Jocko Podcast - 452: Ramadi Declassified with Col. Tony Deane

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

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This is Jocko podcast number 452 with Kerry Helton and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Kerry. Good evening. As a rule of thumb, when the battalion commander is firing his personal weapon, things are going badly. Things were generally bad all across Iraq, especially in Iraq's Anbar province, particularly in the city of Ramadi, and specifically at entry control point three, where at this moment, all hell had broken loose. Intense, if inaccurate machine gun and AK-47 fire spattered the ground around us. From open turrets atop each vehicle, our gunners searched for the enemy across the canal. Looking out my passenger side window, I saw half a dozen small fires burning in the field outside the Iraqi position

with smoke billowing above the concrete walls. The blast burned a 10-foot scorch mark into the concrete near the entrance, marking the site of the explosion. The only evidence of the suicide bomber's truck was the rear-act. Axel and a couple of smoking pieces of blackened, twisted steel, now resting 10 yards out in the desert. The gunner on my truck yelled down, There are guys with guns across the canal shooting at us. What should I do? I grimaced, trying to remind myself that this, after all, was our first firefight. It seemed that all the training in Germany and in Kuwait on the rules of engagement just confuse the soldiers.

Shoot back, I told him. Okay, he replied. He was a good kid, but I decided right then and there that I was getting a new gunner as soon as we got back to camp. I turned to Sergeant First Class Roberts wedged helplessly in the backseat, unable to influence the whole, the battle. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to have an aneurysm. I got it. Roberts assured me without me saying a word, I got it. Moments later, the M240 machine gun atop the Humvee erupted in a soothing hum.

In the next moment, the gunners on all three vehicles blazed away, laying. a furious barrage of suppressive fire on the terrorists across the canal. I keyed the handset of the FM radio to report the situation to the talk located on Camp Ramadi and to direct the relief effort. Conquer a Maine. Conquer six, I called. No answer. Conqueror Maine.

Conquer six. Over. I barked to the handset. Nothing. I could hear the talk transmitting across the radio net, but they could not hear me. King the handset on my radio, on my second radio turned to our internal pletral patrol frequency. I called no more than 30 feet to Captain Lancon, instructing him to take charge here and getting contact with the talk while I assessed the damage inside the ECP. I yelled back

to Roberts. You got this? Roberts nodded in agreement. Relieved he could finally get into the fight. I jumped out of the Humvee and sprinted 20 yards into the Iraqi position, passing the charred corpses of two Iraqi centuries. I needed to assess the extent of the damage while ignoring the thick stinging smoke. Chief Warren officer Jason Forgash, the advisor's team intelligence officer, met me at the entry. Forgash had spent the past frantic minutes trying to rally the Iraqis to defend the position, literally pulling them by the collar and pushing them into fighting positions before the terrorists overran the checkpoint. Judging from the look on his face, I'm certain that Forgash was both glad to see me and surprised that the first help to arrive

turned out to be the task force commander. Chief, what do you got? I asked. Despite mortar rounds knocking him to the ground minutes before in the initial attack, he replied with a concise, detailed report of a professional intelligence officer. Sir, it was a complex attack. They hit us with mortars and small arms fire from the north and from across the canal.

When they got everyone's heads down, they drove a big-ass dump truck into the gate. It was probably aQ. The T-walls held, but the blast was next to the Iraqi officers huge. They're both dead along with the two burned up guys you passed on the way in. The fireball jumped the wall and caught the camo nets on fire and the Iraqi soldiers went to pieces. The command post and all my vehicles are burning inside, so I got no comms.

We need to get the hell out of the checkpoint and establish a perimeter until we can get more help and put out the fire. Your two guys, Reinhardt and Garza, are hit, but they're going to be all right. A couple of Iraqis are wounded as well, but they'll be all right too. In Ramadi, all right meant the wounded had all of their limbs and were not going to die right then. For the moment, my assessment was that we were outgunned, caught in the crossfire of a complex attack next to a burning Iraqi checkpoint and in need evacuation for the U.S. and Iraqi wounded. Frankly, if I had encountered a scenario like this during our trainup in Germany, I would have complained that it was simply unrealistic. It was a worst-case scenario that had a certain Kobayashi-Maru feel to it. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Ramadi Declassified,

A Roadmap to Peace in the Most Dangerous City in Iraq, written by Colonel Anthony E. Dean, who was the commander of the 1st Battalion 35th Armor called Task Force Conqueror in the Battle of Ramadi. and the battalion, along with the entire Ready First Brigade, had been thrown into a situation that too many appeared to be a Kobayashi Maru scenario. And if you aren't familiar with that term, it comes from the show Star Trek. And it's a fictional training scenario that the cadets are put into,

and it's a situation that they cannot win, but they're trying to figure out and trying to see how these cadets react. So they put them into a no-win scenario. And that's what that references to. And many people actually saw Ramadi at this time as a lose-lose scenario. That there was no way to win. But the ready first did not see it that way. But it was going to take a heroic effort and heroic actions to accomplish this mission.

And Colonel Dean and his troops played an instrumental role in achieving victory in the city of of Ramadi and it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Colonel Dean, Tony, thank you for joining us. Hey, Jocko, thanks for having me on. It's great seeing you. Yeah, the Star Trek reference, the no-win situation. Yeah, you know, when we got there, it's funny because, you know, I was in Desert Storm. So it's like, oh, I've been to combat. I know what's going on. And then we got there, it's like, holy crap. And then, and then, And things just, I mean, that was, that was, we hadn't even taken over. That was, that was still, we were still during RIP.

And it just, every day, it was like, wow. Yeah, you guys had a, you guys had a really hard opening, opening stanza going into RMADI. It was rough to watch. I had been there for like, maybe a month at that point. So before we get into the Radi, let's, let's get a little bit of your background. So people understand who you are. So you're born, what, 1960s? I was born 63, you know, born Omaha, Nebraska.

Youngest of five, my dad was a chief in the Navy. World War II, right? World War II vet, yeah. He was actually on the Missouri when the Japanese surrendered. So, yeah, so he moved to Omaha because I had an aunt that lived there that helped raised him. And he couldn't get out of Nebraska. enough. But, you know, five kids, you know, he wanted to be by the sea. He was a sailor at heart.

And you were born after he retired. Yeah, after he retired. He hurt his back. And then he ended up getting put out of the Navy, retired, medically retired. And then he was working. I think he was a mailman when, you know, ended up working for the state the rest of his life. But we lived downtown for a while. And then we moved out to the suburbs, the town called La Vista, went to Pavilion La Vista High, and it was kind of a deal with childhood. You know, we, you know, played sports all day.

What sports were you playing? You know, just pickup games as a kid, you know, back when kids used to play pickup games, you know. And, you know, we play, we live in an apartment complex, right? So pick up football in the morning, and then the afternoon, when it got hot, you play baseball.

Then when it got too hot, there was a pool. at the apartment, and then they had a lighted basketball court. So, you know, it was... So you were all day? You were all day, you know, the kind of, you know, Gen X trialhood of don't come back. So, went to school, you know, played, I played baseball, and I loved baseball, but I was

terrible, you know, I just, I couldn't hit. And then, you know, I could catch, I could field, I could run, but arm was never there, neither was a bat. And then I ran track in high school, and I was pretty fast, went to North-Oce Missouri State. I was going to run there, and then it was just too hard. So I ended up transfer into Nebraska after my... So you went from the, you were a big fish in a little pond, and then you became a little fish in a big pond? Yeah, and I wasn't even, I was a medium-sized fish in a little pond. You know, self-confidence has never been my shortcoming. So it's like, I'm plenty fast.

I'm like, well, that's not what the stopwatch says. So, yeah, so I did that. And, you know, really, I deal with childhood. You know, couldn't, you know, the words didn't apply himself, got used quite a bit, especially in academics. But, you know, I kind of slid through with bees and, you know, did all right. And, you know, life was good. So you end up at University of Nebraska.

That's where you eventually graduate from. But when you're in there, that's when you join. in the Army for the first time, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm going to pay for my own college. You know, I kind of had it with my mom. And that worked real good because, you know, my dad passed away when I was in junior high. And so, you know, you got Social Security checks.

But then those kind of stopped when you were 18. Reagan put an end to that. And so it's like that kind of shot my plan. So I was broke. And I had to, you know, I wanted to get through college. and so I enlisted in the reserves, which, you know, my dad always wanted us to, you know, he'd always tell me and my brother, it's like, you're going to, you know, you're both going to go to the Naval Academy, which, you know, at 18, that thought never entered my brain, you know what I mean?

So it's like, I'm not going to join the military, but I got there and kind of ran out of money, so I ended up and listening. And, you know, all these people have these great stories of like one to do. join something bigger and whatever. It's like, no, I was broke. You just wanted the money. I was broke. They paid half your tuition and, you know, he got a couple hundred bucks. So do you go to boot camp like that summer? Oh, yeah. So I went down the recruiter and I didn't want to miss any school. So I said, what is the MOS that I'm not going to miss any school? And they said, cavalry scout. I said, so I, sign me up. I finished,

I finished classes on Friday, shipped out for base training AIT on Tuesday. you know, got back on a Thursday, he started classes on Monday. Calvary Scott's pretty cool because you, you know, you're outside all the time, you're firing machine guns, you know, you get a shoot. It's a pretty cool job. So I did that. I, you know, again, didn't apply himself. So, you know, I wasn't on a grad, but, you know, it was up near the top.

So, you know, flying back, there was this guy on my dorm floor, this guy named Terry Jones who I didn't really know that well. But he didn't even know that we were in the same basic training class until he, you know. got there. We're flying back and we're drinking these, you know, the little airplane bottles. We're like, I can be an officer. Yeah, me too. So end up, you know, I got there and I ended up joining ROTC. And I mean, it was, again, didn't apply myself. So I was kind of a mediocre cadet. And that's through the ROTC program. You're a mediocre cadet. Strong mediocre cadet. Well, you know, actually, and I was just going to stay in the reserves, you know,

know, you know, he could pay it a little bit more. And so as officer, so I remember going to, like, almost my, I was ready to graduate, and I went to one of the majors, and I was like, you know, I think about going on active duty. And he gets up and he shuts the door. And he's like, yeah, you know, I'm glad you want to serve your country, but there's really no place in the Army for you. I'm like, oh, thank you. So, so I.

At least he closed the door. At least he wanted to keep it, you know, keep it just between you. too. Yeah. Yeah. So my senior year, I was still like cadets second lieutenant. They didn't see much professional. You know, most people are like, you know, battalion matter. So I'm like cadet's second lieutenant, you know, and we're having this family day. And the guy who was in charge of it, you know, the squared away cadet, he ended up got appendicitis or something. So it kind of fell on me. And so it worked out pretty good. I knew the kids who were in the simultaneous membership program that are in the reserves and in ROTC. I'm like one guy was in a helicopter company, one guy was in a

transportation company, one guy was in tank company. So hey, get your vehicles. And so we put them out there. We figured out some cookies and stuff. So the battalion commander calls me in afterwards. It was a big success. And he calls me in. And a guy had like nine purple hearts from Vietnam, this guy Bob Snyder. He's like, you know, Dean, you're not half the dumbass I thought you were. It's like, validation. We're tracking in the right direction. Yeah, I'm trending up now. So, yeah, so I went to, you know, so it's like, okay, I'm going to graduate,

going to go to the base course. I go look to graduate and I'm like, I'm graduating in May, right? And I'm like, no, no, no, you're not even close. So I end up like taking 22 hours of summer school because, you know, I mean, back then you could get commissioned without a college degree. And it's like, no, no, I didn't get this done. So graduated college in August and then shipped off for the basic course. And then at the base course, I was up near the top of the class.

And I got accepted to go on active duty. And what year was that? So what year did you get commissioned? I got commissioned in 1985. And then from there you went to the basic course and performing well in that, you got active duty. Yeah. And in the 80s, it's harder to get active duty because it's downsizing and all that stuff. Yeah.

Well, the 80s wasn't downsizing. No, the Cold War was still on. Oh, okay. So they needed you. They didn't think so at the time when I commissioned, but later on they kind of, they had a hole, so they had to fill it with somebody. So they, like the top reservists and the top National Guard guy could go on active duty if they applied. So where did you get stationed first? So first station was in Burbank, Germany, and this is the Hyde the Cold War.

So this is, you know, I got there, I got there the 1st of April, 1986. And so it was just after we bombed Libya. Okay. So, you know, everything was on edge. We were patrolling the housing area, you know, with armed guards because, you know, the bombing of Libya actually came from the nightclub bombing. things were pretty tense. And if you, you know, think back to that time, I mean, oh, we're going to get, you know, Reagan's going to get us in a war. So, I mean, we were

uploaded. You know, you had tanks, the tanks had the rounds in them, the main gun rounds in, you know, two hours to roll out. You know, they call them an alert once or twice a month, and you had to roll out the gate in two hours. There's four cell phones or anything else. So, you know, it was a very, very kind of tense time. I mean, I think people were kind of on edge. I mean, you know, the nuclear threat was pretty real back then. Yeah, it definitely was. That was in Berberligan?

In Berbergen, yeah, just outside of Stuttgart. Like Panzer-Cussern? Yeah, was at Panzer-Cracurne? I was at Panzer-Cracurne for a while, too. They ended up putting a naval special warfare unit there. And so I was at Panzer-Cocern for a little deployment. Pretty awesome place. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. And it was great. I mean, you know, we were keeping an eye on the French more than the inter-German border, but, you know, we had a plan. We were going to roll out. We'd be there, and, you know, like, you know, D plus one, we were supposed to be there and, you know, backstop the, you know, the guys that were actually up on the fold of gap. And, you know, it was a really cool assignment because you could, you know, back then you could drive on the economy.

So we'd take our tanks out like one week during a month. That was kind of the rule. And you'd go out and train on the countryside. So, you know, you'd pull into some farmer's field at night and set up a, you know, set up a defensive position and, you know, get up in the morning and, you know, go in a little grocery store and get, you know, brochins and ham and stuff. So it was pretty cool assignment, actually. Tank camping. Yeah, I mean, you could drive down the Audubon. I mean, it was, it was funny because

then, you know, you flash forward to when I was a battalion commander in, you know, in 2005, and it's like, oh, you need a noise abatement. You can't fire after 8 o'clock at night. and it's like, hey, I was singing a different tune when the wall was up now. Yeah, they were. During that time, you also, I guess you made a trip, and this is in the book, you made a trip to Spain, a little U.S. O trip. And when you're in Spain, you meet an Italian. Yeah. And that ends up being your wife, Deborah.

Yeah. And that was a pretty, sounds like you made a pretty aggressive actions there to make that happen, because you got married within what, a year? Yeah, just over a year. And I think we probably only seen each other face-to-face like 30 days in that, you know, 15 months. And so, you know, and back then, I don't know when you were in Germany, but the German phones used to have like a meter on them. And long-distance phone calls used to be crazy. I mean, for the younger audience, you don't know how much a lot, especially in Europe.

And like, you sit there and the thing was dripping like a fan. I used to, my wife was also, we were a long-distance relationship and I would be calling her. And it was, it was crazy. You could spend like $400, $500 if you weren't careful. And when you're, well, for me, I was a young, you know, E-4 in the SEAL teams. That was a lot of money to be blowing. I'd be like, listen, darling, I do care about you, but I'm hanging up right now. So I can pay my rent.

Yeah. Yeah. So we were there. And, you know, just like I said, self-confidence, you know, my weak suit. So, and back then you had to have the battalion commander sign off if you were marrying a foreign national. And so I went to, Colonel's like, hey, you know, Colonel Sutherland, who's a great commander? And he's like, he's sure about this? It's like, no, no, I'm sure, I'm sure.

It's like, no, no, you know. 30, 36 years later, it worked out, you know. But yeah, so yeah, we got married. And, you know, again, I was never going to make it a career. So I was going to get out of my first tour, but, you know, not married. So I said, okay, let me go, you know, we'll do one more tour because it's just kind of hard to get out. Because we got married in November and we were, PCS and, you know, my three years was up in March. So in four months, a little hard to make a plan.

So we'll go to, you know, we'll go to the advanced course. and we'll do one more tour. You know, kind of, you know, everyone's dreams kind of be a company commander when you're a lieutenant, right? You know, some guys are like, I want to be a general. So you don't really trust those dudes.

But, you know, company commander is pretty cool. You know, I mean, that's a cool job. Yeah. In the SEAL teams, people just want to be a platoon commander. Yeah. You know, and you're right. And I've always, I used to explain this to the young SEAL officers.

I'm like, I know all you guys want to be a SEAL platoon commander, and you haven't thought about anything beyond that. In the Army, you do get people that they want to join. They want to be a battalion commander. they want to be a brigade commander. There's, I can, I can venture to guess there's a handful of guys that join the SEAL teams that their goal is to be an admiral. Like, very few.

Most guys are like, I want to be a platoon commander. And that's it. That's the climax. And we did extend it a little bit to once we, once we kind of reformulated the way we deployed so that the guy would take two platoons and have two, that's what I was. So when I was, I was a task unit commander, what we used to call task unit commander. Now we called a troop commander. But I had two platoons underneath me, which extended.

ended that kind of operational and made that a good job as well. Yeah. But for a long time, when I joined in the full 90s, after a platoon commander for a seal officer, it was just, it wasn't a very happy slum shoulders. Yeah, they were bummed out. Yeah. So, yeah, it's interesting that you had that attitude. All right, well, at least do a company command and then move on.

Yeah. So where did you get stationed next? Well, then I end up at Fort Stewart, Georgia. and then Desert Storm broke up. And so... And you had your first daughter, by the way. My first daughter, yeah. So Allison was born in April.

And then in August, it's when the 24th took off, right? So it was kind of funny. I answered the phone on my battalion, and they called an alert. And it was like at 6 o'clock at night. It's like, no, no, no, no. Alerts are always at 6 o'clock in the morning.

morning, you know, so they can be evaluating stuff. And they're like Larry Advance. I was a man, still at work. I'm like, what do you mean Larry Van? You know, and you saw the stuff on TV about Kuwait and, you know, let's have a world of, you know, no one cares about Kuwait. And so, and actually, because our, you know, back then, our planning was kind of for Iran, you know what I mean? And, you know, people didn't even, you know, really know where Iraq was. It was a place next around, right? So we get called, and then they call back like 20 minutes later. It's like, oh, you know, don't, you know, never mind, a little Emily Lutela there, right? You know, never mind, don't worry about it. The next morning we got alerted. And back then, the deployment

procedure, everything, I mean, they were kind of, you know, tabletop drill, but no one ever did it. So we ended up putting our stuff on a boat. And we were, you know, the 24th was the first heavy unit into Saudi Arabia. And there was nothing there. I mean, we pulled in the port. There was nothing there. I mean, we were living under just like Desert Change, you know, like under 10 buildings and it was just hotter than

hotter than the devil. And so we got there. We got our stuff off the boat. And I mean, they didn't have MREs. That was one thing. So, General McCaffrey, who I got all respect in the world for, John McAfry, they were giving us these hot dog buns that had, they said it what, you know, General McAfri, that's not Camel Pate, it's like, it was Camel Pate.

And you get that and a mango and a thing of mango juice. And it's like, for like two weeks. It's like, oh, man, then finally the MREs came, you know, it was like VJ Day, you know, guys, kissing girls walking out of the street. You know, if you're excited for MREs, you've been in some rough, you've been eating some nasty stuff. So we got there and we went out and we went out the desert. You know, he was absolutely right. He's like, hey, we got out of these cities. We can't be any place built up because, you know, we were the only heavy unit and we were still trying to get organized and, you know, they put the

80 second up on the, up on the berm there, but there wasn't a whole lot, you know, had Saddam decided to keep going. So everyone's on edge. So then, you know, more and more units started coming and then, you know, you kind of got locked into into what you were doing. And so from August, you know, September, all through the fall up until January, we were just kind of in an assembly area. Yeah.

Move north finally. But yeah. Yeah, you talk about it in the book and you go through kind of basically saying you weren't the, you guys weren't training as much as when you looked back on it. And you say this, at dawn on 17 January, 1991,

I was sleeping on a stretcher in the cargo compartment of my humbeat. Humvee when Staff Sergeant Cecil Gaskins woke me up exclaiming the war started. I looked up from under the tarp to see a grayish sky filled with the contrails of planes heading back after the night's bombing missions in Iraq. The air campaign targeting Saddam's Air Force, air defenses, and strategic targets in Iraq and Kuwait had commenced. The punishment from the sky continued for five weeks until 24th February when the coalition

forces launched the ground assault to liberate Kuwait. during the previous five months, our battalion had wasted away its potential training time. On the second day of the attack, as part of the 24th Infantry's famous left hook, our battalion was ordered to sweep the airfield at Jabala, Iraq, from the south, while our sister, two sister battalions laid a base of fire to the west. I was in charge of 60 assorted vehicles, including cargo trucks, recovery vehicles, Humvees, and Battalion Aid Station. We were still heading east when I stopped my formation behind the last terrain feature before the airfield. I had all the vehicles point outward, forming a 360-degree perimeter around the aid station, which I ordered to set up and prepare to receive casualties. Ahead of us, the battalion's combat vehicles crested the hill in a column formation

and attempted to come online and turn to the north at the same time. The line of 44 Abrams tanks skewed too far to the west. Instead of engaging the enemy on the airfield, they inadvertently fired into the flank company of our sister battalion, killing two soldiers and wounding nine. Combat journalist David Turnley captured an iconic photograph of Sergeant Ken Kosa Kosa Kouets, crying after learning that his friend Andy Alonis laid dead in a body bag next to him on board a Black Hawk helicopter. For the next 14 years, I kept a copy of that photo in my office desk drawer as a visible reminder of what happens to untrained units.

For years, I would ask myself daily what I could have done to prevent that fratricide. At the time, I had zero input into the conduct of tactical operations, but I was still a leader in the unit, and I always had a nagging feeling that I should have been able to do something to prevent it from happening. Upon returning from Desert Storm,

I swore to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to command a battalion, my unit would train every minute possible before entering combat. Yeah, and you've got that picture in the book. And look, obviously I'm not reading the entire book. Get the book. This book is so detailed,

and we'll get into some of the detail, but you have that picture in there, and it's definitely an iconic photograph, and you can see the heartbreak on the soldier's face, knowing that, knowing what had happened. And that's a, a lesson learned for you and a very valuable lesson that you carried with you. You know, prior to that, all my battalion commanders had been Vietnam vets. And there was a real difference between the guys who were in Vietnam and the guys who grew up in the kind of zero defect army. And, you know, the Vietnam vets

were all about training people. All about training people. And, you know, I'm not talking bad about the guy, but the environment he grew up. He was more worried about the OR-rate and whatever, our tanks break, and we're going to look good on numbers. And so we didn't train. We just kind of sat there.

I mean, the company commanders were trying to do what they could. They were doing individual training. You know, they used to have this book, the Common Task Book. And it was so boring out there. Guys would, like, race each other, how fast they could put on their mop suits. you know, I mean, if there was an enlisted soldier that deployed early in Desert Storm, you know, he can assemble, dissembles weapon, put on his mop suit, whatever's in the Comptast book,

he can do that just because they were so bored. I mean, that was the only thing to read, you know, I mean, we were out in the desert. There was no media. AT&T set up these phone banks, but there was just nothing to do. But they really didn't do any training. And the commanders were, you know, calling for it. And he's like, well, no, we're going to break our tanks, whatever. But, you know, if you don't train, it's going to have terrible effects.

You know what I mean? And so, you know, even when in Iraq, you know, the untrained guys were the ones that would get on the trigger because they get scared and they just start shooting. And so we never really trained. I mean, they did a couple, you know, the brigade did a tactical exercise out troops. And the brigade commander was great. but, you know, the Titanic Commander just really didn't understand what it took to train guys, you know, and we kind of, we kind of just kind of piss that time away. And so, and that's how you end up, you know, with the fresh eye.

Yeah. And I don't know a few 35, 40 years on from Desert Storm now, right? Yeah, 35, 34. You know, still think about that fratricide, you know, and the devastating effects it has on a unit, you know, guys carry it with you. And so, one, I didn't want to put that on my guys. And two, you just, you know, don't want to, you know, you're going to lose guys in combat. But if it's a fratricide or an accident, you know, that's kind of on you. You know what I mean?

That's on me. So that's why I made it a point, you know, talk about it later. But when we got to Kuwait, it's like, okay, it's. time to train and train really, really hard. War takes 100 hours, built a ground war, 1991. You come back from Desert Storm, and then do you pick up company command after that? Yeah, I took command of a company, 369 armor after that. And do you deploy with them?

No, no, no. The war is over. Peace had broken out, you know, the drawdown is on. The peace dividend is coming. and so you know, I took command my tank company the problem was the battalion commander

was still in command and... Oh, the same guy? The same guy, yeah. Yeah, they didn't take about a command. So he decided that, you know, if I just work a little harder, I will overcome, you know,

a fratricide, you know. And so, it was a miserable experience coming in command. I mean, my soldiers, it was great, but I mean, this guy was just constantly, you know, kind of zero defect kind of guy. And again, I thought about getting out. You know, actually one time I actually had my resignation typed up. And, you know, a guy called me in the office, and he's like, something. Something seemed like he was bothering.

You know, first he was calling me a liar that I lied to him. I was like, I didn't lie. And he said, well, you know, something seemed wrong. I was like, well, you know, big sergeant's back there typing up my reservation. You know, resignation. So, I just go home, take the day off and get back home. And, you know, my wife. So I'm home like at, you know, 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

I was like, what happened? Because, you know, we were all, you know, all the company commanders were, like, working until like 9 o'clock trying to make this guy happy. And she's like, what happened? She's like, I'm getting out. And she, you know, my wife, you know, God bless her. She's like, don't let them beat you. You like this.

You like being in the Army. You know, don't. You know, don't let them beat you. I was like, yeah, you know, screw. So, you know, went back the next day and, you know, just got after it. And had a really good company, really good NCOs and officers. And, you know, we went out the NTC, you know, did really well. you know, the, uh, uh, uh, the last battle, um, you know, the NTC's made to lose, right?

So we're down to like five or six tanks and, uh, from, you know, all three platoons. And, uh, and I see the NCOs like making hand signals and bounding and moving each other, smoke and stuff. And it's like, you know, hey, we got this. You know, whatever happens, we're ready to go. We got a good company. And, uh, you know, then my, uh, actually, when I came back from Desert Storm, where I think they called it Operation Stork, where, you know, that's where the youngest came from. And so actually, I was at NTC when she was born.

Oh, wow. So after the train was done, before the AAR, you know, I flew back home and then I saw my second kid. So, yeah, but it was a good experience. And then after that, I actually got selected for a second command of HHC. had a great brigade commander who ended up being a three-star guy named John Moyne who, you know, getting old Vietnam vet.

And, you know, it was just, it was, that was a good experience, you know, working for that guy. So where did you go next? Didn't you go, didn't you end up in New Jersey? Yeah. So, so after Desert Storm, they, you know, the, you know, the National Guard used to play. So the Army recommitted to the National Guard. We're going to take the best in brightest. We're going to call it Project 2000.

And we're going to send our 2,000 best officers in NCOs, train the National Guard, to make sure they're ready. It was a trap. I mean, they did send good people. There was a lot of good people there. But it's like, you know, they're telling, oh, you know, this is going to put you on a fast track. You know, you're going to. Yeah, no.

So we end up in New Jersey as a National Guard advisor. and, you know, I got a lot of respect for the National Guard guys there. I mean, they really, you know, as much as people, you know, back then especially badmouthed them, these are guys that like, you know, if you get two weeks off of work, I'm going to go to AT or I'm going to take my kids to Disneyland. And these guys are, you know, foregoing their family stuff, you know, they're usually working like one or two days, nice, you know, after their regular. jobs and these guys are out there you know they there were things that they needed to do and they probably could use but you know I mean a dedication I mean they were getting after it every you know all the time even you know just in peacetime in New Jersey and so we were there for two years

and then two years up and they said hey we're going to move you out to Fort Leavenworth you're going to get prepositioned for the command general staff college you know they said you're at the bottom room. She said, you're at the bottom half of the top third. It's kind of 50-50 whether you're going to be below the zone. So it's like, okay, you know, I'm right there. You know, I'm in the hunt. And I go to Leavenworth and I was supposed to be on, what was then,

BCTP, the Battalion Command. If this is an Army acronym that you, You don't know, there's no way in hell I can help you out. No, which is funny because I was there twice. Battle Command training program. So it was these computer simulations for brigade division and core headquarters, right? Because you can't put the whole field. It is a battle simulation.

I was supposed to go there, about ready to get there. Literally, they're packing out the house and they're like, hey, you're going to do the Command General Staff College to be the deputy operations officer. So the school. So I'm like, okay, you know, I'm going to the teachers. Everything's going to be good. And I wasn't happy about it, but, you know, I went there, and CJC list comes out, not on it. I'm like, okay, well, you know, next year, I'm on it. So actually end up going over to BCTV.

It was a great assignment because you learned. I mean, working at the combat training centers, if you're an Army guy. I mean, you can't, you can't overestimate how much you just learn being around Army stuff all the time, right? Just seeing these, you know, seeing other people's successes, seeing other people's mistakes. It's awesome. That's what, I, when I was a E5 in the SEAL teams, I spent like a couple years at SEAL Team 1. The SEAL teams themselves used to train themselves. And so there was something called training cell inside the SEAL teams.

and that was where I got once I did three deployments, then I got put into this training cell. And yeah, that's where I really started to put things together. Because you're pretty experienced after three platoons. But once you're in training cell and now you're, like you said, I get to watch a platoon, see what mistakes they made, see another platoon, do the same iterations, but do them right, do them better.

