Jocko Podcast - 481: Deeds. Not Words. With Airborne Ranger, Will Bardenwerper

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<Will Bardenwerper was an Airborne Ranger qualified infantry officer in the United States Army. He was stationed in Germany and his service included a 13-month deployment to Nineveh and Anbar Provinces, Iraq in 2006-7. While in Iraq, he helped lead his infantry battalion's reconstruction, civil affairs and tribal engagement efforts in the city of Hit. His unit helped contribute to the beginning of what would later become known as the “Anbar Awakening.” Will was awarded a Bronze Star and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocco Podcast number 481 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In January 2006, I stepped off a C-130 in Talafar, Iraq. As I began my 13-month deployment, I imagined an American public following our progress with the same concern as my family and friends. But since returning home, I've seen that America has changed the channel. Young investment bankers spend their impressive bonuses on clubs in Manhattan,

and many seem uninterested in the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Princeton graduate and former financial analyst, I was once part of this world, and I like returning to it, putting the Spartan life of Talafar and Anbar province behind me. But even as I enjoy time with friends who have welcomed me home, my thoughts wander back to other friends who continue to fight as the city parties on. Serious problems with the war in Iraq are well chronicled, but I am struck by one that does not seem to trouble the country's leadership, even though it is profoundly corrosive to our common good,

the disparity between the lives of the few who are fighting and being killed, and the many who have been asked for nothing more than to continue shopping. Those who rationalize this disconnect have argued that our soldiers are volunteers, happy doing what they signed up to do. While it is true that most soldiers are devoted to country and comrades and are focused on their mission, the assertion that soldiers are cheerfully returning for multiple combat tours is grounded in statistics and arguments that are misleading. Supposedly impressive re-enlossment rates are cited as evidence that soldiers enthusiastically support the war effort. In reality, these retention numbers are more the result of the stop-loss policy, where,

soldiers are required to remain in the army after their contracts have expired if their units are deployed or ordered to deploy soon. My platoon's infantry men expected to be stop-lossed, and some felt they might as well cash in on the re-enlistment bonuses if they were going to be forced to stay in the army anyways. Few of today's soldiers expected 15-month deployments separated by home stays of less than 12 months. The stress of The stress on Army families is enormous, especially since at least four of those months at home are generally spent training in the field. Sacrifices like these were the norm in World War II, and families left behind could draw strength from the military knowledge, from the knowledge that everyone is in the same situation. Today's military families shoulder this burden pretty much alone.

Never in my life have I seen such commitment With soldiers and officers working in hazardous conditions upward of 16 hours a day, Seven days a week for over a year, barely able to pause long enough to commemorate their fallen friends. Meanwhile, in the banking houses of New York, the shaky credit markets and the Dow are the things that matter. the problems facing our soldiers 8,000 miles away seem to capture little attention. And that right there is an article from the New York Times in 2007, and it was written by Will Bardenwerper,

who is a former airborne ranger, qualified infantry officer, who served in Iraq with the ready first brigade combat team of the First Armored Division. And he was a college athlete, a presidential management fellow, a master's in international public policy from Johns Hopkins, and a degree in English from Princeton. He's written articles for outside magazine and a variety of news papers. And he's written two books. The first one called the prisoner in his palace, Saddam Hussein, his American guards, and what history leaves unsaid.

and he has a new forthcoming book, which is called Homestand, small town baseball and the fight for the soul of America. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Will, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I think, so we got hooked up through General McFarland,

who said you were one of the most interesting men alive. And as I read through your bio and what you've written and what you've done, he was certainly a very interesting life you've led thus far. No, thank you again for having me. And yeah, I guess Colonel Sean McFarland at the time, who I worked with in Iraq, was one of, and I know you've worked with them closely. I enjoyed your discussion with him.

And as we both know, just a fantastic leader and a fantastic human being. So it was an honor to work with him back then. Yeah, no doubt about it. So let's get some background on you and growing up. What was that all about? My childhood, I think, is probably less, maybe less dramatic or less exciting than some of the other guests you've had. I classified as kind of your typical middle class, upper middle class suburban childhood outside Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Maryland.

Oldest of five kids. My father was a lawyer. My mom was busy raising the five of us. Was your dad Ivy League? No, he wasn't. Okay, because you guys ended up sending every, is it every kid went to an Ivy League school in your family? I think so. I was the first in our family to do that.

And then the younger four followed in my footsteps. So I think all he has to show for it is just a lot of debt that he took on and that he shared with us. But no, it was a great childhood. I went to a Catholic elementary school, was taught by nuns. And despite some of the stories you hear, actually, I had a good experience. doing that. I learned a lot. I've had some people on that went to Catholic schools as kids and they said they were,

you know, their Catholic nuns were harsher than their most harsh drill sergeants. Sounds like you had a better experience. Yeah, yeah, no, you hear the stories about getting your knuckles wrapped with rulers and stuff, but no, we didn't experience any of that. It was a good, good education. Did you inherit any of the, did you inherit any of the firstborn kind of stereotypical? Like, are you a hyper rule follower? Are you aiming to please?

Are you kissing up to the boss? Is that your gig? Maybe a little bit of that. I don't know. My parents may push back on the real following, but I think I kind of was like that. You know, I was a hard worker. I was incredibly competitive, you know, from childhood,

athletically and academically in the classroom. You know, I'm sure I inherited a little bit of that from my parents and then some of it was probably just natural. but no, I think that there was an element of that probably going on. Was there veterans who had served in your family? Both of my grandfathers served in World War II. And, you know, we'll get into this probably in a little bit.

But I think thinking back on their experiences did play a role in my motivation to ultimately join the military for sure. Did they tell you stories when you were growing up or anything? They did. They did. I mean, their experiences were very different and their personalities were very different. My mom's father served in the Army Air Corps. And my father's father's served in the U.S. Navy. And so he was in the Pacific during the war. And then my mother's... Is he still alive? No, they've both passed. They actually both, I think, passed when I was in Iraq, as a matter of fact. So I lost both of them when I was over there. I haven't found a sailor, a World War II sailor. I haven't had a World War II sailor on this podcast.

And those guys that were fighting in either theater, but just what being in the Navy was like in 1943, waiting to get torpedoed, waiting to get kamikaze attack. Just the grit that those guys had was crazy. It's amazing. It's funny you mentioned that my father was just visiting. My grandma, her or his husband, his wife is now 101, still alive, living on her own in Louisville, Kentucky, amazing lady.

And my father was just there a week or two ago, and he was going through some of my grandfather's diaries from the war. And he sent me, he took screenshots of a few passages from it. And it's just like you said. And it's not only, I guess, you know, I had always imagined what it might be like to be worried about, you know, a submarine come in after you or some kind of combat. But, I mean, just the daily life of being out at sea. And that's something we don't even think about. But, I mean, he talked about how there was this one storm. I think it was actually off the coast, maybe not too far from here, L.A. or San Diego.

And, you know, the waves were so intense that they were knocking out the windows on the bridge of the ship. And he was talking about how there were guys who, you know, spent, you know, 36 hours, basically just, you know, vomiting into trash cans and stuff. and you know and I think sometimes that gets overlooked we think about the you know the combat element but just being out there under those conditions you know let alone that there might be enemy nearby and the fact that they didn't know when this was going to end you know it wasn't like nowadays where it's like okay you got your 12 month or whatever deployment you know that was just you're out there until this we win or lose yep you're going on deployment until we win and that's that and so when you were growing up what were you doing?

Were you, you were, I know you were, you were, into sports. So what, what were your sports? I mean, it was kind of the, you know, you think about the movie Sandlot or kind of your conventional, you know, childhood back then, kind of the end of that era where kids would just go to the playground

with their buddies, you know, and play games. So it was just whatever season you happened to be in football, you'd go play football all day. You know, baseball, you do baseball. Basketball was kind of, you know, year-round to some extent. And we just had our little neighborhood posse of kids. We'd go out there.

And it was, you know, it was great. I think it was great development because a lot of my good friends were older. And so, you know, you're playing football and you're just getting your butt kicked by guys that are four or five years older than you are a lot bigger and stronger. So then when it comes time to play against kids your age, you know, it doesn't seem so intimidating because you're used to that. So that's what we would do. We'd go out there.

And then, you know, I was always a hard worker at school. And my parents kind of instilled that in me. So always, you know, spent a good amount of time doing homework and things like that. And so then you end up going to private high school as well, right? Catholic Jesuit, All-Male High School down not too far from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Took the subway down there as a freshman in high school. Fantastic. Daily commute?

Yeah, daily commute. Yep. You know, go to baseball practice and then ride home on the subway in your baseball uniform on the way home. Back then, the neighborhood was a little sketchier. It's gotten gentrified since then. But the education's always been fantastic. Really good, you know, history, English. I think that helped kind of fostering me the love of reading.

So I've, you know, nothing but good things to say about that experience. And did you, did you have a plan of what you wanted to do? Like your parents weren't Ivy League, but somehow you decided that you were going to go to the best school you could get into? I mean, that's part of it. I'd like to think it was sort of more sophisticated than that. But in reality, I think it was part of that competition. And, you know, there were a handful of kids in the class like me who were always, you know, vine to get the top grades. And kind of the goal for that was to get admitted to, you know, one of the more competitive schools.

And so that's kind of how I, you know, ended up applying to those schools. Was your high school like a feeder school? No, I wouldn't. It was fantastic education, but it wasn't, you know, like one of these prep schools where, you know, half the class goes to the Ivy League. You know what that is, ECHO Charles? A feeder school, of course. I don't think they do it anymore.

But like when I was a kid, there was prep schools up in New England where if you went to this prep school, they would just feed right into Ivy League schools. I mean, obviously you had to do well and you couldn't be an idiot, but it was a real thing. It was a real thing. It's like whether it's covert or overt, it's kind of part of the program.

Like this is the pre kind of phase to go into this other thing. And that's, and when I got to Princeton, you know, I saw that because I was like, wait a second, you know,

there's a lot of kids here from Groton or Andover, you know, you know, disproportionate number. But no, I mean, I, you know, sometimes, people will, you know, suggest that going there was like a gift or, you know, the result of kind of being entitled or whatever. And I, you know, I do kind of push back against that because I think that, you know, negates the fact that I was working like a lunatic off through high school to make

this happen. And I was spending, you know, three hours a day in the studying when other kids were, you know, going out and having a good time. And, you know, so I had to sacrifice to make it happen. So that was, were you listening to music? Were you going out on the weekends? None of that stuff. No, embarrassingly, I didn't have the best social life. You know, there was a lot of, between sports and school, you know, I mean, I almost gave myself like an academy-like experience. You know, when you hear about West Point or Annapolis, you know, there's. Self-imposed. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know, they don't have a ton of fun there either. But mine was just self-imposed. How much of that was just being Catholic? I don't think that played a big part of it. I think it was more just kind of just kind of, just the, you know. this competitive nature and wanting to do the best I could. Now, which sport you excelled in baseball? Baseball was the one I ultimately did.

I mean, I loved basketball, and I'd like to think that I was a decent player, but, you know, I was a six-foot white suburban kid. I got down to practice, actually, or to the tryouts at Gonzaga. And Gonzaga is typically, like, nationally ranked, you know, top 20 in the entire country. Unbelievable basketball program. This is Gonzaga High School? Gonzaga High School. Gunzaga University out of Washington State.

Correct, correct. And I'll never forget, I showed up for the freshman team tryouts. This isn't varsity or JV. This is just freshmen. And, you know, there were like 60 guys there. And a bunch of them are Dunkin. And I'm thinking to myself, holy cow. I mean, I'm lucky if I can touch the net, you know, if I jump.

And these guys are like hanging from the rim. And I quickly realized that basketball was not going to be, you know, on my horizon. And that was tough. You know, everyone's had an experience where it was the first time they were cut from something. And, you know, I remember going to the team, you know, outside the coach's office and they write the names down or the guys, you know, as the tryouts progress and my name wasn't on there. How many, how many cuts did you make? Zero. And like I said, I think I was good, you know, through elementary school, through junior high, you know, I scored like, you know, half my team's points.

You know, I was a pretty good player, but I'd had no business on the court with the rest of those guys. What number in the class did you graduate from high school? A second out of like 160. Who graduated number one? Or at least, have you tracked them? Do you know what they're doing now? Kareem, I still remember his name. Yeah, we were always battling it out.

I think he became a doctor. I think he went to Johns Hopkins, maybe. Okay, Jack. Sometimes those people that are number one, they turn out, you know, the pressure. They break. All right, so you show up at Princeton. So you end up playing baseball, Princeton?

I did for two years. I wasn't recruited. You know, the coach kind of knew who I was, but, you know, hadn't made any special, you know, promises to me to make the team. And that was unfortunate because as a non-recruit, you kind of, not only do you have to be as good as the person you're competing with, you kind of have to be better, because presumably the coach has told that guy and his family, if you come here, you're going to play, whereas he hasn't told me anything.

And so, you know, I think as a result, you know, I didn't get the play in time that I would have liked. Were you a walk-on then? Yeah, you could say that. Like a walk-on who they kind of knew who he was, but you didn't really have any promises. And what was your goal being an English major? What did you think you were going to do with your life? I hadn't given it. Honestly, I went through the course catalog and I just looked at, you know, which

courses on here, you know, seemed to appeal to me the most. And I narrowed it down to history in English, you know, and I could have gone in either direction. And ultimately, I chose English. And I really didn't have like a long-term plan for where this is going to lead. Maybe I should have because a lot of kids do. And, you know, they're like, I'm going to do economics and I'm going to go do this and that. And one thing leads to another. But for me, it was really just intellectual curiosity.

I just like the looks of those courses. And then when you were at Princeton, did you get involved with the, what are they called, dinner clubs or supper clubs? Eating clubs. Yeah. So Echo Charles, correct me if I'm wrong, Will. at Princeton they don't have fraternities but they have these things called what they eating clubs

and they're kind of like a fraternity because they have a house and I went I was speaking at Princeton and I went to one of the eating clubs and it seemed like I was in a fraternity being quite honest with you wait so you said eat wait is it eat in eating like eating food yeah

E-A-T-I-N-G eating clubs why they call it eating So as the best I can describe it is, like you said, it's essentially a fraternity but with no national affiliation. Now where they got the name eating club, I'm not entirely sure. But each one, you know, kind of like a fraternity has its own identity. You know, you got your athletes in this one, your sort of party animals in this one, your artsy people in this one. They're all now co-ed.

I think mine was the last one to admit women sometime, you know, shortly before I got there. And you eat, you do eat there. you join midway through your second year. And that's where you do eat your meals, but it's also where like all the parties and things go on. And so, yeah, I got involved, maybe too involved in the tap room of my eating club, which was Tiger Inn, which had a decent number of athletes, but was also kind of one of the wilder ones at the time.

Now is this because you were partially like cleared hot for the first time in your life to like do something crazy? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you hear about the, you know, I went through, When I got into the Army, a lot of my training was with the guys who had just gone out at West Point. You hear stories about how they kind of go crazy. When, you know, because they've spent four years not having a typical college experience, and all of a sudden they're free to go out. And that was kind of me, I think, in college.

You know, I'd spent my entire high school years working. And so now I was like, oh, wow, there's, you know, free beer all the time, you know, girls. So, no, I had fun. I still worked, you know, between sports and academics, I still did work really hard. but I had a lot more fun there than I had in high school. Now, as you start going through Princeton, you're studying English, did you start to figure out some kind of a plan of what to do with your life? No, I still, I, you know, for someone that was as hard of a worker as I was,

I really didn't do a great job of, you know, looking ahead, you know, as far as, you know, a career, you know, plan of any kind. I don't know why that might be. And, you know, so, you know, soon enough, it's time to graduate. and I still really didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I knew a few of my good friends were going to medical school, and they were going to take a year off before medical school. They were both from Colorado to go back and basically be ski bums for a year.

And then another friend of mine and I just didn't know what we wanted to do, but we thought that sounded fun. And they had a family friend who was a real estate agent in Vail who could hook us up with a really cheap place to live out there. And so I ended up doing that basically for lack of a better idea of what I wanted Did your dad try and, like, beat you when he found out that was your post-Prince? Yeah. Was to go be a ski bomb?

Yeah, no, they weren't. I mean, thrilled. I think, you know, I did assure them, listen, this isn't like, you know, the rest of my life. You know, there's going to be an end point to this. Although a lot of people that go to bail say that. I was going to say it. Yeah, you go up there at Mesa Blyfties that are like 48 years old. You're like, where didn't you get here?

Oh, 1976, bro. And there's nothing wrong. I mean, I can see the appeal of that. Actually, my sister is a skeeep. bum or she was a ski bum she's just getting out of that phase of her life right now and she's a little older she's a little bit younger than me but she you know I I would talk to her and my dad would always point out you know I'd say well you know she's gonna what's she gonna do and he's like well she skied 114 days last year and 128 days a year before that and so who's winning and I'm like yep she's winning no I mean I was I was good friends

with the um you know the ski patrol guys out there because I did construction in the summer before doing lift stuff and working at a bar in the winter. And that's what a lot of the ski patrol guys did in the summer was just work construction out on the mountain. And they're great dudes. And their quality of life was fantastic. And they make meaningful contributions. I mean, they're out there every day, you know,

on tons of terrain helping people. So I don't, you know, look down on that at all. Oh, no. That's what I'm saying. Like I looked at my sister and her whole crew of dirt bags. You know, that's the term used in a positive way, dirtbags. Dirtbags means you're just going to, it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what kind of gear you have, it doesn't matter where your next paycheck is coming from,

what matters is how hard you ski and are you skiing a lot? And that's the goal. And her and her friends, man, they killed it for many, many years, many, many decades, which is pretty impressive. But that said, after my year there, I think that's one of my parents were like, all right, enough. We were supportive of this kind of for a little while, but we didn't help pay for this education for you to be checking IDs and breaking up fights for the next 10 years. So what was the next move? So New York, you know, like a lot of Princeton grads, you know, finance was an option.

And that's back, you know, late 90s, the markets were doing good. You know, there was an opportunity for an English major like me to get a job. You know, I don't think that would always be. the case, you know, depending on how the economy was going. But back then, they couldn't fill some of those places quickly enough. So I contacted some people I knew from school and got a job in equity capital markets in Manhattan, had a lot of close friends from college there. And so moved there. And, you know, I loved it. I loved the city. You know, it was a great time to be a New Yorker. The economy was booming. It was just a lot of fun. And is this the, you know, nowadays what it is, when you go for that first couple of years being an analyst

and one of those investment banks, like it's, you're getting ground down. It's, you know, 18, 16 hour days and all that. Is that what you were into? It depends on the job. And so what you're describing, one of my three roommates was doing that. He was working at Goldman Sachs.

And I'll never forget, you know, I lived with them for a year and I almost never saw him. And my hours, because of the nature of my job, were demanding, but not like that. I'd say mine was closer to like eight to between eight and ten. at night, which by New York analyst standards is actually very reasonable. And, you know, so I'd get home, let's say, at 10. He'd still be at work.

And then I'd wake up, you know, the next morning at like seven. And he would have at some point during the night, gotten home, probably, you know, slept for a few hours, changed his suit, showered, and was back in the office. So I, you know, the whole week would go by. I wouldn't see him. The weekend, you know, maybe I'd, we'd cross paths on like a, you know, a Sunday afternoon. but he worked pretty much those same hours on Saturday and part of Sunday. And that was for a year straight.

You know, he was probably in the office 360 out of 365 days. And that's like their win-of-win process. And if you can stick with it, you know, it can be pretty lucrative. But a lot of people, a lot of people don't. So why was your job more mellow? It was more market hours-based. So it was more, you know, akin to like the trade-in part of finance than the like the investment. banking deal-making part.

And those jobs tend to be a little bit less demanding when it comes to hours. So you're doing that job. So is that the job you're in when September 11th happens? Correct. Yep. I was, you know, everyone in New York on that day, you know, has their own story or memory of it. And it's funny how similar a lot of them are. But, you know, for some reason that everyone always comments and I'm the same way

on like how beautiful the day it was. And there's something about that that I think, you know, really hit people. But yeah, we were working on a, you know, kind of a trading desk, you know, environment. So just like, you know, communally kind of, you know, a dozen people kind of all together. And we had the TVs turned on to CNBC like we did every morning. And, you know, the first plane hit and kind of similar to a lot of people, we were like, oh, you know, must have been some kind of small Cessna that, you know, got off course or something, you know, some kind of an emergency. And then the second one hit, and like a lot of people, you know,

it became pretty clear that this is not a coincidence at this point. And at this point, you know, we're all just watching. And we knew people, you know, most of us that were working in the World Trade Center. I think we may have even had a few people from our company, you know, in meetings down there that morning. Our office was in Midtown. But I had friends that worked. My roommate actually worked in the World Financial Center, like right across the street. and I mean he remembers seeing people jump in and you know stuff that you know he'll probably never forget but they evacuated in my building because we were I think the third highest you know skyscraper in Manhattan at the time they didn't know how many more planes might be inbound

I remember thinking to myself you know I kind of was probably not the safest place to be hanging out at that time I didn't have any military or first responder experience so there was really no, you know, it didn't occur to me to like go down there and try to help. I don't know what I could have done at that point anyway. So I just was thinking, you know, I should just try to get out of here safely. And so I thought to myself, well, Grand Central is probably not a good place to go. That's kind of another landmark. It could be another target. Same thing with Penn Station. So I'm like, you know, I'm going to, I was dating a girl who lived up in Connecticut, as a matter of fact. And I thought, you know, that's probably a safe place to go. So I walked, I remember

walking up through Central Park and, you know, towards, I thought to myself, well, no one's going to mess with Harlem. You know, the Harlem train station is not going to be on the top of a terrorist list. So I'll just jump on the Metro North train there, go up to her house and, you know, hang out until this kind of clears, clears out. And I remember turning back and looking down south, you know, to the skyline. And, I mean, it looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off. The skyline from east to west of the bottom of the island of Manhattan was just all smoke.

