justice when he got out of prison, as rumor has it. Damn. Yeah. Well right on.

And then what was your dad doing for work? So my dad found himself, he spent a career at a, I guess, a commercial water filtration you know, corporation, I guess. So he was a purchasing manager

and just kind of did that. I mean, as long as, you know, my entire life, that's kind of what he did. Was he ever in the military? He was a reservist. Post-Fietnam a couple years. I think he was stationed at Pointe-Wa-Namee or something for a year. Oh, so he's Navy.

Navy, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a CB, oh, right on. Electrician and also a pig gunner. Yeah. He introduced me to the M60, which down the road I would actually get to wheeled, which was really kind of need to go full circle. But yeah, I grew up.

You know, my dad was an active duty. He didn't like get into it, but held the Navy with such high regard in the military. And, you know, I was always talking about carrying the pig. And I never, man, I remember this shit all the way back in Ramadi in gunfights. But my dad used to tell me the survival rate in Vietnam for a pig gunner was like, I don't know, 30 seconds or something. That was kind of like the rumor. So, you know, that conversation kind of stuck with me. And when we were getting gunfights, it was, yeah, check.

You tried to shrink your head down a little bit? Yeah, yeah. Try and keep that low profile. So what are you into when you're growing up, like you're in your childhood? I was really into sports. Yeah, that was kind of my outlet. I was a rambunctious kid, I guess, you could say. My mom...

We call those delinquents. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I never spent any time in a facility, per se. But, yeah, I mean, I was just full of energy and rambunctious and stubborn and a handful, man. But sports was my outlet. So, you know, really into sports, played all sports. Growing up, you know, started with soccer and t-ball. And then I got into football and wrestling,

and those were like really, really my sports. And I grew up playing streetball, street football. I don't know if anyone knows that that's the thing, but. Echo? Yes, sir. Do we play a streetball in Hawaii? We did, yes. Big time, what did you play with?

Uh, just neighbor kids. Yeah, but what? Like a rock? Oh, no, no, no. A football, man. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I don't know. There's different levels to streetball

that Charles was playing out with a coconut boy. We have played with coconut people, yes. Yeah. So, streetball, in the street? Yeah, probably like every day of my life from like age eight until, you know, I was playing real football on the field. My brother and I, I have a younger brother, three years younger, playing some reball, man. Yeah, it's great. Cutter teeth there.

And yeah, man, I was into movies, you know, into sports. And then what's up with your parents? Are your parents like, I mean, it sounds like your mom's coming from a little bit of a rough background. your mom, your dad's coming a little bit of a rough background. How would they get along? How was, how was all that? Like the home life. Yeah, man.

You know, it was, it was good. The parents did a good job of not, both my parents did a good job of not passing down their shit. You know, and that's a real gift. That's a generational gift. And I was having this conversation with my mom the other day. You know, I've been doing a lot of reflection last week. No one, and I was going to come on here. I haven't really thought about a lot of this.

stuff in a long time and you know I thank her for that because you know she kind of broke the kind of cycle of shit there and that's been passed on to my kids and so yeah you know I had a great upbringing man I mean you know our parents worked very hard to get a roof over our head we had everything that we needed you know they didn't come from much but yeah man I wouldn't change my childhood for anything it was a blast my parents always supported me doing everything You know, and they let me be me. And I think that was the best thing that they could have done was not resist. Yeah, they tried when I was younger and it didn't work.

And I think I turned out to be the best version I could have been. What, like, guardrails did you push up against with your parents? Like, what were you getting into that was where they were like, all right, we just got to let this go? Oh, man. Were you like getting good grades? Yeah, I was, yeah, I was a decent kid, man. I was a pretty good kid. You know, I got decent grades. I wasn't very focused in the classroom. I just didn't want to be in the classroom, but I got it done. You know, my parents did expect me to do well in school, so I did well enough to keep them off my back. And, you know, as I got older, I just got in a lot of fights, man. You know, and I was, I was, I was, I was, I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. You know. I was. I was. I was. I was. I. I was. I was. I was. I was. I. I Yeah. Were you just mouthy or were you a nice target?

Were you just hostile? I don't know. You know, I think I need some of my, you know, childhood opponents to kind of remind me a little bit. I like to think that it wasn't me that started at, you know, my parents raised me to never start a fight, but always to finish it. Like it was always very clear that if you get in a fight,

you better finish it. And it was like, you know, not like, you know, if you want. It was like you're going to finish it. We expect you to do that. So I got picked off for a little bit. I was, I got a little bit chunky, you know, or hefty. Hefty. You know, but it was like solid like fighter weight, you know, like nine, 10 years old, you know.

It wasn't like sloppy. It was like kind of thick. That happens to boys when they're getting ready to grow. Yeah. Like that age of maybe 9, 10, 11, they get a little bit thick, we'll say. Yeah. And then when they grow, usually they lean out a little bit. Yeah, so.

So you got picked on because of that. Yeah, don't, don't quote me out. But I think from like second grade to like sixth grade has 120 pounds. And I just, that's pretty beefy little kid. I just grew taller. And then I grew kind of thinner, right? Yeah, so I got picked on a little bit. And I just handled people, man.

You know, I was. Straight up, bro. Completely untrained. Like, no skill whatsoever. But I was, I was fueled by the movies of the 1980s, man. You know, I mean, all those action movies. You related. I related.

And, yeah, you know, I think my record, I think I'm undefeated, man. In childhood fights. I fought all my neighbors, except for one. There was one kid. I won't let him know who he is that I didn't want to fight. He gives a tough guy. He is older, too. But, yeah, and in school, got a lot of fights there.

And, I mean, just damn near. Did you get trouble? Yeah. My mom was on a, you know, first. name basis with the principal. I don't think I was suspended, but I was threatened to be suspended. I was threatened to be expelled several different times.

And yeah, so just like a lot of fighting. And man, I got so many fights. I was even getting cocky and like trying new moves and shit. I had no business doing. What year is this? Oh, this is like circa, you know, 88 to kind of 90. So like this is still pre-UFC. No one knows.

Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. All right. You're still thinking roadhouse moves are going to work. Oh, yeah, yeah. I got a story for you. All right. Speaking of roadhouse here, so I'm, I want to say I'm 11 years old, and on the playing ground and playing basketball, the basketball goes out of bounds.

And this kid, you know, like, picks up the ball. And I was like, hey, man, give us the ball back. And he's like, yeah, not having any. He threw it away. I was like, oh, it's game on. Right. fight is happening. So we end up going after it and,

you know, throw a couple blows. I'm like, I'm like 11 years old, man. Just a little chunky butt. Throwing, throwing blows. And like I said, I was like so cocky at this point. Been so many fights. I'm like, it's go time. I'm doing it.

And I decided to try for the first time in my entire life a roundhouse kick. Oh, bro. That's real. Not only did it, not land, but I fell on my ass. Yeah, not a great look. Is this, when did you meet? Tyler?

I met Tyler in eighth grade for sure maybe seventh grade, but we got really close in high school. And the reason I bring up Tyler is because, well, we actually all know him because he ended up in the SEAL teams as well.

I'm not sure we'll get to that. But that was seventh, eighth grade. You met him, started running with him. Yep, yep. And you get in high school, or did you keep wrestling? I stopped wrestling in eighth grade.

Man, I really credit. I only wrestled for like four or five years, but that wins every fight. If you're 11, 12 years old and you wrestled for four years, you're winning every fight just on that. I mean, and a nice roundhouse kick apparently. Yeah,

you know, back then they didn't have mixed martial arts. They didn't have jujitsu. Well, it wasn't as prominent, I guess. No, they didn't have it in America.

It was kind of like karate, taekwondo. I mean, those were kind of like what kids would do. But I wrestled, I think, you know, strongly encouraged, you know,

especially young boys to, you know, do one of those things, do martial arts, wrestle, because, I mean, I just learned things at that young age that carried on with me the rest of my life. And the, uh, the discipline to wrestle. Um, I mean, the hardest practices of probably all the sports, I'd imagine. Um, you know, cutting weight, the discipline and then just standing in the ring, you know, staring that at their dude down, you know, the heart's racing and, and like, you're going after it, you know, but, uh, so I, I was a good thing. good wrestle, you know, pretty accomplished.

Up until eighth grade, I made it up to, I'm not sure if it was a state meet or regional meet, but a pretty big meet up in Sacramento in eighth grade. And, you know, I got pretty close to like finishing. I got towards the end. And then I met my match. The junior Olympic dude who, I mean, looks straight up like Rocky. And I lack skill, to be honest with you. I was just kind of like aggression and I met my match.

And I think he got me. I think it's called a surfboard move. And he just maxed me out in points. And I was like, you know what, man? I feel like my wrestling crew is over. So went into high school and my high school had a really great football program, a year-round program. Damn.

And that was basically, you know, I had to drop wrestling and I was all in on football after that. All in on football. And what did you make? Like, are you playing football? freshman team, varsity team, JV team, like how'd that go? What'd your career look like? Yeah, yeah, my high school career. I started out, I played freshman ball, had a pretty good season. And then after the freshman season ended, our varsity team was in the playoff run. So they had, I think they won the championship the year prior, like really, really great team. I don't know

what we were ranked in the state that year, but my senior year, I think we're ranked like fifth. So, like, super solid program. The head coach came in. I don't know what level he coached in college, but he came down and just ran kind of like a college level program. At least that was the perception of it. So they pulled me up to varsity the end of my freshman year. By this point, I played Iron Man ball, which means offense and defense on the freshman side. But they pulled me up, and then I just played defensive line from that point on.

Would you weigh, like, in high school? I think I was 190, 190s. Is that by the time you got to your senior year? Yeah, man, I don't remember like what I came in at freshman year, but yeah, I was like 190s senior year. Were you jacked? Were you lifting? Were you squatting?

Or was just kind of like normal growth? I mean, I wouldn't say I was like jacked like, you know, like muscle man jacked. But I was super strong. One of the things that, you know, I didn't mention we kind of passed over, but when, you know, I was a chunky butt from like, I don't know, 9 to 11 or whatever. I started to lean out. But one of the things I did, I made a pack with myself. Fifth grade, summer going into sixth grade, I'm like, I'm done being a chunky butt. So I just stopped eating shit.

And I started, my dad had some weights. So I started, like, lifting weights. And I was a strong kid. So, yeah, I was strong. and I was fast, you know, and I say that like with a huge grain of salt, like compared to fast people. I'm not fast, but I was, you know, decently fast, aggressive, and I felt like I was born to play football. So how far did you make it like your senior year in football? Yeah, so, man, I was all in, like, you know, I had aspirations of playing after high school,

but I think my social life and distraction kind of gone the way in high school and I just stopped developing myself further. So, you know, I'm still like ranked pretty high. What grade was that? Well, I would say probably junior year and senior year. I just kind of slacked off. Did you get a car or something? Yeah.

Did you get a girlfriend? Yep, yep. I actually met my future wife in high school, so dated softball. sophomore year. Are we allowed to say her name? Yeah. Yeah. Beth.

Yeah. So you met Beth. I met Beth. That's crazy, you know. It's crazy. Yeah. And I...

Big distraction right there, Beth. Big distraction. Just distracting you all over the place. Let's blame her for the reason why I'm not, you know, I didn't play in the NFL. Not the fact that I was, you know,

5, 11 and not even 200 pounds. Playing defensive line nonetheless. Chuck. Yeah. I was a very social. kid and you know man I just was distracted and probably doing things I shouldn't have been doing and not you know I I didn't want to get big I was happy being kind of strong and lean and I probably had to gain another 30 pounds you know which I would do later in life but yeah so we we made it uh

you know I got injured really bad high ankle high ankle sprain my senior year it didn't take me out the game but, you know, I was just like less in full force. That, you know, first half of the season there, stats weren't that grade. And, you know, there were no scholarships at the end of that, no colleges ringing. Great grades were decent. But it kind of squandered that. And my final game, man, I remember it, like, very, very closely because we were making another run at the championship, had a good football season into the playoffs.

or it was the game deciding if we go into the playoffs. That part's a little bit fuzzy, but we were down. It was 28, 21. We're playing our rival. So I went to Clovis West High School, and our rival was Clovis High School. They were ahead. Clovis was ahead 2821. And, you know, I think it's poetic the way my career ended.

If you want to call it a career at my high school, sports career. We're calling it a career. Yeah, all right, all right. So it was a play action run on the offensive side, and I was a noseguard. I broke right through the line, and I just saw the quarterback, and I hit him. He fumbled the ball, and I'm looking at, man, I can paint this picture for you right now. We're probably, I'm probably like 40 yards away from the end zone. And the ball is there, and there's no one.

I see no one. I pick up the ball and, you know, I just, I started booking it and I made it like probably three yards and I got tackled from behind. That was my last play football. We drove it all the way, our office drove all the way to the one-yard line. And they couldn't get it done, man. So that was it. Into the career, I was the, you know, we went into the locker rooms change and I went back

down the field and just kind of like soaked it in, man. That was, football was such an important. part of my life up that point and I mean honestly man when I went through buds I was looking back at football practices and like I mean this ain't that bad yeah especially summer in Fresno like oh yeah yeah it's miserable 10 degrees and this is back when you know hydrating was like a luxury you know yeah that's that this is pre the big hydration you got to hydrated. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We had... It was like they started saying hydrate or die. Back then it was just die. Just like, just die. Like you don't need water. What's wrong with you? You're freaking wimp if you need water. We had ambulances come out.

This was not uncommon. And, you know, everyone would just look at the guy, just like, weak. This guy. Heat Kaz. Yeah. You were into music, too. You play guitar. Yeah, I did.

So what was that all about? My parents divorced when, uh, when I was around 12 and my mom started dating a guy, ended up marrying him for a couple of years as well. He played guitar. So he introduced me to guitar and I picked up. I loved it. So I started jamming out. I think, man, Paradise City was the first song I learned. Oh, dang. Yeah. Straight in. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I never learned how to read music. Just tab. And just kind of like self-taught. I say self-taught with a grander. salt, you know, that gentleman taught me a lot, taught me all the chords. And then I would just,

you know, that was kind of my thing. So whenever I was out of football, I would go to my room and I would jam and I would play songs and I would write my own songs and do that. And then, you know, eventually got into hardcore music and. Hell yeah. Yeah. Echo's favorite. No, that's my favorite. But, you know, Echo throws out the hell yeah at certain moments in podcast. You Usually it's on some real dumb shit. Oh, yeah. He'll go, hell yeah. Like someone will say, like, he actually already said one today.

When I said Roadhouse, did you hear that? He goes, hell yeah. Because, you know, that's some meaningful shit. The echo Charles, bro. He's like, you know, that's a bouncer right there. That's his, that's his forefathers right there. Pat Swayze, man. That guy got after.

So you're listening to hardcore. You're going to shows and everything? I did. Yeah. I went to my first show in eighth grade. Bad religion was my first show. my first show. Nice.

Yeah, good, good punk rock band back then. Got knocked down in the mosh pit. My first experience with that, walked away at a bloody year. You're fired up. Fired up. Fired up. Like this is, look, yeah. Yeah.

And got more into it in high school. Actually, I mean, backing up a little bit, the head bingers ball. I was really into that in the late 80s, early 90s. With Ricky Ratman. Ricky Ratman? Remember that? Yeah. The head bangers ball with Ricky Ratman.

Yeah, and they'd play songs that weren't appropriate for the daytime MTV. Remember when MTV had music on it? It was an interesting thing. So as you're doing all this shit, do you have a plan for your future? No. Is that a shocker? I mean, football was my plan, but then I just kind of let that die. No plan at all.

and that became clear senior year. I mean, when football was over, it was like, shit. So were people like applying to colleges and this kind of stuff? Man, I... And what are you doing? Like, uh, just... Everything wrong. You know, so like even backing up during the football season,

it was so awful, but I took the SATs on a Saturday after a Friday night football game. up super late. I had to drive, it was like 45 minutes south of Fresno at 6 in the morning. I was doing touch and goes. I mean, I was surprised I haven't made it there

in one piece. I was smoked. I did awful, you know, I didn't have any big prospects. I wasn't super into school. But my parents told me as soon as I was done with football, it's like, go get a job. So it's like, check, all right,

I'm going to get a job. And then just figure it out. So I what was your job? I ended up getting a job at the Silver Dollar Hofbrow. Which is what a restaurant? It's a a Hofbrow is like a restaurant bar. It's kind of like a bar with a cafeteria set up. It's weird.

So I got a job working in the back. So I was like in the kitchen, cleaning stuff up. Bus boy, you know, washed dishes graduated kind of like was a bus boy and a bar back. and then did some ad hoc bouncing as well. Hell yeah. But yeah, so it's, you know, no, I didn't have a plan. I decided to go into junior college or community college because that's what you do when you kind of don't have a plan.

So figured I would do that and kind of figure stuff out. And, you know, my senior year I was just kind of doing a lot of exploration, like, you know, young men do at that stage. like man what what do I do were you thinking military did you start to consider military you know I started having some ideas I mean if you're watching freaking predator and freaking Rambo and all this stuff you must be yeah I I did I was raised on those movies I was raised on you I have uh this rambo knife here you know first blood commando predator so I felt like I wanted to do some sort of you know you know action career if you will but I had no idea

kind of what that was. So, yeah, I went to community college. I actually, one interesting thing that happened to me in my senior year was I found a martial art called Ikeido. So I was actually at a party senior year. This is after the football season and at this guy's house and he had like a full-on dojo set up in his house. Now we look back and know that this dude was a nerd.

For sure. At the time, we're like, yo, he's been trained by the ancients or something. He had straw mats out. Like, it was legit. So I'm like, hey, you know, what's this? And he showed me some moves. And I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of cool. And, you know, he's like, oh, by the way, this is, you know, you heard of Stephen Seagall. I was like, oh, please tell me more. You know, that's what Seagall did. And I was like, I was intrigued. So I ended up going to a class. that next week and and got really into that. So that became my outlet. Did you buy those weird pants and everything? No. No, I have a great picture.

I'll show you after this. I got to do some like black belt testing at Segal's residence. Damn. And I have a picture of him wearing the funny pants and elf shoes. Wait, the pants are for the teachers and stuff, right? It's not for the regular students. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. You're talking about the Hakima.

I'm just talking about like the Akito pants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I never, I never made black belt. I got up to, uh, do you need to have a black belt to get the pants or whatever? You're, you're supposed to, yeah. What do you wear before that? Like a regular ghee? Yeah, just ski.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I know this because I did Ikedo back in the day, too. Oh, damn, look it all comes out. I, I, I, I know about Ikeeto is I bought my first ghee ever from an Akito school in Ocean Beach. Yeah. And it was cheap, it was $40.

It was called unbleached. So there was like a white one. Yeah. And it felt a little bit softer. But that was like $48. And the one that I got was $40. Okay. And it was unbleached.

So it was real rough and it was like a yellowish kind of gnarly looking color. Yeah. And it lasted like three weeks because they didn't know what we were about to do with these things. Because we were turning like, you just, blah, and just killing each other. Yeah. So the thing didn't last long at all. And then I had to go back and go get like a real jujitsu ghi. But that's only, so the only the high level people wear that weird outfit in Aikido.

Yeah. So it depends on, you know, if you're going to like a non-traditional place, they may do that, which gets really confusing because like we used to travel and do seminars and training events. And so sometimes. And so Bobby and the freaking training program. So sometimes you would go to these seminars and, you know, you're training with folks. and you pair up with people and you're training with you,

you're like, man, seems like you're not a black belt. Yeah, and you're also like, it seems like I could kick your ass. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but in Aikido, it's a young, chunky Bobby's going to come out

whoops of ass. You're basically a white belt all the way until you wear a Hacama. So there's no, you don't know kind of who you're dealing with until you get the Hockman, then, you know, that's just first degree of black belt and you go off from there.

How many, how often are you training? A lot. Like every day type thing? Not every day, multiple times a week. I mean, it became my new football. And this is your senior year of high school. Senior year. And then it carries into when you go to community college, you keep training.

Yep, yep. I train really hard and started traveling. It just really kind of consumed my life. So, Akito, yeah, basically I went to school, you know, worked out and did Ikeido. And then later when I got motivated to, you know, go the route of pre-executive. to go to the teams. I mean, that's just kind of all I did.

So how did you find out about the teams? Just straight, the movie Navy Seals? It played a huge part. Because Leif Babin, he's just straight up. Like, that's like a game changer for him. Freaking Navy SEALs the movie.

Hands down. Someone else was on here. It was like Navy SEALs. And Dave Burke, top gun, like 100%. Yeah. 100%.

He's like, oh yeah, top gun came out. He's like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. So was that where you first, heard of the dames.

I don't know where I first heard of it, but I do recall I had a teacher in eighth grade who the rumor was he was a seal. Turned out not to be the case. And I've learned many years later that he went to buds. You didn't graduate buds. But I remember, I think that was the first time I heard of it and, you know, kind of piqued my interest. You know, and then I start Aikido and Stephen Segal and, you know, under siege.

Oh, that's right. He was a Navy SEAL cook. Navy SEAL cook. I'm like, man, I don't want to be a cook, but I kind of like, you know. So I started looking into it more and then I watched Navy Seals the movie and there's no turning back. Oh, okay. Best movie, hands down. It's good.

I've watched that dozens and dozens of times. And if it's on, you know, if I'm scrolling through the channels it's on, I have to finish it. You're watching it. Pay homage. Yep. Go to a recruiter. Like, and Tyler, you guys, did you guys just sit down and watch it together and freaking just geek out and go like, let's go join the Navy? So it wasn't like a linear path to go to the team.

Oh, you two weren't like on it together? We got there. But we weren't there immediately. So probably spent six months outside of. high school, just kind of mess around. No real designs to go into the military. Then I started looking into the seal thing and talking with Tyler.

Tyler was actually looking to become a Marine. So we went to like Armed Forces Mall. You know, like you go like just like on the street corner. It wasn't an actual mall. But it was like, you know, Army, Navy Air Force. Yep. And we went there just trying to talk to a couple of dudes to kind of fill it out.

And I wanted to talk to the Navy guy. Shocker that, like, Navy guy was out for lunch. Jack. But you know who wasn't out for lunch was Gunny. Yeah. Gunny came out, you know, saw two fit dudes standing outside. And it was like, hey, boys, come inside. And he had us up on the pull-up bar immediately cranking him out.

He's firing us up and, you know, introduced us to force recon and, you know, put on a video. And I walked out of there 100% thinking I'm going to be in my name. I was going to say, I don't know how you didn't sign the dotted line that day. I did. I actually, so much so I went home, I told my mom. Yeah, I was living with my mom at that point. I'm like, mom, I'm going to be a Marine. And she just completely broke down.

And really because I hadn't talked much about the military up to that point. So it was like completely out of the blue. And she's like, please don't, you know, just think about it, give it some time. And yeah, so anyways, I did take some time. I was like, all right. I woke up the next morning and the gunny's, you know, spell had kind of worn off. And from that point on, I was like, man, I'm all in. And then probably six months after that.

All in for the teams? For the teams, yeah. But you still hadn't talked to a recruiter yet? No. No. Okay. I ended up going back probably like six months later, something like that. By that point, Tyler had kind of gone on board.

So we decided to do that later. Yeah. And basically it was all in, you know, on the Frogman path from that point. And then spent the last, at least the last year and a half, maybe even longer, of just training. And Tyler and I trained like Mad Men, you know, I mean, for the better part of two years. And trying to get ready. Trying to get ready. Was that like that?

all that time, was it because you were thinking, oh, this is going to be so hard? Like, I'm not ready yet. I need to get ready. Was it one of those things? Yeah, yeah, it was. And there wasn't a whole lot of information back then. As you know, I mean, there were books from Vietnam.

The internet was just, you know, coming online, but, like, people weren't really using it that much. So, yeah, I was trying to convince myself that I could do it. And I was trying to prepare myself. And I did come across, Tyler and I came across a couple of books. that had like, man, I think it was a Stu Smith book. It was like a workout book. And then there was another book.

So, you know, we gobbled those up and we created a training plan. I mean, this was like the first real exercise I'd had in my entire life of setting a goal and figuring out how to conquer that goal, like invaluable stuff. But, yeah, I'd never ran more than the high school sanctioned mile. You know, like I ran lots of, you know, yards and football. but it never ran more than a mile, so started running a lot, worked our way up to 30 miles a week, was running two,

or sorry, swimming two miles in the pool, which is miserable. Yeah. It's awful. Like a, like a 25 meter pool or something like that. Exactly.

Yeah, started doing pool skills stuff. So, like, we knew enough about buds to know what the requirements were. So Tyler and I were drownproofing ourselves. We were breath holding, I mean, looking back, especially when I got into training and you learn some stuff, it's like, man, just really dumb stuff.

Just for everyone that's listening, one up, one down, man. When you're working in the water, you're doing breath holds, you're doing drown proof and anything like that. One guy on the top, the other guy can do breath holds. Don't be competing against each other because you can definitely both pass out and die, and it's terrible. So one up, one down is the rule for that stuff if you're listening. And you're a freaking knuckle-headed young man between the ages of 13.

and 24 and you and your buddy decide you're gonna go and you're like we need to breath holds just one up one down that's the rule and so you guys are running you guys are swimming you guys are doing drown proofing and you're getting ready what um you finally go to the recruiter was it a hard process uh no that that was easy um you know basically i got my my ticket to MEPs so went to MEPs and uh that was up in Sacramento and, you know, MEPs is essentially, I don't know what stands for it, but it's kind of military processing, medical type stuff. Military entry processing station, something like that.

There you. Yep. Yeah. So did, I mean, it's like an all-day affair up at early and they're prodding you and poking you, doing, you know, every test known a man. And then at the end of that, you sign your papers. So I did all that. And I talked to the recruiter and prior, sorry, backing up.