And you have this really increased and profound perspective that you gain on how to do things. And so it was very helpful. And I can imagine, yeah, being at NTC, that's just a kind of epic instruction. Yeah, yeah. And same thing, BCTB, right? And then ultimately I end up going to NTC, but I was there. So then they, you know, list comes out the second time.

And this is for what? For major? No, this is for the school, Command General Staff College. So the top half goes and your career goes on and the bottom half, you know, actually. And you already made major at this point? I was on the list. Got it. But you don't have to go to that school to make major.

But if you don't go to that school, your major is going to be it. Yeah, you might make lieutenant colonel, but you know, you're not going to, you're not going to command battalion. You're not going to, you know, go on. So, so I did have a little ritual, right, when I didn't make a list. Because I was good at getting promoted, wasn't good at getting selected for schools, right? So, you know, get there, get the scotch out. Okay, next year, you know, another fight. And so, you know, BCTP, it was a great assignment, you know, traveling.

I was actually on the team that trained brigades. So, you know, we'd go out, I think we went out like probably 20 times a year. We'd go out for like four days, you know, it was for guard units. So we'd go out for like Wednesday through Sunday. You do these computer simulations. And again, you know, you saw it, you know, 20 times a year. And so, you know, third time comes around and I'm not on the list. I'm like, hey, you said I was, yeah, we kind of lied to you.

Actually, I think the branch guy told me I was an organ donor. So what do you mean organ donor? He goes, yeah, you're OERs now or just to like prop up other people. Dang. Dang. So luckily, I worked for this guy who, But you don't decide to get out after they tell you you you're a freaking organ donor? Trust me.

I thought about it real hard, you know. And again, my wife, she's like, hey, you know, you like what you're doing. You know, it's pretty good. And, you know, Army's a pretty good life. And a little bit, you know, naive on my part, too. It's like, okay, well, we'll go out. We'll go out for it or one. And we'll see what happens.

I worked for this guy named Norm Gretchen who, knew this guy who was buddies with a guy that was chief staff at Fort Irwin, and I ended up getting out to Fort Irwin because the, you know, branch is like, okay, send me to Fort Hood to do anything. And, you know, again, self-confidence, you know, I'll do a good job. And sooner or later I'll work my way down in the Italian and I'll, you know, I'll do fine. and they're like, no, we're not sending non-CGSC graduates to, to divisional units. So I ended up at Fort Irwin, which, you know, the training unit out there, it was not, you know, it was not deploying back then.

So I went there and I worked, I worked on the division staff for about 18 months, but while I was there, worked for, just because the staff back then was so small. There was only like two active duty majors in the G3. And, you know, I had all these crazy additional duties just because there wasn't anything. So, but I worked quite a bit with the general, right, with General Webster back then. And just learned a lot from, you know, when you work with really senior people, you learn a lot of things. You know, just seeing how they operate. And so I did that. And then I went down to the, I was in the opt-for, which was a great assignment.

Awesome. Yeah. And so, you know, the kind of secret of the opt-for is there was two squadrons. And a guy best friend in my life, even today, Scott Hickenbottom was the S-3 of 1. And I was the S-3 of 2-11. I works as a guy Mark Ritter who was a ranger, ended up, you know, Ranger Company Commander. And so we'd go out.

And so for, you know, the 10 rotation I was there, for five of them, I actually got to be the Regimental 3, and you're having all this, you know, regimental stuff. And you're planning the attack. But then for the other five, you're a tank commander. So you're just striving around, your B&P, like shooting stuff. It was like adventure camp, right? And so that was a great assignment.

And, you know, kind of you build on your experience, right? So, you know, Colonel Ritter was, he said, you know, we're real good at this mild stuff, but we're generating, you know, a battalion, or, you know, a generation's worth of officers that have never fired a real bullet. Because, you know, we're all about being out for and, you know, being good at miles. And that's our job, you know. I mean, you want to give the units coming out there the toughest fight you can. So he said, hey, we need to start sending up these live fires.

And it's like, well, okay, you know, there's a big live fire out there. But the opposite group guys, they said, well, no, you know, maintenance, contract, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we end up setting up our own, you know, like squad and platoon live fires. And, you know, out there with the, you know, lifting kits and out there with the, you know, with the compass, figuring out the SDZs. And so, you know, my master gunners were great. You know, we figured out, and we started doing these live fires, which, you know, paid dividends later on when we got to Kuwait. But it was a great experience.

And then, you know, I was 12 months as the S3, and then I ended up going back. I was Secretary of General Staff at Fort R.1. And so I was working, you know, very closely with General Thurmond, J.D. Thurman. And again, just, you know, this well-lawful. of knowledge just by being around the guy. And, you know, you kind of saw the, you know, how the rotations work, you know, and I kind of learned a heck of a lot just by being around these guys. You get done there and you end up going to NATO, right? Yeah. Yeah. So 2001, June of 2001,

you head over to NATO. What's your job over there? I was a, I was in the J5. And so I was just, you know, I mean, there's no war on, there was no war on the wrong. There was no war on the horizon. And actually, if you, you know, it's kind of funny, if you think to September 10th, 2001, and you asked anyone in the military, how's the op tempo? And they're like, oh, we can't sustain this. Oh, man, we, we are burning the candle at both ends. You know, guys are going back and forth to, you know, the Balkans and Kosovo. And it's like, oh, we can't keep this tempo up. You know,

and now those are the salad days, you know what I mean? You know, and so, you know, we go over there. You know, my wife's actually from Florence,

but we were down in Naples and a great assignment. So I get to, I'm the, I'm the, you know, just some flunky in the J5 and,

a major. And, um, I guess one of the things was the, this thing called the Mediterranean Dialogue program, which these Levant and North African countries

where they're outreached in NATO. And that was one of my things. And then just the NATO command structure, which is this Byzantine jobs program kind of thing where it's like, oh, this is a headquarters for this, but this isn't a tactical headquarters. And it's like, why am I? So, you know, I did that.

And, you know, you'd write policy papers and, you know, worked for some really good guys. I actually worked for this German, a guy named Fritz Govins, who had been a school of advanced military studies at Fort Leavenworth. He had been a fellow there, the first international fellow, and just a brilliant military mind. And, you know, worked for him.

And so he kind of understood, he had a very good understanding of the American Army that you, don't see in people who, you know, from our partners. And he also understood, I mean, just understood war and just a really good guy. And, you know, I worked for him. And, you know, it's one of those things where you had to write your own evaluation. And he'd always, you know, which is very hard to do on a fair to do that. So you had to write your own evaluation.

And then he'd sign it and you go, I will sign this because this, as you move up your military career, that will make your military weaker in my mind. and stronger. Funny guy. You know, they're smoking cigarettes in his office. But, so I worked really good guys.

And then, you know, the kind of straight line to the American General that was there. And so, you know, I kept, you know, when I first got there, went to Kosovo a couple times,

went there initially, like right after 9-11. And things were, Things were, you know, I'd calm down by then, right? So the bombings were like, I think, in, what, 2000, 2001. I think the 2000s when they really kind of goes over where the bombing campaign was. So, you know, by end of 2001, things would calm down. But then I also went back in like 2004 right before I left when the riots started, which, you know.

So it was a good experience and got to travel in North African countries and stuff. Did you think when September 11th happened, did you think we were looking at two decades a war? No. Actually, uh, um, so my peers,

like the guys that I was like company commanders with and, uh, they were all commanded battalions during the invasion, right? And so, you know, by, by, uh, 2003, it's like, oh,

the war's over, you know, once we, once we got in there. I, I didn't think the war was going to last, you know, uh, and actually, you know,

we, we only had a brigade in Afghanistan until like 2006 or 2008, right? So it's like, okay, they got that tamped down. You know, we'll get into Iraq. It's going to be over in a couple months. And you'd been, and it's from the book, you've been in 2001, your alternate list for battalion command,

2002, your alternate list for battalion command, 2003 your alternate list for battalion command, and then finally in 2003 you're told you're going to get a battalion. Yeah, yeah. But you figure the war is going to be over pretty quick. So, war, it's going to be able pretty quick, you know, and actually, you know, actually one of the things I did was I volunteered to be a, I put my name in the hat to be an RTC professor. Because it's like, yeah, there's no, there's no war going on, you know, and it'd be back and, you know, it'd be like after Desert Storm, there'll be another drawdown or some crap. And so, you know, again, with the, you know, the bad news, so, you know, with the Scotch, it's like, you know, first year, it's like, you know, and then I don't let us, I'm like, you know, and.

This is back, you know, I'm in Naples too, so it's like, do, do, do, do. You know, dial up takes forever, you know, or the crap. So I'm like, you know, six hours ahead. So I'm, you know, get the email and write the guy back, you know, hey, thanks, right. But the story always was if you, if you ask him if you buy a house, that was kind of the, I don't know if it's true or not, say, hey, hey, buy a house. And if you're, you know, you think you're going to get a command, they'll tell you, hey, don't buy the house quite yet. Got it. So the second.

So you're going to get stationed to what, Seton Hall? Seton Hall, yeah. So the second year, I'm like, hey, thinking about buying a house. And the guy's like, you know, buy low, sell high. Dang it. So then the third year, I mean, I'm like half in the bag. I was like, three in a row. You know, that's some sort of record, right?

So I read him back and he's like, yeah, call me in the morning. So I'm like, oh, geez. So I couldn't get out of being the RTC professor, which actually turned out be a great assignment. but it was, you know, 11 months. You moved from Naples, moved to Seton Hall, 11 months, and then back to Germany. And you get back to Germany, and now you got your battalion command, and you're immediately training for deployment.

Yeah, so the, I took command in, I think, June 7th of 2005, and we were deploying in November. So, you know, and, you know, it's like, well, why don't you, move us in early and they're like, oh, the other guys need to get there two years because if you don't have two years in command, it's, you know, it's like, dude, the rules have changed and, you know, no one, no one size me, kind of got that one. So we were, everything was planned out. There was nothing you could do, right? Actually, I took command and then we went on leave for two weeks. And so when I got there, and the unit had just come, I think they got back like a memorial

They got back at the end of May from doing, you know, shooting gunnery, you know, Hone fells, and then at Graff. So, you know, everybody's fully trained, you know, 44 qualified crews, did this maneuver training, and then everyone left. Like, so when we get back off of leave, I think I had like six crews out of the 44 that were qualified. It's like, look, we just went to gunnery two weeks ago. So, you know, new people coming in over the summer, and it was, you know, we did this gunnery, which I, which never did really make any sense to me, where we were like, we went to Graff

and we were like shooting out of the back of trucks, kind of like this OIF-1 training, you know, trained for the last war. And then we went to our maneuver training, and then we went to gunnery, which is kind of backwards because, you know, you guys sharpened gunnery. So and being a tanker, you know, gunnery is, you know, the big deal. But. Well, this is kind of where I want to pick up in the book here. And one of the things that's awesome about the book. And just if you're listening, just get this book.

It's so much detail. And by the way, you give like historical context. There's so much information in this book. You did it. We'll talk about how long it took you to write this thing, which must have been quite some time. But, you know, not only do you give historical context, you also give really awesome detail of the people that you talk about in the book. It's almost like a mini bio of everyone that you start talking about.

And you talk about the soldiers and the Marines that you serve with. And so I want to go into get some of that and we'll start going through this book here. You say my operations officer, Major Chuck Bergman, had arrived in the battalion the day I took command in June 2005. Chuck had grown up a Marine brat with a family tradition of military service dating back the Spanish-American War and called Seattle home despite having attended high school in California, Okinawa, and Virginia before heading to West Point. In infantrymen by trade, his knowledge was invaluable in training tankers how to fight without their tanks.

Bergman knew how to train soldiers, having been a Bradley-Patoon commander in Bowmholder as a lieutenant, a light infantry company commander in Hawaii, and an observer controller at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany, in prior assignments. Chuck had a wry sense of humor and called everyone but me, Ranger. He called me Dino behind my back. Chuck and his team in the operations section combined with the resourcefulness of the company commanders and first sergeants to get the time on the ranges the soldiers needed.

And then you start talking about team dealer. Team dealer commander, Captain Lou LaCon had his men on the firing range every day. When they were not pulling triggers, Captain Lecon led his soldiers through what-if drills, so they would clearly understand his intent during the battle they were about to enter. Lou knew what it meant to be a soldier, an NCO, and an officer. After graduating from Franklin High School in Jeneret, Louisiana in May of 1989, he enlisted in the Army to become an airborne ranger. His family had a tradition of military service, and Lou felt it was his duty to join.

After basic training, he attended Ranger School and spent the next eight years in Ranger Regiment. On 5 October 1993, Sergeant Lacone was a team leader at Fort Benning, Georgia, standing in in a 1600 hours battalion formation when the names of the dead and wounded from Mogadishu, many of them known to his fellow Rangers, were solemnly read. after a moment of prayer the orders came wheels up in four hours we're going to Somalia although Sergeant Lacone was leading some of the best trained soldiers in history thoughts of whether he had done

enough to prepare his men for combat filled his head as he boarded the plane who was a staff sergeant when he went to Officer Candidate School OCS in June of 1997 after he completed his first tour as an infantry lieutenant the army sent him to finish his degree at St. Martin's College

near Olympia, Washington. He was fresh off the previous 15-month deployment when he assumed command of team dealer, vowing that he would be able to answer the question, have you done enough to train your men for combat with an unequivocal yes. He kept the men of team dealer engaged and preparing for a fight that may or may not come. And like I said, you give those kind of outstanding backgrounds on just about every person that you mentioned in this book. You give the historical context, There's a bunch of the cultural context that you weave in here, the history of the land, the history of the people, the war. So if you're listening to this right now, get this book.

It will give you an incredible amount of information about these soldiers and more important about the battle and the entire context of the battle. So fast forward a little bit. We're going to take you onto the ground into, take you on to the ground into Ramadi. Um, here we go. And, and again, you cover like what you guys were doing to prepare. You cover a whole, the entire cycle is covered. But I'm going to fast forward right now. During my first days in country, I went to bed physically and mentally exhausted.

On the evening of two June, I decided to turn in early, knowing that the next day was going to be another grind. Just after 2,300 hours, I left the operation center and went to my room slash office next door to go to sleep. 30 minutes later, a runner from the Operation Center was pounding frantically on the black metal door to my office. The terrorists had attacked a team dealer patrol with an IED and small arms fire into meme. The blast overturned the vehicle instantly killing specialist Brett Tribble and very seriously wounding Sergeant Thomas Davis, private first class Adam Haley, and private first class Gabriel Moreno. Sergeant First Class Michael Harris raced to the scene, loading the wounded in the back. of his Bradley and tearing through the night to get the injured soldiers to the expert medical team at Charlie Medd. Once stabilized, Davis, Haley, and Moreno were medevacked to the field hospital in Balad.

Although evacuating multiple casualties was a daily currents for units in Ramadi, this, for us, this was the first of many. Tribble's loss was shocking to me personally. I was never under any illusions that I was going to bring everyone back, but I certainly did not expect to start losing soldiers before assuming official control. During the Task Force previous 15-month deployment to Baghdad in 2004, it lost three soldiers. I had expected that I could similarly keep casualties to a minimum through intense training back in Germany and Kuwait. Specialist Brett Tribble was a quiet kid in one of the platoons of Team Dealer. By all accounts, he was a good soldier who had found a home in the Army after some troubled teenage years.

He liked being in uniform, had it planned to re-enlist in the coming days. Tribble was normally one of the dismounts, infantry men who rode in the back of the Humvee or Bradley and only got out of the vehicle when there's trouble. Tonight, he had volunteered to man the M240 machine gun atop the Humvee, exposing himself to direct enemy fire so he could be closer to the action if needed. He was that kind of man. And what's interesting is, and it's the way it is, you lose guys and the war keeps going on, and you have to keep working.

And you get into that here, like after nightfall, I went with Mark Lovejoy and some of his staff officers to shake Ahmad Bazeeraea Abu Risha's house. Sheikh Ahmad would be in my sphere of influence, S-O-Y, along with two other sheikhs in Zangora, military leaders partnered with local leaders willing to cooperate with the coalition. A sphere of influence could be an elected official, an Iraqi security force leader,

a Sheikh, a mom, or local businessman. By assigning these citizens to individual military leaders, U.S. forces were able to stay on message and keep the locals from gaining too much Wasta, Arabic, street cred by having the ear of a two senior a U.S. commander versus his station in Iraqi security. And, you know, I have to bring this into the, this is a huge part of the picture, is your interactions with the Bazaia, Abu Risha family, a huge part of it. It's, and we'll, we'll get into that as well.

You, um, fast forward a little bit. We're going to, you meet with Colonel McFarlane and you met with him. a little bit. He's been on the podcast. General McFarlane. You say McFarlane was tall and lanky and looked like he could be one of my cousins back in Ireland. Introverted with a dry wit that was lost on some. He looked five years younger than I did, even though he was five years older. As we settled into a gray metal folding gear at a meeting here. As we settled into the gray metal folding chairs surrounding the conference table, Colonel McFarland began the briefing by telling us that the Meph commander had given him the mission to, quote, fix Ramadi, but don't make it like Fallujah.

someone said aloud in a tone of disbelief. That's it. That's the guidance. In my mind, the Meph commander might as well have slapped Colonel McFarland on the ass and said, go get him, Tiger. Colonel McFarlane looked up, shot a glance of displeasure, shrugged his shoulders, and continued outlining his plan to take back Ramadi. Minutes into the briefing, six mortar rounds exploded in rapid succession,

rattling the conference room. I always felt that leaders should not be the first to run for cover when fired upon, But neither should they be the last. To my surprise, the briefing continued with Colonel McFarland, not missing a beat. Yeah, I don't know if you were there for that. It might have just been the Army guys. But so, you know, McFarlane, because it was a pickup team. You know, I mean, say what you want, but it was a pickup team.

I mean, you know, Ron Clark was on first. I mean, I met him once. I met, you know, you think, oh, they're in the same unit. But I didn't know McFarland from Adam. I mean, I met him in the pre-command course, you know, but he was colonel, I was Lieutenant Colonel, doing Colonel things Lieutenant Carl's new. And, you know, the Marines, I mean, and if you think pre-war,

I mean, for a Marine and an Army unit to be working together, it was like at a three or four-star headquarters, not, you know, at the squad level like we ended up doing. So nobody knew anyone. So no one, you know, knew each other. And I don't know, were you in that meeting? I don't remember. So we were sitting there, and they had that conference.

conference room, which was, I think it was a courtyard that they just put like two-by-fours over and a roof. So we're sitting there and these, I mean, those mortars, they killed the two guys who were, you know, 100 meters away. And sitting there, and there was that overhang before the woods. So I'm like, trying to get under the overhead. I'm like, you know, Chuck Bergman's in Miami's like, Chuck, scoop back. I'm trying to scoop up. And everyone just kept going. I was like, you know, that's the way it was. And that was, you know, day zero, you know. And, you know, it just kept getting worse. Going back to the book, I went to sleep at about 0200 that night.

Within an hour, the runner from the talk was pounding at my door again. The terrorist had launched another catastrophic attack on team dealers in Teme. 15 artillery rounds detonated directly below a Humvee, instantly killing First Lieutenant Scott Love and private first class, Nick Cromby. The men of team dealer reacted immediately to the blast, evacuating the assault. the casualties in securing the site. Sergeant Jason Welsh and specialist Gilberto Correz Ruiz were evacuated to Charlie Medd and then on to Balad. The fifth passenger inside the vehicle a locally contracted Iraqi translator or Terp walked away unscathed

and upon returning to Camp Ramadi immediately quit along with his brother. First Lieutenant Scott Love was a graduate of Florida State University with a degree in film production enlisting in the Army in 1999 as an Arabic linguist before attending officer candidate school. Everyone who met Scott instantly took a liking to him. In my mind, he was the best platoon leader in the task force. Private First Class Nick Cromby was a 19-year-old medic who had joined us in Kuwait and immediately gained the respect of the non-commissioned officers in the medic platoon as well as the task force conqueror surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel John Farr. Ten minutes after meeting Cromby, Dr. John Farr was in my office telling me that Cromby needed

to go to medical school on the Army's dime once we got back. Mark Love, and Mark Love, and Mark Joe, again, you cover this in the book, but he was the person that you were taking over for. Yeah. Great guy. Mark Lovejoy once told me that you never lose your slackers. At the time, I thought he was just overly sentimental for the losses his unit suffered. With the loss of Tribble, Love, and Cromby, once again, Mark's words proved prophetic. As we formed up for the transfer of authority ceremony at 0,700 hours on the morning of June 7th, I was not nearly as optimistic.

as I had been 48 hours later. We had three soldiers dead, six very seriously injured, and two more wounded in action before our even taking over. That's kind of when I remember meeting you for the first time. I mean, I think I met you in a meeting or something like that,

but I think that day we came and I brought a couple guys with me to come and see how we could help out. Yeah. Yeah, we, we kind of went into it, you know, we kind of bought in the counter and certain stuff. It's like, you know, turned down the violence, you know. It can't be, you know, it's not like we're going to take her home.

It's off, you know, like Brits try to do. But, you know, it's like we're going to turn down the violence. We're not going to, you know, be fighting indiscriminately. Luckily, we had the six months in Kuwait where we actually built this big training range, you know, Lou had his boys in the infantry company, Lou Lansone. He had them boys out there shooting. every day. And more importantly, they were talking about scenarios and, you know, like I said before, when somebody's very well trained, their first instincts isn't to shoot. Actually, I think Lou said

to me one time, he goes, you know the difference between like Special Forces dudes and regular dudes as Special Forces guys think before they shoot? It's like, huh, makes sense. So, but we got in there And actually when me and Lovejoy went to see Sitar, or Ahmed, the brother, the Iraqi TV was on. And so our movement out of Kuwait was supposed to be this secret. And, you know, don't tell the families, whatever. And we go over to the Bazea house, Ahmed's house, and the Iraqi news is on. And there's this, you know, like an arrow going from Kuwait to Ramadi with this big star on it. And, you know, first words at Ahmed, we were like, oh, you're from the unit for Kuwait that's going to come here and, you know, destroy Ramadi.

And I'm like, oh, no, that's not us. It's like, okay, the cat's out of the bag. But what we didn't realize was that we went in there. They were expecting Fallujah, and, you know, we weren't going to give it to them. So when we went in there, we just got, I mean, we caught hell. And, you know, even during Rip, we kicking somebody's door, you know, we were, we were, we were. said, hey, we've got to be aggressive, so we start kicking indoors. And you'd find, you know, 75, 1-55 rounds in somebody's living room, right? And so, you know, when we lost Tribble,

that's like, okay. And then, you know, two days later, you know, Scott Love and Cromby. And Scott Love, I mean, just the nice guy of me, you know, full energy. Everybody liked him, he was, when he was enlisted, he was an Arabic translator. And he probably bought off on the mission more than I did. You know, he's like, oh, we're going to help these Iraqis. You know, it's like, you know, just the nicest guy you ever met. And then, you know, those two guys are dead. And it's like, and then, you know, the next day we take over.

And so you're, you know, it's like, okay, how are we going to do this? And then, you know, not that, you know, the past is the future. but, okay, we're four days into this thing. I mean, we're minus four days into it, and now we've got all these casual days. It's like, I'm just being here for six months. I mean, it's just going to be left. And, you know, not that you worry about your personal,

you know, you're more worried about failing than your personal safety, but it's like, hey, you know, how are we going to, we got to do something. We just can't take these kind of casualties. And, you know, and how are we going to, you know, safeguard these dudes? and also accomplished our mission too. So it was it.

That first couple, obviously, you know, the guys were wounded, guys, whatever. But for me, it was like, geez, you know, what are we going to do? Yeah, you fast forward a little bit. Chuck Bergman developed a plan to conduct familiarization patrols on the major routes throughout the AO Conqueror, and we sent them out. Every patrol hit an IED, every single one. and again it is hard to explain

to people how different Ramadi was than a lot of other areas in Iraq and reading this book you know those are the kind of things like I had one of my elements went out 24 times in a row and they had enemy contact 24 times in a row and then they had one

op where they didn't get enemy contact and then they went right it picked up again but those are the kind of things when you know I that's kind of an anecdotal thing that I tell people to try and explain to them how bad it was. And this is another one of those things. You send out familiarization patrols into your A-O, which, by the way, your A-O is this area primarily called Tamim, which was sort of like a little bit of a suburb, I guess, of Ramadi,

which had pretty like one-and-two-story buildings and looked like a suburb kind of. A couple apartment areas. But it wasn't huge. It was probably, I mean, how was it, two miles long by one mile or something like that? Yeah, I think a little closer to three. And then the ECP was about a half mile below that. So it was tiny.

Yeah. But there was like 40,000 people jammed in there. And, you know, it just, it was that. And then we, I mean, we had everything west of the water. So we had that and we had five kilo, but the Iraqis were there. And then the tribal area. And so, you know, our area. You know, it's funny, the area we focused in was probably, you know,

probably five miles by two miles with the Camper Madi in the middle of that. But, you know, my A-O... Yeah, your A-O was huge. And theory went all the way up to Lake, was it, like Thar-Thar-Thar? Yeah, which at one point they're like, hey, you need to go up there and clean that thing out. And I'm like, yeah, we're busy. I'm sorry, the phone's broke. Luckily, that one passed.

Yeah. It was interesting, too, because Tamim had like a grid, basically a grid system. It looked like a normal kind of. grid map, which was, which was interesting for there. We started off reading about two, one of the places that got here. Here's another one, another O.P. Fast forward a little bit. When I arrived at O.P. 29 or three, it was in terrible shape.

There was trash piled everywhere and only a rudimentary concrete patch over the 10-foot hole. The dump truck created a month earlier. Iraqi soldiers were half naked, sleeping on broken cots in 110-degree heat. under a 25-foot-high desert shade. Months of mortar attacks allowed rays of light to stream through the baseball-sized holes in the roof. The American advisors had converted a 20-foot shipping container

into a talk, complete with maps and FM radios, and another into a sleeping area. Both were hardwired with electricity, provided by a 40-kilawatt generator, air-conditioned, and protected from indirect fire by 18 inches of sandbags. It was not palatial living, but it was certainly nicer than anything I had lived in during Desert Shield or Desert Storm and a hell of a lot better than how the Iraqis lived

50 feet away. What struck me were the human feces that were everywhere. I mean everywhere. I grabbed one of the NCOs from the advisor team asking Sarge, why is there shit all over the place? Sir, they just shit everywhere. I keep getting on their NCOs and officers to tell them to knock it off, but they don't do anything about it. They got no standards, he replied.

So it is important to remember that we're here and we're working alongside Iraqi troops. That's the goal is to get the Iraqi troops up to speed. But a lot of the Iraqi troops, especially at this time, they were, they were, you know, almost conscripts. You know, they were almost conscripts. They weren't quite conscripts because it wasn't like they went and got pulled out of their, you know, home somewhere and forced to serve. But a lot of them just financially, they had no other choice. There was no other opportunities. And so they didn't have any, we had guys that didn't no left from right. We had to change some of our, when we would be teaching them, like, how to move through a building or how to label things, they didn't know, they didn't know how to count. So this is

what you're dealing with. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things in, you know, there's a few epiphanie moments for me, and one of them was the poop thing. It's like, so, you know, so I asked Pixar's like, well, where are they supposed to poop? And he's like, I don't know. It's like, hmm. And so, so we went there. And then. Then he showed me where it was. And it was like, you know, actually kind of feeling it in my chest right now because it was the most disgusting thing I ever seen. So they had no place.

And so it's like, you know, like any, you know, if you show, if you show soldiers a little bit of love, they'll do great things for you, right? So we said, you know, hey, we got to get these guys, you know, this is just substandard living. And oh, by the way, they were going on in a while all the time. It's like, you know, it's a mystery. why they're going AWOL. Come living this ECP for two weeks.

The Masloff hierarchy in needs, I mean, a decent place to poop isn't even on that. You know, that's in the stub sector, right? So we got them out there. And the company I went north with, when we went north out of Kuwait, John Hiltz was the engineering commander. And he ended up building one of the fives.

but John was with me in Kuwait, and I was like, John, we got to do something about this thing. And so he got these connexes, and he put basically just, you know, some two-by-fours, and he made these three bunks. And, I mean, it literally looked like, I mean, when I saw it, it's like, John, this is the best you can do. It looked like Bukenball, like the camps where they had them. And we put air conditioning on them, and we put sandbags on top of them.

And the Iraqis were just ecstatic. They were like, oh, this is a great thing. I'm like, John, what the hell is this? But that's all it was needed. And our, you know, the AWOL problem started going away because we just showed them a little bit of love. But you're right. They, I would probably go with conscripts

and there were stories of like even like press gangs. They were just kind of driving around people and throwing them the back of trucks. And, you know, but that's what you had. And so, you know, you got to make the best what you got. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You're still out there and you get word. Colonel McFarland and his five vehicle security detail entry to end of the compound.