And at that point, we didn't have, you know, it wasn't like today where you could look on your phone. I didn't, since I left the building, I didn't know what had happened down there. As far as I knew, a nuclear bomb had gone off. It looked like it. And yeah, so that, you know, that was an experience that I obviously won't forget, nor will I'm sure anyone who was there at the time. At what point did you start thinking about changing your career path? Pretty much, almost right then. It was almost instant. And it wasn't so much, you know, even though I think it was pretty clear, I think the president had gone on TV like that night or the next day and was talking about how it was a terrorist attack. So it was pretty clear immediately that this was an attack.

But it wasn't so much that I felt, you know, I need to go fight or, you know, bring anyone to justice. It was more watching like the FDNY, the NYPD, you know, guys who did that, who helped people every day, you know, and the selfless service and the example that they set, you know, going, you know, the firemen going up the stairs into these collapsing town. hours, you know, watching that and watching the responders, you know, going down to ground zero, you know, in the hours and days afterwards, it just opened my eyes up to something different. And all of a sudden, you know, the Excel spreadsheets I was doing every day just didn't seem fulfilling or important, you know. And so I pretty impulsively quit that job, you know, maybe about a week, again, with no plan, you know, no idea, just an abstract desire to find some

way to serve somehow. But I did kind of, I think to myself, if I don't do this now, the emotion will, you know, they say not to make emotional decisions, but at the same time, I think, in this case, I was convinced this is something I need to do, and if I don't do it now, maybe I'll, I won't ever do it, you know, so I quit and to start to research, you know, FBI, FDNY, NYP, Army, Marines, you know, and ultimately for a variety of reasons, I kind of chose the military. I think partly because a lot of those other things are more career choices. You know, you don't see too many cops or firemen or even FBI agents do it for, you know, three years and get out.

Whereas the military, and I wasn't convinced I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I just thought this is my time to serve the same way that my grandfather's had. And the military seemed to be the best opportunity to do that with, you know, either, you can either, and then go in two directions. and stick with it and make it a career, or you can do it and serve honorably and get out and do whatever it comes next. And Army or Marine Corps?

And so I was leaning actually Marines. You know, a lot of people, like a lot of people, I'd probably just watch the commercials and it look cool. I mean, you know, they have the reputation. They have the reputation of being, you know, super demanding. And the competitive part of me, I just wanted to do whatever was hardest, you know, and they kind of seemed like their, you know,

their basic training or OCS is the hardest. So that's what I'll do. You know, I didn't really have any interest in flying with my eyesight. I don't think I would have had any aptitude for it. I didn't probably even really know much about, you know, the Navy. I don't think I wanted to be on a ship. You know, I had a sense that this fight's going to be on the ground. I don't even know if I knew really about the seals back at that point.

So, yeah, the Marines seemed like a good fit. But amazingly, they had no one was getting out of the Marines at that point. You know, everyone that had been doing it was like, well, this is what we've been training for for years. You know, we're not going to get out. And then they also had a flood of people like me applying. So they said, well, we're not going to be able to process you to OCS for, you know, a year or so. And then I, you know, so I went to the Army recruiting office and they're bigger. And they have more slots.

And they said, you know, we can get you in more quickly. And so that's the direction I ended up going. How long did it take before you actually left for, and in the Army, you even as an officer, or you end up going to boot camp first, right? Mm-hmm. And that, yeah, so, and that even ended up taking longer than I expected. I don't think I ended up beginning basic training until, like, January 03, which is over a year after 9-11.

And that was with the Army, which was supposedly going to be more quick than the Marines. And you're right. The Marine Corps, and I think the Navy, I mean, you would know better than I. You can, if you're a college graduate, you can just go to OCS. Yeah, the Navy, you can do that, yeah. And so, yeah, the Army for whatever reason, you got to go to basic training and then OCS. And so it ends up just being like two basic trainings. Yeah, you know, you finish basic training and, you know, you get like a day off and you show up at OCS and you're on the ground doing more pushups getting yelled at.

And you think to yourself, wait, I thought this was, I thought I was done with this. You know, you're just starting a new one. So that was like six months of just, you know, hazing because OCS was just kind of like a repeat of basic training. And basic training was tough, not so much because. of like the physical demands, which, you know, I was in pretty good shape. It wasn't overwhelming. But it was more just culturally, you know, here I am this 26-year-old guy, you know, coming from this Manhattan job. And most of the kids were like 18. So it was just like I felt like I was back kind of in high school. Do they make you like a squad leader or anything? They did. Uh-huh. Yeah, they give you

like, you know, certain leadership things. And I had pretty good drill sergeants. And I actually became, you know, friends with some of the guys in the platoon. And you start to realize, you know, that even though this kid may be 18, there's things that he's pretty good at that you're not good at. I think the best, I think the guy that graduated number one in my basic training class was going to join the Army band of all things. He was the most squared away guy in the whole place.

That's wild. That is wild. I'll meet people like that. Like, oh, I was in the Marine Corps. I'll say, what'd you do? What'd you do in the Marine Corps? And they wore like trombone or whatever. And that's what they do there for their career.

They'll be in the career in the Marine Corps or in the Navy, and that's their job. And yeah, they kind of have to be. squared away because you do a lot of drill and ceremony and all that. So that's, so any, was it, was there any level of regret when you were in boot camp or you were in OCS? Like, hold on a second. What am I doing here? Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, not, not an hour would go by, right? I didn't think that, you know, because it's, you know, when I joined, I, like a lot of people, you know, I'd watch the commercials.

I thought I'd be running around in the woods, you know, doing army stuff. And then I'm like, you know, we're just spending hours like making our beds and folding our socks and labeling our t-shirts, you know, and, you know, mopping floors. And it was just, it's like, where's the army? You know, the highlight of my day was the physical fitness, you know, just going for a run and doing push-ups. Like, that's the kind of stuff I loved. But it was, yeah, and then not to mention, the drilling ceremony and the marching. And I was just like, this isn't what I joined to do, you know.

And, you know, so all of basic training was kind of like that. then OCS was kind of more of that. I would say that it wasn't until infantry officer school, which was like the next step in the Army pipeline, that I finally was like, okay, this is what I joined for. How long is the Army infantry officer's course? What was it? It was at least, you know, the better,

because I joined at the same time that a lot of the West Point grads joined. Just because it just so happened. I was going through it. I think we began in July. they graduate in like May or June. And most of them go in either the July or the August course. And I think it runs maybe like five months, something like that. And I mean, I think there were two elements of it that appealed to me.

One was I was finally with like sort of older, more mature guys, you know, that were just kind of more similar to me in background and experience, I think. A lot of them were, for whatever reason, former Army, you know, athletes. A lot of, I was good friends with some hockey players, football players, baseball. lacrosse like so it's just like good dudes to hang out with and then you know finally we were out in the field doing you know army stuff you know we had a great you know I don't know what the what we call them like a training officer he was a major he had spent he was with 100 first airborne had just gotten back from an Iraq deployment and he was in charge of our platoon training us he was wonderful

and you know we just go out in the field for three four days at a time you know and and and and And finally I was like, okay, this is what it's all about. But it, you know, there was six months there where it was like you said, I was just like, what in the world? Why did I make this decision? And then from there, it was what, airborne school and then Ranger School? Correct. Yeah, I don't remember which order.

It must have been airborne first because I did some jumps in Ranger School, which you wouldn't do if it was the other way around. So, yeah, airborne school, you know, nothing too crazy. I mean, just static line, you just jump out of the plane. That's basically, you just got to overcome that initial fear and take the step other than that. It's not too difficult. Ranger School is a little bit more difficult, though.

Yeah, that one, that was tough. I'm not going to lie. You know, that was certainly to date and maybe even until now, you know, the hardest thing that I had done. You know, not everyone that's been through it will say that. You know, some guys, I'm sure get through it, you know, more easily than others. But for me, it was a real challenge. You ended up writing an article. Maybe we'll refer back to that article.

but was there any, what was the major challenge for you at Ranger School? I mean, I think there were a few that are common to everyone and then a few that were unique to me, just because of my skill set. You know, the common ones are kind of the obvious ones, just no sleep. You know, it's nine weeks, 63 or so days. Usually the first week is kind of in like a garrison setting, and then the second two weeks of each phase are in the field. The garrison part, you might get four hours of sleep, you know, on a mattress.

The two ensuing field weeks, it's more like, you know, one to two hours of sleep just on the ground. You know, if it's raining, you're wet. If it's cold, you're cold. If it's hot, you're hot. And, you know, that will take a toll in a week or two, much less nine weeks. And then the food, you know, not eating, you get, it's the same thing like the garrison part, that one week, you'll get at least, I think, two meals a day in a chow hall that, you know, you get like, you know, 90 seconds to eat it. So you're just eating with both hands as fast as you can, but you get some calories.

And then the field two weeks. It's, I think, two MREs a day, which, which isn't a lot when you're on your feet 20 hours a day. You know, you're burning, I think, like, you know, twice as many calories as you're taking in. So those two things were tough. For me, the sleep part was harder than the food part. Some people, the food part's harder than the sleep part. How much weight did you lose? I didn't lose a ton because I well I did for a period of time but I recycled which we can maybe get into in a little bit and that is an opportunity to kind of fatten yourself.

What did you get recycled for? So that ties into your previous question about the challenges. So those were the two common challenges. The things that were challenging in particular to me were the fact that I've just never been handy with things. And so, you know, whether it is just like constructing something, like building something, you know, it's kind of embarrassing in our family, you know, like, you know, my wife's the one that, you know, if we buy an IKEA desk and someone needs to build it, you know, I'll sit, I could sit there for five hours with manuals and instructions and the thing looks more screwed up after I touched it than it did before, you know, and, you know, she'll take, she'll take a quick look at it and it'll be assembled in like two seconds. And so that, that's tough because a lot of what you're doing at Ranger School is. I mean, not constructing things, but like so tying, tying things down, you know, knots, tying knots, that was ultimately what got me recycled. But, you know, so everything that you're assigned, you know, whether it's your night vision goggles, even like your weapon, any sense of what they call sensitive items, radios and things,

you have to tie it down so you don't lose it when you're out in the woods in the middle of the night. And I just, for the life of me, couldn't tie a knot, you know. And one of the things you need to do is pass this test called knots in the mountain phases. And part of it is to do. Your biggest fear. Yeah, yeah. And this is something that... It's like specially made for you.

Yeah. The test is called, nots. And this is, and what's even more embarrassing is this is a test that like, 95% of the students have no problem. Yeah. You know, it's not considered something that presents much of a challenge to most people who aren't like, don't have some kind of like a not dyslexia. And there's 10 of them that you need to do. And part of it's for mountaineering, you know, it's for safety. Like you need to, you know, if you're doing on below, you know, you know, if you're doing on

ballet or something and you're going down the side of a mountain you want to make sure that that knot is done correctly so you don't just crash and there's 10 of them and I'll never forget you know there's like a rope and you know you're standing next to it with your little ropes and you do your knot like on top of that big one and you know you have two minutes I think to do each one and if and then the instructor will come by and if and I think you can you have to get like eight out of 10 and you have two minutes to do it and he'll say you know the double bowling blop you know whatever and And if you get it wrong, he'll like tap you on the helmet and you take a knee. And so I remember the first time I did it, you know, he would make, he'd announce whatever that knot was.

And I just like took a knee instantly because I knew, I mean, you could give me, you can give me, you can give me an hour. And it's going to all my knots just turned into like what they'd call a granny knot, you know, no matter what it was. That's what it would ultimately look like. And so he's like, Ranger, what are you doing? You got, you know, you got a minute and 50 left. And I'm like, you know, you could give me the rest of the day, but I'm, this isn't going to happen. Dang. You got an A plus for honesty.

F and knots, an A plus for honesty. And, you know, so I might have gotten like, you know, four of them right out of ten. And so that was it. You know, so at that point, you're recycled to the beginning of that phase. You would have really, in seal training, you got to tie knots too, underwater on a breath hole. Oh, my God. I mean, I can barely tie my shoes. So, yeah, yeah, that would not be in the cards for me.

And so, and it was, it stunk because it, you have to go back. to the first day, you know, of that phase, all your buddies that you've been going with are moving on. I remember I had to serve them food, you know, you get, you have to like do menial labor, you know, so I was working in the chow hall serving them their food on the day they left to go down to Florida for Florida phase, which is the last phase of Ranger School. And I knew it was, I remember the timing, but I knew there was something that, like some party or something they were going to, I was thinking myself, they're going to be at that party having graduated before I even restart this phase. because we were there at the, they take this break for the best ranger competition.

And so like the next, you usually would pick up with the next class. The next class wasn't going to come through for like another month, which meant we're just up there in Delanooga, Georgia, you know, picking weeds, painting, you know, just doing nothing while your buddies are getting closer to graduation. Did you get retrained on knots or did you do it on your own? No, they did. I mean, they, the two benefits to that were you can sleep a lot. I mean, those first few days, they kind of left us alone.

We probably slept. I didn't know you're physically capable of sleeping this much, but I'm not kidding. We'd wake up, eat, sleep from like 9 to 12, eat sleep from like 1 to 6, eat, and then sleep all night. I mean, it's probably like, you know, 18 hours a day of sleep for those first few days, which shows just how deprived we must have been. And then, you know, you could eat as well. So when you do pick up with the next class, I think you are at an advantage because, you know, they come in exhausted from the first phase.

you know, you're kind of fat and rested. Now, it doesn't last forever, but it gives you kind of a short-term advantage. Plus, you've kind of already learned a little bit about the turning of the place that you happen to be, so you can kind of help out in that regard. And you do, yeah, I've worked on knots a lot. And I still barely passed, even after a month of doing nothing but knots, but I did ultimately pass.

Yeah, there's one thing that's very good that I think they do in seal training, which is, you know, Hell Week is kind of the, I think it's the fourth or fifth week. I think it was the fifth week when I went through it might it might be the fourth week now But if you don't if you get rolled During hell week If you make it to Thursday I think you're good and they'll roll you forward But if you don't make it if you get rolled on Wednesday You don't just go back to the beginning of hell week

You go back to the beginning of the first day of first phase and the reason for that is because Like I think they just want a certain level of physical durability to be tested as a human and and if you were totally fresh going into Hell Week, it would be a massive advantage. Because when you get to Hell Week, you are already just kind of beat down. And so that's one of the good things that they do. You have to go all the way back to the beginning.

Because if you didn't have to do that and you could game it, you'd get to Hell Week, get rolled, sleep a bunch, be totally ready, refit, get all healed up, because everyone goes in with, you know, scars that cuts all over your body, and those things all get gnarly infected and everything else. Get all those cleaned up, put on a little extra body weight.

The big, one of the big, I don't know which one is, it's like it depends on what type of suffering you may or may not like or what you can deal with because I was well suited for seal training because I don't need a lot of sleep and I really like to eat food. And you get to eat a lot of food. Like even during Hell Week, you're eating probably, probably, two good meals a day and then two meals that are you know like a mri out in the mud or whatever but they're not trying to starve you whereas in ranger school it's like oh you you're gonna starve

people eat lose 20 30 pounds in ranger school and that's yeah that's not uncommon for the guys that go straight through you know and and and but they do just to be clear there is what they call a day one recycle which is I think what you're describing and so it just depends on the reason why you know what you failed essentially. So if like something like knots, you know, you'll just go back to the beginning of that phase. If it's kind of a more like a worse infraction or you fail something more important. Like so if you're just really bad at like leading patrols like just abysmally bad, sometimes they're just like, you know, this guy, he needs to go back to day one and start again

because he just needs that, first of all, just needs to be retrained because he's not anywhere near where he's supposed to be at this point. Or if you're found, you know, guilty of some kind of like an honor violation, you know, not something severe, but like, you know, in the article, maybe we'll talk about later, there was a kid who had, I think the rule was at the time you're not allowed to keep the, you're not allowed to eat or keep this. I think you could eat them, but you couldn't keep the snacks that come in the MRI for like to eat later. You had to eat it on the spot.

You couldn't put it in your pocket for like later that day. And he got caught with some bag of skittles, you know, that he had just kept for later on. They did like an inspection and they found it. And he was, I think he was given it a day one, which is, I mean, that's like almost a fate worse than death because you're, I mean, every day you have to redo is a horrible day. So you want to redo as few as possible. Yeah, and that's that's like a little bit of a minor fracture. They do, there's guys going through seal training where they'll get, uh, integrity violation, which pretty much you're getting dropped. So if you like straight up cheat on something, like you're done,

which is real interesting because on the one side, you got, you got this, uh, sort of mantra in basic seal training, which is if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, which means like, oh, if you can get, you know, you can get sneak into the room and get, get your feet up in the air. and sleep for five minutes, do it. But the other end of the spectrum is like, oh, if you do an actual integrity violation, they are 100% going to drop you.

And I mean, I've always been confused by that as well. There's a tension there that never totally made sense to me. And we see that at Ranger School, where that was most evident was on night land navigation. And for whatever reason, as bad as I was at Nauts, I was like really good at land navigation, which was strange because I was the suburban kid. I had never even, I don't think,

and camping, you know, and, but you put a map in my hand, and the way it works is that, you know, there'll be like five grid coordinates, you know, and you have an assigned amount of time to, to go find them. And, you know, they could be two, you know, two, three kilometers apart with, you know, a swamp or, you know, a small mountain or, you know, any number of sort of terrain obstacles in between you and the destination. And, you know, you have a map and you got to find it, and you get there and there's a little clicker that you have a little scorecard and and you click to prove that you found the point. And some of them can be almost impossible to find because, you know,

especially in the summer when there's so much vegetation, you know, whatever the little thing you're looking for could be, you know, you could almost step right on it before you actually see it from a distance because it's covered with stuff. And then there's nightland navigation, which is like that, but harder. It's at night. And to get to the honor point, I think, you know, you could use a red lens flashlight because you have to do something to see the map.

but a red lens doesn't help you if you point it forward to try to see something. But, you know, some of these markers were almost impossible without, you know, actually turning on a white lens, which I think most people probably did, you know, quickly to at least say like, okay, you know, I think I'm close, but I don't see it and I'm probably within 10 feet of it. But there's always stories of Ranger instructors who would, you know, be sitting at the point, you know, and they see the white thing going at them and they're like, you know, Ranger, come here. And, you know, like you said, that's an honor violation. I think that would probably just be a, not a day one, but like back to the beginning

in that phase. But that's one of those ones where it's like, it's that middle ground. It's like if you're not cheating, you're not trying, kind of everyone's doing it. But if you get caught doing it, you're in trouble. You know, I don't know. I don't pretend to have the right answer to how that works. We'll dive back into Ranger School a little bit when we get to the article that you wrote about it where you actually went back to Ranger School in a sense.

But for now, so you get down. with Ranger School, finally, and it's off to your first duty station, and that's over in Germany? Correct. Yeah. And so now what's your job? What's your assignment when you get in your first duty station? It was infantry platoon leader, and it was a tough time for that job because I inherited an infantry platoon who had just got.

They actually, when I arrived, they were, I think they were on block leave from a 15-month deployment to Baghdad. So this is 2003. This would have been, this was, no, this would have been 04 because I was doing all that training, you know, for the better part of the first year or so. So 2004 you show up in Germany. Yeah, probably summer 2004. Is Colonel McFarland in charge yet? He, I, no, it was his predecessor.

Okay. And so that was a tough assignment because I was the only one in that platoon that did not have a combat infantry badge, you know, and in the army, that's a big deal. It shows you've served in combat, and they all had. a pretty long year. And you know, here's this guy, you know, in their eyes, like right out of college, who's now the platoon leader. And you get straight put, is this in the 136? Correct. So you get put right into that battalion out of the gate, the 136 armored infantry regiment, the Spartans. Yeah, the 136 infantry, part of the first brigade, first armored division. And luckily, during my platoon leader time, my first platoon sergeant, who's the senior

enlisted person that works alongside you was unbelievable. I mean, just in reality, they probably didn't need me. That's how good he was. But he was also good enough to know that, you know, in real life, you do need a competent lieutenant. So he didn't just do everything. I mean, he kind of, you know, mentored me, if that's the right word, and, you know, what you will need to do as a leader, but also was there to kind of catch me if I was

screwing up before, you know, someone else saw it. And so, you know, I really benefited. from the experience of working alongside him. And then are you guys in, they finished their block leave, they just got back from deployment, they finished their block leave, and now are you starting a training cycle again? Correct, yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, it was kind of unfortunate timing for me because my whole platoon leader time was sort of pre-deployment training, but by the time we deployed my time was as

a platoon leader was up, you know, so it was, I don't want to say peace time, but it was, you know, it was in Germany. It wasn't in Iraq. And that was just a result of when I arrived at the unit, when the platoon needed someone. And yeah, so that kind of, that kind of sucked. That's terrible. Yeah, yeah.

