Jocko Podcast - 449: Be Loyal To Your Team, Friends, and Your Dogs. With Jay Kopelman

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<Kopelman began his military career in the US Navy in 1985, training to become a Naval Aviator, and then transferred to the Marine Corps in 1992, where he continued to fly before becoming a forward air controller and earning his gold naval parachutist wings. His last assignment was as the Deputy Director for advisor training at Camp Pendleton.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 449 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In an abandoned house in the northeast section of Fallujah, members of the 1st Battalion 3rd Marines, known as the Lava Dogs, froze when they heard a series of clicks coming from one remaining room of the compound. Grenade pins? Most of the military deaths in Fallujah during that first week of the U.S. invasion happened inside buildings like this, where insurgents hid in upper rooms and threw grenades down at the Marines as they moved upward.

There were a lot of head and face injuries. And while the lava dogs considered themselves some of the toughest Marines around, they named themselves out of respect for the jagged pumice they trained on back in Hawaii. Just being a lava dog didn't shield you from a grenade's fancy special effects. Being careful did. Being focused did. having your weapon locked and loaded when you inched around every corner did click click click maybe timed explosives throughout the first days of the invasion of Fallujah the Marines

discovered weapons caches suicide vests and large amounts of heroin speed and cocaine apparently used to bolster suicide bombers courage they found dead bodies of fighters from Cheshnia, Syria, Libya, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. They walked into human slaughterhouses with hooks hanging from the ceilings, black masks, knives, bloody straw mats, and videos of beheadings. They freed emaciated prisoners, shackled, and insane with fear. Fallujah near the center of where it all began was now a city cordoned off from the rest of the world, inhabited only by invisible snipers and stray dogs feasting on the dead click snuffle

click the lava dogs tightened their jaws and clench their weapons as they ran through the rules in their heads cover danger areas stay low move stealthily be prepared to adapt and eliminate threats snuffle click click click click snuffle an insurgent strapping a bomb to his chest They should have prepped the room with a grenade, tossed it in, and just let it do all the dirty work. Instead, for reasons still obscured by war and fear and things just destined to be, they backed up to the walls on either side of the doorway and positioned their weapons to fire. Then they thrust their rifles around the corner, squared off, and zeroed in on the clicks as their target rushed to the other side of the room. Holy shit The puppy turned around at the sound of their voices and stared at them

What the hell? The puppy cocked his head trying to interpret their intent rather than no words. You've got to be kidding Then the dog yipped wagged his tail and clicked his toenails on the floor as he pranced up and down in place Happy it seemed someone had found him at last and that right there is an excerpt from the prologue of a book called From Baghdad with Love, a dog, a Marine, and the love that saved them. The book was written by Lieutenant Colonel J. Copelman, who served in the Navy prior to going

into the Marine Corps or transferring over to the Marine Corps. He fought in Iraq where he eventually found a dog that he named Lava that chain. and likely saved his life. And it's an honor to have Jay here with us tonight to share his stories and lessons learned. Jay, thanks for joining us, man. Yeah, thank you, Jocka, for having me. It's a different kind of book to read.

The book centers around you saving this dog. Yeah, it's a story of love for sure, story of salvation, not just for lava, but for me. and I think for all the Marines who were around him. And I just have to say that the beginning of the book is written that way, but in reality, lava was found in the middle of a firefight by Marines from 1st Battalion 3rd Marines. He was hiding in a 50-gallon drum.

I didn't know this part of the story until after the book came out. Got it. and one of the Marines there, he was a corporal, I believe at the time, or Lance Corporal, his squad leader said, hey, do something about that dog, right? Take care of that dog because he's going to give away their position. So the Marine hands his rifle off to another Marine, crawls in the 50-gallon drum, throws the dog in his pro gear, and they end up taking it back to the house. And that's where I first met him.

Dang. Jack. Yeah. Well, before we get into that whole thing, you had a pretty interesting ride just getting into the Marine Corps. So let's go back a little bit to your life. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was born there, raised there, stayed there until I was 18 and went off to college. What'd your mom and dad do?

My father was a business owner. He had a back in the day a direct mail business. What does that even mean? Yeah, so think junk mail, right? Yeah, so he had a business where he had a big plant in the back with all these machines. It would, you know, put an address label on this thing. And then other machines would bundle them all up. They'd stuff them in mail sacks.

And that was really my first real job, so to speak, was hauling around 100-pound mail sacks as a scrawny 14-year-old. And what about your mom? What'd she do? Um, mom was, uh, a stay at home housewife, uh, for most of my life. Uh, when I was in high school, she then opened up a store with a friend of hers. They started a stationary and invitation store, you know, personalized stuff. And, uh, she kept that going for quite a while, even after she and my father moved to Tampa, Florida. She opened up another one there. When, when, were you still in high school when they moved to Tampa? No, they moved there, my, as I was going into my senior year,

of college. So I, you know, that was the last time I was in Pittsburgh to live there was that summer between junior senior year of college. And what were you doing in in high school? In high school, uh, so I was not a great student. Um, you know, I, I was one of those kids that guidance counselor always telling my parents. I was underachieving my potential, of course. I, you know, I played all the sports, right, growing up. Did he good? No. Not especially.

I think I was pretty good at tennis at one point. Like my parents hired a coach and the coach was like, oh yeah, this kid, if he stays with it, if he works, he can get a scholarship. He's looking for those extra coaching fees too.

You know, those coaches are just like, I see a lot of potential with your kid. They definitely could make something happen. If we give him a couple more private lessons a week, we can really get there. Yeah, yeah,

probably like that. But I just wasn't in a jumping rope and running for that stuff. But, you know, I was always a big football fan. My father was a Penn State alum, and he had season tickets. So I started going to Penn State football game, so I was like seven years old. And all I wanted to do was play football. And my father said, well, if you get to be six foot two and 210 pounds, which he knew

in our family was never going to happen, although my son is six three, which is crazy. He said, then you can play football. And I said, I've always kind of done. things because people said I couldn't. So I said, well, I'll show you. And senior year in high school, I played football. Was that the first year that you played? I played a little, in fifth and sixth grade, you know, I played quarterback. And then in seventh grade, I was playing quarterback and jammed my fingers into the ground and my whole hands. Well, I mean, it was a mess. And so I didn't play again after that until senior year in high school. I was, I was a kicker. I was a place kicker on the team.

Echo, you're excited about that. Cake nuts was a kicker. Okay, okay. You know, when I was, so in practice, I was kicking 55-yard field goals, and I had never done it before, right? So I go off to college, I start thinking I can play football. And where did you go to college? University of Miami. Okay.

So, you know, I'm thinking I can play football in college, and I get down there. Lou Saban was the head coach. I went on a recruiting trip, actually. So he must have done pretty good in high school if you got on a recruiting trip. I was mediocre. We had a coach who had a favorite who was a running back and punter, and then he let him start kicking, and I kind of just got forgotten about him. I managed to the letter, but that was about it.

So I go down there, and they got this kid, Danny Miller, who could just bomb the ball. I mean, he was incredible. You know, he had thighs like the size of this table, right? I mean, kick a kick of football, like nobody's business. So I said, okay, that's not going to work. So I better do something. So I weighed 155 pounds. And like, I can't play football.

I'm like this slow Jewish kid. Nobody wants me on their football team. So I started lifting weights a lot, bulking up by the end of freshman year. I was 205. Damn. And playing defensive back. And then spring practice, freshman year. going against the first team offense.

They're running an end-round. And there's a deback. You either come up and you take out the lineman who's pulling or you go head on for the running back. Well, I hit the running back at a bad angle. My knee buckled, first knee injury. You know, Howard Chenelemberger was our coach at that point. He comes running over.

They were nice as could be, but, you know, here I am. I'm just a walk on. Nobody gives a shit. right it's like okay just get them off the field but i came back after that you know i had knee surgery i came back kept trying and finally by the end of junior year i realized you know what you're never going to be a real college football player i was a human blocking and tackling dummy for the most part i'd made it up to first string special teams um but then got hurt and that was the end of that. So I figured I better graduate from the school pretty quick.

So what did you graduate with a degree in? Broadcast journalism. What even is that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So is that like you're going to be a news anchor type thing? Yeah, well, you, or you would do sports broadcasting, something like that. So are you in a classroom like getting taught? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you get taught on how to how to write, how to produce stuff. I had one class. where we had to do like an improvised stand-up comedy thing. You know, it was some crazy stuff that I had, I didn't, my roommate was a broadcast journalism major. So I said, that sounds good. What happened is I started out as a drama major. And that was too hard.

So. And then it wasn't, I mean, it was. That's a low bar, man. I told you, man, I was not a great student. I'll tell you, though, when we had rain on the podcast from the office, and he talked about what that, because he did the whole drama thing. Sure. He went to college for drama.

And it sounded like, you know, he's playing Shakespeare. And I was an English major, and so I had to read Shakespeare. But when you're doing drama, you got to go and memorize all those lines. and acting plays and have that stuff memorized, that's a big task. So I could see if you're not into it, and they're like, hey, go ahead and memorize King Lear over here. One semester of that, you say, yeah, I'm out.

You know, I did all that theater stuff in high school, and I actually at one point auditioned when I was in high school for NYU's drama program. You had to do a monologue. What monologue did you do? I want to say it was from death of a salesman. Okay. But I don't remember.

It's a lot, a lot of years ago. You know, Willie Lohman on. Oh, going deep over here, Echo Charles. I know this wasn't on Hawaii 5-0, but, you know, we're still in the game. But the one good thing about it, freshman year, I was, you had to take dance classes, right? So I'm in L.A. I'm in a ballet class. Echo Charles settled down.

Do you remember those times when Schwarzenegger and everyone was doing ballet back in the day? Herschel Walker was in there. Did you get in the game? No, I'm bad. Echo Charles. I did not get in the game. Confess. I don't want to see, you know, internet pictures later like, no, Echo Charles took dance.

No, you will not. But, hey, not that there's anything wrong with that. You know, I hear good things. So, you know, get some. Yeah. So I'm in a ballet class. And the only other guy in there is Greg Luganis, who's like the greatest diver in the world of all time.

Isn't he from San Diego? He's from Orange County. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so this is in college freshman year. This is in college freshman year. God, God. And so, you know, Greg didn't like girls.

Mm-hmm. You know, it's public. I'm not saying anything out of school here. And the professor, it was so bad. This professor was just, like, all up into Greg. Oh, like. Yeah, like digging on a big thing. time. But that meant all those girls were there for me. Well, there you go. And then I realized they

really weren't. That was just, that was in my mind. So what were you planning to do or once you graduated? What did you do with this degree? Were you, were you thinking about the military yet? I had never given the military any thought. Interestingly enough, though, I had a couple of neighbors guys like four or five years ahead of me in high school or in school who did join one of them became a f-15 backseater in the air force and the other one joined the Marine Corps he became an f-18 pilot and eventual squadron commander here in San Diego actually so I had no designs on the military I figured I'd just go into business like my father did and had really had no intention of using the degree other than to get out of college, right?

So then what was your first move when you got out of college? Yeah, I worked for a company in the same business as my father's. He had actually sold his business to this huge company called Advoc Systems, and they were the biggest in the world, really, when it comes to direct mail advertising. So I had a sales job with them for $12 an hour with my college degree. Plus commish? No. Dang, 12 bucks an hour, no commission.

Well, remember, this is 1982. True. So it wasn't horrible, right? You could afford an apartment. And how long did you do that for? Maybe a year or something. And I realized it just wasn't for me. This doesn't sound like it's for much of anybody.

No, yeah. And, and, and so I ended up parking cars. hours, waiting tables. I was just kind of floundering for a while, ended up moving to Tampa where my folks were, and started teaching high school and coaching high school football. Oh, that's cool. How long did you that for? That was also less than a year because during that time, I started thinking about the, you know, I got to do something else with my life and thought I'd give the military a shot. So I ended up going to the recruiter, the Marine Corps, didn't need pilots at the time, but the Navy did.

And somehow I managed to pass the exams for aviation and got a pilot contract. And this is what, 1980? 1985. 1985, yeah. So Top Gun didn't come out until 86. I actually had to go and look that up to confirm if that motivated you. How can you want to be a pilot? It just seemed kind of cool to fly airplanes on and off of ships.

You know, that that looked like a flight. fun thing to do and so why not it was something something I had never done I had never considered but you know I figured I had pretty decent monkey skills and they could teach me the rest so how was aOCS because you went you went to the old school aOCS right I did I went to the whole uh Richard gear officer and a gentleman thing it wasn't in you know BFE Washington it was down in Pensacola and It was good. It was a fun time. We had Marine Corps drill instructors there, and these guys all came off the drill field somewhere. They were either from MCRD San Diego or MCRD Paris Island. So they took the cream of the crop drill instructors. They'd sent them up to Pensacola, but they had to learn

how to deal with officer candidates instead of recruits. And you could tell when the new ones would come they just had no clue and there was one guy he was just mean I mean little guy you couldn't understand anything he said right he like normally Joel instructor give you a command okay I want you get up top side brush your fangs get that back down on my line you got 30 seconds to get dumb move right you can understand that this guy what's going to do now if I was you're going to get and move and that was it like what do you say so everybody scrambled just running in different directions not knowing what the hell to do was it a shock to the system did you think like all right i found my home or were you thinking what did i get myself into um i think it's always a shock to the

system right it's completely different environment from anything you're used to especially when you got these these totally squared away Marines just yelling at you in fact there was a guy there one of the drill instructors who they say they modeled Louis Gossett Jr.'s character on for the movie, The Officer and a Gentleman. Yeah, it was interesting. There are some good stories from that. Yeah, I went to OCS. It was different because you went to when it was just aviation OCS.

Right. I went to when they combined aviation OCS and regular OCS. And yeah, same thing, though. Marine Corps drill instructors just absolutely squared away and awesome across the board. everything that they did was was it's echo charles just so you know marine court drill instructors like everything they do is perfect like they don't make mistakes for instance and i think this kind of sums it up when they change their uniform like two three times a day so it doesn't show ever show that they sweat so there just always look like nothing's phasing them right so and that's the way

they are with everything and and they know their job they do it perfectly and it's just a really impressive indoctrination into the military. Marine Corps does it. Yeah, it's super impressive. And, you know, think about it. They're there. It's like, when do these guys sleep? You know, it's like, how can they be like this?

