Jocko Podcast - 484: It Might Not Go The Way You Want. With Navy SEAL Command Master Chief, Jim Foreman.

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Jim Foreman is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Command Master Chiefwith 27 years of elite military service, including leadership atNaval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU – SEAL Team 6) — one of the most selective and operationally demanding units in the world.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 484 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. All day, murderous bursts of machine gun fire hammered our position, shattering windows and impacting interior walls, each round with the violence and kinetic energy of a sledgehammer wielded at full force. Some of the incoming rounds were armor piercing and punched through the thick concrete of the low wall surrounding the rooftop.

All of our element of seals, EOD bomb technicians, and Iraqi soldiers could do under such accurate enemy fire was hit the deck and try not to get our head shot off. Rounds snapped inches above us and shards of glass and concrete fragments rain down everywhere. Damn, some of those bastards can shoot,

yelled a seal operator, pressed as close to the floor as humanly possible. We couldn't help but laugh at our predicament. RPG7 rockets followed in rapid sequence of three or four, exploding with tremendous concussion against the exterior walls. Hunkered down inside the building we were separated from the bone-jarring explosion and deadly shrapnel by a foot or so of concrete

One errant RPG rocket missed its mark and sailed high over the building trailing across the hazy cloudless Iraqi summer sky like a bottle rocket on an American 4th of July But if just one of those rockets impacted a window it meant red hot fragments of jagged metal ripping through just about every man in the room Despite the onslaught, we held our position in the large four-story apartment building. When the fury of the attack subsided, our SEAL snipers returned fire with devastating effect. As armed enemy fighters maneuvered through the streets to attack, seal snipers squeezed off round after round with deadly accuracy, confirming 10 enemy fighters killed and a handful more probable kills. and that right there is an excerpt from a book called Extreme Ownership,

which was written by Laif Babin and me in that section, which was written by Laif, displays and shows and talks about not only the level of violence delivered by the enemy, which was significant, but also the effectiveness of our SEAL snipers. And on that particular operation, it wasn't just seals from TASCUNA brouser. We had some help on that one.

And one of the best things about being in the teams is obviously working with the best guys the world. It's also very random because you can be in the SEAL teams and you can be on a different cycle from someone else. And you might not see that other person for months or years or sometimes even decades. But you still know them and you know their reputation. And you track what people are doing. You hear stories. You read after actions reports. You see their name pop up on the advancement lists,

but time goes by. And then for whatever reason, you happen to end up on the same battlefield at the same time, and you get to work with them for a day or two days or a week or a month, and get to do what we all join to do. And you get to confirm that they are who you thought they were, and their reputation is well earned, and that they're a frogman.

And then they're gone again and you continue to track their progress and their career through the stories and the advancement lists and you continue to see them do great things and you feel proud of know them and that's the teams. And when I was at SEAL Team 1, there was a guy who checked in and quickly earned an awesome reputation. He fit in very well with the culture of SEAL Team 1 at the time, which was Stalog Team 1. very strict, very tough, very hard charging, very operationally focused and probably overly professional in many aspects. But he knocked out a few platoons there, became a respected operator and a sniper, and when I went the officer route, he went to the Navy's special mission unit, the maritime component of the Joint Special Operations Command, J-Soc, and he made it through selection there. and became a an operator,

a combat leader in the global war on terror. And fast forward almost a decade from after we left, SEAL Team 1, and that's when we were in Ramadi. And he was able to join our task unit on some missions to see exactly what we were doing and how we were doing it. And we all got to see his professionalism, his expertise, his humility. I like to think that that was some shared roots from that time that we spent at SEAL Team 1

with BTF Tony as well. But he continued on his career path. He eventually completed 27 years in the SEAL teams, conducted 18 combat deployments, served as a team leader, troop chief, squadron master chief, chief of selection and assessment, training chief.

And during that time, he was awarded the Silver Storm. are eight bronze stars purple heart and five presidential unit citations and this individual's name is jim forman and it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned jim good to see you man thanks for coming out you too bro thank you yeah it's wild how you can just not see someone for years and then you're just oh hey what's up dude and the nature of, I guess it's the nature of the shared suffering and camaraderie of the seal teams that it doesn't really matter if you don't see someone for a long time.

It's like, oh, hey, what's up, dude? How you been? Oh, good. Yeah, it picks right out. Let's get some background. So where did you grow up? Bay Area, Northern California, Fremont. And what, what did your parents do?

My mom was RN nurse up there and then my dad was an accountant. Okay. Yeah. So any veterans in the family? My dad served in the Army. What are you doing the Army? He was an engineer. Was he in Nam?

No, no. He stayed back and was reserves, I think, because mostly he had a family. And I have a twin brother. Oh, really? I grew up with a twin and a sister, older sister, and had a pretty good upbringing. Nice. Echo Charles, any twin questions? Echo Charles is a twin as well.

This early on? Are you identical or what? You know, we're identical. Oh, right now. Okay. That's it? Okay. Nice.

You guys bro now. Yeah, yeah. Big time. That is a weird thing, right? Is this really echo? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I'm the echo of him.

He was born second. What about school? What were you into? What sports you play? So I did football, wrestling, and some track and field. How much wrestling did you do? Two years. Okay.

Yeah. What years? Freshman and a sophomore year. And then no more. No more. Then I switched to football. But wrestling was, I got an injury. So in my going ads that like shut me down pretty hard.

That's a significant thing. Getting a rat. Yeah. Jack. Yeah. How about what was your grades like? Were you like studying? Did you care?

I was bored. I think I got bad grades because I was bored, you know. So I did some summer school and things like that. Oh, wait. That's a little beyond some bad grades if you had to go to summer school. Isn't that like a serious shortfall that you got to go make something up? Yeah, it was. Were you getting in trouble or anything?

Not really. I think I was just bored. I had, you know, like history is a big thing for me. I love history. And my history teacher was, even in college was, you know, just dates and laws, dates and times and things like that. It was not about, like, when I learned about the Alamo in junior college, it was like, okay on this day, 1836, a bunch of Americans to made a fight and they got wiped out and blah, blah, blah.

I were like, what? So, you know, I had to read books on my own to find things out. So I, you know, a lot of teachers, there are some good teachers, but I wish they would like elaborate a little bit more, make it more interesting, even in like math, you know. They should do, it is amazing what a good teacher can do.

And I think podcasts, there's some podcasts out there that people do such a good job of telling history. It's like it's a game changer. And people always say, I wish you were my teacher in high school, you know? Yeah. So when you were in high school, did you have like a life plan of any kind? When I was in high school, I started to see, like I love football and wrestling.

I started to look at the military stuff. And I was like, yeah, I'd like to be part, because you would see some movies. That was like in the 80s, right? And I'd go like, yeah, I think I want to be a part of a small team. You know, I didn't know anything about the SEALs. that highly skilled, we all have the same skill level, high, same mindset. So when I was a junior, I started to look at the Marine Corps.

And when I went to college for a couple years and didn't do too well. And so I actually joined the Marine Corps. Okay. And then in the delayed entry, we're playing football. And then I racked my leg pretty bad and tore my ACL. So I had a year out.

Did you get surgery? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I got my mom, since she was a nurse, she knew some good doctors. Oh, nice. And she hooked me up big time, up with a sports. Did you get a cadaver replacement? Or did you get a, did they move your patella?

No, they just moved. They actually stretched my tendon and put a screw in the side of my knee. Yeah. So it was like, my knee was like that for a long time. He had to stretch it back out. But you were going to go in the Marine Corps. What did you, what were you can do in the Marine Corps? I just wanted to do like infantry.

Just be like infantry. I was like, I just want to go like... Actually, in those days, I don't think you could pick your MOS at all. Yeah, probably. When I was looking, you could just join the Marines. Yeah. And you were just going to be whatever they told you were going to be. Yeah.

And that's the way it was. So you were probably just going to be a Marine. There's anything wrong with being a Marine. But you could have been a lot of... There's a lot of different jobs in the Marine Corps. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So you get hurt for a year?

I was out for a year. Then I started... So my brother, unlike me, was going to be. getting good grades. And so I go, okay, I'm not doing too good in school. I'm going to kind of see what he's doing for school. And he was taking like, you know, interesting things like history, geography, anthropology. And I'm okay, I'm going to just mirror what he does. So I just went to his, I just got the same classes as him. No kidding. And I just like basically copied his class schedule. So then, you know, I had somebody to hang out with and ask questions and learn from because I was

not doing good in college. What college was it? It was a Shabot college. It was a two-year college. I actually got kicked out. That's why I joined the Marines. Or I got suspended for bad grades. For bad grades? Yeah.