And it's just because they can't, you know, they can't have someone be a platoon leader for like, you know, three years or whatever. So how long was the training cycle that you were for? I mean, I was probably a year between that deployment or when they got back from that deployment to when we deployed to Iraq. And so you only get one. year in that leadership position. Yeah. And you can get there's a few specialty

platoons that you can compete for for like a second year, you know, I can't remember what they all are like there's some kind of like scout platoon or something like that. Yeah, like a scout one but you know there's few and far are those between. And so that's the other thing that's terrible about that is now you have a new platoon commander come in and take over before they go on into combat. Exactly. So it doesn't make a ton of sense. It doesn't always work. that way. I mean, there's guys who works better. Let's say you show up six months before the deployment, it probably works perfect. You get to do your pre-deployment training and then lead those guys for at least a portion of that in sewing year. So as you're going on deployment, so, in your

job as you guys are getting ready to go on deployment? Well, I mean, it was to lead the splatoon, you know, through all the pre-deployment. We did a lot of pre-deployment stuff. And in Germany, you go to Hohenfels, which is, you know, about three hours from where we were stationed outside Frankfurt and there's you know month or two month long sort of training cycles that's usually divided between gunnery and and sort of operational tactical you know training and it's important I mean it's even if you're not the guy who's ultimately going to be with those soldiers you're still training them right and so I'd like to think that you know even though I wasn't with them downrange to the extent that I think they were pretty successful at least some of that had to do with

with me, you know, as a leader. Now, but as you guys are getting ready to deploy, like, I mean, now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. And they say, okay, you're done with your platoon tour. You do a turnover with the guy, with whoever's taking your place. And now where do you get assigned? So that brings us to where I meet Colonel McFarland. They decided that, you know, we need this, what they call public affairs officer, which

typically would be an Army major, you know, in 2004. But for some reason, you know, the word had trickled up to him that we have this, you know, Princeton guy, you know, in the brigade. Next thing I know, I'm meeting with the XO, kind of making me an offer. I couldn't refuse. And, you know, for your listeners, PIO is kind of like a public affairs officer, someone that has to show media people around the battlefield. And so I kind of got roped into that reluctantly. and when they encouraged me to do that, I said, you know, you're not in much of a position to negotiate as a lieutenant or a captain, you know, but to the best extent I could, I said, you know, listen, I'll do this. But, you know, please just get me back to my infantry battalion, you know, sooner rather than later, because I didn't, I definitely didn't leave a job on Wall Street to be a public affairs officer.

You know, and I'm not disparate. It's, it's an important job, but it's not what I joined up to do. I mean, in some perspectives, it's one of the most important jobs because this is the way the world is. going to see what you're doing as an army unit. And if you don't have a person that can convey the correct message, then that can be terrible for a command. And there were elements of it that were cool and that, you know, what Colonel McFarland, you know, told me is like, listen, you're going to be, you know, with me. Wherever I go, you go. And so, you know, to an extent, that's kind of a neat opportunity in that, you know, rather than just being assigned, you know,

let's say one really quiet neighborhood and you don't really get to see anything beyond that, know, I'm riding on a Blackhawk all across the brigade AO from, you know, all the way almost to Mosul to, to, you know, Sinjar where the Yazidis would live. You know, every day was different. Every day exposed me to like a different part of the battlefield. So it wasn't all bad. But I did want to get back to 136. So that's where you are.

That's the position that you're in when you actually go on deployment. And you guys kick off the deployment up in Talafar. Correct. We got there right after, you know, I'm sure this name's familiar to you and your listeners, but at the time, Colonel H.R. McMaster would become General H.R. McMaster. And then I think National Security Advisor, McMaster. And they had done a really good job in what had been a pretty violent place. But by the time we took over, it was pretty stable.

I mean, there were still some pockets of resistance here and there. But for the most part, there wasn't a lot of kinetic stuff going on. And I think, you know, General McFarland, you know, spoke to this a little bit. But I think, you know, he was the beneficiary of, you know, kind of seeing what worked from McMaster. And this was before some of this stuff had become kind of accepted doctrine. You know, I think McMaster kind of implemented some of this counterinsurgency stuff before it became embraced by like the whole army.

But Colonel McFarlane saw it because they did a pretty good, you know, right seat, left seat transition. Yeah, it's interesting that the manual, the FM3-Tact 24 counterinsurgency manual, which when I got to Ramadi, I got to Ramadi, I got Ramadi in April of 2006. And that, there was a draft version of that out on the internet. And that was what I read where I was like, okay, this is what I need to get on board with. And so, yeah, it hadn't even been finalized yet in April of 2006. So, yeah, the fact that McMaster had already implemented a lot of those strategies up in Talafar,

and they'd been very successful, was very fortunate that when General McFarland or Colonel McFarland at the time showed up and was like, oh, look around and go, oh, okay, we see what, you know, we see what you did and how effective it was. which is a pretty awesome thing. And it's also proving the kind of or exemplifying the type of leader that General McFarland was because many people, you know, anything, you know,

if I show up here, Will, and I look at what you did, I'm immediately looking at what you did wrong and I would have done different, I would have to do better. That's what a lot of an attitude that a lot of people have instead of going, oh, wow, you did a great job. I will carry on with what you did. That's unfortunately the way it works. sometimes with people's egos, but, you know, General McFarland clearly is a guy that's wanting

to just do the right thing and his ego doesn't play it, literally any role at all in making decisions. So you guys get up there, you see this. And so in those first few months, you actually are the PAO. And you're flying around, like you said, you're going everywhere. Are you interacting with a lot of press up there? Yeah, we had embedded reporters. I can't remember where they're all from. But it was, but the army, you know, they were pushing people that way because at the time this was kind of a success story. So it wasn't, there was no shortage of, you know, interest in what was going on. And yeah, I was, and that was when I first met Travis Patrick Quinn. Okay. Who, I think we can talk about in a little while, but he was the brigade civil

military operations officer. And so we were, you know, we worked very closely in that we both had these kind of like ill-defined amorphous jobs working with Colonel McFarland, but also kind of just able to do our own thing. And we became, you know, real good friends. And, uh, you know, we're going out, you know, pretty much every day. Was, was Travis an SF guy? He, he was prior enlisted. Um, and he was an SF like comms guy. Um, so I think he supported, he wasn't, I can't remember the technical name, but he had fought in, and I think Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, um, supporting an SF teams, um, uh, with their comms. So, and I also, I, also, I, made a comment about him being fluent in Arabic.

General McFarlane, tighten me up real quick on that. It was like, no, he had like passing, passing Arabic. He thought he was better at it probably than he was. Yeah, but, and the thing is he really did have an awesome open mind to understand the culture and it had a huge impact. And he ended up making this, this slide show that circulated throughout Iraq at the time about how to, it was like stick figures and how to overcome an insurgency and what the, what the Sunnis thought of us, what the Shias thought of us,

how we couldn't tell them apart, but they could tell each other apart very easily and how we needed to get engaged with them. I mean, it was called How to Win an Al Anbar by Captain Trave. I remember you can Google it. And that was so classic because you think about it, you know, we pay, you know, millions of dollars to consulting firms to, you know,

put together 100-page, you know, PowerPoint presentations on whatever, you know, and this, you know, here you have Travis just kind of sketching this on the back of an envelope, and it ends up, you know, kind of being, you know, the key to whatever success we had. And that's just a tribute to his, you know, I think, unconventional thinking and his just genuine desire to do what it takes to win, you know. And he had no use for, you know, bureaucracies for really for the chain of command, which I think rubbed probably a lot of people the wrong way, you know, who's this, this O3 that,

you know, is going straight to the brigade commander with whatever crazy, you know, scheme he had. But it just so happened that those, that he was right. And I think it's a tribute to Colonel McFarland to recognize that this young captain is on to something. Because a lot of times he'd probably say, you know, you talk to this major. The major will talk to this lieutenant colonel and then eventually, you know, it'll get up to me. But, you know, he kind of embraced like a flatter organization, which you don't always see in the big army. Yeah, you know, before we hit record, you were asking how well I knew Travis and I was kind of pointing out that, interestingly enough, at the brigade meetings, which was a bunch of 05s, you know,

know, battalion commanders. But Travis and I were kind of like had a seat at the table. So I had the seat at the table because I was in charge of the seals and and interacting with all those different battalions. But then Travis was there too. So he had like an 03 and an 04 that would sit there and, you know, Colonel McFarland would listen to what we had to say and take input. And, you know, he did have a very flat organization that he was listening to whoever had

the best idea in the room. and so just to be in there in all those meetings and that's how I got to know Travis just because we're the junior guys in the room we're gonna kind of have our little sidebar conversations about what and we could help support each other you know he was definitely much more understanding of how to interact with these tribes

but we were out there all the time so for us to be able to take some of that knowledge and try and utilize it the best possible way was just everyone had to work together you know so he was another guy that I had the opportunity to work with. And he, you know, and he was a, I mean, he was a complicated guy in that he, I think, appreciated the importance that these tribes are going to have to our ultimate success there. But he wasn't like, you know, a pacifist.

I mean, he, I think he had a bumper sticker on his little office that said, you know, like World Peace, like one well-placed sniper bullet at a time, you know, and he was instrumental in getting us to embrace this squad-designated marksman thing where, you know, the brigade, you know, wanted to have, you know, one guy in each infantry squad that had, you know, received kind of better, you know, marksmanship training. So he knew that, you know, killing bad guys is part of this mission, just the same way that trying to co-opt tribes is. Yeah, and if you went out and talked to the tribes, you'd see that the tribes actually wanted the bad guys to get killed. Yeah. Those tribes had been murdered. I mean, the tribal leaders had been murdered and massacred just before we showed up and it took place while we were there as well. So those tribal leaders, they wanted help from the big American and coalition forces.

And Travis is the guy that figured out, oh, yeah, they definitely want our help. And here's how we could best help them. And yep, you're absolutely right. And then, you know, just on a personal level, I think he, there was something about him that, again, this is a testament to Colonel McFarland. You know, he wasn't your typical infantry officer. You know, he's a little overweight. He smoked a lot.

You know, he was a hard worker in that he would do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission, but he was kind of lazy and that he's not going to do a lot of just BS staff work to impress his boss, you know. And I think there were people within the infantry world who, you know, didn't, you know, respect that as much. You know, they preferred kind of your standard issue, you know, super clean, cut, fit, you know, infantry guy

that kind of looks like he, you know, comes out of central casting. And Travis wasn't that. And so I think it says a lot about Colonel McFarlane that he kind of saw this, you know, this guy, this eccentric guy, and he recognized that there's a spark there that is important, you know, and that that can help get us somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah, he was a bit of a wise ass. And he also, I don't think his hair or his mustache were in regs at all. No, no, no, no, no, no, he's not going to ace the PT test. He doesn't really look the part. His boots probably aren't, you know, polished back in Garrison, but there's no one you'd rather have, you know, over there to actually, you know, do what needs to be done. No doubt about it. So your mission, so Talifar has been pacified to the point where it's, you know,

like you have a full brigade up there of five or six thousand people and it's like oh uh actually we don't need you there anymore you can leave a battalion up there we need you to go handle what's going on in romadi that was kind of the next shift that took place in your all's deployment correct yep i remember there were rumors kind of starting to float you know among the brigade staff that you know something may be going on kind of behind the scenes and i don't know how much i certainly wasn't privy to those discussions you know maybe coroner McFarlane was but but yeah as fate would have it you know I think maybe four or so months into that, the brigade got sent down to Ramadi. That's when he finally let me get back to my infantry battalion,

which was actually in a town called, pronounced heat, H-I-T, which is along the Euphrates River, you know, a few hours from Ramadi. You know, very similar to Ramadi, I think, you know, demographically and sort of culturally and just kind of like a mini version, a smaller city, but a smaller unit assigned to deal with it. I went on block leave. You know, we get like a week of leave, you know, during the deployment. And that's when, you know, when we moved. So I left, you know, Talafar, went on my leave.

And when I got back, I arrived in Ramadi and then convoyed out to hit for my new job. And he actually sent up a request to get you replaced as PAO and the Marine Corps sent him a major, Marine Corps major named Megan McClung, who ended up taking your role. Correct. I never met her because, you know, this happened. She probably stepped into my role while I was on leave and I got there and I got onto my next assignment. But no, that's exactly what happened. So you get out to Heat and what's your job out there now?

Now I'm basically the Travis in Heat. I'm the, they're what they called Civil Affairs Officer, which was a great job. There was a Marine Corps, I think there was a Marine Corps Civil Affairs Detachment. and then there was a special forces ODA. And so all three of us basically had the same mission, which was to try to do whatever we could to tampen down the insurgency, whether that was through civil affairs projects, reconstruction work, trying to develop governance, and most importantly, the tribal engagement.

And so I was in touch with Travis, you know, kind of trying to, as best I could learn what he was doing with some success. and Ramadi and apply that to what we were doing in heat. And so, yeah, it was a great job. I worked directly with the battalion commander and the sergeant major, who was a former Delta guy. I don't know how he ended up, you know, with a mech infantry unit, but just an amazing, amazing guy. I have stories of what he did that we can get into later.

But a challenging environment. I mean, it was they didn't much like us there, probably similar to Ramadi, you know, there was a pretty active insurgency, and those who weren't actively supporting it were just intimidated by it. And, you know, a lot of fighting. By the end of the year, I think we had close to 200 wounded out of, you know, 650, 700 person battalion, which is a lot. And, and yeah.

So what did your mission actually consist of? So would you go out with the conventional forces? Would you go out and do interaction with the tribes? Like how did it go down? So we did a little bit of all those things. You know, like so one day I might go out with the Marine Corps civil affairs team to, you know, go to the hospital, which was just in complete disrepair. You know, you go into like their emergency room and I mean, there's, it's just filthy. I mean, they didn't have any of the stuff they needed to perform, you know, basic procedures.

you know, and, you know, try as best we could. Well, first of all, we have to do some vetting to make sure that we're not, you know, actively supporting in like an operating room who's operating on insurgents that we just got done fighting. But, so, you know, trying to get the community, you know, on its feet as best we could, the theory being that that would, in turn, you know, make it less fertile ground to recruit people to fight us. I don't know if that was ultimately proven correct or not.

we worked a lot with the Army ODA. It was a really good Special Forces team. It was led by an Army major that I actually am still in touch with today. And they had deployed there before. So they had some pre-existing connections to some of the influential tribes that were invaluable. So we spent hours just smoking cigarettes and drinking chai with, it was the Al-Good tribe. And the end point that we were working for there was to get their tribal leader to commit his young tribesmen to join a police force. And we literally built it, you know, one police station at a time, strategically located in different parts of the city.

So were those similar to the combat outposts that we were putting in Ramadi? Exactly, yeah. That's what we call them. It was like cops one, three, and four. each had one of our platoons in them. And then we would try to get an Iraqi police station manned by these tribesmen somewhere nearby. And that was absolutely critical to success because before we developed those relationships with that tribe, we could have a recruiting drive and like two guys show up.

But all of a sudden if the tribal leader gives it his blessing, you got like 150 guys that also happened to know that area better than any of us. They can tell who's from here. who's not from here, they can tell where this car come from. It's like if someone shows up in your neighborhood right now with some brand new car, you go, oh, the Smith's got a new car. It's the same thing for those tribal leaders and then the tribesmen that live in those neighborhoods. It's like, oh, yeah, this person's not from here.

They're from another country. They're from, you know, Jordan or Saudi or wherever, and they're here to cause problems. Let's get rid of them. Yep. And it didn't, but it didn't happen overnight. I mean, there were, and this is something that, you know, Travis and Colonel McFarlane probably spoke to, but, you know, this is the result of hours of relationship building. And these SF guys were very adept at recognizing that we don't, you know, you don't interact

the same with them as you would, you know, in a Western business negotiation. You don't show up with, and expect to get this thing tied down in an hour. You know, this is months of just sitting together, you know, eating, smoking, and really developing a trust and a rapport that will pay dividends, but it's probably not going to pay dividends. overnight. Yeah. No, that's, and that is like a classic SF mission. And did those guys have language? I imagine they did. They did. It wasn't great. But, but, but, um, but I think more important than the language was just the cultural understanding of, of, of, of, of what was necessary. And, and, and it's something that, you know, you just wouldn't really find in a lot of conventional

army units, you know, outside of someone like Travis, who just kind of had an innate appreciation for it. Yeah. And that's something that, you know, when, when they say that seals and green berets are roughly equivalent and there's certainly some equivalent skill sets but they're they're better at that stuff than we are you know that's just the way it is they have the language they actually train for it you know when you look at their their whole training pipeline is built around doing that or we don't have anything like that we would insert stuff like that like we would do tribal engagement field training exercises and when I was in charge of the tribal engagement field training exercises they would just devolve into a big

massive ambush, right? It'd be like, oh, you got set up and now you're getting killed. So, which is probably just bad on my part, but that's what, that's what we're doing. But the army, the way that they developed those SF guys to build those relationships and all that is, that's like the perfect SF mission. That's the perfect SF mission. And luckily, we had Travis. And Travis, you know, then it was Colonel Dean and all the various battalion commanders,

they built these great relationships with their counterparts. And my guys did too. You know, the seals that worked with, not with the tribe. We didn't, I don't think we were. We very, we worked through the tribes on a very small scale. But we worked, we interoperated with the, with the Iraqi forces. The Iraqi police and the Iraqi forces that we did. And I think we did a decent job of that of building those relationships and making them trust us and realize that we're going to stay there.

I think, I think SEAL's not great at that, but I think the guys did a decent job at doing that in, in Romani. But we wouldn't have been, we would not have been able to take the lead on that without a guy like Travis. And then the rest of the, him and Colonel McFarland kind of explaining what we were doing to the rest of the, the rest of the battalions on the ground. That's kind of the way it looked from my perspective. Because, you know, yeah, seals are not great at that kind of thing. Now, we were really good at sniper overwatches and getting those positions secured when they were building those combat outposts. Like, that's a great job for seals. Going for chai?

Not the best thing. What was your opt-tempo like? I mean, it was pretty intense. You know, partly by design, partly just by virtue of the place we were. but, you know, the battalion commander, myself, the sergeant major, you know, we'd be out every day. And, you know, the platoons manning these combat outposts were, you know, living this all the time. And, you know, it was one of those things where, I mean, you know this from Ramadi. I mean, it could be the most innocuous mission in the world that could turn into a pretty intense day, you know,

just because, you know, the enemy doesn't really care if you're there to go build a, to school or if you're there to go kill a bad guy, you're still a target. And, you know, I'll never forget, you know, this just kind of shows maybe I was, you know, naive or whatever early in the deployment. But I asked my brother to send over, to raise money in his high school to send over like soccer balls and soccer jerse. He's kind of the stereotypical, you know, hearts and minds, you know, the kids will love it. And Travis and I had actually done a similar thing in Talafar, and it, you know, it worked out great and everyone was happy. And so we tried this in, and, in heat.

And we went to, I think the town was Cabesa, which was a nearby village, you know, maybe 20, 30 minutes away. And, you know, we visited the school. We handed out the jerseys, the balls. The kids were happy. The teachers were happy. You know, we were all excited that we had developed this goodwill in the community. And on the drive back to heat, we get hit with an IED.

You know, it was like a four-humvee convoy, I think. Luckily, it went off, like, kind of between vehicles. It might have damaged one, but no one got hurt. But it was just one of those moments where you're like, you know, what the hell is are we doing here again? You know, I have my brother, you know, raising money at his school to send this stuff over. We do this great mission and they're trying to kill us, you know. So, you know, that's kind of how a typical day might unfold. You know, you might go out to do something like that and the next thing you know, you're getting, you know, shot at. The story I was going to

mention from the Delta Sergeant Major that was pretty remarkable and that it resulted in, I think, a distinguished service cross, a few silver stars, you know, a lot of deck awards were given because of the heroism. But it's another example of something that, you know, began. It was just a routine, I think, battalion meeting downtown between the battalion commander and his company commanders. And I think they chose to meet at one of those combat outposts that day. I can't remember the exact sequence. But so just both U.S. Army, like battalion commanders going to meet with one of the company commanders in town. With all this, with the number of company commanders. Yeah, I think it was like a battalion, you know, leadership meeting.