I talked to the recruiter and he'd put me in for the seal contract. I think it was like a $2,500 bonus. Yeah. Oh, man. And so I had that contract going up there to MEPs and, you know, I do the whole slew of test there. And I get to the point at the very end of that, you go to an office and then they go through your contract. And I was trying to get into the delayed entry program. So I didn't want to go.

I was, I mean, even at this point, I was in. but I was like hesitant to pull the trigger. So I was like... Because you thought you need more preparation? Yeah, yeah, I did. So I was like, you know, I want like six, seven more months. So anyways, I'm at the desk with the recruiter person, whatever that is. I'm going through the contract and I'm flipping through.

I'm like, yeah, good, good, solid, nailed that. And then I get, you know, to the back and there's a signature. I'm like, man, I'm not seeing any seal shit in here. and, you know, it was a lady, just told me, like, yeah, you failed an eye test, you don't qualify. Oh. Yeah, and I was like, what are you talking about? So, I mean, I was devastated, and I walked out of there. I didn't, I obviously didn't sign.

I'm like, yeah, I'm out, man. And I was, like, broken hard. I had spent the last, you know, 18 months. So what part of the eye test did you fail? So, you know, I spoke on this. on another podcast a couple of months ago. I may misspoke because my memory was fuzzy. I had to consult my mom on this,

but she just said I failed the general eyesight. Like the, I'm not sure if the requirements were 2020. I don't know. I have no idea. For seal back then. But yeah, I just, I failed the eye test. So I got kicked out and, you know, I went back to my mom and devastated. My mom was kind of hesitant for me joining the military at all.

She was kind of stoked. She was, but you know what? She actually helped me. I went and got a couple of doctor appointments on my own. I went to some optometrist, and I was determined to find a way in. So I ended up, I went to two separate optometrist until I got the one I liked. And got what I needed, and, man, I guess that's all it takes for the Navy. I went with a permission slip, and I went back to MEPs.

Do you wear glasses now? No. Do you know what your vision is now? It's, I mean, it's not 2020. Like my left eye is a little bit weak. So I think probably, you know, my left eye was probably a little bit lazy. I know there's a depth perception test that I've known kids that have failed and they, you don't, you can't go. And it's a weird thing.

It's like one out of every 100 people or something. They can't see depth. And that's one of the few, like you can get just about any job in the Navy, but you can't be a seal. And it's a bummer. I was talking to one of the master chiefs that's like sort of in the team still. And he's actually trying to push for some of these things to change because you have kids that they fail the depth perception test, but they like played freaking baseball. You know what I mean? Where obviously you have depth perception if you can play baseball.

And there's just a weird thing. I don't really remember the test. It's like dots. You're looking at dots or you're looking at a house or something. And you have to see is this dot. front of the house, behind the house, and some people just can do it, and some people can't. So, I don't know. Maybe you failed that thing.

I don't know, but I went and I got whatever test they needed and it got me in. So I did Tyler, what happened to him when you failed? Was he like, yeah, you suck. Yeah, he, I mean, he carried on. And what was interesting was we ended up, I mean, I got that resolved. I don't remember how long it took, but I got that resolved pretty quickly. I mean, I wasn't pouting too damn long on it. I went and I'm not one to give up too easily.

And yeah, I mean, that was like another, there's all these moments throughout your life. These like little, you know, micro decisions, these character building moments. Like I hadn't out, you know, like people had known at that point I was training to do this. I could have taken that out. But that was the case where I kept pushing. My mom helped me out. And so I got back on the debt program and then Tyler and I were aligned on that. And, but we ended up not coming in at the same time.

He had kind of a medical issue that delayed him. But man, that last, after I signed those papers. Trying like a psycho. I trained like a psycho. I was still in school at the time. And I had to explain this. So I ended up going to school later and where my transcripts were necessary. And there was this like this period where, you know, like good grades, you know, first two years in college or first year and a half.

And then this semester where I just, man, I was just partying and just, you know, thinking like you're going to leave and never come back. Yeah. Type of thing,

like just getting after it. And so I was just training like a psycho, just trying to get it all in. Still doing, you know, heavy Aikido at this point. Beth and I had broken up. Like whenever I started going full cycle,

full psycho, like towards the Navy, and it was like Navy. Yeah, nothing else. Ikeedo working out you were like it's best for you you're like I might not come home you just find another full legends of the fall no man it this was this was not me this was like she was done she's like yeah you know what I mean yeah was over your dumb ass well there was no time

I mean I was just working out non-stop yeah so um it's weird too when you're going in the military if you, like, if you don't know people that were in the military, you just think you're, that's it. Like, I know when I joined the Navy, I was basically like saying goodbye to my friends for the last time. I was like, you know, it's been nice knowing you. I'm out. Like, I'll never see you again.

That's how I felt. Yeah. And part of that was kind of good. But I didn't have any, like, if you grew up, let's say you grew up in San Diego, you'd see military people everywhere. And they'd be like, oh, like, you know, you go into school and there'd be like, Oh, some dad that's there that's in uniform picking up his kids. You're like, oh, it's kind of a normal.

There's a normal side to it. If you, like I grew up in a little town in Connecticut, dude, there's no military people. So I thought, well, there's no military people because we need to join the military. You're gone. That's it. You're in some other world. So, yeah, you get that attitude like, it's over. You know, all your old friends, they're out.

Your girlfriend's gone. It doesn't matter. Parents, good luck. Thank you. Goodbye. I'm carrying on. I had a good buddy and I'll call him out here

Kerry he was one of my Ikeido buddies but I had a heart to heart with him getting ready to leave man because I was having like second thoughts man you know it's tough like when you are you've never done anything like that as a kid or young man you haven't left your family this seems daunting and just like what you said

man it felt like I was never coming back like I was never going to see my family again because I was going to get shipped to some faraway land I'm clandestine missions, you know. I felt that way too, but I was super pumped. I was super stoked. I was like, I'm out of Connecticut. I'm out.

I'll see all that I. Remember me in the setting sun. Yeah. Just too many movies, man. Chuck. So you had your heart to heart with Kerry. What did you say? You know, man, he just kind of fired me up. He just kind of pulled me out of it.

You know, I mean, it was just that kind of weakness creeping in. I mean, just like everything else, whenever you're about to do something really tough, you're going to have those thoughts, and you're going to have that, you know, I mean, it's that human survival instinct trying to pull you out of like the shit, you know.

Jack. Yeah, so, you know, obviously went through with it. My dad took me to the drop off. This was right after Y2K. Oh, yeah. So we barely made it out of that one. We barely made it out. Yeah, and then I was shipped off, man.

And off to boot camp in Chicago in January. Good times. Man, that ain't no Fresno. No, that is no Fresno. It was epic snowfall. And really, I mean, I'd been up in the snow. We got mountains near Fresno, but I'd never seen snow like that. Boot camp, shock, regret, dismay, daycare, RCPO.

Yeah. Were you the RCPO? For like a week. Okay. But then they found out I had no really. them because one of the rules, or not the rules, but roles of the RCPO, the RPC, right, is you sing cadence. And the Navy, they sing their cadence.

I hope they don't do this anymore, but it's not like the Marine Corps where you have like an aggressive cadence. You're like seeing, yeah, I wasn't singing no cadence. So I got demoted to mastered arms. Check, you're probably a solid mastered arms. Yeah, yeah, that was good. That was good. Doing the, back then they had the, I don't even know what they call it, but the, like, seal.

Did you do the seal PT stuff in the morning at boot camp? No. No. It's good. They had like a small debt there. And then everyone who wanted to go to seal program, you go and you work out there. Because, I mean, basically, if you're a really fit dude, you're just getting out of shape. Yeah.

In boot camp. So at least you're getting a little bit there. And then you get double rations at the chow hole. Yep. That's what you had. But, yeah, boot camp was easy. You know, I was, I'm the antithesis of you in terms of like, you're a morning person, very clearly a morning person.

And I grew, you know, to be better in the morning, but I was not a morning person. So, you know, one of the nifty things that I did that I'll pass on to any prospects out there, you could use my trick here, was, you know, we had to make our bed every morning, right? and cut those creases and all that stuff. And one thing I would do is I would make my bed and I would just never sleep in it. I slept.

I think everyone did that. Oh, I did that too. Yeah, I think everyone did. Well, I slept on top of the bed. And then I had this trick, you know, because they have Revely. I think it's at four or something like that in the morning. And I was just so tired. And I would post myself underneath the bed.

And like I'm fixing the bed. So if the feet are hanging out, I'd just hang my hand like in the bed. I would just sleep for another 45 minutes. every day. But yeah, glad to get out of boot camp. And then I went off to ISA school. Well, Chuck. In Virginia, then.

Damn Nick. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. And so now you must have seen some team guys around there. No, you know, no, I was on a different side of base there. I didn't have any real interactions. I did at one point. So, you know, in A school, I was teamed up with

other guys who wanted to go to buds and we were training together and getting back in shape and one guy was a like super nature tracker guy like I'm not sure if you heard of Tom Brown yeah he was like one of those guys one of those like disciples

oh like legit from Tom Brown well or just into it really into it but probably probably like legit but he had us like he took me in the swamps in Damnack they have legit swamps there sure and swam with alligator gar you know what those are no they're gnarly they're like uh i mean if an alligator and a fish yeah i was gonna say isn't it like some kind of weird fish alligator

combo it's a prehistoric fish that looks like an alligator and they're i mean get like six feet long and they have teeth so you swam with these things like yeah what like they were in the same lake or swamp or you were interacting with them like what's up i was interacting with them This guy was like, you know, what's the Steve Irwin? Steve Irwin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he's, of the damn neck swamps.

He's like petting the alligator guard. Oh, damn, right on. And he's like, hey, man. Yeah, go ahead, do it. I'm like, did he go to Buds this guy? They went to Buds. Everyone I went with Buds with, didn't end up taking there, at least in my class. Yeah, that alligator gar shit.

Only goes so far, homie. Yeah, there were, I think there were like four or five of us. Great guys. you know definitely would like to get back in touch with some of those dudes so you show up to buds and how's that welcome aboard yeah it was good I went on I took a month of leave from a school so that was like a couple months there and during my leave I went water skiing and now I'm not a doctor but knowing because I've had these injuries since pretty sure I tore my

meniscus And I showed up to buds, you know, just like in a bad spot with my knee. And it wasn't like, you know, I was malingering and not doing shit. I just, I was in pain. So, but I had a little while to class up, had a few months there, and kind of got through that or, you know, it got, you know, to a serviceable point. And ended up classing up with class 233. And this is in, you know, July. I guess we classed up in October of 2000.

October 2000, you class up. Chris in that class 233? He was for, he graduated with that class. But he started, I think he started in a 2,30 or 3-1, and he rolled back. So after Hell Week, he rolled into my class. And then I ended up perforated my eardrum in second phase, doing the tower drops.

Oh. Yeah, you were exploded underwater and then, so I got rolled out of that class into two, three, four. How was, so first phase, you kick off first phase. What's going on? Is it hard for you? You feeling like, was your knee healed enough? Anything kick you in the ass? You know, man, I felt like I felt like I excelled in first phase. Like I was very well prepared for that. Everything that I did that Tyler and I did, it paid off, man. Was Tyler with you? No, no.

Was he behind you or ahead of you? He was behind. Okay. Yeah, he was a couple classes behind. But, I mean, we had done so much prep and that that, you know, I was very, very prepared. The one thing you really can't prepare for unless you do it is running in soft sand. But yeah, man, I was a good runner. And yeah, I say that again with a lot of humility

compared to like real runners. But for a 200-pound man, I was a good runner. Swimming was kind of like, was not my thing. So I'd done a lot of swimming. But for whatever reason, you know, in the ocean, I was a bad guiter. And so, you know, two nautical mile ocean swim was probably like two and a half miles.

And like that was just, I survived every single swim, just barely. Just seconds away from failure. Just seconds away, and it was like, you know, I was giving everything that I had, every single swim. But past all the other tests, like, you know, all the underwater stuff, we had all done that, man. So, like, you know, when you talk about the role that training plays in preparation, I felt like I had a leg up. I mean, I had done the 50 meter underwater on my own. in fact

Tyler and I both after a night of parting if you will both went to the pool straight after that I did I don't know probably 60 underwater

he did like he did full 75 you know but yeah we had done all that stuff very prepared first phase you know thought I did pretty well there

in Hellweek I was like in the rock star boat crew for a bit and then I found myself which you might get a kick out of this because I mean I'm not like a short dude like an average pike guy

but what are you 511? Yeah I found myself in the smurf crew How? I guess the with 233 they were like a bunch of giants Okay So you weren't like the towering over the other smirks

Because normally like the smurfs are like 55, 56 maybe I was towering Yeah okay so you're at like boat full on head. Yeah, yeah. So come Wednesday night, you know, we're sitting there and I'm just like, you know, we've won like every race up to this point. We're just like cruising, man. And then they're doing like, all right, get in the height line. And they set us up and they're counting. I'm kind of looking around and I'm like, looking to my left. I'm like, oh, shit. There's only six guys to the left of me. And sure enough, I got put in the Smurf crew for the last part

of the whole weekend. That was absolutely brutal. So now that I'm, you know, here with your audience, So I'll just apologize for presumably what all the weird noises I was making. You know, it's just that boat was crushing my neck. It's freaking gnarly. I could hear the, if you take two rocks and you rub them together, I could hear my neck doing that during Hell Week. And like literally that noise. I was like, hmm, this is fucking probably not good.

So, yeah, be careful of that. So then you make it through Hell Week. Anything crazy happened in Hell Week? Yeah, I mean, I guess I have a good little story I mean, this is just like one of many of where I'm just doing kind of stupid shit and other people are paying the consequences, but

we were doing a drill to where you're like not sure if it's kind of like escape and invasion. I mean, basically you're trying to go undetected from the instructor staff. You're like crawling on the O course and for like a mile or something like that. And my swim buddy and I we're like really into it

I mean we're just like we're not going to get caught and you know they have a bunch of wreckage and stuff out on the O course and we found a little piece of wreckage you know because they have instructors coming with spotlights and doing all that and so you know this guy's instructors coming in and we're like all right you know dig in and we dig into the sand

in this like wreckage and then I wake up like an hour and a half later because we just passed out because like if you in Hellwick if you stop if you stop for any amount of time like you're just toast you're out so So they, you know, at this point they'd gone full admin. Lights are on.

They're beating the class, right? And it's like, you know, they're calling out our names. And we come too and it's like, oh, shit. Sorry, guys. But no, get through a whole week all right in one piece. And then went into second phase. And did, was there anyone that shocked you that they quit? any of these like do you want athletes and all that exactly that yeah what did you see we had our

in two three three our oh I see was a think he played I think he was a quarterback for Notre Dame don't don't remember that guy's name but he was a big Hulkian dude I mean just like Superman looking guy and yeah he he went and then there's some guys you know guys I went with uh isn't that freaking crazy yeah you're the freaking quarterback at Notre Dame you're like you know what I'm going to be a seal. And you tell all your friends, and you tell your mom and dad, and you tell your girlfriend,

and you show up and you freaking quit. Yeah. That's wild. There were other guys, you know, the ones that stand out to me, a couple loud mouths. You know,

these are the guys that are policing everyone up, you know, because guys aren't squirt away and not doing the right thing. Then in hell week, you see, you know,

you got the car lights, you know, looking at you and you're in the surf and then, like, you've just seen their silhouette kind of going away. It's like,

Damn. Yeah, there's this whole thing. I did a few podcasts about the psychology of military incompetence, and it's this whole thing about, it's written by a guy that was in World War II, who became a psychologist. But he, like, talks about how people that are, like, super orderly and, and, like, highly authoritarian kind of things that you're talking about. Like, hey, you need to square yourself away. They like things to be followed.

And then you get into hell week, and it's just, like, total mayhem. And their brains can't handle it. And they just quit. That's it. Game over. Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, people always ask. Whenever, you know, you're talking to a seal for the first time, it's like it's going to happen within the first two minutes is,

did you ever think about quitting? And I can honestly say no. Yeah, me neither. I hear guys like everyone thinks about quitting. I'm like, I know 100%. Not just me. I know all kinds of guys that didn't think about quitting. I guess maybe a lot of guys do, but a lot of guys don't.

Look, if nothing else, I mean, even aside from like, you know, I want to do this job and whatever. I mean, just the, you know, not wanting to let people down. And like you said you're going to do something, not doing it. Like all those reasons. There's just no way, man. Yeah. It's just not happening.

So then you go from the, you make it through how a week. Now it's first, second phase diving. And what? You hurt your eardrum? Is that what you said? I did. Yeah. So we had done the, we had that.

Since decommissioned it, I mean, the teams have moved, all that stuff. But they had a tower, the 50 foot tower. and we used to work in that. That thing was daunting, man. So we did some work in that in first phase and no issues, like went down and tied some knots. And then in second phase, they're building up your competence,

you know, for all the underwater stuff they were doing in second phase. So they had a couple different events. And one of them, I think it was just called bottom drops where you just go down to the bottom. And I had a cold. And I started to go down. And I made it like 20 feet.

and I'm trying to like Val Salva, you know, equalize the pressure in my ears, and it's not happening. I'm like, well, I have to keep going down. Just keep going, bro. Keep going. And then that underwater explosion happened in my head, and it got vertigo.

And I was like, all right, I'm going back up. And went back up. And then, yeah, sure enough, I perforated my eardrum, pulled me out of that class. And, man, two through three of those guys were just a bunch of rock stars. And, you know, so it definitely was hard leaving those guys. But would you be coming? I'm friends with Chris at this point?

Not really. So you guys just knew each other. Yeah, yeah. And it was short. I mean, it was only, I don't know how many weeks after Hell Week, but Chris rolled in to two, three, three after Hell Week. And then that evolution was like the second week of first, of second phase. Yeah.

And just the reason I bring that up, because I know you guys became, you know, super close and everything. And when we were together, you guys were freaking, uh, yeah. You guys were all tight. Yeah, man. He was actually part of the reason, him and one other dude who were in that class. So another guy rolled in when Chris rolled in, ended up being in Charlie Platoon.

And those two guys are the reason why I found my way to Silt Team 3, Charlie. So you get rolled. And now you're in 2, 3, 4. And this is the one with the freaking documentary. Yeah, man. So what was that like? It was wild. It was such a difference.

233. I mean, we were just like, we couldn't do anything right. We were just getting beat down. And 2, 3, 4 had a lot of scrutiny on it because there were cameras there. So it was like, it was a different vibe, you know, because cameras were rolling. So it's like, all right, guys, we can't be doing that on camera. But the guys were amazing. They were a really small group.

So I don't remember how many guys they had rolling out of Hell Week, but it's like 20 or something like that. really, really small class, and we ended up graduating with 25. But, I mean, a lot of great mugs there. You know, dudes are still keep in touch with great guys. But, you know, it's tough anytime you're going into a class like that, that, you know, a small group that's really tight, you know, took a little while to kind of... How much were the cameras there?

A lot. No kidding. A lot. Yeah, they found me. They seem to find me, like, during every moment of weakness I had. It's all documented. It's all documented. Like none of the hero shit.

Now I'm going to go watch it, bro. No, no, you're not. Oh, no, I am. I'm just said you screenshots. Yeah.

The only like hero shot they have of me is in the intros. I'm doing like this peruette and then I yeah, just looking, just looking badass. Just looking badass, man. But, you know, they got me, it's like,

like all my low moments. They got me, you know, struggling in pushups. And, uh, they got me doing a dive soup, uh,

check rolling up, uh, with my, oxygen or sorry my my air bottle's off oh so I get beat for that and then uh the only other time like I passed uh I passed all these like water tests first time every time you know and anyone who does that says that with a certain amount of pride um but you know I had issues during the Drager buddy breathing so wait you got through pool week all first time every time including pool comp yeah oh so they really did have cameras flowing the whole time oh come

on. I'm just saying, bro. I mean, you know, though I do have to clear there and I don't want to dime him out here, but on the video, they mistaked me for someone else as failing pool comp. So if you look closely, they have like a quad screen of like, oh, see, whatever it is. And it shows someone getting pulled up from the surface. And you can very clearly see it's not me, but it says Holland. They were just determined to make it look like you failed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so you know, Drigger, buddy breathing. They got me coming up to the surface. So I was the,

you know, the top buddy and you're passing a rig around basically here. And he was kicking it out. And I think the hoses got kinked. And Homeboy wasn't getting nowhere up top. So that world was like, you know, shrinking down.

You're starting to fade. So I came up and they got that on video, you know, beyond oxygen. So it's just like, yeah. Damn, bro, documented. Yeah, but luckily no one will ever see that after this. Oh, yeah.

Luckily they won't pee-id. Just dime myself out, yeah. And so now you're going to third phase. All good there, no factor. Good times at SCI? Yeah, man, good times. You know, I had like one issue. I don't know what it was.

Yeah, I grew up shooting. Like my dad used to take me to the range a lot, but I had like a hard time crawling, like on rifles, you know. So it's like that was one of those moments. Anytime I hadn't failed anything up that point. So, you know, in the teams, you start to fail something. You get the pressure ramps up really quick. And I personally think the gun was shot out.

You know, I'll stick with that story. But, yeah, aside from that, got through that, went to, went to SQT after that, got to do airborne school. You know, I felt like I was, I'm definitely not the old guard. Like you're the old, you know, 90s, Frogman, old guard, you know, guys that raised people like myself. but I feel like I got the tail end of it in terms of like some of those experiences. So, you know, went to Airborne School in Georgia. Where were you at when September 11th happens?

Because you must have been in training still. Were you in SQT or were you in Buds? Yeah, no, I was in SQT. I graduated in June of 2001 Buds. And we were in SQT getting close to the end there. And we were out at Nileans. and we were actually doing some Claymore ambush stuff like old school Vietnam shit and it was one of those overnight evolutions so go out there um do that basically until

sunup so we were cruising back to the compound made it back 6 a.m. you know 615 618 uh you know the news was on the first tower had been hit and yeah as everyone knows at that point no one really knew what was going on um you know we kind of grab breakfast we we're all glued to the screens and then second tower hit man and it was it was very clear at that point you know what our career was going to tell after it was clear to you that at that point even in sqt you were like oh it's on so much so that uh we actually had um we had a guy in our class quit on on 912 damn yeah i i i mean everyone knew like we didn't know what yeah to what it was going to look like but i mean it was going to look like but i mean I mean, it's like, shit, you know that we're going to be in there somewhere getting after it. You had a guy quit on 9-12 from SQT. Good on him. There's a lot of guys, I want to say a lot.

Some guys go in for the wrong reasons, you know, and they'll do a pump. They'll get out. And when you're in a non-war time situation, all good, no big deal. All good. No harm, no foul, man. but, you know, you know you got pending combat and you could be a liability if you're not all in. So this guy wasn't all in.

And yeah, so that was, I ended up, I checked into SEAL Team 3, two months later. Yeah, that's one of those things. I've had that conversation with a few people over the years. The first time I had it was talking to some woman wanted me to meet with her and her son wanted to be a SEAL team. type thing and she was like oh I'd really like to meet and I was like he was like a friend of a friend of a friend so I was like yeah this was like probably 10 years ago I was like okay yeah and I meet with the kids like all fired up and stuff and I can do this many pull-ups and I have this swim time and I blah blah blah and I was like do you want to kill people and are you ready to die it was like both him and the mom were kind of like they hadn't even they haven't they hadn't considered that part of the job you know what I mean and that is that is actually the job the job is you're going to kill people and you're you're going to put be in harm's way for you and your friends to get wounded and killed.

That's what the job is. That's actually what the job is. Everything else is whatever. It's training. It's, you know, getting ready. But the actual job is you kill people and you're going to be in a position where you and your friends could get wounded and killed. And if that's not in the front of your mind, it's not a good job for you.

You know, any other reason, any other thing, any other fantasy or vision that you might have, that's not what the job is. The job is you're going to kill people. and you're going to be in a situation where you and your friends can get killed or wounded and that's the way it is. So yeah, probably a good call

for that guy to freaking bail. Yeah, no doubt. At that juncture. So it was Team 3. And when you got to Team 3, did you go into a workup? Did you get thrown into a platoon? How'd that go down?

Yeah, I showed up at the end of the pro-deaf period. So that was November. I think we were. Okay. starting workup, you know, I don't know, April of the following year. So it was kind of junk time, you know. So it was kind of getting into the holidays. We went right on a trip.

Like within, I think of me, my first week being there, we went on a trip up in central California, long coast, may or may not have gotten into some trouble up there, which got some people disbanded from a whole city. Damn. I'm trying to think of what. This is, so this is 2001. Yeah, slow incident. Oh, was that you guys? Well, there's a couple of slow incidents along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There were. There was one where the guys went up and got in a fight with like Tim Kennedy and a bunch of Chuck Liddell and a bunch of actual UFC guys. I'll take it back. We didn't get people disbanded, but we started. We opened up, you know, the can of worms. But yeah, I mean, that was like, you know, first trip. Welcome to the teams. And yeah, man, we were rocking and rolling.

We kicked out work up and then, yeah, CQC was our first block. And so now you're with Chris? We are. So this is Chris Kyle. Chris Kyle is in this platoon. Is Jeremy in there too? He is. Yep.

Damn. Okay. Yeah. So just you're a new guy. What's it you know, so I talk about like, oh, your job is to kill people and be in positions. Let me tell you about the other part of the job. When you're a new guy and an enlisted guy in the SEAL teams, it's a freaking blue collar job, right? You're building pallets.