Our class drill instructor has since passed. He was a great guy. And he would come out, take a, us on a run, right? But he's like stomping out a cigarette right before the run and still running us into the ground, calling cadence. It's just like, God, this guy is just, he's a machine. Oddly enough, I was a seal when I went through OCS, and my drill instructor's name was

gunnery sergeant seals. And he was awesome, total professional. I don't know what happened to him. I'd love to talk to him and get in touch with him because he was scored away. you get done with that and then you roll into flight training yeah that's that's true and then how's flight training for you yeah so uh flight training was good i went to corpus christi for primary flight training and what you do is as you go through primary it's like the guy that gets the best grades gets his choice of what he wants to fly and so the goal is to do as well as you possibly

can in primary flight training so that when it comes time for selection you get what you want and they break it up into thirds and you know the the old joke is about helo pilot so bottom third but that's not true of course and and so i did all right i think i had about a 3.1 gpa coming out of flight school which is by the way the highest GPA i ever had on anything so so i was pretty stoked and then uh i i selected for jets uh went to beville texas which is now shut down uh for for jet training and it's where uh when bush first bush was VP for Reagan he would fly in there and go dove hunting got it yeah so we'd always see air force two coming in for him to go to go dove hunting but uh yeah that was a tiny little town with nothing there but at dental hygiena school and the naval air

station so yeah it was good uh i enjoyed it i had one flight instructor we'd be doing really close formation stuff and having to pull a lot of gs and you know he was uh an exchange pilot from uh columbia i think or venezuela and he'd always be in the backseat of the t-2 when we we're just learning this stuff eventually you go out you solo formation you have to solo formation you have to solo everything to prove you can do it and he's back there yelling at me more yeas yay more yees like what and I'm like oh okay I got it and so what'd you end up getting to fly would you yeah so uh I I completely fucked up the first time I went to the carrier super nervous of course as as everybody is so it's no excuse but I I got the big dairy queen

the DQ at the at the boat the first time and that's flying what were you flying the T2 Buckeye so they take they take you land a T2 Buckeye on the aircraft carrier okay absolutely yep not anymore because now that they're gone I guess they're flying T-45s now in training and so I DQed they sent me back to the beach and you know bring those of us at the queue in our room okay look this didn't go so well we're going to go back we'll do it again in the meantime the navy had a big push on for e2 and c2 pilots so for those that don't know an e2 is essentially the navy's version of a shipborne a wax and the c2 is you know it's essentially you know flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of hong kong kind of of thing, but taking it out to the carrier. So delivering mail and VIPs, that kind of stuff out to the carriers. And so that was it. We went back, did, you know, field carrier qualls again. And then... Is it easier in the C2? Or were you just like a little bit more confident now that

you'd done it? Well, first had to go back and qual on the T2, right? And then go learn to fly the E2 or C2. and you don't know what you're getting until you're in the what's called the rag, the replacement air group or the fleet replacement squadron. So I did select for C2s. And it's definitely not easier. That thing isn't there because the props aren't reciprocating. So they both go in the same direction. So as you're coming in a land, you're constantly having to make a rudder input to correct.

to correct your flight path so you land center line. How did you deal with, you know, here you are, you have this goal becoming a jet pilot, a fighter pilot, and you don't qualify, you get disqualified on the carrier landing.

And the thing is, the reason I bring this up is this happens to people, it happens to everyone in life. I mean, it just happens. No matter what your goal is, eventually if you're pushing hard, you're going to get to some kind of goal

that you don't get to, you know, whether it's Echo Charles, not making it to the NFL, right? Sure. Hey, you didn't, you know? That's true. Or, hey, I put, the first time I put in an officer package to become an officer in the SEAL teams,

it didn't get selected. And, you know, it's like, okay, well, what am I going to do? And luckily I had another year to try it. But, yeah, things come up. And I know there's all kinds of people that try out for special operations, whether it's Army, Navy, Air Force, from Marine Corps, and they don't make it. And here you are with that situation happening. And how did, like, what went through your mind?

Well, you know, the first thing you always think of is, man, I'm a failure, right? I'm never going to be any good at this and how could I do this? You're just kicking yourself in the teeth really badly. And then you take a moment, you reflect and you say, okay, you know what? It's not meant to be. And this is. And now I'm just going to do my level best to make sure that I don't fail again. I'm going to succeed.

And I'm going to just fucking push through this. And nothing's going to stop me now. Yeah. That's the attitude you got to have. And, you know, there's a lot of guys that I would meet in the Navy and the fleet. And I'd be thinking they're super squared away guys, you know, with whatever. They were intel. They were radio men or whatever.

And I find out later they dropped out from buds. They're still good dudes. They just, it wasn't, you know, wasn't meant to be in that job. And so they switched their regular job in the Navy and got after it. and hell yeah. So good attitude. So now you graduate from that school and now you show up forward.

Is that when you go to the rag after? So you go to the rag after T2s and then you go back down to Corpus Christi to fly twin engine props, get some training in that. It's like 12 flights or something. Most of them are just two student pilots going up and flying together

and try not to kill themselves. So, which, you know, like I said, I always like doing things people say I can't, right? I'm going to prove you wrong. And so I go out in primary flight training, you do 10 flights with an instructor. You get a check flight to go out and solo. Got it. Easy. Did that.

And then you do acrobatics, aerobatics. And then you get a solo. You get to go out and solo. And they have all the authorized maneuvers you're supposed to do as a student and doing aerobatics. And then some that aren't authorized. So I had a great, great on what's called an onwing instructor, the guy you fly your first nine or ten flights with. Super squared away guy. Marine Corps C-130 pilot.

But he had his own, I think it was a pit special, this super acrobatic airplane. So he'd take me out all the time. time and show me these great maneuvers and it was like this is awesome and so of course when I went out and did my aerobatic solo I'm going to try this split S that he showed me that it's unauthorized so in a split S you come up like you're doing a loop and then as you come back over you roll the plane back upright and you come down and you pull up right so it's it's a good way for attack aircraft to get on target without using up extra airspace. And so I did that.

I'm like, the plane's not coming up. Planes not, nose isn't coming up. And I realized I hadn't taken the power off. So now I'm just, you know, nose diving right into the Gulf of Mexico. And at the last second, I remember I pulled the power back, got the nose up. I don't think I was 100 feet off the water when that happened. And salvaged it, brought the plane back. And, you know, you always went to maintenance report any issues with the plane.

So I had to go back and tell them that I overstressed the airframe, put too many Gs on it, pulling out of that dive. And, well, how'd that happen? I think I had a hard landing when I got back. Does it track the Gs that you're getting? Oh, yeah. So you can't just hide it. Oh, no. And you wouldn't want to because.

If there's even just one popped rivet or something from overstressing the airframe, it could be fatal to somebody else. How many Gs are we talking about? It wasn't a lot, maybe seven. Yeah. I got the backseat ride in the F-18 back in the day, and we did like seven or eight Gs. It was pretty cool, pretty good times. But I could see if you're not in a F-18, how that could definitely stress the aircraft for sure.

Yeah, these airplanes, you know, they had like max G of seven and a half. have. And you were right there. Push those limits. And then, so then after that you get up, you get to your squadron? Yeah. So after I finished with the C2 rag, which was an adventure in itself, and we can talk about that a little bit, get to a C2 squadron.

Well, what was, what was an adventure about the rag? Yeah. So in addition, not being a great student, I didn't have a great temper for a lot of my life. And I always was kind of quick to fists. So we were at a party at Damnick at the officers club out on that beach there in Virginia one summer. And there may or may not have been alcohol involved in this situation. But I got into a fight with another guy in the squad. And a guy I had gone through flight school with.

And so the next day he ended up. with a broken nose and 10 stitches over his eye. So Monday morning, get called into the commanding officer's office and he said, okay, here's what's going to happen. You're going in Hack for 30 days and we're going to. What's Hack? So Hack is essentially it's confinement for officers. Oh, dang. Yeah. So I got confined to base for 30 days, how to live in the bachelor officer quarters. I couldn't go anywhere, how to eat all my meals at the BOQ. Bam. Yeah, it was kind of weird.

Everybody who I thought were my friends just kind of turn their back on me, wanted no association with me. The only guy that really stuck by my side was a friend of mine from AOCS who was over at Oceana. He was an A6 bombardier navigator and now he's a orthopedic surgeon. But Dougold would come visit me. in the BOQ, bring me stuff. And, uh, well, you might be kind of lucky that you didn't just get kicked out or like

kicked out of the program, right? Well, they boarded me. They sent me to what was called in the Navy, a FNAB in the Marine Corps. It's called an FFPB. So a flight, what is it some, it's a performance review, right? Where they can take your wings. Yeah. Were you sweating at this point?

Big time. Yeah. Were you thinking that maybe. you shouldn't be drinking alcohol and fighting? No. No, still weren't old enough to figure that one. No, I was, uh, I was in the mindset of this is bullshit and, uh, it was a fair fight. And, um, they didn't see it that way, of course.

Yeah. Yeah, I was still too immature to really think along those terms. Um, and so they convened the board. Uh, it had. It's supposed to be made up of pilots from outside the squadron. Well, they put the XO as the head of the board as the president of the board, and the guy that I beat up was kind of his favorite guy. So you can see the direction this is heading.

So they have this board all set up, and then they start bringing in witnesses. And pretty soon I'm thinking, you know what? I'm not too good at this witness stuff. They're getting an attorney. So the Navy won't provide an attorney for you, nothing. So my brother's an attorney. He leaves his job in Atlanta to come up and be with me for a week in Norfolk to go through this board.

And they're bringing in guys. There's one guy who comes in, this guy, this instructor pilot, he's like, yeah, you know, I can't believe it. look at this guy's former college football player you know if he had hit me like that i would have crumbled and uh i was like oh dude come on let's you know enough melodrama here you know this isn't televised right and and so uh my brother he was great during this time he'd sit there if he didn't think i should answer something he'd put up his hand then whispered to me and you could see the ex-o the president of board he's getting all pissed off while this is happening.

And he finally says to me, he goes, so what's the matter? You can't answer questions for yourself. My brother goes, hold on a second. Leans over, whispers something. And I go, yes, sir, I can. Well, I think it's even more impressive that they didn't kick you out

after rolling up there with your brother and everything. I'm surprised. And if the ex-o, who already doesn't like you, that's a rough one. Oh, but luckily you didn't get kicked out. No. So then next up is what? Now you go to your squadron.

There's one more board. Oh, okay. Yeah, this story gets crazy. So I don't mean to beat a dead horse to death here, but this is really part of the story. So they send the package. Of course, they find five nothing against me. They're going, I'm done. And would you get kicked out of the Navy at that time?

No, it had probably had a. go drive ships or something. I don't know if they were going to give me the option of getting out. So in the meantime, I get tired of this bullshit. And I said, you know what? If you don't want me here, I don't want to be here. But I do want a package to go to buds. I've never seen anything get approved so fast in the military.

They were like, they were so happy to be rid of me. So the Navy captain that was the wing commander there, he signed that off like that. It was done. I'm gone. The whole thing goes to the Admiral's office. I have to go over there and see one of his aides. The guy's like, look, yeah, the Admiral doesn't want this to happen this way.

We don't think the board was convened properly. And we're sending you back for a second board. So now the squadron has to bring in all new people. And people that were in there talking shit about me the first time. now all of a sudden they're saying nice things about me like board members even and that one goes through three to two I got to go back now I got to meet three to two for you or against me okay so now I got to go back and see the admiral himself three star admiral big guy like six foot four massive hands right and so his aide comes out greets me I'm in my navy dress blues and he says hey look

You're good to go. Don't get your powder wet. Everything's fine. Like, awesome. So I go in, see the Admiral, stands up. Hey, Jay, Paul Miller, you know, good to meet you. So his calls, I'm sorry, Fred Lewis, not Paul Miller, Fred Lewis. He goes, his call sign is bad Fred.

And I'm like, okay. He goes, have a seat. So I sit down. I just kind of don't sit at attention or anything, right? I just kind of lean back and relax a little bit because now I know everything's good. Well, then his aide comes in and kind of stands in a corner behind the door. What's that guy there for? So Admiral Lewis says to me, he goes, so Jay, what seems to be the problem with your attitude?

I'm sitting there I go. I got no attitude problem, sir. Guy launches himself across the desk at me. what the fuck is this what's that get the fuck out of my office i don't ever want to see you again or i'm gonna kick your ass i'm shit my pants at that point that was it and sent me back everything tracked after that finished up did did great all my flying everything academics did great at the ship during the carrier qualifications and went to my squadron and how was life at a life at the squadron uh that was good uh life was fine did some fun deployments you know rosy roads

corpus christi no living on the ship just you know flying and living life in good old norfolk and virginia beach um i did get my call sign out of that situation though that whole thing well as i was uh finishing up at the rag we were getting a new exo at the squadron i was going to and somebody introduce me to him said hey commander littlefield this is uh this jake hopelman he's going to be coming here squad and he goes oh i've heard about you slugger and it's stuck jack uh and so then what happens you're you're doing these um deployments whatever flying out with the carrier and at some point you decide you you don't want to be in the navy anymore what brought about that decision yeah so you know i still had that kind of dream about flying jet

and I heard about the opportunity to do this inter-service transfer to the Marine Corps. I just kind of felt that I wanted to be with war fighters. And when I was going through these boards, at one point, I did say something the effect of, like, well, if we're going to treat somebody who gets in a fight like this, granted, I was wrong. 100% 100% wrong and you know I still think about that

to this day but you know I said to them I said if we're not going to support people that are willing to stand up and defend themselves or you know

have that will to fight I want to be with people who are and and so did the inter-service transfer put in the application I had a quote unquote rabbi who I had met a Marine colonel. He was a lieutenant colonel then got promoted a colonel who was helping shepherd this whole thing. So the way it works is you put in your package for inter-service transfer.