Got it. And trying to think of exactly how it unfolded. They were in a convoy. And one of the Humvees took a turn a little too wide and ended up, you know, sort of tipping partly over into a culvert, you know, on the side of the road. And as, you know, another Humvee pulled back to, you know, tow it out, an automatic weapon opened up on them from like the third story of a building, you know, probably less than 100 meters away. And, you know, in like one burst, you know, I think it hit, you know, the, the, a company first sergeant, you know, so the senior enlisted in the company, a company commander, a lieutenant,

and maybe someone else, you know, so in one instant, you have a good portion of this battalion's leadership, you know, wounded. And in this instance, there was a... young West Point graduate, who was, I think, a field artillery officer, who, you know, had been hit himself. But despite that, you know, ran back, you know, into the fire to pull, I think it was the first sergeant, who was a big guy, you know, into the, into a waiting Bradley, you know, to get medevacked. And then, and then this Delta Sergeant Major noticed that an enlisted soldier, had been hit, and it hit, I think it was his femoral artery, and was, you know, he's basically

bleeding out. I think the medic, you know, was just kind of overwhelmed by the situation. You know, he tried his best, but it was just kind of too much for him to deal with. And the Delta Sergeant Major, you know, I wasn't on this mission. I was back at the battalion headquarters, but I could hear it, you know, going on on the radio. I could hear the transmissions. and then I talked to all these people afterwards.

And he literally reached in and, you know, pinched the artery with his hand. You know, and I don't know if he had just received, you know, some kind of advanced life-saving training as part of Delta or if he just had that presence of mind to kind of just figure it out. They called for a ground medevac, you know, I think via Bradley to the nearest combat outposts

that, you know, had a helicopter. you know, place they could get picked up safely. So he, you know, they literally carry him while this guy's, you know, wrist is in this guy's leg holding the femoral artery shut, you know, trying to keep it cinched shut. He, they transfer him from the Bradley to the helicopter. He still is, you know, holding it. Um, and they fly to al-Assad, which, you know, I don't know what that would have been, maybe like a 10-minute flight or, you know, I don't remember how long it took. And he literally holds this guy's leg until they can, you know, get him into the combat support hospital at Assad and hand him over to the surgeon and the guy survives and pretty much makes I think a complete

recovery. But had it not been for this this sergeant major, you know, that guy would have been dead probably within minutes. Yeah. So that's the kind of stuff. I mean, that wasn't routine. I mean, that's a dramatic example. But stuff like that, you know, was going on almost every day. Yeah. This is something I think I talked about with General McFarland was the fact that you were mentioned like being on the radio and how you can hear what's happening and it was so interesting because in in romadi you'd be hearing you'd hear what was happening and so when when the Marines were getting hit when the army was getting hit you could hear these reports coming in and like even when my guys would kill a guy or my guys would take out an RPG guy like you'd hear it and everyone would hear it

and you know i'd be down at one of the combat outposts and like army dudes would give me like a head nod because like, you know, the SEALs just, because I think it was NSWTU RAM, which was, or a call sign Red Bull. It was like Red Bull just killed whatever. One enemy carrying an RPG and guys would be like fired up. And also the negative of that was like when someone got hurt or someone got wounded, someone were killed.

Like you'd kind of just everyone, you'd eventually hear it. Maybe you didn't hear it on your net, but you know, the platoon commander or the platoon commander of the platoon sergeant would, would hear it on the battalion net. and then tell the guys what happened. So it was a very, very shared information

that everyone kind of knows what's happening, which was a very unifying thing. You know, you go to the, when you go to the Chow Hall or something, like you just, everyone's in this fight together and you'd know what had happened an hour ago. You'd know what happened on the battlefield an hour ago. We'd know when there was mass casualties, like guys would go up and donate blood.

It was just everyone was in the fight together. And that really, I really never thought too much about the fact that we were all listening to radio traffic and then passing the word on. Because you want people to know, there's a big explosion. You know, people are going, like the boys are saying like, hey, what was that? And then four minutes later, you go, hey, the Marines just hit an IED up on, you know, firecraft. And you'd be laying in your bunk and you hear something blow up and you're like, well, something just happened. And then there's that moment where you're sort of nervously expecting or like, you know, I just hope the next report isn't that there's, you know, whatever wounded, you know.

And sometimes it would be a relief that no one had been. Other times you hear that someone had been, and that was not great. How did you hear that Travis was killed? I honestly don't remember exactly. It was probably on, you know, one of those sort of secure chats on your computer. I remember where I was, you know, in our little sort of makeshift little plywood, you know, office. And, you know, I think the first word maybe was not specific. You know, it's just like a bunch of, you know, officers or brigade staff, you know, from Ramadi were hit. And I don't know if

his name was associated with it at that point. But, you know, shortly thereafter, I think it became clear who it was. And people knew that I was, had been close with him. So that was, you know, pretty devastating. I mean, at that point, we had already lost, you know, people. I'm trying to remember the order of the different people that I knew that were killed. I think my memories, I have actually tattooed on my arm. I think Travis was December 6th. I had another friend that was a day before my birthday, July 24th, who's also on my arm.

So I'd already lost him, but then when the Travis one happened, there was something about that that was even more devastating. And I know, I think it's, you know, it's kind of human nature when, you know, someone is lost. You kind of romanticize that person and, you know, they can take on a larger-than-life persona that maybe in some cases is a little exaggerated, you know, and there's nothing. That's just human nature. But, you know, I'm not embellishing when I say that with him, there really was something uniquely amazing about him, you know, not that every loss isn't horrible.

but this one really stung, I think, for me, and I'm sure for a lot of other people. And the other horrible thing about this for you is, so you had been, as I mentioned earlier, you had been replaced by this major, Marine Corps major, Megan McClong, and she was with Travis, and they were both killed. And so, you know, if you really wanted to peel back the onion, she was sitting in your seat. What would have been your seat, you know? Yep. I mean, yeah, I mean, that thoughts crossed my mind.

And then the, I don't know if he was the driver then, but specialist Vincent Pimanti was, you know, I was close to him too. He was, you know, we, you know, we were kind of like the island of misfit toys in Telfar. It was, you know, Pimanti. There was a sergeant Hartman, Travis and I. And, you know, that was our little, you know, gang that would go out together, you know, either on our own or with Colonel McFarland. And, you know, that was my vehicle. That was my seat. You know, the only thing I tell my son.

when I, you know, because I don't want to feel guilty is that I kind of raised my hand for what at the time was the more dangerous job, you know, so it wasn't like I was leaving the dangerous one and then someone got killed. You know, I kind of was trying to go in the other direction. And that just, you know, you can't really ever predict what's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just that attack alone, you know, you got people, then this is something that General McFarland was talking about. It's like, these are, you know, the brigade staff, you know, And so you think, oh, well, the companies and the platoons, they're down there fighting, but the enemy doesn't care. The enemy doesn't know where you're working.

They don't know what unit you're attached to. It doesn't matter to them. The other guy who, yeah, who's tattooed, or I was good friends with, who's tattooing on my arm is Captain Jason West. He was the Brigade S-1, you know, personnel, and he got hit with an RPG. I don't know what, you know, what he was doing out that day, you know, probably some kind of a staff function of some sort. sort, you know, see, yeah, you know, but the enemy, they see a Humvee that's a target. It doesn't matter who's riding in it. Did you see the progress taking place in heat?

So in Ramadi, for me, I left October 21st, 2006. And the last big combat outposts that I went out to put in, and I was actually, literally, was with Colonel McFarland in the combat outposts. there was almost no security there yet and we're we're standing there and it was very interesting because there was very limited fighting like i don't my seals didn't kill anybody which was very surprising and it was like there was of course there was a little bit of fighting but it wasn't as drastic as it had been in the past so that was kind of a little bit of a little bit of a hint that that maybe there would be some some lessening of the violence but it did it did

There was plenty more fighting and actually after we left, there was kind of an apex of fighting. But did you guys see up in heat during your deployment? Did you see things? Did you see progress? Did you see things starting to get better? Unfortunately, I don't think we really did. I mean, the violence was almost continuous until the end of the deployment. I mean, to include, you know, there was a mortar attack on an Iraqi army formation on our compound that we think, you know,

someone had leaked the location to, you know, the bad guys. And, you know, that was a huge mass casualty that killed, you know, I don't if it was over 10, but a lot of Iraqi Army soldiers, you know, dozens wounded. I mean, literally the night before we left, or while some of us were leaving, we had one of what we call right-seat, left-seat ride transition medians with the incoming unit that was going to backfill for us. And we were sitting in the battalion conference room, and he, And, you know, we're going through the slides, you know, this is the local shake.

This is the local, you know, mayor, whatever, trying to orient them to the battle space. And, you know, as we're sitting there, we had soldiers that were on the flight line that night. It was dark, you know, ready, you know, lined up to leave. They were beginning to rotate out as the new soldiers were coming in. And, you know, in the middle of the meeting, we hear, you know, boom, boom, boom. And it was at one of those moments. It was close enough. murdered almost daily and it's a big enough compound that generally it didn't do any serious damage

it made you nervous every time you went to the porta potty just because you don't want to be sitting out there when they went off I mean it was it was common but but but this was close and we knew there were guys outside and there was that moment and then we started hearing you know the screams and the shouts and we're like oh shit you know and it turns out they had hit the flight line you know as the guys were waiting for the bird inbound thank God You know, so we paused the meeting and run outside, you know, try to collect the wounded, you know, it's dark, so you couldn't really even see where everyone was. I remember running and I heard like a whistle, you know, kind of come past me and I was like, that doesn't sound good. You know, so kind of just, you know, kind of grit your teeth and hope nothing goes off and nothing did.

To this day, I don't know if it was just like a dud or, you know, something definitely was coming down and there was no explosion. So I was like, okay, good. but thank goodness no one was killed you know there were I don't even know if anyone was too seriously wounded a friend of mine got like a piece of shrapnel through his calf you know some like sort of relatively minor man it wasn't minor to him at the time but relatively minor injuries but I mean that shows that was like literally the last day that kind of stuff was still going on but to your question it was like a switch went on like probably within the first month or two of that new unit being there because I don't think they had almost any casualties all year

And I kept in touch with my interpreter who was an amazing guy, you know, after I left, and he said, you know, you're not going to believe it, but, you know, you could literally take off your body armor and eat a kebab, you know, like the hospital we were talking about before, outside the hospital, and no one will mess with you. Whereas when we went there, you know, we'd have to shoot smoke and, like, run, you know, because if you just even walk inside, you're going to get shot. And it was almost instant. Like it was, the instant was after we left. but I think it was as a result of a lot of the work that we did. Yeah, that's, it was definitely interesting to watch that,

to watch Al-Lambar settle down, you know, and same thing, you know, we got reports from the guys that replaced us and it was just amazing to watch that transition take place. Now, as you're getting ready to go home, are you thinking about getting out at this time? Yes, so that, let's see, that would take me towards, the end of my, you know, three-year or four-year commitment. And it was, I think, a 36-month, you know, commitment overseas. Yeah, so that would have been my next kind of decision point.

And my decision, even from when I joined, was more than likely leaning towards going to do my time and then, you know, get out. But I was open-minded. You know, if I fell in love with it, I would have continued. I think ultimately the two reasons why I did decide to get out. one was just the op tempo at the time was so intense and I refer to it in that article that you began the show with and I mean it sounds kind of dramatic now you know 15 years later but it's if you put yourself back at the at the time that that was written you know these units it was a year on maybe a year off if you're lucky and then a year back on again and it and there was no end in sight you know we didn't know when this was going to end it looked like this could be

going on for 10 years and with it you know if you get it into Afghanistan, it kind of did, you know, in a different location. And I thought to myself, you know, I was single at the time, you know, at some point I'd like to have a family, you know, how can I even meet someone, much less, you know, if I do meet someone, say, oh, by the way, I'm going to be gone for, you know, 50% of the time. And then when you're not gone, you're training, you know, so friends of mine who got to 1,36 a year before I did, they got there, did 15 months in Baghdad, an extended deployment, came back. back for less than a year before a 14-month extended deployment in hit.

So they're looking at 29 months out of, you know, let's say the 36 months they thought they were going to be in Germany deployed. And then probably half of the home time you're in the field, you know, separated from your family. So I thought to myself, you know, is that really a good deal for, you know, a future wife, you know, to say that, you know, 32 out of 38 months, I'm going to be gone. Don't tell my wife it wasn't a good deal. And so I have, I mean, nothing but respect for the people who did that with, I cannot even, as now the father of a seven-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl, I don't know what the hell I would do if I had to say goodbye to them for a year.

You know, not even knowing if I was even going to come back and if I did come back, it was going to be a year. I mean, I have a tough time going away for a week saying goodbye, you know. And so I think about, like when I was. in the army, I was a single guy. The only thing I was missing was the bars in Germany. You know, like, you know, we'd spend all our time. Like, when we get home, we're going to go to this place and that place. How those young fathers and mothers dealt with it is something I can't even wrap my mind around.

Yeah, that's, it definitely is interesting for me. I had my family and was going on deployments and my buddy Laif, you know, he, once he started having kids, because he didn't have kids until he was out of the Navy and all that. But he was like, yeah, when his kids were, were six, seven years old, he's like, dude, I don't know how you went on deployment, like just saying goodbye to your kids. And the Navy goes on six months appointments. It ends up being about seven that you're gone.

And we're pretty consistent. There's guys that have done longer occasionally that someone get messed up in the rotation thing and they'll reset everything and some team will get a year-long deployment. It'll happen literally maybe once every five years, eight years, 10 years. but you can pretty consistently know that you're going to be back in six, seven months. But yeah, you're right. You know, you think about what you miss

for a little kid. Especially at those young ages. Yeah. Where every year there's these milestones. You know, it might be, you know, 14 to 15. You know, that sucks too, but it's like two to three, you know, three to four. I left on my first deployment

and my son couldn't crawl. My first appointment to Iraq, my son couldn't crawl when I left. And when I got back, he was walking around. Wow. So I missed like crawling. I missed like crawling. I missed pushing.

up, crawl, walk. And then my second deployment to Iraq, he was, like when I came home, he was swimming, which was really kind of hurt me because, you know, I'm a frog man, you know, and some other dude at the Navy base taught myself, you know, some life card taught my son how to swim. That was not cool. Yeah, so it's, I can see how that weighed into your decision making process. No, that was part of it. And then the other part is just, you know, on the officer level, you know, you're doing staff

jobs for like one out of, you know, three, four years of leadership jobs, you know, and I looked at that world and I thought to myself, you know, do I really want to be slaving over PowerPoints, you know, for three years for, you know, to compete for the opportunity to lead guys for maybe one if I'm lucky. You know, so those were kind of the two things that led me to decide to, you know, get, you know, get back into the civilian world. So what was the first move in the civilian world? Back to, back to Vale for a ski bomb tour? Yeah, right. They'll never look so good, right?

No, I think, you know, having been to Iraq, one of the things I really wanted to do was to put myself in a position where maybe I could have some influence on these kinds of decisions in the future, you know, the decisions that got us there. And I, you know, I was realistic enough to know that as a, you know, 30 year old or whatever, you know, I'm not going to be making those decisions. But maybe even on the margins, you know, if I put myself in the right position, I can have some influence. So I wanted to get kind of into that policy world. And I knew that maybe the best way to do it would be through graduate school. Finally, I was actually trying to come up with a plan for the future, something I had never really done before. And I thought, you know, if I want to end up in the policy world,

maybe at the Pentagon in a decision-making role, the way to do that would be to go to a place where I ended up going called Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, which would then often feed people into some of these kinds of. government position. How are you paying the bills at this point? Well, I had, you know, a good amount of money saved up, you know, from, I was a single guy, 14 months in Iraq, you know, with no expenses. Now, we did blow through probably way more of that than we should have, you know, carousing around Europe when we got home from Iraq. Thinking back, you know, we were pretty, you know, we had, again, like,

kind of like you hear about, you know, the young 18-year-old privates, but we weren't that much more mature as officers, you know, just jumping on planes and, you know, going to, you know, You know, one weekend we'd be on the Mediterranean. I mean, that's the most amazing thing about being in Frankfurt is your two-hour budget flight from pretty much anywhere. But anyway, I did manage to save some. And then I got the GI bill to pay for, I think it was half. And now I think it might even be better.

I think they might pay the whole thing, which was nice because I had had no government. I didn't, the Army didn't pay for my undergraduate education. I was still paying loans out on that. So it was nice to at least get something in exchange for this service. So yeah, the GI Bill helped and I went to Johns Hopkins. And didn't you take a jump for a while as like a news assistant or something like that? What was that all about?

That was while I waited or, you know, while I was going through sort of the graduate school application process. And I think at this point I was already getting a little bit of an itch to write, but I didn't maybe even really fully recognize that yet. Even though you were an English major, you never had the itch to write prior to this? Not professionally. I mean, English was more about just the fact I loved reading these books and kind of, The cost of getting to read them was you'd have to write about them sometimes. But yeah, I don't remember. Oh, you know what it was, actually.

I do remember. There was a former, I think I had read either his books or some of his articles. And you may be familiar with his name. He was a former Marine infantry officer who became a correspondent with the New York Times. His name's Chris Chivers, C.J. Chivers. He wrote a book called The Fighters about Afghanistan. That's incredible. And it had spent a lot of time in bed.

on the front lines. The fighters, part of it takes place in the Coringold Valley where there's a lot of intense fight in Afghanistan. But I think I just emailed him out of the blue and I introduced myself. And he had gone to, I think in Ivy League school,

I think he had gone to Cornell maybe. And I said, you know, hey, there's some parallels in our career paths. I'm also, this Ivy League guy served overseas and, you know, I'd like to maybe get involved in writing, but I don't really have any professional experience. And he was amazing. I think he was like the Moscow bureau chief at the time,

gets an email from just this random guy. And like, he's like, hey, call me tomorrow. You know, and I got on the phone with them and he said, yeah, you know, we do have this program that's kind of like a glorified, you know, apprenticeship for the people that are interested in, you know, write in. And, you know, you're going to make a lot of coffee and copies and, you know, but we'll also give you the opportunity to get some of your own stuff published, you know, under the

mentorship of some of the best journalists around. And so I did it, you know, through his introduction. And it was incredible. It really was incredible. Did you go somewhere for that? That was in those, just in the Washington. And I loved it. And it did seem in a lot of ways like it would be a dream job.

The problem was that for someone like me without really any other, you know, it's not like I'd been the editor of my college paper. I didn't have any experience other than, you know, what I got when I arrived. They said, you know, the best we can probably do is kind of send you to a small paper somewhere, you know, that the New York Times owns, kind of almost like a farm team, like a single A, you know, newspaper. And if you do a great job there, you know, in Biloxi, Mississippi, you know, writing about high school sports, you know, we'll bring you back, you know, in a few years to work, you know, in the big leagues.

And at that point, I was already, you know, 31, 32 years old. You know, this was now my, like, third career, fourth career, if you count, you know, the working at a ski bar, then, you know, finance, then army, you know, am I really ready to go back to, like, the Ranger's school of, of reporting, you know, with no guarantee. And the newspaper industry was already kind of like dying. And I even saw it in the Washington Bureau. You know, I saw every few months, like some office was empty, you know, where there used to be like a really prominent reporter.

And I'm like, man, that's a big risk to, you know, go somewhere and run the risk that three years from now. They're like, oh, by the way, we're cutting more staff. There's nowhere for you to go. And so graduate school just seemed to make more sense. If it had I been 23, it probably would have been something I would have done, but not, you know, in my early 30s. And did you get the bug though at all? Like, oh, I got some ideas in my mind?

Yeah, it definitely gave me the bug. Like seeing what those reporters were doing and just how interesting that worked seemed. And, you know, seeing them on the phone all day and working their sources. And then you open the paper the next day and you see the result of that, you know, with millions of people reading it. I mean, that was kind of intoxicating to see, even though I didn't have an opportunity to do it. I wonder if that buzz has gone down at all now because, like, you work all your sources and do your big story and then you print it. And there's like some knucklehead did a tweet about it like 36 hours ago and like it's already moved on and the news stories move so fast these days.

All right. So John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, what did you take away from that? I think, I mean, they try to give you a foundation on like international relations, just very broadly speaking, and kind of trying to establish like a framework to decision-making when it comes to these things. And I don't think, you know, there's a cookie cutter, you know, it's not like you go to the school and then you just are magically endowed with the ability to make wonderful policy decisions. But, you know, there was a course we did, you know, on like, you know, ancient political theory, you know, so like Thucydides, Machiavelli, you know, and I think there's some

value in, you know, bringing that kind of knowledge to, you know, contemporary problems as a way just to frame it, if not, you know, provide you with the actual solution. And are you learning sort of the inner workings of the system? Like, are you starting to see, oh, this is the way the government works. Here's the positions that are open. Here's what I could do. Here's what, here's where I could have influence. Are they kind of introducing that to you as well? Or is that just from being in D.C. do you sort of learn that by osmosis? Both of those. But, but, But no, the networking element is real. And most of the professors we had, you know, had been in government or even in some cases

war in government. There was like a CIA, you know, guy who taught us, you know, I think his course was like anthropology for strategists, which was just fascinating. You know, because he was like a PhD anthropologist for the CIA. I think his focus was on Afghan, you know, social networks. But, you know, trying to, you know, so that's one example of a government person. There were other prominent, you know, you. either prior or current government people that were teaching us.

And so, yeah, just exposing us to the kinds of jobs that might be out there was important. That's how I ultimately learned about that presidential management fellowship program that you mentioned that I ended up doing. And that's what you applied for and you got in. Yeah. And that's a way that they try to get talented, qualified people into government service. And you would apply to the fellowship. If you get accepted, then you apply to a particular department that you want to go to, whether it's the State Department, the Defense Department,

all the way to like the Forest Service or the Department of Agriculture. I mean, that was really one of the only feeder mechanisms of young people into government. And so I applied for deal. Is it hard to get into? It was pretty competitive. Yeah.