You're moving gear. You're fixing gear. You're fixing motors. You're cleaning motors. It's like a blue collar hard work freaking job. That's what it is. And that's what you're doing. When you're a new guy, you're getting like extra, extra of that.

What did you get? What was your job in the platoon? Pig gunner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like no doubt. I think at one point they tested me on the radio and they're like, nope. Not a chance. Yeah, can you carry heavy things?

I'm like, yeah, I can probably do that. Yeah, so I was A-dub Gunner and, you know, no qualls at all. And I was thrown in First Lieutenant, East Coast calls it engineering. But, yeah, man, and that was like boats and motors. and I was also, Chris and I were both ISs, intelligence specialist. So, you know, we were in the Intel department as well. A lot of responsibilities there for his two new guys.

Intel department guys were like, get a map. Yeah, you have to get the maps and you have to get, you know, chem lights and, yeah, it's very tough job. Yeah, you could sell that sounding so cool, like, well, we were in the Intel department. Like, I can imagine you and Chris as new guys in the close. Intel department. It's like laminate these maps, you freaking meatballs.

Yep, that was it. There was no Jason Bourne going on there? No, no, no, no, no Tom Clancy stuff either. And so you guys, you guys go through your workup. How's it workup? It was good. It was good. You know, that was the first time.

I felt like I'd kind of gone through buds, you know, relatively unscathed. But you feel the pressure as a new guy. Did you get your Trident at the end of SQT? I was one at the last guy. to get it at the SEAL team. Okay. So you showed up new guy, no TRIDON. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For, man, I want to say the better part of a year. So, yeah, walking around without that Trident and earning it and studying for my board. Back then, we had a Trident board and trying to learn. I mean, that's what you're trying to do as a new guy. You think, you know, at that point, you think you know everything. Coming from Buds, SQT, you're like, man, I am just ready to rock, ready to run and gun. and you show up to a SEAL team to a platoon and you're like, I don't know anything at all.

You know, it's like such an... SQT has gotten so much better and the new guys are way better prepared than we were back in the day. But, you know, we had no exposure to CQC, for example, close quarters combat until my first platoon. So that was like drinking through a, you know, fire hose

and, you know, throwing shots and like you're getting counseled. I'm like, you know, holy shit, man. Like, I'm going to get booed from the team. teams. They kind of want you to think that too. I mean, at least they used to. They used to like want you to think you're probably going to get shit camped.

Like that was always kind of a little bit, a little bit over your head of like, you don't freaking, you throw another shot. You're freaking out of here. You're like, what the, you know? That was a freaking 50, 50 yard shot with a shotgun slug. Dude, that's a hard shot, bro. They're like, we got to make these. You're like, can I see you do it?

You shut up new guy. Yeah. That's it, man. I mean, it's a, you know, and that's the mindset that you want to have. That's, you want guys, you know, not to be scared to fail, man, but I mean, it matters. And like, everything is consequential. Everything matters. And you're all in, like, every second.

Like, there's no, there's no mailing it in, you know. And so also at this point, like, you guys must have known you're going to war. I mean, it's like a different workup than it was four months ago. Because four months ago, and I did. a bunch of war cups where there's no war going on and look you take it seriously you do your best and but it's always like there's a chance there's some slim chance that you're going to get the big mission and whatever that might be but for you guys must have been thinking oh we're 100% going to war for sure so we had had guys from team three that had already been to Afghanistan so

I mean we knew we were getting in something you know Iraq hadn't kicked off yet but yeah there was a different mindset now I can't speak to what the teams were prior but there there was a certain focus and a certain kind of eminence about what we were doing. So, you know, I was just trying to keep up, man, and making all the usual dumb guy, you know, dumb new guy mistakes and trying to overcome those and trying to learn the job. And, you know, I seem to, you know, always find myself in some sort of trouble. You know, I just damn near drowned a couple times as a new guy. How'd you drown as a new guy?

Man, I don't do well with like, you know, a half-inch cord underwater, stuff like that. So, like, you know, we were... You're like a freaking half-inch, half-inch nylon freaking magnet you are. Dude. So, you know, I mean, like we were, as a new guy, you're carrying all this shit. Oh, yeah, that's right. And so, and if you have a propensity to carry more shit, then you just carry more stuff. So, yeah, we're doing dives.

I'm carrying a bunch of shit. And we were diving on a rig in the open ocean. And I got caught up, you know, underneath and had to abandon my rig. Damn, dude. Did you do a free swimmer ascent? Yeah. For real? That's amazing.

Oh, my God. So what was kind of funny about that was, I mean, the guys were up at the surface at that point, so they had already gone up in a controlled manner like you're supposed to do. And I was kind of stuck down there, and the guys run in the dive are kind of freaking out a little bit and you know you have limited visibility and so you know everyone's kind of like looking down trying to figure out what to do with me and then I kind of popped up and I kind of floated like behind the group and not sure if you've seen the Indiana Jones in the last crusade when when Indy goes over the cliff and they're kind of like all looking over the cliff like he's perished

so it was kind of like that moment where I kind of cruised up and you know with the group and like hey what's going on guys it's like oh there you are Was your rig beanered in down below on the line or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was one time. The other time we were doing a sub-op during the big exercise off the California coast and working with boats off of the submarines. And I was the only one in a boat, in our inflatable boat, and it capsized.

And I saw the whole side of a submarine, like way too much of a submarine that you should ever see because the sea state was like gnarly so it flipped the boat and I was like trapped under there it felt it felt like minutes I'm sure it was like only 10 seconds but I popped up out of that my eyeballs were huge you know so that that was just like how my first platoon went you know it's just kind of like always always on the wrong side of things and a lot of learning I had some great older guys you know my my first Louis C daddy was an amazing he's an amazing he's an amazing guy, but he raised me right. You know, taught me kind of, you know, it didn't take as a new guy, but taught me everything

that I knew. Just a really solid guy, some great operators there. But yeah, first platoon was all figuring it out. And then eventually we deployed and found ourselves over in Kuwait. When did you get there? So the war hasn't kicked off yet. No, but it's staged. Yeah, it's, you know, all this stuff is going on in the news.

And we don't know what's going on, but it feels like it's, it's, it's, it's. going to be happening. So we were there in late 2002. Ended up doing, I guess it was supporting UN sanctions. So doing shipboardings? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we did a shit ton of those. And, man, that's just good old school frogman pirate shit, man. Just running around the, what do they call it, the nag. Do you remember that term? Yeah. Northern Arabian Gulf. The sag and the nag. The sag and the nag. Running around the nag and the sag in our boats.

and helicopters, other boats, and going and hitting ships and taking them down and getting control of them. Yep. So, you know, we did that for a few months and then winter set in, and then things were starting to build for Iraq, and we were starting to, you know,

the U.S. had a plan at that point, and we were starting to train, and we had been nominated as the Desert Patrol vehicle platoon, the Mad Max platoon. The DPTVs. So these are, They're dune buggies. They're like high-speed dune buggies that people drive around out at Glamis.

And there's some kind of racing protocol with those things. There's like a whole group that races like those kind of vehicles. But we had them in the SEAL teams for a while. We don't have them anymore. We don't have them anymore because for a bunch of reasons, the number one reason is they're a racing vehicle, which means they have high standards and very tight tolerances for the way they find. and the way they're built,

and which means they're going to, you put them in very tough situations, they're going to have problems. And so they were, they were generally speaking, pretty problematic in terms of their mechanical stability. They broke down a lot. And then on top of that,

if you break down anywhere in the world and you need, let's say, a tire or a gasket or a freaking carburetor or whatever you might need, you can't get it. I guess they weren't carbon, their fuel injector. But if you needed a part for those things,

You couldn't get it. Whereas another vehicle such as a Humvee, you could get any part, anywhere, take it from another one. Like, they were just so, there's Humvees everywhere in the military. And so it'd be almost like if we used weapons with a different type of ammunition.

You know, like where are you going to get your ammo from? So that was kind of the deal with the DPVs. They looked freaking cool. They always put them in highlight Navy SEAL videos. They put those DPVs everywhere. I'll tell you what, you want to see some eyeballs. You know,

rolling onto a base on the army compound. And yeah, you look like rock stars, man. Yeah. They don't know like everything you said, the upkeep on those things. And the capability is when you weigh them down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. They make them super heavy because they're made to store. They're not four-wheel drive.

They're not four-wheel drive. So they're made to be light and float over the sand. Yep. Once you weight them down with a bunch of team guys and a bunch of gear and a bunch of rockets and a bunch of ammo, like they just sink in the sand and mud and they just get stuck. Yeah, man. And you guys were designated to, DPV platoon.

Oh yeah, yep. And then you had a plan of what you guys were going to execute when the war kicked off. Yeah, so we ended up being part of the, you know, kind of strategic mission to invade Iraq. So we were part of that securing some of the onshore sites there. And that was just a wild kind of week leading up to that because we were on I mean, just like, you know, Scud and Gas Alert notice. So we were in mop gear, which is the Kimbio gear. And in Kuwait, you know, the, you know, U.S. had a mask on all the troops for the invasion.

It was pretty clear that this thing was eminent. And Iraq was launching, you know, rockets or scuds or, you know, whatever they were towards us. And we were constantly under the threat of, like, you know, getting gassed. So walk around in gas masks and getting jocked up, like, all the time. So leading up to the, man, I have to look at the days. I feel like the invasion happened on the 21st. Doesn't matter.

Some else can fact check it. But anyways, leading up to that night, you know, we were kind of in mob gear in the entire night, and then we got the call like it's go time. So we got in the DPVs and loaded these things in CH53, the sea stallion. And we cruised into Iraq, man. And that was that, you know, there were a couple times in my career, out of all the things I did,

where I just felt that, that pucker factor. And going into, you know, Iraqi national territory, you know, they had anti-air systems and all that shit. And, you know, we were trying to do things to mitigate that. but I was a new guy, you know, in my mop gear, in body armor, strapped in a gunner seat in a racing harness with four inches of room on either side in my roll cage. And then the DBV was strapped into the 53 with three inches of room on both sides, you know,

to the walls in the pitch black dark. And we're, and the call comes over the rate. you know, whatever, you know, whatever code were they passed over. I mean, like we've crashed or we've crossed the national territory line there. And then they're throwing chief, yanking and banking. And I don't know if we were taking anti-air fire or someone else could. It felt like that because we were doing hard moves. And I just had the realization, man, that's like, like, if we get hit, I'm just, I'm gone.

I mean, there's no surviving this. There's no, you know, egressing and swimming out, like, just toast. Yeah, and it's a complete unknown. The first goal for it that went down, it was like, I was watching the news and they were like, there's going to be 40,000 casualties in the first 24 hours or 48 hours, something like this. And you just, the unknown is way worse than the known. And so, like, that's a perfect example. Like, we hadn't, you know, you fast forward three months, even if you fast forward like,

days you're like okay they don't really have the capability that they we thought they may have had but you're a freaking a new guy what you just described being in that DPV strapped into that gunner seat inside of a 53 when that thing is strapped in there you are doomed like doomed this thing even if that thing successfully crashed landed and was on fire you're never getting out like you are you are freaking dead so I like to connect things. Yeah, I'm a big, like, movie buff guy and shows and all that. And Band of Brothers had come out prior to that deployment.

And I'm not sure if you seen that. Oh, yeah. And you recall, do you recall the scene to where they're jumping out? Yeah, yeah. Like, that is what you felt. That's how I felt is we're getting shot at, like, get me the hell out of here. I want to get on ground like now. That's my overwhelming feeling as a military human.

like any time I'm in a aircraft, airplane, helicopter, vehicle, tank, Bradley, Humvee, I don't like it. I want to be on the ground. I want to be on my feet. I want to be with my platoon. Like, that's it. That's why I, I'm just, the whole time I'm just waiting so I can be on my feet because then I feel like we can control what's like what's going to happen to us. Yep.

All that other stuff is just in the hands of fate. And it's not a good feeling. For me, it was never a good feeling. Yeah, yeah, no doubt man The one that you just described is a problem I think that's a worst feeling than I ever had In any of those situations like I've flown into places Driven into places

What you just described I never had that feeling before I'm trying to think if I have no I've never had it that bad before There's been a couple times like going into a couple places where I was like Oh, we're gonna get IED, but Not quite I always feel I always feel like someone else is gonna get I Eded and even if I get ID'd I'm going to be okay. I'm going to get out and do awesome kick ass, right?

That's in my little stupid brain. But if you're in a helicopter, that's not happening. If you're strapped into a helicopter, if you're strapped into a DPV in a helicopter, that's strapped into the helicopter. Bro, good times. So, and, you know, going back, they were expecting casualties.

I mean, you don't know what you don't know. We hadn't fought in a major conflict. I mean, they were, you know, a year into Afghanistan. That was a much different war. You know, we're fighting a country here. So I really had no clue kind of what we were getting into. And so, yeah, like all that shit's running through your mind. And having no, like, you know, we've done a bunch of shipboarding and stuff like that.

But having no missions under your belt, I mean, it's just your mind running wild. And what was the mission, by the way? So what did you guys do? You guys hit the ground, launched the DPVs. What are you guys going to do? Basically set security around a facility. That was it. We were working in conjunction.

with the Royal Marines and some other folks. And it ended up being, I mean, basically, I won't say a soft target. I mean, there are a lot of guys there, but the casts that happened prior, I mean, just softened kind of all those defenses. So we went in and, yeah, it's pretty, pretty simple mission, actually. Dude's surrendering, dude's dead.

What'd you find? Both, yeah, yeah. We didn't, in the morning, like, we didn't have any interactions. You know, we were kind of in the peripheries. some of the Royal Marines were getting after it and then the sun came up and there was carnage you know yeah I mean a lot of guys got

the Iraqis just got handled and then yeah there were some that had given up and you know we're being kind of detained and worked there and then we started cruising around you know I mean again we were figuring stuff out and not just like the steel teams but you know we we we collectively the collective we so we were just kind of like cruising

around and we just kind of cruise around without a mission a little bit and uh you know for all the talk that's gone on for the reasons why we went into iraq i'll just tell you this because i have the pictures to prove it is those dudes and i'm not talking to the iraqi soldiers but the people there were stoked to see us there i mean they were waving along the roads you know they felt liberated so for you know Whatever that's worth, that's what happened. And how long did you spend on the ground? We were there, I think, a couple days. You know, it's kind of fuzzy there.

And then we went back to Kuwait, kind of refitted. And then we got launched back out to a place called Nazaria for a little bit. And just kind of doing a wrecky shit. Like not doing any sexy type DA stuff. Still in the DPVs? Still in the DPVs. Yeah, we did an SR on the Shatala Rab, waterway that separates, you know, I ran from Iraq.

Did that and that was kind of that deployment, you know, and then went back home. Did it seem like that the war was going to be over pretty quick? Yeah, it did. I mean, I think even before we'd gotten home, I think, you know, President Bush had had the mission accomplished, on the Lincoln, I think it was. You know, yeah, I mean, we cruised.

I say we, and I'm talking about the U.S. again. And we had guys, we had other elements that did the roadshow to Baghdad. And it's like, man, I mean, they were there within a couple days and had taken over the country. And, you know, we just couldn't hold it. And I wonder, so from your perspective as a new guy, that's a great, like, you're very lucky, right? You're a new guy. You're going into war in your first deployment. Did you realize how cool that was?

I did. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. I mean, it was a huge mission. You know, maybe not the sexist mission,

but still I think the largest, you know, NSW mission collectively that we've ever done. Yeah. And to do a mission, any mission at the time was like, you're freaking stoked. So did you,

was there anything that you personally, like lesson learned that really stuck with you from that first work. I mean, I know there's like a thousand little ones, any major ones that you're like, I need to make sure I do this, that. I mean,

obviously you had your guy that was sort of like your C daddy in first lieutenant, who kind of passed on the way of the frog man to you. Anything else in that first deployment? I mean, too many to name. Nothing big that comes out. But there were just a lot of micro lessons learned. And,

you know, I felt like, a stupid new guy during workup. You know, I just felt like, you know, there was a lot of pressure going on. And by the end of that deployment, I felt like a team guy. Like I felt like I was starting to get shit.

And, you know, unfortunately, I just have to learn things the hard way. And sometimes it takes me a little bit longer to get there. But I felt by the end of that deployment, I felt very competent. Now, you know, still like a lot to learn. That's just like, you know, your yellow belt, Yeah, it's the learning curve in your first platoon is freaking steep. It's you can't get ahead of it like

No new guy is gonna get ahead of the the power curve when you're a new guy in your first platoon. It's just not it's not possible. There's too much to know and too much to learn But once you're in your second platoon like it's so much easier. It's like infinitely easier in your second platoon. It's hard to be behind the power curve in your second So in your first platoon you got guys like they'll be like two one or two new guys that like throw are these guys even gonna make it through workup all the other guys are kind of like fighting to get through workup and then you have I guess you can have one or two guys that are like yeah they're pretty squared away but by your second platoon no

no one's doing bad generally speaking maybe one out of a hundred is doing bad in their second platoon like they made it through their first platoon you get your second platoon you're generally speaking you should be pretty good you don't have any responsibilities you don't you know you're not really in charge of anything in your second platoon or you're not in charge of like leadership. So you can your second platoon, you should be, you should be a solid team guy in your second platoon. Yeah, for sure. And really, what you're trying to get to is you want to be someone that people can rely on. You want to be dependable and you're just trying to get there as fast as you can as some guys get there, you know, sooner and others. And there's a lot of pressure to do that. And

I wouldn't have it any other way, man. I mean, that, that's what. builds character is, you know, that intense pressure of, do I belong here? Do I have what it takes? What do I need to do to get there? And that, you know, whole kind of evolution kind of makes you who you are. Yeah. Come back from that deployment. You're fired up. Roll right into your second platoon because that's what you're doing the team. You go right into your next freaking platoon. Freaking awesome. What's, so what's up with your next platoon? Do you get any schools? I did. Yeah. I finally got a bunch of schools. Ended up. Yeah, I went to the Hearst school.

Hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Check. Helicopters, fast rope propelling. So I did that. I did the dive soup, R or so all those things. The big one I got was Breacher. So that was the one I wanted.

That prior platoon was like a very, you know, we, and actually team three had like just a lot of breaches and a lot of breacher training that they would do on their own. that was not even part of the workup. So that was something that I was like, man, I feel like this could be my thing. You know, I like carrying heavy things. I like breaking shit. So yeah, I got breacher school. Actually, Jeremy and I went to breacher school.

And then Chris, is this when Chris went to sniper school? He did. Yeah. Chris went to sniper. So, yeah, it was good, man. I went to breacher school and, you know, so maybe there was a little bit of hangover from my new guy, you know, figuring shit out.

But I had a close call in breacher school that another, like, kind of defining moment that, you know, I mean, like, you know me as, you know, the lead breacher for a task unit. And, you know, I went on to, you know, do a lot of real world breaching. But, you know, I got ahead of myself, man. I was, I won't say cocky, but we'd been doing so much breaching at Team 3 and in that platoon prior that I was working on speed. You know, and we got to, we got a couple weeks in, and I was doing really well in the course. And we transitioned from one device to another device, which required like a different procedure. And, you know, my mind was like speed. And it's all about, you know, just kind of mastering, mastering the art of breaching there.

And it was during a rehearsal, but we were doing a rehearsal with a live cap. and I ended up I mean detonating a cap that shouldn't have been detonated and Jeremy actually took the brunt took a little fragment his leg peppered him a little bit but that was that was the first wake-up call I mean that was the first time

in my you know going through buds like no issues in buds you know I talked about I didn't struggle as a new guy but I mean certainly I had my mess ups there but this was like a first complacency issue to where I was going too fast. I was rushing through something, and I wasn't realizing the full impacts of,

you know, making a mistake like that. And you make a mistake with explosives, you make a mistake with a rifle, and people can die. People can get maimed, and it's happened. Super unfortunate. And I had that happen to me in breacher school, and I thought I was going to get booted out.

and then you don't know the repercussions after that. But I don't know why they did it. The cadre kept me there. And, you know, maybe it was my performance up to that point. They kept me in, and I fought my way back. I ended up being one of the they nominate guys to be like the lead breaches for the FTX. So I got to be one of those guys. but I mean you do something like that and you feel like you have to repeat it the rest of your career

yeah because I mean if that had been a live explosion I mean with a full breaching charge on there who knows what would happen to Jeremy no doubt no no doubt it's not lost to me and again you know to jump away and just talk about like training and why we do things the way we do you know the crawl walk run is there for a reason and there's a reason why we go dry before we go live. So when mistakes like that happen, they happen with paint and with a cap and not with a full charge. How's this platoon? So you're still together with Chris, you, and Jeremy.

Like this, I keep bringing this up because you guys were such a prominent piece. And Charlie Petun and Tasking the Bruges are like the three of you, you freaking knuckleheads were just like such a cornerstone of the tasking. You guys, I think, well, Jeremy was an E6 at the time, but you guys were like kind of the E5 mafia, the E dogs making shit happen. And so you guys are together in this platoon. You got your platoon commander at this time is Rob,

who's freaking just, just freaking outstanding. Just a maniac, awesome frogman team guy. And your platoon is, it's kind of mayhem. So I know this because, like, I obviously, you guys rolled into tasking a bruiser and so I got to see and hear about what your previous deployment was like, but also just knowing you guys and knowing

Rob like and hearing stories from all of you guys. So this was like mayhem. You guys were freaking going going hard. We were meat eaters. Yeah. We had a great group. Yeah, Jeremy and Chris and

one other guy. We sucked together. So we had a good contingent from the prior... Who's the other guy? Jake? No, just an older guy. Oh, okay. I want to mention his name just because I don't know if he wants to be mentioned. Yeah. Yeah, so we had a good group of returning guys,

but all the older guys had left the platoon except for my C-daddy became the LPO. Got it. So we were in this weird position, right, that we were like, I think to a certain degree looked at like these combat-seasoned dudes, which was not the case, right? Like we had done a couple missions that weren't, you know, super tough, that deployment. But I think, I mean, because like when you don't know, I'm sure, like you've been in 90s frogman, the guys who did shit. Like you looked up to it.

It's like, man, I can't believe those guys were on the mission. Yeah. Like we had guys that had been in Grenada. Panama. We had guys that had been in. I don't think. I never had a guy in a platoon that was in Panama. When I had a guy in a platoon that was in Grenada and had some guys that were in the first Gulf War.

by the way the combined like combat operation time of both those was like three days of both of everyone but like you're saying it was like hey they had combat and we didn't and it's just you just don't know what you don't know and you just have to think that this thing and this elevated thing and what's it going to be like and what it was like and they went through it and so now basically everyone's looking at you guys with that attitude yeah that's it so i mean we were meat eaters and uh And we had a good time, man. We trained hard and like any sort of, you know, issues I felt I had as a new guy or lack of confidence or whatever the hell you want to call that was just gone. You know, even the preacher shit, like once I got through that and I survived all that, you know, it's full steam ahead and just make myself the best team guy I could be. And like what you said, that second platoon, when you get into your second platoon, it's like things are clicking.

And things felt like they were clicking, not just with me, but with our guys. and we were highly functional, you know, I mean, just kicking ass and doing really well in all the training blocks and having fun outside the training blocks. And, yeah, just full speed ahead, like in all aspects, you know, if team got work up. Did you guys, did you guys get, did you guys not get in trouble? No. That's impressive. Yeah, and I, that's impressive. I don't know what the statute of limitations are for, for all the trouble that we caused during that time.

But, no, we, we sit out of trouble. others weren't so lucky man lots of great memories and I treasure those and whenever the boys get together we love bringing up the old shit I mean you have to think too

that I've done a lot of reflecting over the years and I feel like especially as the war was ramping up and the mission in Iraq changed such that we were doing like direct action missions guys were getting in gun fights things were getting a lot more dynamic the wars were ramping up and, you know, kind of going back to what we're talking about, like joining the Navy.

I mean, it just felt like, you know, like we were going into the shit. It was imminent. You don't know what's going to happen. So just like live life to the fullest, get every ounce of it. And that's what we were doing, man. We were living hard and fast in all aspects of everything that we're doing. Enjoyed the shit out of it. Glad we didn't get rolled up and that we survived.

And a lot of great lessons learned and ended up having a pretty good deployment as well. Yeah, there's no doubt that you have something. Look, when you're skydiving and diving and shooting live fire and blowing things up all the time, even in the 90s, even when you have that feeling in the back of your head. Like, you know, and like, we're jumping or we're doing whatever on Monday and it's Friday. Freak, let's rock and roll, man. Let's go. Like, you're not thinking long term.

You're thinking like, let's enjoy this gig that we're on. So now when the war kicks. off 2001 you're like you got that but now it's amplified and intensified by quite a bit because you're going into combat and people are trying to kill you so that's like you you you add that to the testosterone you add that to the freaking like the friendship brotherhood you add that to the shenanigans and the good times and you're out good just go out and do something hard like just go out and you know go out and go out and go into the desert and spend whatever four weeks in the desert out there out all day up and down hot dehydrated

and all that stuff hard training you get back it's like oh we're going to go rock and roll that's what's going to happen so all these things combined together this is get the life of a frog man and that's what you guys were doing getting after it yeah that's it man I mean uh we we lived the life that platoon is great so you're going on deployment and at this point What year is this? Like, 2005, four? Yeah. Okay, 2004.

So at this point, they were taking guys and you would basically do three months in the Pacific and then three months in Iraq. And they were, look, in my opinion, they were doing that. It was kind of like the fair fairy had showed up and it was like, hey, we want to make sure everyone gets combat. We want to make sure everyone gets to go to war. And, hey, what we'll do is we'll send, because we didn't, no one knew there's freaking wars were going to last for 20 years, right? So they're saying, oh, let's put you over there for three months, then send the other guys for three months.