So then I got this year off because of the delay entry with the Marine Corps. So I could actually get out of the Marine Corps. Because about that time I heard about the SEALs. How did you hear about the SEALs? My brother was the first one brought it up. And then unbeknownst to me, my uncle was a doctor in the Navy. and he served with seals in Vietnam. Dang.

And so then I started to hear about that, those stories. And it was pretty cool. They picked him because they needed an excuse to go in these villages to take care of the kids and the people. But then they would set up ambushes nearby. But they needed him to take care of the people so they had an excuse to get in. So he had some really cool stories.

And so that's how I found out about those guys. And then you went to the recruiter. Was it a tough process? What year is this now? This is my junior year. Now I'm at, it's now called East Bay College. It was,

yeah, so East Bay now is Cal State Harrod back then. So I was going to, my junior years when I heard about them, and I go, okay, so I got two years in, I was struggling with it. I should just join now.

And then I kept, my parents were like, hey, just get your two-year degree, or your four-year degree. Just not going to, out because you're not going to get it again. And I struggled with that, but I did stay in and get my four-year degree in geography back in with some history. Like trying to get the easiest

thing, but it was the most interesting. Like I could not sit still if it was not interesting. So I took something that was interesting. And at what point, you said your junior year, you enlisted in the Navy or did that? No, that's when I heard about the SEALs. And then that's when my, my leg start to heal. Okay. So, because it happened in my sophomore year. So then I just decided to finish the last year and a half of college.

And then when you got done with college, is that when you went to the recruiter? Yep, I just signed up, yep, right after, before I even got my diploma. What kind of prep were you doing? So your knee heels up, you're feeling strong. Like,

did you see the Be Someone Special video? I did. Yeah. We all be. It was always just like these badass combat dudes. ribbons from Vietnam. You know, I didn't really talk too much about, you know, what you needed to do. So did you run?

Did you swim? Were you comfortable in the water? How did that go? Yeah, yeah. I had to pull in my backyard, so that was nice to work on. Then I would go to YMCA and swim there and do some running and pull-ups and all that stuff. It had a pull-up bar in my backyard. So start to prepare.

That's pretty good to go for the, what is this now, like 1991 or something? something like that in the 90s yeah I got I joined the Navy in 91 check yeah as you as you get to boot camp like did you think about putting in an officer package at all because you had been to college or no no so I was thinking um like I heard that officers move around a lot and I go if I'm I want to be a CEO I want to be doing a job for a while you know and getting the skill and then maybe later, but I wasn't really thinking about officer. So it was just,

I'm going to E dog. I'm going to E dog. All day. Yeah. Also, because I heard of, you know, I start to read some books.

I forgot which one it was, but most of them were fictional, which is even more interesting, you know, because they, I forgot the name of the book, but it was a good, it was a good book about COs in Vietnam.

So it was, maybe UDTCL operations in Vietnam. That was one of them. That was a good. Yeah. That's a good one. That's just like a big, long AAR. Yeah, yeah.

But talk, you know, the point men, the machine gunners, the snipers, you know, all that stuff. Yeah. Was super interesting to me. And then back then in Vietnam, the officers had more power to do things. You know, it was more like, you know, they were more enlisted in a lot of ways. Like they had skill sets that they could use. And not only did they have those skill sets, but then they also were the senior guy. on target the gfc so it was kind of cool to be an officer back then uh you know they had some

you know i was going to say it's like in vietnam i noticed like you know i read books on uh green brace because there's a lot of green bray stuff going on those guys are badasses uh a lot of the lieutenants the officers captains and even the seals uh had a lot of freedom to do a lot of things without a lot of oversight yeah you know and i thought that was pretty cool that made me think wow these guys could be pretty innovative without a lot of red tape and get the job done and then roy benavitas you know that guy's a badass jerry shriver mad dog both green brace um really inspired me i was like man they they got some um they got some power to make things happen um so you head off to boot camp well how was that a pretty good shock to the system

yeah it was all right i just didn't want to get so I did the die fare program, which was six years because I just didn't want to get derailed. I did that too. That's why I did. Yeah. I just want to get guaranteed that you get the buds. And then it's up to you to make it. So I got that.

Where'd you go to boot camp? Orlando. Yeah. Me too. Check. Get some dive fair hot. Yeah. Do you get to buds?

How was buds for you? It was good. I mean, I got good stuff. story, I was like, you know, when you're doing the fourth phase thing, right? When you're doing the pre-training, getting ready and all that stuff, we had like 127 guys in that fourth phase. And I was looking around, I was like, man, there's some ripped dudes. They already looked like seals, you know? And when we took that PT test to class up for 181, we only classed up with like 66 guys out of the 127. Damn. And they had room to take at least 100, maybe. But I was like, wow, what the

And then the guy, one of the guys was just ripped, like shredded abs, looked badass. He couldn't do the sit-ups. I was like, oh, he just has show muscles. He just got show muscles. All show no go. I feel like such, I was doing the class-up test. Yep. And my partner, you had to count sit-ups.

Yeah. And my partner, like, dude, I mean, I didn't, I didn't really know him too well. But I think you had to do 75 sit-ups to class up. And he did like 73 and the instructor came by. I was like, how many do you get? I was like, 73. I just like didn't cover for him at all. Just a total dick.

And the dude made it in the next class and I know him. Like he's a great guy. And but I, I remember just thinking like, well, there's the stand. Like hey, bro, sorry. Like 73, don't cut it. Dude, you needed it too more. And I don't know if he's still mad at me about that. But if he is, I think it's a little, I think it's somewhat justified.

Echo, do you think that's somewhat justified? You think he's got his extra too. Well, both, but Okay. That's a very politically correct answer. True, though. It's true. Both same, true at the same time.

But you had to do a PT test to class up. You did fine. Yeah. We roll into first phase. First phase. Good to go. Hellweek starts November 7th. So that was Sunday.

and, you know, we're all nervous and stuff like that. We had, I forget how many guys we had by then, like maybe 45 or something. And it was December 7th, so it was like cold. Of course, we do all the stuff all night, Sunday night, and then the morning. You said it's December 7th? December 7th, yeah. I think I graduated. I don't really remember.

You know, you know, like, you ever seen a fake seal and they go, what day did you graduate? The guy's like, I don't know. And then they're like, you're a liar. I don't know what day I graduated for Buzz. Yeah, I mean. But I know it was in the fall. So, and it was the fall of 91. So while you, I probably left just before you started Hell Week.

Yeah. That's pretty funny. So, so you guys, you guys went into Hell Week with like, what did you say, 40 guys? 45, something like that. So that first morning, Monday morning, we go into the Chahawall all wet, freezing, dripping, you know, sandy. And we, you know, usually we fit three or four. four tables, the big tables, and we all sat on one table. I was looking around.

We were like 18 guys left. I was like, holy crap, and nobody looked like a seal. They're like me, like I'm 1303 pounds, you know, 5'8. And then we had a guy that was like 6'5 looked like lurch, you know, with big hands, all awkward hitting things. And then fire plug guys that were short and stocky with no neck. Yeah. We all looked like just like, you know, misfits.

Not, yeah, misfits for sure. No seal. like dudes and I realized I go okay so this is a mindset thing yeah this is people that don't quit yeah and then over the course of five more months they make you look like a CEO just by amount of push-ups and sit-ups and running all that stuff but they can't make the mindset they can't fix your mind they only can fix your body and so they get rid of all those guys it really hit me hard seeing that was there any was there anything that was hard for you in uh in first phase that was like a challenge you're good enough runner, a good enough swimmer, just pretty much well-rounded.

Yeah, I was right there. O-course sucked for me because of that dirty name. Oh, yeah. You know, like I finally realized, okay, you have to train, you have to jump over it to hit your waist. You know, you can't jump at it because you're going to bounce right off and fall over the eight feet. So, um, yeah, that is, uh, that is definitely a, an obstacle that is very prejudiced against people that are smaller.

Yeah. So this thing, Echo Charles, it's like you got to, you got to, you. You jump up on a log and then you've got to jump onto another log that's like right around chest high. So you got to jump up and hit it with your stomach and kind of pull yourself. And you've got to stand up on that one. Then you got to jump to another one. So the shorter you are, the harder it's going to be. And it's not just the height.

It's also the distance. Yeah. Like you got to jump far. So like you have to try to jump past it to land on your waist. Otherwise you're going to hit your chest and fall backwards. So you had a little bit of a challenge with the third name, huh? But it was good. It's like I remember the first time.