It's never a good thing when your boss shows up five minutes after you realize you're in a terrible situation, especially in combat. Colonel McFarland offered his condolences again for the loss of Scott Love and Nick Cromby. I am almost certain that he never met either Scott Love or Nick Cromby, but it was evident that he deeply felt the loss of the two soldiers under his. command. My experiences in Kuwait conditioned me to justify the smallest actions to my brigade commander. I began by giving Colonel McFarland a detailed briefing of my task force tactical laydown. He quickly figured out what I was doing stopping me after 30 seconds. Tony, I don't know you, but the army has made you a battalion commander so you have my unwavering trust. Do what you need to do. Tell me when you need help. But other than that, command your task force. You do not have to tell

You do not have to tell me your every move. I've already commanded a battalion and I don't want to command yours. I have my own set of problems. His comments caught me flat-footed. In five sentences, Colonel McFarland had displayed more combat leadership than I had experienced from my battalion commander

in Desert Storm or my brigade commander during the previous six months in Kuwait combined. Here was a senior army officer who trusted his subordinates at face value. It was a refreshing change. So that's a great description of Colonel McFarland. Yeah. He's the real deal.

Yeah. You know, physical courage just kind of comes with a job. I mean, you know, you're not going to not. You know, there's some guys that'll freeze, whatever. But that whole moral courage thing throughout the military, that, you know, we got the Army values and moral. That's one that doesn't get talked enough about, you know, raise your hand saying, hey, this isn't right. But, you know, McFarland, I'll tell you what, he. absolutely, you know, he, and in the fact that he came out and he looked me in the eyes,

you know, he found me and said, hey, come up from my office, I want to tell you, you know, I feel bad for Scott. It's like, he found me out in the battlefield. And, you know, he looked me in the eye. And, you know, whenever I had a problem, I'd go to him. But by and large, you know, I think he only caught me like once or twice of something that we were screwing up, but, you know, but then it was never, you know, angry. He's like, hey, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Yeah.

What is wrong with you? I think I got a what it's wrong with you one time, but, uh, yeah, yeah. He had come out there also to tell you that, um, you were going to become the economy of forced mission, meaning he was, he was telling you were going to have to hold what you got, do what you can. And it was, you know, as you put. in the book, not going to be a good deal for the task force. And you say here, we had gone from nearly 1,200 soldiers in the task force to just over 500

to one day. So basically, he'd changed the plan or, I guess, solidified the plan of who is going to be the main effort. The main effort was going to be to start things off, the 137, and securing downtown Ramadi. And as we mentioned, you were in the suburbs of downtown. Meaning, oh, by the way, that just means there's like you're right up against them. You're the other side of the canal. It's not like this huge vast terrain feature that's in between.

No, there's a canal and you're right up against where the main effort was going to be. But that changed because he was going to have to pull forces from you and augment some of the other battalions. Yeah. So we were, you know, and that happened. I mean, we were still a week from, we were still under the 228 back then. I mean, McFarlane was going through his own rep the ready first was. And so, you know, I'll be honest with you. I had 1,500 guys.

I had, I think I had like, I was the main effort. So I had like three industry companies, an engineer company, my HHC, you know, a tank company. And so, I mean, I had this, you know, I had this legion of guy. So it's like, okay, well, I got one day before we're going to start in. let me go check the block on looking at the Iraqis and, you know, well, us Americans will get down to business. And we were supposed to hold the outside of the city. And then, you know, BJ was supposed to push in the city.

And, you know, when he came out there, it's like, yeah, that's not what's happening. So, you know, I got left with a – I talked to him into leaving one engineer platoon with us. And I had one tank up. that had two tank platoons because the other platoon, we had to give the Marines for their heavy QRF, and then I had dealer company. And those guys were, I mean, those guys were just rock solid and can't say enough good things about them. But that was it. And so, you know, you want to stay in the offense, you know, because, I mean, in the end, the 228 guys, I think they even lost more than we did. Yeah. It was about the same. Yeah. So you're about the same.

Yeah. So you got to go on the offense. I mean, you just can't stand around and take it. Right? So it's like, okay, we've got to get in the offense. How are we going to do this thing? And, you know, and that really kind of forced my hand over the next couple weeks of both the police and the Iraqi army is trying to figure out what to do with these guys. Excuse me, trying to figure out how to get these guys in the fight because they, by the same token, they weren't doing much. You know, Chris Stilling's and the mid team had the Iraqi army doing some stuff, but the police weren't doing Jack. And so it's like, how are we going to get into this fight? you know, how are we going to, you know, because if you go to, especially in a place like Ramadi, it's like if I'm going to go to play for a year and I'm going to lose some guys and guys are going to

get Maine for life, I mean, they got to walk out there saying, hey, I accomplished nothing. I did the best my 12 months, you know, we've got to get something done here because it was, it was untenable. And, you know, and actually, a little bit later on, it's when the MF came out and said the Ambar was lost. It's like, well, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, fellas. Fast forward a little bit. Al-Qaeda continued its murder and intimidation campaign against the locals on a scope that we did not comprehend. Patrols routinely found mutilated bodies in the street, but even then we only knew a sliver of the problem.

I never fully understood the depth of the terror campaign inflicted on the Iraqi population until years after I returned from Ramadi and served with Staff Sergeant Brian Netherley, a cavalry scout from the unit that replaced us. He told me that once they secured to meme in the summer of 2007, the population began speaking openly with coalition forces. The locals believe that coalition forces had been ignoring them and allowing al-Qaeda to conduct its operations unopposed. Couldn't you see the number of funerals that were going on every day? They asked our replacements. Not to make excuses, but honestly, how is I supposed to know the cyclical death rate of a third world city in a war zone? We saw funeral processions daily and thought nothing of it. We thought it offensive to the locals to stop the funeral procession and start questioning the mortars.

To them, our ignoring the funerals was a further sign of coalition indifference. And that's another thing that I try and explain to people, the level of violence that the, that Al Qaeda was conducting, you know, beheaded people, skinning people alive. It was, they were absolutely horrible. And if they weren't that horrible, they probably would have done a better job at maintaining some level of control because they made the locals so furious that eventually, you know, that that enabled you to do what you did with the, with the shakes. Yeah. And, you know, they were actually, you know, they were very good at what they did. And, you know, people wanted to like poo poo them. But, I mean, they were actually pretty good.

You know, as far as being terrorists, you know, two thumbs up, you know. And they were actually kind of judicious. Now, the murder intimidation, it's like, you know, you don't need to murder that many people, especially if there's no cops. I mean, if you look at what they did with the cops, right, they blew up the cell phone towers, right? So they cut the police off from the population, so you couldn't, you know, you can't just call the cops. And they also, you know, in the cops, they'd follow them home and they didn't, you know, they intimidate them. You know, the guy goes to work, shows up, sticks a gun in the wife's face. They say, if your husband goes to work tomorrow, we're going to kill you.

Well, you know, he stops coming to work. So, you know, when I got there, I couldn't figure out like the mask on the face. And it's like, God, these guys are a bunch of chickens. It's like, no, they've got to do that. Oh, yeah. So the Iraqi police would wear masks. Yeah, they'd wear masks all the time. And just like, well, what's wrong with them?

Well, you know, they were intimidating. And, you know, I mean. And by the way, this, the Iraqi police at early in the deployment was like, There was like 50 of them or something. Yeah, there was like 200 when we got there. 200 and most of them were on leave and like they wouldn't show up. You know, you get like 30, 40 of them showing up sometimes. So it wasn't a huge, and it's important to know that number because later on it becomes a powerful force.

Yeah. So, you know, the one thing, it's like, so if there's no police, I mean, if you think, you know, why do, I mean, you know, I sleep safe in my bed because of the Melbourne police department, not because of, you know, the Army or the CIA or whatever, you know what I mean? And so, you know, if there's no police force and a guy shows up at your house with a gun, well, he's going to get shot. Well, you know, two guys show up at my house with a gun, well, they're going to get shot. But, you know, like, six guys show up. You're like, let me hear what you got to say. So, you know, how many people does it take to intimidate a town?

The answer might be six. Yeah. You know, if there's nobody to call. And so they were very good about stripping out guys. And, you know, it's like, oh, I'm going to stand up. I'm going to stand up to Al-Qaeda. well, no, you're not, because we'll kill you. Well, then somebody else like, oh, well, you need to stand up.

Well, you start getting three or four guys down that line. And people stop standing up, and they understood that. Yeah. All right, going back to the book here. On June 14, 2006, the ready first assumed responsibility for Romadi from the 228 infantry and immediately prepared for an offensive to take the city back from AIF. There's a term I haven't heard, anti-Iraqi forces, with, Colonel McFarland, assembling a force of over 5,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for the pivotal battle in the war.

Under the cover of darkness on the night of 17 June, seal snipers and task force bandit mortar platoon infiltrated down the Euphrates Canal and set up positions to overwatch the largest operation into southern Ramadi in years. The bandits launched out of the shell of ECP3, now rebuilt and renamed Copperman. Megan. Charlie Rock and the 54th engineers cleared the abandoned railroad bridge while team warrior Bravo Company 1-36 infantry commanded by Captain Mike McCusker and an Iraqi tank company following close behind. The bandits attacked aggressively with tanks and Bradley's racing over the bridge before the terrorists could react to this trespass into their territory. Quickly, the warriors seized a foothold less than a mile into the southwest corner of the city. and began establishing cop iron.

Simultaneously, team Bulldog, Bravo Company 137 armor commanded by Captain Mike Baima, attacked out of Camp Corregador, swiftly advancing to a blocking position on the southeastern corner of town and began establishing cop spear. So these were really aggressive attacks. And one of the things I was like to talk about

is there was a road that went into south-central Ramadi from northern Ramadi. It was called Route Sunset. And before we showed up, the Marines went down that road and hit like 13 IEDs in 500 meters. Like these areas were just completely controlled by the enemy. The Rangers tried to hit a target down there one time.

This again, before we showed up. And yeah, I don't go and got shot off target. Rangers tried to go down that road another time while we were there. They lost a vehicle. So these were areas the insurgents did not want us to go at all. Yeah, I mean the, and if you, you know, and that goes back. I mean, even us getting held in Kuwait for six months, right?

So we got there in 2011 in November, or I'm sorry, 2005, November in 2005, well, we're winning the war. So we're going to hold this brigade in Kuwait. Well, we weren't win the war. And, you know, and so then in Kuwait, we were. kind of separated from what was going on. And so, you know, but if you watch the news, it's like, oh, we're pulling out the cities. We're part of the problem. And so, you know, we're pulling back into the bob.

So that, you know, that's also why, you know, all respect, the world, Carmen, front, it's like, no, no, no, no, we got to push in there. And even, you know, some of the guys in the 228, you know, they pull me aside, you know, their field grids are like, you guys are all going to die if you go in there. What? You know, but, you know, hey. The seals that we turned over told us the same thing. Like don't go in these areas.

Don't go in this area. Don't go in that area. It was. Yeah. And then, you know, they pushed in, you know, and, you know, God bless VJ. I mean, very, very good at Chrome Farland. Personally, better him than me because I'm terrified of bridges. So it's like, you know, it's like, man, I, there's a number of times I'd look.

It's like, you know, we've got a terrible fight in our hands. But at least I don't go across the bridge. We're good. But, you know, those guys, they were out there every day. And, you know, and they were good. I remember, I think it was Mike. I was talking to him later and he said that I think you guys found a house that was overlooking his fob.

I can't remember which one he had. And it had an exact replica sand table in the house. And it's like, you know, I mean, I've been on, you know, 25 years with the military mission. It's hard to find a good sand table. And they actually had like a replica of like whatever, cop falcon, you know, overlooking it. I mean, these guys were good. And they didn't want us in there.

and, you know, and it really came down to, you know, hey, the Americans, you know, the Americans are just letting us run roughshut over your guys so they can take our oil. I mean, they come up with these crazy things. And, you know, your average Iraqi will kind of buy off a conspiracy. So, you know, and they bought into it. Going back to the book here, the initial push into Ramadi came at a cost with Corporal Christopher Leon of the second. Naval Gunfire Liaison Company killed by enemy sniper on 20 June while pulling security on a rooftop of cop iron. That's Dave Burke's, one of Dave Burke's guys from Salt 6. In the following two days, Lance Corporal Nicholas White and Corporal Riley E. Baker, both of weapons company 3-8 Marines were killed in Central Romani.

On 26 June, the Currahese, that's the first of the 506, attacked out of Camp Corregador and established Cop Eagles Nest. in the Malab district near the soccer stadium, stadium securing eastern approaches to the city. Captain Bayamund as Bulldogs, having re-armed and refitted, attacked directly out of Camp Ramadi. Accompanied by an Iraqi tank company, they swiftly moved to secure the northern flank

of cop iron by constructing Cop Falcon to control the key intersections of the western part of the city. This attack also came at a cost. With Corporal Terry Lisk of Task Force Bandit, killed by mortar fire at Cop Falcon and injuring private first class Joshua Ravik. The bandits, the Curhys, and the 3-8 Marines

were now doing heavy lifting in taking back the center of the city while the regulars and the conquerors fought their way through the northern and western approaches to Ramadi. Yeah, this was, it was interesting when General McFarlane was on, and I didn't realize it at the time,

and I guess everything just blurred together. But, you know, he said on the podcast, He's like, I wanted to do a major operation every three or four days. And I kind of had to think about it and think about the dates that these things happened. And yeah. And like, even for this one, like this, my seals, the first guys to go into cop iron. My seal's the first guys go to Falcon. My seal's first guys to go into Eagles Nest.

Like these guys were leading all those operations. And it was a different type of lead because they'd come in on the cover, darkness. You know, same thing at the hospital. three Marines went in the hospital. We were there a little bit ahead of them, took a Overwatch position. But yeah, when I thought about it, it was just, you know, two, three, four days.

Guys would come back, refit, reload, and back out into the mix. That was an incredible pace to put on. And then the logistics support behind it all. Yeah. It's almost one of those things where if you asked me how often you'd be able to put together a what Colonel McFarland calls a cop in a box meaning hey we're just going to go build this thing.

Yeah. If you ask me realistically from a logistical standpoint, from a combat power standpoint, how often could you do that? I would have said, oh, you probably need three weeks in between. Yeah. We're doing them every like three, four days. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't like, it wasn't like, you know, 200 Texas barriers coming in every night, you know,

and the, you know, the filling the sandbag. at the Chow Hall, but I mean, there was Texas barriers and the little ones where the Jersey barriers. And there was just hundreds and thousands. And, you know, my S4, you know, I was an S4, so I kind of, you know, it's like, I understand this stuff. But, you know, I tell my S4, you know, this guy, Nav and Cali, come up with this stuff. You know, the staff, it all figured out. But it's like, it was just magic. I mean, I don't know where it came from. You know, I guess those convoys that came in every night. But there was. just mountains and mountains of stuff.

And, you know, I listened to the Jerome McFronland interview, and it's like, no, I wasn't like that, but it was across the brigade. You know, I was doing one every, you know, I was at the back, so I was doing like one a month, but, you know, the other battalion, they were doing one, they were doing one every two weeks, and that works out about every five days from across the brigade, you know? Crazy. Yeah. Meanwhile, you guys are going fast forward a little bit.

Team dealer was going door to door attempting to keep the enemy off balance. Placing an emphasis on limiting violence during training is one thing, but putting it into effect is another. It's a simple task for a battalion commander to design a training plan or issue orders from the safety of his office, but not so much for the 19-year-old Joe out walking patrol on a narrow street where the enemy may be hiding around the next corner or next rooftop. They were even harder for the 24-year-old squad leaders or the 22-year-year-old. old lieutenants to implement and explain to their soldiers with an unseen enemy trying to kill them every minute of the day. Captain Lou Lansom, am I saying that right? Lansom, yeah. Lansom, Lou, I apologize. That guy was a stud. Captain Lou Lansan and First Sergeant David Shaw did a magnificent job of maintaining order and discipline in a unit that was losing its mid-leadership on almost a daily

basis. Starting in Germany, Lansom and Shaw ensured that their soldiers understood the rules of engagement, putting them into practical terms, the troops understood, which was no small feat. The American soldier has and will maintain the right of self-defense and can use deadly force when there's an imminent threat to his personal safety. This required some keen split-second judgment in a place like Tamim. Personally, I felt an imminent threat any time I entered the place. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I had to fight the impulse to slide the selector switch on my M4 off safe, past semi, on to burst.

As First Sergeant Shaw and Captain Lansone asked the soldiers, are you threatened or are you just scared? Yeah, that section right there just explaining the efforts that the soldiers and the leadership went to keep the civilian populace safe because, you know, the one thing I always pointed out to my guys is I'd say, hey, there's a bunch of bad guys out there. there's also doctors, there's teachers, there's mams, there's sheikhs. And the minute we, if you kill, if we kill one of these people,

first of all, everyone knows about it. Like there's no hiding it. And you've got some good examples. We'll talk about there's, you know, there's the relationships with the sheiks. There's the relationships with the Iraqi police. There's the relationships with the Ramadi Iraqi government. And then you have relationships with the civilians. And then you have the relationships.

with the Iraqi army who you're out there with. So it wasn't like, oh, we can kill this civilian over here and no one's going to know about. No, everyone's going to know. And there's no covering it up. And so the amount of discipline that the troops had to have was phenomenal. And look, I had, I had seals, you know. And also, a lot of times my seals, they're in an Overwatch position. Enemy doesn't know they're there.

So they're making, they're able to make a call. They'll take a little time to make a call. in some cases. But your 19 year old Joe, as you put it, this kid's walking down the street. By the way, he went to a memorial service two days ago for one of his friends that got shot or blown up or whatever. And now he sees someone doing something. He's got to make those decisions. And the amount of risk that guys took, but also the outstanding job that they did to limit the civilian casualties.

And look, there was civilian casualties, but it was miraculous how small those numbers were. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a lot of, you know, 99% of that credit goes, especially to, like, Lou Lansone and First Sergeant Shaw. And I don't know if you ever met Shaw. I have to look at a picture of the picture. Big dude, you know, what an infantry first art. It scared me a little bit. I'll be frank about it.

But, you know, he's like, are you, you know, him, you know, are you threatened or you're scared? And, you know, and you walk the streets, you know, I did it, you know, 100th of the guys in dealer. But every time I was there, it's like, man, it's going to, it's going to pop off. It's going to pop off. And, you know, about the third time it did, you know, but, you know, those guys, they trained them really hard in Kuwait. And they also talked, you know, a lot about the kind of moral aspects of it. You know, Lou made a big point. I talked before I came on, you know, about, you know, they talked over, and then what's the second and third order?

And so, you know, it's not, you know, the, what was it in Black Hawk Down? It's like, we can't shoot until we get shot at. It's like, no, those were not the rules of engagement, but it's, you know, not as eloquent as Shaw was. I was like, you know, kill the people that need killing. And you kind of know who the people that need killing are. Yeah, that's close to the thing. I used to tell my guys, which was you better make sure the guys you're killing are bad. Yeah.

And, and you can tell. Like, you can't tell. Especially because, you know, that's another thing, the civilians, civilians weren't out. Like, when shooting started, civilians aren't out there anymore. Like, guess who's out there? Bad guys. Yeah.

And they're carrying AK-47s. They're carrying RPGs and they're getting put down. Well, and, you know, when there's, if you, you know, when I equate, we had a chance to read a lot of those reports because, you know, we were out training and, you know, sitting in my office, I'm reading all these, you know, sick acts and stuff. and, you know, shovel holder was probably the most dangerous job in Iraq in the first couple years. And it's like, you know, why did you kill him? Well, he's holding a shovel. Why is he holding the shovel?

You know, is he digging or is he digging in an IED? And so, you know, and the guys, you know, they were out there. And like you said, can't say enough, you know, they go to a memorial service and then they're out that night. Or they had a guy get killed and we were so strapped for people, they went right back out. because we had all the checkpoints and everything else. So you lost a guy in your platoon, you know, they evacked the, they evacue him in the Bradley. Them guys are back out for another, for the last, you know, four or five hours. So, you know, those kids were out there every day,

and they were kicking indoors. But they understood what the mission was. So they weren't roughen up the family because, you know, you know, kind of the lesson from Vietnam. It's like people wouldn't talk to us. And like when we got there, do you remember there was that big exodus of people? Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, I was in Desert Storm, and we didn't see a lot of kids in Desert Storm, but, you know, the kids always waived you. And the kids always waved to you. But when we got to Ramadi, one, everyone was hauling ass out of town.

And then two, you know, the kids wouldn't even look at it. The parents would walk inside the house and then the kids would just, you know, kind of walk away. And so it's like, you know, something is really, really wrong here. And so, you know, when we got in there, we started talking the people and that's when we found out about the murder intimidation and, you know, what the al-Qaeda guys were doing. Because they, you know, you don't want a dead population. And so they just come in kind of tune up the father until he got in line. And then he's doing whatever, you know, being a lookout or smuggling weapons or digging the hole or being the watch, whatever. Yeah.

One of the ways I described that is when we first started going, especially when I said like cop falcon going out and going to someone's house. And, you know, you're like knocking on the door. They open the door. If they don't open the door, kicking the door. But, you know, in the beginning, the family wouldn't even look at you. They would like, the father would like take. the family and huddle them away in the corner, they wouldn't make eye contact with you. Yeah.

Fast forward, like, I don't know how long it was because my mind is all blurred, but you fast forward an amount of time and they're giving you tea and they're having a legit conversation with the Iraqi soldiers. And that was a huge tipping point in the battle for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was a huge piece. And if the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines wouldn't have been disciplined.

in the way they behaved. That never would have been able to take place. Yeah. So that was a huge piece of it. Going back to the book here. On June 17th, terrorists attacked a Charlie Rock Patrol with an IED in Ramadi, killing specialist Robert L. Jones and Sergeant Reyes Ramirez and seriously injuring Corporal Ryan J. Clark.

The enemy had begun adding accelerants to IEDs, causing the vehicles to erupt in flames following the initial explosion. Making time to plan for future success could not come at the cost of lives here and now. Or now, here and now. So it was kind of unavoidable. And that's one thing that I've, I had not a fatalistic feeling,

but, you know, you drive out Campromati and you go by the vehicle graveyard, which was, You know, probably the worst place to put a vehicle graveyard because it was a, maybe it was the best place because it freaking got you on your toes. Yeah. And but you go through past that thing every day and you think to yourself, there's, there's a very small chance that we're going to be able to get out of here without taking casualties.

Like, that's just what's going to happen? It's terrible. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit. And in addition to our previously assigned Iraqi security forces, we received control of an Iraqi Army T-72 tank company from the ninth Iraqi division. We partnered with the Iraqi tanks, we partnered the Iraqi tanks with Team Comanche, assigning them checkpoint 3 along Route Mobile. Each of these Soviet-built machines flew enormous Iraqi flags from the turrets easily visible a mile away, making a 40-ton statement to the population that the Iraqi army was here to protect them.

The Iraqis loved their tanks. Passers-by would give them a smile and a thumbs up every time they saw a T-72. We also took the Iraqi tanks out on every large-scale mission. more for the message to the population than for their capability. Also, I have to admit that for a tanker, it was pretty cool to command a company the same vehicles I had spent the last 20 years figuring out how to destroy. That was wild. It was wild seeing those T-72s out there.

Yeah. Yeah, those guys, you know, we get in the Iraqi army in the fight, I mean, because it's really hard because, you know, they just, you know, a lot of times weren't very good. You know what I mean? And they meant well, but they couldn't do anything. But, you know, the people wanted the Iraqis. And, you know, they, one of the thing, we figured out two things kind of was, one, we were fighting the al-Qaeda guys who all needed it.

I mean, that's the long and the short of it. But then we were fighting the guys who were in the Muge, right, the popular resistance. But, you know, let somebody, let me and you be Iraqis. What would you be doing in 19? You'd be out there killing America. You know, I mean, they, and so part of that we had to kind of figure out how to split that off. And then getting the Iraqis in the fight. And, you know, it started with the police, and we used the shakes to get the police going and use them to do the recruiting.

And then the Iraqi army was like, hey, we just got to push them forward. Because they would be more than happy to let you do the lifting. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you got to get out there. And there was a couple times where, you know, crazy things happened. Like at ECP3, you know, I call it Chris Dillings. It's like, hey, you need to get these guys down here. And then, you know, he did, which, you know, he kind of looked at me. It's like, well, they don't have a quick reaction for us.

It's like, well, what do you mean? It's like, well, it's not really there. And Chris, you know, very few people at I will, you know, that guy was just a badass. He would be like teaching NBA, you know, military decision-making classes in the morning and then going out of patrol until like three in the morning. And so all those MET team guys are freaking epic. Yeah. And like when we when we cut that shake or we caught the imam and we got we had to take over the mosque, you know, they got down there.

They kicked, you know, they kicked the door into the mosque because we couldn't do it. But, you know, that. Meaning the Iraqi soldiers did. The Iraqi soldiers did. Which, you know, that wasn't in there, you know, getting them to do something on a dime wasn't in. You know, Americans, it's like, you know, blow the whistle. will run the gunfire. Yeah, they don't work like that. So, you know, a lot to those guys are out there. Yeah, I had a, similar to the Iraqi tanks, the first time, I mean, I was like literally

on my first patrol out in Ramadi and the Iraqi army came out. This was with the first of the 506 and I'm like sitting on a rooftop, got up there. I'm like holding, like holding security for a minute before somebody bumped me out of my position because that's what my guys would do. And I'm sitting there looking down like a street and all of a sudden out comes a guy with an RPG and he's got the like the RPG rounds on his back and I had my like my whole body wanted to shoot this guy and I was like oh this you know like a stand by because that's you know that's uh that's what they did that's how they're that's a friendly Iraqi guy that's a freaking RPG gunner and behind him was a guy with a freaking machine gun and AK 47 so it took a little bit of time for me to like get rid of the

the reaction of oh there's a guy with an RPG and for my whole adult life I've been seeing guys with RPGs as enemy and now all of a sudden there are bros yeah yeah

well you know one of the things in so when Garzman Reinhard got wounded right when the ECP got on fire and we getting back him Charlie Medd and and I talked to him and I said And, you know, because to me, in the grand scheme of things, being on a MIT team, you talk about being dealt some bad cards.

Bro. You know. So the team, just so you know, Kerry, these are the guys, military transition teams. These are the guys that are going to be like a three-man, four-man team. And you are going to go in bed with an Iraqi company or Iraqi battalion. And by the way, there's a PIT team, too, which is the police transition teams. So these guys were, this was a job. that you had to be just a hard human being to do, you know, from the living conditions.

Look, and you might have an air conditioned ConEx Box sitting out on ECP3, but you're still out there on ECP3 living in living in the shit, literally. Literally. Yeah. And so, you know, the, so Garza and Reiner, you know, they got some shrapnel. Garza got the worst of it. You know, they both end up getting like Bronzer vs, but we're sitting there in the con. Right?

there in Charlie Med, and I was like, hey, you guys, you know, I put you on the scene, because they were from my batine. I mean, that's one of the things like Lovejoy Day. He said, hey, you need to give these guys, so they got the latitude even, because they didn't need, you know, Chris didn't even have enough guys to move his vehicles. You know what I mean? So, you know, one of the things that 228 told us, you know, 172 was, hey, give them some of your medics and NCOs. So we gave him some medics and NCOs. And Ryan Arzo, Garzo was a medic. And I was like, hey, guys, you're good. You know, send you back to you. And I'm sorry about, you know, sorry about screwing you. And they, you know, I mean, from the mouth of babes, I mean, he's six and an old corporal,

but he's like, yeah, we ain't leaving. This is the only way out. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. You can go back. You can go back and eat in the mess hall of Campromati three times a day. And they're like, no, no, no, we're staying. We're staying. And I was like, huh?

Maybe these guys get it better than I do, you know, and at the time they did. Yeah. And that's heroic. There's the, the attitude that those guys had, that's just heroic attitude across the board. It's freaking epic. Fast forward a little bit. I had one last card to play the special operations guys and the other government agencies,

OGA, who lived in a corner of Campromadi called Shark Base. All of them went only by their first names. Since we were conventional, since we were mere conventional forces, we dubbed the residents of Shark Base the Super Friends. And I took to calling Shark Base the halls of justice. The Seals of Seal Team 3, led by Navy Lieutenant Commander Jocko Willink

were great teammates and did whatever it took to accomplish the mission. The SEALs had their own intelligence section. That was phenomenal. And it did like my guys that did that job. There was a few SEALs and a few Intel guys. But I was telling you before we started. I mean, those guys were, and I just was texting back and forth with one of them.

Those guys were working like 18, 20, 22-hour days. Yeah. Every day, the whole time. Interrogations, grounding up Intel. work in sources. They were just freaking outstanding. I'd met with one of the super friends a couple days earlier. As is common, he ended our conversation.

Whatever you need, just ask. And what you asked me for. This was actually me. You asked for $300 and a set of wheels. What happened on that one? Yeah. So it was kind of early on. And it was kind of crazy.

So we had one of the thing, things we had to do, and to me was we had checkpoints. And so we'd have a Bradley and another Bradley, or a tank and a Bradley, looking back on each other so they couldn't put in IEDs. And they'd still get in IEDs. They'd drop out at the bottom of the car, they had cut out, whatever. But the only way to keep a big one from coming was have these Bradley's. Well, the yellow apartments, so the ones in five kilo, right? And so some guys, like, with a mirror, like flashing, flashing with this mirror. like so the Bradley goes over and sees it right and says go see what's up and some guy runs out and he's like this building's full al-Qaeda and we're like okay because I mean part of the thing was you know our train-up was so a local was flashing a mirror

You're trying to get your attention. Guys go over to check it out. And the local says, hey, there's a bunch Al Qaeda. Yeah, this is all Al Qaeda. This is their headquarters. And, you know, we kind of, you know, for a train-up, it's like, hey, we're looking for like this, you know, we're on a camp. They'll be on it.