So that's what you guys did on deployment. Yeah. And I mean, I think, I don't know if they had this in mind as well, but you think, yeah, not knowing how long the wars are going to last in terms of the benefit to the community and get more guys deployed the combat zone as well. Yeah, true. Maybe not a bad move, but if we would have known that the war is going to last 20 years, which eventually once they figured out the war is going to last 20 years,

like, yeah, you're going on it because it's a big, just the logistics of taking, guys. So expensive. Yeah, it's so expensive and such a pain and really in three months like you're just getting up to speed. So why are we going home? Let's keep or why are we going to this other A.O. Let's keep going. So your typical exercises and stuff over in the Pacific? No. Did you go to the Pacific first? I did. Okay. Which I think it's good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it. Oh, no. It would be better to do the other way. It'd be better to go the other way. But at least we had something to look forward to,

there's pros and cons, right? Because if you do it the other way and then you're there, he's like, what's the point? But at least we knew we were going to the show and, yeah, and we knew that we were going to be in a spot doing DAs, doing direct action stuff. So had all that look forward to and just kind of buying our time until we got there.

And then, yeah, so actually Chris and the other guy got pulled from our platoon for the push through Fallujah in November 2004. So we were like just super pissy about that. Hanging on in Paycom and... Just reading after actions from Chris? Yep, yep, yep. And it's like, man.

And so eventually we linked up in January and then that was a good little deployment, man. I mean, yeah, we were only there for about three and a half months, but I don't know, it did. Maybe 15 plus. DAs and it's where I cut my teeth as a breacher. Man, that was, and those were like the heydays of doing roll up assault. Like you're like riding the rails, you know, fast roping on the X, got to do some of that

sexy stuff. But I'll tell you what wasn't sexy was my first op as a breacher. Let's go. What went down? A lesson was learned. So we're rolling up and I have my charge. charge on me and we're heading to target. So, you know, basically kind of breacher is part of the point element, if you will. We head to the target and we have to hop over a wall. Well, this wall

was pretty short, like a four-foot wall. We got a structure there and I have my nods on, right? This is kind of how we trained, but we, you know, maybe hadn't been using that many walls or hopping over walls. So like the art, the art of the hop hadn't been perfected yet. So I had myself like already and like I'm good with that and uh so I I roll over the wall you know kind of four foot wall that I can kind of walk up to and just kind of like roll over and it was 10 feet on the other side and so I just spilled you know uh you know ass over kettle or whatever and it was just a complete mess so I mean got up and like you know my nods were flopped up and I was catching they had like clothes lines it was just like I did everything wrong just keystone cops all the yeah yeah just

making so much noise and then but I made it up to the door the breach went fine, breach went good you know the guys didn't leave me enough room to not blow myself up so I you know was a little bit too close but other than me spilling over the wall

it went pretty good but but I learned a valuable technique which I use after that is I would never go over a wall on nods I mean you you look over the wall on nods but always looking underneath trying to use that, you know, the death perception isn't great on those things. Yeah.

So after this, you know, first breaching little fiasco, at least over the wall, so what was your op temple like? I think we were doing a couple ops a week. Cool. Yeah. So like I said, I don't know the exact number, but we did, you know, I don't know, 15, 18, something like that. Actually, I mean, those are like going out on missions, but we would often do multiple targets.

So I don't know, we did a couple dozen, something like that, DAs and cut our teeth, man. And that was really, you know, I think Team 5 was kind of like the godfather of creating the modern SEAL team DA. At least that's how it was perceived on the West Coast in terms of creating those procedures and doing all that stuff. And so, yeah, we got really good at it. and you know those were like the good good old sexy missions if you will where you're just rolling it hot blowing shit up you know taking things over with violence of action and uh you know rolling off target with the bounty it's like 45 minutes bro it's like you know what i mean it's such immediate gratification and with such limited like downside you know like it's just good

we did one one kind of unique mission that we were doing a this was like my first real Overwatch where we were we joined up with a

this was just kind of a weird one but we joined up actually I think with the first of the 506 out in in Habania so we moved around a little bit and they had a kind of an Overwatch mission major thoroughfare there

and some separate teams kind of mutually supporting positions or whatnot and so we were paired up it was me and another frogman and two army guys and we snuck into a town and these guys just do shit different right so snuck into a town you know free climbed up like a second story building in the middle of like you know like a city square i guess and in the morning to my surprise the whole city was surrounded us Like we were, we were like in an apartment overwatching stuff with an active, I mean there was like

I looked out the window at one point you know, very, very sneakily looked out and below it. I mean, they were selling fish there was like a fish market right below us and we were in this kind of like abandoned building and you know you had guys like kind of all around it was like holy shit man. You know this can get gnarly really really quick.

Of course nothing did. I mean it's a pretty pretty easy mission there but yeah other than that did a bunch of DAs. I didn't get roped into any of the security type stuff that the other dudes were doing. Yeah, I got lucky. Good. Come home from that deployment and now you roll into, so now it's 2005, I guess.

2004 you might have gotten home, but it's 2005 when we form up. Were you already done? No, because we went to desert almost immediately. So you guys had already done pro-def. So you probably got home in 2004. No, five. Okay. Yeah.

So I deployed, that was a quick turnaround. We had a couple quick turnaround. Oh, that's right. It was no pro-dev. Yeah. Yeah. We came back in April 2005 and then went right into it. Check.

What's cool is you still are with Chris and Jeremy. Yeah. And I, the triumph for it. So do you know what that means? I think it means three people. It does. So I, once I was like,

you know, because Laif used to say it all the time, he's like, oh, it's a triumvirate. And I kind of was like, finally yesterday I was thinking about that. And I go, what does this even mean?

Where does this come from? And it's like some Roman term for three people that are in a position of power. And they had like a bunch of examples, you know, seizure in this guy and this guy. And so that 100% came from Laif, you know?

Laif would only, only Laif at that time had the historical knowledge to come up with triumvirate. So you guys roll in to now it's your third platoon together. Tony's, BTF Tony comes in as the platoon chief. I was thinking about this too. You guys must have been bummed that freaking Rob wasn't going to be your task unit commander and you were getting some freaking random guy.

You never heard of me. Yeah, some caveman looking guy. And if you're calling me a caveman and you're comparing me to Rob, like these are the options. There's a lot of Neanderthal activity going on between us too. Yeah. Yeah, but you guys must have been like, damn, a little bit bummed out because you guys were bros with Rob. You just did a deployment with him.

And it's kind of normal that he would just fleet up in the same troop and just take over. I don't know why that, I don't know why it happened the way it did. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we obviously loved Rob. He was the man. So, yeah, I don't know how things shook out, but it all worked out. So somehow the Ouija board got, I think I just figured out why it might have happened that way. but we can talk offline about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I show up to you commander. Laif shows up as the platoon commander. BTF Tony's your platoon chief. That's kind of a new headshed coming in. But the cool thing is Jeremy steps us up as the LPO.

Yeah. So Jeremy steps up. Chris was still there. And not only that, but we had all the previous new guys. They all stuck around. So we had the... Yeah, we got these freaking badass.

We had, we had, we had, I mean, the dream team. Yeah. And in these guys, we had a ridiculous amount of qualls. Like, I don't know, like, I think seven breaches and seven snipers. Like, we were just. Tasting a bruiser ended up with 13 snipers, which is freaking badass. Yeah. Unreal.

That's one set of qualls. And you guys roll in there. And it's cool. You know, that's always a question I get asked a lot about is like, stepping up from being a peer to being a leadership position. How did Jeremy handle that? And maybe, I'm sure Jeremy will come on the podcast or something, but how did Jeremy handle that from your perspective?

I mean, he rocked it, man. He stepped right into it. He was, one thing really impressed me about Jeremy was, you know, he was a couple years younger than me. But when you're in your 20s, that's like a big deal, right? Like, I'm 22 and he's 20, but he was a little bit younger. And but he... What he had made first class and you hadn't, basically?

What are you saying, man? I'm just wondering. That's how we got it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was the highest ranking guy, but definitely the guy for the job, man. I mean, he was kind of a prodigy, if you will, you know, just really solid frogman.

And he stepped up and did all the things that you would expect, you know, in LPO to do. And it makes it easier when you have a good guy that you know is a good guy, right? Like so he was just easy to work for him. Yeah, he's freaking stepped right up. But that's a question I get asked all the time. Like, oh, I'm getting elevated.

And you can go too hard or you can go too soft. You can be like, That's right. I'm in charge now. Or you can be like, oh, I guess I'm in charge. Like, I don't know. And he did the right balance of like, hey, you know what?

I'm in charge now. I don't know everything, but I got to make a call and this is what we're doing. You know, like he just did it good. It depends the group of guys too, right? True. Because if you have immature guys and you're not able to respect the position. And also, I think Leif did that. I mean, he was, like, masterful at how he did that in terms of developing good, meaningful relationships with people.

But doing it in a way that, like, there was never any question that he was in charge. And that when it came down to a decision being made, there's a time for discussion. And then there's a time that, you know, this is what we're doing. Right. So, yeah, Jeremy was good at that. And if you're a good dude, I mean, that's hopefully how it's your role. And our first trip was straight out to land warfare and it was just freaking awesome. Yeah.

I mean, like, everybody was just kicking ass. Oh, man. I just realized the never-ending March. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a rough one. Especially for guys that maybe didn't take things as seriously as they should have. So we get told that we're going to do a shakeout patrol.

Shakeout patrol is like, oh, we're going to go make sure our gear feels good, make sure that, you know, our equipment's riding right and walk around, you know, probably be back and a half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, something like that. This is day one. Yeah, this is day one. We just show up out there. So like, hey, we're going to do a shakeout. They literally say we're going to do a shakeout patrol. This is a common thing. Shake out patrol.

The original idea is, hey, make sure your gear's not making any noise. So it's like go out there, shake it out a little bit. Make sure you don't have. Go through like the hand and arm signals and like, you know, just shake some stuff out. 45 minutes, hour or something like this. Easy. Would you call it like a practice run? But it's even less than that. It's less than that. It's like just a shakeout.

I'm trying to think of a way that if you were in a school play and they were like just walk through where you're going to go. Yeah. You're not even going to deliver any lines. You're not going to sing any songs. If it was football, what's your football equivalent for Echo Charles? It would be a walk through. Like a Friday, you know, after you know, after you know, walk through or something like that. So you literally shouldn't break a sweat.

You shouldn't break a sweat. Should just be, hey, we're cruising. But for me. So I'm like, okay, shake out patrol. What's that mean? Like I get all my gear totally squared away. Like water, everything that I'm going to be carrying. I'm carrying.

Like I just do what I'm supposed to do as a good freaking frogman. Not everyone did that. Leif Babin had had his freaking, he had had his water in his canteens since. SQT. And so he, he had water and like the first sip he took. Okay, so. Putrid.

Yeah, the first sip he took it was like spoiled like water. Yeah. So anyways, they go, hey, we're going to take you guys out for this, Chekop Patrol.

Then they drive us out in the middle of the desert, and then they start dropping it off by pairs and giving us link up points. And it ends up being like an all night evolution, walking all through the desert. And guys like Leif hadn't cleaned his can Other guys just didn't bring water Backels or he'd brought like very little water and so we end up on this a little bit of a death march and This is the story that Leif likes to tell is he comes up to me and he's like hey

It's like water and I was like yeah He's like do you have any spare water and I was like why and he's like Bigels doesn't have any water. He's he's starting to feel it and I'm like and Lief's when he tells the story, I look at him, I'm like, is he going to die? I'm like, is he going to die? And he's like, no. And I was like, well, tell him to remember to bring his own water next time. So that was one example of, you know, a few things that went down that night.

But like, Laif was out of water. I don't know, what was your status? Yeah, I run hot, man. I brought my water, but I burned through it. We marched. I mean, it was hot. Yeah. And we marched.

Not acclimated because it was day one. Not acclimated. And August or whatever. carrying a full, you know, pig gunner loadout. So third platoon, you know, I'm still carrying that pig. And, yeah, I was smoked, man. And then... Did you go down?

No, I didn't go down. No, no. No one actually went down. No one actually went down. And then at the end of that, we did like a combat conditioning course, right? It was in them, because it was just getting light. And they're like, hey, combat conditioning course is next. And I was like, oh, cool.

Good. I was like, cool. Let's go. Freaking combat conditioning course. Um, hey, also, so we're out there. Bagels is out of shape. And he's like, dude, you could tell as a new guy, he got done with Buds and SQT and was like, I just finished buds and SQT. And I'm going to freaking relax for the next 30 days of leave.

And that's exactly what he did. And you know, normally I was thinking about this. Normally in a normal seal team, you'd be like. like oh cool then you get back to the team and everyone to be in pro dev and you kind of get back into shape and whatever and you can also think like biggles haven't been a wrestler he probably like you know cut wade and he was like on that 30 days of leave he was finding some food man he was getting in there and he like to eat you know what I'm saying you know he like to get he like to eat so he put on some lbs and the very first trip he shows up on is is for a desert warfare and

he's not in shape. And he was hurting on that, and he was hurting on the combat conditioning course. And so right out of the gate, it was like, this guy's not in shape. And he had a cool attitude, but basically you got a sign

to freaking square his ass away, right? Yeah. Well, tell me about that. Yeah, we just got paired up. I mean, there was really no program. You know, Laif just told me, hey, take Ryan under your wing and squirm away. So what that meant was is we started running together.

And so every, you know, not every day, but, you know, several times a week. And on every trip, we just ran. So, yeah, we ran the deserts of Nileland. And Laif just always, like, the image just pops up in my head of, you know, we're running with our shirts off down the siphon road. And, you know, I'm like Portuguese tan, middle summer. And Biggles is just like glaring, just white, just uncomfortably glowing white down the road. Yeah. Yeah, that's freaking classic.

Uh, we get, that other story that's freaking classic is freaking Johnny Kim. Like, you guys had just like hazed somebody and I don't think that's the term that we use. You guys had just hazed somebody. And it was like real obvious and everything. And so I actually got the platoon chiefs and SEA and I was like, hey, guys. And so I pulled themselves like, hey guys. Like I get it, but you can't be dumb. Like you can't be doing this shit.

Like it's real obvious like freaking freaking, freaking keeping under control boys. And they're like, yeah, I got it, got it. And I shit you not as we're walk because Johnny had been at sniper school. So he showed up late and this this 20 minute period, I shit you not the 20 minute period that like I saw this happen and I was like dude you guys.

So I go, hey, let me talk to you guys. Muster them outside. We're out freaking standing by the, whatever that tower is. We're standing there like having a a little freaking man-all-man conversation with the khakis. And then during that 20 minutes, Johnny Kim had showed up at an island as a new guy, late. You know, now he's late.

Even though he's at a freaking school, but you guys are like, you're freaking late. And I come walking back in, and you guys had taken him like shaved half of his head, beat him up or whatever. And I come walking in, and I hear someone like, it was actually Chris. Chris is like,

go report to the commander. And I'm like, what is going? Like, that's just a weird thing to hear, you know? Because everybody calls me Jocko. Now I hear, like, me being referred to as the commander. He's a go report to the commander. And I look over and here's freaking Johnny. And I look at him and he's like a little bit shell shock looking,

but also I see like tufts of hair like on his shoulders and like half of his head, but he's got a hat on. And I'm like, hey, bro, how's it going? And he's like, sir, I'm petty. I'm I just got here from Cypress School I'm honored to be a part of this and I was like cool bro It's awesome to meet you man. I look forward to working with you and then just like walked around like God I got some freaking out of control knuckleheads Which is kind of what you want

So that was all good all good Yeah good times but there was some old school bonding going on did I say Hasinger and I said bonding rituals? I think you meant bonding I think I meant bonding rituals so there's some bonding rituals that took place that were going on. So we get done with that. We freaking general, I think we did, we went out to the desert

for vehicles next, mobility. Then we go to CQC. And this is when we were still doing CQC out at a civilian place. So that was awesome training. Yeah, great, great workup.

Yeah. That's a good one. We really had an awesome workup. Going to, Mount was also at an army base. So we had a big, facility to use out there and and this whole time we're having good times as well

both on and off the training areas is a good crew yeah no doubt man I mean the we had we had a lot of the energy from that prior platoon so we were still you know a bunch of meat eaters yeah but with a little bit more civility and a little bit more structure well yeah I mean you you throw Tony into the mix and like that's just a different, you know, Tony's a freaking animal, right? And I mean, by that, I mean like he's like part human, but part animal. Like you want to talk about needing water in the desert? Doesn't drink water.

No, just coffee and dip. Yeah, coffee and dip. He's like, oh, we're doing a shakeout patrol. It's going to be nine days long. Cool. I'm going to eat dirt and be good to go, by the way. So when you were talking about, hey, you know, forming up a new platoon, when I heard he was going to be our platoon chief, I was like, oh, shit, this guy, because he had put me through

He was He was like the desert rat out of Nileland He did like years at Nileland And multiple tours probably And he put us through our 60 gunner course Oh yeah The infamous course And this was a multi-day course

And it was hell on earth man I mean While the grenadiers Are like You know, sipping tea The riflemen Yeah the rifle men The rifle men are like

Whatever the hell that they were doing Training for that week and we were just grinding up and down, middle of the summer, buddy carries and just stuff eating until our fingers were bleeding. It was awful. And he was just sitting there, you know, just drinking his coffee and dipping. And then luckily he would give us a breakdown at lunch and we could go unpack ammo while everyone else was eating.

So, I mean, you know the thing about that is you might not know how hard he is as a human being. Because you're like, oh, he's just like sitting up here telling us what to do. but you know what I'd like to see him do that and then you then he doesn't then you realize like oh he'll do this and that freaking that type of thing when you in the seal teams when you have somebody and there's always someone like this that's into whatever they're into like the breaching is on the backs of like a handful of guys that were just super into breaching and just took it to the next level the snipers like there's guys that just along you know from generation to generation like someone turns over that school, that train, that block of training is just like, someone goes in there

and takes it over, it's like they love it and they want it to be the best training. And AWs and comms guys and everybody, you get these people in the teams that, that create the school or the training for people that just takes it to the next level. Like the AW course is a classic example. The AW course could be like a two-hour session, maybe a four-hour session. You'd be pretty good. You know, you'd be pretty good after four hours of good drills with a heavy machine gun. You'd be like, okay, cool. Like, we're pretty good at this. And most communities would be like, okay, cool.

Yeah, we've really trained our automatic weapons gunners to a high level. But when you see what the AW course is like, you think, oh, these guys are literally ready for anything that can happen with an AW. It's freaking awesome. And that's what you end up with. You end up with badass people that have been trained to the nth degree, and they're going to be able to crush in any situation. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I didn't know much about Tony's background.

So like him coming in, I'm like, you know, is this guy I'll talk or whatever? And he's certainly not. Like the hardest frogman I've ever worked with. I mean, the guy is just like what you said, you know, I mean, doesn't need water, doesn't need food. He just, I mean, he does need dip in coffee. And that you can run off you know for weeks off that. Yeah. And so he and I grew up at team one together.

So we knew each other. So but we had never been in a platoon together. But like when I was coming to team three and I saw that he was one of the platoon chiefs and in the same thing like we were both like so freaking stoked. Because I knew, you know, his reputation as a frog man was awesome, you know. And his reputation as like beating people up. All that he had that too but I knew like hey cool we can you can contend with that like you can contend with like hey dude Can you do me a favor for the next 48 hours not punch anyone and and here's why and like we want it you know He'll be like no

Why yeah I'll just sit in my room then It's like but he gets it you know and he did things that were so one One of the things that was so professional never forget this I'm out there we're at we're doing We're doing mobility. So we're out there at an island with the vehicles. And we were supposed to be setting up like a little mini-op or something.

And I'm just standing there. And Tony's like, hey, and he's talking to Laif. And he's like, hey, what we should do is put vehicles here, put vehicle here, send the guys over here, boom, set it up like this. And Laf's like, yeah, cool. And he says, and Leif says, hey, why don't you go ahead and, you know, tell the platoon. And Tony's like, no, you go ahead and tell him it would be better coming from you. And just to have that humility for him, you know, this was early in the workup.

He wants Laif to get that rapport with you guys to be like, oh, yeah, Laf knows what he's he's wanting to build up his boss. And there's so many times where people's ego is like, LT, you go ahead and stand down, all brief. Like, he just didn't play any of that. So he's hard and tough as hell and an awesome operator. But he also, like, really, truly understood the dynamics of leadership and the dynamic. of a free concealed platoon, which was outstanding,

outstanding to see and beautiful to work with. Yeah, I think, you know, we build our kind of leadership blueprint with everyone that we work with, but, you know, mine certainly was heavily influenced with Tony's, and I just grew to really respect the hell of them. Great frog man, great, great leader, and I mean, just like, you know, just a tactical badass. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned something before we hit record about when we were at Mount and like I was encouraging you somehow to

What was it an obstacle course that we were doing? A Mount obstacle course? What went down? That's exactly what it was. And I'm surprised that you don't remember this. But we were paired up into groups of three. So it was I don't remember who the third was, but it was you, I and someone else and we were in these teams.

And it was like a combat condition course where we're doing all these different obstacles in the mountains. downtown and one of the absules was like we're running up a building and we're repelling down and it's a pretty tall building i mean i don't know six stories something like that and i don't even know if we had to belay dude um but yeah we got up to the roof we rushed up to the roof and you know we're trying to try trying to win this damn thing right and i i don't know you know what your motives were but you were compelling me to take more slack with the rope and And I mean, mind you, I'm like a trained Hearst guy.

I know my way around the repel rope. But you were dragging me on a little bit, and I don't know how I complied. So I took a lot of slack, and I jumped off that roof. And it must have looked like an 80s action movie, man, because I jumped. I went like two stories down and I disappeared into one of those open windows. And my old shit meter was like going off the charts, man. My eyeballs were big, and I was just holding that rope. And it kind of like ricochied me out.

So I flew in and then the rope kind of like ricocheted back and I was just like, all eyeballs. I just carried on smartly and then went down, but I was like, oh, shit, man. That's classic. You were obviously messing with me, testing me a combination of the balls. Probably. I don't really remember it, you know, but for me to be like encouraging people to freaking go hard and do tougher shit.

Yeah, it's pretty standard. But that's also the trip where Tony broke his ankle. and like he tells the story he's like just like hobbles over to the side of the roof and then just goes like to like try and force his broken ankle to heal and it was of course after he made some kind of speech like you know something happens just btf through it you know and sure enough what do he do he btf through it just freaking holl around on a broken ankle oh hell yeah um we were set to deploy to bagdad yeah and And we went on a PDSS, so like a pre-deployment site survey to Baghdad, and met up with the special operations guys.

It was seals and green berets that we were going to go and replace. And we were going to be working with this Iraqi counterterror force. And very, let's say, a very cookie cutter kind of deployment was set up for us. Like everything's in place. The guys have been trained. The operations are kind of steady and flowing. and it looked like it was going to be just a really good, solid deployment. And that's what was happening.

And so I went over there on pre-deployment, all good, like high five with the guys. Yeah, we'll see you guys in a few weeks. Come back. When I came back, they had done for whatever reasons. Well, I know the reason. They wanted to unify the entire western part of Iraq under one special operations leader. They chose our leader at Steel Team 3 to be that guy. And now the opportunity for him was to unify his whole team underneath him in Western Iraq in Al-Lambar province.

And they ended up coming up. I got called in and you guys were on leave. And he's like, hey, there's a chance for you guys to go to Ramadi if that makes sense to you. And I was like, because I knew what was going on in Ramadi. Ramadi was total mayhem at the time. And I was like, well, that makes perfect sense to me. And that's what we ended up doing. Now, did you, did you guys, did we, I don't even think we had a capability of getting that word to you while you guys were on pre-deployment leave.

No, no. We came back from leave and that was just kind of dropped on us and, you know, didn't really know like what that meant. Hadn't really had time to kind of absorb what the changing mission was. I mean, the original mission was kind of like what I had done the prior deployment. That's what we were expecting to do. Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot, there was a lot of people that, that was almost like, what's that expression? That was like two birds in the hand is worth one in the bush.

It seemed like that was a real obvious like, hey, this is, we're going to go there, we're going to do this type of mission. It's already going on. Like there's no drama. We could just go and do that. I looked at, what do you have that? That was a gross misrepresentation of the expression. But, you know, it's kind of the opposite. But, hey, man.

Okay. Be you. You do you. My boss. You do you. No, what I'm saying is. Going to Baghdad was like, oh, this is a good deal. It's already like two birds right here, right in our hands.

We have this real nice, kind of easy mission. Two birds in the bush is better than one in the hand. The one in the hand is the unknown. No, the one in the hand. The one in the hand is the one that's known. You have it. You said two in the hand is worth one in the bush, which is. Okay, so I'm all jacked up.

Yeah, yeah, all jacked up. Well, that's the way it goes sometimes. We had this opportunity to have one bird in the hand. Now I'm tracking. Two in the bush. We could have had one bird in the hand, which was these nice, clean, simple, straightforward operations in Baghdad, great opt tempo. Or we're going to this Wild West area, which was really bad at the time. And the task unit that we were going to be taken over for, they were conducting operations,

but it was like really hard for them to get operations approved. They were getting out of the wire sometimes, but it was kind of tricky for them to get out. And it's definitely like, some guys were like, damn, it seemed like we are taking a risk by going to do this other stuff in Ramadi when we could have just kind of a nice silver platter with Cool Ops in Baghdad.

I looked at it like, hey, there's a lot of bad guys in Ramadi and they're concentrated there. And there's really bad things happening and we can go there and I think we can do a lot of good and do a lot of damage to the enemy. And so I rogered up. You guys all came back and we went on deployment. You remember getting there?