I mean, they did some good mental stuff on everybody, like how, okay, get your best time. You get your best time. Okay, now you go get wet and sandy and beat your fucking best time. Or you're going to do it again. And then you're just doing it over because now you're tired and you're wet and sandy. And you're like, God, why did I get my best time? I should have like sandbagged that first one. The running the O-course wet and Sandy.

I don't think they actually do that anymore. I don't think they I'm not 100% sure But I don't think they do it anymore Because that made the O-course So much harder the way you're just traction was terrible Slippering Yeah And there's a couple

The stumps Remember the stumps you hop on Those are now just tires Like football Yeah I like those things Because those were tricky Like it went in Sandy That thing was like

It was like it was wineished or something It was like glass Yeah That thing suck Did you, so you made it through Hell Week and through first phase, you were on the dive phase. How were you in the water for all that? I was good, except that was the one thing I failed was that pool comp. Holy crap.

So I was, because then you fail pool comp. And what it was, you know, you got like the shoulder straps and the chest strap and you got the one inch or half inch floating around. So I pulled, I was trying to pull my chest strap. and I pull the shoulder strap instead. So procedures, so I failed. And then waiting all weekend sucked. Because if you failed, again, you're done.

Yep. Right. And then Monday came around, and we had five guys, retake it. And they put me through. I'm glad they did because it made me feel like I earned it. But I was underwater for like 18 minutes. Like they're like, you know, fucking around for me, punched me in the stomach, doing all that stuff until I had nothing.

You know, like even the air bubbles you're trying to breathe through to. get the extra because I don't think they may fail you if you come up too soon. You're trying to do everything you can to put that rig back together, breathe from it and all that. So like the whammy knot on the fucking inhaling tubes. Like when they put that whammy not, it's like, because I've seen some guys, do you think that they're done? They're like, nope, you can get that knot out.

They're like, nope, you get that knot out. Which is badass training, right, with no mask, you know. So, yeah, I came up with black, you know, rubber marks on my face from them stripped running around my head. You know, so that that was cool that I passed. I'm glad that they gave me a tough one because the other four guys didn't pass. Oh. So that was good for me. How many?

So there was like 18 guys in your dive class in your second phase class? We got a couple. We got some rollbacks. We got some rollbacks. So when we graduated, we had 16, I think, from Hellwick. And then we got some rollbacks from that, from the previous. class when they got done with Hellweek and then we moved on yeah i think that that regulator that aqualong aquamaster regulator yeah two hose regulator no there's no one that used

there's no reason to use that anymore although i do think there's like someone in cold water possibly but that thing is just archaic and i think the main reason why they keep it around is literally for pool comp yeah for just for for doing the hard sure and and the other like the army or the air force or the regular Navy, no one, no one uses that freaking evil regular regulator that could get tied in knots on your back

dude, it's freaking chaotic. We're not only where you, you had to wait for them to get done with tying the knot and you're holding your breath. Yeah. You know, it's always just like you're breathing to your regulator

as they're freaking out. Yeah, and they're fucking around. They're spinning you up on your head. They're trying to rip your rig off you and take it to the surface. You're like, wait. You know, it was brutal, but it was badass.

You know, when you think about it. Was it, was it if you, because I remember, I failed on Friday. And then the weekend, it was like the worst, longest weekend. And me and my swim buddy, we put our, we both failed. And we got in the, I don't know how we did this. We got in the dip tank in second phase. And we had like the full setup. We had the regulars.

We had charged bottles and everything. And we pool comp to each other in like whatever the depth. of a dip tank. But we did it for like eight hours, just murdering each other. And you could, you could pool comp the other guy while you were standing outside the dip tank. So I was like totally dry out of the water. And I'm just like wrecking my buddy. And but we trashed each other and did it over and over again.

And then on Friday we both, I mean, sorry, on Monday morning, we both passed. But I was it just one chance on Friday, one chance on Monday? It probably was two chances, but I only remember one. I really remember pulling that shoulder strap. But I probably messed up somewhere else. Yeah. Because one would be kind of, I think it was two chances. I don't remember what the first thing was.

But it's probably a procedure too. Check. You get through it. Then it's third phase, going to the island. Yeah. Are you now super stoked? Because you end up being a sniper. Was that always sort of a goal of yours?

Yeah, I was a good shot. So it revealed itself that how good of a shot I was, like at Buds and also at CO-T-1 when you started going to an island and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, this is cool. I definitely want to be a sniper. But third phase, so like shooting the pistol, you were good to go. Yeah.

Shooting the rifle, no factor. Yeah. Isn't it weird? There's like some people that just suck at it. Yeah. It always baffled me. Like, to me, a CEO, you'd always have expert. And I remember seeing like S on one of them.

I like, what? You're like, how'd you make it through bots? I don't think they, I think they might roll you now if you don't shoot expert. That's right. That's right. which is good. Although, you know, if you get, you're the guy,

if the guy gets rolled in buds, he could get to the team and he's going to be shooting expert in it like a month. Yeah. I mean, it's just, a lot of it was, um, giving the proper instruction,

which they did, uh, but some instructors, you know, they're, they get impatient. And where the students like, uh,

feeling that, uh, hate towards them. They mess up. So, you know, there's a lot of stress. And this is back in the day when you'd graduate Buds.

That was kind of the big deal graduation. Now it's when you graduate SQT, you get your Trident everything. Then you go to your team. But you're just like me because I was 177. Did you graduate with 180? 181. Yeah, I started with 181 and finished with 181. Okay.

Yeah, so that was you, you went to Buds, graduated from Buds, no Trident. And did you put in that you wanted West Coast? Yeah, I put in, I want Steel Team One just because that was like the Vietnam guys. You know, I go, okay, there's still some guys hanging out there. Yep. And so I thought that would be the one. Yep. And you got those orders.

How was it showing up a Steel Team One as a new guy? Good. They did the fucked up thing where it's like, hey, go go to engineering and ask for this guy, you know, some guy that died, you know, or whatever it was. But, yeah, they fucked. Obviously, they fuck with you. Yeah. Big time. Was FAC, the master chief at the time?

was how was that checking procedure um intense i mean he was a old vietnam guy um he was later i never even talked to him personally until one time we're out and uh i think it was guam he showed up and he was actually a regular guy i like oh shit he's just a regular guy he mellowed out a lot towards the towards the end of his tour there because he had been at seal team he spent like i mean he did 30 years he probably did 25 years or something like that at seal team one yeah like He was there for a long time. Yeah. I checked in with three other guys and we were like outside of his office.

He's like, get in here. So we were like staying at attention on our whites. And he goes, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you. Get out of my office. I was like, oh my God. Like, what am I doing here? And then he, once we were all kind of all new guys together, he assembled us and we were in the classroom. And he came and told us like, keep your mouth shut, keep your ears on.

Keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open. Don't be late. And don't forget any gear. And that was like, Roger. That was the, that's what he said. Yeah. I was all ears at that point.

Yeah, that's good advice. Did you, so you also, like me, you didn't go through SQT at the group or at the center. You went through STTT, CLE tackle training at CLE Team 1. Yep. And did, what'd you guys do, land? Did you guys do land? Nyland. Nylent.

Just straight into the. straight into the mix. Yeah, it was good. I think we, we fucked up somewhere and we had to spend two more weeks out there. But it was kind of cool to have the instructors from CO Team 1.

Yeah. You know, because then you might get a platoon, then maybe your platoon chief later. 100%. So that was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely some advantages to it.

I think that thankfully, they unified everything together because those guys were getting, the SQT training is like a really good right now. Yeah. And it's much more uniformed. So no matter what team you're working with, everyone's got even more of a baseline, you know,

that's like the same. What was your, did you, what was your job going to be in your first platoon? Did you know? I didn't know. I wanted to be a point man, but I got 60 Gunner, which I loved. Like that was badass.

Yeah. Yeah, 60 Gunner with a couple other guys. And that E3, you know, 18 and a half pound. 500 rounds, you know, a couple, maybe 50 extra rounds for a little bit more, but that was awesome. and I don't know if they do it that much anymore but we used to like practice singing and that was just nonverbal communication and that started us off with a seal

is like how we use body language and shooting and different techniques like you're getting ready my 60's going low so I'm doing like three round birth and the other guy here is that so he's like laying on the lead you switch out and then you just give out like 12 round birth

But you're up. Now you're back singing. Yeah. No, they definitely hammer that course because at least when I was running trade at like it was still the 60 gunners or it became Mark 48 gunners. You know, they had what was it, four days where it was just them and their pig. And it was awesome. Like do you see those machine gunners at the end of that, even like a new guy machine gunner after four days of that machine gun course? And the machine gun course is just freaking awesome.