The Marine Corps says, yeah, okay, yeah, we'll consider this. So what has to happen is kind of simultaneously, the Navy has to sign off on releasing you. and the Marine Corps has to sign off on accepting you. So I was up in Washington, D.C., running back and forth from headquarters Marine Corps to Chief of Naval Operations to get this paperwork signed off and get accepted into the Marine Corps. And sure enough, it happened in like January of 92, I think. And then February of 92, I woke up one morning. I was a Navy lieutenant.

I went to bed that night as a Marine Corps captain. And the Marine Corps doesn't do a lot of, they don't take a lot of people. into the Marine Corps with prior service. It's not very common for somebody to go from the Navy to the Marine Corps. It's more common for guys to go the other way. I knew flight instructors in jet training who had done that. And I even met a seal when I was down in Coronado at one point where he was an instructor. I was over doing my lunch PT on your O course.

and I met this guy, short, short, stocky guy, baldheaded guy. Really good dude, I forget his name, but he had been an F4 pilot in the Marine Corps. Oh, I know him, yeah. And then came over, joined the SEALs. Yeah, I know. Yep, I was at Team 1 with him, as a matter of fact. Yeah, really good dude. Yeah, I remember when he checked into Team 1 and he was already like a lieutenant,

but he had been a pilot of the Marine Corps. Yep. Yeah, that's awesome. That's pretty funny. Yeah. And so then what was your job? What job did you pick up in the Marine Corps? Because they don't fly,

they don't fly C2s in the Marine Corps. No, no, no. So I was pushing hard to get jets. Which would be what? I wanted to fly Harriers. F-18s or Harriers? So the Marine Colonel who kind of, you know, helped me along this path,

he was a Harrier guy, great guy, very subdued, quiet guy, very, very bright guy. And so Charlie's like, okay, we're going to get you in a Harrier program. And of course, the Marine Corps said, nope, flew turboprops in the Navy. You're going to fly turboprops in the Marine Corps and C-130s here I came.

But I was committed. I really wanted to be a Marine. I had originally applied to be a Marine and they weren't taking pilots then. And, you know, it just solidified for me when I was in AOCS, seeing those drill instructors and a couple of the class officers who were Marines and the uniform looks good. I said, damn, I want to be with these guys. Yeah. And then how was that job as being a C-130 pilot?

What was that? It was kind of boring, to be honest. We did some aerial refueling missions. I was like the primary mission. I was flying the KC-130. It's an airborne tanker. And it's kind of an incestuous community. You know, so here I am.

I'm a Navy guy that becomes. comes a Marine. I haven't gone to Marine Corps OCS at Quantico. I didn't go to the basic school. They didn't know. Oh, they didn't make you go to the basic school? No. After I did my inner service transfer, I worked at what was called FMF Lant, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic. So now it's called Marf O'Rland, Marine Forces Atlantic. I worked there for probably six months, went to a school called amphibious warfare school and now they call it expeditionary warfare school in Quantico did that for nine months and then went to learn to fly the C-130 so I was an outsider got treated like an outsider within a few months of getting to my squadron

they were sending me over to work at the Marine Air Group I worked in the three shop there while I was in Norfolk though I did get to go fly the Harrier I went down Did the simulator flew the two stick harrier? I flew the carrier. I flew the Harrier simulator at Yuma. And I crashed it like 17 times in 10 minutes. I was just like, because they didn't tell us anything. They just put us in there.

And I just crashed it over and over again. I mean, literally they didn't, I got no in brief. It wasn't like, hey, this thing does this, this thing does that. They're just like, yeah, here you go. And I figured, of course, I'm a young frog man. I got this. I crashed that thing just over and over again.

But we got no in-brief. I think if I got a little bit of an in-brief, I would have had a chance. But the Harrier is hard to fly, right? Because it's, especially when you're doing vertical takeoff and landing, you got to, there's all kinds of different monitoring you have to do

and make sure that you got your power in the right spot. It's not like when Echo Charles is flying a drone. Whenever that's hard. And he thinks, yeah, you know, watch me. But, all right, so you flew the, the simulator. Yeah, I flew the Harrier Sim in the airplane.

Oh, that's cool. And then when I was at the Air Group, I worked in the three shop. I managed the flight program for all the F-18 squadrons and the C-130 squadron. And my boss was a Hornet guy, the S-3 there, the ops officer. And he goes, hey, make yourself available to fly the Hornet. I'm like, that sounds great. So I got to do some two-stick Hornet flights with the rag there, VMFA 1. 101 at El Toro and did that for a little while and then I decided, you know what, the C-130

thing isn't working out either. It wasn't my lifelong dream of be a pilot. You know, I could have stayed there and pushed things, but it was pretty clear that I wasn't really welcome. I do still have one really dear friend from that squad and we're friends to stay. He's a captain with Delta. He retired as a colonel, but so we're still a really good friend. and I'm glad that I was there.

You know, I met some really good people, some not so good people, like anywhere, right? And so I put in for orders, I requested orders to go to First Anglico, Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company. When I was back in Norfolk, when I first started, we had a reservist who would come in there and work with us. We were at the air shop for this huge headquarters. and V8 had been in Anglico. He was telling me all about it. And so that kind of stuck with me. I remembered that.

I said, I want to go to Anglico. So they gave me orders to Anglico. And 94 went down to Camp Pendleton. First Anglico got my first real taste of doing anything on the ground with Marines and the kind of PT that they do. You know, it was an airborne unit. got to go to jump school, did all the roping out of helicopters. I went down there as a forward air controller,

so I went to the TACP school down at Coronado. Sure. Had a team with 12 guys, and we could go anywhere in the world, support any allied or U.S. service military troops that needed somebody to call in close air support, artillery, and naval gunfire. Yeah.

I mean, Anglico is an awesome unit, and I worked a ton with them. Yeah, that's very cool. And then what did you end up with that? Yeah, so I got to Anglico coming off a big knee operation. I had a torn ACL repairs. I had a reconstruction. And then while I'm in the hospital right afterward, my surgeon came in.

We had become pretty good friends. And he comes up to the room and he's holding some cigars. And I'm like, oh, oh, this can't be good. So he looks at me and goes, hey, man, I have some bad. news. When we went in and placed the new ligament into your femur, we didn't realize till the x-rays post-operatively that you have a growth on the femur that showed us the wrong place. We didn't realize where we were putting the placement to hold that ligament in place, so we're going to have to do a revision. And so he goes, but here's a couple cigars. And, uh,

If you go out, out that door out there, you can go out onto a deck and smoke the cigars here in the hospital over the weekend. So I had to have a revision on that. And they said it'd be six months before I was returned fit for full duty. Again, I'm like, that's what you say, but that's not what I say. I got through it all. I was returned fit for full duty in three months, and I was in jump school before the six months was up. So I pushed it. But I did the Anglico thing for about two years.

You know, as you can tell from this, I did not have the linear path to success in the military, right? I was kind of doing my own thing, just enjoying it the whole time. And it was great to do things that way, but it's not good for a promotion. So I got passed it over for major. and the second time that happens, you get out, you're done. So in January of 97, I was done, got out of the military, stayed in the reserves. I was working as a civilian for the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Alan Burson. We were out in El Centro, and I was running teams on OPs and LPs, looking for drug and human traffickers coming across.

So still having a good time then Still having a good time Yeah Right up until the night that DEA helicopter Jacklighted my team on a mountainside And I filed a big complaint about it Wrote a letter to the head of the DEA

In San Diego Saying Cowboys are out there Trying to get my guys killed And you know This guy was classic I mean he had the slick back hair The double-breasted suits

looked like you know you would expect right out of a movie and then things got a little uncomfortable for me there too you know kind of having to watch my back a lot um DEA doesn't like when you call them out like that so and again not not a super mature well thought out so what was the next move then uh next move was uh I got what's called active duty special work orders ADSW to come back on active duty down at Coronado, where I was teaching at the TACP school. I became a Hearstmaster, so helicopter rope, suspension training, teaching people how to repel, fast rope, spireg. And then I was also an MCIWS, Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival,

which was great. So it was a job that involved a lot of PT for me. So that's when I was going over to the Budzo course. and doing that for training at lunchtime. Right on. That'll make for a good time. And how long did you run that job for? That was for probably nine months.

And then I got a job at a small tech company. The founders of that company had sold Shopping.com and started a new one. And so did that for a little while until about 99. then went to work at Solomon Smith Barney as a stockbroker. And where were you, where was that? It was in Orange County. Okay. In Irvine.

Yeah. How'd you like that doing that job? Yeah, it was pretty good. I learned a lot there. It was good. I had a office branch manager who was a great guy. He had been Navy. In fact, his son was, her uncle, yeah, his nephew was a Marine F-18 pilot who I'd

gone to amphibious warfare school with and maybe that's why I got the job but um but jean was always very supportive of my reserve time and uh he was he was good guy for me to work for um so did that for a while and then 9-11 happened so september 11 2001 happens and you know we got to work really early I did anyway I was always there an hour before the market opened so I'd be there by 5.30 in the morning and there was another guy

who was a bond trading guy who was in his office he had TV in there and I hear Fred start yelling something I'm like what the hell so I run down to his office just in time to see the second plane hit the towers

I'm like fuck we're going to war and you were still in the reserves I was in the reserves I was at Third Anglico up in Long Beach at the time. And how long did it take for the recall to happen? It came pretty quick. Did you volunteer for it? I did.

So you just call up and say, hey, I'm here. Yeah. So what happened was when I was at Third Anglico, I had taken a team over to Jordan to support the 11th Mew. They were doing exercise there. And we get there. And the XO and the Opso from 11th Mew meet us at the airport and they're like yeah this hop is canceled you guys are going back and what sucks

is I had met some girl from France I can't remember where I met her or any of that but I had lined up a trip for the guys that I took over we were going to France and this girl was going to be our tour guide so after Jordan we were going to go to fly to France and go have a good time and then come back to the states so all that got canceled I mean we spent one one night in Amman and got on a plane the next day and came home. What happened was Osama bin Laden had been threatening the Navy ships in the Gulf at that time. They were going to blow them up and all this stuff. So rather than saying, screw you, you're not going to do that.

They just pulled chocks and got the hell out of Dodge and the exercise was canceled. So I remembered this guy who was the XO or the Mew. I got in touch with him and I said, hey, I'm available if you guys need somebody. So sure enough, like within a couple weeks, I had active duty orders to go to the 11th Mew and work in the three shop and get ready to deploy with them. And where was that deployment to? That was a Westpac deployment. So we went over, did some exercises in Kuwait and Jordan, all that kind of stuff.

You know, nothing was really happening yet. The only thing that had happened is when we sent. guys into Afghanistan initially in what October of 2001 so we deployed in 02 in like May of 2002 and they kept they'd send me advanced party everywhere because I was a major at this time I got promoted in the reserves and go over doing advanced party stuff in Jordan and Kuwait it was great for me I was having a great time you know I lived in the intercontinental hotel in Amman for a month, right? You know, worked out of the embassy there and just kind of ran around the Middle East.

Causing trouble. In Kuwait, we were coming in, bringing the ARG, the amphibious ready group in, at least two of the ships were. We were doing split ARG ops at the time just in case something happened. So the two ships are getting ready to come in. They send me in to negotiate contracts for facilities. at the port. And I mean, it was run down.

It was a mess. So I go in and I have to meet with a guy from the Quady government. And he's now all of a sudden they're trying to start extorting money, these exorbitant fees, like almost a million dollars. And, you know, he kept running back and forth between me and some other guy. I felt like I was buying a used car, to be honest. Let me go check with my manager. It was exactly like that.

And so finally he comes back and he says, okay, this is what it is. I said, no. I said, this ends right now. I said, I'm not negotiating anymore. I said, there's a thing called the sofa. It's the status of forces agreement that we signed with Kuwait after the Gulf War in 1991. And I said, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to get these facilities at this price.

or I'm going to take the sofa and shove it so far up your ass, you're going to be able to read it. So we got what we wanted. But the next morning I'm in my hotel room in Kuwait City, I get a phone call. Is this Jake Hopelman? Yes. This is so-and-so from the U.S. Embassy.

Oh, did it again. And so the conversation is, we heard that you told Mr. Moufik this, that he was hysterical. you know, I'm, I'm still an asshole at this point in my life. And I said, look, only women get hysterical. And here's what happened. They were trying to extort us, get millions of dollars that we really didn't have to pay.

The facilities are a disaster. And that was the end of the conversation. The end of story. But saved the U.S. government a shit ton of money. Did you get any repercussions from that? None at all. None at all. You're pretty lucky from that respect.

because that could definitely go sideways. Yeah, yeah, it could. If they want to, if they get, you know, hey, you need to make an example out of this guy, etc. Well, I was, you know, I was, of course, the mighty USA, right, in this Kuwait, and we're going to get what we want because we saved your asses.

Right on. So then you come home from that deployment. What's next? I heard about an opportunity at one MF, first Marine Expeditionary Force, where they needed a soft Lino, special operations forces. liaison officer.

I went over, talked to the G3. He said, job is yours. And then what was that? You went on deployment there? Yeah, ultimately did. First, though, they would send me around to, like, to go support a Mew. I was doing a lot of de-confliction work for special forces operating in Marine Corps AOs and Marines operating in SOFA AOs.

Just to make sure that everybody was talking to the people it needed to talk and make sure that the operations weren't deconflicting in any way. Was that in Iraq or was that just like exercises or something? Yeah, it could be exercises. It could be for combat operations. Yeah. So, yep. And then did you go through any training with anybody with like any of the Marsok or anything?

I guess Marsok with the Raiders or anything? Yeah, it wasn't around yet. Debt one. Yeah, it wasn't around yet. This was still 04. Wasn't debt one was formed up in 04, wasn't it? Not until 06, 07. Yeah, yeah.

Because, well, they sent a crew over in 04 that relieved me in Baghdad. And they was like, I think they called it, they did, they called it debt one. And it wasn't. It must have been from force recon. Yeah, it was like an assemblage of guys from force recon. And I actually luckily knew a bunch of them. They were awesome guys. Yeah.