I mean, it wasn't impossible, but the application process at the time was pretty rigorous, particularly for like the more desirable places. You know, so DOD, for us it was the Office of the Secretary of Defense. That was a competitive. One state department was pretty competitive. I ended up doing an OSD. What was your first job in there?

One of the best parts of this fellowship was you could basically do whatever you wanted because you were paid by the fellowship. And so when you show up to like the assistant secretary of whatever, you're like, hey, and I'm free labor. And most of us, you know, were reasonably well qualified. So who's going to say no, you know, to this guy that will probably do a good job and costs your office nothing? And so you could kind of write your ticket.

you would just go around the Pentagon and you'd talk to prior fellows and say, hey, did you work for so-and-so? How was it? Did you get a lot of responsibility? And there's like this little sort of internal, you know, mafia. And a lot of the more senior ranking people in the Pentagon had begun as these fellows and would usually look out for them and try to pull them into the more desirable, you know, positions.

And so my first one, I think it was on what they called. And you could do some elsewhere too. So this was, I think, on the joint staff. It was called the Pakistan. Afghanistan coordination cell. It was working for Admiral Mullen at the time. He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It was probably around 2010-11 on Afghanistan policy.

I think it was corresponded shortly after the Obama surged to Afghanistan. That was my first assignment. And how was it seeing it from the other side? So it's interesting when I was the Admiral's aide, but then when I came back from Ramadi, I was going sometimes to go in brief, like a briefed Admiral Mullen on what had happened in Ramadi

and I was kind of like the guy from the battlefield so I would do that but I spent a lot of time in the Pentagon not a lot of time in the Pentagon compared to a lot of people I spent a I went to the Pentagon quite often when I was the Admiral's aide

and I got to understand what that I got a glimpse at that world right and then going back there after going to Ramadi and seeing the way the war was being understood back there and what the attitude was like and what the atmospherics was like it was it was very disturbing in some ways and also he's very interesting in other ways

what was your your take on it i mean it was complicated because it's all those things that you said um i mean i think it was partly humbling in that you realized that you know i had maybe sort of these grandiose visions of, you know, helping make these important decisions. And you realize that you're thinking you make decisions, you end up making PowerPoints. Yeah, exactly. You know, your decision is, you know, is this going to be, you know, double spaced or single spaced? And you realize that, you know, there's a very, oftentimes a very small number of people who are actually making the decision.

And that your ability to influence that is pretty limited. The other thing I recognized over time, and I don't want to sound too negative, because I really did, you know, even just being a spectator to those decisions as they're being made was pretty amazing. You know, just what, I wasn't in the White House, but I'd get the readout from the meeting in the White House that, you know, you know, Secretary Clinton said this and Panetta said that, you know, or Gates maybe at the time, I can't remember. So, I mean, that was pretty fascinating, even if you didn't have really much of an ability to influence it one way or the other. And you're right, it could also be disenchanting, depending on what the

decision was and whether or not you happen to think it made sense. professionally, the other thing I recognize, though, is that a lot of the more senior positions were political. And I don't think I had a full appreciation for that when I joined this fellowship. I kind of thought it was more like the military, you know, but maybe even better because it would be like accelerated and that there was like a defined path. And I realized once I got there that the path kind of stopped at, you know, GS-15, you know, like 06, let's say, 0506. And beyond that, you know, 80% of the jobs are political appointees. I wasn't a very political person. I didn't have any political connections.

I wasn't really interested in political, you know, I wasn't spending all my time in D.C., you know, trying to rub shoulders with the up and coming, you know, political leaders. And so I thought to myself, you're a terrible bureaucrat. Yeah, yeah. So I thought to myself, you know, how am I going to ever get to where I need to be to make decisions if I'm not political? And that's kind of what you, those are the connections you need to get there. I mean, every once in a while, there would be someone that would just work their way through the civil service system and get a position, like a deputy assistant secretary position. But most of them were political. And so after about four years, even though I really did enjoy my experience there, and, you know, I got to do some cool stuff.

You know, I spent some time with the SEALs doing counterterrorism work in Africa. I worked, the leaders I worked with were fantastic. You know, nothing bad to say about them. but I'm like, there's kind of like a glass ceiling. I don't want to be doing the same job 20 years from now, and I don't know how I can get past it. So then what was it? So you see your, once again,

you have failed to plan effectively for how your future is going to work out. And at some point, you look around and you see, okay, maybe it's time to try and figure out to write. Is that the next step you're going to take? Yep. And so trying to think of the exact chronology, But yeah, I'd say about four years into my time at the Pentagon, I thought back to these interviews I had heard back when I was doing my reporting

and in graduate school working as assisting a journalist on one of his projects. And they were recordings that the Army Center for Military History had done with the soul. And they do these with everyone, you know, from General Petraeus down to Private Jones, who was involved in a historic episode of one kind or another. You know, there's thousands of them probably. And these were some ones that were done with the soldiers who had been assigned to guard Saddam Hussein in the months before his execution. And I remember hearing them at the time, you know, in a different job.

And I didn't do anything with it, but I just remember thinking, this is amazing. If someone needs to tell this story. And so fast forward, like five years, I'm thinking about what to do next. And I think, you know, that story still hasn't been told. There might be some potential there. And so I reach out to a woman who I had been friends with for years all the way back to college who worked in publishing. She worked for Penguin, I believe. And I just sent her like a one-page email explaining, you know, what I thought was a pretty amazing story about these soldiers and asking her, you know, do you think this has legs?

Do you think any publishing company would be interested in this as a book? She said, absolutely, you know, I know these agents. let me put you in touch. You can work on a proposal. Just to back up what the story really was or what struck me about these interviews as being particularly remarkable, I guess, were a few things. One was that these were just like 18-year-old MPs. You know, these weren't like, you know, CIA, you know, highly trained, you know, interrogators.

I mean, they played a role too, but the guys whose interviews I listened to, you know, they were like, in some cases they were right out of basic training. And then they're sitting as close as we are right now to Saddam. you know, 12 hours a day, drinking tea, smoking cigars, telling stories. He could speak English when he wanted, you know, strategically. He'd pretend he couldn't if he didn't want to. And so, like, the intimacy of their connection to him was, I thought, pretty shocking, as was the fact that, like, you know, that their backgrounds were what they were.

And then what also became clear to me was the peculiar nature of these relationships that had developed. in that they found themselves over time kind of starting to like the guy. And they knew, I mean, they weren't idiots. And I want to make that clear because I think some people that don't read the book might think, oh, these are just impressionable young Americans. They don't know any better. They knew he was guilty of these things. You know, they weren't under any illusion that he wasn't a bad guy.

But they hadn't seen that. You know, they had only seen this charming, older man, telling stories, you know, acting like he was genuinely, like, interested in their lives. you know, asking about their girlfriends, their families, you know, telling them, hey, you know, if I ever get out of this, you know, I got a lot of money. I'll put you through college, you know, and like, you know, just crazy stories. One of the medics went to explain to Saddam one day that he was going to be gone for a week because his brother, I think, had been, either been killed or died of an overdose.

He had come from a pretty rough neighborhood, pretty violent background. And it says something about their relationship that he felt the need to explain to Saddam why he wasn't going to be there because he knew Saddam would miss him, which was true. And Saddam got up and hugged him and said, like, I'm so sorry that you lost your brother, but you know, I will always be your brother. You know, and so there were just like story after story like this. And it wasn't, if it was like one guy, I'd be like, well, whatever, you know, that's strange that this one guy was susceptible to this.

But, you know, they called themselves the super 12. and out of 12, you know, probably like eight of them had the same experience, you know, as did some more highly trained people, like FBI interrogators and guys that definitely, you know, came into this with a, you know, a more worldly, you know, background. So anyway, I thought this is crazy. This is a story that needs to be written, and that's what ultimately became that book. Yeah, the book, The Prisoner in his palace. I'm going to read a little excerpt from it.

So they're in court. Saddam's in court. Enough. Sit him down. The judge ordered from his perch in the front of the courtroom. Saddam then shouted, this is the behavior of traitors. God is great. God is great.

Using one of the catchphrases that had been featured so prominently in many of his presidential speeches, he added, and curses upon the evil doers. Not finished. He delighted some in the audience by hurling the base Arabic insult. Curse the father of your mustache. Of course, the persona of raging showmen that commanded the world's attention in the courtroom disappeared the moment the elevator doors shut and Saddam was returned to his cell on the floor below. Chris Tasker, who's one of the guards, was sitting outside Saddam's wreck area beneath the courtroom one day, observing Saddam alone in what was little more than a steel cage with four chairs when Saddam suddenly looked at him. The former president was seated on a metal chair with his legs crossed, puffing a cigar.

Tasker not entirely sure how to react to the prisoner's stare felt the need to say something to break the uncomfortable silence. And he decided to go with the innocuous, that sure smells good, sir. You want some? Saddam asked gamely, gesturing for Tasker to join him in the cell. Sure, Tasker replied, trying to appear nonchalant. Tasker slid the cell door open and entered the room. He took the cigar from Saddam's outstretched hand and inhaled the sweet tobacco smoke, careful not to cough in front of Saddam, before exhaling and sending it arcing into the cool air of the underground cell.

Soon, though, the mounting silence that accompanied this shared cigar again grew awkward. Tasker searched for something else to say. How did you get started with cigars? He came up with, a natural question for the Kohiba-loving Saddam. Fidel, Saddam responded smiling. Saddam liked to share the story with the guards of how Fidel Castro had taught him how to smoke cigars. Sometimes he'd even show pictures of the two of them together, likely taking during one of his rare foreign trips, a 1979 visit to Havana. Tasker thought this was pretty cool.

What would his buddies back in Ohio think when they heard that he'd smoked a cigar with Saddam Hussein? So this is a crazy book. It is. It's nuts. And, you know, there's so many elements to it. But, you know, one of the challenging, I think, parts for these soldiers was the fact that it's not, you know, your typical sort of Hollywood ending. You know, so if you think about the bin Laden mission, you know, you go there, you kill the worst guy. You come home and you can sit at the bar and, you know, people give you a pat on the back.

In this instance, these guys came home. And if you put yourself in their shoes, you know, what are they going to take? tell the guy sitting at the bar next to them, oh, you know, we were there for Saddam. You know, we kind of got to like him a little bit. You know, we were kind of haunted a little bit by having delivered him to his execution. You know, people in America are going to just shake their heads. They're not really going to know what to make of it. It's not consistent with everything that, you know, they had been led to believe about Saddam, which again was all true. But, you know, these guys' experiences was also true. And the morning that they brought him in the rhino

armored vehicle to get to get hanged. you know, they, he walked from the back of it to the front of it and he like embraced them one by one with, you know, they had some tears in their eyes in some instances. Apparently he did too and he thanked them, you know, each one individually. You know, these are the people who are bringing them to get killed like in an hour. And he was like, thank you, you know, you treated me so well. I'm so grateful. And one of the questions that, of course, raises is, you know, to what extent was this just a big manipulation from, you know, a sociopath who. was good at convincing people to get what he wants.

And in this case, you know, maybe that was his cigars, whatever kind of better treatment he might get, whatever the case may be. Or was there kind of like a genuine, you know, human connection that developed? It's not really clear which of those it is. And I don't. Exactly. Sort of like. And another cool thing about the book is you go back in history and you've got these

other interviews that take place with people that were tortured by him, you know, had family members killed by him. his other family members. And so you, it's not like you wrote a, what do they call it? What kind of piece is it when someone, oh, what kind of piece is it when someone does a really nice? Not a hit piece.

What's the opposite of a hit piece? Fluff. A fluff piece. Yeah, it's not like you wrote a Saddam fluff piece. I mean, you lay out all this horrible, horrific things that he did, not just as a leader of a country, but like as an individual human. So this isn't a puff piece.

it's it's it's it's really a powerful uh display of how horrible this guy was but then this weird like human side yeah where he's hugging the guards and playing chess with them it's it's weird and i think that's exactly right and and you know if someone i'd do book events and people would always ask you know well was it a manipulation or was it real and some people would already assume it was, you know, that was one or the other. And I would say, honestly, like, if you force me to answer, and I don't think we will ever know, you know, it's a mystery, but it's probably a little of each, you know, I think it probably began, you know, as an effort to manipulate. But I think over time, you know, it did evolve into something around. And I think it shows maybe

something about, you know, what makes these guys' experiences, I think, unique from even other soldiers was, you know, it's one thing to shoot at like an anonymous target, you know, from 200 meters away. And not that that's necessarily easy on anyone either, but it's, you know, someone you've never seen before, you're never going to see him again, someone who may have just been trying to do something to you. In this case, you know, this is someone they got to know, first of all, this is someone that had never done anything to them. It's not like Saddam had just been shooting at him, you know, and they saw him as a human, you know, they saw him praying, they saw him bathing, they saw him, you know, writing in his journal, they, they talked to him

And taking the life of someone that you've actually gotten to know as a person is, in some cases, just going to be harder. You know, even if that person was a really bad person. So, yeah, I think I try to get into that in the book. And it's been optioned into a movie now. Hopefully that will happen. They've signed this director, Johann Rank, who did Chernobyl from HBO, which I think won an Emmy. They have an actor, an Irish actor, Barry, I think Keynes, how you pronounce it. And now they're working on, you know, getting the right budget, you know, funding for the budget they want.

And so I think you know about how Hollywood works, you know, it's never real until it's, you know, they begin filming. But hopefully we'll get there. And I'll tell you what, even when they begin filming, it's freaking crazy. It is one of the craziest things that you could imagine getting something all the way through that process. You know, like, you don't know what's going to happen. Like during a movie, like, a, one of the first thing. One of the characters could get hurt, you know, someone could get sick. They could run out of money and they just like, oh, you know what?

We're just abandoning this project. Like, it's a crazy thing to have happen. And yeah, so where you're at right now is like a critical moment. Hopefully people are listening to this because it could be a really, a really fascinating look at these characters, you know, both Saddam, but then also how it impacted these individuals that are working through it. Could be definitely, are you, how much have you seen the screenplay? I had, I mean, that's the thing is once you option it, you kind of do forfeit most actual creative control. And it's kind of just on them at that point, how much they will or will not involve you.

In this case, I have to give them a lot of credit. They were very, you know, solicitous of my opinions, you know, having calls with the director, with, I was in, you know, constant contact with the screenwriter. it had been optioned by a group before this. So I'd already kind of been down this road and knew how it works. But in this case, you know, they did seem very eager for my input, which I appreciated, because they didn't have to do that. And so I have some degree of faith that what will come of it will be hopefully generally

consistent with what I had hoped. I mean, I don't want to go too much down the road of the last option. But in that case, I think the creative vision was really different from the book. almost to the point where I'm like, you know, do I even, you know, want this to happen? You know, financially it would be nice, but do I really want to watch a movie that doesn't even resemble what I wrote about? So in this case, I'm much more comfortable, I think, with where things have ended up. Yeah.

No, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting. And it was really cool. I just made a movie, as I guess you know, and I was on set, like, almost every day. And just sitting right there with the director, with the actors, like, talking through everything with the screenwriter. Like, it was, I was very lucky. Because I was, you know, afraid of that too. You know, of course, you're afraid of it because, you know, my name's on it.

And so if they take something with your name on it and they just do whatever they want with it, that could be a, that's a very scary proposition. So to have people that, and that's one of the reasons, you know, the first person that approached me about this deal was a guy that I could tell, this guy, Ben Everard, I could tell that he had the same like, uh, deep feeling like, oh, I get the core meaning of this book. and the core theme of this book. And we will keep that theme. And I was like, okay, well, that's, because other people that offered me to option, the kids' books were all like, you know, we just want it.

You know, we'll take it. We'll give you money for it. But then it'll be ours. And it's scary. And my biggest concern really was, was the soldiers, you know, because they had entrusted me with their story, you know, at zero benefit to them.

You know, they really didn't get anything out of this. And I figured I owe it to them to do justice to their story. And what really worried me the most was, you know, handing this over to someone in Hollywood who will then twist it in a way that will not be true to them and potentially make them look, you know, undeservedly bad, you know. And I say undeservedly because, I mean, I want to tell the truth. You know, so if there's truthful stuff that looks bad, fine. but don't twist the truth into something that makes them look like just, you know, just like some dalt or some naive, you know,

Rube who just didn't, you know, like there's a lot of directions they could have brought it that I think, you know, would have been, you know, both incorrect and a disservice to the guys who, who I think risked a lot to allow me to tell their story. When you, when you did the original book deal, did you get in advance, did somebody actually pay you money for this thing? Yeah.

That's pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean, it was, I worked for, I mean, one of the, you know, Scribner, which is one of the top publishing houses. The editor I had there was one of the top, you know, editors in America. You know, I'm by far the least, you know, distinguished guy he's worked with. I mean, he's worked with bestselling authors, you know, prior to me. The fact that you rolled in as an unpublished author, and you hadn't even written any newspaper articles at this point, that you didn't have a lot to. I mean, I guess you did some Wall Street Journal or some on New York Times stuff, some articles.

Yeah, I had a little bit, but I mean, it was pretty flimsy when you look at the caliber of the guys that he would typically work with. And I will say one funny. it's funny now, it wasn't funny at the time, a little anecdote on that is, you know, I remember I worked, you know, my ass off on these first, you know, let's say three chapters, 50 pages or something. And I thought this was the greatest thing I had ever written, you know, and I send it into him. And I'll never forget, I mean, I could pull it up on my computer right now. I kept it his response and it began, you know, dear will. And I think this is verbatim. He said, we say, I don't know how else to say this. But I had a viscerally negative reaction to these pages, period. In short, comma, you violated every rule of storytelling. And then he went on for like six pages to outline all the things that, you know, I had done in his estimation wrong. And I thought to myself, you know, I just quit this job, which was a good job and a steady paycheck,

to, you know, go out on a limb and write this book, and I have no aptitude for it, you know. And here I have, you know, this premier editor telling me that it was just, a disaster. And I mean, it took like a few days to kind of bounce back from that. But once I kind of collected myself, I realized, first of all, that, you know, I think he was right. You know, it wasn't like I read it and I'm like, oh, this is BS. You know, I did it. I did wonderfully. He made amazing points. And what he was really getting at was, you know, you're not a bad right. You're just, this isn't the right kind of right in. You know, you're still writing like it's some combination of like a policy grad school paper. Oh. Or, you know, you know,

thing. Yeah, yeah. Or, like, it's kind of, you're not making an argument. Like, that's not the job you're supposed to be doing here. You're supposed to be telling a story. You know, so, for example, this is like a simplified example. I wasn't this bad. But, like, you know, I would say something like, you know, Saddam killed, you know,

these five people. This show is just what a bad guy Saddam is. You know, like, I was editorializing. I was trying to, like, connect every dot and, you know, not trusting the reader to connect some dots. You know, it's the old show, don't tell. You know, if you describe what Saddam did, the reader's smart enough to conclude he's a bad guy. You don't need to, you know, bang him over the head with it the way you would in an opinion column. And so he just got me to write in a way that I was telling a story.

He would always say to write filmically, you know, bring the reader into the, allow them to imagine what it was like, you know, in that room. What did it smell like? What were they wearing? What were those details that make it seem like a movie? which I think worked because ultimately it did get adopted to be a movie. So I think to that extent, you know, I succeeded. But I'm very grateful to him now for that feedback, even though at the time it was pretty devastating.

Six pages of devastation. Yeah. I like it. That's my kind of editor right there. In the meantime, while you're writing this book, you get married. Yep. And you somehow convinced your wife to marry basically an unemployed author at this point? Yeah.

She got a real run. deal because when she met me, I was, you know, this high-flying, you know, you know, the office of the secretary-defense, you know, employee with a steady paycheck and a good job. And all of a sudden, yeah, now you're living one, you know, book advanced to the next. So, yeah, I don't know if she got everything she bargained for. And you end up leaving and move out to Colorado. We moved to Colorado. This time not to be a ski bump, but to be some kind of a, maybe a little bit of a ski bump.

Yeah, yeah. We, so we were, you know, we had been living in Arlington. That's where she was working for a property management firm. You know, I was working at the Pentagon when we first met. You know, then, yeah, during that time period, you know, I left that job to do this book full time. And I think both of us, you know, I'd grown up in D.C. She had been living there for a while. We were, we had no kids at the time and we thought to ourselves, you know, and, you know, I could write the book from anywhere.

She could do her job actually from out there. They had properties out there. And we're like, you know, why are we in D.C.? It's expensive. there's a lot of other fun places to be. So we just kind of drew up a list of potential landing spots in Denver, one out. And so we headed out there. Up and out to Denver, Colorado.

Now you start doing some, oh, you have a kid, by the way. Yeah, she was actually, so the whole idea of us going out there is, you know, foot loose and fancy free. She got pregnant, like, as we were moving. So, yeah, my son, Bates was on the way as we made the move. And you start doing some articles writing some articles, writing some articles. articles and one of the one of the articles you wrote wrote is called steal the thunder and it's from outside magazine and it's from this would you call it a sport did you call it a sport yeah oh yeah indian relay racing on horses which is freaking nuts um these guys it's you ever see you ever heard this before echo charles no okay so these dudes are racing a horse around a track no stirrups no saddle uh and you're you ever see you ever heard of this before echo charles no okay okay so these dudes are racing a horse around a track no saddle uh and you're you have to change horses three times.