Yeah. And you know the deal with like you get some seals when a seal gets really into something Bro, they just break that thing down and they and so you get those guys that are instructors and they love being an A dub and they're going to make those guys into really awesome Adub. Yeah, it's holding strong man. It's holding strong. That's good enough. What's crazy is I had Roger Hayden. You remember Roger Hayden? I don't know. So Roger Hayden was a old Vietnam guy, but he like some of the stuff that they They started, like he started, like walking the point man course with the, with the trip wires and the targets popping up. He started that, like him and another guy. And we still do that now.

You know what I mean? So it's like these these courses that were came from combat and they just got passed down from generation to generation to generation to generation and they're still there now. That was one of the coolest thing was that point man course. Yeah. I love that that like a 60 course where you got almost a week of solid stuff and you come out of that and you're just like you understand. understand what your job is. Like, you're at the door, you're laying down lead, so everybody gets you get you through.

You know, it's like that type of training. If you go down, somebody, they don't care about you. They're picking up that 60. Getting lead down first before anybody grabs you, you know. And then that point man course was, I mean, you could tell it was like right from the Vietnam days, you know, the little tricks that they had. Yeah.

I was at like a seal thing. And there was, I was talking to some new guy, 60 gunners or Mark 48 gunners. And I saw Roger Hayden. So I'd bring these guys. I said, hey, Roger, I was talking to these guys, they're, they're pig gunners. And he just looks at him, he goes, the pig is an area fucking weapon. That was the first words out of his mouth.

I was like, thank God. He's fastest knowledge on, man. The best. All right. So now you're rolling to your first platoon. Yeah. And you're a pig gunner. Yep, pig gunner.

How is the, how's the, you know, this is the 90s where it's hard to explain to the younger guys, the GWalk guys, how for us, at least for me, it was always like, let's hope we can get one mission. Like let's hope we can get a mission where we get to lock and load our weapons for real and go do anything. That was kind of what we would hope for. Yeah, we all did that.

Like we're in Guam or something. No, we were in someplace Indonesia. And something happened, something small. I went to my house. I say, you go, hey, can't you just tell the congressman, Like we're here already. Like, you know, you just want to get into everything. Yeah, I remember in my first platoon, we were, we were in Guambe.

We went to Thailand and there was like some kind of a UN thing was going on. Yeah. It was a U.N. helicopter. We like took a picture with the U.N. helicopter and like thought it was super cool that, you know, the U.N. troops and we were there. That's, man, it was just different. and the but the but I will say this and we just kind of talked about it dude we trained freaking hard like we trained so hard it was almost there was a in a way training for the unknown you would just think about you know the fear of not being prepared enough I think that compelled us to train

even harder because we just didn't know what to expect like will I be ready yeah and I think that had a I think that had a big impact on me and how you know would we get the call are we good enough will we know our weapon systems will we be you know do we know our comms well enough and like all these things which the funny thing is all that stuff is kind of it's actually not that hard yeah uh and which so that's where you run on your first appointment you did your Guam so yeah we did the paycom okay yes based out of Guam. Did you guys do just exercises? Yeah, we did COBRA gold, which was fun. Yeah, yeah. Four weeks, five weeks there. Um, but, you know, working with the ties. That was, that was great.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, there's some seals that never left. Yeah, exactly. They're still there today. With whatever how much land they got, their own house and probably the third or fourth wife. Yeah. Yeah. Simultaneous wives, I think, for some of those kids. Yeah. Uh, you come back from that to deployment what's next i jumped into golf platoon and they need it it was like uh they're already on their uh their cycle so i jumped into golf and then i was their um rear security point man and how was as you're now a new guy in your first platoon now you're in your second platoon what what are you looking at from a leadership perspective and what are you seeing i'm seeing the difference in leadership you know the slightly difference of the chiefs and the lPO's which was uh they're both good

but I did notice that the chief you know if you got one that was like because my first chief was badass we talked about him or he was the LPO okay yeah so the LPO was badass and the chief was badass and then my second platoon the chief was okay

he was still good he just wasn't like wow I got spoiled on that last one with the chief of the LPO and then you can see the team the squad leader's picking up yeah This is what I realized when I, when I worked at trade at was if you had a platoon, you know, my initial thought was like, all right, the chief's got to be the tactician, the officer's got to be looking ahead, the LPO's got to be driving stuff.

And I had this kind of mold of what I thought it should be. And what I realized after a relatively short period of time was, dude, I just want to have like a couple good, if I can get one or two good leaders out of that top four, the platoon's going to do fine. It doesn't really make. If the officer's great and everyone else sucks, it'll be fine. If the chief is great and everyone else sucks, it'll be okay. LPO is great and everyone else sucks. Like you just need a leader that can make things happen.

And it makes such a huge difference in the whole zone. And I had to open up my mind and be more flexible to where, what roles people were going to play because look, man, you got, there's some chiefs that they're just going to run everything. And it's just going to be, they've been, they got eight platoons under their belt. They're smart. They're humble.

They make things happen. And it's like, no, look, that, that officer doesn't really have to, You didn't have to show up, to be honest with you. And then sometimes, like, oh, that chief came from shore duty. And before that, he did, you know, worked at some other shore duty. And he just doesn't know what he's doing. And then it's like that officer better step up or the LPO better step up or something. But you just need a guy.

Yeah. To make things happen. Yeah. You're right. You rarely get all four badasses. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's very rare.

And sometimes. if you get four guys that are really good, they also come with four really big egos. And now you got conflict between, you know, the chief and the OIC or the chief and the LPO. And those things are just, it's so, it's such a bummer to watch. You know, it's such a bummer to watch a platoon eat itself.

Morale drops. Oh, yeah. It's a disaster. When did you go to sniper school? after that deployment? So I got to CO2 in 92. I went to Stanford School in 95. Okay.

So was this after your second platoon then? Yes. I think it was, yeah. It was at the end of my second platoon, yeah. And where'd you go on that deployment? Same place. So we just did different things. Like I think we went to India, which was awesome.

So we still did Paycon. We just hit different areas, Indonesia, Malaysia, to Hong Kong, different areas. Did you start feeling like you knew how to do your job pretty well? Yeah, I got better. Like I was also the Intel rep back then, you know. Laminating maps.

Yeah, it was just basically the guy that got all the RFIs and, you know, briefed whatever. You know what else was crazy? It was back then was on my first deployment, we had one computer. Yeah. Like one computer. And the only person that even knew how to turn that thing on was the officer. And everyone else was just like every single brief was on whatever. Yeah, the flip charts and just that's how we rolled.

Yeah. It was like magic. The, you know, the mission planning stuff was just paper and magic markers. Yeah. And that's crazy how much it changed. There was no whiteboard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

We didn't even have dry race boards. That dry race board would have been high tech back then. check so pretty standard deployment for back then yeah all three of them were uh standard did you have anybody ever get in any trouble or anything like that oh yeah yeah we got in trouble i think it was my third platoon did you make it a point man your third platoon yeah there you that was awesome but here's the things like because i was the 60 gunner like you you and you realize the importance of it that's why it's good to have different jobs yeah right so as a point man i remember Rutton Island, you know, we're doing an eye ads, immediate action drills and live fire,

and they put our 60 guy down. And then I was able to go, okay, I get the 60 and start laying lead, you know. And so, you know, a lot of guys, everybody could shoot a 60, but like to shoot it like proficiently because you have the experience and all that stuff, that was awesome to still have it, you know. Oh, yeah. And also later on my career to understand supporting assets, you know, because I remember a couple of times in my career later on, guys were just all like 18, 20 guys show up all was just like 22s, you know, like the M-4s. Nobody has a heavy weapon. Nobody has 40 mic, Mike. You know, like, man, this is not good. We want to have a variety of weapons. And we honestly want to have as many belt feds as we possibly can. Absolutely. Because that's how we're doing this. That's what keeps the freaking enemies heads down.

So you get done with your second platoon. Now you go to sniper school. house sniper school for you it was good i loved sniper school it was uh you know did you go to sniper school no okay so yeah laying out in colanga flat ground was a couple tumbleweeds trying to do a stock you know that was tough but it was great training it was there's a lot of people there's a pretty big attrition rate at sniper school yeah guys that would go and wouldn't make it through it was freaking i didn't go to it but like i knew really good guys that would come back and be like yo that's sucked. Yeah.

And some guys would be like, oh, yeah, I graduated, but barely. Yeah. And like you said, it was especially the stalking piece, which is, you know, you got a guy that's a sniper instructor that's sitting on an elevated piece of position. And you have to crawl to him in a certain amount of time to a close enough distance and take a shot with a blanks. Yeah. And not, and have that guy who's on by nose.