But they were, they were sort of the first crew to come over. And they, they, I want to say they reported to the seal team that was there. And they were working for the seal team that was there. But we turned over with them and went through ops with them. Yeah, but, yeah. So I never got any formal training. As I was coming into this role, I had to get read in on a lot of very high-level stuff. So, you know, I had a TSSCI clearance.

I had to go to Soxent and get red in in their skiff. And then I actually went down to the SMU in North Carolina, got right in on their stuff, spent a day with them because ultimately I would end up supporting them in Iraq as well. And so that was really the only training that I had for that. But, you know, as an L&O, it's really more about the relationships and understanding what's being done on both sides and being able to interpret that and then translate it so that the folks on both sides know exactly what's happening at all times. Because the last thing you want is to have missions that are conflicting and have something to happen. Yeah. I was real lucky because I was a young enlisted guy. I did two Argue platoons, like, you know, obviously with the Big Navy, but also just embedded with the Marine Corps. And so even as a young seal, when seals, this is in the 90s, man, like seals were such a carved out kind of on our own island with no relationships with anybody. And but for me, in Argue platoons, we did everything with the Marine Corps and with the Big Navy too. So I got a real good introduction into like, Deconfliction and all that and just understanding how the Marine Corps work because otherwise I wouldn't have really known I just wouldn't have known and then and then my first appointment to Iraq

You know obviously we're rolling into battle spaces the Marine Corps owns a battle space the army belt owns the battle space so we'd go and Meet and greet with those guys again. It's the reason I knew that we kind of needed to do that was because of my Young days doing our platoons with the Marine Corps and yeah and with the big Navy so you definitely if you if you stay in a silo if you kind of grow up in a You won't recognize how much interoperability and deconfliction needs to happen. And luckily for me, again, it's very lucky because most, you know, if you're at a SEAL team back in the day, there'd be six platoons and only one of them. Only one of them would be an ARG platoon and it would only be one every couple rotations because we actually shared that. So I got lucky because I did two of them. And of course, most SEALs didn't want to be shipboard.

Yeah, I got to work with seals when I had my Anglico debt on a Mew. So we ended up over in Korea over at Oson. And so the seal debt that was with us came with my team and we went out on the coast and we did close air support. Get some. Yeah, awesome. So now you, when you finally end up deploying in 2000, now it's 2004 and you deploy to Iraq and you end up working with, with the Iraqi special forces. So the Iraqi...

Yeah, they were so special, in fact, they were called the Specialized Special Forces. That's very special. So these guys, it doesn't get any more special, right? And so these guys were based at Camp Fallujah, where One Meph was headquartered. And so I'm over there to train the Iraqi Special Forces. Really, Fid was probably the biggest thing that we were working on.

and also for an internal defense for folks that don't know, though I suspect the majority of your listeners do. And so we go over there, we're working with them, training them. You know, it's Ramadan coming. And it was actually a really good experience because I got to really embed with them a lot. At the end of the day, we'd be invited for break the fast with them, had some great meals, you know, just the big piles of lamb and maybe goat, I don't know, but it was good.

And it's certainly beating in that chow all the time. But, you know, you got to know the people too. And going back, really, when I was doing all this singleton stuff in Amman or Kuwait or whatever, before I deployed, I got Arabic lessons. Like I took the time to sit down and get one of those courses and do that on the computer. So my Arabic was passable for a while. Like conversational Arabic? I could understand except at one time I'm in an elevator in the Intercontinental.

Some women get on and they say to me, Mahabah. And I'm like, shoot, I don't know what that one means. It sounds kind of like something I love. learned in Hebrew that means what time is it. So I started looking at my watch and I'm telling them the time and they're just looking at me like this guy's an idiot. So later I asked my fixer what that means and he said it's just kind of like hello. So maybe not so passable.

No, no. I could give directions to the cab driver to get to the Austrian flight attendants apartment. And so what was the buildup to Phantom Fury like? So Phantom Fury is the big assault on Baghdad or sorry on on Fallujah. From your perspective, you're in Camp Fallujah at that time as this big preparation is taking place? Yeah, I'm in Camp Fallujah at the time. And it was going to be a big army-led invasion, right? So I forget the general who was over there, sent com.

He'd come to Camp Fallujah. there'd be briefings in the conference room of everybody from the headquarters element. You know, all the key players were in there. It was interesting. I was still spending a lot of time with the Iraqi special forces, but I'd be in there for meetings. What happened is they started planning all this, and I was still working with the Iraqi special forces,

and then the chief of staff comes to me, and he goes, Hey, I got a deal for you. He said, sure, what's going on? He said, you're going to take an Iraqi Army battalion into the Battle of Fallujah. I said, okay, I'm in. You know, I'm a Marine. How big was your American team with the Iraqi battalion? Yeah, so I didn't have a team.

I had to go around and find Marines who wanted to go and do this. How many guys did you put together? Let's see, I had probably about five. And then there was a seal who was over at the adjacent camp, but he was working as a liaison to one Meph. And they put him with me as well. So I'm a lieutenant colonel at this point, right? But I'm going to go lead these Iraqis in a Fallujah. And so we had maybe six guys.

You know, I grabbed the Ranger who was in the COC, who was there as liaison from the Army. And I got, so I got Dan Doyle on my team. And Dan, he looked like he was about 60 then. But this dude is just a born gunfighter, man. I was a ranger. I mean, he was hard as woodpecker lips. I mean, and just a great human being. You know, one of my favorite people of all times.

and unfortunately I've kind of lost touch with Dan but so he's on my team I get a communicator you know it's young Marine corporal I get my buddy Tim who comes over from the commanding general's PSD he's going to be my turret gunner Tim O'Brien and another great Marine just just could just sling lead like nobody's business taking income and he's just staying there cool as a cucumber and the turret, just laying it down. And so we go into Fallujah. We get, first they build up a camp next to Camp Fallujah. They just burn it up, throw up some tents, right?

The Iraqis come. There's two battalions. They got to keep them separate because they don't get along. And so I go to meet the CEO of the battalion I'm with and his team. And all of a sudden we hear mortars, right? And I'm like, don't worry, it's outgoing. It's all outgoing. Next thing, like not 50 meters from the berm.

Boom. I'm like, maybe it's incoming. So they scatter. They find any solid structure they can find. I'm like, oh, boy, this is not going to go real well. All right. Well, with that, I'm going to get into the book here. We're going.

Here we go. I don't remember exactly when I got to the house that served as our command post in the northwest sector of Fallujah. And I don't remember exactly how I got there. It was a couple of days after the lava dogs arrived and took over the compound. I do know that much. I remember that after four days of dodging sniper fire, sleeping on the ground at patrolling Fallujah with wide-eyed Iraqi soldiers in training who shot at anything that moved, including their own boots,

I walked up to the building with a sense of having escaped an abstract rendition of the wrong hereafter. I remember being exhausted and tiredness weighing more heavily on me than the 60-pound rucksack I lugged around. And as I walked through the front door and shrugged off, shrugged what I could off my back, all I could think about was sleep. That's when I saw lava for the first time. Only it's not as if I walked in and saw a chubby puppy cuddled up on a blanket under, underfilled by the world like an overstuffed lamb. There was no squeaky toys, no baby yips, no eyes looking up at me with an artless blue-gray innocence. instead with a sudden flash of something rolled toward me out of nowhere shooting so much adrenaline into my wiring that I jump back and slam into a wall a ball of fur not much bigger than a grenade

skids across the floor screeches to a halt at my boots and then whirls and circles around me with the torque of a wind-up toy it scares me right like I'm tired and wired and anything quick coming at me jerked at my nerves so I peeled back off the wall and reach for my rifle even though I can see it's only a puppy. So there's your introduction to the dog. And this is a like this job that you've got with these battalion, a battalion of Iraqi soldiers that are going into Fallujah. This is a very hard job, obviously.

Fast forward a little bit. Some Marines patrol the streets, some clear buildings looking for weapons and some get killed and don't do much of anything after that. Me, I have to patrol the streets with three wide. eyed Iraqi soldiers who in their brand new US-issued chocolate chip camis waved their rifles around as if clearing away spider webs Most still haven't figured out how to keep their rifles safely locked They are untrained out of shape and terrified

Their members of the Iraqi armed forces Stout-hearted double-speak for conquered and unemployed who were coaxed by the United States to help root out insurgents in Fallujah before the upcoming national elections. Here's an example. Fast forward a little bit. One afternoon about a week after I arrived at the compound. So this is all just taking it. And again, get the book.

There's a lot of detail about what's going on in Fallujah. And I'm reading out some of the examples here. One afternoon about a week after I arrived at the compound, a few other Marines and I are patrolling one of the main streets with them. We're in front of a mosque, right? And the Iraqi soldiers, they're all bug-eyed and waving their guns around. and I'm a little strung out myself about what's going on around us, only I can't let that on because I'm their example of what they're supposed to do and feel and be.

But they're so freaked out, they're clearly about to shoot me or one of the other Marines by accident, so I figure the best thing is to make them more afraid of me than they are of the streets. You know, take their mind off of it for a little while. So I started yelling, knock that shit off, and I keep yelling, safe your weapons, and they keep jerking their eyes one way and then the other and their rifles another way. I said, knock that shit off until I see they've gone into another zone of fear that even I don't have access to. And then one of the other Marines, I don't remember who.

Tim O'Brien, Dan Doyler, Mark Lombard says to me, take it easy on them, man. They don't understand English, which kind of ruins my whole show. Yeah, well, they better learn fast. But I stop yelling and give them a look instead. Then something rips past us in the air and we just freeze, just like that. It comes from nowhere but explodes a few yards away. Now we're moving fast, fast. A second rocket-propelled grenade comes screaming our way,

and I assess the situation, taking fire from two directions, small-arm, medium-machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. Two men wounded. Iraqi soldiers running for cover, outnumbered in more ways than one. I maneuvered behind the hood of the Humvee to direct the men as Tim O'Brien up in the turret opens up with a Mark-19 turret gun,

laying down a base of covering fire so the rest of us can position to fight. Dan Doyle picks up a squad automatic weapons and fires towards the southwest. Tim's a primary target in the turd, especially with his Mark 19 jams, and he has to fight with his M4. While he's trying to clear the Mark 19 and make it ready to fire again.

But it's Dan who gets hit. Blood runs down the inside left of his leg. Dan, get into that Mosky order, but he ignores me and takes off running to get the Humvee's positions so we can evacuate the rest of the wounded, including Mark Lombard, who's bleeding all over the place

but is on the radio calling in our situation report anyway. Bullets and shrapnel ricochet from the Ho to the Humvee, inches to my right. Blood soaks Dan's pant leg. Get your ass in that mosque. I yell again, but he, get this, looks over at me and grins just a flesh wound. Two armor piercing rounds hit the vehicle and tear through its quarter inch steel plate easier than needles through skin. I fire my M16 and yell for the Iraqi soldiers to direct their fire to the south. Only I don't see them. Where the hell are they? I have to get the wound into safety. So when I see them from the corner of my eye,

crouched numb between two overturned vehicles, I realize we're on our own. I abandoned my M16 for a more powerful squad automatic weapon, run in front of the Humvee and fire away to the south. This apparently inspires one of the Iraqi soldiers to stick his head out, fire two rounds quickly, using me as cover, and then duck back in. It's the last I see of the Iraqis for the rest of the 35-minute firefight. So that's good times with the Iraqi soldiers. Good times. You get back to the compound. And again, get the book so you could read some more of those details.

You get back to the compound, and I'm going to fast forward a little bit. Hey, what's with that puppy anyway? I ask one of the other Marines. What are you guys planning on doing with him? No one answers. Then one of the Marines stretches out, yons, and says he's turning in. Others grunt. Lava crawls out of my lap and turns a few circles, flops down, and falls asleep with his nose buried in my empty boot.

I guess they didn't want to answer my question about lava that night because, like everything else in Fallujah, during the invasion, nothing but the immediate was worth thinking about. And you're thinking about the dog and fast forward a little bit. I've been a Marine since 1992 and I was transferred from the Navy and I know that the little guy is going to die. I knew it right away when I saw him in the hall. This one won't make it. Just like you could look at some of the other guys and think this one won't make it because his eye twitches or this one won't make it because he parts his hair on the right instead of the left. Superstitious stuff like that, which you know doesn't make sense but oils your engine anyway. I was thinking this one won't make it because he's too damn cute.

I'm also Lieutenant Colonel, which means I know the military rules as well as anyone. And every time I picked up lava, they darted across my brain like flares. Prohibited activities for service members under General Order 1A include adopting as pets or mascots, caring for or feeding any type of domestic or wild animals. So just in case anyone doesn't know, there's a whole set of. of rules that you follow in the military. And in Iraq, there's very specific general order number one, you know, things like no porn, no alcohol, no taking pictures of enemy, no pets, no, they have a whole bunch of rules.

And you literally sign a paper when you get there that spells them out. Correct. And they do a good job of making it pretty simple, clear, and concise. It's like real straightforward. And that's what you just quoted. No pets, no domestic animals or wild animals of any kind for mascots, pets or anything else. So there's rules in place. I would say of all the rules that got bent, probably the animal rule was the one that got bent the most. For sure. And it's part of it was because, well, I can tell you

how my first deployment, the rule got bent was because there's just dogs. And, you know, the dogs are in the compound. And, you know, you don't see a dog and go, okay, I'm going to kill this dog. No, you go, oh, there's a dog. Well, you don't shoot it. You think, oh, I'm going to give it. You're going to give it a piece of MRE. And then guess what the dog does? Starts falling you around. And this is not me. This is like guys in my platoon first deployment.

Oh, so now they're giving a little scrap of the dog. Now the dog's hanging around. Now they're teaching the dog to sit. And all of a sudden, the dog's buddy shows up. And now you got two dogs. We had two dogs. Two dogs in our compound in Baghdad. They were named Mortar and RPG, you know,

which was a pretty good set of names. But again, it was like, if anyone came down and gave us an inspection, And said, what are those dogs doing here? You go, I don't know. They're just here. You know, it's almost, it's almost like there's nothing you could do about it other than freaking just execute the dogs. But the dogs would go away and come back.