Is it three times? Three times. And it's like a pit crew is waiting with your next horse. And so you do a lap around the track and then you come flying in to this area where all the racers have their horse with their people staged. And you jump off your horse. Someone catches. What's that guy called?

The catcher. The catcher grabs the horse that you just jumped off of. another dude has the horse that you're going to get on and you jump onto that horse they smack that horse and then that one does a lap and then you do this three times and it's like chaos there's people falling off getting bucked off horses hitting each other people hitting each other it's it's chaos and so you cover this you focused on this one crew of riders called the brew crew and man it's it's it opens up you know obviously it ends up not just being about this horse relay racing, but about life on the reservation, about poverty, about addiction,

about suicide. And then, you know, which is interesting, and you make this note, you know, we look at what some veterans go through. Oh, it's like poverty, addiction, and suicide. And here you have these Indian racers, poverty addiction and suicide. A lot of parallels there. Yeah, it was a remarkable story, you know, not, I don't think necessarily because the way I wrote it, just it's just the, the episodes that we, that I cover were just pretty crazy. I initially, so I was, yeah, I was living in Denver. I'd finished up the book and I was looking to write more. And, and I think I'd seen the movie Wind River. I don't know if you saw that Taylor Sheridan, really good movie, and it's about law enforcement. I mean, he's the one that

ultimately, I think, went on to do Yellowstone. Oh, yeah. He's freaking amazing. That dude is putting out work. Yeah. I mean, what a beast. And this one, this was one of his first ones, was a Jeremy renter was the main guy in it. But it's about law enforcement on a reservation in Wyoming. And I knew, you know, I lived in Denver. I'm like, there's these reservations out here.

And it's something that most Americans just, it's a world they just don't know anything about. And that, you know, we probably would do better to learn a little bit about. And so I headed up to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. not too far from Rapid City, but 90 minutes probably to the southeast, right on the Nebraska border. And it's notorious for being one of the poorest and just tough reservations in America.

I mean, they're all, none of them are in, like, very few of them are in great shape, but this one's like even worse. I mean, the life expectancy, I think, is like equivalent to like Afghanistan, you know, 50s. And, you know, the income, you know, it's just very poor. and very remote and spread out and, you know, brutal winters and hot summers, just a tough

place to live. But also a place of, like, remarkable natural beauty. I mean, you're right near the badlands. And, I mean, it's kind of majestic in its own way as well. Then I went up there with the intent of doing, like, a really deep embedded account of, you know, law enforcement, tribal law enforcement on this reservation. And as I was doing that, I just talked to a woman whose dad or uncle was the police. Chief. And she's like, oh, by the way, you should also meet my nephew. Like, he does this

really cool sport. And I thought to myself, okay, you know, why not? Sounds interesting. And then so I, as soon as I started talking to this guy, I'm like, wait a second, this is the story. You know, this is an even more interesting story than the law enforcement. Maybe I could connect them, but it's going to be through the lens of this sport. And he also happened to be just like a super charismatic, nice, welcoming guy who introduced me to the sport you just described. And it's exactly what you said it is. It's just remarkable horsemanship. You know, they ride these things bareback, you know, around a mile, mile and a quarter

track. And it's, I mean, it's like, I think one of the, one of them told me, you know, this is like, you know, if people watch this and then the Kentucky Derby, you know, no one's going to watch the Kentucky Derby. This is 20 times more exciting. And, you know, each of these, what they call exchanges where you get off one and on the next one, that's actually what typically determines the winner of the race. Because you could have the fastest horse in the world, but if it

takes you 20 seconds to dismount one and get on the next, the other horse is going to win. So it's a combination of the speed of the horse, your ability to get it around the track, but most importantly, your ability to kind of get on and off. And they're, you know, meanwhile, they're like colliding with each other. Yeah, it's mayhem. It's like the pit crew. They're all in like a very, you know, condensed area trying to, with, you know, like a dozen horses jumping all over the place.

Yeah, they just have like a white chalk on the ground that designates like where you are. So it's not like there's anything that can stop the horses once they start running. around. You're watching, you go and watch these things. There'll be just like random empty horses run off the track too. It's like, it's mayhem. Guys are getting stomped, you know, but, but the deeper part of it, though, is there's a few, it connects to their history, you know, and the Lakota, you know, are some of the most talented, you know, horse riders, you know, in, you know, in American history. And before there was in America, you know, they were, they were doing this. And so it's something, and it's, and there's a spiritual element to it, too, you know, that they have, you know, where,

there's kind of like a deeper connection between man and horse that's almost difficult to describe. And some of the ways that they can like break wild horses kind of defies, like you can't teach it. You know, it's something that they've somehow, you know, passed through the generations that transcends just, you know, you could train someone like me probably for 100 years to do that. And one of these guys can just do it almost instantly. You know, you'll see them. We went on a ride they do every year kind of retracing the first. footsteps of the battle of Little Bighorn. And, you know, they bring their entire families up there

and ride, you know, 20, 30 miles a day, you know, 100 miles total. They'll camp out at night. And, you know, I was very honored to have them, you know, invite me on this. And, you know, you'll watch, like, little, you know, five-year-old, like, jump on, you know, this, you know, however many hundred-pound horse and just with no saddle and just look as effortless and natural. And, you know, and then I'll get on one. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, this thing, if he just takes off, I don't know what I'm going to do, you know. it's not easy. But these kids make it look easy because it's something they're just raised doing.

And more importantly, it's something they can do to give them, you know, positivity and happiness in circumstances that are really tough and where the suicide rate is just nuts. Like you said, the addiction rate. There's no one who isn't impacted by it who doesn't know someone who's addicted or know someone who's killed themselves. But this is kind of this one thing that connects them to their, to something. and they're proud of. I mean, it's not dissimilar from what you hear about, you know, like boxing, you know,

historically in the inner city. You know, it's a way to have discipline, to have pride, and to have, you know, access to adult mentors. You know, I write about a few of the guys in the book who have gone out of their way to, you know, look out for these kids, you know, who in many cases don't have very good home lives. And this is like the one kind of thing that can anchor them a little bit. So when you write something like this for outside magazine,

and by the way, anyone go read it. It's steal the thunder. It's an outside magazine. You can just Google and it'll come up. So did you write it and then present it to them? Or do you pitch them a story and then they say, yeah, we'll take it? Like, how does that work? Yeah, it's kind of like the tribal.

There's Iraqi tribes and there's the American tribes, but it's not different. You know, it's tribal engagement. You know, it took a long time, I think, to earn their trust. I mean, there's no shortage of white people that, have shown up on the reservation making promises that, you know, that ended up just burning them. There's a thing called poverty porn, you know, which has happened there where, you know, reporters will parachute in from New York and go to the worst possible thing on the reservation.

And there's no shortage of it, you know, and spend 24 hours saying, look how, you know, effed up this is, take some pictures and then leave. And then, you know, the people on the reservation are like, okay, well, what, how do we benefit from this? You know, all you did was just tell the rest of America that everything screwed up. And, yeah, we have our problems. But, like, that's not all we are. It's just a collection of problems, you know.

And so I think what I tried to convince them of through my words and my example was, listen, the main thing is I'm going to be here for a while. You know, I'm not just coming in for a weekend. You know, I think it ended up being close to, like, you know, three. It was a whole summer. So it was at least three, it was probably closer to, like, six months of, you know, back and forth from Denver. Again, my poor wife now with her, you know, baby kid with me driving back and forth to South Dakota for like what amounts to probably less than minimum wage when you when you you you know I I don't remember what you get in advance. Yeah you get paid but it's like a contract. It's like you know, you know, it might have been like you know $10,000 for what amounts to six months of work to include expenses. You know, you know, I'm staying at like, you know, cheap, you know, motels up and you know, whatever that town was in Nebraska, you know, uh, yeah, when you divide the number of hours spent, you know, um, you know, yeah, when you divide the number of hours spent, you know, you know, um, you know, yeah, when you divide the number of hours spent.

producing this report. I mean, it's contributing like nothing to my family. You know, it's contributing to my, I guess, development as a writer, which is great. And I'm very fortunate to be able to tell this amazing story, but it's not paying the bills. But yeah, so I spent time up there and I just said, hey, you know, I'm going to tell the truth. And I'm not going to gloss over the problems that are here because part of what made the sport so special is the fact that it's helping people to overcome the problems. If I just ignore or gloss over the problems, then the sport becomes kind of less meaningful. And they still push back a little.

They're like, hey, you know, how come do you really need to say this or that? And I said, yeah, I mean, I can't just ignore it. But I'm also going to also going to shed light on the positivity and the joy that this brings. And I'm just going to try to be balanced. And I think at the end of the day, well, I know at the end of the day, because I keep in touch with them that they, you know, respected the final product. And then they thought that it did right by them. So with that big windfall of 10 grand coming in from outside magazine, you decided to do another story with that.

So I decided, yeah, to keep digging myself into a deeper financial hole. So the next one you do is Army Ranger School is a laboratory of human endurance. And this is another article that you did for Outside Magazine. And you go, as I mentioned earlier, you go basically back to Ranger School where you're going to do 24 hours on, 24 hours off. and you're going to see what is, see what range of school looks like from the outside, what's been something like 15 years since you had gone through it. How was that experience?

That was also a great assignment. Again, my poor wife, you know, Bates, my son is probably now like two or three. And here I am saying, oh, by the way, I'm going to begin out on a plane, you know, from Denver to redo Ranger School. Good luck out here in Denver by yourself, you know, 2,000 miles from your family. So, yeah, to earn another, you know,

whopping paycheck, you know, like making $3.75 an hour or whatever, you know, because I'm working, you know, redoing Rangers school theoretically. I'm working now 20 hours a day, you know, or whatever the case may be. But, but yeah, I don't, I mean, looking back on it, I don't even know how, you know how the military is. Like, they don't give access for these things to just everyone. And, and in fact, no, they had never given access to anyone to do a story like this in the army, at least. Somehow I slipped through the cracks. And then the Ranger leadership at the time was also like shockingly disengate, you know, which is great. You know, they didn't notice what was happening.

Yeah. Like I, you know, they're always like, do you want to meet the, you know, the, whatever the commander was? And I'm like, no, I'm happy. You know, I met the, they assigned two Ranger instructors to kind of be like my shepherd, you know, my, the guys I worked with. And then they were just both normal. One was like an E7.

One was an E6. They were just normal instructors who got assigned this mission. And they were awesome guys. I'm still in touch with them. And I was more than happy. to deal with them and just kind of stay beneath the radar because I knew that nothing good would come of too much leadership attention to this journalist just, you know, hanging out there. And so, yeah, they allowed me in day one, you know, same thing, show up like two in the morning

or whatever when the new students arrive in the middle of the night at Fort Benin for the first phase of Ranger School. And my intent all along was to just tell the story of the school, you know, through the experiences of a handful of the students. And then we even, maybe a few of my own memories, you know, as opportunities presented themselves. And so the first few weeks, you know, really what, and I started to kind of panic a little bit because this was a big challenge. I'm like, I can't tell this story through the experience of a lot of 200, 300 people, you know, just anonymous, shaved-headed people. Like, I need to bring someone to life. But who am I going to bring to life? Is they all look. They look, yeah, and they might quit. And they all look the

same. And so I really had to quickly try to hone in on a handful of them that I'm going to tell this story, you know, through their experience. But who are they going to be? And how do I make that happen? Because they're working 20 hours a day. They're not, they don't really have time to sit down with me for more than a few minutes. And so I was really kind of struggling with like identifying who is, who are these people going to be. And I kind of had in the back of my mind, I want to make this story relevant, you know, representative, I guess I should say, of the experience. And so I don't know how Buds is, but Ranger School typically has like certain demographics. Like there's always going to be younger guys, you know, in Ranger Battalion who I think, you know, to make, you know, to go from E4, E5, you need to successfully complete Ranger school.

So that's like a huge group that's going to be in every class. there's always going to be your infantry officer graduates a lot of West Point types who are assigned infantry that's going to be a big contingent and then oftentimes there's going to be

sort of older special forces guys that for whatever reason that may not have gone to Ranger School yet and that this is like an important sort of element of their career progression or just NCOs in general like infantry NCOs that didn't have a chance to go earlier in their career.

So you have that like the young enlisted, older enlisted, and then younger officers are like your typical groups or buckets, I guess. And then now there were women for, you know, one of the first times, you know, that had only begun maybe a year or two prior. And so, you know, I wanted to keep my eye on that, even though there were only a handful of them. And so gradually over the first few weeks, I finally, you know, got to kind of identify, you know, one or two people from each of those groups who seemed willing to talk. I mean, some of them just didn't want to, which is understandable. who seemed like they had kind of cool stories to share were outgoing, sort of natural storytellers,

maybe came from a background that was particularly interesting. And so that's how, so then I decided, okay, these are the people I'm going to follow, and I'm going to spend most of my time with them on that cycle you described of 24 hours, the same cycle that the instructors usually had, which was like a day on and a day off. And then I was also going to tell the story of the instructors, because that's a whole different part of the equation that I hadn't had any experience with as a student. I never saw behind the curtain. I never knew what was going on when we were training.

Yeah, one of the things that's in the article, no body type has a monopoly on grit. So it's like you can't tell like which one of these people are going to make it and which one aren't going to make it, whether you're tall, short, fat, skinny, like muscular, uh, weak looking, whatever the case may be. It's like you don't really know. As you're,

as you're watching these things, from the outside, what's your like overall assessment of Ranger School in terms of what it teaches you about human nature? I mean, I think it teaches you a lot. And the grit comment is an important one.

And I think this may be one of the areas. I mean, I've never gone to buds and, you know, I think each branch has its own sort of stereotype of the other ones and whatnot. But I think maybe one of the differences, though, is that, you know, Ranger School, it, I don't think it really does put a premium on just being an absolute physical, you know, stud capable

of just lifting a lot of amounts or doing a lot of, you know, eight million pull-ups or whatever the case may be. I mean, all that's going to certainly help. It's not going to hurt. But I think more important is just, grit's a great word for it. It's just a toughness and an ability to kind of think back

to just like what grunts, just the word grunt is another good word for that. historically, looking back at World War II, you know, just the ability to endure, just to suck and do endure hardship, there's nothing really sexy about it, but not everyone can do it, you know, and the people that can do it aren't always the ones you would think. You know, it might be some runty little guy that isn't that strong, but he's just, nothing will break him, you know, whereas you might have another guy that you put him in a gym, he could bench eight million pounds, but, you know, how's he going to do when he hasn't eaten in a week or hasn't,

slept in a week and it has to make decisions, you know. And so it teaches you, I think, a lot about yourself, you know, taught me a lot about myself. You know, having gone into that, you know, I had generally been pretty successful at everything I had tried to do, you know, athletically, academically. And, you know, I got in there and there were a lot of moments where I'm just like, you know, I'm just not, am I not cut out for this? You know, I'd look around and I just see someone that was just doing better than I was, you know and I'm just like man this guy like how's he doing so good you know like I want to be

weird when like an 18 year old kid is kicking your ass yeah and you just look at him and you're like this this guy nothing can break this guy and I'm in the end you know deep down that I am almost broken you know and this guy seems unfazed now maybe he is he's just not showing it you don't know but it really it it it shows you yourself in a way that that very few uh things can do in in a way that can be I think pretty pretty humbling um uh, yeah. Would you, as you're watching, could you start to see, uh, people that were going to break? Like we, we, we, we have an expression.

Not, I don't know, it's a big deal, but we would say like guys would get quitter's eyes. Like you'd look in their eyes and you could see that they were rationalizing the various reasons why they're not going to be there much longer. And sure enough. Like, yeah. And you could never predict that prior to, you know, hell week or some tough evolution. And I never, I never, I never really. I only went through how weak.

I've only seen it like one other time from the outside perspective and I didn't really even see that much of it. But just watching guys go through it, it's very difficult to tell like, oh, I bet my next month's paycheck on this guy. That's not a good move. Almost no one will do that. Almost no one will say, yeah, I'll put money on this guy over here. Almost no one will do that because even in your own class,

you're looking around like, oh, this guy, he's a D1 water pole, player, this guy's a D1 wrestler, this guy, and you go, this guy's got it, you know, no, no, they're quitting. And by the way, D1 wrestlers and D1 water polo players also make it. So it's like, it's just impossible to predict. Same thing at Ranger's School. I think so. I mean, I think you could, you know, you could probably have, you know, you could pick maybe

five guys and be accurate on a handful of them, you know, but, but you can never be 100% sure in a particular person, absolutely. And, and, and yeah, you see that. I did see that and it was painful to watch, you know, because they're trying hard, you know, and I had been in those shoes. I mean, it's like you said earlier about, you know, healing up, you know, prior to how we could, how that would have made such an advantage because, or giving you an advantage because just the things that would appear to be not difficult become incredibly difficult

when you, like, for example, my feet, for some reason, my feet are still screwed up, but I was very susceptible to like trench foot and blisters, no matter, you know, what kind preparation I would do. They'd say, you know, wear these kinds of boots or do this or that, you know, to help. Nothing helped. And, you know, so for me, every step at one point, I don't remember what phase it was, but it was a period where it got really bad. I mean, literally every time your foot hit the ground was like, it felt like needles coming into your foot. And so imagine spending 20 hours a day hiking up and down mountains when like just walking down the street was like agonizing. You know, so all of a sudden, you know, simple things, because, you know,

very difficult when you're in that kind of pain. And so I would see guys, you know, in similar situations, you know, as an observer. And I'm just like, man, that guy, it's not looking good, you know, either because of like the physical stuff he was dealing with. And yeah, you start to see just the resignation on their face. And it's just like it's almost like you see the Grim Reaper just kind of hovering above, ready to take them out. Or, you know, sometimes you see people that just don't seem capable of making, you know,

good decisions, you know, in stressful situations, you know, and you give them multiple opportunities to, in Ranger School, you need to, you have a leadership position in each phase that you need to pass. And so, like, you might be the platoon leader. And so there's a day where you need to do an ambush. Let's say, you know, there's guys who play the role of the enemy, the opt for, you know, they'll come walking down the road. You've got to do an ambush successfully, you know, in the eyes of the instructor. And, you know, typically if you fail one leadership position, you'll get at least one or two other opportunities. You know,

but you see some guys that just just can't do it. You know, they get two or three chances and each time it's just a disaster. I mean, there was one where I swear to God, I felt bad because I was kind of laughing,

you know, because it was like, I think the instructor said to me, he's like, where the hell's the platoon leader? Like this operation's been going on for, you know, this firefight's been going on for like 10 minutes.

And I don't know who's in charge. You know, that's not a good sign. You know, eventually he kind of like came out from behind like a tree. It was almost like that scene in Band of Brothers where I think what's his name was like hiding behind the hedge.