Two guys. Two guys on Bino's trying with all their might to find you. Right. And it was a challenge. Like they made it. They felt like they were shit bags that they couldn't find you. So like when you take that shot with a blank, you just have to sit there. Right.

And they have, I don't know, anywhere from five to ten minutes to scan. Okay. We just heard a shot. And then they got walkers. And they go, hey, I see something suspicious. Walk to your right, 50 yards, you know. Two feet up, a little bit to the right. sniper at your feet and then if you're wrong you're like nope that's just like a coat can or

something like that and like fuck and then they'll keep doing it you know and sometimes they're like wait till they get one but they try not to do that where there's just like saturated an area but what's the closest you ever had them call sniper at the feet uh where you were actually laying oh they got me once uh my final one and that was um for honor man oh and uh this is a good story I know the guy. So one of the guys was failing, right? And he had to get like a 10. And so a 10 is like, so, yeah, you do your blank shot and they can't find you, right?

And then they give you a live round. And then they put a target where they're sitting and they move off. And you take that shot. And you can't just hit the target. If you just get the side, that's not less like a seven or something. You have to get within that kill shot thing. If you get that, and then they come back, and then you look for you again. God.

And if they can't find you, then you get a 10. So I was rocking for a lot. I was very patient doing the right things. My favorite thing to do was like a cut a hole through a bush or a tree, cut a small hole through a tree, and then get behind it 20 feet and then shoot through that hole. Because then they're looking for you in the tree. right but you're like 20 feet behind or have multiple bushes and they're like looking for you behind each bush but you're like way back there so that was cool and that was my favorite thing to do

is like to shoot from distance through a hole in a bush or a tree and in this situation I'm like okay man I'm gonna crush honor man you know and then my he was actually my shooting partner and I did that same this is an island now and now so I have a tree. I'm like laying my back, cutting a hole through those tumbleweeds. It was like about four foot long tumbleweed. And I click, click, click, click, come back, click, click. And they also look at your bullet path. It has to be legit. Yeah, even if you hit the target, they want to make sure that you're not hitting any twigs. The guy that's laying grading, the walker will look at your bullet path and your position and all that. So I had this perfect shot. I'm like, all right. And all of

sudden my shooting partner who was like six three comes shows up right next to me like ran like across the pool table with two bushes like runs and gets right next to him I'm like what the fuck and he's like gee I had to get you know he I knew he had to get 10 right but I go hey man I'm also going for honor man and so he gets right next to me he's like fuck and all of a sudden I hear the comms they're like holy shit run run 20 feet to the right run run you You saw him run over that bush. And so they stand right behind both of us, right? And I didn't know what he had done.

So I'm just like concentrating on my thing. And they go, sniper out your feet. Or no, they didn't even ask that. They go, who did that? Right. And I looked at my buddy and he looked at me. And I go, I did it like that. He took one for the team.

And then they go, fucking forming, get the fuck out of. That was the biggest bull. shit thing I ever seen. I'm like, what? And so I'm walking away. I go, hey, bro, you got a perfect shot through that bush. I already cut the hole. I'm like, oh, I'm still pissed and you got a 10. But he made it. That's good. But like, I always like, you know,

he's one of those things. I was like, what? I didn't know you did that. I didn't know you ran 50 yards on a pool table. And how was that deployment, the last, your third deployment? That was a good one. That's the one when we went to India. And we were training with those Indians.

out there, their seal version. That was good. We did a lot of maritime stuff, and that's when I started getting into the teaching stuff, teaching the 60, doing the 50-Cal sniper stuff, and I can see that, okay, I like this stuff, teaching stuff. And then we had the skill to back it,

the capabilities to back it. So that was cool to see. And you come back from that deployment, did you go into training cell at Team One? I did. Yeah, I went to training cell for a little bit, and then I became a sniper instructor and did that. That was 97.

Now would you do that sniper instructor like TAD? You just like they'd group you guys together in four months. They just said, hey, we got a sniper course going on. You're in training cell. Your sniper, they want you. Yeah. Like I remember you being in training cell, but I don't remember you being like I taught, kind of did everything because I was like, you know,

didn't care about anything else. So I was like, oh, we'll teach CQC. We'll go teach freaking diving. But you were out there. The one thing I didn't teach because I wasn't a sniper As I never went to teach any sniper courses obviously Yeah It was short time in training cell

Because then I left for the next unit In 97 So you head out to the next unit You get out there Selections is another Very difficult Challenge It was good

It was like it was kind of like buds But it was just more advanced You know It was just like big boy stuff and they knew what they're doing. So they had certain ways. It was like the basics. And I won't get too much into it,

but it's just like if you didn't know the basics, like they broke every, like for CQC, like most of the guys that failed were RSOs because they already had a way of doing things. So you had to like forget all that stuff. So my advantage was like I didn't really know a whole lot, you know. So I just listened to them and like did the walking thing,

walking, walking. And then two weeks later things are speeding up, you know. So. And then next thing, you know you're running. And if you didn't have the basics, how they wanted it, and then it was over.

And the good thing is, so out there at this time, there was actually work to be done, like over in Bosnia. Yeah. And did you get on some of those operations? I got on two deployments over there, which was good.

It was basically Piffwick stuff for the first one. That's what personnel indicted for war crimes. Yeah. So these are people that doing war crimes over there in that war zone. And once the war kind of ended, they had to go back and capture all these war criminals. Right. And then so you did two of those deployments.

What was the Optumpo like? Back home, it was slow, but over there. So you would only get a couple guys that would go during a certain time in your training. And so they get like maybe four or five guys that go. Or once the war kicked off. then we had a whole troop go over there because then it was like not only Piffwicks, it was also like terrorists that were working out there

with NGOs, funding money and things like that. And that was cool. So basically when you go over there, it was just a low-vis type thing. You're wearing the clothing that they're wearing, just taking photos, documenting, tracking, building up a target portfolio on the guys that you're looking at. And eventually you're going to nap them and roll them up.

Yeah. And you do those low-vis type things? Yeah, so we never nabbed anybody. We turned it over to the big dogs FBI. Yeah. And they actually, they grabbed one of the guys that we had tracked for them back in Chicago. So they were just, they didn't want to do it over there because they knew that he was tied to all these different NGOs where the funding money. And one of them was Chicago, and that's when they grabbed him.

Sure. Okay. And then once, where are you at September 11th? I was training FBI at the command. No kidding. Yeah. So we're doing just QC and then one of the guys came in and goes, hey man, planes just at the towers. And at first I was like, plane in the tower, like a small plane.

Like I didn't understand. And then they left because they're from D.C. They took off. And that's when, or I think of the second. plane hit they took off and then that's okay that's definitely deliberate and that's two airliners so when that started a lot of guys were thinking oh yeah there's going to be a deployment or two and then it's going to be over I'm like oh no a lot of moving parts on this one yeah well I thought the same thing I was I was actually in college because I did the CMA natural program so then I had to once I

did a couple deployments I had to go to college and so I was now in college and I called the Detailer who I had worked for and who was a friend of mine an awesome guy and I was like, hey, sir, like Just send me back to a team. I'll go to college when I'm older. I'll do online courses or whatever Yeah, uh, I don't want to miss this and he's like, hey, janko, this is going to last for a long time. And of course, I didn't really believe him. Yeah. And the other thing that he told me, he actually told me this like a couple years ago. Like, I'd be like, oh yeah, I called him and told him I wanted to go every freaking guy called him. Like every seal that wasn't at a seal team. was like, hey, sir, please give me orders to a seal team. That was every guy. So that's the kind of guys, you know, that's, of course, of course. Yeah.

You know, that's, of course, every guy that's not at a seal team is like, get me to a damn seal team now. And I think everyone's thinking, otherwise we're going to miss it, you know, because if you looked at Grenada, if you looked at Panama, too quick. If you looked at the first Gulf War, it was like, if you weren't lucky enough to be in the right time, in the right platoon, at the right place,

it was like, you're just going to watch it. be over in 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, maybe a week at the most. And everyone, I mean, we all just thought, well, it's going to be over quick. Yeah. Boy, were we wrong, huh? So what, so when did you actually get, uh, overseas? Uh, the first time was, uh, uh, right after, like in early 2002 January. Okay. And that was just an advance just to check it out. because we're getting ready to deploy. So I went over with like four other guys from my team. And we checked it out.