And so it's, it's like the rule is getting bent. You don't have a dog bowl. You don't have, you're not, you're not giving the dog a house. It's just a dog. It's around. It's almost like having, you know, you're on patrol and there's a dog. like what are you gonna do it's gonna follow you let's you know like that's just what's gonna happen so that's kind of the situation that you guys are in you know this dog's there and you start hanging

around with the dog and you know you start dog starts becoming a little bit more friendly starts it knows what it's gonna get knows it's gonna get some some mRE crackers and whatnot um so that's what you're dealing with and that with this dog lava yeah uh i'm a fast forward little bit. There's you intro, there's an Iraqi, or sorry, there's a reporter. She's not Iraqi. She's American. She's a war journalist. Her name is Ann Geryl. She actually died a couple years ago, I think, in 2022. But she's there, and she's a war reporter. And she's, you know, you're right. She's been in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, former Soviet Union, Central America, Tiananmen Square, and Pakistan. So she's been around

and she's you're developing you know I guess I don't know if you'd call it a friendship with a journalist because I you know journalists you got to keep them a little bit in check uh you say one of the but you develop a friendship with her one of the things that I think worries and the most is that she's not telling her radio audience because she was with NPR the real story about us she complains about it a lot how can you explain how lethal how faulty how fundamentally lousy the whole situation in is here in general. Chaotic, she reports. Moments of sheer terror. She tries, but she always feels she misses the mark by a few inches. You go on talking about, she interviews a Marine psychologist that's there. They experience horrible shame of being helpless, he told her. Marines hate above everything to be

helpless, passive. It's not the way they see themselves, and it makes it hard for them to get back the feeling of confidence, just talking about bombs and snipers and things that you can't see and it's very difficult to fight against. Fast forward a little bit. I don't let lava sleep with me at first. I always scoot him off towards Anne or somebody else more willing to sleep with a snoring piglet who farts MREs all night. Then one night, Anne says to me, he's so adorable, what's going to happen to him? I give the shrug, don't know. And then fast forward a little bit, you say, but I feel like shit and let him sleep on my poncho that night. And I think that's how Anne finds her story.

And here's part of her story. During the fighting, the battalion has gained a new member, a tiny puppy. They named Lava Dog. Though filthy themselves, they've lovingly washed him down to get rid of sand fleas. He sleeps nestled in a marine poncho. So that's kind of your introduction to this dog. And is it so did that story, did she report that story on NPR? You know, I don't know if that got, if that got reported.

I do know, we stayed in touch for a little while afterward. She was a great person, great, great reporter. I think always very fair about her reporting. And she could tell a great story as well. very bright person obviously her her husband was also a very accomplished guy i think he had been CIA at one point and then became a cartoonist uh an artist and uh so i don't know that if ever got reported but anne and does play a big part in lava's rescue as the story goes on Yeah, there's a whole bunch of players in Lava's Rescue.

I mean, this is literally a book about the rescue of a dog. This is the vast majority of what it's about. Right. I mean, clearly there's a ton of, you know, your personal story and the story of the glorious Marines you served alongside and that fought in the Battle of Fallujah and the Army as well. And, yeah, that's a thing that the journalists, you know, they can be so awesome.

And yeah, there were some awesome journalists that I met and did incredible stories overseas. I never really, quite frankly, I don't think I've ever had like a horrible interaction with a journalist.

They've all been pretty cool. But I know that there's people that have definitely not had the best interaction with journalists. So I think it's important to be a little bit cautious. They're looking to publish a story, right? And they're looking to get people

to read that story. and sometimes hopefully what brings people to read a story is a positive story and a story about good things happening. But a lot of times often what brings a story is, you know, conflict and drama. So negative drama. I will say this on their behalf, though. It takes some big balls. Oh, yeah. To put on a cheesy helmet and a flat jacket, right?

And go out there with no weapon. Yeah. You know, and you're in the middle of fire fights, and, you know, there was a reporter who had been with us, I think from Christian Science Monitor got shot in the arm. I mean, it happens. Yeah, I think there's a certain level of people that are true combat journalists that truly embed. And there were some guys in Ramadi that were like that. And they, they wrote awesome stories and badass stories and really capital. to what was happening.

And that was very cool. Again, I've had, I had positive experiences, but I have definitely heard and seen when people don't want to write a good story. They want to write a story that's going to get them the most clicks. And the negativity certainly gets the most, can get clicks. And it's easier to write a negative story, I would imagine, than a positive story.

So, yeah, I, again, like younger, who, embedded with Restrepo. I mean, yeah, Sebastian Younger, who, I mean, he did a great job. And there's a lot of journalists like that. I mean, we had Holly on this podcast a couple times. She did incredible things, you know, going into horrible places, putting herself at extreme risk to capture stories. And she did a great job.

And so, yes, I don't mean to be too negative. but I might I just would always be cautious in in interacting I would I would agree 100% in any situation yeah yeah yeah for sure everybody has an agenda right and and they can put any spin on anything they want to I mean but you're you're right I mean look at some of these people that do amazing things as journalists and show a lot of bravery like Benjamin Hall from Fox yeah yeah you know just crazy story yeah there's there's There's definitely incredible journalists out there that take extreme risks in order to capture stories.

So there, I think I've balanced myself out a little bit. I didn't want to be too hard on. Like I said, especially there's journalist Michael Fomento, who's a guy in Ramadi, did incredible work. It took incredible risks. And was out there, like you said, he's out there with a flack jacket, a helmet, and a camera, running around like a maniac.

And he can get shot just as easy as anybody else. and there's the Stars and Stripes journalists. There's just a slew of journalists that are out there. So again, I think I was a little bit negative. I don't want to be too negative. I would be cautious because there's also been journalists that their whole goal is to write a negative story. So use caution.

Going back to the book here, you spend a bunch of time with, you know, with what's going on in Fallujah. You spend a bunch of time with how that kind of develops with lava. dog and I'm going to fast forward a little bit though you now getting towards the end of your time there you say later that day I receive word that I'm supposed to report to the joint task force in Balad to replace a lieutenant colonel Ignatius Buck Laberto who's going on leave for six weeks. I know the guy right so I email him in Balad and ask him if he'll take lava home with him when he leaves no problem from Buck's end but he's flying out on a military plane in order to transport

a puppy, he'll need all Levi's lava's vaccination papers and approval from brass. I'm thinking that this is no big deal until I get the response from the military veterinarian in Baghdad. He respectfully reiterates general order number 1A that prevents the Marines from keeping pets and further points out that diseases such as Leishmania, Haidid disease, and rabies are common among stray dogs in Iraq. Quote, my apparent lack of concern for this puppy isn't due to not caring. simply following orders, regulations, and my desire to protect the public health of our

soldiers, the veterinarian rights. What I'm trying to make clear, sir, is that is that nothing we can do for you is going to assist you in getting the dog home. Well, shit. And clearly, that was not exactly the answer you were looking for. It is a real problem to try and get a dog home. And actually, my buddy Seth Stone, he ended up getting a dog home from Afghanistan. The dog wasn't hairy, was an Australian

but he was a working dog. You know, he was a golden retriever, but he was a bomb sniffing dog. And so that made it a little bit easier because he was kind of in the system. But even for a dog that was in the system that had all the shots, that was trained, all those things,

it still took monumental efforts to get Harry. back to America. And I guess there were some Australian transfer. So there's just all these administrative rules and loops that you're going to have to jump through. And it's crazy. Fast forward a little bit here. You end up in Balad.

Balad isn't like a super secret mission or anything, but the group I work with Task Force 626 is a special operations unit that pursues high value individuals like AMZ, Zarkawi. We also work with Iraqi prisoners whom we suspect no. the most important stuff, stuff that could help break the back of the insurgency, but who don't want to tell us what they know. I have great accommodations, including a trailer with my own room, a real bed, a refrigerator, a closet, and a wall locker. There's a bathroom with a real sit-down flushable toilet, a sink, and a shower. We have a gym that back home would cost $500 initiation fee and $50 a month to join, plasma TVs in our command center, and a full PX complete with a Burger King. I went to Balad for like one day.

But yeah, these are the big built-up bases. It might have been a great mission except that, except this one thing that keeps peaking or pecking away at me, this thing that I have to do that I don't want to do. From the minute I get to Balad, I keep hoping that something will happen magically behind my back to solve everything concerning lava. So you start going on this effort to try and figure out

if you can make this happen. And I can't even begin to give. credit to everyone that deserves it. And when you read the book, you really start to appreciate the Headwood Woodward, Helen, sorry, Helen Woodward Animal Care Center. You got people from Triple Canopy, which is like a contracting company. They're helping you out.

There's an Iraqi veteran, Dr. Morani. You get Ims, how do you say Iams pet food? I am. I'm pet food. You've got all these assorted cast of characters to try and help you get this dog at home. fast forward a little bit and by the way you're still doing you're still having to do your normal job the elections are coming up January 2005 you're at the syrian border again this is one of the

many plots that you try and execute to get lava dog home by the time the elections are a week away and he is in flight to bagdad lava is still at camp felusia and i'm at the syrian border I'm back to babysitting Iraqi soldiers who in this part of the country call themselves the desert wolves. I'm worried about lava, whom I haven't seen in more than a month. I'm also worried about Matt and his guys who are arranging a special convoy. They're calling a chow run to get him to Baghdad. So you've got Marines that are setting up convoys to try and get this dog to Baghdad. So lava can link up with Annie and hopefully get left.

Marines are prime targets these days and the insurgents are and everyone related to them hate our guts for what we did in Fallujah But I'm most worried about and who's going to have to pick him up somewhere in the city The ref seems to be pissing on these days Here's the current fast forward a little bit here's the current headlines the week leading up to the elections At least 21 people killed by suicide bombers but these are just all headlines Baghdad governor Assassinated at least 20 people killed an insurgent attacks militants behead I Iraqi who worked for the coalition and kill at least four others. Militants kill eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers. Eleven people die in suicide bombings. At least 14 people killed and 40 were wounded by car bomb near

Shia Muslim Mosque. Bomb detonates near Iraqi premier's offices. Iraqi judge assassinated in Baghdad. Car bomb at provincial government headquarters kills five people. 20 people killed in a series of attacks involving rockets, roadside bombs and suicide car bombs. People stationed or stuck and Baghdad are starting to unravel as all these contractors and civilians and Iraqi soldiers get killed. As for U.S. forces, we don't fare much better. During the month of January, 641 of our troops are killed or wounded. This includes 31 lava dogs. These are the Marines who go down in a helicopter during a sandstorm four days before the election.

So this is all kinds of fighting, all kinds of death, all kinds of destruction. going on. This is actually when the SEAL's mission was protecting the top eight of the Iraqi government officials. And it's just interesting because that was everyone called that a no-fail mission, right? We can't let these guys get killed. And it was so, the environment was so absolutely hostile at that time towards them. And they managed to do it. This was incredible that they were able and look I can tell you there was no seal that that said to themselves oh my goal in life is to do personal security for Iraqis for Iraqi government officials but that's what the task was and they did an outstanding job so a lot going on and this is what's happening in the country and while all this

is going on and while you're doing your job you're still trying these attempts planes trains and honorable bills, taxis, military, and civilian flights are trying to get this stuff dialed in. You're building relationships with all kinds of different people trying to figure out with journalists,

with military people, with civilians, with industries, with charities. You have some good luck. Usually often turns into bad luck. Baghdad, Syria, Kuwait. Again, there's so much going on. Get the book so that you can follow all this, all this mayhem.

Eventually, again, get the book, eventually you end up, you redeploy back to America, and now you're back in America trying still to see if you can help with Lava Dog. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. I check the email again, nothing. And you're checking one of these emails for all this that you're trying to make happen. It's the middle of the day here in Baghdad, the middle of the night here in California, and no time in particular to me everywhere else in between. Something must have gone wrong.

Maybe the little shit is dead already. Or maybe they didn't make it through and now he's lost on the streets of Baghdad wondering where everybody went. I pray that if lava doesn't make it through, he'll find a body somewhere in Baghdad to keep him alive for just one more day. Which brings me to the last part of my confession, I want lava to stay alive. No matter how bad things get, it's still better to be alive. I want to know he's breathing and leaping after dustballs and chasing imaginary enemies in his sleep. I want him to be alive because then there's still hope that he'll make it here to California and get to be an American dog who runs on the beach and chases the mailman instead of strangers with guns.

I want him to be alive and almost more than anything I can think of, which feels like a confession, because before lava, I was a Marine who wasn't required to cross any lines with alive on one side and dead on the other. I carried a rucksack full of coupons redeemable towards absolution. Now, after meeting lava and letting fear in, I feel distantly related to a serial killer. What's that all about? Yeah. So, you know, you made reference, uh, in an earlier passage to the ref, euphemistically God.

And, you know, for my entire life, really, I didn't have to care about anybody else or be responsible for anybody else. And part of why this became such a huge mission for me was when I asked the Marines back in Fallujah, you know, what's going to, what do you think is going to happen? It's dog because I was well aware of General Order 1A. and they said, well, we're going to get them back to Hawaii.

I said, you're not going to get that dog to Hawaii. There's no way. I said, first of all, it's in blatant violation of the orders. I said, secondly, Hawaii has some of the strictest quarantine regulations of any place in the world, much less the United States. And this dog isn't going to make it back. I mean, they had gone to Okinawa. for a unit deployment program, they flew there, right?

And then when they get to Okinawa with 31st Mew, they take ships over to the Gulf to come ashore in Iraq. So I said you're going to have to get the dog onto a Navy ship and keep it a secret. Ain't happening. No, not even for a second. And then you're going to have to get to Okinawa and put the dog on a flight and get him back to Hawaii

and then face the quarantine. I said, they'll probably euthanize them there. They're not going to take him. But I know some people, let me make this happen for you. I'll get them back to the States, and then you can come pick them up, take them back to Hawaii if you want. So now I'm seeing it as I'm a Marine.