No, I don't really remember much about arriving there. Was it the first night that we got into the... I think it was your guys. So I went early with like Tony and like a few guys. Like there was some of us went early. And then you guys showed up like four or five days later, something like that. But yeah, we got like, there was some assault on the camp. And so we end up with the entire task unit, including techs just up there on the roof,

just laying wastes across the river. Oh, shadow stalker getting kidnapped with like no nods and just shooting from the hip. Yeah, that was, that was my intro to Ramadi, man. I had a feeling that we were going to be getting up. after it entire deployment. Yeah, and I just knew. So when I got there, got on the ground, I realized, you know, some,

I went and talked to, there was a guy from Special Operations Command, who was a friend of mine that was there at the time, and he kind of briefed me what was going on. His intel officer had been my intel officer when I was at SEAL Team 7, so I knew her well, and she told me what was going on.

And then I kind of obviously turned over with the, the task unit that was there before us got a feeling for what was going on and then talking to conventional so i basically figured out like what we could do that i thought would be very beneficial to the fight you know and so by the time you guys got there i kind of had a pretty good idea of what was going to go down and and how we could start knocking it out and i for for a while for a few days we were for probably like five six days we were actually working for the seal of seal team one So the seal of seal team three hadn't taken over yet.

So there was like five days or six days where we were working for the CEO of seal team one, who I kind of knew. And what we tried to do is do as many missions as we could in the first five, six days so that we developed a precedent of like, hey, we're gonna be working a lot. And that's exactly what we did. Leif tells a story about the first op that he ran,

which I'm sure you were on as a DA and like right outside in Tamim. And Lai, was like stressed like there was paperwork due and there was this do and he was like we you know he kind of came to me like dude we should just like roll this and I was like bro you got this this is this is like a literal no-brainer your platoon knows what to do you know what to do just go knock it out and he was like Roger that and guys went knocked it out no factor and came back and he's like you're right dude like we're ready and we just did that as much as we could for the next few days and almost

immediately also started doing sniper overwatch positions the one of the best things that happened was Tony took a crew out up in a firecracker. I don't know if you were on this or not, but he took a little sniper overwatch team up in a firecracker. And I was, this was so early. I was meeting the brigade commander for the first time. And when I walked into the talk, they, Tony's element had just killed an IED in place or in an exact spot or like a block away from where an IED just killed like three Marines. And this, this was like the timing was impeccable. I'm going into the talk.

This radio traffic is coming in. The brigade commander, Colonel Gronsky's hearing this radio traffic that the seals just got here and they just killed an IED implacer, which was right where these, we lost these Marines. He looked at me and was like, we need you to go to Eastern Ramadi. And I was like, Roger that, sir. And boom, like, that's kind of all these little elements kind of got the ball rolling really well. And on top of that, like going to memorial services right out of the gate for Army guys and Marines. That's like one of the first things we did.

And that was a real eye-opener as well, I think, for everybody. Yeah, man. I mean, from my perspective coming in, obviously it was a different kind of deployment that we had done the last couple. But, you know, you guys made it clear that we were there to, you know, make an impact. whatever that meant and getting creative, like what you guys were doing behind the scenes, which I really wasn't super privy to at that point, to find employment that was meaningful and not meaningful to like, you know, beefing up our e-vails, you know, doing a bunch of ops that don't really matter.

But like what you're saying, I mean, guys were getting, you know, conventional forces were getting hammered pretty good. You know, the Iraqis weren't going out. the effort required us to do some things that that you know we weren't used to doing but it needed to be done and I think you know us walking away after that seeing the kind of strategic impact of doing that was pretty cool yeah the great example so we ended up doing these sniper overwatch positions all over and when you think about it how many how many urban sniper overwatches did we do during workup the answer is zero so

I was actually talking to a guy the other night. And, you know, we were talking about workup, and he's currently going through workup, and I was talking to him. And he was sort of like saying, well, hey, we know, we've got this thing going on in the world. We got this thing going on in the world. We got this thing going on in the world.

It's kind of hard to tell which one to actually prepare for. And I was talking about, I told us to a few other guys as well. What workup does is it put you in really challenging situations that you learn to figure out. And if you can take your Mark 48 and get it waterproofed and swim across the beach at San Clemente Island and go live fire, hit a target somewhere and then get back in the water and swim back out to a boat, that whole thing is just a bunch of problem solving. That's what it is. It's a bunch of problem solving.

You know, I don't think the SR training that we used to do gets enough credit. Sure. You know, I mean, I think that was the training. I mean, you look at the muscle movements. In terms of the things that we're doing, the planning, the multi-day missions and all that, the only difference is how you're setting up in an urban environment. But when you have to adapt to, oh, we're going to be doing OTB, then you have to adapt to going to SR, then you have to adapt to vehicles, then you adapt to boats, then you adapt to this, then you adapt to this.

You can't do it all. And you can't do it all. But what you learn, what you train to do, sure, you train to do overwatches or you're trained to do SR. And yes, you train to do DAs. But what you train to do is you train to think you train to adapt you train to learn that's actually what the workup is is Getting people to learn how to adapt how to see patterns how to recognize where they can improve And that's what workup is and that's actually what sealed like even buds Buds is like mayhem how it's how do you deal with mayhem how can we take this freaking total chaos of hell week and get a head count

How do we do that and that's what? carries through and that's what we that's what we're good at we're good at looking at a shit sandwich and being like okay we need to turn this into an operation that we have control over well us more than others too i think you know we're not mired by doctrine that the teams are you know out of all the other soft elements out there you know we're probably the least doctrine focused now that could be bad in some ways but it's bad in some ways but it sure is good but like what what you're talking about i mean throw us in challenging environments and situations and and we're gonna figure shit out.

Yep. And then we'll get better at that down the road. Yep. Yeah, even when we were out of the water for a while, meaning like NSW in general, you know, in the workups, we started doing less and less diving and less and less more ops. And people would talk to me about it,

be like, you know, we're not even getting the water. And I was like, hey, man, if we need to get back in the water, we'll get back in the water, we'll figure it out. I'll take, I went through that cycle, you know, it's like, oh, we haven't done OTB in a while. Cool, how do you rig the boats? And you'll go screw it up. And you're like, hey, we need to put one inch tube

on nylon. around this and oh yeah, hey, we need to make sure we prep the motor like this. Oh, yeah, cool. Hey, we need to make sure that the chemlights are our chemlights are over. So you just relearn it, but because you have an open mind and because you've learned how to adapt, that's what makes it work. And that's really exactly what we did when we got to her body. We were doing operations that we had to figure out.

We were doing interoperability with Marines and with Army that we hadn't done. We were using vehicles that we hadn't used, Bradley's tanks. We were using air support that we hadn't used Apache. Like there's a whole bunch of things that we just had to go, okay, how are we going to work this? We couldn't be like, hey, we know how to do this. We've never done this before. What do you think? What, give us your opinion.

How would you execute this mission, Army guy or Marine guy? Like, those Army guys have been there for four months, six months, ten months. Marines have been there for three months, four months, five months at that time. Like, hey, how do you guys think of this? What do you guys think of this? Learn from them and then go, oh, what about this? And that's really what it was, was like an exercise in adaptability. Yeah.

The other thing that was interesting is we show, you know, we do this whole workup as a complete task unit. We get to Ramadi and we split up into five separate elements. A bunch of different, you know, little five, six man elements are now running things. And people like you, you were in your third platoon, you end up as like the assault chief for the special mission unit of the Iraqis as a combat advisor, which is a huge, you're huge freaking responsibility. That in particular was really cool and just kind of dumb luck how it panned out.

But yeah, we broke up into different groups there and, you know, we were at a five-man mixed element and with our special missions platoon, I think they were called, right? The Iraqi element that essentially we were partnered with whenever we were targeting, you know, bad guys to go after and gave me a great opportunity. Yeah, I mean, to kind of plan. lead these assaults when I had no business doing that, you know, structurally in terms of like where I was. Structurally you didn't, but experience wise and level-headedness and performance and leadership capability, you were definitely ready to rock and roll, obviously. Yeah, yeah, that was

a, that was good, man. That was great, great experience, like super fortunate that I found myself in that group. And I was with Laith. Always a great time working with Laith and, you know, learn so much with him throughout that. And I got really into. the mission planning process and kind of the non-sexy stuff. But you know what? Like all that stuff, if you're going to do a career in the teams, you know, learning how to do that shit, learning how to, you know,

whether it's dealing with products, briefing shit, like I wasn't a great briefer before then and I was probably not great during that. But I got a lot better at it and, you know, learning how to run shit, you know, and at kind of a higher level. And it was cool, you know, got to run some, I mean, task unit size DAs and deal with all that and to have the opportunity

to kind of be in that position I was in was, yeah, pretty cool. You were, um, he threw out a lot of Rambo quotes. It's kind of your thing. Yeah, you know, I mean, going back, if, if you were to look at my childhood, you probably would wonder why I didn't go into the Green Berets, you know, I'm a huge Rambo fan. You were, uh, we did a hostage rescue. We did, yeah. And what were you, the, were you the assault lead on that one?

So I wore a couple different hats on this. This was an interesting one for me. So backing up for the last two platoons, all the direct action missions that we had done, Chris was the point man. And, you know, I don't recall Chris talking much about in his book, you know, what he did behind the scenes, just to kind of deviate here for a second

because I think it's worth telling is he was a tremendous like navigator and planner and not just in like routes to target but I mean you know like mobility navigation so like out of all the convoyes and missions that we did on the most treacherous roads in Iraq never got hit by an IED and I give Chris a lot of credit for the deep mission planning he was doing in developing routes and finding the the best ways to get us in and out. And yeah, great, great point man. Aside from all the stuff he did as a sniper

and everything else he did. But this was the first mission. So when we did DAs, generally Chris and I were like inseparable as part of that point element heading up to the assault. We got the mission. You being breach team and him being like point man. Yeah, inseparable. Yeah.

And for this mission in particular, it was a short notice. this time sensitive mission. We didn't have much time to plan or to think on it. And I don't recall exactly why, but we broke up, there was an Overwatch contingent. I know why.

I know why. Because there was a tall building that had a great vantage point over the target. And the target, we had intel, that there was like a machine gun nest, and there was IEDs around it. And so in order to mitigate that, we didn't want to just hit the target cold.

We wanted to get eyes on beyond. We obviously tried to get aircraft, but we wanted to get our, that was something I was always into. I was always into like whatever we could, whatever I could do with us. Organic, I wanted to do.

And so in this particular one, there was a building, which we weren't supposed to go into, by the way. But there was a building that was like perfect, overwatch to look at the target area. It was like a university or something. It was in the university. So there was this.

There was an area called the Alambar University that we weren't supposed to go into. And, you know, sometimes you got to make a decision where you're going to bend the rules a little bit. This is one of those times. I made a decision like, yeah, we're going to bend the rules. It's literally the perfect Overwatch for this target building where there was a hostage, where there was reports of IEDs in the courtyard and heavy machine gun in position in this building. So before we hit this thing, I was like, we need to look and see what we need to have our own eyes on.

And once the assault starts, we need to have Overwatch as it's going down in case there is a machine gun or somewhere there. So that's why that little split took place now that you're bringing it up. Sounds like the worst environment imaginable. And like going back to the little vignette, you know, talking about going over, you know, invading Iraq. Yeah, that was like another moment there because I ended up being point man for my first. time ever on that op. So it was point man slash breacher going into what I thought was the worst

environment imaginable. Ended up not being that bad. But yeah, that was that was one of those ones, you know, especially now, father to a couple of kids. Pretty cool, man. Pretty cool that we did that. I'm glad it went, it went smooth. We got to Target. And, you know, it always shocked me, you know I mean we we stormed that entire house made it to the roof before they even woke up so a shot wasn't fired um you know did what we had to do um got the guys wrapped them up you know saved the kid and uh yeah that was pretty cool one yeah i i think i was staged by the overwatch which was only like a hundred yards away but as the assaults going down i would ever grab a couple guys and I go to get to the breach point of the assault.

And, you know, 48 seconds goes by or something and get the target secure. And then, like, Laf's calling me like, Jock Leif. I'm like, go. And he's like, jackpot. Meaning we just got the hostage. And at this point, man, I mean, this was, you're always suspect of Intel anyways. But I was like, I think I was like, jackpot? He's a jackpot.

And I was like, Roger that. Like, freaking hell, hell, yeah. Let's go. And sure enough, like you said, we got the, it was like a 15 or 16 year old kid that had been kidnapped from Fallujah and then taken into this safe house, enemy safe house in Ramadi. And so, yeah, that was a, that was pretty good. Yeah, if I recall, was he like, you know, like the provincial leader son or something like that? Yeah, I want to say it was like the provincial police chief son or something like this. So he was, his parents were some kind of, some kind of political official.

And that's why they took him. But. Yeah. And I may or may not have said, we're Navy Seals. We're here to get you out. Yeah. And if he would have spoken English, he may have been impressed with that line. But also interesting, Leif pointed this out to me. A couple of years later, the people that we captured went on trial.

And they had to have testimony from the assault team that captured them. And so the assault, the people that were testified was you and Leif. And you and Laif, obviously you couldn't use your real names because then the enemy might, you know, find out who you are. So you guys testified via VTC a couple years later as Lieutenant Ray Tango and Petty Officer Second Class at Gabriel Cash. Tango and Gabriel Cash. Ray, Tango and Gabriel Cash. Oh, good times. You know, those are just a little waste that kind of get back, you know.

You got to get them back. Got to get him back. but the opt tempo there clearly I mean it was really high we almost you know we had guys in the field all the time you and your team and the other elements we just had guys going out all the time obviously the fighting was really heavy we talk about like when I got back and I was talking to one of the prior enlisted captain over at Warcom who is a machine gunner seal machine gunner in Vietnam and I'm kind of debriefing with him and and you know know for us we always held the we always thought the guys in Vietnam were just like

constant combat and I was talking to him and he said you know I was like well like how many when you were deployed like how many gunfights did you get in and he was like I forget the exact numbers but he was like six and I was like okay and I mean that was like three days in Ramadi and and I was like oh did you did you how often did you run out of ammo and he's like I never ran out of ammo and I was like oh and we had guys go Winchester on the pigs a decent amount

like not a regular occurrence but more often than you'd think for sure and you know guys were too eager to throw that box of ammo whenever we got in a gunfight try to get that weight yeah yeah because guys were carrying extra rounds

and then you know we're getting a gunfight you just see boxers getting peppered at your back and what was your how much did you carry on your person? 500. Yeah. Man, my first platoon, I'm not even shed you. It was a thousand rounds and it was like weaved in my kid.

It was ridiculous. I couldn't even move. But no, we got down, you know, doing a couple of deployments and then the SOP kind of changed a little bit because you have to be mobile enough. You got to, you know, we're hopping over walls. We're running, gun in. So that was usually it. Um

you end up that that citation that I read in the beginning was you got you got hitting the leg with shrapnel

um you end up getting medevact uh that was Tony's birthday by the way yes BTF Tony's

happy birthday was a big gun fight that's probably I guarantee that's the best birthday Tony's ever had that's probably like his 50th birthday yeah he was either he was either 50

or 21 or like or like 742 and he's a vampire and he just like lives war to war you end up it didn't look bad like I remember looking at your knee and I was like it doesn't look too bad but it was not good it was worse than it looked I should say so you end up getting medevac and sent to Germany I got an email here oh shit Sunday, July 23rd, 2006. Leif. Hey man, I talked to Jocko yesterday.

I gave him the lowdown. I'll repeat myself as usual for you, sir. They were unable to find that tiny fucker with the orthoscopy. Orthoscopy. Apparently, the shrapnel was on E&E from the scope, so naturally they ripped open the rest of the knee, set up an L ambush, and eventually found the little son of a bitch.

It was pretty not good. Sounds like it's going to be a little more recovery time than anticipated. I've talked to the docs here and my basic plan is to hang out here for a few more days Then go to unit two for a few weeks to a month or however long it takes to be good enough to walk around and then get flown back to you guys I don't know if I'll be good enough to op with you guys But at the very least I'd like to come back and help out any way I can even if that means being a talk bitch I'm figuring I'll know a little bit more in the next couple weeks well, just know on the bright side, I'm in a hospital bed sweating my ass off, being bit by mosquitoes, constipated, and I'm pissing on myself on a regular basis.

And luckily, they are underfeeding me with shitty food as well. Now I think I'll go back and lie about my pain so I can get a morphine percocet cocktail, relax, and itch my full body rash. Hate, hate, hate, Bob. I'm blown away that you have that. Lay fat. Oh, my God. That's wild. That's wild.

That was a wild time, man. You know, getting back to it, it was a weird, you know, some shrapnel that found itself right in the middle of my knee, and it was hard to get to. And I remember we had a conversation, you know, they weren't forcing me to go. This was like a decision, like, man, do what you want. If you leave it in there, it's going to tear up the inside your knee if you want that to happen. But I had a decision to make, and that was kind of a tough one. I didn't want to leave the guys.

I mean, when you're in it like that and you're going through all that shit, the last thing you want to do is leave the guys. And, you know, we talked about working to be dependable and being one of those guys that are relied on. So to get pulled out like that, it just sucked. And, you know, they were telling me, they were hopeful they thought they were going to be able to get into it with a scope, which is really easy. Throw a scope in there, pull it out, and they weren't able to do that.

So it just got a little bit more invasive. But I don't think I've shared this with anyone that kind of like how those couple days went. I ended up, I caught a flight to, I think it was a chopper to Balad. And then I took a C-17 Medevac plan, which was wild. I mean,

if no one's fortunate to be on something like that, if it's pretty gnarly. You know, basically, a whole 17 was filled with wounded guys that were stretchers stacked like four high all the way across. So to walk on ambulatory with a backpack, you know, just kind of kind of hit me there. And then had the surgery, you know, was rehabbing, got out of that, that, that,

Man, just that email. I'm going to have to get a copy of that. It takes me back. But yeah, had some team guys there that were. Was that in Belaud or was that email sent from Belad, July 23rd? Was that sent from Germany? No, that was from Germany. Okay.

Yeah, that was post-surgery there. So I was in the hospital there. That's where they sent all the casualties there and recuperating. They kept me in the hospital a couple days and then they gave me an allowance to go get some clothes. because a lot of people that go, I mean, they're like coming off the battlefield and it's not like, hey, go pack a suitcase. And I went and grabbed some clothes

before they were sending me to the debt over there. And I remember just kind of a funny little note is they didn't have anything at the exchange, so I just got like some shitty clothes and looked just like, you know, the dudes in Pulp Fiction, you know, fence. You see Santa Barbara. Yeah, I mean, just like a dork walking around Germany,

you know, rehab next two weeks. But yeah, it was tough being away from the guys and not knowing what's going on. And then I got the call from Jeremy on August 2nd, you know, that Mark was killed. And Biggles had been hit hard and was en route to Germany. In fact, the same hospital that, you know, I'd left at that point, I'd been out of the platoon for two weeks, just for two weeks. So, I mean, kind of a blessing in disguise to be there and to see Ryan and to be there for him. You know, although, you know, I don't know how cognizant he was. He was in a really, really bad spot.

And to be honest with it, it was hard to see him like that, like really tough. But, you know, I also got to be the liaison to his family there, which I know was meaningful to them to hear of. voice someone who knew him, you know, provide a little bit of comfort there. And so hung out with him for a little bit, and then he got shipped to- Was he still in a coma, like medically induced coma at that point? No, he was awake, though, heavily, heavily sedated.

And making, you know, I mean, just, I haven't giggling a little bit, the best that he could kind of giggle, but, you know, he had hoses and all sorts of stuff, and he just looked bad, you know, and definitely not how I saw him last. So one of the It was tough

You know being not not being there with the guys during that event It's just one of those things I don't share With the platoon And you know I don't say that Lightly You know because there's pros and cons to that Obviously I wasn't there You know wasn't able to help

All that stuff but on the other side I'm thankful I didn't get to I didn't have to see that I got another email from you. This is August 9th, 2006. Laif, today is Wednesday, and we will be on a flight with Mark out of Philadelphia to San Diego. We will get back at about 8 o'clock tonight and transfer him to Greenwood Mortuary. Sorry about the lack of updates. Connectivity has been bad, and we've been on the road a lot trying to get down to see Ryan in Bethesda.

I will call, I will try to call when I can to get through and talk to you guys about what I know. Ryan is getting better bit by bit. He's sitting up. He knows where he is and he manages to speak to us when we are there, albeit slowly. It's kind of like he's really drunk from his medication. His girlfriend, Kelly, has been by his side pretty much nonstop and his family has been there for him too. Every admiral in Speck War is coming to see him. When Dobber Biff and I went to see him, we managed to make him laugh a bit, and he gave us a good T.U. Bruiser fist pound.

His spirits are up, generally speaking. His left eye is a huge question. They ask us every time we are there if he could see out of it right after he got shot, and I can't really answer that question. I know the doctors are anxious to talk to Johnny Kim. The bottom line is that sometimes he can see light when they flash it into his, left eyelid and other times not. The current prognosis is not narrow. He may have all, none, or partial vision in his left eye and is going to be crucial in

these next few days to find out for his sake. Mark still doesn't know about his right eye and he still doesn't know about Mark. Just yesterday he found out he wasn't still in Iraq. His dad is going to take the burden and tell him all these things as soon as he isn't so heavily sedated and they are hoping to tell him that his left eye is okay everyone is expecting him to be pretty upset understandably and his dad has already been asking us if there will be a place for Ryan and spec war if he only has the use of one eye one of the captains from Warcom here told him absolutely they will find something hopefully that will help ease

the burden when he hears all the bad news at the same time As much as you can imagine, or as you can imagine, the family is pretty upset, but they are grateful for all the support. There's a guy here, Chris, from Group 2 Medical. He is a frogman who has been by their side throughout. He is a pretty good point of contact for you guys if you want the no-shit situation. He is also going to escort Mrs. Job out to Mark's funeral. He is great and has really been taken care of Ryan's family. That is about it for

For what we know as for Mark You guys know about as much as we do The memorial and all will be on Saturday Good to hear the updated version of the video Nick made was sent We have a ton of Mark's pictures already And we'll put something together for the family We are flying out of Out at five East Coast time and get to San Diego at eight

We'll make sure to get picks and whatever is handed out at the funeral for all of you guys. Bob. God, man. Fucking just took me back there. I don't know where. I'm surprised. Laif had these emails.

Yeah. That was a heavy time, man. Yeah. Yeah. It's really strange that, like, these emails, I mean, they just get saved. You know, these are like civilian emails that, you know, you are going back and forth with Laif and,

lately like i have i have emails that i sent to my wife and it's very interesting because they're all like they're they don't say anything like i know everything that's going on and i'm like hey how are you and it's very strange to see it um yeah so you ended up flying home with mark did you fly home with mark i wasn't in the uh they call that the euro flight yeah that's called angel flight In the angel plan. Sorry. No, I wasn't on that. I flew separately.

The other guys that went, you know, left country were the actual escorts. Yeah, because we sent home three guys. Do you send three guys home? I think we sent three guys home. And then, like, you know, going to the service, that just had to be so crazy for you. It was, man. It's how everything went down, you know, I left, then this happened, and then we're flying back. It was a whirlwind of like every emotion you could possibly be feeling.

And then on top of that, you know, the other guys spoke at the service. I didn't speak at service, and I wasn't capable of it to be honest with you. So the guys did a really good job, but, you know, I was kind of sitting in the back during the service. It was fucking weird. Yeah. Yeah. That whole time. And then we buried Mark.

And then the other guys, I think they went back pretty quickly. Yeah, they went back pretty quick. And I hung out. And one of the things, my situation, I was trying to stay in Germany because we had kind of felt that was my path back. Yeah. Like closer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, if we're out in Germany, there's a chance to getting back. I want to get back. And then I got to San Diego, they don't want me to get to go back. So the, you know, doctors wanted me to heal. And then I think the command, yeah, I mean, they just wasn't, they didn't want to send me back. It was a tough time, man. And I wrestle with it. And, you know, like that first email, you know, makes it sound like I'm super gung-ho.

And it's that the reality is, is all the shit goes down. It's like a month. Something has passed. No one wants me to go back. Like, you know, those kind of demons on my shoulder like, fuck it, man. You know, just hang back. We're creeping in. But I just had this like overwhelming sense of guilt, you know, and knew I had to get back out to the boys.

And felt in maybe some way that that was like maybe, I don't know, some sort of gift that I could give them, you know, some sort of positive thing. not replacing anything, anything like that, but just something positive to bring the platoon that had gone through so much. And I found my way back. So thank you guys for making that happen. That was, you know, I mentioned it prior, but, you know, your life, there's just these kind of micro decisions and moments that kind of define you, I think, in a little ways. and I would have regretted not going back. My entire life, I will have regretted that. Yeah, well, it's a representation.

Like, when Cowie got wounded, he was like in Charlie Med, telling me, like, please let me stay. Freaking bagels, blind, like, talking to him, like, can I come back? And, you know, you were in a situation where you could come back, and you did, you know, which is, freaking outstanding. And, you know, I remember there was definitely resistance. There was definitely resistance from like, and probably for the right reasons.

I get it. You know, NSW trying to take care of the force and everything like that. But man, it was, it was freaking good when you came back. I mean, it was freaking good for everything. Yeah, it was good for me. And everything had changed. I mean, that, like I said, that is a moment in time. all the shit that I'd been through with Charlie Platoon, everything.