And then we came back and then we deployed in 2002. And what was that? What was the like op tempo like in the mission set? It was looking at. I think a lot of people thought that was just going to end pretty quick. A lot of, so I was with a sniper team and I had some awesome leadership. So during peace, we were training really hard. Like if we did cold weather training, we're actually like making snow caves and packing our rucks like you're supposed to, like taping up all the, you know, the one inch and understanding that you don't want to just dump your rock out to find something.

You know, that winter warfare thing on the East Coast, like, I know team two, when we were geographically located, and team two was Europe, and they had some dudes that were freaking all in on the winter warfare activities. You get in the Norwegians. Hell, yeah. You know, those guys telling it how it is, making sure that you did things right. So that was cool. And also we had guys that were just like wrecky guys that just understood even in the jungle or woodland that you have to have your ruck packed right. You know, and you could compartmentalize. And, I mean, we came up with that one with the top pouch you could undo and put it around your waist for, you know,

so you could go off for, you know, 12 hours and not have to take your whole ruck, things like that. So it was good. that deployment was good because we already had those skills so we weren't walking we're we're just we were walking uh but at least we were walking as opposed to crawl walk run you mean yeah that type of yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because i saw some other um um units that were out there and they're like crawling and it was like they didn't have the rug idea because you're out there for a long time and those mountains are killer you know it's like yosemite um but you're not using trails You know, so they had trails and stuff, but if you get off that goat trail, you're done.

I mean, like, it's brutal. And those mountains separate other countries like Pakistan, you know, so you walk. And then they don't understand where their line is. So you're in Pakistan. They don't get it. So we had to abide by the rules, and they don't. But it was good. It was good to be up in those mountains up north, northeast.

and then even interior because that's where those guys were up there with their camps and regrouping and doing their stuff and and we so as part of a recie element where you were doing primarily recie yeah and then how so how long was that like into 2003 so yeah 200 that deployment and then we deployed again 2003 um 2004 When did you go to Iraq for the first time? 2003 for the invasion. Oh, so you're there for the push-up. Yeah.

How was that? That was good. I mean, we had, I mean, talk about having every single asset you need it. I mean, there was one operation we did were, uh, it was a deep penetration because, you know, Iraq wasn't secure. We left from, um, a different country. And we flew in our helos. And, uh, we, they said that they had, uh, three aircraft. per guy.

That's how many aircraft were in there. Damn, dude. Overseas. Because there's a big deal. They're shooting like those damn missiles at us. You know,

I remember we're refueling because there's a long insert and seeing like a telephone pole go past it. You know, so they definitely had their defenses up and it was good to have all those aircraft

because you're taking out targets as we're moving in. Three aircraft per man. That's really crazy. Yeah. And that was on the push up that that that you had all that going on yeah yeah yeah and then we ended up flying into bagdad once got semi-secure and then we start working out of bagdad and out of bagdad we guys doing like kind of hits

does d a type hits yeah yeah we're just knocking out like whatever we had like a list of guys that we need to find and capture and then we're just knocking them out just with other units yeah just bringing them down finding out where they're at yeah i got there in in o3 and that's exactly what it was it was like You know, one of our jokes was saying Baghdad Swat. Yeah. Like load up the trucks and we'll go freaking hit that target. And we'll do it the next night. We'll do it the next night.

It was just like pretty straightforward. And at the same time, super cool. Because it is like the ops would take like an hour. Yeah. You know? And we had good intel coming in, relatively good intel. And so we didn't hit a lot of dry holes. Like most of the time we'd kind of get who you're going after.

So it was like, you know, pretty good percentage of success. There was a plethora of targets. Yeah. And the enemy was, they weren't like organized, you know, they were still doing kind of dumb things. Yeah. That would, you know, in an environment like that, they're not, if they're not adapting, they're just getting rolled up. And so you're getting rid of the, the easy target. It's basically.

Yeah. Here's something for you because I saw, I thought my opinion was they made a huge mistake. So when we took over that country, they had a standing army. Oh, yeah. And they took the generals and the top leadership and they put them in jail or what do they did with them. And then they just had. And then they disbanded the army pretty much.

The whole bath is part of, yeah. That was a huge, huge mistake. Yeah. And it's like, hey, you had a standing army. Just like, you know, get them on your side. Pay them. Because now they had no jobs, no nothing. And then there's like, fuck these Americans.

Yep. You know? No, that's probably one of the biggest blunders and lessons learned. Yeah. You know, these are so, I mean, even a normal soldier, they're like, okay, cool. Like, am I getting paid? Yeah. Cool.

You want me to face this direction? I'll face that direction. Oh, you want to face the other direction? You go, okay, I'll face that direction. Like, give me my money. Let me take care of my family. And it's not like they're going to. be able to be gainfully employed

if you fire 100,000 or 200,000 people, like, what are they going to do? I'll tell you what they're going to do. They're going to get paid by some insurgent to put an ID in the street or shoot a mortar or shoot an RPG. Yeah, that was not good. And I think that's pretty universal

that that was a mistake. Yeah. But I did, you know, did you get to see like the people welcoming you with American flags, all that stuff? Dude, they loved us. Yeah. And I felt bad because sometimes we had to bust in their house to look for something or somebody.

And they're just like, have a tray of fruit, you know, to give to us. Hey, we understand, you know, we understand you have to do this. You know, I felt bad for them. Yeah. But they're super friendly because they wanted, you know, that regime out. And they saw us as the saviors and they want their country back. Yeah. Yeah.

Boy. It's one of those reasons. It's one of those things where I think that. as Americans, and especially as our senior leadership in America, and by senior, I mean like the senior leadership at the time, looking at the situation and thinking that everything is going to go the way we want it to go. And that's the thing with war is, it is one thing I can guarantee you about wars,

things are not going to go the way you think they're going to go. And if you think you're going to roll in there, and because they're waving American flags when you get there, they're going to keep waving those American flags. It's like, well, not if you do, not if you fire 200,000 people, in their army. I don't even know what the number is. It's hundreds of thousands of people. And then, look, we can kick in your door tonight and you'll give us fruit.

But if another unit kicks in our door two nights later and then another unit kicks on our door four nights later, eventually we're not giving you fruit anymore. Eventually, we're just pissed. And then not to mention, what if you hurt somebody? You know, what if someone gets injured by a breach? What if you destroy their car? And then what happens is Al Jigera shows up with cameras. and they record or they record,

oh, look what happened to this family. Look what happened to it. And it's just little by little that mob mentality, the tide turns. Yeah. So you're there in the push-up. And then is it, do you go to a cycle of going to Iraq or do you start bouncing back and forth

between Iraq and Afghanistan? We did both for a while. So we got back from Iraq and then it was like only a couple months where we went back to Afghanistan. And what are you like, team leader at this point or are you still just a shoot? I was a sniper team leader. Okay. Yeah so and then The recke guys had a lot of experience up in the mountains was paid off because we were also the point men for the

the troops and the teams and stuff like that so back to Afghanistan I think there was like third time now you know by then or maybe second going on my third and the cool thing was that we're just the cycle was quick so we got a lot of experience over there. Like we'd come back, train, go back over, and we see the same people, same interpreters, same personalities. We just pick up where we left off. So that was good for us to have that experience. Yeah, that quick timeline, I think has some advantages to it because, you know, I think the ideal way to fight a war is the way they fought World War II. Yeah, you're there for the duration. You're there until we win. I think that that cycle, of hey, you're gonna be gone for like,

you're gonna be there for three, four months, come home for a short period of time, go back for three, four months. And it's sort of is, I think that's better than, all right, you're gonna go for a year, but then you're not gonna go back for three years, four years. And that I think is, I think the way we did that,

the way the military at large did that was not the best, not the best way to do it. I think either shorter, where you're, even though you're going home sometimes, you still feel and you still have continuity. Yeah. Because I think when you start going six months, when you start going home for a year, year and a half,

the continuity's gone. It's just gone. And then you have to relearn new tactics, new procedures that the enemy's using. Yeah. Everything changes, you know. So you're back to a, it's like your first deployment again. Right.

And so I think you've got to make the home time frame short enough that when you go back again, it's not like you're having to relearn and you're on a totally different deployment. Yeah. And obviously, guys are going to get burned out of doing that. And then you go, cool, cool. You're done for, you send them to shore duty or whatever, send them to three years. Let them take some real legit downtime to decompress.

But man, when you're switched on, stay on. And keep it rocking. It's true. You can see even the leadership, the senior generals and admirals out there, they switch out. and then the next guy comes in, he's doing his own twist on something. But if you had the same guy out there, and if he fucks up, you, you know, whatever, you get a new guy in there that could get the job done. But the whole thing is to end the war, not just to have it prolonged.