I'm a lieutenant colonel. And I've just made a promise to a bunch of young Marines that I'm going to do something. And I damn well better keep my word because that's all I have is my word. Why is a little kid, my father, he said to me one day, he goes, son, I'm not going to leave you a lot of money. He said, all I can leave you is your name, so don't fuck it up. And, you know, that holds true today for anybody. All you have is your name and your word.

And as soon as you go back on that, you're screwed. And I can't expect Marines to follow me in combat if I can't. keep my word about a dog, right? So this becomes a big mission for me. And I'm a dog lover from the jump, even as a little kid. And, you know, I wanted to fulfill my promise to these Marines, but obviously I became very attached to lava and I want him to live. I mean, if he hadn't made it back. I don't know what it would have done to me. It would have been heartbreaking for sure. I'm sure life would have gone on, but it just wouldn't have been the same. And so now I'm going to fulfill this promise. I'm going to fast forward a little bit, quite a bit, actually. The email arrives,

but instead of opening it, you sit there and stare at your computer. You think about things like whether you'd ever blow yourself up for your country and whether you'd feel better about things in general if you did no you decide you'd only feel dead then you open it iraq closes its border with jordan four romanian journalists are kidnapped in bagdad a major u.s newspaper reports that mental disorders among afghanistan and iraq veterans are on the rise then you read it a car bomb kills 11 more in Baghdad. As of 1,600 hours, Iraq time, lava is out of the country.

And for the second time in your adult life, you break down and cry. So that was the email where you got the word that lava was in the game. Lava was coming home. Um, so where to go from there? Your backstate side. Yeah.

Yeah, you get reunited. Yeah. Yeah. So lava becomes my dog and, uh, he is not a tame dog at all. So, uh, Helen Woodward Animal Center had a dog trainer there, a guy named Graham Blom, who's a fantastic trainer and he's done fantastic things aside. from just training dogs. He has started his own nonprofit called Shelter to Soldier,

where they get shelter dogs and train them to be service dogs for veterans coming back. And they decided to give me free lessons with Graham to work with Lava. So we do that for a while and get him trained up pretty good. You know, he's got all the commands, sit, stay, heal, all that kind of stuff. He's doing all right. start doing some media for it, right? So the day he got back to the states, they flew him in. He lands in Chicago with these triple canopy working dogs, right?

So, you know, you got a six-month-old Iraqi mutt, mutt, mutt. And he's in with Malinwas and German Shepherds, right, coming back from deployment. and in fact the contractor with Triple Canopy, who was assigned to bring all these dogs back, he slept on the ground in a parking garage in Amman at the airport the night before their flight just to make sure nobody would come and confiscate him. And they pass him off as a working dog.

You know, he's in a crate, so they couldn't see him too good. But they get him back and we're doing all this media. And then we were supposed to be on Good Morning. America. And so that was going to be a big deal, right? But then the Pope died, like the night before. So we get preempted. Like it happens in media, as you know.

And so that story doesn't go, but they do some kind of remote. And, you know, there's just multiple stories like Fox News, CB. Everybody's covering this story because we were really the first, first ones to get a dog back like that anybody knew about for sure. So there's a lot of media attention around it and people are saying, oh, you should write a book, you should write a book. I'm like, no, I'm not going to write a book. I can barely read a book.

I'm not right. I don't know the first thing about it, how to get a publisher, none of this stuff. And so I'm just like, no, I'm not going to do it. And finally, I just got tired of it. I said, fine, I'll write a book. and not knowing the first thing about it, you know, Amazon was coming around this time. So I go on Amazon and I start searching for books about rescued dogs

and all this other stuff. And I find a co-author. I found a book that had been co-written by this gal. And so I'd start figuring out how to reach out to her and call the publisher. They say, oh, we can't help you, but maybe her publicist can give you an email. address. And so sure enough, got an email address, sent her an email. Don't hear anything from her,

but at least I made the commitment. And finally a few months later, get an email back. Yeah, I'd love to do this. Let me check with my agent. She's in San Diego. And sure enough, the agent said, yeah, do it. So we start working together to put the book together about Lava's journey. How long did it take before the book came out? Probably took a year. From the time we started working together, more than about 14 months. So we started working together like in August of 2005. The book came out in October of 06. And in the meantime, I met the agent.

She signed me. And she starts shopping it around. Nobody would publish it. I had a cousin who was at a big publishing house at the time, I think, random house. And even she says to me, she goes, why is this a book and not a magazine article? It's encouraging.

Yeah. Hey, you know, and that's my cousin. I didn't know. What the hell do I know? And so finally this small publisher in Connecticut, Lions Press, decides, yeah, we'll do it and give us this tiny advance. And so we're off to the races. Now we're writing the book. You know, we had just sent them, you know, essentially an outline.

and they thought it was okay. And they wrote like travel guides and outdoors books and stuff. They didn't or published those. They didn't know about this kind of stuff, but they took a chance. And that in May of 2005, there's this huge thing called Book Expo America. I don't know how big it is anymore. But that year it was in Washington, D.C.

And they had printed out 500 what's called galleys. So essentially readers proofs of the book, before it's it's kind of like a paperback but it's not the final version there's still a little editing and stuff to do to it so they do 500 of those to have there and my agent and i fly out and i got to sign 500 copies of this for them to give out to media and whomever so publishers weekly writes a nice review guy from USA Today writes a really good review uh they were going to print I think 25,000 copies originally. They had another book.

It was going to be their big book about the four presidents, you know, Clinton, Bush, Carter, I forget who else was in there, but they were doing this book about how all these presidents get along and all this other stuff, their legacies and how they had done, and they were going to do 50,000 copies. That was their big book for the year. And so it does so well.

at BEA, now of a sudden the publisher says, okay, we're going to up it to 50,000. Then there's more press. It ends up being 100,000 copies first run. And so now they're hiring a publicist to set up a book tour for me. So now I'm going to have to travel a world or travel the states anyway and go do book signings and speak about the book and my time in Iraq, all this stuff. and I've never done any of this, right? This is all new.

I'm basically a home body. You know, I don't go out. I don't do anything. I go to Jiu-Jitsu and I come home and work and that's it. And so now I've got to be out in the public and doing all this stuff. So they end up doing that. And I was at Amazon up in Seattle was one of the trips they had set up for me to talk to their media team, which includes books. So I'm up there talking to them. I come out of that

and get a phone call from my agent, and this is like October, November of 2006. And she says, yeah, you just made New York Times bestseller list. It's like, what are you talking about? But I was really determined. I'm sure I was very difficult to work with because, Because if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right. And we're going to do it. And of course, my way was the right way. You know, not knowing anything about book publishing, but God damn it, I'm going to do it. And it worked, obviously.

I didn't want to put out something that was just a fluff piece or something inferior. You know, I did go through channels with the Marine Corps. I gave galleys to the commanding general, the PAO. the attorney, everybody had a chance to review it, make sure there was nothing in there that couldn't be in there before it was published. And it did. It came out and that's kind of where things went once Lava got back. But he was clearly a troubled dog.

I mean, you know, they say people get PTSD. Well, Lava had it in spades. He just could never, ever relax. Like the entire time I had him for 11 years, he was just really high strong and just nervous all the time. Just, yeah, it was tough. And you end up getting out of the Marine Corps. Did you retire from the Marine Corps? I did.

And so we were getting ready to stand up Marsok and Major General, Denny Halick, was the deputy commanding general at one MF at the time. And I was working as the deputy director for the advisor training program. program. So Denny approached me and he said, hey, I've been tasked with standing up Marsock. I'd like you to come with me. And I'm like, wow, that's a big honor. And I started thinking about a little bit. I had met the gal who I would end up marrying. We were having a good time surfing. I was racing bicycles. So just riding a lot and training all the time and living the good life in Southern California. I said, sir, can I have a day to think about this? He said, absolutely. And I talked to him the next day, and I said, I've thought about it.

I'm going to retire. I just didn't see my role at Marsock as being anything more than maybe a chief of staff. You know, I might get promoted one more time. I'm sure Denny would have seen to it. But I didn't want that. I didn't want to be just riding the desk for the next three, four years. As you know, once you've been in combat, it's hard to go back. That adrenaline rush and everything else.

You know, I wanted to be a gunfighter still if I was going to stay in. And that's, when you get to that level, it's just, it's not in the works. It's not going to happen. So what was your next move after you retired? So I retired. I left active service in probably no, November, December of 2006, and I was still technically in the reserves. I put in my retirement papers, got that February 1st of 2007. Prior to that, I'd gotten a phone call from headquarters Marine Corps. May I speak to Lieutenant Colonel Copelman?

Yeah, this is Jay, because I at that point considered myself a civilian. And the gal on the other end says, well, this is Colonel. Nancy Jones. I don't remember her name, but I said, hey, Nancy, how are you? She said, well, I'm calling to advise you that you've failed selection for colonel. I said, that's okay. I'm out. You know, I've already put in my retirement paperwork and clearly you didn't get the memo. So I appreciate the call, though. So I was so busy with the book tour stuff still and I was then signed by a speech. Speaker's Bureau to go out and do a lot of public speaking, so I was getting paid for that. I wasn't working, and that went on for quite a while. Meantime, I did end up getting married in June of 06 on the summer solstice in Coronado.

Had maybe 11, 12 people, a couple of my buddies, her mom, her brother, a couple of nephews, my stepson, just had a great time. You know, we took my, my best friend and I took my stepson fishing one day. He caught a shark. It was great. You know, on this little boat, he catches a shark, maybe three, four feet big, right? I'm grabbing it by the tail, holding up, trying to get the hook out, right? And the thing is curling up on its own body, trying to bite me.

I'm like, this shark doesn't like juice. And so, yeah, so that went on for a little while just doing that. And then in 2008, I realized, okay, I better get to work here. And had been introduced to a small nonprofit in San Diego called Freedom is Not Free. I knew they needed a new executive director. I approached them. They said, sure. So I did that for a couple of years.

Ran that small nonprofit. We did some really good things. I started a couple of programs that hadn't been in place before. Did a golf tournament. We got San Diego. I'm sorry What is it? Del Mar Country Club

To donate the whole club They donated everything The food, everything Your friend in mind Mike Thornton came He spoke, raised a lot of money He's You know, Mike he's larger than life guy

Yes indeed And so that was a lot of fun I put together a program Called the Little Warriors Surf Camp Nice And got a company INT surfboards

They donated like 100 surf boards to the camp and some money for lunches for the kids. So Wahoos did the lunches down at Loyish Shores and Surf Diva provide all the instruction. I was good friends with Izzy Tihani and her sister Coco. They owned Surf Diva. They came out, provide all the instruction, did this for like a week, and then we were able to give the boards to these kids to take home. That's awesome. Military kids, yeah. That was cool.

And you ended up writing another book. I did, yeah. And what was that one about? So that one's called from Baghdad to America. And I wanted to write about the reintegration process and the issues that veterans deal with coming home. It was a different publisher. The first publisher told my agent they wouldn't work with me again.

And in fact, one of the guys there started cursing at her one day after the second book came out, though, because he was pissed off that we didn't write the second book with them. She said, well, you told me you didn't want to write another book with him. So this other publisher offered me a pretty decent advance to write the book. I wrote it. I don't think they marketed it right because it came out as a dog book again, when really it's not. It's a human book. It's definitely a human book.

And I use the dog metaphorically for myself in that book to talk about PTSD and TBI and having to go to the VA and see a psychologist and all that stuff. And you end up getting cancer. Yeah, and much later. So in between then, I had gone to grad school at UCSD. and started working health care. I've always liked helping people, right? Like, you know, I was a teacher.

When I was a kid, if I saw somebody getting bullied, even if the bully was bigger, I'd run over and intervene, just slinging fists, right? Not always a good decision, but what I felt was the right one. And so health care seemed like a natural choice, choice for me if I could somehow improve patient outcomes and help people's lives could be better in any little way. That's what I wanted to do. You know, I worked in nonprofit. So I'm just going to continue on helping people and went in a health care.

And the second company I was with, while I was there, I went to the VA for a checkup. and the doctor says, yeah, I don't like your numbers here. And up on the screen was my A1C, which is an indicator for diabetes. You know, I'd always worked out. I stayed really fit. And I said, you think I have diabetes? And she goes, oh, no, not those numbers. Your PSA, which is a prostate-specific antigen, and it's a big marker for prostate cancer.

So I said, eh, that's got to be a false positive. I'm fine. So go back, do the blood work again, and the number comes up higher. So like your PSA should never be over 4.0, I think. Mine was like 12. So going to the VA, you know, they do the digital exam. And sure enough, I got an enlarged prostate. They do the biopsies.

Sure enough, I got cancer. and in 2015, a really dear friend of mine, older guy, had developed prostate cancer. So he can afford any care anywhere in the world, the best of anything. And he ends up going to a guy here in San Diego, a guy named Carl Rossi, who is the preeminent radiation oncologist or proton radiation oncologist. the world. The guy gets flown everywhere to lecture on this and do everything. And that's where he ended up going. So he had just finished his treatments in August of 15. I get diagnosed in October of 15. I call him up and I said, hey, Tim, I want you to know, you know, how highly I think of you. And,

and, you know, I try to do things the way you would do them. But just to show you how much I do look up to you, I decided to get prostate cancer too. And he says, first thing, okay, you're going to go meet Richard Lamb in L.A. and you're going to do this and you're going to do that. Like, the whole thing was mapped out for me before. I didn't even have to think about it. And so I end up going in the VA, seeing a urologist there,

and she's like, oh, you're a perfect candidate for surgery. I said, well, why do you say that? Well, you're young, you're healthy. I said, it's exactly why I was 55 at the time. And she says, well, you know, you're a good candidate. I said, that's exactly why I don't want surgery. I'll still want everything to work. I'm still, you know, a pretty vital guy.

I don't want to take that chance. Well, it's robotics. I said, yeah, but robots can make mistakes too or the person operating it. I said, I want to do proton radiation. Well, we don't offer that, and there's no good data on it, on the efficacy. I said, that's not true. They've been using it for decades to treat childhood brain cancer, you know, pediatric brain cancer. And I said, this is what I want, and that's what we're going to do.