The most meaningful moments, I wasn't there, you know. So that's the kind of gap in that kind of history there. But I got to go back and help the platoon and the troop heal. And we went back to work. Yeah. You know? Yeah, we went back to work. That was it, man.

And that was what we owed to those guys. So what we do, man. We're a frog man. And then, I mean, obviously, you know, we weren't done losing guys yet. Because we had Mikey get killed. Which was another nightmare. And, you know, we had a lot of guys get wounded, too. You know, I guess Cali being the worst of the guys that got wounded.

A lot of guys got fragged. A lot of guys got, you know, took a hit here. pretty much you and Cowhery were the only ones that had to leave, right? Anyone else? No. No. That was it.

Yeah. Mine was, yeah, I called the million dollar wound. I mean. Yeah. Other than obviously when Mikey died, you know,

Mike, Doug, they were jacked up and they got Casavac. It was the end of deployment. So, you know, it's like, kind of their redeployment.

It was almost there. It was maybe a few days early. And so what were you thinking when you came home from that deployment? And I felt like I felt like I'd seen kind of everything that I needed to see and gotten out of the teams. That's kind of how I was feeling. I was, you know, three platoons deep. I mean, certainly was in the shit that entire deployment. And I was just a little bit kind of tired and burnt.

And I had had a plan. And I never planned to do a career in the teams. I mean, I was like, I got pulled kicking and screaming every re-enlistment contract in like three-year intervals until finally it's like, hey, dude, just do it, you know. I was planning on getting out. So I actually got, I had orders to trade at, and those got switched over to buds. So I ended up going over to buds, and the intent was to finish school. to go back and get my degree,

and then to get out and go work for my mom who had like a leasing business, essentially. So that was kind of the thought. I had a loose plan going into it. And, yeah, you know, I just, I also felt extremely grateful to come back in one piece from that deployment. And definitely for a couple years,

you know, whenever you've been through something, like that you realize how inconsequential like all this other bullshit that we stress and worry about and all these other things how they just don't matter you know and that's kind of freeing a little bit it doesn't last forever though and then you get caught up in life and all the other bullshit but I do remember yeah I lived it up I had a lot of fun as a buzz instructor you know what where did you work at buds I ended up being the pre phase it's gone by different names pre-bud's four phase, whatever the initial guys are showing up there. Yep, yep.

Did that and went to school, I joined a Dodgeball League, played with Laif. Hell yeah. Down in OB. And we were just crushing souls in Ocean Beach, man, with these poor, poor hippies who didn't have health insurance and just bashing faces. Check. Did you, as you're at Buds now, seeing it. from the other side. Did you work Hell Weeks?

Yeah. What was that like? Like what did you learn from that? Man, I remember it, I mean, first of all, seeing behind the scenes is really, really need to kind go full circle and to see that other side. But, you know, I learned being at Buds and in Helwick that you don't know, like, what guys are actually going to make it through. And I remember a couple times being surprised. And Chuck Keating was actually one of the guys. I remember putting through training. And, in Hell Week, he was emaciated. I mean, I don't know.

Like couldn't hold down his food maybe or something like that. I don't know if he was sick or had pneumonia or something, but like he lost a lot of weight and was gaunt. And just seeing guys like that power through, it's like, fuck yeah, man. This is, teams is great. This is the best organization in the world.

So, you know, being able to see that. And it was fond man. It was good. And to be a part of people's history, like if you remember all of your instructions, instructors and hold them to high regard whether they deserve that or not you know that that uh that impression that you get from those instructors it lasts a lifetime and I still remember my instructors that way so um but it was really cool later in my career to run into guys a decade later and like hey

you put me through buds do you remember this and to hear all the funny stupid shit that I said and uh it's good man and and and sometimes you know I mean guys come back like hey I remember you tell them the story or doing this man it's just like feel like It's good. It's cool. I never worked at Buds. And so now I kind of like would like to go and work at Buds right now just to kind of see what it's like. But it was always kind of like, oh, no, I'm in the teams, dude.

I'm not going to go back to Buds. Why would I do that? But I think you learn a lot and or just not even learn a lot, but, or yes, learn a lot, but also just interesting to see. Like I was talking to Andy Stumpf and he was talking about like he was in second phase and did pool comp. and he has like all these little things that he can tell you about. Oh, when he'd see a guy's like hands do a certain position,

he's like, oh, this guy's about to go. Like he's about to bolt to the surface. Oh, if he doesn't bolt to the surface, his hands do that and he doesn't bolt the surface. Oh, that means he's about to like freaking pass out.

He just had all this knowledge about like watching people in really stressful situations and how they react. And it's just, I mean, you must have seen that in hell week. You're like, oh, this guy's about to break. And you can decide like,

well, if I say this, to him probably going to get to the next evolution if I say that to him he's about to ring the bell well yeah and that's what you're trying to do is you're trying to get people you know to quit essentially you're trying to create that environment that people reach that moment of despair and either Charlie Mike through or they quit I mean that's that's what that's what the selection program is trying to do um yeah people say like my my son's going to buds do you have any advice for him or like I'm going to go into buds do you have any advice for him I was like yeah don't quit

That's the freaking advice. Don't quit. Yeah. Train, prepare yourself and don't quit. Yeah, don't quit. There is no magic sauce. Don't quit.

That's magic. Yeah. Don't quit. Could be. So now you're saying you were planning to get out. I was, yeah. So I had a three-year tour set at Buds. And, yeah, I was supposed to get out.

And I think 2009 or 10. And then the market tanked for one. There was some contributing factors. And then more importantly, Leif recruited me to stay in. Hell yeah. He was going back to, he was the Opso, I believe the Opso at Team One. And he was fleeting up to be the XO. And this was his pitch, is, hey, man, you know, come back.

I'm going to pair you with Jeremy. You do a platoon together. And that's exactly what he did. That's a solid pitch. It's a solid pitch. It's like, you know, this whole getting out thing, the economy tanking, you know, what's another couple more years? And that was also my opportunity to do a leadership tour, a true, like, leadership tour

as the leading petty officer. So got pulled over there. Actually, I left, I started kind of doing like a mini workup. Once I knew, I was like going to the team. I'm like, all right, you know, because you don't go to buds to get sharp. for seal shit. So I started kind of doing some kind of workup stuff, jumped on a couple trips,

and then I wanted to, you know, I wanted to get the buds stink off me a little bit. So I found my way, snuck on Team One's deployment. They were deploying in 2009, as just a strap hanger, basically. And I did a couple months, went out to Afghanistan. Didn't do anything out there, to be honest with you.

but it gave me a chance to kind of get out there and get away from buds a little bit, interact with the team that I was going to be working at. And then, yeah, Jeremy and I linked up, and we did a pump. Bro. That's freaking ridiculous. I mean, yeah, that's just awesome.

Doing a deployment with you're the LPO and your best friends, the freaking platoon chief. Yeah, and I was in all of Jeremy's pletons. Damn, dude. It's pretty cool. It's freaking impressive. And now you guys are just kicking ass because normally there's like this whole period the platoon has to go through wherever we've got to get to know each other.

The leadership's got to learn to work together and they're having their little ego. But you guys just roll right in 100% on. Not to mention all your SOPs, you're like, hey, this is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. That must have been ridiculous. Yeah, it was great, man. I mean, there was no conflict at all between Jeremy and I and, you know, we rock and rolled and it made us a strong platoon.

We had a great OIC, good group of dudes. And yeah, man, it went really well and really neat. And, you know, I'll take working with people that I know, especially good people, you know, go back to the old two birds in the bush, one in a hand thing. What is it? Five birds in a bush and one and three in the hands. What is it? Every day of the week.

So we were set up for success. You know, had a good work up. She got a little bit weird around deployment just because, of world events and some changing things, but we were supposed to deploy, we did our whole workup, you know, thinking we were deploying to Afghanistan. So Afghanistan was heating back up.

This was an area that I was excited to go operate in, you know, I mean, just austere. So I was really pumped to get a chance to go there. The troop we were in, some of the guys had been there prior. But it didn't, It didn't work out that way. We ended up, for whatever reason, there was a delay in our deployment.

They swapped shit around. Shit happens. And we didn't deploy on schedule. In fact, it was like several months later. So bags, bags were packed. And this is actually when I was introduced to golf. Who introduced you to golf besides Navy SEALs, the movie? Do you need anything else?

right so was there a guy in a platoon or something that was in doing it? You know the I don't remember exactly who it was but our bags were packed like the ass shoes were packed

we were ready to deploy I mean that's where we were workup was done you're deploying and then I guess we were waiting on a deployment order and it was like it's like we're deploying on Monday

and then we show up on Monday it's like now wait 72 hours and then that just kept going and going and going so our bags were packed it's like what else are we going to do

Someone recommended that we go play golf. I don't remember whose idea was. And I don't really think I gave a shit. But once I got out there, man, got hooked. It got you, huh? It got me. I mean, that round, it got me. I think I hit one, one ball.

I was like, damn. That felt good. I felt good. Where'd you play, North Island? Yeah, yeah. That's a nice place to play. I mean, I guess, right? I'm not a golfer, but it seems like a nice place to play.

You're in Coronado. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. So you got your little, introduction to golf did you get, did you go out and buy clubs and stuff? I went and I got I went to like a golf store and I got used clubs.

Yeah, like that same night I think I went out, I got some junk clubs and then just started and we started to whack around now we obviously had a pending deployment so you know I think we actually went to they had like a couple of charity things that we went to

went to a couple of golf events actually the platoon went And I actually, we ended up deploying, we deployed to Iraq, and I brought my golf clubs. Damn. Dude, yeah, golf is a thing. It's something I never talk. Golf is a thing in the teams for like certain team guys. They just, look, there's team guys that are in archery.

There's team guys that are in jihitsu. There's team guys that are into skydiving. There's team guys that are into golf and motorcycles. Like there's little clicks of guys, but golf is absolutely on the list. Actually, I got a friend that was an older guy, not quite a Vietnam guy, but like a little bit after Vietnam. But he tells this story. His wife, like, whatever, after 13 years or something, he comes home from work and like his shit is sitting outside in the yard. And she says, I hate the teams.

I hate golf and I hate you. That was it, bro, getting divorced. But that's like a team guy thing, right? Like, oh, what do you care about? The teams? and then golf. And for me, it's like, oh, the teams and jiu-jitsu. And some guys, it's like the teams and motorcycles.

So they put all their money into motorcycles or golf or whatever, and that's what they're doing all the time. And it's, but golf is definitely one of the things. Like there's guys that surf in the teams. What else? What are other little hobbies? Surfing, jiu-jitsu. These are mine.

Jumping. Golf is in there, man. For some reason, golf is in there. But like spear fishing. I'll tell you why, man. because the more you get into it, it's hard. And I say this with a grain of salt, like a huge one, you get like, all right, how hard is golf?

It's challenging. It's a mental game, though. It's a mental game. I mean, there's a physical component. There's a lot of strategy to it. I mean, there's a lot of shit going on, and that golf swing that has to happen, you know, all within a split second, and it's frustrating.

And to be a frogman or some type A dude who thinks that he can conquer the world, and then you're hovering over this ball and you can't make it do what it should do. It doesn't seem right. And that's it. Like that's what got me. It's like, fuck this, man.

Was anyone, when you went for the first time, was anyone good at it? There were a couple guys in the platoon. Yeah, and there's some competitions. Like, oh, that guy, that guy can hit the ball? No. I can do that. Chuck. That deployment, you go to Iraq?

I did, yeah. This is now like 2010, 2011, 2011, 2012. 11. 2011, you're going on deployment. Yeah. So we were... So Iraq is kind of shutting down. Did you guys close it down?

It is actually shut down. So we had Jeremy and I, I don't know, I mean, someone else can come out and be like, I had that distinction as well, but I mean, we were the two guys that had the distinction of starting and ending like a war, kind of, because we were there during the invasion. And we were part of the last element when they closed down December, whatever it was, 2011. and made a nice little certificate about it. Did you guys leave Iraq on that deployment? Like you personally, you and Jeremy personally left Iraq

and went somewhere else? We closed it down and we redeployed. So you went back to America? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was it. And you were the last troops there like, I mean. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished.

What? Did you do anything good on that deployment? Or was everything kind of like winding down? Nothing sexy. It was winding down. and it was like catch and release. So we were grabbing bad dudes, but because of the inner squabbling and politics,

they were getting released. So it's kind of like, what are we doing? What's the point? Kind of sucked, but we did have, what was really neat, was we were the last show in town in terms of soft. And again, there may have been another element or something out of there, but pretty much the last show in town. But all the assets were still there.

So like all these great assets, we had everything. That's sweet. I mean, all sorts of overhead stuff, like everything that you, everything we wanted for every deployment. We had at our disposal. So it was really neat to kind of run the mission like that with having too much shit. But yeah, it was kind of anticlimatic. We closed it down and head back. And that was it.

Short deployment too. And then you roll right into another deployment. Did you make chief during that? deployment? I did. I made chief right before we deployed. So we ended up, I got, I actually got sent to southern Iraq for a month or two and had my own debt. So I was a chief, had my own debt. That was a really neat feeling to like, all right, I got my group and kind of like a prelude to being a platoon chief. And then we joined forces, I think, in Baghdad with the entire platoon and then beat feet. And then, yeah, I got back. And by that point, the, the, the, the,

incoming CMC just asked me, hey, do you want a spot? And you don't turn down spots. Hell no, not for a platoon chief. No, but there was a caveat. Uh-oh. We were re-organing the team. Iraq was closed down and they were looking to get back towards the Pacific with our team in particular.

So that was the catch. Like, hey, if you're standing team one, this is what's happening. Do you want in? And I was like, yeah, man, I'm in. Cool. Platoon chief, how'd that feel? feel great I mean that that is

for me that was the pinnacle you know when being in a listed seal you know that that was everything I wanted to be was to run your own platoon and you feel like

you know doing all the platoons and workups and deployments prior you feel prepared and all those lessons learned and everything I learned from Tony and my other chiefs and Laif

and everyone else had kind of prepared me for that moment so it's just an awesome feeling to now have this thing that is your own. And I say that, I mean, you have an OIC, their shared responsibility. It's your platoon, but, you know, the platoon chief is really running those platoons and has a heavy amount of influence. So to be able to take all the lessons learned and kind of infuse that in that time, which is awesome, man, and kind of the honor, honestly,

of my career, all the shit I did, one of the most rewarding. things I did, you know, even aside from the combat stuff, was to be able to raise a platoon and to do it the way that you think is right. And had a great group of guys, man. We had a lot of fun. We made that, you know, it was challenging, managing expectations with guys that, you know, didn't have a combat deployment. We had a lot of guys who didn't have a lot of combat experience being told that they're not going, you know, to the show for this deployment. So in terms of the leadership challenge of getting people on board with, you know, this new mission. This new mission for us is to go here and do this.

And while that may not be sexy like this other stuff, it's important. And here's why. And going through all that and doing it like in a genuine way that people weren't like, this guy's just selling out and this is all bullshit. Everything we do doesn't matter. And ultimately, you know, we trained hard and we did things. the right way and we did all this shit to be a good platoon, which is what you should be doing is training hard,

making yourself better as an operator, as a platoon. So I think we did well with that. I was talking to a guy that was in that platoon. And apparently you guys got a lot of Arnold on, a lot of pumping iron and a lot of predator. So you just kept the, you kept the theme going, the action theme going through your whole, through your whole career.

Yeah, man. So, again, I've been a movie buff, you know, so every time I could infuse something into it,

something we used to do is, uh, we would roll out to training evolutions, playing the theme song from Predator. Yeah. What is that the, what is that one? Yeah.

What's the, I'm not gonna do it. Come on. I know it. I don't want to do it either. Okay. You guys are weak. Yeah,

okay. You're probably what it was. Apparently you, and I tried to get a hold of this, you're Charlie, platoon manifesto, which I'm sure I'll get a hold of it at some point. Somebody will have a copy of it. But laying out, hey, this is what a frogman is.

This is what's expected of you guys. From what I understand, that left a big mark on the boys that worked for you. Yeah, you kind of don't know what's going to stick. And, you know, it was cool to see that thing still exists and someone has a copy of it. But, yeah, I did my best. I felt obligated everything that I had kind of seen and learned and kind of, where the teams were kind of evolving and the different experiences that guys were showing up. And, you know, the different experience that I was kind of bringing in, I felt obligated to pass

whatever I could along. And, you know, you spend the better part of 12 years in the teams. You're going to see a lot of things done poorly, and you're going to see a lot of things done well. So, yeah, you know, I mean, I was telling you nothing, pills in comparison to all the great stuff that that you've written. But, yeah, I tried to leave a little mark there. And I'll tell you what, man, it's just so cool now to see, now that I've moved on to see these guys leading platoons and to be, and to lead the community.

How that goes full circle. It wasn't always easy, man, you know. But really, really cool to see that happen. Yeah, like the, I know you made a patch for that. What was your patch that you made for the team one? What was it? You know, the Bravo one was weird. It was just kind of a hodgepodge.

But the Charlie Patch that I, well, I won't say I. And we, although heavily influenced by the platoon chief, was TCB, which is Elvis slang for taking care of business in a flash. So we were a Charlie platoon, so there was a big emphasis on the C and the patch, and we had the lightning bolt. And, yeah, that was awesome. I forgot to do the whole Elvis thing. Like in Tasking of Bruiser, we had, you guys got the freaking car,

because you're an Elvis fan, you got this freaking cardboard cut out. It was in the, it was in the, like, our planning area in Ramadi, a freaking cardboard caught out of Elvis. The king made it to Ramadi, but he didn't make it back. I don't know where he ended up unless someone has been holding him hostage for 18 years. And you guys hit Graceland and work up too. All the time. Yeah, I was, I am a big Elvis fan, especially like late,

70s or not yeah yeah mid mid late 70s where you know that the tempo it's just he's going with it um but yeah i went to graceland for three workups went with uh with johnny and some of the boys and lath um that last one for sure fired up is that where you guys got the is that when you got the the cardboard cut out i that was probably laf's doing yeah laf was really good about that but uh yeah I think Leif got it. Check. So you got this manifesto going on. And now this is like 2012.

You said this is when your dad died, right? 2012. It is, yeah. So my dad, you know, I told his story a while ago, but, you know, just suffered from alcoholism his entire life. So that was his, he carried a lot of burden, abandonment, loss of his brother. He didn't pass that down to me, like in a way that was damaging to me other than seeing him, you know, hurt himself over that period. But, you know, he had a problem with alcohol my entire life and went into the teams.

And he tried to try to get sober. Like this is in 2004, a week before my second deployment. And, you know, not knowing what I know now, especially about coming off of alcohol and other drugs. says you can't just cool, you can't quit cold turkey. And he gave himself a stroke. So 2004 gave himself a stroke and was just like from that point on, from 2004 to 2008, he ended up divorcing his wife. It just got bad, you know, so he was just, and it wasn't even, there was booze involved,

but he was heavily medicated. They didn't know what to do with him. And there was like a lot of 5150 shit over those years where he was getting, been picked up on the street, you know, just, just suffering, man. So me, uh, 2012, uh, basically his, his organs gave out and wanded up in the hospital, and they were keeping him, you know, on life support. So I was in workup when that happened and pulled myself out, uh, went home and, you know, my brother and I, I mean, basically pulled the plug on my dad.

And, and then. And then, you know, a couple days later did a celebration of life for him. And then I went right back to a Pletown. So like not much of a break or time to wallow for that. You know, my dad and I, we left on good terms. You know, I mean, he was a loving dad. Did a lot of great things, right? Like, raised me right in a lot of ways.

I get all my manners, you know, from him, those good old Texas manners. taught me out to fish, shoot. So obviously losing anyone's tough. Losing your dad is tough. And that was a rough time, man. You know, it was that period, that year, it just, the hits kept coming. You know, there was a bright spot.

My second kid was born six months after I lost my dad. So, yeah, that was great. But then just three months after that, you know, Chris was murdered. Where were you when you heard about that? We were on workup. We were just in San Diego. I don't recall, shit. You know, it was a former platoon mate that called me.

I was in town, you know, hit us with the news, and then we assembled and, you know, went to Texas. Yeah, that was. I mean, yeah, just a freaking nightmare. Yeah, it was a rough time, man. I had a rough year there. And, you know, aside from the tragedy, you know, of those events as well, the stress of being a platoon leader, you know, we had a pending deployment, all that. Jacked up my back big time.

Like this was like You know Wasn't anything like I broke bones or or anything like that But it was it was extremely painful Right before deployment and A broken bone sometime would be better It's like just freaking break the bone The weird like muscular freaking soft tissue shit

Yeah that stuff and like If you talk to your buddy and you're like Oh yeah I have a broken vertebrae They're like oh okay cool like I get it like you can We accept that your excuse when you're like well my back kind of hurt it's like the worst right my back for and it feels weird you know it's like just it's the worst yeah i i was walking around i mean with wraps and all this stupid stuff and doing everything i could to relieve that i you know i deployed and luckily we weren't

in a doing a combat deployment so a lot of training though um but yeah you know just just kind of a weird rough time just trying to keep my shit together you know and not let that impact the the platoon. I mean, especially, this is like my chance to lead a platoon and,

you know, not to muff it up. So, um, but luckily he had a great group of guys and, uh, they made it really easy. So what was it like with Chris,

um, like kind of this whole image of Chris from the outside world. And then, you know, us guys, knowing him and and then like you who'd like obviously did multiple deployments with him and man it was like what was your perspective when you saw like the world watching Chris and reacting and like I didn't know this but I think American sniper is the most popular military movie

of all time like beats saving private Ryan beats platoon like Wow. Yep. It's the most popular. I don't know, maybe Top Gun has got it now, but like, what did it look like for you? Didn't we, we all, I don't know if you were at this. They had like a screening of the movie in Coronado for us. And we all went to it.

And it was really like weird. It was weird, man. And, you know, there's some structural issues when you're trying to fit someone's life. into a two-hour block, you know, so it's, you know, trying to make sense of, all right, okay, what is this? But, yeah, I mean, I was glad to see, you know, Chris, Chris had a reputation. I mean, the stuff he did in Felucia was, you know, kind of, it was just legendary, man. You know, I mean, that's what, that's where he got the name or, you know, in that time frame.

He did a lot of great shit, man, and, you know, took care of business down there. And to see him get the credit for it and tell the story and kind of the full cycle, kind of the redemption aspect of him going through all that shit, like I told you when I was done with my third platoon, I was mentally smoked, right? I need to take a break. Chris stuck around and hit another. Yeah. Into Sauter City, by the way.

way. In the Sadr City, had another tough deployment. So he was shot, got shot in the helmet. Did you hear that? What you probably knew? I mean, he got shot in the helmet. Yeah. Yeah. So he volunteered for the hardest duty.

I mean, was in Flusia, that second pump when we weren't even in Iraq. So, I mean, he constantly volunteered for the hardest duty, put himself in the front lines. And, yeah, I felt I'm glad he was recognized for that. And I'm glad, you know, the story was told. of him kind of going full circle and I didn't keep in great touch with him whenever he got out and I did reach out like when the book was coming out

and you know just like reconnecting with him a little bit but he did he did reply back to me and it just was super glad that he left when he did and like super thankful and grateful that he got to be daddy I remember I was actually looking through some old stuff and you know came across a note there that that was one of the things that he really appreciated was, you know, getting out of that and being,

being a father, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, obviously Biggles, when Biggles died, which, again, it was like, what was hard about those guys, it was like, we were home, you know? And, like, we all think, oh, yeah, like you said, it's not supposed to happen. Yeah, it's not supposed to happen. and freaking just terrible.

And, you know, the movie, I remember we went to see the movie and you're just like, you don't really know what to expect. And it's just kind of overwhelming to see this movie and just, and, you know, like you pointed out, and what I've come to realize what you pointed out is like, they had to take a guy's life, his whole life, four deployments, four combat deployments, his wife and family, his growing up family, his mom, they had to take that whole thing and put it into an hour and a half. Like, that's, that's an impossible task.

And so you got to kind of look at it from a different frame of mind. And I think what it did do is it did a great job of showing, you know, what the stress is on the family, what, you know, Taya's wife had been through his kids and like the fact that you said, you know, like he was trying to, you know, he was coming back. He was going to move in that direction. And I think that's what they, look, the combat stuff, it is what it is. The way they make things look in Iraq, it kind of is what it is.

But to tell the story of, you know, and it's not just Chris's story. It's the story of so many guys that went on deployment and their families that had to deal with that and the aftermath. So the only, the other thing that always kind of bums me out is like, Chris being such a freaking wise ass and being so funny and being like, being like just they just didn't capture that kind of at all like they didn't really show like dude this guy was funny as hell like would be harassing people making jokes practically the whole nine yards he was not sulking or brooding yeah I mean he was he was a wise ass and salty as hell. Yeah. And a cackling, aggressive laugh that like if somebody did something and he was laughing, it was like little darts were hitting. You could just, you hear that cackling freaking laugh.

So I'll give you just like a little tidbit of Chris's mischievous nature. He used to like to poke me. I mean, we were buddies. We were often on training trips when we had to share rooms or whatever, we'd share rooms. So we'd like do little pranks and stuff. But on our second deployment, we were in Baghdad in like an abandoned building or whatever and in between ops I mean it was sleeping and lift like get super strong and watch movies and you know until you have something to plan for or whatever and I used to like my quiet time and I was known to nap occasionally so I would nap and close my door I had my own little room and he did not want me nap and you know he he He didn't think that was right.

So what he would do is he would come in... He didn't think that was right. He would doorbell ditch me. He would come and knock on my door and bang, bang, bang, and then, you know, it'd come out. And he'd get me all riled up. And this went on for, like, a couple months. And I got, like, really pissy about it.