Oh yeah, yeah. You know, and I can't remember his name. He's the guy on friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and I'm like, I started laughing. I'm like, oh, fuck, like, there he is. Like, you just like, like, where's he been for the last 10 minutes? And so you see things like that and you're just like, oh, boy, it's not, that's not

going to end well for this guy. Was, there's a lot of talk about the standards of these various courses and maintaining the standards. Is there anything that you noticed that was, have the standards maintained? If they gotten easier, gotten worse, what do you think? Yeah, that's a tough question. I'd say a few things. I guess first with the instructors, I was, and now I'm sure they, you know, at least the

instructors they put me with, you know, were probably among the better ones if they were smart. They're not going to like just assign two, you know, are you allowed, what's your policy on language here? Say whatever you want. Yeah, like, they're not going to give you like two shit bags, you know, that to be your, like, you know, the guy showing you around if they have any sense. So those two guys were amazing. But I saw, you know, all the, I saw pretty much all the instructors in the course of nine weeks. And I was uniformly impressed, even compared to the ones I had had. And I think one of

the reasons for that is that I was going through this in like, you know, 0304 when it was probably like half and half, half the instructors had never deployed to combat. And so there was kind of this holdover of the guys that I think were just, at least a few of them were just kind of sadistic and just liked just the power trip they'd be on, you know, up in their own little kingdom of Delanooga where no one could tell them what to do. And they didn't really have real world experience that they were drawing on. You know, I was actually in the, when Pat Tillman got killed, I remember there were a bunch of guys in my, in my recycle group actually up in the mountains waiting for that next class and I got to know them. And they were telling me, they were from

Tillman's company out at Fort Lewis, second, what's it? Yeah, second Ranger Battalion. And, you know, so they were telling me all about what it was like to serve with him. And so they were pretty hit hard when, you know, they found out he had been killed. And like one of the instructors, I'll never, he said something like basically insulting, you know, about Tillman, you know, like, oh, I heard Tillman. I don't remember what he said, but it was very tasteless. And, you know, and it was basically because he hadn't deployed, these young guys had, they had been in Afghanistan in one of the early fights. And there was like this tribal friction, you know, like these young, he was like,

who are these 18-year-olds that act like they're such badass as because they were in Afghanistan? I'm the instructor. They're not giving me my proper respect. And as a result, you know, he said something and, you know, there's almost like a fight. I was going to say, like, that seems like fights. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what's going on. And so you're like, this is not that professional, you know, this isn't what should be

happening, you know, on either side. When I went through not all the instructors, like this was like a pretty small number. And it even got to the point, I think, where there was the son of a prominent officer, maybe a general, who was going through the course and was hazed pretty badly, you know, because they knew who he was and who his father was. And the father, like, basically got up on a helicopter the next day and just, like, cleaned house. And it was, it was not a situation where, you know, the kid was imagining stories because I had friends that were in that class. And they told me that the kid actually what I think what had happened is they had gone back to

Benin and you know the father kind of just innocently asked you know how was it and his son I don't think said a word you know he just sucked it up took the abuse and graduated some of his friends I think said oh by the way sir you know you should know you know they made him do X Y and Z and so they're the ones that that brought it up he wasn't complaining at all and it was unprofessional and they got rid of some of these guys so there was a little bit of that going on back when I went through, I didn't see any of that, you know, when I wrote this story 15 years later. And I think one of the reasons for that was that all of these guys had been in combat, you know, multiple times. And so they understood this isn't just a game. You know,

this is, there's going to be real world consequences. We're doing this to make these people more effective as combat leaders, not just to give them a hard time. Well, from my experience, combat is very humbling and it can read you know if you haven't been to combat and you think maybe you're a little bit insecure about the fact that you haven't been in a combat and what better way to make up for your insecurities than by acting like a real jerk to these young trainees that are going through that's i can see where that can get out of hand but the just the last part to that as far as it is it more difficult or not um i think the main things that make it tough are are still there, which is just the lack of sleep and the lack of food, that seemed indistinguishable

from now was there. It didn't seem like any changes had been made. The one thing that had changed that I think you could argue made it, I don't want to say easier, because it's certainly not easy. And it didn't impact, I don't think, the essence of the course, but there was less of what we would call smoking. I don't know what you call it in the Navy, but smoking would be like when the Ranger instructor, the drill sergeant just, you know, drop and give me 100 pushups, 100 flutter kicks, 100 push. Like when we went through, that was like constant. And so you were functioning at a constant state of like muscle failure,

which then made everything else harder because you're already exhausted. There was less of that smoking that I witnessed. Again, the sleep and the food were the same. And the, you know, the demands of just being out, you know, in the rain and the cold and the overland movements, you know, all of that was the same. I think the lack of smoking, you could make the argument that that probably made it a little bit easier, but not dramatically so. Yeah, that's weird because like in the first phase of seal training, which is like,

it used to be nine weeks. Now I think it's seven weeks. But the four-mile timed run you have to do is 32 minutes. You know, eight-minute miles. Seems like no factor, right? That's pretty lame, really. but what you don't realize is that, you know, the night before they woke you up at, or, you know, you didn't get to bed at midnight, you were out on the beach getting wet and sandy and you were doing, you know, literally a thousand eight-count bodybuilders. And then you get done with that at two o'clock in the morning, you go back, you shower, you go to bed, and then at four o'clock in the morning, you're lined up on the beach for a four-mile time run.

By the way, there's a high tide which pushes you into the soft sand. You got boots and your utility pants on. And the, and the, I would say that the four mile length is not measured by anyone. And so sometimes you'd run a 4.1 mile, 4.5 mile, 4.3 mile, depending on the time. So, you know, for me, it was like everything I, I had to go as fast as I possibly could to pass those runs. And same things with like 50 meter underwater swim. That's actually not that. hard for most well not it's not that hard if you're training for it what happens is though you're

you're same thing you've been in and out of the water for two three weeks at it for two or three weeks in another water inhaling or breathing all this crap and just about everyone is like coughing up half a lung so now all of a sudden you're doing a 50 meter underwater swim on you know with a bunch of phlegm in your throat and so all that stuff that stacks up yeah compounding like you're talking about movement at night or movement like during a forced road march. Dude, if you do a 10-mile forest road march or a 15-mile forest road march, and then you start doing evolutions, depending on how conditioned your feet are,

you may be like in a real deficit before you even start because of that right there. Absolutely. I mean, if you took your average member of a CrossFit gym, and I've done CrossFit, you know, for the better part of the last 15 years, less so in the last year or two,

but it's something I've always enjoyed. And, you know, I would often think to myself, I mean, I could look around most of the guys in this room would dominate these ranger school physical standards. And if they showed up just fresh, rested, you know, with good shoes and, you know, a good night's sleep and without the stress of, you know, knowing what failure might result in.

But when you add those other elements, it becomes a lot. I mean, 49 pushups. Who can't do 49 pushups? But when you're doing it on no sleep and you know that failure means you're done and that your whole career is kind of riding on this and when you have an instructor who are, the instructors are notorious

for like, you know, sort of inconsistent standards, you know, like what is a push-up? You know, how far down do you got to go? If they start no rep in you, does that, do you panic? You know, you start, you're at 10 and all this, let's say you've done 20 and they've only counted 10. Now you're like, oh my God, I'm starting to get tired. You know, am I really going to, do I have 29 more?

Like the mental and the physical things that the challenges become compounded by some of those stresses for sure. And it's nine weeks right now? Was it nine weeks when you went through? Yeah. Has it been that? I thought it was longer than that. No, it's, well, back before I went through, there was a desert phase. I don't know when they got rid of that, but there was, but that's before my time.

That was a while ago. Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, there's like a, let's say you were trying to fill up a bucket full of suck. and you know in ranger school it's like oh you can fill a lot of that bucket with no food you can fill a lot of that bucket with no sleep you know but you're only filling it for nine weeks in seal training it's like well you're going to get food and you're you're going to get sleep on the weekends which is kind of nice but you're also going to be times where you're not going to sleep at all but eventually if you're going through some kind of training like that they're going to fill up

that bucket with sucks somehow or another and they add the other part I know if you guys have this either but there's the peer evaluations And that's a part that is tough too in that it's like Survivor. At the end of each phase, you vote, you know, one through 10. Who's number one? Who's number 10? And that can be humbling.

And it can be, that's not a foolproof system either because you get, you know, four guys from the same Ranger company, for example, in the same squad. You know, they can find ways to game that too. So sometimes it's funny to see how that all unfolds. Yeah, they actually implemented that now in SEAL training where same thing. Like they, it's not quite as official where it's like, oh, if you were peer ranked by this guy, but what's going to happen is if a bunch of people say, yep, this is our lowest ranking guy and everyone ranks him the lowest. That's going to be a problem. Yeah. So. It's important. Oh, yeah, for sure. Because there's, you can, you know, they'll call it a spotlight ranger in ranger school. But you can be a guy who, you know, it's your moment to lead. You do great. But someone else is in charge, you know, and they check on you. You're supposed to be, you know, providing, you know, far security down an ambush and you're just sleeping, you know, because you, you don't. You know, you don't. You know, you don't. You know, you

care you're not the leader that time you think you may as well just catch up on some sleep but you're screwing over the guy who is in charge you're going to make him fail and so the peer review process you know plays an important definitely important so next up you move from Denver to Pittsburgh PA what what prompted that activity uh well I think a few things um we we we I think both loved Denver um and you know had it been probably just up to me. I would have lobbied to, you know, more strenuously to stay. But, you know, there were a few elements to it that were just tough to deal with. One is just the real estate. It's, it's, at that point, we, we had had our son. We were, you know, interested in having

more children. We wanted to eventually live in a house as opposed to an apartment. And just looking around, there was just nothing, you know, that was affordable. You know, and I don't want to overlook, I kind of make light of the financial, you know, the challenge of this writing profession. But it was tough. I mean, I was driving Lyft, you know,

not to disparage, you know, lift drivers. A lot of people do it. But, you know, not too many people with degrees from Princeton and John Tompkins are doing it. That have been working.

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, you talk about moments in basic training where you're like, you know, you know, how did I get here?

Why am I here? What am I doing? You know, there were moments, like that, you know, or I'd pick, you know, up someone at the airport and I drive. And one thing I learned is lift drivers, there's some really cheap people out there. And, you know, I would do like an hour long drive from the airport, you know, and, you know, the guy give like, you know, a $2 tip or something.

You know, and the other thing I learned, and I've asked other drivers this. And maybe there's a system that I'm not aware of, but like, you don't get like that whole fare. You know, as a driver, you know, it seemed to me like a lot of times I'd get like, you know, half of it. You know, so let's say it's like a $60 drive to the airport. I might get 30, you know,

but I think what happens is the passenger thinks you get all 60s. So that might be one of the reasons they don't give a big tip because they're like, well, this guy just made 60 bucks. Well, you don't. You get like a fraction of it. So. Yeah, people ask me about writing books like,

and I always tell people all the time, do not expect to get any money from writing books. You should expect no money because that's what 99% of chances are. You're going to write a book. It's the amount of late. that you put into it is incredible. As Tim Ferriss once pointed out, when you get done writing the book,

when you get completely done writing the book, you're now 50% there because now you have to go back and edit it and do all the other stuff that it takes to get the book out there. So it's not a great thing to get into if you're getting into it for the money. You've got to write because you just want to write. And for me, I mean, that really was a lot of it. It was just the desire to tell these stories.

You know, and in the case of the Ranger School story, that even probably more so the case of the Indian relay story. You know, I genuinely felt that these were important things and that they shine a light on things that were worthy of people's attention, you know, a wider audience. You know, and the magazine writing is the most dramatic example of that. The book writing, you know, with a decent advance, at least it gives you something. But again, you get, you know, we mentioned the advance on the first book, you know,

that's divided into, you know, payment. that may take place over like three or four years. You know, so whatever that number is, you know, divide it by four for like an annual number, and then you take the taxes out of it. And even what would be considered like a good advance in the book world still comes out to a pretty modest amount. And that's sometimes difficult to explain to the people you're writing about

because if they're not familiar with the business of it, they're like, well, what am I getting out of this? You know, why would I tell you my story if you're going to be this big shot author? They don't know that, like, the reality is that you're probably not. not going to get super rich off of this story either. And in some cases, you might be making less annually than they are. You know, so yeah, from a financial standpoint, you know, that was part of it. It was just looking around in Denver and, you know, just kind of taking a realistic view of, you know, what can we afford to do here. And how do you select Pittsburgh? My wife is from the West Virginia

panhandle, which is actually people don't think of it geographically, but it's northwest of Pittsburgh. There's a part, a little sliver of West Virginia that's northwest of Pittsburgh. And that's where she's from about an hour away. So her family was close by, you know, raising a family that was certainly part of the equation. And then Pittsburgh's also just a very affordable city. You know, you can enjoy a quality of life there, you know, that we couldn't elsewhere. I mean, pretty much the exact same house in the same neighborhood in Pittsburgh would be half of what it would cost in a Denver or a D.C. or a Boston or a city like that. So it was kind of a combination of those two factors.

So you end up writing another story, Harper's Magazine. You do a feature story in there, and this is in 2020. It's about minor league baseball. The story is called Minor Threat, which I don't know is a band. That wasn't, yeah, so I don't do the titles on stories. So I did get a lot of comments on that, but that wasn't, I wasn't the one who did that. Okay. Well, that's an original DC hardcore band.

So I thought maybe you had some DC hardcore. And having grown up, exactly. I was, oh, he must be a... I was familiar with it, but no, that wasn't me. So you write this story about the minor league, about the Appalachian League getting killed by the Major League Baseball. That story comes out, and that...

You obviously enjoyed writing it, and this leads to you putting together another book proposal? Kind of, although the chronology was even, I think, more interesting than that, in that I had actually... When I was in Denver, I caught wind of this idea that Major League Baseball had that we're going to cut

what amounted to like 25% of our minor league teams to save like, you know, an insignificant amount of money in the big scheme of things when it comes to professional sports. I think it came out to like every team they cut would save $700,000 for the Major League Parent, which is like one Major League minimum salary. I mean, you're looking at guys now who are making one player on the Mets last year. He was making $200,000 a game. $34 million a year, $210,000. in an afternoon.

You know, so you're like, and so I just remember being struck by this, like, these are teams who, in many cases, had occupied an important role in these communities for like a century. And there are, you know, some of these communities are kind of poor places. There wasn't a lot else going on in like Bluefield, West Virginia or Pulaski, Virginia. But this one connection to the major leagues was, like, really special. It was something that they really valued. And it brought a lot to the community.

And I thought to myself, you know, this isn't good. You know, this isn't going to, it just doesn't, I don't think, speak well to the sport. And it's certainly, I don't think these communities are going to be in a better place as a result of this. And so I put together a proposal then to what it was going to be was going to be a book telling the story of what appeared to be the final league, final season of this 100-year-old Appalachian League. And Double Day, this editor, you know, loved the idea. And so I had a book contract ready to go. However, if you remember, this would have been the fall of 2019. What happened in the January of 2020, COVID?

So that final season ain't happening. Yeah, exactly. And so I remember checking the newspaper like obsessively that, you know, January, February, March. And, you know, at that time, you know, no one really knew what was happening with COVID, what was going to stay open, what was going to shut down. I remember looking at like, well, this is a, you know, a Republican state. They tend to be more open. and this one's run by a Democrat governor,

and they might shut down. What happens if, like, one state in the league shuts its teams down, but the other one? And I was, of course, hoping that they were going to play because that was going to be my book. Did you already get in advance? I had already gotten, I don't think I'd been paid, but, you know, the contract had been signed.

And, or at least it had been offered. I don't remember exactly how far we got in the, but we got to the point where we were thinking of moving from Denver to, I think, at the time, Asheville, North Carolina, because I knew I was going to be probably, be spending the better part of the next few years somewhere doing the story. And Asheville's strategic, it's a cool town strategically located, you know, near all these

places. I was about to get on a plane and go, you know, look at houses. And that somewhere in that spring, you know, word came out that MLB had canceled the whole minor league season. So now there is no season. And so my editor, who I, you know, ultimately will get to this in a minute, did do the book for, but he basically said, hey, Will, you know, we love this idea. you know, there's unfortunately no book here because there's no baseball.

And so that was pretty crushing because, you know, I went from thinking I had this amazing story that I was excited to tell to not. I did salvage it in the form of that article for Harper's, which kind of did tell the history of this league and what happened, you know, absent the ability to spend a season down there. And luckily, thank goodness, and it's kind of serendipitous that this happened, that a guy read the article and just, you know, just reached out to me through my website and said, hey, Will, you know, what you wrote about really resonated. We have a team up here in Batavia, New York, Western New York, that, like, everything you

describe, you know, is kind of the same dynamic that we have. Like, you should just come hang out. You know, I'll introduce you to some people. And I thought to myself, okay, why not? You know, it's a nice guy. It's a four-hour drive. And I got up there, and I kind of, like, immediately thought to myself, now this is a book. And it was kind of just a different version of that same story and that this town had also been stripped of their team for the same reasons.

There was an equally rich history and tradition, but they had stood up a collegiate team to kind of take a summer collegiate team to take the place of where this minor league team had been. And so it was kind of a story of death and what may be a rebirth of baseball in this town. home stand, small town baseball, and the fight for the soul of America. I'm going to read a little piece here from the introduction. You say this, the memory is always the same. My younger brother and I are in my grandparents' backyard. The grass is freshly cut because I just finished mowing it, mowing the lawn under my grandfather's watchful eye before dumping some flour onto the ground

to mark baselines and batters boxes. Once the lines were marked, we would have carefully laid out, the set of rubber bases our grandfather had bought for us at the nearby sporting goods store, straightening them out just so. And then we would play. One-on-one baseball, employing imaginary base runners and fielders, keeping score in a spiral notebook.

It was no longer a modest suburban backyard. It was Fenway Park. The Nerf ball line drives, caroming off my grandpa's house were striking the green monster with a satisfying thump. Time moved. With the languor unique to childhood, fireflies flickering in the summer dusk, my grandfather watching from under a shade tree with a glass of scotch in his hand. He would occasionally heckle us good-naturedly. His Bronx accent unchanged despite being many decades removed from the old neighborhood where he'd grown up playing stick ball over 50 years earlier.

I am now closer to the age my grandfather was then than I am. to my younger self. A kid channeling Roger Clemens, blowing fastballs by his hopelessly overmatched younger brother. These days, even the two years I spent playing baseball in college at Princeton had begun to fade in my mind. Yet this memory of my childhood remains pristine, somehow growing even more vivid with the passage of time. When I was young, those evenings seem as if they would stretch on forever.

the sun suspended just above the horizon, never setting on our happiness. Only years after the final pitch was thrown toward the upright green wheelbarrow that served as both catcher and strike zone, would I realize that the game was over and that those magical summer evenings with my brother and grandparents were the happiest I would ever be. Ah, man. So, you know, that's just, that's just, that's a, the introduction right there.

And, you know, the book, as you mentioned, the book is like the story of the Batavia Muckdogs. And it's like a love story of baseball and a love story of America. And it's also about how, you know, money and greed can corrupt both those things. But how the soul of America is still there. Exactly. That's a great way to put it. And, you know, I, you know, it, I think it addresses that sort of fundamental tension between, you know,

or the question of, you know, what is baseball? You know, and as I mentioned, you know, hopefully as comes through in that introduction, you read, you know, I think that at least historically, we've liked to believe that it's something special. You know, it's not, it transcends business. You know, it's our national pastime. And so, and there's kind of a romance. associated with it and a historical role in kind of bringing people together that, you know, you can hear the sort of capitalist argument, well, this is a business, you know, and this was a

business decision, and this is $700,000. Why does the owner have to pay it if he doesn't want to? And I acknowledge that. You know, that's America. They can do what they want. But what bothers me a little bit was the disingenuousness of, on the one hand, purporting to be something more than that, you know, on your commercials, you know, making, you know, like, you know, before you watch the World Series, you know, they'll have like a Norman Rockwell kind of, you know, you know, picture of a kid playing catch with his dad out by the cornfield, you know, or like the movie The Natural, you know, and, you know, so baseball has always kind of leveraged this, this sort of mythic status that we're not just a business, we're something kind of uniquely like American. but if you're going to manage it in just with like a ruthless McKinsey consulting, you know, strategy to extract every last dime and maybe leave, you know, 40 struggling communities in the wake of these decisions, well, then you can't really pretend to not just be a business, you know. And so that's kind of what I address in the book on a larger level.

But I do it through the lens of this one community and what baseball means to this community. and in particular like a handful of people that, you know, whose lives are in one way or another defined by this small team in this small town. And, you know, hopefully I capture kind of what is sort of magical about that. And it's distinct from professional sports, you know, major professional sports in that it's the same people going to these games every night. You know, the season ticket is $99.

You know, so it's like a, it's more of like a family reunion or a community picnic than it is, you know, going, you know, to Petco Park, you know, here in San Diego and spending, you know, 100 bucks a person, you know, and 20 bucks on a beer or whatever the case may be nowadays. And so I try to, you know, sort of capture what makes it special and what we risk losing, you know, if more of these teams go under. Yeah. So I guess I was thinking about this when I was reading through it, you know, I talked about the band Minor Threat. So Minor Threat was a hardcore band from Washington, D.C., and that's the scene that I grew up in listening to that kind of music. Well, there was this huge differentiation

between that kind of music and regular music, you know, meaning that if you went to see, let's see, if it's 1985 or 1986 or 1987 and you went to see the band, The Scorpions or Deaf Leopard, you're going to pay a bunch of money and you're going to sit in the nosebleed seats and you were going to watch these people perform and then they were going to leave. and that is completely different from what I grew up with, which was you would pay $3 to go into a place that was, you know, the size of a racquetball court. And the band would be sitting with you or standing with you

at talking to you before the show. They'd get up on stage, play the show, and then they'd get right back down and start talking with you. And so you had this thing that was happening that was, it was so much more connective. Right. And everyone's sitting right there. The other thing I started thinking about was, have you heard of the sport pickleball?

Mm-hmm. So pickleball is just massively popular right now. It's like one of the fastest growing sports. And I haven't played it yet, but my wife has played it. And I was like, well, why wouldn't people just play tennis? Like, what's the big deal? Well, it turns out that pickleball, when you play it, you are much closer to the other people that are playing it. And the courts are smaller.

So all of a sudden, in tennis, you know, you can't have a conversation while you're playing tennis. You'd have to literally shout. But pickleball, you can sit there and talk about the school and the school board and the and the and the potluck supper that's coming up and you can have real conversations. And so it's much more, much more connective. And then I put that, started thinking about the book, you know, this book Homestan that you wrote. It's like, oh, you're going to go to watch. this game, you're going to be sitting right, you're probably going to meet the players, high five them, get their autographs, all hang out, take pictures, and then you're going to sit

and you're going to talk with the people that are in your neighborhood and you're going to watch this game and you're going to cheer them on and you're going to have this unified thing. And man, that's a huge, a huge unifying force to rip out of these communities. I mean, you hit on so many of the themes that I tried to bring to life. And you're absolutely right. respect, you know, as far as what is special about this, yeah, the connection between the players and the fans, you know, before every game, you know, the players are talking to the little kids, you know, alongside the railing, signing autographs. And these kids, they don't know the difference

between Manny Machado and some, you know, Division III college kid. He's a big, strong guy wearing a cool uniform, you know. And the players, I think likewise appreciated because they're, you know, they probably are like an obscure division three player who's not no one's probably ever asked for his autograph before and they probably won't ever again you know so it's a unique opportunity for them to feel you know appreciated and to see you know kids looking up to them the way they probably looked up to players you know years ago um and then yeah just the value of of bringing people together you know in today's you know very sort of toxic political world i think can't be underrated you know in person to uh you know i tell us

story in the book of different groups that otherwise probably would not, you know, connect. You know, there was a security guard, great guy, you know, but it looks like right out of Trump, Maga, Central casting, you know. And then you have these two older ladies from Buffalo who would drive, actually, 45 minutes, you know, a night, you know, for most of the summer to go to these games. It was like their thing to do, you know, and they loved it. And it was a defining part of their existence. very liberal, you know. And so, you know, you have this security guard and these two women whose past would probably never ordinarily cross and who probably had politically very divergent views.