And she starts slinging things at me. I said, look, I have as many degrees as you do. And I've done the research, and I know that it's efficacious. And that's what I want to do. And the VA ended up paying for like $150,000 of treatment for me to go do this. And it wasn't pleasant. You know, if back then they were still sticking a balloon up your butt to separate organs and make sure the radiation didn't hit anything, it shouldn't.

So 30 treatments of that. in February of 2016, I got to ring the bell and kill cancer the first time. And meanwhile, while that's happened, you're getting separated from your wife, right? Yeah, we were separated when I started the treatments. And then on top of all that, you end up having to put down lava. Yeah, the day that I started treatment, I had to put down lava. I'm going to read this from the book lava was once again becoming increasingly ill at ease he just couldn't stop i called the vet to describe the scene it's time he said i knew but i said

nothing you've done more for lava than anyone would have he said you gave him eight years more than i would ever have expected there's nothing more you can do i was sick at heart but i knew the vet was right i knew others would have given up years before lava had given me hope and restored my faith in life itself i owed him that the inevitable saying goodbye knowing it was time to free lava from his demons had always been there hovering as his unease increased i knew this final act would end his constant agitations i knew it would in some small way repay the debt i owed him for all he had done for me i knew it would be a tribute in some dark way a final heartbreaking measure of love.

I knew all that, but grief is not an abstraction. Even though I was prepared, I still felt as if I'd been blindsided. I was aware in some fashion that the circle of life, the beginning, middle, and end, we all face, had not been broken that day. It was completed with lava's last sigh. I told myself that as I walked away from the vets on January 4th, 2016. I knew all that, but I didn't feel it. I felt nothing.

I was numb. I was gutted. So how did you cope with that? Yeah, so it was, I had a distraction, of course, going through the cancer treatments. But it was a dark time. I was a dick, as you can imagine. and, you know, women don't leave you because you're a good guy. It's because you're a dick.

And, you know, she was right to do that at the time. And I just, I kind of stopped exercising for a while. You know, I was, I'm sure I was depressed. Kind of let myself go a little bit so much that I was embarrassed to go to a gym Because, I mean, I was by no means fat, but to me, I was. You know, I had obviously didn't have the right view of myself, but I was just feeling down. And just made getting through the cancer treatments my focus and kicking cancer's ass. So that was where I turned.

I didn't have a pity party or anything for myself. It was just, it was one of those things that just, just needed to happen because the final straw was he chewed through a wall and a door and like cut his mouth up chewing the nails and the drywall. And I'm like, this dog is just not right. There's really something wrong that he's never going to find peace. And it was a hard decision. But I think at the time now, looking back, it was the right decision.

but I just coped with it by kind of focusing on the cancer and beating cancer and and then taking the next steps in my life. When did you start training Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai? Yeah, so I started training Muay about a month after I finished the cancer treatments. I got myself at TRX and started working out on that every day, couple times a day, got back into shape. Believe it or not, just using a TRX, you can do that if you go hard enough. And I went to, I was living downtown, and I thought I wanted to train Muayai.

So, you know, something else to challenge myself. And I found city boxing, which I know you're familiar with downtown. And I started training under Dennis Grachev down there. I know. He was five-time world champion and was fighting now as a professional boxer. He had become the NABF light heavyweight champion. Just a great guy. And so started training Muay Thai there.

Didn't really give Jiu-Jitsu any consideration at that point, but really took to the Muay. And about six months after I started training, I asked Dennis if we could spar. How'd that work out? it was going great i mean it was good i i i was training five six days a week you know and and and just really taking to it and you know i was older guy 56 years old but beating up the young guys coming in with testosterone and anger and whatever and just relax it's just you can pick

them apart that way but uh so we get in the ring head gear gloves you know 16 ounce gloves chin pads and it's going pretty well until i kicked Dennis in the head and then when it landed I was like oh shit because his whole me in changed right like he gets that look in his eyes I ran I ran across the ring and I said don't blame me you taught me um from that point on it was like nothing given baby it was just like okay if we're going to to spar, we're going to spar. Yeah, that's not going to be fun. You end up moving to Idaho?

Yeah, in 2020, my son and I at the time weren't getting along well. He wasn't wanting to spend time with me. And it was COVID. My best friend was up there. I had been going up there for a couple of years to fly fish and started hunting up there. And I said, you know what? I talked to my ex-wife and my son, and I said, I'm going to go. I just have to get out of San Diego in California for a while,

and I'm going to head up to Idaho and live up there, and it was great. You know, going down to Park City to ski, Jackson Hole to ski, still going over to Jackson Hole to train Muay at Jackson Hole MMA. and then in summer 22 June of 22 I was down here I would come back every month I was driving back to see my son spent a couple weeks in San Diego and see him and his mom told me that June that he wanted me to come back and so in September 22 I moved back I started working in August of 22 for Semperfying America's Fund as an advisor in the apprenticeship program where we take on members of Semperfying America's Fund who have businesses or hobbies that they really want to get into.

And we help guide them and help them with those hobbies. And sometimes the hobbies become a business or if they have a business that they've started, we help them build and grow that business as well. And now I'm back to helping people again. it gives me a lot of fulfillment. You know, it's not just fulfillment for them, but it gives me and I think my colleagues, a lot of fulfillment to see them succeed and grow

and not just as business people, but as people. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's where, we're, that's the fund.org. Correct. Yeah, the fund.org. Yeah. That's awesome. And so is that when you started training jiu-jitsu?

Yeah. So in, uh, 20, before I went up, I met Chris Lieben. He posted on Instagram, hey, if you're down to train, hit me up. So we trained in his garage. I started training some MMA with Chris, and now I'm 60 years old, right?

Training MMA with Chris Leibin and loved it. I mean, it was great. So he opened up his gym maybe later that year, I think, or the following year. for 22. And so I was in there training with him. And we start doing some light sparring. And I threw an overhand right that almost landed.

And Chris threw a left of the liver. And I went down. And he's like, look, if that's how you're going to play it, this is how it goes. Yes, sir. And I realized at 62, I probably shouldn't get punched and kicked in the head anymore because I didn't want to stroke. out on a mat somewhere. So I started the jiu-jitsu in October of 22 and loved it.

I mean, damn, it was great. I just, I had wrestled some as a kid, you know, in junior high. That was my, actually my first introduction to a Marine was in junior high school. The wrestling coach had been a captain in Vietnam. And he used to put pieces of tape on our lockers when we did well. said we were getting leatherneck points. I didn't know what the fuck a leather neck was. Like, what's he talking about?

Great guy. Just like, you can imagine. He was a Vietnam Marine, right? Just squared away guy, great guy. And so I took to the jiu-jitsu. I really was just doing no-gi for the longest time. Taking private lessons every week from Ivan Herrera over at the training center, who's done who's number one and ADCC you know he's won east coast are the east coast

he won Chicago open I think so um yeah started doing it a lot and then in March of 23 there was a Jiu jitsu World League tournament up in Delmar I said I'm gonna enter you know I'm like I got the bug now Like, I'm really into this. So for Nogi, though, they only did Masters 1 and 2. So I had to go down to like the 40-year-old division to fight. Right on. And during this time, I was training so much, I started losing weight. So I was like 171.

I was going to fight lightweight, like 168 or whatever. But now I'm 162 pounds a week before the tournament. I'm like, fuck, I'm just going to go down and fight featherweight. at 154. Well, that's awesome. So I do a weight cut the week before. And when you're 63 years old, you should not be cutting weight for anything. So I'm talking to my coaches and Chris and I've, and they're like, no, don't do it.

Don't do it, bro. I did it. So I get the sauna suit, right? I'm on the bike, losing weight, doing the water cut. So I'm drinking a gallon of, uh, distilled water every day that's my that's what I'm eating and like a couple ounces of protein and some lettuce that's it for a week so the good thing was you could weigh in the morning of even though I didn't have anything till that evening go there 152 pounds fuck yeah I'm in but I'm

white right I'm an old man cutting weight like I'm 20 years old again and And get in there. First match goes great. I win it. There were only three of us, thank God. I win that one, 12-0-0. Just mount, side control, back in a half-guard, get the escape again, get more points for side-control or mount.

And then got to do the next fight, right? And this kid is strong. He's 40 years old, fast and strong. and I get choked out. I get rear naked choke. But then he fights again, beats the other guy. So now I'm one-on-one. I get silver medal at Jiu-Gitza World League.

You know, three guys, right? Whatever. Hey. You guaranteed something, right? So. Well, second place. The second place. It's a World League.

We'll take it. But I was getting ready to head back up to Idaho in June of that year. And Ivan's like, hey, you got to come to Ghee. tomorrow morning. Okay, I'll show up. I get there late, of course. And so I'm hustling up. He's like, get in your geese and get over here.

So I get all geet up, go over, get in a roll for like one round or something. And I'm like two weeks out of elbow surgery too. And I had signed up to do Jiu-Jitsu Khan last year at the end of August in Las Vegas. There's a white belt. And so we finished class and line up. and he goes and pulls out a blue belt and he promotes my buddy Brian to blue belt. I'm like, yeah, this is awesome. That's why he wanted me here.

So I could see Brian get promoted. This is great. All of a sudden, he goes, pulls out another blue belt. It's like, Jay, come on up. I'm like looking around and see if there's another Jian class. It can't be me, but sure enough, I get promoted to Blue Belt in eight months. So now I've got to sign up for Master Worlds. There's a blue belt, right?

And so I'm spending time just training up in Jackson Hole last summer, doing private lessons with Aiden Collins up there. It's great, great grappler and got some good tips, good lessons, good roles. They've got some hard guys up there. And so we do that. Come back, train for about a week here before Worlds, do the put the final touches on it get ready go over we got nine guys in the division now so it's master seven blue belt it lightweight in worlds and i don't think i shit for three days while i was in

las Vegas i was so nervous i mean my whole goal was don't embarrass your teams just don't do that so another guy and i had a fight compete in an elimination match to get into the main bracket. So I win that. My next match is against the number one seed, the defending pans champion. And I don't know how it is for younger guys, but old guys, when we are waiting to go on the mat, we start talking, right? It's just like, yeah, how many kids you got? What do you do?

You know, this guy's a physician from Atlanta. He's a pathologist, teaches at Emory Medical School. And he goes, so how long have you been training? Do I tell him? What do I say? I could tell him the truth. I said, 10 months. He's like, oh, okay, cool.

Yeah, I go, I still think I'm a white belt. That's why I consider myself. So we get out there, match starts. He goes for a really weak takedown. So I just sprawled, took his back, body triangle, stayed that way the whole time, ended up winning 6-0. You know, I was going for subs. but I still didn't know shit.

I still don't know shit. And we get up after the match, hug it out, and he goes, you're a blue belt. That's like, cool. Right on. What did you get overall? I got silver last year. Yeah, the guy that beat me in the finals got promoted a few months later to Purple Belt. So, you know, jiu-jitsu is amazing.

It's a community. And being on the team over under Barrett. Yoshida who you know well it's it's a real fight team over there I think and but it's a community the whole jiu jitsu thing is a community like when I did that first tournament at jiu jutsu world league I didn't have any coaches I'm just up there by myself a buddy and his wife came to watch and my second match, the one where I got subbed, some guy I didn't even know a coach, went and sat on the chair in my corner and coached me.

I mean, that's just the kind of fellowship and community that you have in Jiu-Jitsu. Everybody is so nice. I mean, I'm friends with the guys I've competed with in finals. You know, we stay in touch. And it's just a great thing. I mean, yeah, I, you know, I've gone down in IBJF to Masters 4 to compete at Orange County last year. I got silver again and was getting ready for Nogi Worlds in December.

I was rolling with a big, big black belt and trying to escape half guard from the top. And he rolled away from me and tore the MCL, PCL and a meniscus in my right knee. So that put me out for about 10 weeks, but yeah. Yeah, that doesn't sound like fun. No, I don't know. Right on. Well, yes, we definitely support jiu-jitsu around here. Yes.

There's no more about that. Yeah. So does that get us up to speed? Yeah, I think so. You know, since then I've had the opportunity, a mutual friend of ours introduced me to, psychedelic assisted therapy. Oh, okay.

For veterans with PTSD and TBI. And I got to go do that back in March with the mission within. And go down to Mexico. I didn't want to set any expectations about it because I just wanted to happen organically. Mm-hmm. I had a great experience. In fact, I'm now involved with the Mission Within Foundation. I'm on their board raising money to get other veterans down there.

Recently raised a million dollars for Marines only. My friends who donate, that's what they donate to is Marines and dogs. And it's really important. I've spoken with our mutual friend about this, and we agree that had this therapy been available to us, we'd have been better operators because it makes you clear. You become really clear after this. It's not a magic pill or a panacea.

You've got to put in the work afterward. But since I did it, my ex-wife said she even noticed a difference in my son's behavior and his attitude. I approach everything differently. Now I see the world through a different lens. I'm sober. I don't drink. I used to need THC gummies to sleep at night. Nothing.

You know, it's, it's been a huge benefit. Do breath work, meditation. Yeah, it's just really fantastic. It can completely be life-changing, I think. At least it has been for me, and hopefully others will get this treatment as well if they're open to it. I know it's not for everybody. I know it's definitely not going to be your jam. I've heard you mention that before.

Yeah, well, I don't think I really would need, I don't think I need to go to that extent of anything. No, I think, Jocco, I think that. I think Jiu Jitsu and surfing and guitar. Jiu Jitsu for sure. I mean, you know, people think they think it's just a physical workout. but it's not. It's,

it's definitely emotional, spiritual. I mean, Echo gets quite emotional. About your emotional right now? Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

And going back to the community thing, it's like the first time I've really felt like I was back in the Marine Corps as being part of that team. Yeah. You know, it's, jiu jitzy is awesome for sure. And,

and, you know, I've definitely known some people that have had a really good experiences with the, the psychedelic type treatments and all that. So I, you know, I was trying to keep an open mind about everything. So if it's helping people out, right on, you know. I've also heard some people that I've had some not good experiences.

Sure. So I think it's definitely something that needs to be approached very, very cautiously. But then getting, that's just an opinion from me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know that much about it. Definitely have had people that have, it's helped them a ton. So, you know, if someone's at a point where they feel like they've, because, you know, I always think like, well, were you doing jih Tutsu before?