You know, you kind of, you don't really think through it completely. And so these guys are in there. So we, you know, so Lou gets the guys and he, you know, we tossed the building. Our Lou's guys tossed the building. And, you know, they found some wires, but they were all engineering students. And there was nothing really that we could, you know, ball him up for. Actually, I talked a little couple days ago, and it's like, so how did the guy get in the back

of the Bradley with his wife and kids? And Lou's like, he's still mumbling about it. I still don't know what happened. So somehow the Bradley comes back and it's got the guy and his wife and his three kids. Is it the guy that was signaling? Yeah, the guy was signaling. And so, you know, over the course of like the next, and so it's like, we got to get the, because back then, You can't bring wives and kids on to, you know, women and children on the post because then, you know, the Al-Qaeda guys would make, hey, but it sounds like, oh, geez, what do we do?

And so it's like, okay, we'll turn them over to his tribe, you know, so it was like match, it was a family feud, you know, me and the three and the exit was like, good answer, good answer. It's like, but he turned out he was like an Azidi, which they're like, there's no tribe there. Yeah, there's no tribe in the, and the Sunnis all think they worship the devil. So we can't do it. It's like, okay. Okay, we'll do this. Yeah, yeah, good answer. And so finally it's like, okay, we're gonna get rabbi. And so literally it's like, hey, sir, Chrome McFarland's on the phone for you, which is one of the times he's like, what are you doing?

And so, okay. Because you had a woman on base. A woman on base and these kids. So, you know, like I said, you know, I met Jago a couple days prior. And it's like, so I calm up and I'm like, hey, you know, Tony Dien, one through five. You remember, oh, yeah, sir, how are you doing, you know? and, you know, you don't need validation, but, you know, you're a great teammate from this point on, right? And so I said, hey, I need 500 bucks in a car.

You're like, what? I'm like, hey, look, man, I need 500 bucks. And it kind of, it's like, okay, okay. And then, like, magically it shows up, you know? And I, you know, I don't know how magically you did it. I don't know if you did in case there's like some army lawyers listening, but, you know, it showed up. And so, you know, curfew, live. lifts, they come up and I grabbed Lou. I said, Lou, you make sure these guys get out of there.

So Lou gets them, uh, Lou comes in, you know, we've been up all night. And Lou's like, they're gone. It's like, you know, seven o'clock in the morning. He's like, they're gone. I said, any problems? He goes, yeah, it was a stick and he couldn't drive a stick. Oh, sorry. Vecher's scampage of truth. And I said, I said, so what happened? He goes, he's headed to Baghdad in first gear and it's not our problem anymore. I'm like, good man, Lou. Good man. And so, yeah, so I mean, you know, whatever we asked you, I mean, whatever we asked to you guys. And, I mean, you guys were kind of the, you know, the coin in the realm.

And there was other people doing other things. But every time we asked you for something, you'd find a way to give it, even if it was. $500 bucks in a car. 500 bucks in a car. Or, you know, when we took over the university, you had some guys there. But you actually had some guys that rolled in with us that helped us with the interior. And, you know, whatever you could do. I mean, you guys were always there.

And, I mean, there wasn't a lot of you. No. You know what I mean? But, you know, I mean, you know, the, you know, we could use a seal brigade. You know, I mean, because, I mean, you must have had 24-7, you know, people, hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this, you know, bigger little? But, and rolling out on a major operation every three days. Yeah.

It was incredible work, you guys. Yeah. just to clear up legally. So we'd have SERP funds, right? Yeah. So that's the money just going to come from SERP funds, which is stuff that you use to pay when something happens to a family. Well, you took a family out of your home.

It's okay to say, hey, here's some money so you can relocate. That's totally normal. And then we'd have vehicles because if we went and captured someone, like a bad guy, we'd take their vehicle. And in some cases, we would take their vehicle because we'd want to come back and see if they'd modified it, see what they were doing with it. And so, you know, we probably had three, four of those vehicles at any one time.

And apparently one of them was a stick. So that's what's going down there. And, you know, that's just, you know, speaking of the whole thing, you know, the, the, the, the whole teamwork that we had there across the board, you know, for me it was always, even to this day, someone will make a joke about the Army, someone will make a joke about the Marine Corps. and I like will not participate in that. I won't participate in the in the little rivalries that that we have because the teamwork that we all had was was so deep that I won't even betray that teamwork like 20 years or 18 years later. Someone wants to say something negative about the army or about the infantry or the Marine Corps.

It's not it's not happening. I won't. I get it. I get it. We're playing that little game, but that's not happening. And it stems from the fact that, yeah, we helped you guys out, but think of all the things that you did to help us out, that the 38 did to help us out, that the 137 and the 506, like everyone, you know, just even the route clearance that you guys were doing. You know, just, and by route clearance, I mean, you drove the route, you know. Your route clearance sometimes was just you're driving the route.

And we would pay attention because we'd go hit a target somewhere in Tameem. Guess when we'd go. We'd go after you guys had driven the route two times that day. So that's what we're doing. So you guys are taking IEDs for us sometimes. So when you guys need something, we're going to do it. And we're going to give you what we can. And you know, you think about the 137, those guys, Mike Baim, are rolling out.

They're rolling down IED pack streets. And they're going to rescue one of my guys, going to bring a Kazivak or fire support, 506, same thing. So everyone was so reliant on each other that coming up with 500 bucks in a car, all day, we'll make it happen. Yeah, one of the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the mid team, and I kind of figures out, I got a lot out of Chris Stillings,

but, you know, just leadership stuff. And he was, you know, we were both lieutenant colonels, but he was like, hey, you're the boss, which was, you know, I mean, there wasn't an adversary relationship. He's like, well, you know, we're, we're paired. I mean, he was like, hey, I work for you. You got to get these Iraqi guys going, which, you know, crazy. He's like, well, you have a Iraqi battalion.

It's like, attached, op-con. How was it? They're like, no, they're just yours. And it's like, okay. And you got Chris. And Chris had his own sharing command, but he, you know, but he had guys, he had 10 of my guys. And I think there was only eight of his because they'd lost a couple guys early on. And so, you know, at the squad level, we had Marines and Army guys.

you know working together and there's a story in there where you know chief for gash the guy from ECB3 he ended up getting shot in the stomach and uh while he was out with the iraqis in five kilo and uh uh oh shoot the the one of my e-7s that was there um he hears it on the radio and he like he was at two nor three he goes out there he grabs some mp who's smoking a cigarette he's like you get in the truck, get on the gun. And he, like, drives into this Iraqi firefight, finds Forgash, who's about ready to bleed out, throws him in the Humvee, drives back to Camp Ramadi,

and saves his life. I mean, these guys have been working together for like a month and a half. You know, and the poor MP, you know, he'd just stand there smoking a cigarette, you know? And so, you know, it was amazing that there was absolutely, because, you know, like you said, inter-service rivalry and, you know, you only work at least.

No, man, it was like, Walking down the street, you know, someone will save you, you know, and you do anything for them and they'll do anything for you. It was fascinating. Fast forward a little bit. Later that evening, we received word that Corporal Ryan J. Clark from Charlie Rock died out of the wounds he suffered two weeks earlier. Although Charlie Walk was temporarily detached from the task force, they were still part of the family. Team dealer was taking the fight to the enemy and to meme around the clock, and during anywhere from five to ten IED or small arms attacks daily. I'm going to say that again. Five to ten IED attacks or small arms daily. We had been judicious in our use of violence and response to these attacks and a detaining military-aged males,

and we're beginning to see slight slivers of hope in reaching the community. Still, most of the encouraging signs continue to come from the tribal areas just outside of town. The term ma'am military-age male would become politically incorrect in just a matter of weeks and banished from all official reports, but it was clear who is attacking us, young Iraqi men between the ages of 16 and 40. Some units in Iraq went on ma'am roundups, arresting anyone that looks suspicious, meaning Iraqi males between 16 to 40 years old. We made a conscious decision against that. Throughout the first three weeks of June, we brought in 65 suspected terrorists and had enough evidence to send 36 of them to extended stays in Abu

Gray prison. The rest we thank for their cooperation in. them on their way. That was interesting how they term ma'am got disbarred. Yeah. Um, and we had to call them. I forget what we moved to, but, uh, you knew. Yeah. On the afternoon of two July terrorist attacked a team Comanchee patrol with double-stacked landmined, severely injuring staff sergeant Joe Sealski and Sergeant Chad Rosoundsky and wounding specialist Henry Brady, rushing to the eight of the two wounded, the NCO's platoon sergeant, Master Sergeant Mike Morton suffered injuries as well. As they carried Rosansky into Charlie Medical, he was yelling at the top of his lungs, conquer or die, which is you guys were the conquerors

and your motto is conquer or die. He yelled at the top of his lungs, conquer or die, and sounding off with his name rank and social security number, landing, get me some ice, my ass is burning. Although his injury ultimately cost him both his legs, Rosansky would not be defeated. He was laughing and joking until the medic sedated him and wheeled him into surgery. The mortar platoon had only five of the 10 NCOs.

It was authorized at the start of deployment and did not have a platoon leader. This single IED attack injured three of the four stalwart NCOs in the platoon, landing them back in Germany within hours. just like that, I had one platoon without leadership, and I could not afford to take them out of the fight, not even for a day. That's a crazy thought, right?

Yeah. You can't even pull them off the battlefield for a day, and they have no leadership left, and you're just going to make it work. Yeah, yeah. And so I take in their... So the guy that was their platoon leader, Van Dorme, he made captain.

And captains don't belong. You know, O-3s do not belong in the tombs. It's not good for them. It's not good for the unit, whatever. And so I took them out, and I was going to bring another guy in, but I was waiting for him to come back off the leave. And then all of a sudden, you know, they lost all their incentives. And they were short-handed to start.

And actually, Rzanski wasn't even a mortarman. He was my fire support NCO from the talk. And they asked for volunteers. Rzanski just makes, you know, Sarge. He's like, hey, I'm ready to go get that. in the fight. And so, I mean, that more battoon, there was a bunch of mortimer in there, but there was a bunch of cooks and mechanics and mortarmen. You think about that for one second. Like here, here's all these casualties are happening on a

daily basis. You got vehicles stacked up in the vehicle graveyard. And you needed someone to go out in the field. And this guy that's sitting safe, relatively safe in the talk, is like, hey, I'm in. Let's go. I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. And I still keep him contact. Rzanski, he's actually, you know, raising his kids. I mean, he's actually living in a pretty good life. Awesome. I see him on Facebook. He's like, I'm canoeing and stuff. It's like, man, you get off my ass. He's living life harder than I am. But they go out there. And so, you know, Van Dio, Van Dormue was in the, you know, he's working in the three shop. It's like, yo, grab a mitt, go back, go back, get in the game. And he went down there. And I think we took, like a maintenance guy or something. And then the guy,

Gilmer, he had just made E6. I mean, he was like E5, just like made E6 that day. And it's like, hey, you're in charge now, stud. And they did it. And they went back out. And the one thing, all my guys, Comanche, they didn't take near the casualties that the dealer did. But the dealer guys, I mean, at one point, I think they took like 25% casualties between KIAs and WIs, which were crazy numbers for that war. and they went out every day.

And we didn't, like the combat stress guys, we didn't send our guys there. They couldn't afford to. Fast forward a little bit talking about the police recruits. If we could screen, you're trying to set up a police recruiting thing. If we could screen and transfer the recruits in the same day, we could solve the intimidation problem. And you would describe it in the book,

but basically a guy would go get recruited into the police and then go back home and they'd be like, don't go, don't join the police, and then they wouldn't ever show up again. So you're saying, hey, if we can just get them to join and then take them to get them trained immediately, we can bring more people on board. You said, I went to Ready First Deputy Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner, who was the officer in charge of developing Iraqi security forces for the Ready First.

Lechner grew up in Rochester, New York, although he came from a Kodak family, not a military family, Jim and always wanted to be a soldier. He attended college at the Citadel and chose to become an infantry officer. Jim was wounded while serving with the Ranger Battalion in the Battle of Mogadishu, spent numerous follow-on tours with Special Operations Command and had already done an advisor torn Iraq. He was a bulldog. Very good way of describing Jim Lekker.

He was a bulldog who knew how to get things done, second only of fighting the enemy. Lechner enjoyed fighting bureaucracy. Yeah, Bulldog's perfect description. A big bulldog, by the way. Despite being the year of the police in Ramadi, there had been no more than two dozen recruits a month since February of 2006.

you now you're working with the shakes to try and make this happen um you say during these meetings because you're going to these houses the tribal leaders the sheikhs houses during these meetings arab men constantly arrived and departed from shake o'kmaid's house their mood was always jovial and the shakes seemed genuinely glad to see americans akmed was akmed continued to complain how the terrorists were taking over insisting that if we would just arm the tribes everything would be fine and i haven't introduced him yet but you've got to character in here named Dragon. That's your interpreter.

Outstanding Terp. And you get into this, you know, you get in there to meet with the shakes once again. And you say I'm probably the hundredth American to sit in Shake Pazia's living room. You say, when I met with the shakes, I always took off my helmet and body armor to show that I show that I put my personal safety in their hands. The Bedouin culture requires hosts to protect his guests.

And over time, you figured out. like the game that was being played. And fast forward a little bit more. We now had entered a phase of the operation known as steady state. The soldiers knew what to expect when they went on patrol and the staff was working diligently to solve the problems we faced. Although the daily fight was extremely violent,

even in the relatively peaceful Zangora, exemplified by a patrol led by Lieutenant Tim Connors on the western edge of five kilo that was attacked by a 68-millimeter spam V rocket, remotely fired out of a piece of PVC tubing. We were getting better at interdicting the AIF before they attacked us. On 3 July, F troop was conducting operations in the village south of Tamim when they discovered a Chevy suburban with 80 pounds of TNT, 25 blasting caps, and 35 pressure plate triggers. It's freaking crazy. Later that day, team dealer detained three bomb makers in Tamim while the Iraqi Army Battalion and Team Comanche searched the yellow apartments in five kilo and detained a four.

four terrorist bomb makers on whom we had actionable intelligence. It seemed that maybe the mirror man had been correct after all. This is the guy that was sitting there. We were starting to make progress across the AO, across AO Conqueror. We were finding bombs and bomb makers before they attacked, and the Iraqi army was joining the fight. The reason that steady state operations is a misnomer

is that nothing remains steady. The enemy was constantly developing new tactics, The mood of the community changed based on events. Leaders go on R&R or become casualties or get moved to new assignments. So this is what you're dealing with. And by the way, it's July. So this is July 2nd. So you've only been in there for a month.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That suburban had actually had a, like the year prior, like a 2005 Texas state. License plate. The sticker. Oh, okay.

Got it. Got it. And then it's like, how is the thing? Yeah, it's like, okay, I got other problem. We'll never figure that one out. But I mean, it's like, what the hell? Just before 0,800 on July 4th, team Comanche formed a 360-degree defensive ring around the Bazaia compound.

Again, you go into so much detail. This relationship that you formed with Sheikh Bazaia and that family, and you'd gotten it turned over, by the way. So there was a 117-2. They'd done a great job of forming. in that relationship and and pass it over to you. Yeah. I know I sent my, uh, my lieutenant junior grade, regular Navy officer, just outstanding guy

out there on some of those, on some of those meets with you. Yeah. Um, so here you are now. Fast forward a little bit. You set this 360 degree defensive ring around the compound and this police recruiting drive is ready to kick off by moving location from the glass factory, which we've talked about on this podcast when the glass factory got blown up. Um,

From moving it from there to the Buzzias, our personal requirement had dropped from three companies to just a couple of platoons. And though I had to send the four vehicles from my security detail, just so Comanche could meet the minimal requirements for securing the site. We would provide the outer security ring with the on-site security, the responsibility of a mixture of Iraqi policemen, Iraqi highway patrolmen, and Bazia's people who were more of a posse than an organized unit. members of the brigade's Iraqi security force cell led by Jim Lechner and Captain Travis Patrick Quinn, augmented by Conqueror staff, set up various stations. The recruits would rotate through to pass screening. Frankly, the bar was low to get in the Iraqi police. Present a valid identification for proof of age.

Pass a fingerprint check to verify the aspiring officer was not a known terrorist. Complete a basic literacy test and perform a physical fitness test that entailed running 20 yards. down and back. Once the recruit met all four of these requirements, he was deemed qualified, he was deemed qualified to attend the police academy in Jordan. So this is what we're doing. We're trying to get the locals.

Think of what a profound idea this is to get the locals to police their own areas. Yeah, so one of the problems, I think, was that, you know, at the higher levels, they put a lot of emphasis on the Iraqi army. but the Army doesn't keep you safe, the police keep you safe. And so, you know. And they have a vested interest.

It's their neighborhood. It's their neighborhood. And we're never going to figure that out. You know, I can't tell you why the mayor of Melbourne, Florida, is the mayor. I've been living there seven years. You know, I can tell you what's up in Omaha because I grew up there. But, you know, you are never, especially in six months or a year, you're never going to figure out the interseesies of, local politics, which is, you know, Klauswitz, you know, it didn't go to CJC, but, you know,

war is essential in politics, learning that much, right? And so, you know, getting the, getting those guys to recruit them into the police, I mean, to me, that was just simple. But at the time, the tribes were a vestige of the past, you know, you can't deal with tribes, can't deal with tribes. Well, you know, we weren't making a deal with the tribes. We were, hey, get your guys to join the police. And, you know, there was two hundred. hundred of them. And I told, I told, uh, Ahmed, I said, you get 500 guys. I'll build you a police station, which, uh, zero, zero authority to do something like

that. But I figure, you know, if I show up, it's like, hey, I, you know, double the size of police, you know, over double the side of police force, you know, I'll be, you know, carried on, on throne. And it's like, no, you'll be Lawrence of Arabia. I'll be lorraine of Arabia. But instead I got pushed. And even with the, you know, changing the location.

are shipping them out on one day. It's like, no, here's our SOP. And, you know, so something, you know, I just turned Jim loose on him. Jim turned himself loose because, you know, Jim's looking for a fight. If he can't be out on patrol, he's going to, you know, get somebody on the phone, yeah. And so Jim hunt those guys down. We got it down to one day. We got out of the glass factory, which was like the saddest thing I ever seen.

There was all, and they had a big one like in May, and I know you guys have talked about this, or in January, which then the, the, they had a tribal awakening, and then it just turned into the baptism scene of the godfathers. They blew up the thing, they blew up the recruiting, and then they hunted down all the shakes that were there. So there was, you know, had to be present to win. So, you know, the Bazaias were like the only ones left. And so we told, we told Lachman that, and we kind of shook on it. And he, I think we brought in 300 that day. I think Dan had won, and it kind of worked out to 300. And so, you know, again, they were working us as hard as We work in them.

And it's like, you know, so, so, so, Ahmed's like, hey, where's my police station? It's like, yo, where's my other 200 dudes? You know, I mean, so, you know, and we'd go there, go to his house and he had all these, like, you know, you know, the Army doesn't give cash prizes, you know, they give, like, trinkets and coins and, you know, plaques and stuff. And he had these plaques from every unit that ever passed through there. And it's like, well, you know, the guys on the team. actually Sitar had built his head so him and Starr lived next to each other. Sitar had these dwarf columns on his house to look like the White House.

And it's like, so these guys are on the team. They're like, oh, they're working yet. I think these guys are on the team. And General McFarland and I talked about it. He was getting pushed back about working with Sotter. You know, like, oh, this guy's a criminal. This guy's a smuggler. He's like, yeah, well, he's a businessman.

That's what, otherwise known as a businessman. Oh, it got worse. I mean, so once the awakening started, we should. finally got some of the MF guys to come and the like Polad and one of their like senior guys came out and he's like we were trying to get him made General Zilmer and the brigade went or the Meph staff went let's do it so I love don't get this wrong I love the Marine Court Meph that was a little bit different we had we had two different views and so they'd uh you know he's like well you need to arrest the tar

I'm like, you know, I kind of snapped. And if I had been a Marine or he had been an Army guy, I probably got fired on the spot. But I'm like, I don't know arrest him. You arrest him. And so somehow I managed to keep my career on that. But they were convinced that he was a criminal and they didn't want to do business with them at all. And it's like, dude, he's this charismatic figure. And, you know, his brother Ahmed always kind of downplayed.

Yeah, he was always kind of dirty, but Starr, like he did that on purpose. But Sitar was always like in the starched, you know, Arab clothes and, you know, always look good and carried this, uh, chrome-plated Colt 45 Texas sequedennial six shooter. It's like, dude, he, you know, and, but they understood the theater. You know, we're like, oh, we, them boys understood the theater. And they, they played it well. Yeah.

Uh, we'll get in some more of that stuff too. Across the task force, back to the. book across the task force unless a soldier was bleeding he went right back on patrol it was months into the deployment before we even began sending blast victims to the medics for traumatic brain injury screening we just did not know any better at the time and we still and we are still years behind on the treatment of TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder treatment for these types of injuries include drug therapy but most veterans also return home with some physical injury either a purple heart worthy wound directly related to combat or bad backs and

trick knees from carrying equipment. Doctors liberally prescribed pain medications to treat those physical ailments. I believe there have been insufficient studies on the combination of the two drug therapies. Anecdotally, I've seen too many good soldiers given a bag filled with painkillers, antipsychotic drugs and sleeping pills, and told them to take them as needed. Add in some hard liquor, self-medication, and the results are predictable, all too often, tragic. Fast forward a little bit. Again, this is two days later than the last one I just read.

On July 6th, 2006, 3-8 Marines led a clearing operation at Ramadi General Hospital. The largest hospital in Western Iraq. Ramadi General was a modern seven-story, 250-bed facility that looked exactly like the building on the opening credits of the soap opera general hospital. Good point. Depending on the reports you believed, Ramadi General Hospital was, one, a field hospital for terrorists. Two, a headquarters for al-Qaeda operations in Ramadi. Three, a torture chamber for al-Qaeda. Four, a bomb-making facility.

Five, a sniper's nest. Six, a place of peace where the American oppressors unduly increased the suffering of the people in Ramadi by forcing their way into the facility. And that was obviously just wrong. I believe it was a combination of the first five. The operation went off without a hitch with the Marines finding a dozen or so IED triggering devices in a tiled ceiling in one of the offices. The enemy knew the hospitals, mosques and schools were off limits to coalition personnel and routine. mainly used them as armories and meeting halls. Al-Qaeda used its control of the hospital as a bullet point in the propaganda campaign,

claiming it was evidence of proving who was really in charge of Ramadi. The other thing that was good about them for the hospital was it was seven stories tall. It was tall, and so it gave you line-of-site communications throughout much of the city. So they used it for that as well. So they were using that as an absolute command and control node. Fast forward. Task force conquer continued census operations leading to targeted raids, on intelligence usually gained through previous census operations and attempted to engage with the leadership of Al-Awambar University as well as working with the sheikhs on police recruiting.

The enemy fought back furiously, placing more IEDs throughout the streets of Tameen as they attempted to keep us from reaching the population and gaining their trust. The route clearance patrols conducted by 54th engineers, task force dagger, were critical to our being able to move through town. Every night, these men moved slowly along the main routes, searching for and disarming IEDs. They actively hunted the source of the biggest killer of Americans in Iraq and an incredibly dangerous mission. Dagger supported the entire ready first, and we only had use of this valuable asset every few hours, a few hours during the night a couple times each week. On the night of 8 July, team dealer and task force Dagger conducted a route clearance patrol in Teme, almost directly across from Camp Ramadi. and very near the site where Scott Love and Nick Cromby died a month prior. A platoon of dismounted infantry moved building to building, building, clearing the flanks

as the tanks and Bradley's inspected task force interspersed with task force daggers, mind-resistant husky, buffalo, and cougar vehicles crept at a snail's pace with soldiers interrogating every pothole and every piece of debris on the street. We had done everything we could to mitigate the risk in this textbook route clearance, patrol. The only asset we lacked was a predator drone and we only had a predator support in troops and contact call. Shortly before midnight, a massive IED exploded underneath the second vehicle in the convoy of mind-resistant cougar. The blast drove a manhole cover through the bottom of the vehicle, cutting it in half, instantly killing Staff Sergeant Omar Flores, specialist Troy

Linden and specialist Joseph Mix. A fourth grievously wounded soldier, Sergeant Alkalai Floyd, would die from his wounds three days later. Also severely injured was Staff Sergeant Noel of Charlie Rock, who was riding along learning how to conduct a route clearance. It was one of the worst days of deployment. Four men dead and one severely injured in a matter of seconds. The attack on task force dagger occurred in A.O. Conqueror and a lot of

I was ultimately responsible. I met the casualties at Charlie Med when they arrived while we sent out the recovery quick reaction force to bring the vehicles back and grieved for the loss along with the 54th engineers. And the peacetime Army officers become convinced that if they do everything right in battle, the result will be minimal casualties. The Army has a proven methodology for training management, execution of training, and after-action review process following every event.

During these reviews, a leader establishes an open dialogue among all the participants to determine the connection between a shortfall, either in the planning of an operation or a failure during the execution of the mission. What I never fully realized is that sometimes the enemy gets lucky or is just better than we are on that particular day and we will have soldiers die even when they're doing everything right. The Vietnam veterans used to say that the enemy gets a vote, but as a desert storm veteran, I never really understood that. until now. Yeah, that was horrible. And those guys from Task Force Dagger, that's what they were doing every freaking night

throughout the A.O. And I rode with them before. I also sat there and watched them do their job from Overwatch positions. And it was, those guys were just incredible. Yeah. And we did everything to protect them.

I mean, there were Bradley's in there. There was Humvees in there. We had infantry squads running on the flanks, you know, and, you know, we didn't see the trigger man. And, you know, I think it was one of those leftover from the beginning when they, you know, they had ceded to me. And part of the other problem is, you guys, you know, is the Ray First was getting more and more success, you know, with Falcon and Grant and, you know, taking over the hospital stuff. They started moving, you know, they take the path of leadership resistance. they started moving back into meme, and it took us a while to kind of figure that one out. And so there were all these IEDs that were, I think they were pre-planted.

You know, like you were saying on sunset, I think, you know, those things were just pre-planted, waiting for someone driving on the road. And, you know, I just remember, you know, going to Charlotte Madden. That was, I mean, we lost two guys, but I mean, when you have four guys dead, you know, Jesus. You know what I mean? It was, you know, and Sean McGinley, I called him up. up and, you know, he's like, you know, and offer my condolences and, you know, so then two days later

they were back out. You know what I mean? Back out in our sector. You know, it's like, hey, there's my idea. We didn't get that road club club curve. We got to go back and get it. And it's like, you know, those guys, you know, again, all these kids, they went out every day, you know, and even the kid's on the wall.

You know, these guys on the wall. It's like, oh, you know, I'm a cook and I pull the wall. You're on the wall every day for 8, 10, 12 hours. Yep. And there's enemy everyone. out there. Fast forward, July 10th, I scheduled a meeting with the leadership of the Al-Lambar University.

Allegedly the campus was an informal headquarters of the Mujahideen in Ramadi, and was fast becoming a hotbed for Al-Qaeda activity as well. By my count, terrorists had murdered at least three university presidents in the last couple of years. I also found a professor who graduated from the University of Nebraska at the same year I had, but I was hesitant to ask for him, fearing that he would be beaten or killed for talking to coalition. So there's this on the, on the actual.

outskirts of Tamim, just I guess west of Tamim, there was this big compound, like a college compound. It was the Alambar University. Yep. And you were going to get in there. You say this, this is also an interesting, a little bit different subject, but I spent a lot of time the first month trying to figure out how to capture HVTs on the top 10 list. As it turns out, I had the entire perspective of how to catch terrorists completely wrong. At first, I thought we were looking for the Viet Cong, a faceless enemy living in the jungle, desert in this case, wearing black pajamas and attacking Americans.

The conventional wisdom was that if we could just get the leaders and maybe the next couple of knuckleheads on the top 10 lists, then the violence would stop and peace would break out. Every unit across Iraq from the multinational core, Iraq headquarters to the third platoon, had a top 10 list. Killing or capturing the leadership of the insurgency would help a little. but not to the extent that one would think every company commander in the army thinks he can do a better job of commanding a battalion or brigade or division than his current commander terrorists are the same killing or capturing the enemy commanders might lead to a slight decrease in organizational capability but it certainly does not stop the violence and there was nothing more obvious than that than when we killed amz because we killed amz in june he was the big leader the the the charismatic leader of al-qaeda in iraqaq yeah killed him there's like didn't even make an impact. I mean, at least not on a tactical level out in the streets.

Yeah. Yeah. Although I will say of the al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind, the dude who came in later, was that Masari? The guy who took over. Bobby Baker? No, no, no. He was later. The guy who came over next, he actually kind of sucked his leader at Q.