And I actually went to the extent to go get, like, you know, surreptitious camera equipment and set up to catch him. I end up not catching him. But, yeah, he's a funny dude, great guy. Yeah, man, he's amazing. And then that deployment, as a platoon chief, you guys deploy kind of a standard doing exercises and stuff overseas. It wasn't a combat deployment.

This is probably maybe around the low point of combat for the teams. Yeah, I guess. It depends on where you are. But for you, it was. Yeah. That's your first non-combat deployment. It was. It's pretty impressive, man.

A table was kind of neat. I mean, the younger guys didn't like it, right? Because we all want to be in the ship, but it's easier to say, you know, when you have a couple of combat deployments, it's like, you know, I'm good. But the guys are eager who've never done that, whatever, you know, didn't take it so lightly.

But, yeah, I kind of got that like 90s frogman pig on deployment and got to see a lot of the world I'd never seen. And it was a blast, man. I mean, I really had some fun. And, I mean, honestly, at the end of that thing, We had done so much training, like we were sharp. Oh, man, our CQC, so tight. Yeah, good group of dudes and good deployment,

different type of deployment, but rewarding in different ways. And by the way, you're married this whole time. When did you get married? So you married, Beth, your high school sweetheart. I did. Yeah, I married, yeah, I'm sorry. Don't want to forget that one. No, I know.

Beth, you are at the top of our story, but we had to cover some other things. Yeah. So we ended up, we broke up for a while whenever I went Psycho pre-Navy and then started dating again after my first platoon. And then we got married after that Ramadi deployment. So 2007. Check. Yeah. Right on.

And so she racked up a bunch of deployments. She did. She earned it. And then I have two kids. So one was born in 2009. and then the other in 2012. Yeah. Now, after that Platoon Chief Tour,

you decide you're going to do, you're going to switch over to Warren Officer? Well, it kind of, the tour got extended. They ended up kind of keeping us together. There was another reorg undoing what they had already done. Classic, classic move. So they kept us together.

We did like another year and it was like kind of do your own workup, which is kind of fun. And then we did another mini deployment to Paycom. So it's like another year. year. And then at the end of that, it was clear that I hadn't thought one second beyond being a platoon chief. This was like all the way back in high school again, like no plan whatsoever. But thankfully, you know, being around good people, someone's going to have a good idea. And one of those people was Jeremy. Jeremy had gone warrant the year prior. And I was like, you know,

I didn't really think much of until I was in the position. I'm like, hey, man, what's this warrant deal? I'm looking for, I'm looking for a change. And At that point of the career, you know, you have, as an enlisted dude, you have a couple different options. You know, you can go the senior enlisted route or, you know, you can do something like what I did. And I just wanted to do something different. So I thought I liked that the warrant officer career path was just a little bit different. And I thought would challenge me in some different ways. So I put it in a package and they must have been low on candidates that year because they got picked up.

So you get picked up for Warren officer and now you go to SEAL Team 3. Back to Team 3. That must have been kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. That was really cool, although in a much, I mean, we talk about going full circle too. Oh, yeah. You're like being a helion to a company, man. You know, working up in ops and with the headquarters.

Yeah. And then you, you know, you basically become the training officer. Is that what's going on? Yeah. So we jumped on deployment. pretty quick went back to Iraq so newsflash if you haven't been following the news or the last decade we end up going back into Iraq and was kind of thrown to the wolves in terms of like you know one day you're commissioned kind of no training and then you're like right in the op shop so I was right

right on the wrong side of the ops in Iraq did that came back and then was the the training officer for that you know we did a full cycle got it at team three. And then where'd you go the next time, one deployment? We did a, went out to the Middle East, a non-combat zone.

Yeah. And are you still into golf at this point? Yeah. Because as a warrant officer, you got a little bit of more, a little bit more flex time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,

it's almost like an Echo Charles type schedule. Especially after we got back from Iraq, I found myself being in San Diego, like a lot, having a lot of time. So, yeah, I rammed up. That was actually when, you know, golf had been an obsession kind of up that point but like not in a mature way right just like

whenever I had time I'd go golf and and honestly in that kind of 2012-2013 it got me through I think some kind of tough stuff there but you know come after that deployment circa 2016-ish I had some time to actually practice and lo and behold like would you be shocked that when you practice or something you actually like get better it works like believable yeah I didn't have to be losing all these balls, you know, that often. So not that I'm good. I'm very far away from good, but I got a lot better. I started practicing and then it just kind of like, you know,

built some momentum there. Once you get a little bit better, you want to get better and better and better. And so that really gave me, like as I was kind of griping, you're dealing with this challenge of being out of a platoon, which, you know, whether you leave the Navy that way or it happens in your career, it's tough. You know, you spend an entire career as this thing, as an operator, whatever it may be,

and then you're a company, man. I'm working a desk job. I don't have the same buddies. I don't have those relationships. You know, it's important to have something else. If that's Jiu-Jitsu, working out, whatever it is. I found golf, so I just went into that, and that gave me something that I was constantly thinking about

and working on it. I never really thought about this. Even though I spent my adult life in the SEAL teams, you were talking about the fact that you were home during workup and I was like oh damn because I was always in a platoon so the fact that I was like oh all those people a bunch of those people up in the head shed they weren't freaking doing what what a platoon guy's doing well two guys just going just like you're just going and you're just going and I didn't even recognize that until like I was thinking about that I was like oh there's a

bunch of people that are just like going home at night that's weird it's weird you know and one thing I really talk about but uh I'm still dealing with that back injury that was part of the reason I wanted to go warn I because I felt like I was never going to get better got it like like this is it man you know it's a did you ever figure out what the injury was it a specific thing or was it like musculature it was musculature and some imbalances yeah I went like almost two years without any pain relief and it was like narly man so it's like you know putting on shoes hurt everything we did it was just excruciating and if you've dealt with back issues and there's a lot work wants to deal with.

But yeah, I just really couldn't function with that. But I went in after that second pump I did, second platoon chief deal. I went in in kind of desperation to the physical therapy. And I'd been working with people and no relief or whatever. And, you know, we're blessed that we have in the community. They hire like some legit dude. So guys I work for professional sports teams, whatever. Jason.

He was one of them. Check a check right on. Not for that event, but I worked with him before that. But anyways, I went back into this guy in desperation. I'm like, dude, figure this out, please. And within an hour, he had no shit figured it out. And he's like, all right, dude, this is an imbalance. We're going to do this and this and this.

And, you know, my leg was sucked up into my hip and was creating just all these kind of contortion of forces there that were just. So, I mean, whatever he did, provided relief for the first. time I had in almost, you know, a year and a half or whatever I was. So do you have to go on some, like, stretching protocol or something? I did. Yeah. And I did some things, and I end up strengthening some things and doing some other stuff and knock on wood. I haven't had, I've had a couple of episodes, but I got through that. I didn't think I was going to get through, but I actually ended up getting in, dare I say, for me, ridiculous shape when I was a warrant, like, dude,

because you're not getting hammered on the workup is hard on you, right? Like, you're running and gone in body armor hopping over walls just up and down just getting beat down there's like no rest shitty sleep just like all shitty sleep shitty food just all of it all stress yeah down but now now i have an opportunity to like chill out a little bit and uh i got in great shape and it's good man yeah so you do a couple tours at team three and now you're your your last i think your last tour is at SQT? Yeah, yep. And what was your job there?

I was the training officer. So just overseeing everything? That's it. Yeah, I mean, essentially I was responsible for the curriculum and execution of training. So just making sure that our guys were getting the right type of training and that it was being conducted the right way. So it was a good challenge. I mean, every kind of job I had in the teams was a new challenge outside of the platoon for sure. And these SQT guys are getting freaking out.

standing training. Oh, dude, for sure. Compared, there's no doubt, compared to what I got going through and then the guys before me, like, did you go through STT? Yeah, I mean, everything has gotten more professional and better. So these guys are, you know, high caliber fucking dudes when they show up to a team. Now look, you're still a new guy. There's still like a lot to learn, but they're starting, they're based on you. Yes, you. You're still a new guy. I don't care how well you've been trying. You're still a new guy. The baseline. The baseline is so much higher than what it used to be. Yeah.

And then at that point, you're like going to retire. You decide to retire. Yeah. By this point, so I was kicking and screaming in terms of making it to 20 years. I didn't want to do a career, really. But then eventually it was like, okay, I'm going to do it. Commission as a warrant. I thought I'd do 25 years.

But I went to SQT, and that was my real first short duty that I'd had in about decade. and I just took a deep breath. I was like, damn, it's time. And I thought that was a great place to end it on. I just thought it was like kind of full circle. I just ran, I lost steam. That was it. So I made the decision to get out.

But yet again, I found myself in a position of like not knowing, you know, I didn't have anything set up. So what was your plan? To buy myself. some time. Yeah, I ended up getting into, you know, I look around whenever I struggle to know what to do, I look to those around me that are doing things. And there were some guys that were going through a MBA program up at UCLA, executive MBA program. So I was like, yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, maybe I'll go learn about business, all the different facets of

business. Maybe that would be good. You know, give me some skill sets to kind of lay. on get myself a good job. So I thought I'd do that. And I ended up getting into that my last year on active duty. And that was right around, I mean, COVID 2020, check out weird. So I ended up doing a year of school on active duty. A lot of unknowns. During COVID.

During during COVID. Yeah. So that was like probably pretty nice. I'm assuming because it was like whatever virtual classroom or whatever. Yeah. It was easier. I didn't enjoy it. You know, I wanted to be up in person.

I don't have a hard enough time learning as it is, you know, especially on a computer screen. But yeah, so, you know, I went through that program and halfway through, ended up retiring, still had no idea of what I wanted to do, although I had taken an entrepreneurship class. And they had this class that was kind of like an, exploratory class. So you have an idea, a business idea, something, here's your opportunity to test the concept

for kind of viability. It's just, you know, just a semester's worth of research. So I had an idea. I actually had this kind of epiphany during that period. I mean, I just woke up on a Saturday and it's like, I'm going to make, at the time, it was a Navy SEAL inspired golf bag.

so like inspired by the kit that we wear designed in a way and I ended up kind of drawing I grew up drawing and doing stuff when I was a kid but ended up drawing like for a whole weekend like concept art and tactical golf bags yeah yeah kind of I like it yeah yeah yeah had a name had an idea and I was like I don't know it wasn't fully fleshed out

but it had this opportunity that next year, this entrepreneurship class. I still didn't know what I wanted to do at all. I had no clue whatsoever. And I was like, you know, let's maybe just pitch this and let's see if there's something there. I had no idea what the market looked like, what the opportunity, you know,

didn't really know anything. So the one prerequisite to be in the class is you either had to join a team or create a team. So I ended up recruiting people. I didn't know the class that well. We were six months then. And so they had this kind of like bio book. And I was going through and just looking for like anyone who had hobby of golf.

And actually the first guy I came across, Kevin Lee was in the bio book, hobby golf. I was like, boom. Yeah, reached out to him. And he's like, hey, man, yeah, I'm in, you know, basically been in kind of manufacturing my entire career. So I was like, oh, yeah, great, let's do it. So he was the first on the team. And then recruited some other folks. and we took that through a series of multiple classes.

So it was kind of like you graduate from one. You have an option to go on to the next stage. And we started with one group, that first class, and then moving into the second class, we had to reform teams, essentially. So Kevin stayed on, recruited some other people, had just a great team, super fortunate. And it just kind of built some steam.

The more that we kind of researched it, And the more I fleshed out the idea of what later would be Huli and kind of where we are, you know, we moved away from golf bags and, you know, did this research and I thought there was room to get into the apparel side and all that. Golf apparel. Golf apparel. Golf apparel. Golf.

Hoolie Apparel. Yes, sir. I guess it's just Hoolie. It's Hulie. It's Huligolf.com, right? It is. The website is holligolf.com, H-O-O-L-I-E. Which is named after?

The H-H-O-L-E-T-O-E. Yeah. So as a breacher, that's one of the tools that you carry. Sure you carry explosives. You might carry a sledgehammer and you might carry a hoolie tool, which is taken from the fire department who uses either a hooligan tool or a haligan tool. Right? Yeah, correct. I think we talked about it. I know. You and I talked about it, but I don't feel. I think the halogen is the guy that originally invented this tool, which looks like a big ass. weird looking pry bar basically. And then people copied the idea, but they couldn't use the same name because they kind of copied the idea. So they changed the design a little bit,

but that also is a very practical thing. And that's what, in the SEAL teams, that's all we ever said was Hooli tool. Yeah. Probably because we're more hooligan-ish. Well, yeah, I think there was a structural difference too

in that I think a Hulligan is a one-piece cast. And Hooligan is like, has a bolt or something that. Yeah, it's like a three-piece. Yeah, it's like a three-piece thing. Something like that. So, yeah, that was, you know, we did our name exploration. I was going through, and I just liked the way it sounded, and there's a connection to my background.

I thought that was kind of cool. And then, lo and behold, I found out that hoolly is actually like an old, obscure Scottish golf term. That means blowing a strong wind. So. Dang. Layers. Layers. We call that layers.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, if you're in Scotland and it's blowing, it's blown a hooly. So, yeah, once I knew that, I was like, man, all right, we're on. It's meant to be. And so when did you retire? So did you, wait, let me phrase that. Did you have school finished by the time you retired?

No. So you retired from the teams. In July of 21. And then. How'd that feel? Man, if I'm being honest, like a weight was lifted. I felt great. Yeah.

You know, especially where I was, I had been away from the platoon for a while, right? The nucleus of the team. So like you're a company man, you're doing different stuff, rewarding, important stuff. When I retired, I was like at Trayette. And so like, I was out with the platoons all the time. I was like in a platoon. I was basically in nine platoons at a time.

I'd be out with this. And you're just like, oh, like, how can I ever leave? Yeah. And then I had to clean out my cage. And I was like, oh. But after being a T.U. Commander, troop commander. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're just in different company positions, essentially, you know, or executive positions. after that. But yeah, so got out July, retired July 21, and then that program that I was in, I graduated in June at 22. So, yeah, a year and a half ago, some change. And then by that point, I was all in, man.

You know, I looked at all the pros and cons and basically came to the conclusion that if you think you have a good idea and you can pull it off and you don't, I mean, I'm just going to regret that my entire life. You know, so there really was no other choice but to proceed. And obviously, you know, we're a young company

ended up launching this last April, a lot of stuff to figure out and being a small company is precarious. A lot of stuff to figure out, but it's extremely rewarding. And I found all these other things that when I was looking for what I wanted to do

you know one of the things that just back up here a little bit that I think it's worth mentioning give these guys a call out because they do great work but there's an organization called the Honor Foundation

and what they do is they help soft transition from the military and yeah it's a I don't remember how long the program is but essentially there is kind of like a exploration period like a self-exploration period

So did you do that whole thing at the Honor Foundation? I did, yeah. And, you know, I kind of like didn't want to do it, but there were other guys that I respected that were doing it. I'm like, all I got to go do it. I don't want to do all this touchy, filly stuff and get in line with my, you know, emotions and history and blah, blah, blah. And it ended up being like one of the best things for me because...

Wait, did you do all that stuff? What is that stuff? Well, the first, I think the first six weeks, it's like journaling. and like going through your history and trying to like, you know, decipher what makes you tick? Like, here's your history, but why is it like that? Why did you do this?

Why are you the way you are? Why did you choose this path? What drives you? Like those things. Like, why are you waking up in the morning? So you ended up doing all that? I did. And you got reward out of it.

I did. You learned something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did. You know, it didn't pop up. up when I was in the program, really. Like I was, they, they give you a coach, and the coach is supposed to kind of guide you through the process.

And I was kind of... Is the coach a civilian or a team guy? Civilian. Okay. Civilian. And, you know, they try to align. If you have some sort of industry you're trying to get into or something like that, they want to try to align you and personalities and stuff like that.

So they do the best they can. But I had a great, great coach there who was helping me guide through some stuff and have these conversations. But, you know, looking back, I guess. see he was he was trying to pull teeth because I wasn't being easy. Yeah, I wasn't converting very easily. But what I got from that program, like really what it did is it forced me to look at my priorities.

Like what are the things that I think make me tick? And these things equal happiness, right? And that's that mix of, you know, what am I trying to get out of my family life? What am I trying to get out of my work life? And like, really, what am I trying to get out of work? Am I trying to make money? am I trying to be home a lot? Am I trying to be my own boss?

I didn't have all those answers, but it set the precedent for me to be introspective and to look at all that stuff. I found it very, very helpful, and it took some time. But when I started to get into the Huli stuff, I was like, you know what, man,

I kind of like designing shit. And I kind of like building things. And I kind of like the challenge of doing something that maybe the odds are stacked against me, building a brand these things are kind of scary like in a different way risky in a different way

yeah I just kind of it grew on me and then it's like man maybe maybe I'm an entrepreneur yeah I'd say you're definitely an entrepreneur what I remember is like you were you initially talked to me about this idea and you're like well you know I'm in the golf I'm like oh I don't want golf

come talk to me when I'm 90 to 8 and I'm going to start playing golf because I'm doing jiu-jitsu and I'm freaking surfing and I'm playing guitar and all this stuff. But I was like, oh, I got this idea because you're, but I know I've known so many team guys that were so into golf. And then when you were telling me the idea,

I was like, well, I also know there's a whole group of dudes that play golf that are not like a stereotypical golf person. And I was like, oh, you're going to freaking land because there's all kinds of people that think the way you think about golf and they're a huge part of that market and I know tons of them and no one's no one's reaching them no one's no one's talking to those people and definitely no one's making cool stuff for them to wear so as soon as you were talking me I was like oh yeah this is gonna be this is gonna be great you're gonna nail it

because that those people exist and you're making this is what I always think is important you make something that's for you and your friends like you're making something that's for you I make all kinds of stuff that's for me and my friends like I'm Jiu Jitsu gear. Why that's for me and my friends make rash cards. That's for me and my friends. This is all stuff that I use and so as As you were talking to me, I was like, oh, he's gonna make stuff for him and his friends and there's a and I know that there's a huge I mean look Golf is a freaking huge thing and I know that it's not all people in a country club with a Mercedes It's a bunch of hooligans and so oh you got a whole group of people that you're gonna be that that want to get on board with this and Not only that, but people that, you know, they're doing it early in the morning.

They're doing it because they got a regular job. They're doing it, you know, in between when they're taking care of their kids. They're practicing in their backyard hitting into a net, you know, like these are the people. There's a whole culture of like, hooly golf that's out there. I already know it. And so when you were like, oh, I'm going to make clothes for them, I was like, oh, that's freaking awesome. That's going to do outstanding. So it may be your first effort in business, but I think it's going to slay because I think

you're nailing a group of people that are that think the way you do about a very uh something that people are super passionate about i've seen freaking team guys spend their all their money on golf right new clubs new balls new freaking teas new this new that but they're hardcore dudes and and they work out and they train and so you're taking that team guy approach to golf and i think it's going to crush so man that that's awesome i appreciate saying all that because you said it way better than I possibly ever could have man that's it I mean you know we're trying to trying to bring golf to uh you know a group of dudes out there that are cut from a different cloth and see the world maybe a little bit different and yeah maybe

a little bit hardcore up in the mind yeah like dude you post workout stuff and like early morning golf right you're like dawn patrol golf pre-dong golf is salt like that's what you're doing that's When I start playing golf when I'm 79 years old, I'll be like early Dawn Patrol golf. I'll be in the game. I'll be Huli to the core. To lead to the core. I know what the issue is, man. You're scared to get hooked because it's in all of us.

I definitely don't need any more hobbies. I can tell you that right now. And especially a hobby that takes four hours. And I know you can do it faster. How fast can you play? How fast can you play nine holes? Do you play nine or do you play 18? No, I'm not playing nine.

I'm no quitter, Chango. Come on. So how long does you take you play 18 holes? It depends. So if I'm hitting it good, I could do it in two and a half hours, like at a mild pace. Do you jog a little bit? I might jog. Okay.

It really depends on how I'm playing, like just an average round, even if I'm playing like shit, three hours. And this is all if I get off the first, you know, T first. So if there's no one in front. But I've played this fast. I mean, now there's this new thing. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to have to get back into running shape, drop a couple of LBs, but they have speed golf. And these guys do it like in an hour, hour and a half,

and they're like legit sprinting around. I've done that. And the fastest I've golfed is, I've played in less than two hours. And for a hack, that's pretty damn fast. You went to the freaking caddy course in Scotland. What's that all about?

How long did that take? What kind of pressure situations? Were they like, yo, we give me a club. Give me a club. What's the distance? What's the distance? Oh, man, I'm glad you brought that up. Another good, great organization worth talking about.

But county school for soldiers is another program. That's a program I went in this last May. Great organization and basically what they do is they fly a group of veterans out to Scotland. And it was a month period that we spent in Scotland. And really the purpose of that is to, you know, guys who've been through a lot of shit to share their experiences with each other, you know, help each other heal and find out what's next and connect with golf. And then also to, you know, find some employment. So there's a lot of guys who leave that program and there are caddies, you know, working their way up or

going to resort towns and being caddies. So it was an awesome experience. I had a great group of guys and to everyone, you know, running the program, just say thank you guys for have me. When you, when you, does, so every, this is soldiers, what's it, soldiers what, what's the name of it? Caddy School for Soldiers. Caddy, they all go to Scotland or just some? Yeah, it's a, they had one class that I think went to Whistling Straits.

But yeah, they have a couple, couple classes that go each year to Scotland. That's it. Yeah. Unless something's changed How much does it cost to go to caddy school If I was just like signing up Well I mean if you're a veteran in the program It's free

No but what about me or not What about Echo? He's not a veteran But he's just fired up for golf And he wants to go do you even know Man no clue but you talk in airfare That's a couple grand minimum And then you talk about I mean we stayed They have a

They have a house in St. Andrews So you know since you don't know much about golf But I do know that that's like the That's the mecca of golf It is the holy girl That is the best way to say it is the mecca of golf. It's ground zero. Is it where golf started?

There's probably some debate, but build courses. Pardon me. Hundreds of years old. Yeah, I want to say they- It's been pissing people off for hundreds of years. I want to say, yeah, I hope I don't get this wrong, but you'll just edit it out. I think it's from the 17th century, like old, old.

So, yeah, I mean, you go there and, man, one of the best places I've ever visited. I can't wait to go back. I don't know when that will be, but the country is just so gracious. And, you know, it's just amazing. And you go around best golf courses, you know, probably on the planet,

and they're all stacked right next to each other. There's so many golf courses. Are they sitting you down? They're like a freaking old, freaking Mickey type dude that rolls in with like sunburned face, leathered, and he's like, let me tell you when you get in the sand trap and there's a four not offshore wind you want to go with this like is it like that like what's it going down yeah so in terms of golf Yoda where's he at

they have a training program and they go through kind of the basics and and most of the guys that show up are proficient golfers but not always it's not a prerequisite in fact one guy was uh you know great guy was out there if it just picked up golf um so they go through some of the kind of fundamentals, but in terms of like what you're doing as a caddy, your goal is to help your golfer have his best day. And so there's a lot that goes into that, aside from the tactical stuff of

what is the yardage, what is the lie? You carry a rangefinder? Yeah, yeah. I actually, I went old school and... Milled it out? No, I stepped it out. Yeah. I didn't I didn't use a range finder in the program.

They have, you have a book and you have markers on the course. Oh, okay. So you're using markers and like, okay, from there, it's 20 paces and just like you're diving pace count. I had a pace count. Okay. But yeah, really fun and rewarding.

And who knows, man, maybe in retirement, I'll go caddy and put in my LinkedIn profile, part-time caddy for hire. No one's taking me up on that, but I'm willing. My, bro. You may be out there caddying. Yeah. But, you know, the other part in terms of helping someone have their best round is managing, you know, emotions and strategy out there because having someone who can help you make the right decisions out there when you're not in the heat of the moment because, you know, ego, you talk about ego a lot.

Ego on the golf course, it's not good, especially when your skill level isn't, you know, up to your. Levels of the ego. On par. On par. Yeah. Thank you. Look at that. He speaks up and he comes in with a slam dunk pun, bro.

He's been waiting all day. He had that written down. He's just waiting. Good to go. So that's, you learned a lot and good. You were posting cool videos and stuff when you were, when you were over there.

It looked freaking badass. Absolute blast. And obviously I'm not a golfer. But, you know, we know how that goes. And that obviously helps you out with Huli. you understand the game better and all that, which is awesome. By the way, you know, we mentioned Beth, your wife. She is a program manager for the Navy SEAL Foundation, which is like just awesome.

And she's been there for a while. But I just wanted to point that out that, you know, you've been out there, you know, serving our country. And now you retired, but she still is serving our country and serving the teams through what she does with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Pretty awesome effort and a great organization that has helped, obviously, helped so many of our friends and our friends' families.

What's that like? What do you look at from the outside? How hard is she busting and her asked to make that happen? Is it possible that anyone could be more passionate about taking care of team guys than team guys' wives? Yeah. I mean, you said it right there. The organization is just amazing. They've done so much over the last couple of decades

and continue to, you know, I mean, help out the families. And now, you know, with all the veteran issues, they've got these new programs. The Warrior Fitness program just opened up in San Diego, helping veterans, team guys, you know, recover from years of abuse on their bodies and minds and all that. And always, you know, there for the wounded and family of the fallen and all that. So, yeah, man, too. It's been really, really neat to see Beth, you know, pick up that service. I mean, she served, you know, I mean, while I was running around doing stuff, you know,

running the family. I mean, that's service. Keeping the family together, keeping everything moving at service. And then to get out, you know, and have her. do that and be a part of that organization. It's just really cool, man. And on top of that, it's really neat to stay kind of connected through her to the community as well. So kind of another blessing as well.