Were you working out? Were you eating clean? Were you getting the right sleep? You could do all that stuff. Were you taking ownership of what's going on in your life? Because if you're sitting around blaming a bunch of other things, you're going to have a hard time resolving those things. If you don't say, yeah, you know what? It's probably my fault that I treated my spouse this way or treated my kid this way or treated my friends this way or whatever.

If you don't, if you're not able to say that, well, then, you know, maybe you need some help getting there. So, yeah, no, I'm glad it's, I'm glad it's helped you out. And it's definitely, like I said, it's helped out some friends of mine. So where can people find you right now? So you got the fun.org. I know you're on Instagram at J underscore Copelman underscore USA. And Copelman is K-O-P-E-L-M-A. And then you're on Facebook, of course, at Jay at J-Colpomen.

Is there anything else we can do to find you? What do you do to find you? Mission within.org. Okay. Yep. If you're a Marine or any service member that is interested in this, you can reach out to me for sure via social media. I'm available. But yeah, that pretty much covers it.

Yep. Awesome, man. Good. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Just real quick. Back to the psychedelic experience. You said it made things clear, like what's clear? Yeah.

Well, what's interesting is with Ibogaine, it has the. these neuroplasticity properties. Oh, that's the one you did. Yeah, so we did Ibegain and 5MEO DMT. And it's it makes it, it's kind of like taking your hard drive and wiping it. So you get a kind of a reset in your brain. And the easiest way I can say it is that with jiu-jitsu, as you know, learning new techniques is very difficult, especially, you know,

if you've had any kind of a brain injury or something, it makes it tough. I think Echoes definitely can relate to that. Okay. All right, cool. But it's, I have an easier time picking up new techniques now. Like food tastes better for some reason. I look at the sky. It's more brilliant blue.

And maybe it's just a new appreciation for life that I have in general. But certainly, yeah, it, even, helps your moral clarity, I feel. Yeah. It's almost like, because I know a lot of people who did not, I begin, but other stuff, but when they talk about the reset or clarity or whatever, it's almost like the, you're almost like, you go through life distracted by your preconceived notions that are like, can be inaccurate or more negative than they should be. You know, so you know, you talk about, um, you can appreciate things more or you feel like you can appreciate things more. And it seems to make sense if you're seeing something to, experiencing something without the burden of some negative thought that's just running in the back of your mind the whole time, you know? So it's like the appreciation kind of moves to the front, you know, with everything that kind of you go through. Yeah, well, I try to look at everything a little more positively now. I take things slower. I, you know, I'm a lot calmer than I was before. I feel more at ease about things.

The way I approach things with my son is completely different. Rather than telling him what's going to be, I'll talk to him about things. And, you know, I didn't necessarily have that role model growing up. So we tend to just kind of carry on what we're modeled as kids. And, you know, they say that PTSD is intensified if you had any kind of childhood. trauma. I believe that's true. I know it was in my case. And so I think that it's just helped me, you know, look at other people, you know, and have a different appreciation for understanding that somebody could be having a really bad day and that's why they're behaving the way they are.

And you try to give them some grace, you know, that's really all we can do is try to give each other a little grace and understanding and it just it really makes things easier. Yes, sir. Good to meet you. Anything else? Echo Charles.

That's it. Jayney. The jujuts. Yeah. Janie, any final thoughts? I just want to say thank you very much for having me here today. It's been great.

Made this very easy for me. I appreciate it. And hopefully get to do some roles here one of these days. Right on, man. Well, that's what we do. Thanks for joining us, man.

Definitely appreciate hearing your story and your lessons learned and most important. Thanks for your service in the Navy and in the Marine Corps. And thanks for holding your word and taking care of that dog and your boys. Semper five, bro. Thank you. Semper five.

And with that, Jay Copelman has left the building. And clearly some good lessons to learn. and I think one of the lessons is you're there's a really good chance that you're not going to have a perfect path in life things are definitely going to go wrong and being able to you know I talk about this with Dave Burke good deal with yes that that Dave Burke the amount of wickets that you have to get through to be an F-18 fighter pilot in the Navy or in the Marine Corps it is like extreme wickets and some of them you don't have a lot of control over meaning sometimes you'll get done with flight school and you graduated number three but there's only two fighter bill it's open and there's just that's just the way it is yeah and yet that's it's that's the course of your life has totally changed not to mention the fact that you had to be number you so you would have

had to be number one number two to actually get to jets And that's a wicket you got to jump through. By the way, you gotta get to get a, what if you're born your eyesight's not good? What if you got some weird heart murmur? What if you got some strange like blood disease, that everything's normal but you still can't be? There's so many things that have to be right.

And the SEAL teams is similar, not. Dave Burke and I have had this discussion. He'll try and be a little bit humble and say, no, you know, it's, you know, but the SEAL teams, the WIC and tickets are a little wider, you know. There's just more room. There's, you think about, I don't know how many, I don't know how many F-18 pilots there are in the Marine Corps or how many F-18 pilots

there are in the Navy right now, but it's not a big number. It's not a big number. So situation here, you know, you get, you're going to go through life. You're going to maybe not get exactly what you want. Let's see what we can do. Let's take that and run with it. So that's what we're going to do. we're doing trying to make the best out of the situation we're in take ownership of it move on uh one thing

that's going to help us across the board is being in good physical condition you know you're going to be more mentally prepared for whatever if you're physically prepared okay can you imagine you're going through a stressful scenario and you feel tired or winded or whatever it's not going to help you way worse it's way worse so we're working out if we're working out that means we need to get that clean fuel going. So check out joccofuel.com. If you want to get a, what is it, an audio message, I send an audio message, the team at JoccoFuel set this up. And what you do is you text JoccoFuel to 246, 7, 2, and then I'll send you like a voicemail. It's pretty like Mondays. I dig it. Yeah. Yeah. They're short. They're less than 20 seconds long. Yeah. So anyways,

JoccoFuel.com, check it out. We got protein. We got energy drinks. We got hydration, which is going Richter right now. That makes sense. Yeah. It's so, taste delicious. It's got the best freaking ingredients in it.

Clean fuel, clean, natural sweeteners. Awesome, complex of electrolytes, the perfect electrolytes. So check that out. Also, energy drink. Don't get a junk energy drink, which is what energy drinks are. There's only one good one. Let's go. Get yourself one that's good.

Cross the board. 100%. No downside. There's not any other energy drinks that can say, yeah, no downside. There's not. They don't exist. So here we are. So check it out, jacofuel.com.

Get what you need to stay on the path physically. You can get it at joccofuel.com. You can check Wawa, vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries, A-fees, Hannaford, dash stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, H.E.B. down in Texas is crushing. So everyone in Texas, I'd like to say a big howdy to y'all for getting into that H.E.B. and getting it done. Same thing with Meyer up in the Midwest.

I don't know what you say up in Meyer in the Midwest, but I'd like to say thanks for getting in there and getting after it. Wegmans out on the East Coast, same thing. I don't know what our terminology is for crushing it at Wegmans. I think it's a don't you know Don't you know Midwest right don't you know

Maybe no it's more like this is like more like how you doing country Okay like oh I went in the Wegmans and got some I got some moch how you doing So check that out Harris Teeter lifetime fitness shields Crushing in shields as well Crushing in Lifetime Fitness Mulk is selling in Lifetime Fitness

Just just flying off the shelves So that's what we're making the good stuff. You're drinking the good stuff. Thank you. Small gyms everywhere. Jiu-Jitsu CrossFit. We're getting in there. Email JF Sales at joccofuel.com if you want to get this good fuel into your world.

And you know what? I'll say this. Go read the ingredients. Let's go read the ingredients on what we put in these drinks and in these supplements. They're awesome. That's what we got. Check it out. Joccofuel.com.

It's true. Origin news say. Mm-hmm. American made. So we're doing Jiu-Jitsu as well We are 100% That's good for you physically and mentally As you did note earlier

I could have went down a whole rabbit hole I didn't But I could have Praise The whole thing But it's true It washes away your stress As you know Actually Jason Kalipa went

Kind of on this as well Where you know I think it was Yeah I think I called it a stress You have a stress patch From stuff That you get throughout the day Right

You get through stress, you get, you know, disagreement, whatever. It says it causes the stress patch. You talk, I get stress. Exactly right. So you go to Jiu-Jitsu, the stress patches get washed away. Unless, you're going to need a ghee if you're training Jiu-J-J-Too. Go to Origin USA.com. This is where you can get your ghee.

Chris Ruiz. He was still texting with him the other day. He was like, hey, my love for J-Jitsu got rejuvenated for all these reasons. I'm getting a ghee, which one do you recommend? He's on origin. Yeah. On the website or whatever. I recommend the rift.

Are they still doing the rift? Yes. Guy. Yeah. That's the one I recommend it. So nonetheless, you need a ghee. You also got rash guards. You also got stuff outside of Jiu-Jitsu jeans, boots.

Let's go. All made in America, by the way. We're all about that American-made thing, right? We don't want to let our jobs and our manufacturing capability and our dollars go overseas. I want to keep them here in the United States of America. So check out origin, USA.com and get some non-com. communist gear that you can wear. Might as well be putting a big giant American flag on your shoulders when you put on a

pair of American made jeans, boots, t-shirt, whatever. We got you. Origin USA.com. Check it out. Also, we got a law enforcement, first responders, military jiu-jitsu camp, August 27th through the 31st up in Maine. Go and check it out. We'll see you there. It's going to be awesome.

It's true. Jocko store called Jocko store. Discipline equals freedom. Good. All these things. When you want to represent these notions where you can get your stuff. Also, what we call now the shirt locker.

Subscription scenario, new design every month, shirts. Last one landed pretty well. I mean, from the feedback I've seen. Yeah. Okay.

That's the back to the book one. Back to the book. Actually, technically now today, as of today, the technically last one. no this one so whatever is thinking strategically all the time that's a good one as well back to the book was good too yeah you know um but yeah new design uh every month subscription scenario it's called the shirt locker

that also is on jocco store.com so yeah go ahead check that out uh on that page on that specific page short locker page you can see kind of past design see kind of what what the whole deal is so yeah you like something get something yeah going deep into the into the roots on that Of course. Of course. The first 139 episodes, you said, if you like something, get something. I still maintain it back. Yeah, I maintain it back.

Good job. Hey, speaking of if you like something, get something. If you like steak, go get some steak from primalbeef.com or Colorado Craftbeef.com. Awesome steak from awesome people delivered to your door, ready to be thrown into or onto the grill, cooked and eaten. So check them out. Colorado Craftbeef.com or Primalbeef.com. or primalbeef.com and get yourself some steak. Also, subscribe to the podcast.

Also, we have Jocko Underground. Subscribe to that. Check it out. We're about to record one right now. Also, YouTube. We're on there. Psychological Warfare. Flipsidecanvas.com.

Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books, the one we covered today from Baghdad with love by Jay Copelman. Also, I've written a bunch of books. You can check those out as well, especially the kids' books. Check out the kids' books. Get the kids' books. Get them hype for the movie way of the Warrior Kid and starting filming soon and it's going to be an epic movie But it will be there's layers in it by the way. Yeah, you probably could have guessed that

Yeah, significant layers. Yeah, there's actually some significant layers in this whole thing. Oh, yeah. It's it's it's powerful So be ready for that also Extreme Ownership dichotomy of leadership leadership strategy and tactics. I've written a bunch of books about leadership and I have a leadership consultant We solve problems through leadership. It is at echelonfront.com. If you need help with anything in your life, the solution that you need is leadership. So go to echelonfront.com if you need leadership inside your organization.

Or if you want to train leadership, which will help you in every aspect of your life, we have an online training option. It's extreme ownership.com. Go and check that out. Learn how to lead yourself and your team and your family. and your company and your community properly. And if you want to help service members active or retired,

you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah Fink, Heroes and Horses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization,

beyond the brotherhood. all awesome ways to help out our veterans and if you want to connect with us j coleman is on instagram j underscore copelman underscore u s a he's on facebook at jay copelman and don't forget about the semperify and america's fund go to the fund dot org they do a lot of great work there and for us i'm at jocco dot com i'm on social media that goes on social media Echo's at Echo Charles I'm at Jocko Willink Just watch out for the

The algorithm Oh also what about the app The Deaf reset app Your brother has been building it Yeah it looks good Are you in it? Yeah of course I haven't seen you posting in the morning

Well you know I haven't posted in the morning But I'm in there for sure Okay Maybe you should get in there And comment a little bit more So we can get visibility on you Maybe I will

about that okay the app has a good sense of humor it's almost like it's kind of part of the crew yeah so it talks smack to you yeah so if you want to get in that get in that uh it's on it's available right now on the apple store yeah yeah there's like what would you know i don't know all the terms but there's like a soft launch yeah so i don't think i'm supposed to be saying it right now but it's there yeah it's in there for sure and you can to go download it and you can just because today i i logged in this morning and I was like, hey, up before the enemy, click. And the thing is, if you, when you click up before the enemy, it traps your time.

So whatever time you got up, it says it. Yeah. So if you're late and you say like, oh, I, let's say you forgot to do it. Or you didn't get up, straight up. And at 7.48, you click up. It says, oh, the following people beat you. Nice try. Yeah.

Do we want everything to be a competition? No, we don't. Do we want to have fun? Yes, we do. So that's what we're doing. Check out the app. You can get at the Apple App Store. And thanks once again to Jay for joining us.

And thanks for your service in the Navy and the Marine Corps. And thanks to all our military members around the world. There's evil out there. There's darkness. There's tyranny. There's extremists. And you are military. Put yourselves in harm's way to protect us from those threats.

And we thank you for that. Also, thanks to our police law enforcement. firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. You put yourselves into harm's way in order to protect us here at home. And we thank you for that. And everyone else out there, listen, we get one run at this game. One run.

That's what you get. There's no restart. There's no do-overs. This is what you get. So don't waste it. Get in the game, stay in the game, run up the score, don't give up any points. Be loyal to your team. Be loyal to your friends.

And yes, be loyal to your dogs. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.