And then learning new lessons and somebody else, oh, I think I know how to do it. And then they try it and it fails, you know, and then they got another guy come out. Well, I'm going to do this thing. But if you had the same guy out there, it's like, yeah, I tried these two things and it failed. Now I'm going to do this one. And I'm seeing my mistakes. I'm getting experience from dealing with these people out here, you know, and I think we could do this efficiently.

Yeah, and I think that when you look at the fall of Afghanistan, I think one of the many contributing factors is, like, if echoes out there and he's training up some local forces, he says he trained him up to a level four. Yeah. And then you get them. And look, those guys aren't getting any better. But what do you say?

You go, oh, I'm Jim, and I train them up. Now they're level five. And by the time it gets to me, I'm like, well, I'm going to do better than Jim. I got to prove that I did a great job too. So now I'm trained them to a level six. And you do that for, and by the way, they're still level three. Because Echo is lying. You were lying and I lied all to get our promotion, all to look good.

So we all lied. And the Afghans weren't any better. And that basically happened for 20 years. Yeah. And look what happened at the end of it. Oh, oh, the Afghans are good. You remember, what was it? Two or three weeks before the pull out.

They're like, oh, they're up and they're ready to. Yeah. That was just based on lies and lies. and lies and lies instead of somebody just saying, wait a second. And everybody on the ground was like, no, no, no, no, this isn't good. This is not good. I mean, I said that in Iraq, when we left Iraq,

it's like, hold no, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. The Iraqis have gotten better, but they're not ready to hold down the fort. They might hold it down for a little while, but they're not ready. And the politics took over. Yeah. Freaking, yeah, that's horrible.

So you're doing now just back to back to back cycles coming home, training and and then going back on deployment now we are you in a sniper element this whole time yeah i switched over um took basically uh a platoon size uh group and that was cool because then that was like an assault type group where i also had a sniper team and assault teams and stuff like that that was great and you're you're getting experienced um how's it how's the uh casualty rate at this point for you? I would say there was mostly wounds, you know, and that's, and I say that mostly wounds because

we did have some deaths, but like at the same time, we were quick to learn from, the feedback was good. And that's one thing I didn't like about, like, when I was in the CEO team, just like, finding out what happened, you know, getting to AARs, you know, from like Team 3 or. team two it was hard to get you know so where I was at there was like a little it was still hard to get from different teams that were out there but like with the snipers it was easy because we had huge we had our same building and we just talk about it and we could get back we could email them and stuff like that and find out so we could prep training for okay this is what they're doing

out there now so we could get there a little bit of higher speed but yeah so there was some casualties and then I won't get in too much, but like, yeah, we took some heavies in Iraq and then, but, you know, we were going after some heavy hitters too. When you came out to Ramadi in 2006 and what was it that, I mean, obviously you guys knew that we were killing a lot of bad guys. What was it that? How did you end up coming out? I forget.

Good question. So I was the operations guy. So I wasn't really, didn't need to deploy, but I liked deploying. So I knew your platoon chief. Tony. It's a big Tony. Yeah. So I did a platoon with them at one and learned a lot from him.

Big land warfare guy. Oh, yeah. So, and I love. The Nylander. Yeah. So we came, I did a visit for you guys. And I brought my sniper rifle because I was like, good call. I was like, hey, I know I'm not chief, but like,

You know, so I told my leadership, I said, hey, so we as a unit do not have urban sniping. We got rural, but we don't have any urban. You know, can I stay here and just learn from these guys? Because they're doing urban. You know, why wouldn't I? And as long as they allow me, can we do that? And so that's what my pitch was. And they're like, yeah, I just talk to Jocco and Tony.

You know, so that's how I got in. I was like, cool. Yeah, and I always had a relatively Open Door policy for team guys Especially, I mean, if I know him, that's a lot different But I always tried to in Ramadi It wasn't quite as much in Baghdad when I was in Baghdad It was like if you showed up and you were a seal

We'd get you on you know, we get you to do an external security or something like that I did have that bite me in the ass one time where we took out a guy and he ended up like opening He was trying to shoot out a light but he didn't tell anyone so we're like taking out a target and all of a sudden there's shots fired and he didn't tell anyone he's going to shoot and then when you know we're all going hey who's shooting didn't say anything it wasn't until afterwards in the debrief it's like hey because we're now you know we're spinning up we got the AC 130 we're trying to figure out what that was going on yeah and it was this dude trying to shoot out of light so we tightened up our policies after that and like okay here's the rules got to do a walk through got to get with the chief like all that stuff yeah but uh romadi we were tighter because it was just way more dangerous to do it But you, you know, coming from your command and just knowing me and Tony was like, oh, go get some. Yeah. That was good. It was a good experience for me.

Did you, like, was it surprising to you how target rich that environment was? A little bit. I think I knew it was target rich, but it was cool that you guys put yourself right in the center of or on that corner, like where you guys drove. out and hung out. That was cool to be there, you know, that a platoon. Just and then you just walk out the door, you know, patrol down the street or take a, go at night and take a building, you know. And it was good to see like old map studies of finding, okay, which building is the highest in this town, you know, and what can we get to and what are we actually trying to do if we take this building? Can we even see the other building that we were trying to observe or the structure? So I like that.

That was cool to see the old school planning, not just walking out there and just taking a building. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, Tony was totally fired up for that, you know, like, let's get out the matter. And then Chris, Chris Kyle obviously was like full on committed to where can we position ourselves where we're going to have the most impact and kill the most enemy. And it was interesting I had the brigade commander on here, General McFarland. And he would like the same, you know, here his brigade. is they're killing all these enemy fighters. And like the meth is going, hey, how are you killing all these people?

General McFarone's like, come out here. Yeah. Come and see. And that was my answer at the same time. Every time people are like, how are you killing so many people? It's like, come on out. Come on, come and have a look. You got to stick your neck out a little bit.

You got to be in there. Yeah. My regret was that I brought my 300 win mag. Yeah, you wanted that SR. No, no. I wanted my 5, 5, 5, 6. Oh, okay. And only because, like, I had the round that could drop people.

But, like, the kickback. So the 300 winemake, when I shot, like, it took so long to get my scope back on the target like I would miss the second one. Yeah. But, like, the 5, 5, 5, 6, it could be like tink, tink, you know. So that was my only regret. But it was good experience. I was just rocking with a... Well, like you said, that's a good lesson learned for, like, oh, if you're in an urban environment, there's going to be more targets.

It's going to be... You can need to take quicker shot. Yeah. I mean, of course, the 300 windmage, you got the distance, which, you know, Kyle definitely shown on that one, you know. For me, I think my shots were only like 80 to 120. I think I had a 220 yard shot, but they're pretty close. Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to Laif, you know, that you were coming on and he was like, oh, yeah, he's like, he was telling me about that chapter that I read in the opening of this. He's like, I think, he's like, I think Jim got four of those. He was all fired up. Yeah. And it was definitely, you know, we were doing things that made a lot of sense to us. But, you know, I found out afterwards, people would be like, why are you going out in the daytime? I was like, hey, wait, what do you mean? Why are we going out in the daytime? It's like, number one, we have Iraqi soldiers with us.

They don't have night vision goggles. Number two, we're going to go out in the nighttime and we're going to get in a position where we're going to stay. And that's when the enemy is going to come out because the enemy didn't come out very much. I think we probably killed less than five guys in the daytime. Um, or sorry, in the nighttime. Yeah. Almost everybody was that's when the enemy would come out and fight. They knew we owned it the night and they didn't want to come out.

Yeah. I like what you guys did. You guys went out in the night to take the building. Mm-hmm. And then you're there first light. Mm-hmm. You know? And then you're, and then that one was the mosque right next door was like yelling,

screaming out like, hey, Americans are here. So we got your guns. We got them, you know. And then they came. Yeah, they would definitely come. And I remember one op that you guys did. You guys went out because an army tank got blown up. Yeah.

And when an army, uh, Brad, or sorry, it was an M1 got blown up. And so then it takes you have to send an M88 wrecker out there to drag the thing back to base. But for, and I think on that particular operation, when that tank got blown up, the, I think it was the driver got out, stepped down off the tank as they exited the tank. and he was killed by another ID. And then the Army requested, hey, can you guys like watch this thing? And I think that's when you were like, I'll go too. So you got down there and just to see how the enemy was effective.

Like they figured out how to burn. They figured how to set fire to those tanks. Yeah. Which was impressive. Yeah. I think you also did a bit. You also did like a daytime patrol with the boys, didn't you? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. big IAD, big gunfight. Big gun fight, yeah. They, I think they hit us with PKs on that one. And the funniest thing was like, you know, I was, you know, with you guys on the, we're doing like a center peel. And I was running back. And then the rackies were behind us, right?