He's probably the worst one. But then we killed him and they actually got some good help back in there. you know so but yeah I mean we you know we think we're going to kill these these top 10 terrorists but it's like there's somebody else you know there's someone in the next man up and they were they were same way and uh the one thing that you know we talked about this we thought we were fighting the viet Cong and then we kind of figured out that uh we were actually you know a maurish guy right so we were actually fighting the IRA you know strip out the police living in monks you know Michael Collins was riding his bike through uh Dublin every day and you know you know

know, even at the time I was thinking about, like, you're, you know, you're driving through and a car's going by and it's like, could that, good, that guy be the brain thing operation? You know, or just some guy that's like waving to you when you're driving down the streets, like, is he on the team or is he the ultimate mastermind? And, you know, there's a little bit of both. So, you know, once we kind of change that, we're just not going to, you know, and even, like, I guess it was the yellow apartments, not the white part, the yellow apartments, you know, we're not going to find them all, like, hanging out in the clubhouse. You know, they're not in the Legion of Doom, you know.

So it took us while to figure that one out. Team dealer received two new platoon leaders. Second Lieutenant's Perfecto Sanchez and Mike Latier. Am I saying that right? Latiri. Latiri? Yeah. And they were beginning to get a handle on the situation in Teme.

Perfector was born in Harlem and raised by his grandmother who stressed both curiosity and responsibility. Growing up, he showed a lot of potential, but he was just not a problem. applying it to his life. His high school track coach, John Damon, pulled Sanchez aside one day and gave him a pamphlet on West Point. He was smart enough to realize that the opportunity presenting itself and that sticking around Harlem would only diminish his chance to make something of himself. After graduating from Newton High School in 2001, Perfecta had gone to West Point.

And again, I'm like, there's so many details in there about all these soldiers and Marines that you put in. It's just, it's awesome to read. because it reminds people, if you read this book, like these are not just numbers, these are not just statistics, these are people. Yeah, and in the living and the dead.

You know what I mean? So, you know, 93 soldiers died in the ready first or 96 in the Battle of Armadi. Well, you know, something that's good in the aggregate, but that's somebody's brother, that's somebody, you know, that's a kid who was state wrestling championship. That was a kid who, like, pulled himself, you know,

out of a tough situation. and he moved on. And, you know, the admiration, and I know you have it, I mean, everyone has it. But when you know these guys that were in that fight every day, you know, the guys in dealer or whatever, it's like, wow, double wow. You know, it's just words can't describe what these guys did. And they all had good lives.

And if you know, if you look at the timeline, most of them joined right after 9-11. You know, they're like, hey, our country's under attack. We're going to go good after it. and you know the and the guys today i mean god bless them there's still a war you know we're still in iraq uh you know there's still a war going on not not as vicious as it was back then but uh still in harm's way still in harm's way and these kids are still making life choices that could have you know they could have done something else so yeah fast forward a little bit on the night of 17 July, we caught a break when a team, when a team dealer patrol captured three men out

after curfew. When their justification for breaking curfew raised suspicions, the patrol brought them back to Camp Ramadi for further questioning. In the morning, we realized one of them was an imam from a mosque and Tamim. Detaining an imam was a big deal with a clear cut set of rules, including a requirement for prior approval from the commander of the three-star multinational core Iraq in Baghdad. Technically, since we did not know he was a mom when we detained him, we held him. Although another rule of thumb was that when the commander used words like, technically, he is skating on thin ice.

Numerous intelligence reports linked this particular mom to al-Qaeda. And but Baghdad disapproved Colonel Lovejoy's request to arrest him months prior to arrival. We were sure he was a bad guy. I called Colonel McFarland telling him that we had detained an im, filling him in on the cleric's background. Colonel McFarland's response was good. There was never any hand-wringing on McFarlane's part. Later that day, a restive crowd of nearly 100 Iraqi men chanting and carrying signs gathered outside the front gate of Camp Ramadi.

This was extremely out of the ordinary since we were for all practical purposes isolated from the population. The only Iraqis who dared venture near the gates were Iraqi security forces detainees who were zip-tied and in U.S. custody, the Terps and the owner of the Hajimard. At the time, the Iraqi stayed on one side of the wall and U.S. forces stayed on the other. The crowd was demanding the release of the imam. Half the signs were in English,

but without Western reporters around to film their protests, their efforts were in vain. Most of the mob stayed well back from the gate, but four men came forward demanding to speak to the commander. Colonel McFarland called me on the telephone. You brought the amam in here. You go get rid of the crowd, he said. Sir, I don't want to usurp your authority.

They want to see the post commander. I think they want you. replied jokingly, good try Tony. Get out there was his reply. You do some negotiations and you end up telling them, hey, if the Imam is innocent, he'll be released. If he's a terrorist, he's going to prison. I promise you, I'll look at the evidence and let you know in a week. Then you have a meeting with the super friends. My guys roll in there and you get them all together on June, July 20th, and you start kind of going around the circle and you say this. And they were, some of the Some of them were saying, release him.

Yeah. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You got to understand that the Imam is in a tough position. If he comes out too strongly for the coalition, the terrorists or killed him, we'll kill him. That might have been true. Then again, the Imam may have just been playing the handler. This is one of the people you're talking to. The meeting went on for almost an hour.

I knew that there was intelligence implicating the Imam, but I also understood what the super friends were saying. Like it or not, they were conducting operations that were not being shared with the Task Force commanders. While it was possible that the Imam was working for the greater good, I did just not, I just did not see it. Finally, it was a cards on the table time, and I went around the room and asked each of the super friends to vote whether to kick him loose or send him to jail. In the military,

we defend democracy, not practice it, but I wanted to get each one of them on record regarding where they stood on releasing him, starting with the handler, and again, these are other government agencies, people, and these are someone that's been like working with this guy as a source or what have you. Each one in order said to set free the cleric. But the farther away from the handler, the less impassioned each vote seemed to be. I began to feel that the super friends felt the need to stick together and that I was not getting the whole truth from the collective group.

They had about broken me my will and convinced me to release the Imam when one of the seal intelligence guys sitting in the back of the room locked eyes with me. He was a junior petty officer and did not have a speaking part at the meeting. More importantly, since he was sitting in the back row, no one else could see him. Ever so slightly, a frown came across his bearded face and he shook his head from side to side. That was all I needed. Thanks for your input, guys, but I'm going to have to think about this some more, I declared. As fate would have it, that afternoon, a dealer patrol took an RPG fired from the Imam's mosque. And yeah, whoever your guy was, I don't know.

He was sitting in the back and, you know, and he was pretty junior dude. Yep, I know. That's how I know who was. And he was just like, yeah, don't let this guy go. Yeah, don't let this guy go. I was like, okay. Yeah, I'm going to out him, but. Awesome.

Yeah, that guy, that was one of those guys, dude, he was working. And he was just so engaged, you know, so engaged in who was connected to who and who is doing what. Those guys were just, they mapped things out. so well. It was awesome what they did. Well, you know, it's crazy because they, you know, and, you know, we had guys, we actually got some Intel guys from our parent brigade down in Kuwait. And they were like, they're like, well, they're, they were in the Intel company. They're like, they're Slavic translators, you know, and it's like, because that was a mission,

it's like, well, you know, the kid's got 139 GT score. We'll figure this thing out. So we brought these guys up from Kuwait, and they weren't, you know, Intel analysts, but they were all smart kids. And the same thing. You know, I'd walk into a dealer company. I can't remember the guy's name. You know, the C-5.

And you'd seem to slumped on the desk at like three in the morning. Because I'd, you know, I kind of walk around when they went on patrols, you know, try to see the guy. Because you've got to kind of look at your guys in the eye, make sure they're doing it. And these guys are just slumped on the desk, you know. And they were out there working. And they'd have like, well, Abu whoever. And they'd have pictures. And it's like, that was beyond me.

man, I'm like, so is it the dude in the orange jumpsuit or, you know, the guy with the big head? Yeah, we're going after this guy and they'd have all these names worked out and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. This guy. Oh, okay. I remember a picture, but they, all them guys were crossing. They all worked together. It was amazing.

I mean, if you could hook a multimeter up in Ramadi that measured like workout per man, I mean, that thing would just blow. It didn't matter. I mean, even the cooks, you know what I mean? They just, everybody was just working so hard. Yeah. And there was such a direct relation between getting intel, finding out what's going on,

conducting patrols, and keeping guys alive. Yeah. So, like, you know, that's why my guys. And, you know, I haven't talked about my group of Intel guys that were part of Task Unit Bruiser much because what they were doing was, you know, it was Intel gathering. And it was not something that we normally talk about in the CER themes, right?

So it's that type of work. And so I haven't talked about what they did much, but you would know that when those guys would target, and by the way, oftentimes what they would do is we'd send, they'd put together a target package and we'd tell you or we'd tell 137. Because for us to assemble the forces to go out and go into Temeem and roll up a target, when I could just get on the phone with you and say, Hey, go hit building Alpha 3, 2 in this sector, you'd be like, cool.

We'll be there in 15 minutes. That's how fast your guys or the 137, the 506, or the 38 Marines, they could just turn and go execute things fast than we could drive there. So like, let's just do that. Yeah. But so my guys, everyone, everyone just had this feeling like every piece of intel that we can get that gets an IED maker captured or killed, we're going to keep some Americans alive. Yeah.

And that's the driving force. And so you had Intel guys doing. in that, but it's also like the cook that stand and watch on the tower. Like those guys, we killed people from, from on Camp Ramadi. I had snipers shoot people from our base

that were out there putting in IEDs. Yeah. Like, so this is what was happening. So everyone, like every moment that you could do something positive, that little thing that you did might save an American's life. Yeah. And every person that was on that camp was pulling on the rope. It was just amazing.

Yeah, it was just amazing. But one thing that you realized, the Americans, we couldn't do it by ourselves. And I'll fast forward a little bit here. I now believe that the local police were the key to victory. And I knew that Sheikh Satar was adept at bringing in other sheikhs to encourage their men to join the police. My desire to get the local police themselves reminded me of high school with the locals as the students and the coalition forces as the administration. The students in my high school all knew who was drinking booze, who was smoking dope, but the administration had no idea.

Or if they did suspect something, they did not have the evidence to prove it. Likewise, the locals in Ramadi all knew who the bad guys were while we were clueless. If we could get the citizenry to take responsibility and police themselves, then the coalition's responsibility for providing security would drop down to almost nothing.

And we, you know, they wanted to do that desert protector thing. You worked through all that stuff. Here's a great dialogue that you had. I'll just read these two lines. Sheikh Satar tells you, my grandfather fought the British in the 1920 uprising. And you reply,

mine too, back in Ireland. Talk about a kinship. More about Sheikh Satar here. He loved President Bush, both of them, in fact, but especially W.

This was true of most Iraqis I met. In their eyes, President Bush was the hero who liberated Iraq from Saddam and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity for a democratic government. Satar constantly, told me his greatest dream was to meet

President Bush and thank him for all he had done for Iraq. Another thing you mentioned. With his father, two brothers and countless cousins murdered by Al-Qaeda, Sheikhsatar, saw the terrorist organization as truly evil and wanted to defeat it across the globe.

Like you said, these guys were on board. Yeah. Fast forward, the police recruiting was going so well that by late September that the 500 policemen would be due back from the police Academy so it was time for me to live up to my end of the bargain and build a police station. I promised Sheikh Ahmed back in June. So you run that up the chain of command and you get told no.

No. Nope. You can't build a police station. Why? Because they had some PowerPoint that they had to present. We're building 32 police stations and this isn't one of them. Luckily you had your bulldog Jim Lechner and what he figured, he's just, you know, not just a bulldog, but a smart bulldog because he figures out, okay, well, how about we build a police. substation. Does that make it okay? Well, what's the difference between a substation and a

police station? The name. That's it. Same resources. Everything's the same. And as soon as you put substation in front of it, they improve it, which is just the way that's the crazy, when you hear about the crazy like military bureaucracy, that's case and point right there. Well, and the other thing too. So, you know, we were kidded out. You know, I got a chest carrier. I got my, whatever, the ACU that kind of look like pajamas. But, you know, we had a military uniform, we had boots, you know, we're out there in the fight. And these cops, that was one thing, they're out there. I mean, they're like Paul Blart. I mean, they're mall guards. I mean, they got polyester pants and polyester shirts and, yeah, they got a plate carrier. And then we gave them those

over the silver autos and we put some metal. It's like, you know, there's a picture in the book where they got a, like a, I don't know what, or whatever the era of M60 is, right? they got a machine gun on top of one of those pickup trucks, and it's not on a pedal. It's on a tripod. And those boys would roll out. And it's like, you know, I really, you know, over time, it's like, man, these guys are kind of badass, you know.

I mean, for just even doing it, even trying. And then once, you know, once we started getting a lot of them, you know, when this police station goes in, there was a lot of them. I mean, we went from like 200 to, you know, we got the 500, so we got up to 700. and then like within two weeks wrapped like 3,000. Yeah.

Yeah. It was awesome. You also plan to build this university checkpoint. I introduced it. Again, there's so many details in the book. Get the book. I plan to build the university checkpoint. Colonel McFarlane was not afraid to make a hard decision agreed to it immediately.

The first PowerPoint slide announced the name of the mission, Operation Toga. McFarland quietly said, knowledge is good, which is a quote from the movie Animal House, which is just like typical McFarland. Arland to be able to pull that quote. There's the opening of the movie Animal House. They're showing this statue. And it says like whatever the favorite college. And it says the quote is,

knowledge is good. And McFarland was able to just rattle that off. Fast forward a little bit of cross ready first AO's casualties mounted as operations to take back the city continued. Task Force Bandit had secured a foothold in Southern and was conducting census operations around the new cops to get a feel for the new neighborhoods. The Curahees and the 3-8 Marines were also expanding their presence in the city. It was a daily grind of soldiers protecting the combat outposts and then going on patrol to

canvas the population. All the time, the enemy watched attacking when and where they could. On 17 July, Staff Sergeant Michael Dickinson, the second assigned to A Company. Ninth Cyops was on a dismount of patrol when a sniper took his life. On 19 July, Bulldog Company from Task Force Bandit sent an armored patrol along route sunset between Cop Falcon and Cop Iron to ensure it was clear of enemy presence. The Staff Sergeant Mark Vensione was a tank commander of the lead tank in the patrol when his vehicle hit an IED and began to burn. When the crew could not immediately extinguish the fire, Vensione ordered them to evacuate and move safely, evacuate and moved to safety while he began to moving the loaders to the loader's side to pull

the release on the external fire extinguishers. While attempting to save the vehicle, Venscheon triggered a second IED, the explosion killing him instantly. The tank continued to burn for hours, eventually requiring a brigade-level effort to recover the tank. Two days later, the terrorist attacked a 3-8 Marine dismounted patrol with an IED killing corporate. Julian Ramon, a Colombian immigrant from flushing New York, who was on a second tour in Iraq. The enemy was seemingly everywhere and nowhere. That was a great description. That idea of the enemy seeming like they're everywhere and at the same time seeming like they're nowhere.

Yeah. And you like it's, you know, you like me, you were probably out of the office a lot, right? So you'd come back in the office and they're like, some guy got killed in 137. Some guy first five or six got blown up, you know. And like every day. And, you know, the book's kind of thick. Because, you know, I thought all the guys who lost their life there should be kind of memorialized, which was kind of hard to do. But if you put the wounded, you know, it would be a three-volume set.

You know, it was just every day somebody was getting hurt. It was like 500 wounded for the 1-1-A-D. Yeah, yeah. I'm certain of it. And it was every day. And, you know, kind of, I think it's kind of started getting on the guys a little bit, you know, because, but then, you know, kind of you get numb to it, but kind of it's like, well, it's going to happen to me sooner or later, you know, but these guys went out because they didn't want to let the buddies down, didn't want to fail. They bought it in the mission, and God bless them. On 22 July, one of the super friends came in with a tip of a high-value target that was a bomb-making factory into me. We diverted a dealer patrol led by Lieutenant E. in Blackstone conducting sentences operations to investigate as the patrol began.

moving toward the suspected enemy hideout, a furious, continuous burst of automatic weapons fire from PKM machine guns and AK-47s erupted. The withering fire pinned them down for several minutes. Clearly, we had walked them into an ambush. Eventually, the men of Team Dealer gained the upper hand, suppressing enemy with overwhelming firepower. By then, however, staff sergeant Christopher Swanson

lay mortally wounded with a single gunshot wound. On 24 July, Al-Qaeda tried to reassert its dominance with a coordinated citywide series of attacks against coalition forces, striking at 15 locations across Ramadi in less than 30 minutes, with eight of the attacks occurring in one deadly 10-minute span. Well over 100 fighters engaged in the offensive, with six of the attacks defined as complex, meaning more than one engagement method. While the attacks briefly rocked us back on our heels within minutes,

coalition restored the relative order, killing at least 28 terrorists who had with nothing, who had nothing to show for their effort. That was, again, that was just, you know, you talked about how they were good at what they were doing. I mean, that's a difficult operation to, and I remember it was crazy. Like, for them to be able to pull that off was impressive. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I got to talk about Starns-Wanson because he was another guy that was like Scott Love. Just, you know, you talk to him, you meet him, just a nice guy. very good at his job. You know, it's like, one of them guys like, he's going to go pretty far. This guy's going to be a soldier of the Army someday.

You know, just a really good guy. Just a stud. And very good. Like when we did, we did squad live fires and plight fires when we were in Kuwait. And, you know, his squad was always, you know, kind of the best right there at the top. And, you know, they got caught in this thing. And you talk to the guys who were there. I mean, there was all these machine guns.

I mean, they were, you know, the guys who were there, they're like, that's the worst we had it. time in there just getting tore up. And Swanson, you know, figures out what's what. He kind of figured out before it got lit off. He got the guys inside the building so they didn't get caught in the street, you know, and he runs up to the roof, and he's trying to engage, and he gets killed. And, you know, and that was, and that happened every day across everybody, you know, and, you know, in Swanson was another, you know, some of them, when you know the guys pretty well, you know, he, that one, that one, that was a bad one too. And, you know, and as this is going on, if, you know, the names in the book, the dealers are

starting to lose NCOs, left and right. And so, things were getting bad. Yeah. Let me say one thing, though. Before that day in the attack, because that was like two days later, I believe. So the next day, I think we only had four attacks in Team Dealer. We only had four ticks that day. And me in the three in the in the in the ex-el, me and Dave Rao and Bergman were saying

there were high-fired. We've turned the corner. We've turned the corner. And then the next day, just a brigade wide-ass weapon came. Yeah, you do mention in the book also about Swanson. You say a week earlier, I just seen him in Charlie Med getting a small piece of shrapnel pulled out of his butt after the Humvee he was writing and hit an IED. I joke with him that he had the million dollar wound as if the enemy could only wound a soldier once. Yeah.

go. Here's a dude that gets wounded. Gets wounded. Week later, he's back out on patrol. Yeah. It was a little worse. You know, your memory fell. I just remember we have like a little cut, but he actually kind of got, kind of got it. But, which is even more so. I mean, he got a bunch of stitches in his crotch, which you're out walking patrol and he's like back on it.

Yeah. And by the way, it's 120 degrees out there. Literally 120 degrees because now we're in July. It's 120 degrees. That's what the temperature is. Yeah. On 26th July, Al-Qaeda attack cop, Falcon, enforced, causing. Mike Baima and his men to fire every weapon system they had to repel the enemy and requiring

ammunition resupply during the four-hour gun battle. The next day, three Marines from weapons company, three-eight Marines, Corporal Timothy, D. R. R. R. R. Murray, and Private First Class Enrique C. Sanchez died when an IED destroyed their vehicle. Yeah, it's like, as I was reading the book, you start getting in this, and I don't know if you did this on purpose. I don't believe you did, but you may have, but you start getting in this pattern where good things happen and you're like, oh, we're going to get police recruits and people die. You know, there's friendly killed in action. Then something else good happens and that's the way it was all the time. Like you just said about turning the corner.

Yeah. You know, you'd be like, oh, this is a good day, you know. And then, like, it's not, it's just not ending. Yeah. Yeah. Sheikh Satar had a scheduled meeting for one August with tribal leaders from across Ramadi who wanted their young men to join the Iraqi police. And this is great. So you're in this meeting. And once again, your interpreter's name Dragon. And you say, Dragon.

So you're in this meeting. Dragon, tell them they all look the same to me. I said to my interpreter. Dragon is normally very soft spoken. He had a personal investment in the war, having been in Ramadi for over two years at the time, and did not want to see me destroy the progress we had made. He looked me in the eye and said, matter of factly, I'm not telling him that. Tell him, dragon.

Tell him every fucking word. Dragon shrugged, grimaced, and repeated in Arabic what I said. The room fell silent for a moment and then erupted with angry outbursts from all the shakes at once. It was hard for me to tell exactly what they were saying, but judging from the tone and body language, I calculated their mood to be somewhere between indignation and anger. And then you continue. Back in Nebraska, we all wear cowboy boots, blue jeans, plaid shirts and cowboy hats.

I went on to say, knowing the Iraqis all watched a lot of Hollywood movies on satellite TV. If you came to my town, you couldn't tell us apart. Since I lived in Nebraska all my life, I could tell you who belonged there and who didn't. I can tell you who's a good man and who's a bad man. I can tell you which families are good and which ones are bad.

Why? Because I'm from there. And I know the situation in ways you'll never understand. It was almost as is, if the lights went on in the shake's head. That's classic. You know, you get their attention with that statement. You all look the same to me.

Yeah. But it's so accurate. You know, it's so accurate. That's kind of what the thing with Travis Prattrick Quinn, what he was trying to explain with his stick figure diagram. Like, hey, we don't know who's good and who's bad. They do. Yeah.

Yeah. At 10.30 hours on August 2nd, under the watchful eyes of SEAL Team 3 snipers and the camera lens of a circling predator drone, the soldiers of task force conqueror embarked on Operation Toga. This is once again putting a checkpoint at the university. Rolling past the checkpoints ringing the outskirts of Tamim, the assault column turned to the campus of Al-Ambar University. And you rolled in there.

It turned out you were expecting like 50 people or something like that, but it was payday. So there ends up being 400 people on campus. what we had envisioned as a six-hour operation dragged on all day. Luckily, the Naval Special War for Intel team had a couple of seal shooters along for the ride to help interrogate locals. They had an uncanny knack for picking out terrorists out of the crowd by their body language and demeanor. That one there, six rows up, five over from the right, the blue shirt. See him rocking back and forth.

He wants to kill us all. Hall his ass in. And the dude with the beard three rows behind him in the red shirt, grab his ass too. He's acting too cool. And again, these were, I had these guys that have been. trained their seals, but they've been trained interrogation, and they were just freaking awesome. And then we sent those guys, and we were also doing something over out of Cop Falcon the same day. So we had multiple units in the field, but these guys were helping you.

These guys find a bunch of, you know, actually the, the, sorry, the Iraqi company that you brought, found a bunch of RPG launchers, PKK machine guns, dragging off sniper rifles. And, you know, so it's a successful. Very successful operation. Yeah. And, you know, and so for months, the white apartments,

which were, like on that road, that went down to Ramaga and the right apartments there, we were figuring getting, everyone's getting attacked out of there. And I asked Lou, I said,

you know, you know, to me, the boogey man lived in the white apartments, right? And he's like, there's just nothing but a much poor people in there.

Well, then we kind of figured out that, like, you know, if you're going to start a revolution, Where do you want to start at? University of campus. And so they were crossing down.

They were using the university because, you know, we couldn't go in there. Yeah, we couldn't go in there. Yeah, which, well, why not? You know, right? So we couldn't go in there. And then they'd go under the train track. There was like a sewage thing. And they'd go into there, and they'd go to the white apartments.

They'd shoot us and they'd come back and forth. So it's like, and actually what took the scale for me was the Q36, were they were shooting mortars. They were teaching people to shoot mortars from the university, and they were shooting them out in the desert. We got the Q36 return. It's like, you know, they're holding the, you know, Impak, the mortar leader clash. You know, they're holding that thing here in the university, you know, and they, and they didn't even have the, felt the need to waste their ammo on us. They were just teaching people out of shoot. So I was, okay, we got to do that. University of G-Hod. Yeah. And so, home of the fighting soon. But, uh, um, um,

So, you know, we didn't want a blood bat there. You know, we just want to take over the place and deny them it. And, I mean, it went all the way up to Maliki, but, you know, they said go. And, you know, I talk about this in the book. I mean, the three things you don't do is take over university, take over a hospital, and take over a mosque. And McFarland was like, yeah, go get it. You know, as long as you made a good case, he's like, go get it. You know, I mean, you know, when you talk about moral courage, most people is like,

the hand-wringing that would go on for any of these things. But he was like, go get him, Tiger. Yeah. No, he did not shy away from bearing the responsibility for these things. And like you just said, I mean, hitting a hospital, hitting a mosque. Like these are hitting the university. These things are huge potential, you know, news stories and we look terrible. Yeah.

And he just put trust in us to execute these operations. and make these things happen. It's amazing. While Operation Toga had its glitches in the end, I would call it our first combined task force-level U.S. Iraqi operation establishing a permanent Iraqi-led combat outpost and denying Al-Lombar University use as a terrorist safe haven without firing a shot a success.

As soon as I got back to Camp Ramadi, I checked the Reuters news website, which was the source I used whenever I wanted to see what al-Qaeda had to say about a topic. In this case, Operation Toga. The terrorist press release was already in circulation with its usual list of atrocities committed by coalition forces. We attacked the university in a hail of gunfire,

killing many professors and students, blatantly not true. We had beaten professors and students alike, blatantly not true. We systematically raped the women on campus, blatantly not true. We had humiliated the professors by making them walk around with signs around their necks, calling them dogs, which caused us to reevalued our naming conventions because you had actually named off sectors of the city

and so you had to label them where you got them from. And so this part was actually not blatantly unsure. So while our mission went well, it was a terrible day across the ready first with Corporal Joseph Thompson of 3-8 Marines dying from wounds received during operations in Central Romadi. Later that evening, SEAL Team 3 was conducting operations near Cop Falcon. in central Ramadi when an enemy sniper wounded seal operator second class Ryan Job

triggering a running gun battle that lasted over an hour and spread throughout the streets of Ramadi when it was over aviation ordinance men seal second class Mark Lee was killed becoming the first seal to die in Iraq Ryan Job would eventually succumb to his wounds nearly three years later I think what you said earlier you know hey when one good thing when happen, you know, three bad things would happen. And, you know, hey, we took over this university, we locked it down, and, you know, you guys have the worst day in, in probably years in the seal things, you know. And it was just, it was just like that every day. Yeah. And, you know, here we have, you know, seal snipers over with you, don't even fire a shot in that whole mission.

Yeah. And then here, these guys are in a, you know, and what, there's, that's a half a mile away. Yeah. Yeah. These things, this city was crazy. Yeah. By August. by four August, cop crab was complete, and we were circling back to our routine. All I had on my schedule was attending a memorial service in the morning, then meeting with the lawyers in my office in order to make a final determination on a platoon leader and a platoon sergeant whom I had suspended from duty because I believed they'd shot up the fire station and to me. Then I was flying out on R&R. I did not have the time to go into, I did not have the time to go to all of the memorial services across the ready first. There were two,

many seemingly won every couple days. Today's ceremony at Blue Diamond was for specialist Hai Ming Sai who died in an IED attack on one August assigned to Alpha Company, 26th Infantry. He was a member of Task Force Conqueror through the train up in Germany and Kuwait. I had met Specialist Sai in a couple of times. He was smart, dependable, team leader, an immigrant from Chinatown in New York City trying to live the American dream. He was older than most of his peers, but a hard worker and well-liked with a bright future in the army. Halfway through the ceremony, Sergeant First Class Roberts tapped me on the shoulder with a grave look on his face. He whispered in my ear, Sir, F-troop, Humvee, hit a landmine. It's really bad.

We left immediately. The blast site was adjacent to an abandoned railroad station approximately 500 meters northeast of OP 29 or 3. I arrived at a gut-wrenching scene. The blast had instantly killed Staff Sergeant Clinton's story, Sergeant Bradley Best, and an Iraqi translator, a firing gulf the vehicle before we could evacuate the bodies. I waited there with the cavalry men until the recovery effort was complete and the remains of these brave men evacuated. Yeah, that was a, um, that was really a bad day. And, uh, um, you know, F troop, they, uh, McFarlane would give, would give them to me for time to time just because I was friends are short of people

and we had them doing some checkpoints, but, you know, there's nothing you can do. You know, vehicles on fire. And we just come from

the Memorial Service and, you know, and then oddly enough, there was a marine firefighting detachment there, which I guess they came with the airfield.

There's nothing, but like, you know, two Marines come out with a, with a fire truck. What the whole firetow come from? They put the fire out.

So, It was just You know And all that was I think in a week Everything we just started Yeah Yeah I think this is like Because you know

So they'd have a mass casualty Drill on base And one of the things they'd call They called for blood Like they'd call down to my talk And be like hey we need blood And so we just Anyone that was there

Yeah Would go and give blood And or help out And I remember I'm pretty sure This was the one But you know I sent guys up there And it was we didn't have

Most of the guys were working But had a few guys send them up there and they went up to help out give blood and they ended up just helping move bodies and um you know the guys were just burned and and and um one of my guy one of my young officers came back and i could see it was uh they're gonna leave a mark on them you know seeing these guys and just tragic situation yeah yeah and it was you know and it's there and it's like you know hey and you know uh one things Mark Lovejoy said to me was, you know, you may lose a guy, but you got hundreds of others.