No, it's awesome. And it was pretty cool. We all went to an event and correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a Navy SEAL Foundation event in Los Angeles. And there was four guys from tasking a bruiser there. And we were all with our wives, the same wife. that we had. I mean, I guess Beth was your girlfriend at the time, but Jeremy was there with his wife,

still married, and then one other guy who's still active duty with his wife. There's four of us there, right? I remember the three. I don't know about the... There might have been one more. Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, you're right, yeah. There's four of us. They're four. So pretty awesome, pretty awesome to see. And we got a picture of that momentous occasion. Four team guys that have all been married to one woman for a long time. That's pretty impressive.

and pretty impressive what that foundation does. And Beth, thank you for what you do. And thanks to that foundation for what you guys do. What else? Does it get us up to speed? Man, I mean, I think that's everything. That's the most I've talked about my life ever. Hopefully you'll never have to do it again.

Yeah, no, man. You know, thank you for having me on. Yeah, I said when I started, or if I didn't say, I meant to say, extremely humble to be here, man. I mean, to think of the people that have sat in the seat and kind of what you've done, you know, over the last decade, man. It's amazing. Glad to be here.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. That's all I got. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah, yeah. Oh, here we go. We've got football questions. Well, no.

Come on, bro. Not as much. That's your job. Wait, D-Tackle and Noseguard, right? Football. All right. So I started out D-N freshman year and then I moved in Noseguard. Yeah.

Because 190, 195 is not big for nose card. Oh, no, no, no. No, I wasn't big. But I was aggressive and I was to shoot the gap, nose guard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Relied on the speed. That's good.

But you were into drawing growing up? I did. Yeah. Do you think that that has a direct correlation to, you know, design and close like that? 100% man. Like there was a, you know, it's interesting. Guys come on your podcast and do interviews, you learn about a lot of, of things and I think there's a lot of guys who are kind of

unless you can come up with something better creatively inclined oh for sure you know I mean like play guitar I grew up playing guitar drawing you know you got guys that are great photography or this or that or whatever and I think that all plays into what we do I mean there there's a lot of creativity to you know being a special operator no doubt about it yeah for sure what was the what was the original name for the tactical golf bag we didn't have a name I mean the

no you had a name you had a name did I have a name didn't you just say you said we had a name for it and then it eventually became Hulu I had a name for the brand yeah yeah I had a name for the brand the original the original oh god

oh man I'll say it was Huli Bros Hooli Bros Oh Dude Why is it why is that Hey we can edit this out Bro Why is that bad just because it's too bro?

Look, man, I was very early. The idea hadn't matured, but Hooli was in the first iteration. And then I played around with Hooligan. So we went through like our first kind of class as Hooligan golf. I kind of liked Hooligan golf because that's the kind of people that I think we're talking about. But then I think there's more layers going straight. To Hooligan. Yeah.

It's cleaner. And it's two on the nose. And then you've got also the wind, the Scottish, the Scottish wind blowing through. So we got all kinds of going deep. Yeah, Huli comes off as more refined, which is kind of the same element of refinement than golf kind of seems to have. But it's not overboard. Not overboard. It's not too snobby.

Well, the whole idea is already not snobby. It's already hardcore. You see what I'm saying? But then if you take that hardcore and no matter how much you refine, it's still going to be hardcore, no matter what. See what I'm saying? So I think it landed perfectly. My father-in-law is a golfer. And my dad, I'll have to get them some golf shirts.

Yeah, man. If I don't play golf, can I still wear your stuff or no? Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, look, it's just fucking cool-looking shit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like this, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see it's got like a little camouflage activity in the collar?

That's kind of the deal. So it's kind of subtle. Look, we're starting in golf and we hope... I think the spirit of the brand is sound. I mean, all the things that you just described, which I will not try to say as eloquently as you. I mean, that's just a spirit, right? You know, like we can take that.

We can, you know, whether we get into kind of like lifestyle apparel or, you know, you get into other sports or whatever. But yeah, there's tons of people, tons of Huli customers. And I'll just say thank you to, you know, offer customers out there. But that aren't golfers. So now please, please do. And people can find you. So it's hoollygolf.com.

that's where you can get the stuff. You can go to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Huli Golf, and then you have a YouTube channel that you're the star of. Yeah, look, I haven't been posting on YouTube that often. I'm going to get back to it. But it's over the top Huli,

at over the top Huli. Did you know that's what it was? Yes. Why is it at over the top Huli? What's the difference here? Well, I mean, over the top is... The Sylvester Stallone movie? Well, I think for a copy.

You're right purposes. I can't say that. But, you know, the, yes, over the top is a great silver Sloan movie. It's just a coincidence.

But over the top is also layers. Talking about layers here. It's a problem in a golf swing. So if you have an over the top swing, it's a swing fault. So there's, there's some layers there. But yeah,

over the top, Huli. And then also at lead Bob Holland is my personal handle, kind of a new account on Instagram. Have we reached out to the DOD King? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, oh yeah. This dude, he's, because I follow you.

Now of a sudden I get golf stuff in my algorithm, which is, you know, but, and, you know, I won't look at much of it, but I saw some kid and he, and I said from 757, from Virginia Beach, where the games are. And he does this whole thing. He doesn't use a T. Do you know what a T is? Yeah, I know what a T is. I'm just making sure.

No, no, no. Thank you for asking. Well, the thing is he doesn't use one. The DOD means drive off the deck. Okay. So he's out there and he just talks mad shit. Anyone that uses a T, he calls him a weasel. He's like, oh, weasel, you cheat and all this stuff.

Tea using weasel. Tea using weasel. So he says, oh, you know, oh, all you weasels out there and keyboard warriors, dude, he goes off. But then he cracks these drives. off the ground. He just throws the ball out there. Wait, who is this?

He's a guy. His handle is actually CVA underscore golf, I believe. It's like an influencer dude or something? Yeah. Hell, you does. No. He's the most popular golfer. There is.

But it's, but it's, he is, man. He will be now. He will be. He should be. See, I think his first name begins with C. And then it's VA because he's from Virginia. He's from Virginia Beach, no less.

And then what's the last part of it? I think it's just CVA golf. Okay. But his real thing is D.O.D. King. And he tells people. He's like, because I'm the king, he says. And he says, I'm five foot seven. I got crooked teeth and a mullet.

And I'm about to just crack this down the fairway. There we go. Down the fairway. And he throws the ball out and then he just walks up to it and just cracks it. And look, there's some of the king. keyboard warriors out there. They're saying, oh, it's fake. But then he'll do like a long version and be like, how fake is this?

I'll throw it out there and just hit it. There's no edits. Oh, he's good, man. He's blown up and he's doing some clabs. And yeah, guys got skills, man. It's not very big, but he smashes it. So we'll get the, we got to get you connected with the DOD king. I mean, I am a T using weasel.

Right. But he doesn't want to be one of these people that's wearing golf shirts that are made by weasels. he wants to be probably, I would imagine. He's, because he's also like a working class. Dude, he's not a snob. He's out there, he's out there working. He's got a job, you know?

Sure. So. I think he's already exploring someone else's stuff. That's what it is, whenever you get a following, but. Okay, well, we'll see. Yeah, we can collapse. We'll see. I don't think he's a weasel.

I think he's a good American. He's from Virginia Beach. I think he's probably going to be really interested in representing Huli, which is more legit than whatever bullshit. He's rolling. Now, no offense to D.O.D. King. And look, I'm not a golfer, but he looks like he cracks it pretty good to me. For someone who's not a golfer, you seem to know a lot about it.

Dude, once you got, he got in my algorithm. Got it in your algorithm. So props, props. Props to that guy. So that's where people can find you. YouTube over the top, Huli, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Huli Golf. And then Huligolf.com if you want to just go there and get a badass shirt. You could wear that shirt to a meeting.

You could wear it to dinner. And yes, you could wear it playing golf. And you got a bunch of cool designs that you're the designer of now because we apparently, you're a design guy. Well, I'm not the only designer to give credit to our great designer. Check, check. Echo, do you have any more questions? That is it.

Good to see you. Yeah, thanks, man. Bobby, any other closing thoughts, man? No. Good times, man. Thank you. Wrapped it up. Well, thank you.

Thank you for coming down. It's freaking legit. and that guys are now retiring. Look, I hate the fact that you all have to retire, but you retire and you can come down here and kind of share your story. It's awesome. I appreciate it.

Thanks for what you did for the country. Thanks for what you did. For the Navy, for the teams. Thanks for what you did for tasking a bruiser. Thanks for the lessons that you passed on to the next generation that are out there using your lessons for their platoons right now. Thanks for what you did.

and you never faltered, you never wavered, you stepped up, you led, and you set an example, an outstanding example, and you passed on the highest standards of the frogmen. So thanks, bro. Thanks, brother, appreciate it. And with that, and this actually means a lot in this particular case, Bobby Holland has left the building,

because that came from Elvis. Lead Bob, yeah. Elvis has left the building? Yeah. That's where it comes from. Oh, yeah, yeah, the layers in. And so today there's a lot of meaning when I say that Bobby Holland, lead Bob, has left the building. We talked about it a little bit.

He's a fan of Elvis. Yeah. So Bobby Holland has left the building. Awesome to have him on. And see what he's doing here, bringing back a lot of memories. Very cool. So thanks to lead Bob. It is always interesting to hear you.

Even the same thing with GIF. Mm-hmm. Like, especially when there's other players and the whole history. the story, you know, Laif and like, you know, Tyler. I know Tyler. I have actually, I have a whole separate history with Tyler, by the way. I don't know if you guys need this. But so I've known Tyler.

Well, you knew him from hanging out with Jeremy Kikoa. Yeah. Coming. Yeah. A different Jeremy, by the way. Yeah. Then the Jeremy that we talked about today. Yeah.

The Jeremy that we talked about today is a different Jeremy. Different Jeremy than you're, yeah, exactly. The Jeremy that you're talking about. So let's say there's a Hawaiian Jeremy. Yep. And then there's a different Jeremy. Not Hawaiian, yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, so it always is interesting to hear like another, essentially, another perspective of a timeline that I'm very familiar with, with characters that I'm very familiar with. It's kind of like when they do a, like a prequel or a sequel. Prequel, yeah, yeah. But it's more like a prequel, right? Prequel. Because a sequel, you kind of, you're carrying on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. A prequel, you're kind of learning more about what you know about already.

Yes, exactly. So there's something a little cooler about it. Yep, exactly. I guess the only coolie is a sequel. sequel right yeah that's like oh there's more coming right come yep exactly holy business there's a movie called go the name of the movie is go and it's a it's a we should make a energy drink called a go oh we did cool okay what's it about uh it's a you know like a little thing thing that they all this group of people get into these kids or whatever like you know

young 20s whatever they go to Vegas and all this stuff there's this trouble they get into and they all have their and they split up and they get back together and they split up or whatever with their different um over time over one weekend it's like a night or so got it you know and but it's so it's like three movie you know like in three stories in one movie so and each one is from a different person's perspective so it's exact same story but it's from this guy's perspective it's like that that's what it felt like essentially so you saw a different perspective another perspective you know a lot of overlap which makes it so interesting and that's what made the movie so interesting because when the overlap you're like oh that's what was going on at that

time you see what I'm saying same deal yeah and it's good to be able to capture that stuff I mean and even Bob was telling me he was going through like just thinking about stuff and he said on the podcast he's been doing some thinking about everything and you start to remember little things and like even the story he was telling about being in mount and like repelling off the roof and like I'm going to think about it more I can't really remember it right now and and so it's nice to be able to Capture like at some point you forget stuff that happened and more stuff that happens in your life the more stuff you forget about The further way you get from it you know Leif sent me those emails and Bob would say an after man he's like that email account Doesn't exist anymore so Bob doesn't even have access to those emails that Leif sent me

So man to have and those emails those old emails are really interesting to look at because they're a They're a A stamp of time. It's like a historical And it's you, you wrote it. Like, you wrote it. And that's you at that time. And you can get older and you can learn more and you can become more wise and you can become more jaded. But at that time, this is a pretty good representation of who you were and how you felt at a certain time.

Yep. So pretty cool to be able to have those documents and be able to go through them and get back those memories. Even after we got done recording, he was like, he said when I started reading he was kind of like wait oh he you know he was like coming back to him the memory of it came back to him so it's very cool to be able to reopen

those things and remember details that you might not otherwise remember and don't think about and all that stuff so thanks for coming on Bob appreciate it lead Bob still on the path after all these years speaking of the path deaf reset's coming

yep deaf reset is starting, listen, technically speaking, starts January 1st, reality starts right now. Like if you got to be ready for deaf reset, you can't just show up. It's like going to buds. You just don't roll into buds. Oh, first phase, day, what do they call it,

one one day? Like first week, first day. Yeah. They call one one day. If you roll into one one day and you haven't done some, they give you, even they, even they, the Millick, the Navy, gives you six weeks.

Prior to one one day. So one one day is coming January 1st. You got to be ready. You got the prep phase going on right now. We've got the warning order. So we're going to get our lives physical, mental, professional, family, leadership. We're going to get them all squared away. Start in January 1st.

There's prep work that's happening now. Don't go into it cold. You won't make it. So go to the deaf reset.com. We got workouts and fitness with Jason Kalipa. We got leadership with echelon front. We got discipline directives coming from me. We got jocco fuel.

We got, there's like benefits, benefits you called them. Hell yeah. We're going to give away like tickets to the muster. We're going to weigh a bunch of jocco fuel stuff. So, Defreset.com.

Come and check it out. Let's get on the path. Be prepared. January 1st is coming. It's December 1st right now when we're recording this. I don't know when it's coming out, but time is ticking. Be ready.

Def Reset. Go to the DeafReset. Speaking of joccofuel joccofuel.com, I am currently at this time two goes deep. I'm one and I'm feeling very fired up. So look, am I fired up because Lee Bob was here? Sure. A little bit. Kind of. Yeah. Am I also fired up because I had a few go to go? Yes, I am. So do I have downside? Am I going to crash? No, I'm not going to crash. Am I going to get type two diabetes? No, I'm not. Am I going to get some other weird gut problems because I have artificial sweeteners no none of that's going to happen so my downside is nothing my upside is everything go to joccofuel dot com get yourself some go you can also go to wawa vitamin shop gnc military connoissehanna for dash stores in maryland wakefern shop right hbbbb down they're

in teahas mire up in the midwest harris teeter lifetime fitness shields small gyms everywhere and listen if you own a small school jitzy school CrossFit school, Powerlifting school, Olympic lifting school. Maybe it's just a straight Globo Gym. But you want to sell Jock Fuel? Email JF Sales at joccofuel.com. Chaz, he'll get in touch with you.

Have you met Chaz yet? No. Old school. Old school in the game. Yeah. Just getting after it. So that's what we're doing. Mulk protein.

Because sometimes you, look, let's face it. Sometimes you need 30 grams of protein. Like right now? Yeah. RTD. Yeah. Just crack one open. You're good.

30 grams. protein. I figured something out. What's that? About the milk banana RTD. A little side note. Please share. Do share.

So, you know, like me and me like many people, I'm no, you know, banana's not the number one flavor. Usually it's going to be chocolate. Usually. This is just in world? Just in general. Yeah, you know, banana flavor. It's kind of like, you know, it takes a special, you know, like you, it's very

rare that that's the number one flavor. Some people like I dig it. For an individual human being? Yes. to prefer banana is their number one favorite flavor in general. Correct. And I'm one of those people where I like the chocolate. I like the whatever.

So the bananas are like, fine, but for whatever reason, freaking the banana milk, RTD is my number one favorite one. I don't know why until now. So I used to make these homemade milkshakes back in the day when I was a teenager. And the formula was freaking good,

really good. So here's the recipe. It's sugar. milk vanilla one egg one raw egg and one banana hell yeah

bro I'm telling you you get the ingredients the proportions perfect bro it tastes freaking super good especially if the banana's a ripe banana you can't get the under ripe banana the pre right banana don't do that ripe banana what was Tulsi's deal with bananas

oh yeah the frozen one frozen yeah to make it more creamy whatever but Nonetheless, that was the formula for my homemade milkshake. It was freaking bread. It was really good. So you blend it up really good. The egg makes it like thicker and stuff. It's really good.

Oh, yeah, ice too. That's what the Molkartidi banana tastes like. Brought tastes exactly like it. GTG. GTG, big time. And if you put in the fridge for a long time or the freezer for a short time, it'll be extra cold, which adds another layer of like, what do you call, appeal to the taste.

Bro, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Oh, there you go. All kinds of good stuff. Joint Warfare, Supercryl, vitamin D, cold war. That's what we're doing. Hydrate. Hydrate.

You're going to need to hydrate. You get done with that. Even before that you just. Yeah. And then here's a key component to your daily life, greens and creatine. If you're not doing greens and creatine in the morning, you should be. There's no one that shouldn't be doing that. Not one person.

Everyone should be doing greens and creatine like brushing your teeth. Brush your teeth, greens and creatine. Actually, don't do it right away because you get that weird. What's that thing? What is it? You don't want to do that. You brush your teeth. You can't eat anything for how long?

Half an hour? 45 minutes. 45 minutes. Okay. 45 minutes, then maybe you get done with your workout. By the time you're done with your workout, 100% you're cleared hot. Yeah. For greens and creatine.

Or you can follow my protocol if you don't know already. I said it before. Right when you wake up, no problem. I don't care. The greens I don't put in, but I just put creeteen hydrate. Pre brush? Pre brush. 100%.

Brush, creatine and the hydrate. When you brush your teeth, bro? Right after that. What, do you go down to the kitchen and you're like functioning doing stuff? Bro, it's staged right on my nightstand.

Okay. A whole thing of hydrate. Water's already there. Hawaiian from last night. See what I'm saying? Hydrate creatine right there. Here's what's bad. Anyone that goes in my room

and they know what cocaine looks like. You know how that creatine you put in, you spill a little bit? It looks, it looks bad. But hey, man, if you can endure that, bro, that's a perfect staging sequence.

See what you're saying? Yes, pre-brush, boom, done, before I even get up. I'm already fucking in. You see what I'm saying? With the creatine. Dude, I'm going to give that the triple stamp of approval. Dig it. Dig it.

Hydrate and creatine. I had the vision of you walking around your house with morning breath for like an hour. Your wife comes down. Sarah Charles is like, yo, get back away from it. Go back upstairs. Get out the Listerine homes. So that's what we're doing. JoccoFuel.com.

Go check it out. OriginUSA.com. We're doing Jiu-Jitsu. We're lifting We're hunting Are we playing golf? Some people are Yeah kind of

I mean shoot You hear a freaking lead bob talk about you Kind of like oh It might be a little bit more to it I've never you've never played Have you ever played a round of golf on the golf course? I have played like literally one round of golf On the golf course

Where else where I play around a golf? I don't know how they say mini golf I've played mini golf I've played more mini golf yeah Yeah I played minigolf I've never played one single around I was played mini golf I was playing mini golf

myself He was probably like six and he straight up like full driver with the putter like full driver shot that thing like Tiger Woods bro it was like such a hazard it was if it would have hit somebody like another kid yeah it would have been major major injury concussion possible like temple shot death I don't know but I believe uh origin USA dot com that's what we're doing awesome closer and they're all made in America. Look, we in this country have fought for freedom and right now we're selling that freedom. Selling it. You go and buy something from China. You're selling it. You're giving it away. All this freedom that we fought for being sold. Don't

let it happen. Buy American. Buy American made. We go through the most extreme lengths to produce and manufacture things in the United States of America at origin USA.com. Everything that you need. Workout clothes, hunt clothes, jeans. You need a pair of jeans. You probably need two pairs of jeans. We got you. Get American made jeans.

Support the American worker. Support the American economy. Support American security. Because if we can't produce things in this country, we don't have a country. OriginUSA.com. Go get some. It's true. Also, Jocco Stor,

gonna represent on the bill. Whether you're on death reset or not, you're just on the path in general, or if you're taking a break from the path, doesn't matter, you can still represent. Look, I'm not recommending it. I'm not over here recommending getting off the path. If you're taking a break from the path,

by the time the order shows up, you should definitely be back on the path. From an ideal standpoint, I think you're right. But on reality, boots on the ground. Hey, we live in a world where some people aren't on the path 100% of the time. What I'm saying is it doesn't matter necessarily. It's hard to put on a discipline equals freedom t-shirt and not be on the path. That's true.

It's hard to put on a deaf core t-shirt, a t-shirt that literally says deaf core on it. Discipline equals freedom to the core? And you're like, yeah, I'm going to, where's that donut at? Yes, it's very hard. You're correct. So, but we live in an imperfect world in human beings, which we all are. I can see what kind of mood you're in today. Did you violate something?

Did we have problems? Did you train today? I'm a very understanding. I did not train today. I'm a very understanding person. You see what I'm saying? That's all I'm saying. That's really the end-all point that I'm trying to make.

Look, but you can still represent. When you do, you want a new shirt, that you want to represent with. You go to jocco store.com. That's where you get it. Discipline equals freedom, regardless if you're resting or not, it still does equal freedom. You're saying? Yeah.

Good. You think things are going to go freaking perfectly the way you want them to go right now all the time? Every single day? They don't. No, not going to happen. It's okay. It's okay. Everything's going to be all right.

Anyway, you want to represent jococcal story.com. If you want to get on the short locker subscription, what that is is, the new design every single month. It's good. People like them. Check them out. See if you like them. If you like a boom, subscription, that's where you can get that as well. Hey, speaking of America, Americans, look, do we need milk?

Yes, we do. Do we get 30 grams of milk? 30 grams of protein of milk? Yes. Do we get 14 grams of protein from a milk cookie? We do. Yeah. Guess what else?

Sometimes you need supplemental protein. Actually, your primary source of protein. Primary, yeah. Let's go steak. Yes, sir. Let's go American steak. Let's go. Let's go primalbeef.com

and let's go Colorado Craftbeef.com. Two American companies bringing you steak that tastes like. It's just next level. It's next level. On that grass-fed fruit finish. I got the burgers, right? Last night, or last night I was making the burgers. So here's a good tactic, too.

Just it's a side tip. Look, does it bet? Is this essential to do? No, but it's a side tip might help you out. So what I do is I grab the burger, grab three of them, right? You know, they come to the stacks, right? Get them to room temperature.

I ball them up into one big ball and I make them into a bunch of sliders for the kids. Grass-fed fruit finish. That's where you're at. That's what I did last night, yes. Check it out. We got you. Colorado craftbeef.com and primalbeef.com.

Go check those out. Subscribe to the podcast. Check out Jocco Underground, check out our YouTube channel. Check out psychological warfare. Check out flipside canvas.com. Dakota Myers selling you cool stuff to hang on your wall. Keep you on the path. Also, a bunch of books.

I've written a bunch of books. You know what they are. And look, they will help you. They will help you. Read them. Read them. And then look, you got kids in your life. Get them away the Warrior Kid books.

One, two, three, four, and five. These are the books. When you get them and you see kids read them, you see their lives change. So that's what we're doing. Check them out. Mike and the Dragons, about face, extreme ownership, dichotomy leadership. It's all there. Eschlon Front.

You heard about Lafabin today. He and I have a leadership consultancy. It's called Eschlonfront. Go to Eshlonfront.com. We can help your organization. We can help you with every problem that you have because all the problems that you have are leadership problems and we solve problems through leadership. We got live events. We can come into your into your organization and work with you on a long-term basis. We will figure out a plan to get

you and your team aligned. So, Eschonfront.com. We also have an online training academy. If you want to train, look, for leadership, but it's training for life because when you interact with other human beings, which you do all day long every day, unless you're a hermit, you've got interact with other people that's leadership so you got to lead yourself you've got to lead other people you got to interact with other people go to extreme ownership.com and learn these skills also if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families gold star families check out mark lees mom mama lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or get involved go to america's mighty warriors.org also heroes and horses.org also jimmy may's organization

Beyond the Brotherhood.org. And finally, the Navy SEAL Foundation, which is where Bobby's wife works. She's been there for a while, but there's a bunch of great human beings. These are the people. This is the organization that takes care of SEALs, families, and the SEALs,

but when someone gets killed or wounded, their support is unbelievably strong. So check them out as well, Navy SEAL Foundation. If you want to connect with Bob, he's on the interwebs. Hooligolf.com. He's on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, at Huli golf. He's on YouTube with over-the-top Huli. And Echo is at Echo Charles.

I am at Jocker Willink. And again, just be careful because of the algorithm, you'll look at one golf thing, and the next thing you know, you'll have a bunch of golf stuff inside your algorithm, showing you the D-O-D king. So just be careful for whoever else. You know, if you look at it,

one dog, one knife, you'll have a thing full of knives. It's true. If you talk about something, it'll pick it up, put it in there. It's wild. You got to turn off your microphone setting on your phone. Okay. That's true. Sounds like a good plan.

So, just be careful. We're there, but there's algorithms on the hunt. Once again, thanks to lead Bob, Bobby Holland, for joining us today. Check out wholeegoff.com. Most important, thanks to Bob. for his service, leadership and the teams, and for our great nation. And thanks to Beth as well

for everything you do for all of us. And thanks to all the personnel out there in uniform right now that are serving and protecting us around the world. Your sacrifice is appreciated and will not be forgotten. And the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders.

Thank you for serving and protecting us here at home. We are grateful. And everyone else out there, you got a good example from lead Bob Bobby Holland. Step up, work hard, have fun, have fun, man, put some Elvis in your life. Take care of your friends. Take care of your family. Run things. Raise the bar.

Stay humble. And of course, keep getting after it. And until next time, this is actually. Echo and Jocko. Out.