But they united, you know, through the muck dogs. You know, he would greet them, you know, take their ticket, they'd hug, they'd ask about each other's lives, their families, and they became close, you know. But if the only connection between them was like, you know, on Twitter, you know, or on a device, they'd probably be, you know, just shouting insults at each other. But you put them together with a common, you know, hobby or pastime, and all of a sudden you can get beyond that. And, you know, I think that there's a real, you know, value to that sort of connectivity,

and it's kind of similar to the pickleball. You know, there's people are social creatures, and we benefit from, I think, you know, having connections with each other. Yeah, I'm going to read one more section of this book because it kind of, plays to that a little bit. You say, I arrived in town on Memorial Day, weekend of 2022. Having been told that the annual Memorial Day parade in Batavia was a big deal. The town struck me as an overtly patriotic place, one that took great pride in the numbers

of native sons and daughters who'd served in the military and in honoring those lost to war. Muck Dogg's owner Robbie Nichols thought having the team marching the parade would engender goodwill in the community. When I arrived in the parking lot of the strip mall on the eastern flank of Batavia's Main Street, where the parade participants were assembling, I met the team and its manager Joey Skip Martinez for the first time. Shortly after I arrived, the players and the muck dogs dance team, comprised of local high school girls and coached by the mother of one of the players, assembled in front

of the Herb City Vap Shop for a team photo. The day was gorgeous. 85 degrees with a light breeze, not a cloud in the blue sky. The players wore red and black muck dogs jerseys and caps along with shorts, making small talk as they got to know each other in the parking lot that was beginning to fill with marchers from other local organizations like the Boy Scouts and various church groups. As the parade slowly made its way down Main Street, the boys are back in town blasted from the speakers of Fisher's Jeep.

The manager, Skip Martinez, a natural showman. stood on the jeeps running boards, waving to those lining the sidewalks. The parade route was lined with people of all ages, from little kids shouting, Dewey, trying to get the attention of the muck dogs mascot to their parents and grandparents watching over them. The adjoining neighborhood featured modest home with neatly kept yards, many with American flags, some Marine Corps flags, Buffalo Bills flags, and a smattering of Trump flags. everyone was smiling.

There was an almost palpable lightness in the air, a collective exhalation after what it seemed like a relentless onslaught of bad news and divisiveness. From COVID and suing lockdowns, war in Ukraine, inflation, and most recently, and closest to Batavia, a horrific, racially motivated mass shooting just a few weeks prior that left 10 people, all of whom were black,

dead in a supermarket in nearby Buffalo. The parade rhaps, up at a monument to honor the Batavia men and women who had died overseas in wars. Shortly before a Memorial Day ceremony was to begin, Memorial Day had assumed more significance for me following my Iraq deployment. I had lost not one but two good friends, and it spent my 30th birthday convoying across the Anbar Desert to a neighboring army base to let one of my best friends know that our mutual friend had been killed by a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his Humvee in Ramadi.

During the ceremony, each name that was etched in the monument was read aloud and accompanied by the ring of a bell. The solemn event then concluded with the playing of taps and God bless America. It heartened me to think that my friends who never made it back from Iraq and Afghanistan might similarly be. remembered. Yeah. There's something special there. And I think it, it, discovering this community and what baseball brought to it did kind of bring a piece to me that I didn't expect. And it certainly went beyond what I had set out to write this book about. You know, initially it was kind of more about, you know, what does this say about our society, you know, the direction that we're headed, the future of baseball business, things like that.

But on a personal level, what was even more surprising was just kind of the sense of tranquility that I found in the ballpark surrounded by these people. And I think in different ways, a lot of the people there were discovering something similar. They're coming from different backgrounds.

They didn't all have military experience, but everyone has different challenges in their lives. And I think there was something kind of magical in the air, you know, so to speak, that kept them coming back. And that, again, you know, just sort of speaks to the importance of this kind of an institution in towns like this. And then, you know, the only other element to that I think that I would add would be to the bad news part, you know, there were a few instances where I would feel this sense of sort

of peace. And then I'd look at my iPhone and I'd see whatever the best. news of the day was, you know, just streaming across social media, you know, and, you know, let's say it was like a mass shooting, for example, you know, and those are obviously disturbing events, but I'd have to step back and say, wait a second, like, I'm in Batavia, New York, I'm in a beautiful ballpark surrounded by nice people, the beautiful sun set in, do I really, like, how does it improve my life to be constantly 24 hours a day, connected? to every bad thing that's happening anywhere in the world.

You know, this has never, it's never been like, 100 years ago it wasn't like this, 200 years ago. If you lived in Batavia, the only bad news, you know, generally speaking, the only bad news that you're going to be exposed to is what happened in Batavia that day. In most days, there probably wasn't anything that bad. It's not like, you know, a massacre in, you know, Mozambique took place, and that's going to ruin your day in Batavia. And so I think for people's mental health, there's certainly a benefit to being able to,

it's not saying just to become, you know, ignorant to what's going on in the world and just, you know, kind of being an ostrich and putting your head in the sand. But at the same time, maybe just kind of throttling back our exposure to every news story from every corner of the globe that's just going to depress us or anger us. And when there's algorithms that are actually actively designed to prey on that exact anger, to keep you, you know, subconsciously wanting more of it, you know. And so, you know, the two happiest people that I've met, you know, probably in the last 10 years in this, were during the course of this book. And the one common feature that they had was they didn't

even own a flip phone, much less than iPhone. And I say this as an addict, you know, I fully recognize that. So I'm not like, I'm not holier than now. But I think I do at least, you know, what's the first step to recognize in a, you know, the first step to recovery is recognizing you have a problem. And, you know, I think one of the things I'm going to try to do is, is take a step in that direction because these guys, you know, just their general contentment was something that I think a lot of us are missing. And I think there's something to the fact that they weren't just drowning in sensational stories, 24 hours a day.

Yeah, one of the things that I thought about as I was reading some of the sections of the book was, you know, I'll, I've done, I get interviewed a decent amount. And sometimes I get interviewed by people that are like just at ground zero of political conflict and when he talked to him like they believe that that's the way that's what's happening they believe that that what happens on twitter is the way people are out interacting like when that's the way that's the that's what discussions are like right now in america and i was you know i have a leadership consultant company and i travel around the country and out of the country but most of it here in america but i travel to like the most random places to work with companies

I go out on oil rigs and construction sites and manufacturing plants. So I'm with people all the time. And I have to say like that normal people are like normal people are not like that. Normal people are not going crazy. Normal people are not screaming at each other. Normal people are not insulting each other. And what also this made me think of is, you know, when you've got these two people from disparate worlds and they come together to watch a ballgame,

and they get humanized, it reminds me so much of the prisoner in his palace when you've got these young soldiers. And believe me, there's enough propaganda when you're a young soldier that you will hate Saddam Hussein. But for them to spend time with this guy, an evil person, and yet they develop, he at least at a minimum, becomes humanized in their eyes. Look, none of them thought about breaking him out, right?

There was no one that said, hey, we need to step in and say, there's no one thought that. But they at least saw him as a human being. And so if you can take soldiers that are trained and propagandized to hate someone that in their mind is the absolute enemy. And an 18-year-old kid can humanize this evil person. It's like, yeah. maybe if you actually went to a little field somewhere and sat in some bleachers with some people and ate a hot dog and cheered on your team and sat next to someone that had that same, you know, goal in mind, you might just find that you can get along and you can move forward.

Yeah. And it's a great, I mean, there's something, you know, beautiful about that. And it's particularly beautiful when you get depressed by thinking that that's not what's going on. You know, and then you see it and you see this little, you know, example of that sort of blossoming. And you're like, you know, this is, this is, you know, to use the military. This is like what right looks like. You know, this is what we need more of. And instead, it's what we're getting rid of, you know, which is kind of the irony of the book.

Craziness. Well, I haven't finished the book yet, but so far, it's just a great read. So awesome work there. What's the next project? Do you know yet? I'm working with my editor. Don't know for sure what it's going to be. I have some ideas, but nothing, nothing that's comfortable for wishing it.

I mean, we're still, this was completed not long ago. So our focus is on this one for now. But I, you know, I'm certainly in the market for good ideas for the next one. And homestand is available, what, March 11th is launch date? March 11th next week. So it'll be out when this comes out. Yeah. So you can go to wherever you buy your books.

And you can order a homestand for a very nice look at America and where we should be heading. Does that get us up to speed? Anything else? Yeah, no, that's it. I don't know if you want to, I'm doing a little work right now with the Afghanistan War Commission. I don't know if you want to go down that road. It's up to you guys. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a congressionally established commission was stood up about a year ago. bipartisan with, you know, certain representatives, you know, selected by Republicans, some by Democrats, a co-chair that was selected by Republican and Democrat,

and essentially tasked with, you know, providing an objective and impartial account of our 20 years in Afghanistan. And, you know, beginning with 9-11 and, you know, the horse soldiers, special forces guys that went in immediately thereafter. and concluding with, you know, Afghans hanging off the back of C-17s, you know, as Kabul fell to the Taliban and kind of asking the hard questions of, you know, what, how did we start here and end here? You know, what missteps did we make along the way? And most importantly, you know, what can we learn from this? And hopefully, you know, avoid repeating some of these, you know, mistakes in the future. So that's something that I'll be working on for probably the better part.

the next year and then they're going to issue a report that's going to kind of you know in some sense be similar to i don't know if you remember the nine 11 commission report that was was a similar you know commission that was established to kind of figure out okay well how you know how did this happen and how can we avoid another 9-11 you know that's kind of that that report is kind of analogous to the report that we hope to produce to hopefully you know shed some more light on on the 20 years that we spent over there any early assessments are you love to talk about on it. Yeah, I can't get into too much detail. I will say that everything, you know, I'll say about it's my own opinion, not that of the commission, because I'm a writer. I'm not even one of

the commissioners. So essentially, I'm just helping them to hopefully produce something that is readable and compelling and we'll, you know, kind of we have a dual objective in that we were, you know, tasked by Congress to do this. So policymakers are like one audience, you know, people will in a position to make some of these decisions moving forward to help inform them. but I think we also want the American public to see this and to hopefully have an opportunity to read it. And in order to make that happen, it has to be something that is at least moderately.

Better than your first draft. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. We don't want them to have a viscerally, you know, negative reaction. And so that's kind of why I'm there, is to help do that. Yeah. I have you ever read the book About Face by Colonel David Hackworth?

I know that you're a fan of it, but I haven't read it now. It's really kind of disturbing. I would read it all the time. I've read it a bunch of times. I read it so many times I can't even count. But in Iraq, in Ramadi, in my first deployment, I read it as well, but things weren't developed as much. But when I was in Ramadi, I would just like, to go to bed at night, I would just open

it up and read like three pages. And it's just so ridiculous how the things that they were. we're going through, especially in Vietnam, but a little bit in Korea as well, how, like, no lessons learned, just no lessons learned. And it would be so frustrating to think, you know, here he is, he's working with the Vietnamese. They were corrupt. They couldn't be trusted.

They, you know, you, it's just like, oh, there's one little thing. Oh, and who's getting, who, how are you dying over there? How are you dying in Vietnam? How's, how's Americans getting killed? Oh, they're getting killed from booby traps, indirect fire, and sniper. It's the exact same thing. And there was just lesson after lesson after lesson. And then you get the fake kill counts, right?

Because that's how they were monitoring the war. And it's like, well, we killed this many enemy. And then you get to Iraq or Afghanistan. It's like, well, we trained this many of our partner force. And they're now qualified to do this type of mission. And oh, the acts of violence are going down. It's like, they're just lying up the chain of command. And so you'd see this stuff.

and it's just awful. It's absolutely awful. And I hope that you guys can publish a report that paints this stuff out. And I hope that it's actually things that you can learn from because I'm not sure, you know? I look at, you know, when you think about

like capitalism, right? So in capitalism, you know, if Echo Charles wants to make money, Echo Charles creates an idea. And then he like has to really drive that idea forward. He has to create that thing. He's got to work to make it. Once he makes that widget, he's got to get out there and market it.

And then he can be rewarded for that. And so it takes like a personal initiative to make things happen. And the military, unfortunately, has an aspect to it, which is, oh, it's kind of like I said earlier. Oh, well, I'm replacing Will. Like you're a battalion commander and I'm replacing you. I'm going to make sure that my battalion does a little bit more than yours did. And it's okay because you're behind me. So I'm coming in now.

And so I'm going to make sure that my reports, when they go up and you trained, you know, two companies of Iraqi soldiers. Well, I'm going to make it three companies of Iraqi soldiers. And then when the next guy comes, he makes it five. Well, none of us trained any. We train the same ones over and over again. It doesn't really matter. It's all a lie. And for me to make something happen, well, I'll be very, I'll show a lot of initiative to make something happen.

But it's not strategic. It's not even a strategic effort. And so some of those lessons that we failed to learn. after Vietnam, I hope that you can capture some of them in this report that you're the people that are working on it can capture them. Absolutely. I mean, the Vietnam analogy is a powerful one. I mean, you look at Robert McNamara's book, what is it, in retrospect, the same thing.

I mean, he concludes with like 10 lessons. And, you know, you look at those lessons and you look at then what we've done over the last 20 years. And you think to yourself, well, how in the world, you know, he laid it out right here. and yet we tend to repeat them. And, you know, to the military, you know, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but, you know, we all saw that. You know, you get to an area and inevitably, you know, you have, what are they used to, there used to be the pie charts, right? You know, like green, amber, red, you know, and inevitably, the outgoing unit would say everything's kind of green and amber.

And then you take over and you're like, actually, it's red, you know, and then by the end of your year, magically it's amber and green again, you know. And part of that's just human nature. You know, leaders don't want to step back and be like, you know what? Things are like worse now than they were when we got here. But I think at some point, I wish the military needs to find a way to reward candor, even if it means acknowledging, you know, that things aren't looking that good, you know. And oftentimes the truth is that they might not be looking good through no fault of anyone who's there doing their best. But no one benefits from them glossing over those challenges.

You know, and I think, you know, I think that's where a lot of problems develop is, you know, this tendency we have to want to show progress and to not acknowledge that there may be strategic challenges that are no one's fault, but they need to be recognized. Because if you don't recognize them, you're not making any progress, despite what you'd like to tell people. Yeah, that's, I'm very looking forward to reading this report. And if it doesn't have some candor in it, I'm going hot. Right on. Anything else? Any other projects you're working on? No, just the other projects just, you know, raising our two kids, which is probably

the most challenging project of all. No doubt about it. Probably a good place to stop then. So people can find you. You've got an interwebbs website, which is. is Willbardenwerper.com. You're on Twitter. Twitter X is what I call it.

At W. Barden Warper. You got Facebook, Will Barden Warper, and you got Instagram, which you're, one of these you're not very active on. No, Instagram's mostly just,

you know, family pictures, nothing too exciting on there. And then you got a substack, which didn't look hyperactive. No, that was kind of a diary of my book research.

And now that the book research is over, the diary is pretty, much over. So I would refer people to the book as opposed to the diary. Okay. So and the book is available wherever you get your books. Um, and if he, how about are you, how active? It look like you're semi active on Twitter X. Yeah. Yeah. I'm reasonably active on there. Um, so yeah, that's not a bad follow. Right on. Right on. Awesome. Uh, echo Charles. Yes. You have any questions? Quick question. Baseball questions? Football questions. What we got? Actually, your most recent project,

uh, your kids. Uh, do you, uh, do you have any strong? Um, um, do you have any strong, um, opinions about them joining the military when they get older? Oh, the military. Well, my wife jokes that I'm in the process of brainwashing my son to go to an academy because it's free. So every time we have family in Connecticut and so like West Point's kind of like right on our path and she's like how come every time you're driving to Connecticut you're you find yourself on the West Point campus. And I have you know I have friends that went there and you know so I became close to them. I go to the Army Navy game a lot and

And so I would certainly not be opposed to it. But at the same time, you know, I also have my eyes open to the fact that, you know, it's a real commitment. And the world is not a stable place. And it can, you know, I certainly would not actually want to pressure someone to do something and then have them, you know, sent off to, you know, do something that maybe wasn't in his or the country's best interest. So I recognize that it's a real decision. But, yeah, we at least half jokingly talk about my.

My encouraging him to consider an academy. Any other questions, Echo Charles? That's it. Will, any closing thoughts? No, I appreciate you having me. It's been a real pleasure. Yeah, well, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for sharing these lessons and these stories that you got.

And thanks your service, thanks for your sacrifice. Another fellow member of the 11A.D. And thanks for what you continue to do today to share your thoughts, share your words. and hopefully they will make and allow people to see the world a little bit more clearly. Oh, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. And with that, Will Barton Warper has left the building. Definitely an interesting voyage he's been on.

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psychological warfare check that out on the MP3 if you haven't checked it out yet and then books obviously the books we reviewed today were looked at today prisoner in his palace and homestand my will barn warper freaking cool books check them out that prisoner's palace such a such a such a such a weird thing to read about that's deep yeah yeah that's that's an intriguing um concept in general that whole there's a name for for kind of that it's called uh something nightingale something it's like a they call i think they call it a syndrome but it's like one basically um yes it's like it's different than that because that's different but it's almost in the same vein

where it's like that when you get when you basically create a relationship with a person who like kidnapped you or something like that. Yeah, Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm is that it is? Okay. That's the OG one I'm pretty sure

off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah. Because there was, yeah. But it's weird how that works because you know how old look recently I've been telling you. There's more like some, there can be two things that are true

at the same time even though they really feel and seem mutually exclusive. You know, like, hey, this guy is an evil person. How can you like an evil person when you're not an evil person? In fact, that's kind of your enemy. You're guarding them in the prison.

Like, it's impossible. For crimes against humanity. Literally against humanity. Exactly right. Like, how can you like someone like that? But it's like, but two things can be true at the same time. Once you kind of like explore them, you know, it gets deep. But yeah.

No, it's definitely an interesting book to read. So check that out. Also, I've written a bunch of books, adult books, leadership books. novels, books about discipline, and a bunch of kids' books that will help your kid completely get on the path and become a better human being. Also, Ashlawn Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. The next big event that we have is Battlefield out there.

We're going to walk the battlefield, the Gettysburg Battlefield. We're going to walk the Gettysburg Battlefield. field and we are going to go through the lessons learned from a detached perspective while we're out there on hallowed ground. Unbelievable experience. Also, we have the muster in San Antonio, April 29th through May 1st. This is a epic event. It's going to be down there in San Antonio. In Tejas, we're going to really be able to transfer the skills of leadership in a powerful way. So if you want to send some of your team down there, you want to come down there, go to Escalonafront.com for details on that.

We also have the online Extreme Ownership Academy where we teach these skills of leadership online. Go to extreme ownership.com. If you want to become a better human being, just better human being, and check that out. And if you want to help service members actively retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. He's got an amazing charity organization.

Helps so many of our veterans and their families. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Micah Fink, and he's got his organization, Heroes and Horses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, beyond the brotherhood.org.

All great organizations, charities that can help out so many people. Finally, if you want to connect with us, for Will, he's on the interwebs. Will, bardenwarper.com, and you can find him on Twitter, X at Will, at W-Barden Warper. W-B-A-R-D-E-N-W-E-R-P-E-R. And for us, you can check out jocco.com and on social media. I'm on there at Jocco, Willink.

Echoes at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's people in there that just going to use your own hate to make you scroll more and stay on it more. They'll make you mad so you stay there. more. This is not good for you. It's not healthy for you. If you're if you're scrolling through that stuff and you're getting angry it's a problem. So be careful. And thanks once again to Will for joining us. Thanks for your service in combat for America and thanks for what you do today to help people better understand the world. Thanks to all the uniform personnel

out there with a special thanks to the U.S. Army's 136, First Battalion, 303. 56 infantry, the Spartans, for what you all have done to take the fight to the enemy when you're up the road from us in heat while we were down there in Ramadi, covering our flank. Thank you. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you for taking to the streets to fight crime and corruption here at home. And everyone else out there, you know, the 136 infantry, they're the Spartans.

And they have a motto. And that motto is deeds, not words. Deeds, not words. That means don't talk about it. Do it. No matter how hard it's going to be, no matter what challenges you're going to face, no matter what your feelings are at the moment, no matter what your inner voice is telling you, regardless of all that.

go out there and do the deed deeds not words and that's all we've got for tonight and until next time this is echo and jocco out