You've got to keep alive. And I just remember standing there. And it was all you could do, but to look at the vehicle, it's like, no dudes, face out. We've got to pull security. You know, we can't get roll up here again. And it was just like that every day. there's uh again you know we talk about discipline and the performance of the troops and you had a situation that was unfolding that you had to deal with you and here's here we go the basic facts of the case were clear coalition forces shot up the fire station and to meme there was no doubt about that thankfully there were no injuries in the incident but some bonehead put an m4 round through the engine of the tomeem fire truck i believed in my heart that the soldiers of task force conquer

would never have done this. Why in the hell would anyone shoot a fire truck? I knew my guys were sharper than that. I'd called the commanders of the units that routinely transited A.O. Conqueror and accused each of their units intern of being behind the attack. The commander of SEAL Team 3,

task force, that was me, and also Task Force Rangers and Task Force Bandit all checked in and stated that it was not them. Still, I felt one of them was not telling the whole truth. Simultaneously, a soldier recently assigned a team dealer went out on patrol a couple times and then refused to go out anymore. I suspected he was a coward and was preparing to court

marshal him. While awaiting his punishment, aside from not going on patrol, he did everything the first sergeant asked him to do. After sitting down and talking with him, First Sergeant Shaw realized the problem was with the platoon and not the new soldier. Although the soldier never implicated the platoon, Shaw was perceptive enough to figure out his men were the ones responsible for attacking the fire station and he had the moral courage to call them out. The first sergeant knew that a platoon medding out street justice was a cancer to the unit requiring immediate removal. I ordered a formal investigation into the incident and reported at Colonel McFarland as the investigating officer began questioning members of the suspected platoon, the platoon leader and the

platoon sergeant invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, preventing a further question of them. All I wanted was to find out the truth of what happened, but I could not tolerate a platoon leader who will not report his actions. No matter how Bradley he screwed up, short of murder anyways, I could deal with it if they simply told the truth. The platoon leader and platoon sergeant officially reported that they had not entered the fire station. After the questioning of the platoon members, it became clear the two men had lied. Army investigations have a way of getting the truth because no matter how many blood oaths or sacred packs are made, promising to take the secret to the grave, once the investigating officer starts reading Miranda rights,

the truth spills out in a matter of minutes. I never did find out what caused the two soldiers to shoot up the fire station, but I suspect the platoon sergeant, had lost his moral compass because of all the fighting and the new platoon leader was not man enough to stop him. Between the two of them, they had decided to teach the Iraqis a lesson in action that was clearly unacceptable and always ineffective in combat. So many like little things in this. Number one, it shows you how despite all this chaos and combat going on, these little things are still going to get noticed. They're still going to get investigated. You know, like the idea that you could go around and cause mayhem and not heavy to know about it is completely ludicrous.

You know, even someone entering the fire station and hurting the fire truck is getting raised to your level by the civilian populace. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of it goes to leadership too. And I think Matt Graham was in command by that time. Lou had moved on to another assignment. But those two, they knew it.

You know, Shaw knew it. And, you know, Shaw is the one who came to me and said, hey, I think it was my guys. And because they knew. I mean, they knew that this was going to happen. And you probably hear this all the time. I hear that sometimes like, oh, you were in Vermont. It was the Wild West. And it's like, well, no, we're professionals and we're going to carry ourselves as professionals.

You know, we're just, it's not some crazy gunfight. You know, it's not. you know, I mean, it was violent, but, you know, we're professional. We're supposed to act like professionals. And the dealer guys, you know, they, they fixed the problem. I mean, they brought the problem up. They fixed them. And, you know, if they would just told the truth, we probably would have figured it out right then and nothing would have happened.

Well, I mean, I've been counseling the statements and Ledger upman, but, you know, you take the fifth. Take the fifth. Okay. Well, good luck. Good luck in court, because you're not going to be in my unit anymore. You say this. I have always felt platoon leaders have the hardest job in the army. They are full of book knowledge and good intentions, but have little practical experience. In comparison, I felt the battalion command was an easier job than the platoon leaders.

I'd spend all my adult life getting ready to command a battalion, holding almost every staff position at some point previously in my career, and surrounded by smart and very experienced majors, captains, and senior NCOs who are also very willing to do anything you asked of them. Even as a company commander, I had a first sergeant on whom I could count on for expert advice, a first lieutenant executive officer who was experienced in three platoon leaders who wanted to do a good job, but did not know enough to ask hard questions. Platoon leaders are at the bottom of the leadership ladder and actually have to live with the men who are out doing the tough mission, looking them in the eye, telling them to move out. Anytime I said something as a task force commander, the answer was yes, sir.

soldiers do not always reply to lie lie lieutenants the same way. Sometimes the response is more along the lines of the entire plan is just fucking stupid. And you know, that's what you said. You know, you said in this case, you had a platoon commander that wasn't man enough to say, hey, we're not doing this shit. And that's usually all it takes. And I always say, look, maybe it's the platoon commander, maybe it's the, maybe it's the platoon sergeant and a teal platoon chief. Somebody in there's got to be like, hey, we're not doing this shit. Right?

Nope, stop. Someone's got to be able to do that. And if they don't, that's when you have a situation like that happen. Yeah. And here's part of the problem, too. And like later on, my last job was teaching the counterinsurgency seminar. But so you kind of think about it. So, you know, me and you were seeing your guys, we're telling our guys, this needs to happen.

This needs to happen. And especially, you know, between starting, well, they're talking to guys who just came back. Right? Or they're talking to the guy that they're ripping with, whatever. And they're saying, hey, I know what you're. They're telling you up there. But this is what I did is stay alive. And so it's like, okay, the 42-year-old dude's telling you one thing,

but the dude who looks like you, but a year older and still alive, I'm going to grow with what he said. And so, you know, they just kind of fell down. And, you know, there needs to be a moral compass. And that's, you know, the platoon leader and the platoon leader doesn't have to be it because everybody's kind of in tune. But, you know, people got to, you know, it's because it's counterproductive in the end. Yeah. In the end.

It's going against the entire strategy. If you're out there doing things like that, this is really populous and it's going to ruin everything. And we bought the fire truck. It was an American fire truck. You know, I mean, the stuff, you know, and part of that was, you know, the rebuilding and everything else. We bow in the fire truck held the soccer stadium. You know, we built that in like 2002. We rebuilt it 2002, 2003, or whatever.

2004, 2005, that thing had been rebuilt. And, you know, how many Gimlers and sidewinder missiles did Ron Clark put into that thing? I mean, it's getting blown up every day. And it's like, hey, Ron, how many shoot in? Quite a bit, you know. And then it turned out it was a, you know, we found out later. It's a, it was like the ammo supply point for the Muge when they finally took it over. That's for damn sure.

Yeah. So, yeah. You know, but, you know, going back to the moral aspect, you know, Lou and Shaw, they preach that. And that was the six months in Kuwait. And we got held in Kuwait for six months. We were in the war before they finally moved us up. But, you know, between me and, you know, Dan Walrath had the same thing in one-six, but, you know, we probably had the best trained

union in the army because we had six months to do what we needed to do and six months a leader because, you know, I tell people this all the time, it's like, if we had gone north in November, I was like, okay, we've done all training, it's ready to go. But when we went, you know, six months after we're training, it's like, thank God we didn't go in November because it would have been horrible. And it was horrible. I mean, it would have been double horrible. You end up going on R&R, which is, you know, some people don't know that, but the Army at this time was letting guys go home because the deployments are a year long, get two weeks of R&R.

Actually, Colonel Clark, now General Clark, you know, I went over and we were talking. We had some big operation coming up, and I went to talk to him about it, and I was like, well, you know, where are you going to be, sir? You're going to go, you know, and he's like, I'm going on leave. And I was kind of surprised, you know, because, I mean, what a. incredible leader Ron Clark is. I was kind of like surprised. He must have read my face and he goes, I gotta go on leave.

And I said, hey, Roger, that's her. And he goes, hey, Jocko, if I don't go on leave, first of all, if I can't go on leave because I'm required to be here and my battalion can't function without me, I failed as a leader. That's number one. Number two, if I don't go on leave,

no one else will go and leave. They'll all stay here because I'll be the example and they'll say, oh, the Boston didn't go on leave. I'm not going on leave or leave either. So to get these guys the break that they need, I'm going on leave. I'll see when I get back. It was like such a great aspect of leadership. And, you know, that's what you did.

So you, that's what happened. You go on leave. How is that leave period? You know, when you're leaving to go on deployment, you know, everyone's kind of worried, you know, my wife's like, is he coming back. You know, hey, honey, let's run through the insurance one more time. You know what I mean? And when you come back, then there's, you know, years worth of, like,

car and not getting worked on and everything else. But, like, R&R is kind of magical. You know, it's like, it's like free time. And so go back, you know, I mean, the wife of there, the kids are like teenagers by this point. You know, we go down to Garmish, you know, and we're kind of out every night, you know, kind of paint the town red. It was really pretty fun. It's this like suspension of time because it's really like, hey, this is a freebie.

Are you watching the news every night or did you just say I'm not watching? I was trying not to watch the news. I mean, but I checked my email and actually we had a couple guys shot during that time. And I think I know a couple of other units took some casualties during that time. But it's like, you know, hey, we're getting away. We're going to go down to Garmish. We're going to have a good time. What is Garmish?

Oh, Garmish is the Armed Forces hotel. It's in the ski resort. It's like a ski town. Yeah, ski town down in southern Germany. Oh, nice. Yeah. So it's got a nice hotel down there and, you know, bars and sit, quaint little German town. And so, you know, we're like, they're tearing it up.

And then, you know, then at one point you just got to go back. Are you, is it harder to go back because you know what you're getting into? Because I don't think anybody, well, I guess. I found out two weeks, I was supposed to go to Baghdad with my task unit, and we ended up getting assigned to Ramadi. And I knew I'd been tracking Ramadi. I knew how bad it was going to be when we got there. But even like the guys that were there before us,

they didn't have any casualties. You know, they, you know, so it wasn't like a glaring issue, like the guys that I turned over with, which was when we're, when they check in, I'm telling like the, I'm telling the task unit, like, you are going to take casualties. There's no avoiding it. Like, you need to be ready. So when you're, you know what you're getting back into.

Was that, was that like something you thought about or was like, yep, I know what I'm getting into, I'm more comfortable with it? You know. And what about your wife? You know, my wife took it all in stride. You know, she wasn't, you know, she, she knew how bad things were. She, and she did a great job. of, so I had some NCOs and officers that I left back to be the family support group, and my wife was not in charge of the family support group.

You know, she was the senior advisor, and, you know, Sergeant Seabick, Captain Koston, it's like, this is your job, you know, my wife's not here to run the wives. But she did a very good job of dealing with the other wives and, you know, making sure things were running right. So she, you know, she was all right, but she wasn't that worried about me. I don't know why. I guess she thought I was going to, I guess the insurance was paid up. you know, so, so it was all right, you know. But to go back was like, you know, it was like kind of playing basketball.

It's like, okay, I've had my breather. I'm ready to get back in for the, you know, ready to get back in the third quarter. And things just, you know, and things just kept happening. You know, it's like, what? What happened? You know, you know, Chuck's telling me, you know, like picks me up from the hellpad, you know, driving me back in the pickup truck and, you know, it's like a five-minute drive. And it's like, you know, tells me 30 things that it happened.

And then it's like, okay, because something terrible is going to happen tomorrow, too. Yeah. Going back to the book, I finally returned to Ramadi on 23 August to find that Major Chuck Bergman had magnificently commanded the task force in my absence. If it were up to him, I probably would have stayed on R&R a few days longer. Bergman and Major Dave Rao quickly gave me a rundown of everything that had happened while I was gone. Unfortunately, it had to be a brutal, it had been a brutal three weeks across the ready first terrorists that attacked the brigade with an average of six IEDs a day. On top of the ever-present small arms attacks and routine suicide bomber. On 6 August, while patrolling in the Al Jazeera, in the Jazeera tribal region, the Humvee carrying staff sergeant Tracy Melvin from Alpha Company, 2.6 infantry struck an IED, killing him instantly.

16 August Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Lowa Tank commander from Alpha Company 135 attached to task force regular was killed by an IED during a dismounted patrol north of Ramadi Staff Sergeant Lowe is a great leader and warrior and well loved by his soldiers

Two days later Sergeant Marquis quick from F Troop died into grenade attack while conducting a tactical overwatch mission for the ready first in downtown Ramadi on August 21st, a suicide bomber attacked the Jazeera police station. The bomber ignited an above-ground, 200-gallon gas tank used to fuel a police station vehicles, creating enormous fireball that burned the policemen and advisors alike. The advisor team at the station was devastated, with eight soldiers burned in the explosion.

This time, the Iraqis refused to be intimidated. After deciding that the Americans were taking too long to extinguish the flames, they entered the compound, put out the fires themselves, and raised a large Iraqi flag in defiance and headed out on patrol that afternoon. So again, a bunch of negatives and you have a positive like that happening. Another meeting with Sheikh Satar. When we were live that night, Sheikh Satar was chain smoking and pacing back and forth in his living room. I'd never seen him this agitated. Satar informed me that the Abu Athea tribe had brutally murdered Sheikh Khaled of the Ali Jassam tribe.

I remembered Khaled well from a conversation we had the night prior to the Al-Ambar University operation. He had lived up to his promise to assist in the recruiting policemen and had been reaching out to his neighborhood tribal leaders trying to get them to reject al-Qaeda. For his efforts, Abu Athea beheaded Shea Khaled, keeping his body as an insult to his family and were holding a female member of Khaled's family hostage as well. The Abu Athea tribe was openly hostile to the coalition with longstanding ties to al-Qaeda. So this is what's happening.

And then the body ends up in another AO in Lieutenant Colonel Walrus AO. Lieutenant Colonel Walroth received word that the tribes had recovered Sheikh Khaled's body. The disrespect that the Abu Athea tribe displayed in holding the Sheikh's headless corpse helped galvanize the other tribes into rejecting al-Qaeda. Yeah, so I show up the Starz house and he's wound up. And so the Stars, what's wrong? And so Collette, you know, when I said, the diet said, y'all look the same. He pulled me aside. And he's like, I've got, you know, four wives and 18 sons and all these people in my tribe.

And, you know, and he was like yelling at me. Like, why aren't we doing something? And I'm like, hey, look, man, you either throw him with us. or are you throwing a thank you who's going to work better? And they kind of talk about the book, but it's like that far side cartoon where what the dogs here and is a blah blah blah, wrecks. So he just starts going on.

I mean, he went on for probably 10 minutes and he's like blah blah blah blah blah blah. And he spit on the ground every time he said Bremer's name. And he's like, you know, the whole debate, you know, what I know about the Iraq War I learned from the tribes, right? And kindergarten, it's like, you know, they all blame Burma. And so when we get there, he said, okay, I'll do what we can.

So we get there and Satar's like, okay, you know, mash your forces. We're going to go into Dan Walrass area and like, you know, take back the, you know, take back the body. And I was like, you know, I got through about five of the seven pillars of wisdom. I mean, it was kind of a long book, you know. So it's like this Lawrence, Ribia stuff's got to kind of stop. So I said, let me find out, which actually worked out pretty good because then they figured out, you know, the tribes figured out that they got to do it themselves. And so like the next day, there was no policeman on duty. There was like, you know, enough people keep the station running.

And they went up there and they, you know, settled amongst themselves. I got the body back. But that really kind of pushed forward, them boys working on the awakening. Fast forward a little bit. You're going back to the Bizia compound. And again, this is what you just explained. You got a lot of details in the book. Get the book.

As we rolled into Bazaia compound, I noticed an unusually large number of people milling a mount, though this was not in itself remarkable since we never knew what we would find at Starr's house. It might be four shakes wanting to talk to coalition forces about having their men join the police or three guys from the town who just wanted to talk to America about a sheep that accidentally got killed two years ago. As I entered, Sheikhsatar stood up and came forward from the inordinately large group of men that surrounded him.

Ah, Colonel Dean, I'm glad you stopped by. We were hoping you'd come. He said without preamble, we here are all tired of the violence. He said while raising his hands, palms up and gesturing around the room. And we want to swear to swear to swear to allegiance to the coalition and vow to rid Iraq of al-Qaeda. It's about as good as it gets right there. Talk about Lawrence of Arabia activity. I mean, that's incredible.

Yeah. And it's cross-sport. It's, you know, the guys in Bravo company, you know, building trust with the people in Temean, guys in Charlie Company work in the tribal areas. You know, Matt Alden was in command there. And, you know, we started to take some of the terrorists out because they were kind of commuting from the tribal area and starting, you know, starting stuff in the city. And then just, you know, building on what Lovejoy and the guys did in 172, but also just kind of

working to them and talking to them. And so, you know, getting the guys in the police, they saw where it was going. And, you know, just kind of a huge teamwork thing. And then Satar, just being the character he was. I mean, Starr, you know, along the way, you know, he kind of capped a couple people here and there. And, you know, we'd go to his house and he'd have like, what was it, MKS machine gun? You know, one of the big ones out there. And it's like, hey, Starr, that's big AK-47.

got there. It's like, but you know, kind of cut him a little slack and he was, I guess, in political terms, he was kind of the bundler. He was up and getting said money and got the tribes together. And all the shakes showed up. The tribes pledging allegiance to the coalition was occurring at the same time as the Ready First was making a concerted effort to secure Central Romadi.

Task Force Bandit pushed further up into the heart of AIF City, constructing cop grant and OP Sword, opening baseline and Farooke wrote to the coalition while fending off sustained attacks against cop falcon the curhiz continued to expand expand their presence around camp cregador while three eight marines cleared northern romadi and the regulars secured the northern tribal areas these operations came at a cost corporal christopher werndorf from lemma company three eight marines died on twenty nine august when a suicide bomber crashed

into the front gate of the position he was defending and sergeant john carroll of Bravo Company 1-6 infantry died from gunshot wounds on 6 September when terrorists ambushed his dismounted patrol in Central Romadi. At 0 9.30 on 9 September 2006, my four up-armored Humvees and Colonel McFarlane's patrol of five Humvees headed out the back gate of Camp Romani for the Surr Drive to shake Satar's house. The Bizzias knew that Al-Qaeda was out to kill them and they took their security seriously. We had a proposal on the table that could fund.

Fundamentally changed the course of events in Ramadi. There was a lot on the line in dealing with the Al-Anbar Awakening Council both personally and professionally and on both sides Since the initial invasion and throughout Ambassador Bremmer's reign as chief executive of the coalition provisional authority Many senior state department and military leaders in Baghdad and Washington saw the sheikhs as a relic of the past who did not have a place in the new Iraq Colonel McFarland was taking a chance in dealing with them Again, just incredible, incredible leadership. Along with Colonel McFarland came a few members of the Ready First staff, including Major Megan McClung, the Public Affairs Officer, and Captain Travis Patrickwin, the Tribal Affairs Officer. Both were outstanding officers in their own way. McClung was a Marine recently assigned to the brigade and was making an immediate impact.

She was a ball of energy who ran marathons for fun. Thanks to her, the media was finally coming to Ramadi. Captain Travis Patrickin was not a marathon runner. While most of the captains in the ready first wore a high and tight haircut, Travis grew out his hair and mustache to look more like the Iraqis, which seemed to help them accept him. He spoke conversational Arabic and was not afraid to speak his mind. Travis was always thinking two steps ahead and had brilliant insights on how to deal with the tribes.

Although he looked more like Ron Jeremy than John Wayne, Travis was a 100% soldier, having earned a bronze star for Vassau. dollar wide wall deployed to Afghanistan during the opening days of operation and during freedom. And we talked briefly about him earlier. And there's a, I guess, like an iconic PowerPoint brief that he made with these stick figures. And it explained for the freaking dummies in the chain of command from an E1 private all the way up to the three or four star generals to say, hey, this is how we can actually do this. and it had a huge impact and it made all the rounds and up and down and across the chain of command

that was Travis Patrick and but yeah he's a character he was a character and he you know you'd be sitting in a meeting and you know you'd say something then you hear someone in the back because I mean he's you know he's not even in the sec row

he's like way in the back of the room he's like that's bullshit and it's like who you know why is Ron Jeremy piping up here you know but you know the kid was right more than he was wrong and uh and he was out there you know him and jimmy were out there

jimmy luckner out there all the time and uh you know he he just understood it and he spoke and he spoke enough arabic so i'm sure we'll talk about later when i left they you know kind of turned everything over to him but he uh he was just a good guy and didn't care yeah you know yeah so much about this is and i wrote it down when you were we were talking earlier you know we talked about the relationships that we had amongst the army the navy the air force and the marines there in all the different units, but the relationships then carried over to the Iraqis. And whether it was the Iraqi police that were now going to stand up and start to fight, whether it was the Sheikhs like just building this whole thing is about relationships at its core.

And yeah, and Travis was a guy that could just like build relationships. He could build good enough relationships that he could sit in the back row of a brigade meeting where he's a captain. He's like the only captain in the room. Yeah. And he's sitting in the back row. he says something he doesn't like he goes that's bullshit like you gotta have a bunch of good relationships with a bunch of majors lieutenant colonels colonels yeah to be able to do that and that's

exactly what he did yeah and and Megan mcclung was also just outstanding came in there showed up she's in charge of you know this information operations of making that stuff happen she was just on fire she got sent down from the meth you know she's a marine she was just awesome so people just came in and started building relationships and that's what makes all this stuff work yeah yeah so you got that good going on meanwhile you write this I went back to my room turned on the TV and there it was a secret assessment produced by the Meph intelligence officer stating that on bar was lost was now the lead story on every news channel the moment was one

of the handful of times in the deployment when I was truly angry and I did not know for which reason was it the MF headquarters intelligence assessment report was so wrong We had been taking We'd been making progress all summer, taking back Ramadi and developing the Iraqi security forces. Clear signs of progress were right in front of them had they only bothered to look.

Yes, casualties in Ramadi remained high, but casualties are always high during an offensive. The ready first had reclaimed large chunks of Ramadi and the number of police was at the highest levels in months. Now with the shakes joining in with us, we had hit the tipping point. How my higher headquarters could be so out of tune with what was going on was beyond me. I knew immediately that this story was going to be a kick in the balls for morale.

Yeah. So that. Let me say one thing. That fat bastard Tom Ricks can go to hell. I got to say that because he leaked that. And looking back, they leaked that to make political hay back in the States, not because Ambar was lost. and it was, you know, this indictment of the Bush administration, and I'll go to my grave on that one.

So is that the reporter that leaked it? Yeah, that's the guy Washington Post, Ricks. But the effect that it had on the guys, and I mean, you guys heard it too, but I mean, you guys know, you guys know, you guys know what's what. But, you know, to a 19-year-old kid that's been kicking indoors now for four months, and it's like, why are we doing this? I mean, my driver, I talk about the book, you know, my driver, And, you know, if you're the colonel's driver, you're on the team.

You know what I mean? You don't keep him around. He's like, we're losing. And I'm like, dude, if you think we're losing. And he knows we're going with the shakes. I'm talking to him. You know, he's got my trust. You know, what are them kids down in Bravo Company? Are them kids out in Charlie Company that are, you know, sitting on a checkpoint all day

or kicking indoors? And so, I mean, it took me, it took me to, you know, a good week to get the genie in the bottle. And by a good week, that means every waking moment I had. I'm walking through the company areas. I'm talking to people, you know, hey, you know, things are turning, things are turning. And things were turning. You know, I mean, this is the point. It's like, hey, we got it.

You know, that shake meeting, I think the next day is the, when the shakes actually met. But, you know, meeting with McFarland, and there was absolutely no guarantee on that one. It's like, man, we've been working now for four and a half months. And here we are. You know, it's easy bad mouth the military when you're back home. when, you know, people, but, you know, a lot of these pundits, like, you really need to think about what you're saying and what's doing. And, uh, again, the perseverance of these kids, uh,

you know, these young soldiers, uh, that, you know, despite that, guess what? Three patrols went out that day out of a problem company, you know, 25 doors got kicked in. Yeah. You say, I spent the next couple days talking to my soldiers, telling them that the news was wrong, that we were on the right track and that everything would work out. Some bought it into it. Some did not, but they all kept fighting. Yeah, exactly.

Tragically exemplified. by the death of the specialist Harley Andrews of the 54th engineers who died in IED attack that night while on routine clearance patrol and Ramadi. I went to see Colonel McFarland and told him that it was time to put a combat outpost into Tamim. He looked me square in the eye and said that it would be a month before he could get me the assets to emplace the position and that I would have to hold on until then. We both knew what that meant. More casualties for task force conqueror, especially team dealer.

Although I had not gotten the answer I had wanted, I walked away with a newfound admiration for Colonel McFarland. We both knew that it was a rough, it was a tough fight all around. Casualties and task force conqueror were high and very personal to me, but casualties across the Ready First were also mounting and very personal to Colonel McFarland as well. The bandits, the Currahis, and the 3-8 Marines continued fighting a tough urban battle and the regulars still fought through a hostile tribal area. McFarland had fully committed all of his forces, and there were just not any more troops to spare. The only way to win was for the ready first to stay on the offensive in downtown Ramadi, and Colonel McFarland was not afraid to make the hard choices necessary to facilitate victory. Colonel McFarland knew the only way to win was by relentlessly attacking the enemy.

We urgently needed to secure Central Romadi, even if that meant task force conqueror, continue to fight with only the forces we already had. This was probably the single most courageous act of battlefield leadership I ever witnessed. And I could see that the hard choice was tearing him up. Yeah, you know, when you go to a commander and you ask for something, you expect to get it. You know what I mean? And, you know, especially because what you're asking for is in line with what we're doing. Yeah, yeah.

Like, hey, can I get one of these things too? Yeah. And we kind of, you know, I talked to the guys in Bravo Company, and we, uh, their leadership. I went down there, you know, again, you know, not secret democracy, but just kind of see what they thought. And, you know, they's like, hey, no, we need to keep on the move. But, you know, just from locking down the position, because it was probably a, at least a two company, if not, to me, it was small, but you probably need two or three companies to really lock it down. And we kind of decided like, hey, we probably do need to get in combat outposts, just

be able to project combat power out of there and have some. stability around it. And he said no. But it's like, you know, that was the right decision. Because, you know, the ready first in the town, I mean, they, there hadn't been an American in there in probably 18, 20 months, right? And so, you know, you had, you had them on the run. You got to keep them on the run.

And so, you know, just because things don't go your way, that doesn't mean that, like, hey, that was a tough choice. And, you know, and everyone was making tough choices every day there. But, I mean, squad leaders were making tough choices. But, you know, for him to do that, I mean, the one thing that really struck me in, you know, working for growing farm was just his kind of moral, you know, it's moral courage, you know. Because, I mean, the easy answer would have been, yeah, Tony, we'll back off, you know, you're taking a lot of casualties.

He's like, no, we've got to go, you know, you've got to figure it out. And we did. It sucked, but we did. Yeah, and everybody's working, everybody's sacrificing. That means, by the way, men and women. Just make sure I cover this. We also had a lioness team. The lionesses were a tough bunch of female volunteers

from across the ready first who formed and served as female search teams. They all had embroidered lioness tab, shaped like a ranger tab, which they kept hidden under their pocket flap of their left shoulder. At first, I was worried about the lioness. Despite assurances, to me, the question remained of whether they could pull their weight because I had not seen them in action. Also, having spent my entire career in all male tank battalions or cavalry squadrons, I worried

about the male-female interaction. Tankers can be coarse, and initially, I was worried there would be problems having males and then females working together on a checkpoint. In the end, my concerns about the lionesses proved to be unfounded. They could hold their own in any tactical situation, and they could control their own. talk smack with any of the males. Actually, after a few days, I began to worry that the lionesses were harassing some of the smaller males.

They could be a bit salty at times. In the end, however, these female soldiers proved to be absolutely professional, living under the same harsh conditions that the men did with no more or no less complaining than their male counterparts. In short, they became an indispensable part of the team. Yeah. So when we took over the university, we actually got a... an Iraqi MP company that worked for the division.

And the MIT team came from like the division mid team. And they were down there and they were like, oh, and they had this, I can't remember with it, like basically like a unit readiness report. And they're like, this unit can show up in the morning. And this unit then can go on patrol or this one can go on a mount of patrol. And so we had this Iraqi unit and they had these Marines that were for the MET team. And then we had these lionesses because we knew that, you know, at the university, people were going to come in and out and we had to search them, right? And there was actually a bunch of like professors living on the university.

So, you know, we were forever pounding heads with these guys. And they didn't, they felt like they didn't need to, they didn't need to answer to me. And we were kind of worried because, I mean, they would. I guess they'd been working in the headquarters. So, like, you'd see him standing out outside the wall at Low Ready, like looking out, and it's like, dude, you're going to get killed. You're in Ramadi. You know, that looks good on the news, you know?

Like, you know, you see people in Baghdad at Low Ready looking wistfully on the, you know, the NBC News, like, no, no, no, no, you've got to get back out of the window. And so we end up having to generate our own MET team for those things, right? And so, who's there, Crow? The guy who was my S-1 and Jason Craw, he's one of these guys. He wasn't happy about being the S-1. I wouldn't have been either, you know, the battalion agent. And, you know, can't blame them.

And so he wanted to go down, you know, it's like, okay, Jason, you're in charge of these guys. And we had a little pickup team and these lionesses. And they went down there and they ran the university checkpoint, you know, and John Hilt's the engineer company commander

4th engineer and Charlie Rock he built all the combat outposts there and you know we built it out as best we could

and we turned these guys loose and it was funny I had those boys like out of patrol within about a week you know good kid

Ranger you know Harvard grad you know and he got those boys to work and it was just amazing how you know

again a thrown together team you know, some of the girls, or some females in there, you know, worked at brigades, some of the support battalion. But they were like, okay, yeah,

we'll go get in the fight. We're down with it. I don't know if you ever ran into them. Yeah, I'd see them around. Yeah, those girls were a little salty. Yeah. They were badass. They suited their name.

Yeah. Now we end up with the Anbar Awakening Council. They vote for an emergency council. They want to kind of become the new, Anbar provincial government. Sheikh Satar also informed me that some of the known terrorists were leaving Ramadi, which although unconfirmed was an excellent sign.

Over the next few days, some of the things occurred we did not fully understand at the time. First arrived an unconfirmed report of the deaths of a number of al-Qaeda leaders gunned down in the Saddam mosque in downtown Ramadi. This was the exact opposite of what happened when Latif tried to break the hold of al-Qaeda nine months earlier. Now the hunted became the hunter, the hunted,

became the hunters. So now you had these tribal leaders going out and killing Al Qaeda. Allegedly. Yeah. Possibly. On the morning of 18 September, I was running late and was still in the latrine when a massive blast wave shook Camp Ramadi. As I went outside, I saw a mushroom cloud billing into the sky over five kilo.

One of the soldiers from the talk ran up to me telling me that a suicide bomber had hit the Al Harrea police station, and initial reports indicated it was devastating. Sergeant First Class Roberts had the security detachment ready to go as soon as he heard the blast. I grabbed my M4, Kevlar, body armor, and in minutes, our four Humvees were racing down the dusty trails of Campromadi. As we turned off Route Michigan and on to Route Lopez, we passed a blackened cube of a charred metal, barely recognized as the remnant of a bomb-shattered automobile. Smoke and flame still swirled around the wreckage as we sped past the burning vehicle trying to stay on the lookout for IED trigger wires. I hope the first report was wrong that instead the civilian car had hit an IED and it had not been a suicide attack on the police station. But there was too much smoke rising in front of me for that hope to be a reality.

Arriving at the Al Hararea station, we found two Bradley's and a couple of Humvees from Team Dealer already securing the front entrance as smoke rose from inside the police compound. The Humphys reinforced the perimeter as Roberts, Dragon and I dismounted and ran through the wide open gate in front of us was a scene of almost incomprehensible devastation. The front of the two-story headquarters building, housing the chief's office, and the American Advisors Command Post was simply gone with the remainder of the structure, a sagging, blistered expanse of cracked concrete, exposed wires, and almost indecently displayed. interior rooms. Across the courtyard, scraps of truck chassis smoldered nearby, looking

nearly familiar to the aftermath of the attack on ECB3 months earlier. Of the four buildings inside the police compound, the main headquarters was completely destroyed, while two others had visible structural damage. Exterior walls were torn away or walls and roof sagging from the force of the blast. The only two things apparently undamaged were a recently installed civilian military operation center and the Humvee that should have been blocking the gate defense. Lieutenant Blackstone was standing in the courtyard directing the rescue effort and calling for support on his man pack radio. Sir, nearly all the MPs were wounded, some of them pretty bad.

The worst ones are already in the back of a Brad en route to Charlie Medd. He reported while pointing to the destroyed command post. There are a couple Iraqis trapped in there. We can't get at them. Keep doing what you're doing and let me know if you need anything, I answered. As I turned to find Lieutenant Colonel Fala, I realized my interpreter was gone. As I scanned the chaotic scene, I caught a glimpse of dragon, crawling over the shattered concrete and twisted metal in frantic efforts to reach the wounded policeman.

Although it incensed me at the time to see my only means of communicating with the Iraqis put his life in danger by rushing into a burning building, it was typical of his character. Caught up in my own reaction, it took me a minute to realize that dragon was trying to save the life of another person, and that was much more important in the larger perspective. Minutes later, the QRF arrived accompanied by a pair of firefighting humvees operated by Marines. One crew assisted in the rescue attempt while the other went to work extinguishing the small fires burning throughout the compound.

Fortunately, concrete does not burn. Despite the best efforts of Dragon, the soldiers, the Iraqis and the firemen, the two policemen were dead by the time we reached them. And what's good is you find this out is that there was another suicide vehicle, which was actually stopped by them. Yeah. So, you know, it was inside job, right? They got someone to pull the Humvee back. So the MPs that worked there didn't work for me.

They didn't even work for the brigade. I don't know. They worked for some big MP headquarters. And there was always a lot of pushback. So we used to have one and three there. They talked us out. They said we didn't want it. It was too hard to move.

They weren't license on it. So we put this Humvee in there. And they, you know, some guy pushed back the Humvee, open the gate, and the suicide bomber comes in. And, I mean, it was a direct hit. And actually, I was late. I was supposed to be there that day. And it pretty much went off where it would have been parked.

But, you know, I'd have been there. Parked there. It would have been for Humvees. Maybe it would have happened. Maybe wouldn't have. So. But the thing blows up. Well, Blackstone is like coming out of camp.

And, you know, Ian Blackstone did a great job. I mean, we moved him around to different platoons, when, especially after the incident in the fire station. You know, I mean, he was a good kid. And he figures out what's going on. And, you know, no orders, no nothing, marshes down a gunfire, which is all you can ask. And he's got two Humvees following him.

and I think you might have been the only Bradley. So they're driving up there and this, like, another vehicle comes out and tries to pass the Bradley because they were going to hit it with one and then get the first responders with the other. And, you know, two E4s in the Humvee. Just, you know, hey, something's not right here. And they machine gun. They machine gun it and they blow it up. And, I mean, it was horrible like the body was up on the roof.

And so, you know, so I come rolling in there five. minutes later, you know, and, you know, my gunner Brown, he's like, did you see that? He said, see the guy halfway up the building. It's like, no, I didn't see it. I was looking for wires, brother. But, you know, they probably would have killed another 15, 20 Americans. I mean, there was probably, I think there was like eight or ten that got wounded because they kind of, that was their headquarters. But, I mean, it would have just been, it would have been national news catastrophe.

but, you know, two E4s and, you know, lieutenant kind of figured out, say the day. God bless them. Yeah, and then you end up with a situation where they figure out, that's an inside job and they figure out the guy that did it and they were going to, like, execute him. Yeah. And again, this is like the professionalism, right?

And you say here, a photo of Falaw putting a bullet in the head of another uniform policeman would have a similarity, a gold mine, just like the TED offensive picture that's famous. More importantly, the rule of law applies in good times and bad. And if we started working outside the rule of law, then we were no better than al-Qaeda. I understood Lieutenant Colonel Fala's anger, but could not let him act on it. I also knew getting in a shouting match with Fala or arresting him in front of his own men before he acted. It was not a solution either.

These are the kind of things you got to figure out, you know? Like, it's crazy. And I haven't mentioned this yet, but I haven't mentioned it specifically, but you've heard me say the words Charlie Medd 40 times so far. And God bless those guys. and Charlie Madden. It was just every single day doing the apps, doing God's work

to save people in coming off the battlefield and they were just freaking outstanding. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was funny with Fala. He was an older guy, right?

Lieutenant Carl. So he was probably 60-something years old, right? And, you know, I was still in my 40s then. And so he's like, so he's sitting on this couch. He's like, what are you going to do? It's like, I'm going to kill him. And I'm like, hey, let me bring it in.

Let me bring him in. And he's like, oh, Cardinal Dane, you know, the author to the translator. He's like, you are a very, never raised the voice. You are a very busy man. You're a very busy man. You're a very busy man. And I'm like, no, no, it would be my honor. You know, and you kind of got this back and forth with him.

And he, he finally, you know, you know, I can. convinced him to let me take them out. And I, you know, I always had two guys with me. I had two body men. Tom Lee Trell and Jemison. And they were these two-jacked. They were big guys. Liddell was more like a, you know, like a cut welterweight.

But, you know, Jamison was, you know, Darnel Jameson, just a big dude. And it's funny because so we got a plan. You know, I talked to Dragon. and we get these guys say, okay, we're going to walk these two guys out. And I told, you know, James Suntrell, and if he moves, kill him. And so, you know, we walk back and we get the gods high, and he just kind of goes to pieces when he figure out the jig's up.

But then, you know, years later, I was talking to Jameson. It's like, you know, I'm in the Army, but, you know, I wasn't really, you know, you tell me to shoot the dude, you know, point blank. It kind of got me. And it's like, you know, so then you kind of. forget as a leader, it's like, man, what are you asking these guys to do? I mean, it was only, you know, but, you know, kind of forget about all that. But these guys were, you know, they did what we asked them. And, you know, we brought them in and he talked. And one of the other things we did was

when we caught somebody, and we thought they were kind of just minor dues, we turned them in the decal. But when we caught somebody and I thought there were somebody that needed a good interrogating, We sent him over your deal. Yeah, you sent him up for your deal. Yeah. Because, hey, my guys just had just had such a good context of everything to put him in so they could just trap in lies. Like, they'd just be able to figure out of trap them in lies and just get...

Yeah. There'd be no escape. Yeah. So, yeah. When it comes to combat leadership, my hat goes off to the company commanders, first sergeant, platoon leaders, and platoon sergeants in conventional units. Going out on targeted raids or sniper teams with 10 other highly trained, volunteer special forces soldiers is exciting and sexy and makes for good stories.

sitting around the VFW, sitting on checkpoints in sweltering heat for 10 hours a day, every day simply sucks, especially when the stop loss policy kept half the platoon in the unit past the time. They were supposed to be on leave, and we're having doubts about the war. Motivating the young soldiers to stay alert and aware in such a dangerous environment

takes exceptional leadership. Luckily, my guys had it. All facts. And all my guys knew that. Like, that's why we had such a high respect for all the soldiers and Marines. Because, like, we go out and do our mission, come back, you know? And we weren't sitting on a checkpoint. Like, a lot of times I'll talk about the engineers.

Like, hey, the engineers are out there. They're on this freaking straddling a Texas barrier trying to hook the crane, hook into it. Like, in downtown Ramadi, that sucks. But you know what else sucks? Sitting on a checkpoint in 120-degree weather for freaking 10 hours. and doing it the next day and doing it the next day and doing it the next day

and how many suicide bombers are we talking about how many snipers? And by the way, how did you get there driving down these IED roads? So yeah, nothing but respect for the infantrymen. Yeah. Fast forward.

Later that week I was sitting in Colonel McFarland's office when he got the call extending ready first to a 15-month tour of combat when he told me the news which I had been expecting I straightened up in my chair and told him the conquerors were up to the task. it's only the ready first McFarland replied

you and your brigade are going back at 12 months so they're getting extended yeah and honestly I walked out of the you know I was like sure you know 100% about I walked out of this I was like thank God you know I mean I you know the ready first doing that

in my brigade had done it in the before I got there they had done 15 months they actually had guys back in Germany but all those guys that got extended I mean that that was just terrible. And plus, you know, and, you know, if we're new, it's like,

okay, peace is not going to break out in January when you're supposed to go home. And it was a tough slog. I mean, they lost a lot of dudes. Yeah, they did. Yeah. It was brutal. Yeah. On 21 September,

3-8 Marines completed their tour and ripped with 1-6 Marines commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Journey. That night, Sergeant Allen Bevington of Alpha Company 40th Engineers, and his squad were interrogating a pressure plate IED when the enemy exploded a second command detonated IED, killing him and seriously wounding two others.

By now, Shaq, fast forward. By now, I was meeting with Sheikh Satar, at least every other day. His entourage had grown quite large with a group of men crowded around a television set waiting hourly for the newsbreak. In a variably, Satar was the lead story, his comments full of fire.

The streets of Alambar will run red with the blood of the terror, We, the people of Al-Aombar reject al-Qaeda as the criminals and murderers they are. We will crush them under the souls of our shoes. They are traitors to Islam. A perfect storm was rising in Ramadi. The people were tired of the violence and desperately wanted a voice in their governance and realized their mistake and siding with al-Qaeda in the first place. A charismatic leader emerged in Sheikh Satar.

Also, there was now enough Iraqi policemen to begin confronting the terrorists. All this occurred as the U.S. forces changed tactics by constructing combat. outpost that secured the neighborhoods around people's homes. Perhaps most importantly, we developed a solid line of communication between the coalition and the Sunnis. That's the perfect storm wrapped up in one paragraph right there. Yeah. That's a lot of things that have to line up for this to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. On 26th September, a massive command wire IED struck a team dealer Humvee commanded by staff sergeant Jose Lanzarin, killing him instantly and injuring Staff Sergeant Acanola Aladipo Specialist James Youne Specialist Eric

Realera and specialist Shane Zitovich And I apologize to Everyone for my terrible freaking pronunciation The terrorist followed up The blast with a barrage of small arms fire Two team dealer Bradley's rolled to either side

Of the wrecked Humvee to protect the wounded Gunners laying down a stream of suppressive fire with machine guns and 25mm turret mounted chain guns. The remaining members of the platoon raced to the firefight immediately, pulling the wounded from the destroyed vehicle as soldiers tried to evacuate the casualties amid a rattling on slot of enemy fire, special as a Zittikovic, Zittkovich. They just called him Z. Z. I was with him.

Zee covered in blood from his own injuries, ran back to the destroyed vehicle, snatched up his M-249 saw machine gun, and laid down with him. Withering bursts of covering fire as fellow soldiers carried the remaining wounded to safety. As Lieutenant Perfecto Sanchez maneuvered his Bradley through the streets of Tamim to assist his wounded men, a second pressure plate IED exploded under his track. The blast injured him, specialist Joshua Ingram, and specialist Taylor, though fortunately their wounds were minor. Burst of 25-millimeter chain gun rounds from the Bradley's, from the damage Bradley supported by the intense fire from his wingman's vehicle. dispersed the attackers the platoon counter-attacked aggressively and found a large cache of IED-making

materials hidden in a nearby abandoned house as they pursued the fleeing terrorists. Staff Sergeant Lanzeran's Hero Flight. You're out there for that. The dealer, the dealer NCOs carefully placed Lanzerans remains into the ambulance for the final 100-yard ride to the helipad. First Sergeant Shaw commanded order arms and in unison the sleuths dropped. Word. Readlessly, the formation closed ranks behind the ambulance and followed it into the darkness to the edge of the helipad. The chopping sound of two Marine CH-46 C-night helicopters in the distance soon replaced the constant hum of the generators powering Camp Romadi.

As the war of the rotors grew louder, the members of the crowd grew silent and a little straighter. As the helicopters flared to land, a dust cloud of sand and pebbles filled the air, prickling the faces of the assembled soldiers. The back of the ramps of the sea night dropped, and two crew chiefs moved swiftly across the helipad, came to attention, saluted, then led the dealer NCOs to the aircraft for Lanzeran's trip back home. Colonel McFarland and I stood next to the ambulance in silence. Within minutes, the back ramp rose and the assembled crowd snapped to attention. As the whine of the engines increased, the first sergeant Shaw's voice filled the air.

again present arms with the blade spinning faster the lifting helicopters prop wash blue sand harder into the faces of the troops gathered in formation this time holding their salutes until the birds were out of sight again Shaw commanded the formation order arms for staff sergeant Lanzarin it was the beginning of his journey back to his grieving family for the rest of us it was time to continue the mission. Some soldiers left immediately grieving on their own. Others milled about in small groups telling stories about their departed friend. Remember that time. Remember when he took the... Some just stood, quietly sobbing or kicking the dirt and vowing vengeance. As we walked down the

hill from the helipad, Colonel McFarland put his arm around me and asked how I was doing. What the hell? Why was Colonel McFarlane consoling me now? I was a battalion commander. I could not allow myself to have a bad day. Although I had been running on caffeine and nicotine for the past four months, I doubted that I looked any worse than I did the day before. Was something wrong? Had my wife or kids got hurt? There's something that just did not make sense to me. Sir, I'm doing fine. We're fine, I replied as I slinked out of his embrace. I admired Colonel McFarland and liked him personally, but we both have Irish roots and we are not the most emotionally demonstrative of a race. I had a job to do, and for the sake of the unit, I could not go wobbly now. My job was to

to lead the living. Tony, you know dealer has taken 25% casualties. He asked as I was lighting a cigar, getting back into character. Yes, sir. More, counting the guys from dagger. Chris Dillings' advisor team has lost almost 50%. I acknowledged. Colonel McFarlane had seen a lot of injury and death in the past four months as we all had.

Up to that point, I had never thought of as it a percentage. Scotty Love and Cromby were dead. Rosansky had lost his legs and Sergeant McCool was shot. now Sergeant Lance was gone. If the numbers added up to 25%, so be it. We had a mission to accomplish. My guess is that one of the staff officers at the brigade headquarters ran the numbers and the magnitude of what team dealer was accomplishing

and the costs associated with their success hit McCart, hit Colonel McFarland all at once. I'll get you some more help, he promised. I was truly grateful. I thanked him, and we turned to walk away into the night. Yeah. You know, you I guess one thing as a leader

You don't think of yourself Right, I mean if you're good You know And, you know, Frang put his arm around me I was like, what the hell, you know Because it wasn't anything we were doing Because it was, you know, it was bad yesterday As it was the day before, you know?

And And we did need some help I mean, actually in a couple I think a couple days later I don't know if you're going to talk about it but, you know, culmination is when a unit can't conduct offensive operations. I mean, I'm doing the math, looking at my NCOs and looking at once left in Bravo Company. And it's like we're close to, you know, culminating, not being able to send out patrols just because there were so few people.

And so many wounded, not so few people. And it was, I mean, that was really a tough time. And everyone was having a tough time, though. But, you know, again, the guys in Bravo Company, you know, Matt Graham at that time, and person Shaw, great-patine sergeants, you know, Raypour, and they just went out and got after it. And they got after it every day. And, you know, it's not, you know, we talked earlier about after a memorial service guys would go out. But, you know, if you think about it, that. There's three parts of that.

There's where the guy gets wounded and they go out when their buddies just got wounded or they just found out you got killed. There's the, then there's the, you know, that night when, you know, they're flying out the body, which, you know, that's about an emotional time as you'll ever have. And then there's the memorial service.

You know, then let alone back in the, you know, back in the barracks where they're emptying out of shit and, you know, backing up the stuff to go home. It's like, you know, but these kids, these soldiers Marines, airmen, they all bought in the mission and they all just kept going. You can't

you know, you can't respect them enough for what they did. Outstanding. Yeah. By late September our replacements, the Steel Tigers of Task Force 177 AR,

second brigade, first infantry division commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mikado Bear Johnson began flowing into Ramadi. The next Next afternoon, Lieutenant Greg Buse tank platoon attached to one-six Marines, struck a massive IED in Central Romadi, severely injuring private first class, Jonathan McCoy, as well as wounding Staff Sergeant Jeremy Ricketts and PFC Michael Pope. This was the first tank within the task force destroyed by the blast of an IED.

Lieutenant Lloyd Alsafo. Alsafo. Al-Safo, a replacement fresh from Germany was beginning his Rip with Lieutenant Bu. When I met the casualties of Charlie Med, Asafo was standing in the back, watching the doctor's work on the wounded soldiers, and to me appeared to be visibly rattled.

Asafo, you okay, I asked? I'll be fine, just didn't expect this on day one, he replied. No one does, I replied. Yeah, so, I hate to say a funny story, but so Asafo, I mean, day one, the kids rattle. But Bue switches out, and Bue is, you know, a great tank platoon leader. Sergeant Butler is a platoon. I mean, they have a great platoon.

Ossaffa gets in there. Within, like, four days, he machine guns a dude, like shooting an RPG at him with the tank machine gun, which is really hard to manipulate. The commander's machine gun hits a dude in the numbers at like 200 yards. It's like, you know, I mean, the, the, the, learning curve was straight up. And, uh, you know, and he, you know, the guys just did it. It was amazing to me. And, uh, you know, just, it was funny because, you know, all these guys, you know, I went to talk to these guys when I was doing the research for the book, all the

tenants, and it's like, yeah, I hit a ID the first day or, you know, yeah, the second day, you know, we got it, we got an RPG and it's like, it didn't, I'm going to say it didn't register, but it didn't register really a lot of unless somebody was like, really. hurt, you know, and then actually, in fact, we actually had guys that were really hurt, you know. When we were talking about the police recruiting at Star South on the 4th of July, it got mortared. And I wasn't there. My driver, you know, Rumpel and Brown were in the Humvee. They were pulling duty, you know, they were just pulling part of the security.

A mortar landed next on. And it turns out, you know, three years later, Brown's getting put out of the heart. because he had a TBI, you know, guys that we didn't even know we're getting hurt, but they just kept going out every day. The following day, September 29th, Navy SEAL Michael Monsour threw himself on a grenade, saving the rest of his team at the cost of his own life. For his actions, Monsor earned the Medal of Honor. On one October, you guys start the construction of the Toy Police Station.

Two days after the station opened, we held a recruiting drive. Hundreds of men from 12 to 80 showed up, all claiming they were. the requisite 18 to 35 age bracket. You run this thing. Issuing uniforms, patrol belts, 9mm glocks, and badges to the new recruits went well into the night. As I walked out the door of the Tway station

at almost 0,200 the next morning, I bumped into Major Saddam, wearing his badge on his black track suit with his police patrolman's belt slung over his left shoulder. Naturally, we did not have a uniform or a belt that would fit him. I told Dragon to ask him where he was going.

to catch terrorists, Saddam replied. I remembered thinking this was either going to be really good or really bad. With all the, fast forward, with all the political infighting between the Al-Anbar Awakening Council, the governor of Al-Ambar, the mef, he covers this whole,

there's a whole political thing that I didn't talk about, but there's a huge, there's a government inside of Ramadi. He was kind of, you know, not the most effective leader, you could say. Yeah.

But he wanted, that position, he held that position, and he was connected to people. So it all, you had to sort out so much stuff. The governor of Al-Lambar, the Meph headquarters, the Iraqi government in Baghdad continued and demanded much of my attention. My main job was commanding an armored task force with a mission to secure a city. And we had unfinished business before our time in Ramadi ended. We needed to build a cop and Tamim, and we needed to set our replacements up for success. Bear Johnson and I were headed to cop crab at Al-Lambar University when we witnessed a massive IED strike targeting a Bradley near the white apartments into meme. Instinctively I told Rumpel to turn

to turn onto the side road so we could assist if they were injured. Unfortunately, Sergeant First Class Roberts in the lead vehicle had already passed the turn and now my vehicle was leading. As we neared the white apartments, we saw two young Iraqi men turn around and start quickly walking the other way. As we got closer, they ran into a bakery. In retrospect, I was probably getting a little ahead of myself chasing down trigger men in the middle of town. The Humvees secured the corner of the buildings and I called on our internal frequency that we were going to clear the structure. The fault in the plan was that the security detail never practiced entering a building as a

unit. As I was exiting my vehicle, I somewhat came to my senses, realizing that I should not be the first guy in through the door. I dogged it running to the entrance to the bakery, scanning the rooftops for additional terrorists. As I got to the wall, I looked around to see who else was going to be in the four-man stack and I realized I was by myself. I pointed at the only other vehicle I could see in motion for the vehicle commander to get over to my position as I continued scanning to make sure the

enemy was not sneaking up on our position. As I turned back to my left, I realized that it was now Lieutenant Colonel Johnson and me on the wall. If having one task force commander in a four-man stick is a bad thing, having two is an exceptionally worse or is exponentially worse. Fortunately, Sergeant Roberts caught up with us and we followed him, Ladell and Jamieson, and Jameson, the bakery without incident. We searched the building and found nothing and turned the situation over to the team dealer patrol into meme. Luckily, the IED had missed the Bradley. Okay, so I guess I could write this for the VA. I gave Sergeant Roberts PTSD if he has any. So if he claimed that I, because I mean, I wasn't like looking for trouble, but, you know,

I kind of like got ahead of myself a couple times. And there were a couple cases like that. And poor Roberts. I mean, he was always, you know, he's always there. Those guys, my PST guys, I got to, I got to give them some mad props. But, you know, poor Rob, he was like, well, you just, and I'm like, no, we'll be fine, we'll be fine. And, yeah, famous last words. Yeah, I'm standing there and while I look up, and it's like, it's bear. It's like, okay, bear, you need to go back, because if you get killed, then they're going to keep my guys longer here, and they're going to get mad at me. If I get killed, they're just going to send my guys home. But, you know, he was game.

I mean, and actually, we'll probably talk about it when we put in a cop dealer. I mean, we asked him do some crazy stuff, and there they were. Yeah. Yeah. Colonel McFarland made good on his promise of additional forces for Tamima, a platoon of tanks from Alpha Company 135, joined Task Force Conqueror from Task Force regular after almost a year, and a platoon of combat engineers from the Kerr. He's joined us as well.

We put the tank platoon on static defensive positions controlling the main routes of Tamim. On their third day in sector, a terrorist managed to drop a grenade down the hatch of one of the M1 tanks, killing private first class, Shane Austin, and wounding specialist Edward Traveris and Sergeant Anthony Ica. The next day, task first regular conducted a large-scale clearing operation in Jazeera region north of Ramadi to suppress any potential enemy activity. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Walruth and had an impromptu meeting with some of the awakening council members. In Dan's

assessment, quote, the dam is broken and the tribes were getting on board, both with the Ambar Awakening and the police recruiting. Although the tribal areas were siding with the coalition, the AIF still had controlled still controlled large pockets within the city of Vermont. That night, Sergeant Julian M.

Arachaga first class, or private first class, Shelby, J. Finiello and Lance Corporal John E. Bowman of Charlie Company, one-six Marine. Marines died when a terrorist detonated an IED next to their home via as they were moving to support another group of Marines pinned down by enemy fire. Just nonstop. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, like I said, we're going on the attack. So one of the things that really helped us was when I had to, you know, the shakes got me, hey, we knew build this police station, you know, the substation, as it be. And so I went to McFarland, it's like, yo, you know, this is a big deal. You know, you need to send me Johnny Hils and the 4th Engineers. And when you put this thing in, he's like, you can't do it. Because that's one that, you know, he's like, I can't give you the guys.

So the police station's out there. And basically there was a house that we put like T walls all around and build a ramp into it. But it was, you know, Toby Watson, who was my, I got to keep one in. engineer. So Lieutenant Watson, he came up with his design. He, he manufactured his guy's up on the top sling those things. And my support platoon leader, you know, Pat Webbinger and this, and Sergeant Gonzalez, they slung them all. I mean, we, we put them on the back of Hammets and hauled them out there. It wasn't very far. You know, it was kind of right there by Star's house. And we started faring them out there. But, you know, they weren't supposed to do that. And, you know, and these guys, you

know. Step up. Step up. You know, one of the things, when I talked to Webinger, and he's like, he's like, you know,

a lot of the stuff I didn't think we could do, but you were just going to yell me to we did it anyway. So I just said yes, and then we'd figure it out. It's like, you know, they figured it out.

You know, it was like, cut out the middle man. Cut out a lot of drama. Fast forward a little bit. Finally, on 10 October, we coordinated a meeting between Governor McMoon,

who I haven't talked about much, but he was the governor and lived in downtown Ramadi at the government center. where the Marines had to freaking risk their life with everything related down there. That place was under constant attack. Governor Macmoon, Sheikhsatar,

and the Meph leadership. And they end up having this meeting. On Friday, 14 October, 2006, Task Force Conqueror began the formal rip process transferring control to the steel tigers. Later that afternoon, we held the official ceremony marking the validation of the Iraqi, Army Battalion. The ceremony was a bigger deal than I thought, especially for the Iraqis, at

1,500 hours. Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa and I took our positions behind a podium on Camp Defender. Next to us on an upholstered couch sat the 7th IA division commander and Colonel McFarland. Beside them, the 1st Brigade 7th IA commander sat on an appolstered chair and various Americans in Iraqi minor dignitary sat on the white rubber-rubbermaid lawn chair furniture neatly aligned in rows. At least 50 crisp new Iraqi flags fluttered in the breeze, mounted into Hesco barriers separating Camp Defender from the rest of Camp Ramadi. The Iraqi soldiers were inspection ready, wearing their best mismatched uniforms, helmets and flak vests, and armed with AK-47s. Up-armored Humvees and trucks painted in their distinctive chocolate chip camouflage pattern,

parked behind a formation with gunners at the ready. Mustafa and I both said a few words, troop the line, and saluted for the playing of the Iraqi National Anthem, signaling the validation of the Iraqi army battalion. Which was just craziness. Yeah. I mean, we had a parade in the middle of it.

There's a great picture in the book about that. It's like, what is going on? And they had these, you know, they had these like plush chairs. Plus chairs and couch. It's like,

what in the hell are we doing here? Fast forward a little bit. Our mission now is transitioning the steel tigers into combat since they had already secured the static checkpoints in AO Conqueror during Operation Dealer, getting them familiar,

with a physical terrain was easy. Getting them to understand the complex political and social situation in the AO was a much more difficult task on our part, especially when the population was undergrowing a social upheaval. Part of that mission was transitioning responsibility for the growing Iraqi security forces. Less than six months earlier,

we had an Iraqi army battalion in danger of just melting away from A-Walls, an Iraqi highway patrol station, barely keeping its head above water, and a single underman police station in five kilo with no more than, and 200 policemen total across all of Ramadi. Now we had a fully manned,

even if battle-scarred police station in five kilo, an effective Iraqi army battalion, a company of Iraqi T-72 tanks, and Iraqi military police company securing Al-Ambar University, and the new TWA police substation, and over 3,000 policemen on duty or in training. Lastly, we had to transition the relationship with Sheikh Satar and the Ambar Awakening,

Council, Sheikhsatar's stature had grown far beyond task force level since he was now, since his impact now reached across the ready first entire area of operations. He was now Colonel McFarland's responsibility. You have a goodbye party at his house, but that really captured the progress that you got made, that paragraph right there. It's just, it is incredible. You have a big goodbye party, goodbye party for you. He gives you a gold watch and a diamond ring.

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, shake Satar stopped as I was departing and asked me privately why the coalition forces had not had shot the police chief. This is another good, uh, thing to think about. Sheikh Sitar stopped as I was departing and asked me privately why coalition forces had shot the police chief of Ramadi. When I returned, uh, to Camp Ramadi, you got this gold watch in this, uh, diamond ring.

Tony the bling has got to go back, Colonel McFarland said, absolutely deadpan. I know, I know, but I didn't want to offend Satar. Can we keep it and put it in the battalion trophy case back in Germany? I'll put it on the property book, I suggested. Do it privately, but get it back to him. Have a witness as well, McFarland instructed. Roger, sir. By the way, did a police chief get shot?

I asked. At the time, there were three Iraqis in town, all claiming to have official papers, naming them chief of police. So to me, it was unclear even which one might have been shot. Unfortunately, the rumor turned out to be true. a coalition patrol and an Iraqi police patrol bumped into each other at night in another task force area of operations. Prior to this, the police had rarely gone out at night, tending to stay around their stations

where it was at least marginally safe. Now the police were on the hunt, which was amazing progress, but presented a new set of problems involving knowing when and where they were operating and how to identify them so we didn't make mistake them for terrorists and kill them. Luckily, there were no fatalities in the incident, but a couple of the policemen were wounded before the situation came under control. So again, like, it was lots of deconfliction to be done out there. Yeah.

Well, and that was the other thing, too. It's like, I am police chief, you know. I remember one time, I'll be honest with you. So there was Sheikh Ahmed and Sheikh Starr. There were two brothers. It's like, one would them be like king and the other one would be like prince? You know? And I asked me for them.

found that and he's there, Chrome McFarland, and he's like, Tony leave the Arab stuff to the Arabs. It's like, good call. Good call, there's sir. Just you why you're the brigade commander, you know? So, uh, it just, as much as we think, oh, we knew what was going on, we maybe, even at this level, I mean, knew like 10%. I mean, there was so much stuff going on in the background that you'll never know. But, you know, hey, they're moving along the way, we're moving along the way.

Everything's moving towards a goal, you know, how you get there. That night, terrorists attacked a dismounted patrol with small arms in Ramadi, killing specialist Jose Perez from Charlie Company 1-6 infantry. The next morning, 1-6 Marine established cop firecracker at a key intersection in central Romadi, further loosening the AIF's grip on the population. Two days later, a devastating IED killed Lance Corporal Nathan Elrod, Lance Corporal Clifford, R. Collinsworth and Lance Corporal Nicholas Manicuian

from weapons company 1-6 Marines Manukian sorry from 1-6 Marines Task Force Steel Tiger assumed control of A.O. Conquer without any casualties. Stilings and his Marine advisor team ripped out Lieutenant Colonel

Rod Arrington and a new crew of advisors picking up where Chris and his men left off. We held a ceremony to award the battle streamer for the battalion's last deployment and to case the task force colors signifying the end of this deployment. I wondered how many other conqueror sixes would have to do the same thing in the future. We handed out medals and certificates to Marines, sailors and seals that we worked with, and then we proceeded to get the hell out of Ramadi. I flew out on the last lift on 26 October. About a hundred of us went out that night, mostly staff officers, first sergeants, supply sergeants and support troops.

As we sat on the edge of the helipad waiting for the start of our journey back to Germany, the soldiers were both physically and mentally exhausted, flopping on their rucksacks while waiting for the helicopters. I walked around and thanked the soldiers for all they had accomplished, all the time terrified that a final mortar attack would hit the helipad, and we would forever be the sad story of the unit that got killed off on its way home. Fast forward a little bit. We boarded the CH-46s for the short flight to TQ, then on to Co-Wing.

We spent the next couple days preparing our equipment for shipment back to Germany as a task force We only had four Bradley's to ship back IEDs and RPGs destroyed the other ten The tanks fared a bit better with 13 of the 16 making it back to Germany You guys end up spending four days in Kuwait and then off to Germany In the ride to Baumholder where your families are waiting for you and I'll close out the book with this and As we approached the front gate, we saw that hundreds of handmade welcome home signs adorned with yellow ribbons hung from the chain link fence and circling the post. Stepping off the buses, we turned in our weapons and sensitive items and then mounted other buses for the half-mile ride to the Hall of Heroes Gymnasium. Outside, we formed into four columns and marched onto the basketball court to the sound of Bet Midler, music coming and cheering.

family members. I had made this march before across the parade field of Fort Stewart, Georgia in 1991, but the thrill of coming home never diminishes. I saluted the rear detachment commander, turned around, and announced dismissed. By the second S, wives, children's, parents, husbands, girlfriends, and boyfriends were pouring onto the court, sharing the unmatched moment of intense joy as families reunite with their soldiers. Deborah and the girls' rammed. out and hugged me and for a few moments everyone forgot the pain and loss we had suffered during the previous six months I was just happy to be home So your deployment's over

The battle wasn't over and and actually in the book isn't over there either you don't you don't just end the book with that You know you continue to explain how the battle unfolds and the casualties that continue including the IED strike on December 6 that narrowly missed Colonel Jim Lechner's vehicle. He went around this IED and then it hit the following vehicle which killed Specialist Vincent Pimonte

Major Megan McClung and Captain Travis Patrick Lynn. Yeah. Which was just absolutely terrible. And you continue, you explain, you know, the continued casualties. And then you get into how things turned around.

And again, the details that you put in the book are incredible. One of the things that stood out was General Petraeus a few months later doing a walking tour of the Malab District. And the Malab District, you know, that was Colonel Clark's A.O. over there. It was just a disaster. I mean, it was a complete disaster war zone. And here it was, General Petraeus doing a walking.

And he's going into shops and buying, like, trinkets and food and stuff. Totally different situation. Things that were completely unimaginable a few months earlier. And then you, again, you carry on the negotiation, the politics of the American departure. You explain the surge and you start talking about, you know, the Arab Spring. I mean, you've got a lot. This is a great book. It's a great book to understand.

You know, like I said, the Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS, the three. Three-way war that ends up, you know, between Iraqi security forces that are backed by Iran, the tribes that are backing ISIS and the tribes that are fighting ISIS. You've got a three-way war going on. ISIS eventually taking Ramadi, killing hundreds of Iraqi troops, executing hundreds of Iraqi civilians. That was May 17, 2015. That's kind of where that's kind of where the book ends. Where were you, what were you thinking when that happened? Um, you know, when, when I saw ISIS rise, right? So, um, you know, just because some types in the telephomber, that's not true. Isis is al-Qaeda and Iraq is Al-Qaeda, you know, and, and we tried to parse it out and whatever, but, um, you know, part of the reason when I, when I got out was, uh, um, the right was on the wall, we were going to pull out of Iraq and, and, and things were going to go south immediately, which they did.

And this whole rise of ISIS and it's like, you know, we could have had it all. We could have been there. And if you look in Ramadi, me and Star, the awakening meeting was on about 11 September 2006.

They ran that 5K a year later in September. And there's a picture in the book I know you and Carl McFrona talking about unthinkable to me. Totally. And it's like peace broke out. And, you know, one of the things I used to say to the star was like, well, why can't this be like Germany and Japan?

And I mean, it would have been like German, well, I mean, you know, chilling, drinking beer. But, you know, it'd be like, but just been in regular garrison. And we had it. And we did it. And then, you know, the pullout led to the, you know, the Maliki going after the Sunnis and then the rise of ISIS. and, you know, a genocide against the Azidis and genocide against Sunnis. And it's like, you know, this didn't have to be.

But it happened. And, you know, it was just, it was infuriating. I mean, that's, you know, why did you write the book? One of it was when we did the surge in Afghanistan. And it's like, you know, we did a surge in Iraq. It went well. Well, there was also no way. And if you look at the Surgeon Afghanistan, would it really get us?

And it's like, no, there's a whole bunch of things that need to happen. And so, you know, part of it's like, you know, this book might not be read for another 20 years until we get ourselves in some sort of, you know, insurgency master. But, you know, kind of get the record set straight. Because there's, it's just infuriating. And my guys, I think, have done a good job. It's like, hey, we gave them a chance. You know, and they've all kind of internalized that and, you know, but we had it.

We had victory and we just kind of let it slip away, which is crazy because, you know, oh, the pull out of Iraq, it's like, we are still in Iraq and Syria. You know, let's not make, you know, we are still in Iraq, you know. And it's 2003, 21 years, right? It was a, you know, a little break in service, you know. But it still goes to retirement, right? So you retired in 2011? I retired in 2011. Did you start writing the book immediately?

No, I didn't. I was a contract for a couple years. And I just didn't like it. And so my company lost a contract. And honestly, my wife said to me, she's like, you are more stressed now than when you came back. Because I just, I didn't like what I was doing. I was getting paid a lot of money.

I felt like it wasn't earned it. I felt like we were pissing away a lot of money. So I said, okay. So I kind of looked for a civilian job, but I was to start writing the book because I felt like this is not that I had to get off my chest. And the story needed to get told. And there was, you know, Jim Michaels wrote a very good book.

The book about Travis is very good. Can't think of the guy who wrote his name. And, you know, there's documentary. but, you know, that they all kind of focus on how bad it sucked, which it sucked. But, you know, part of it was, you know, hey, we actually did some good. The brigade did some good. Everybody did some good. And then we got the tribes on board.

And it's like, that's the story that needs to get told. So I had to get it off my chest. And then, you know, afterwards I'd done something like leadership between stuff and speaking and stuff. How long did it take you to write it? Dude. There are colonel. there are book writing colonels out there. I am not one of them, you know.

So it took me like probably 18 months to get like the manuscript. And the manuscript was above the Unabomber manifesto, but not by much. It was just like kind of rambling as a madman. and so I said, okay, I've reached my point on this thing. I mean, I don't know how to write a book. And so I tried to get agent, try to get a big publisher. Couldn't get it done.

And so actually this guy named Paul Huckleberry and this Cleveland, Cleveland, Greanen Press, he was trying to start up this new publishing company. He took me on, you know, he got me some help with the book. And so it took about two years to get, like, it's a bit. and then it's another year in the, you know, the rewrite. Because, you know, Paul was really hands-on in small company. And he'd asked me questions like, you know, there's a point in there about the history of Iraq. He's like, well, how did things get so screwed up in the first place?

Mm-hmm. Which I didn't know. You know, I didn't know any of this stuff. You know, had I known some of this stuff, I probably wouldn't have been, you know, that optimistic. You know what I mean? I'm always kind of like, how hard can it be? which if you've seen some of the home repair, like, remodeling jobs I've done at the house. It's like, well, it's harder than it looks.

So it was that. And then about, you know, when the book was starting to come out, it's like, you know, Isis of Res and it's like, well, how did this happen? So there's a lot of, like, filling in stuff that I never intended on doing. So it was probably two and a half years from me, like, sitting down. And, you know, including, like, you know, the first sentence, you type it out, that's like, does the quotation mark, does the punctuation go inside the quotation mark or outside the quotation mark?

Then you Google it. And then it's like, you know, 21 stars that you didn't know were related, you know? So it's like, okay, focus, focus, focus. So it took me a good, good long time. Yeah, I'm surprised you got it done that fast. One of my friends wrote a book about the history of the seal teams. And it's an outstanding book. It's called By Water Beneath the Walls.

And despite that title, it's an unbelievably awesome book. I always make fun of him because of his title. But it took him seven years to write this book. It's so well researched. You know, it starts, it's got so much detail, but it's not just about, it's, you know, because why do the seal teams exist? Why, why, why does a commando force exist inside the Navy? Shouldn't that just be Marines or shouldn't that just be soldiers?

Because we're sailors on ships. Yeah. So why does it even exist? And it's actually a very fascinating answer of why. exists. But it goes, so it goes through like the history of the Army special operations, the Marine Corps special operations, why they failed, why they didn't, why they didn't take over the job that ended up the SEALs doing. And, you know, Mike Baima used to give us a hard time because, you know, one of the first things he said to Laif Babin was, you know, what the hell

are doing seals doing up here in the middle desert? Shouldn't you be out on a ship somewhere? And that's actually a legitimate point, right? Yeah. So, yeah, it took him like seven years. So for you get this done, for you to get this done in two and a half years, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. And it's so well researched. It's just, it's just fantastic. Yeah. One of the things was, you know, I didn't want to be just the, you know, the ranging of a madman.

So everything's footnote, right? Probably a little bit too much on the conversation I had with the boys that would have said. That would have said, you know, the bigger picture stuff, it kind of gets glassed over. You know, and if you talk the common knowledge, it's like, um, there was no, before we, before 2002, like when they start ramping up, people start saying anything. But if you look from the end of desert storm to 9-11, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You know, it's, there was no negotiating that. I mean, that is why we kept a brigade in Kuwait on the border.

That is why we had those no-fly zones for nine years. right? And people kind of forget about that. And, you know, I, you know, oh, it was a big lie. Well, you know, I got exposed to chemical weapons. I got a letter from the VA. You know, they blew up the, I think it's Rousdemea ammo dump. They, they blew up. They, they blew it up. And it's like, oh, shit, there was chemical weapons in there. You know, I get this letter from the VA next year. Sorry. And actually, me, me, my drive. from a Dead Storm, Dave Canberra, we're driving through, and we found all these dead sheep in a circle. And I was like, I wonder why they killed them sheep. And then I just kept driving, and then I got back with them years later.

I said, you know, one thing that always bothered me was those sheep that get killed. He's like, they died a chemical weapons dummy. And I'm like, ah, you know, so, you know, people got exposed to it. There were chemical weapons there. So, you know, was there exaggerated? whatever, but that was common knowledge. And again, kind of had a doubt with that. So I'm used them on his own people.

Yeah, so I'm used him on his own people. And, you know, it's funny, one of the things, you know, I was talking to Star. I mean, Star were actually pretty big pals, you know, I mean, much you're going to be pals of the guy. But he started talking about the great victory at 1991. Who are you talking about? And he's like, I think you people call it Desert Storm. You know, we won.

It's like, well, how did we win? You know, how did you guys win? He goes, well, Saddam's still in power. Yeah. Saddam's still in power. We win. You know, he won. I was like, well, I guess, you know, if you kind of squint your eyes, kind of makes sense, you know.

And, you know, when he come clean with the chemical weapons, he never, you know, we weren't his enemy. The Iranians were. And we just never figure that out. Yeah. And also, you know, the other thing, too, it's like, I mean, I'm. junior middle management in the Army at best. I mean, I don't think I get a vice president title as a battalion commander. You know, maybe Sean, you know,

Sean gets some like junior vice president being a brigade commander. And, you know, we're the guys that figured out. You know, you figured out. You know, I mean, it wasn't that hard. And there's this whole, you know, Baghdad infrastructure that was just telling us to do crazy things. It's like, hey, shouldn't you be figuring out the political stuff, you know, shouldn't you be doing the... But, you know, hey, I had good kids.

you know, Pat Fagan, Sean Farah King, you know, two captains turned them boys loose, and they started working with the shakes and, you know, working with your guys. And it was, you know, these captains all kind of figured it out and was, you know, working with Travis and, you know, things worked out for the good. Yeah. That's amazing. So what did you say you're doing now? You're doing, I know you got Tonydean.com.

It's Tony, T-O-N-Y, then D-E-A-N-E. yeah dot com and you do leadership training do some leadership training do some speaking you know mainly that's it

probably do some book seller once in a while you know the thing about a small small publisher I actually have I actually have the books I mean it was it started out it was not self-publish

it was published but the publisher went out of business and he said hey you pay shipping so I got you know some copies of the books so I got to do some book sightings you know so can people people can get the books on tonydine.com as well yeah yeah so it's on amazon and uh but if you go to

uh my website and i'll say remoddy to classified you can click on that and uh there's space so i can even i'll send you a uh uh you know personalized copy oh awesome you know not just sign i'll personalize it so if you want to get it for your you know your brother or your cousin it's like you know just who it is yeah i can tell you if you know anyone that um fought in the battle romadi in any time like any time from the beginning of the war till the end of the war giving them this book is

this was like such an unbelievably awesome read and you know for me because I kind of know I know everything that's happening and it's like it's getting another person it's like debrief in a game you know and and you know you and you know you left

I actually I was thinking about it I left October 21st you left October 26 didn't see you that was it it. There's no debrief, you know. And so here we are. I get to get the full sort of reckoning or from your perspective. And again, it's so beautiful that you gave these tributes to all these soldiers living and dead. And, and that's going to live on. But if anybody, if you got anybody that's interested in military history, that's interested in understanding the world. Because the, you know, a huge part of the world and the politics in the world, it, you know, point.

point source is Iraq. And Ramadi, this will give you the background on the whole thing. So incredible book to read. Definitely, thank you so much for writing it. And it's just awesome. And so if you guys want to get that book, it's tony dean.com and you can get it there. Kerry, you got any questions? No, no, sir.

Good to go. Because you, this is you here in a different perspective of the war. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm very familiar with the battle of central Ramadi, you know, just from working with Jocko and Lafin, the bruiser guys at Eschelon Front so much. I've heard a lot about that battle in Central Ramadi. I've heard very little, I've heard mention of Tamim, you know, but I didn't know all of the

efforts that were going in to, you know, securing Tamim and especially with the police and gosh, turning that around and all of the involvement with the shakes that was going on that eventually led to that awakening. It's just really incredible now to have all that color on that side of the map west of the canal.

You know, it's a huge piece of the story I didn't know about until the book. So thank you. Well, I appreciate it. And, you know, there's stuff in the book that, you know, but there was also like, there was all this stuff that was just crazy how much stuff is going on so yeah you know oddly enough we had like this uh a highway patrol unit which to this day i don't know what they did but you know

but they don't you know like my charlie company first armed bomber and all in those guys they you know it's like arrest him and they're like no no they're doing a good job and and they would find these crazy cachets of like you know i think one time they found like a hundred mortar rounds in a truck. And then the next day they stole like, you know, 500 gallons worth of gas from us. We do not know where the gas went. So, you know, but there was all this like crazy stuff going on. And, you know, you just had to let your guys run with it. And, you know, worked out. Well, also just, just the, the staggering loss and casualty, you know, count from, from that battle to, it really stands out in the book. And again, to Jocko's point, just the, the tribute you give to each of those

individual guys. it's really incredible. But a lot of perspective from that book. Yeah, actually, I thought that was very important. So when I was going through in, you know, there's like four or five websites where they give tribute to these guys. And some of them, they've done a really good job, but some of them are kind of thin, you know.

So I guess if you know someone who's killed during the war, anytime during the war, right, go on there because people will look at those things and, you know, give some color if there's no color in the guy's lives. You know, some people have like 14. new stories and then some people just like, you know, Joe Smith died of wounds. Yeah. Yeah.

So, but, you know, their sacrifice and, you know, the guys that got wounded, the guys that got killed, you know, their sacrifice cannot be forgotten. And sometimes I think we kind of take a forget. I mean, we don't, but I think in general, I think people kind of forget about what happened. Yeah, and certainly reading this book will give you a deep appreciation. because like I said, every two, three pages, there's more casualties happening

and there's all this good stuff happening, but the good stuff that's happening is coming at an immense cost. And the fact that everyone just kept fighting, you know, I mean, and actually, I don't know if we would have, you know, kind of wadied up and, you know, stayed inside the camp with things have been better or worse,

you know, but, you know, everyone just kept on the attack. And that's, you know, they always say, a counterinsurgency, you know, a counterinsurgency is like a marathon, not like a sprint. You know, okay. Thank you, nerd. But, you know, you need to be up there running with the Kenyans. You know, it's not a, it's not an eight-minute mile. It's a, you better be turning four minutes or otherwise you're just going to get run over.

Yeah. It's a way it is. Anything else, Kerry? Negative. Tony, you got any closing thoughts? No. Thank you for having me. Thanks for what you're doing.

you know, you had Kermak Farland on. And it's been a pleasure to see you again, man. It's been way too long. When you're down in Florida, you need to come see me next time. Right on. Outstanding. Appreciate it. And thanks for joining us. And thanks for your service. Thank for your sacrifice

and your leadership in the Battle of Armadi. I know it was another thing I was thinking about. Like, you know, we sit in these battalion meetings and they're like, we don't go out like from there. Just go out. And, you know, like your A.O. was one yard outside the front gate. That was it.

There was your a-o. And I was, on the other side, we were a butt up against Tway. So we did operations in Tway, that Tway Village that were, you know, 50 meters from the gate. There's bad guys out there. So it was awesome to be able to work with you and the rest of the commanders. And, of course, thanks to your whole battalion. The 135 Task Force Conquers, who was an honor to serve alongside your incredible soldiers. and thank you for writing the book

because it not only captures the battle, but like we were saying, it just honors the brave men and women who served and sacrificed so much on that battlefield, and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice. We will not forget them. Conquer or die. Thank you.

And with that, Colonel Anthony Dean has left the building. honored to have them on honored to have served with him and his soldiers and to serve with all the soldiers sailors, sailors, airmen and Marines in that battle and I know I said it a couple times but reading that book and just page after page after page

of friendly wounded in action friendly killed in action it was it was hard to read and it was also just such a reminder of how many were wounded and killed and when we were there like he remember when he was saying you know you get back to your talk and they're like oh yeah this person you know hey 506 lost two guys hey three eight Marines lost a guy hey you know one six like it was just that's what you were that was the that was the rhythm

of what was happening is just rough. And the way that it came across in the book, what I think what made it come across in the book, the way it hit me, was that I talk about, I usually talk about the wounded and killed in one statement. Hey, the Battle of Ramadi, this many people were killed. From tasking a bruiser, we had this many people, we had this many people killed.

And it's like a one statement. and in the book it's just like Chinese water torture where that drop is just hitting you every page boom boom and it bores a little hole into your head

so I think that's what made that's why it hit me in a different way and also a great reminder of how lucky we are to be here you know I went down the other night as I finished reading the book And the sun was setting and I grabbed my wife and I was like let's go watch the sunset

And I told her I said I'm reading this book and it's just every day it's just that's what it was like and you get so used to it It's a terrible thing to get used to when you get told that an American soldier or American Marine was killed and you kind of you know you nod your head and then you open up the Check what emails came in while you're out in the field that's sort of your reaction. It's horrible and yet you know as as as tony pointed out guys went back on the battlefield that's what we're doing that's what we're doing so let's make sure we're living a good life right now honor them um so let's decompress a little bit what do we got we got some jaco fuel can we decompress with some jocco fuel let me tell you what decompressed with some jihitsu let's do that and then decompressed with the lift you know, decompressed through some physical activity.

It's a good way. And when you do that, you're going to need some fuel. So let's get some jaco fuel. We're doing some jih Tjitsu. We're watching some jih Tjitsu with the Craig Jones Invitational. Jock Fuel, check it out. Going into Walmart, biggest retailer in the world, we're going to be available in Walmart.

So if you live by a Walmart, which you do, because you're an American and there's a Walmart within 10 miles of you, So we're going into Walmart. We're not going to all of them out of the gate, but probably going to one near you. So check that out. If you want Jock Fuel, go to Walmart and get some.

You can also go to Wawa. You can go to Vitamin Shop. You can go to GNC. We're in the military commissaries, by the way. Afees, you get at Hanford. You can get at Dash Stores in Maryland. You can get it at Wake Fern. You can get it at ShopRite.

H.E.B. Meyer and Wegmans. Get some. All three of those. If you live by a H.E.B. Or you live by a Meyer or you live by a Wegmans, I want to say thank you. Because you all have been getting after it. So that is awesome.

That allows us to reach more people. So thank you. Harris Teeter. Lifetime Fitness. We're in there. Shields. We're in there. If you need to buy Weaponry and you need Jocko Fuel Water at it, go check out of Shield.

Because they got it going on. You've been to a shields before? No. I want to say like 350,000 square feet of, camping, hunting, fishing, outdoor, and sports gear. I want to go now. They're crazy. They have like a ferris wheel inside the building.

So you can just throw your kid into the ferris wheel. And then you can go just buy weapons. These are up in the northwest, right? Yeah, it's a Colorado. Yeah, it's a Colorado, Utah. I forget all the areas, but they're like a western. Western scenario. And now they've got Jock Fuel.

Yeah, they've had Jock Fuel for a while. And by the way, people are going there and getting it, which is crazy that someone goes into a 350,000 square foot store and they walk out with someone at Jock Fuel. It's freaking awesome and appreciate it. So that's what we're doing. Also small gyms. We're in all kinds of Jiu-Jitsu gyms,

all kinds of CrossFit gyms, all kinds of regular gyms. Go to JF Sales. Go to JFuel.com. We're also in some chiropracticic places. We went into a damn hair salon the other day. Is that Jackson? Yeah. I think Jackson.

I think it was actually Jared. Oh, was it, he's like, yeah, we, I can't care. I forget which one of them was, but yeah, they're giving like their sales update. Uh-huh. Oh, we're now going live into this hair salon. Yes. Dude, right?

Because, hey, you want to get your hair cut? Let's get some protein while we're at it. That's right. That's what we're doing. Check out joccofield.com. Get some. Also American made materials. I was just talking to Colonel D.

about this. You know, he said, hey, what you're doing with that is awesome. What people need is jobs. People need jobs. So origin USA.com, we're bringing jobs back to America. We're bringing manufacturing back to America. You can get the best hunt gear, the best jeans, the best hoodies, the best t-shirts, the best geese. Did I say geese? No. You can get the best geese. Whatever you need for life. That's my whole life by the way we just wrapped it up that's last guards t-shirts jeans boots we got it hunt gear we got it so check that out origin usa.com american made oh by the way we got the new training gear it's like silk weight little activities going on so comfy so check it out origin usa.com made in america also we have a jihitsu training camp coming up august 27 through the 31st in maine it's not sold out yet

the regular camp sold out this one's not sold out yet so if you want to get in there get in their origin USA.com. Right on. We've also got Jocco's store, jaco store. Mm-hmm. Jocco store.com. Mm-hmm. Get your discipline equals freedom gear.

Get your good gear. Uh, get your get after it gear. These are the things we're wearing when we represent on the path. Check. Gold's cool. Yes, sir. We've also got the shirt locker. So that's a subscription situation.

Uh, new shirt every month. Echo Charles coming up with these designs. Um, more creative. designs that we represent on the path. So check that out as well. Jocco store.com. Also, you need steak.

Go to primalbeef.com or Colorado Craftbeef.com and get the tasty, awesome, outstanding steaks from awesome companies, awesome people. Primalbeef.com, Colorado Craftbeef.com. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground Podcast. Check out our YouTube channels. We got Jocko Podcast, YouTube channel. We got Jock Fuel YouTube channel.

We got Origin USA YouTube channel. We got Eshalam Front YouTube channel. And we got Jocko Podcast clips. Good job, Echo Charles. That's what he's real fired up about. So check those out. Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall.

Books. Ramadi Unclassified by Colonel Anthony Dean. Check it out. It is just an outstanding book. It covers so much. I mean, I read 3% of this thing today. Maybe even 1%. It's 400-something something.

pages long. It covers the history. It covers the culture. It covers everything. Check it out. Ramadi Unclassified by Colonel Anthony Dean. And if you go to tonydean.com, he'll send you a signed copy, which is awesome. Also, I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written a bunch of kids books. Check those out. We also have a leadership consultancy. Go to ashtonfront.com for details. If you need help with leadership, which you do, we can help you. We can help you solve your problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. For details, we also have an online training academy,

Extreme Ownership.com. We teach the skills of leadership online. And these are the leadership aspects that will come into play in everything that you do. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom and Lee.

She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Hero. and Horses.org and Jimmy May's organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us,

well, as I said, Tony Dean is at tonydeen.com. And as far as Carrie and I, Carrie is at Carrie Helton. I am at Jocko Willink and also jocco.com. If you want to check out any of that,

thanks once again to Colonel Tony Dean for joining us tonight. Thank you for your service, your sacrifice. and your leadership and thanks to the brave soldiers of the one three five armor the conquerors who is an honor to fight alongside all of you in the battle or amati

and your professionalism determination courage and heroism will never be forgotten by me and will never be forgotten by the men of task unit brouser so thanks to all of you and thanks to all our soldiers sailors, airmen and Marines around the world right now who are standing the watch and willing to sacrifice to keep freedom safe and to protect our way of life. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol,

Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice as you work to protect us here at home and to everyone else out there just keep in mind these incredible sacrifices that have been made to give us our freedom and you heard about some of them tonight but this is one battle there's been thousands of battles that have taken place and in every one of those battles men and women step up and they go forward with the will with the will like the heroic of the one three five the will to conquer or die and they give us this gift of life and of freedom don't take it for granted cherish it and remember them and until next time this is Gary and Jocko out