And I ran it back and I was like, man, we only got like all seals up here. And I came back thinking I was going to go down the long line. and all the rackage were on a corner like kind of laying up in the corner I'm like oh my god okay it's just us it's just us man yeah their reactive contact was not exactly up to uh yeah the standard um one one thing that was so so you got done there and you kind of reported up your chain of command um and like uh basically correct me if I'm wrong you said like I don't think that we that your unit should be doing that operation and or something along those lines because like maybe a week later my skipper calls me up and he's like hey like what's what what's what's this all about and I was like what's what's what's

what's what's what you had Jim Foreman out there he went on some ops with you guys and and like he said you guys don't have any air support I was like sir we don't have any air support like there's do helicopters can't fly here because they'll get shot down and AC130 isn't going to fly during the day so no we don't have any air support he's like we are you know you got there's this massive ID threat and I was like well sure yes there is a massive ID threat that's why we do mostly foot patrols like we did foot patrols do get hit with a lot less IDs that's why we're doing he's like well he's like he's these aren't strategic targets that you guys are killing out there and I was like no sir these aren't strategic we're not shooting

Osama bin Laden or Zarqawi out here we're but we are having a strategic impact with helping the conventional units win this. This is a very strategic battle, and we're certainly implementing it or we're assisting in it. And then there's always this thing about supporting conventional units and Echo Charles for your information.

There's two different types when you go out in the field. You can either be the supported element, which means you're the one that's like, for lack of a better word, you're the senior one or you can be the supporting element, which means you're the junior one. And sometimes people get really concerned about that. Because if I'm supporting you Echo

and you decide to do something I don't like, well, that's kind of like, oh, well, that's what we're doing. And so it has, and actually, if you look at the history of NSW, if you look at the history of special operations, there has been times where that has been terrible. So I'm a special operations unit. I'm working for you, Echo, and you go,

oh, you were working for me? Cool. Go charge that machine gun. And we end up losing a bunch of guys and it doesn't work out well and that can be really bad So people are very hesitant for to sign up to be the supporting unit and so you know my boss was kind of like well you guys are the supporting unit and I was like well sir Yeah We are and I said and guess who is supporting us the conventionals they are absolutely like all of our closer All of our fire support is coming from them with their

tanks and Bradley's, all of our QRF is coming for them, and all of our Kazavak is coming for them. So even though we're, quote, the supporting unit, it's fine. Like, it's not, and by the way, they completely listened to what we had to say. It wasn't like they were like, no, shut up and go do this. No, they're like, oh, you don't think that's a good idea? Cool. What do you think is a good idea? So they had a totally open mind. And the final thing, which is like, this is this the most dangerous thing that NSW has done? And I was like, well, I don't know if it's the most dangerous thing that NSW is done, but I said, sir, this is freaking dangerous.

I'd like, go look at the casualty reports. There's an American wounded or killed every single day here, and we're out there. So is this dangerous? Yes, it absolutely is, but the, the conventionals are out there every single day, and we're going to support them. And so that's what it was. And thankfully, I had a great relationship with my skipper, and I talked him through it. And by the way, my skipper had to approve all of our operations.

And just about every operation that we did had to get run through the Siege of Sotif as well. And the Siege of Sotif was great. They supported everything that we were doing. And so ultimately it was, you know, there was like a little bit of a firestorm for a little bit. And but, you know, once we talk through it, it was all good. Yeah. I think the biggest thing was like we did things different and we have a lot of assets and we try to I take out the key players

and you guys were doing things differently that I did not what I didn't want to do was like we just always say hey this rooster environment over there let's just take our squad and take over you know because then you guys would be under us and this is your playpen so I

appreciate being out there and seeing what was going on that was awesome and then also I was like a free agent and the last thing I want to do is like pull you know because I had a relationship with you guys to pull 30 dudes or 40 whatever over to you guys

and then what the fuck. I had that happen to me where another unit person from a different unit came over to observe and then next you know they got like 20 guys this is during the invasion and then they're like hey we like what you got we want your not only do we want

they want our AO but they also want our sleeping quarters you know and we're like what? Now we got problems. I was like an E5. I was like, wait, what? And I was like looking back to my senior chief. I'm like, is he serious?

You know, it's like, so not that that would happen like that, but I'm just saying we had a different mission. Our stuff was at night. We go in at night. We take care of at night and we come back before the day. In Afghanistan, sometimes we go out on the day and do the right thing. But like you guys had a totally different mission set. And mixing the two might not have been the best thing.

Yeah. if we were really lucky to, like, we happen to have 13 snipers in our task unit, which was not normal. You know, normally, maybe you have, maybe you have two per platoon, maybe three per platoon, you know, so you're up to like six, maybe,

but we had 13. Like, we could really lock some stuff down. But it was weird, too, because, like, there's, like, there was some kind of, uh, like there was, like, people that just said that you said that we were, like operating outside the ROE, that we were killing women and children, that we were going crazy, taking it like unnecessary risk.

It was, it was, there was like a rumor that the seals, the Romadi snipers got shut down because of, you know, all this rule breaking. And it's just like, no, actually, none of that is even remotely true. We did operations from the day we got there until the day we got there until the day we We left sniper operations and we turned over to sniper operations to the guys from team five that took our place and they rolled right into it. Yeah, you have a hater and that person used me to accuse you of things. He said that I was sent there to report on you. I'm like, dude, I would never do that.

I want to get experience. I want to roll with you guys. I wouldn't be there as observing, critiquing. And I told the guy, I go, hey, I got three shots off that, three or four shots off that. And we were surrounded. it. I got wounded with those guys, you know, which was like, how could you say that I was every report war crimes? So my point is that somebody does not like you. I never said those things. And I was in the mix with you guys, my brothers. Like I said, I got wounded on that trip

with you guys. I was only there for like maybe less than a week. You know, we did two, three ops, which were awesome. And I got some experience finally on that. urban stuff and I took it back to the command with the I won't mention the technique but the techniques that you guys used were good to go and it bugged me that somebody was using me and they also didn't they used my name but they didn't use their name yeah yeah and you know I remember I first heard that and I just like sent you an email I was like hey bro you know but I didn't need this and you're like oh no I didn't say any of that I was like okay cool I'm just making sure that we're all good like because this is kind of crazy and you're like yeah dude some you're like you got some haters

I'm like okay man yeah the biggest thing I had was that we just do things differently yeah and it's not there's a thousand ways to do something right and it doesn't uh mean that they're wrong um we just were like very strategic target um assets nighttime in and out yeah not the daytime remain over day stuff for for that deployment in the daytime Completely embedded with like conventional units in the staying within like a little tiny city. You know, it's just it's just a different a different gig, but yeah, and that's the other thing is like how tightly controlled the city was and how we have Iraqi soldiers with us. There's Iraqi police out in the city. There's shakes out in the city. The battalion commanders and brigade commanders are meeting with the shakes. Like you can't just go out there and kill people. You will it just you literally cannot do it. You will get reported. I mean, they had to work in hospital, right? Yeah.

They had a working hospital in Ramadi. So it's not like it was the Wild Wild West, but it wasn't as the Wild West where you can just do whatever nobody report you. Yeah, the amount of oversight that we had, like I said, my commanding officer, the Siege of commander, not to mention the entire conventional side. Like you can't roll into some battalion commander's battle space and just do what you want to do. like it there's there's just no possible way that that could happen so that's why I've never worried too much like these this craziness is all just like okay um it's we know the truth and and that that is what it is uh but it was awesome seeing out there and is awesome just just anytime you link up with like some of your people you know from back in the day and now you can

make things happen it's very cool um and we So we kept operating and of course you kept operating too. You kept getting after it. You went back and now you're, what happens after that deployment? What's next on the agenda? Next was back to Afghanistan running my platoon size guys. And I did Afghanistan and then I went back to Iraq for my second platoon size leadership role. And that when you went back in 2008, that was like.

like a that was sort of the hard deployment for you yeah that was a rough one yeah and and that op tempo was up and you're going against some pretty hardened targets by this time you know the the enemy like we were joking about earlier you know the enemy in 2003 2004 there was a lot of low hanging fruit and just like we were learning but they were learning too and and they were getting smarter they were getting better they started doing the vehicle born iEDs the iED threat just got out of control in 2006, 2005, 2006, by 2007, 2008. Now they're countering RTTPs. This is when a lot of the houseborne IEDs, like it got gnarly for you guys on that deployment.

Yeah, yeah, it was a good deployment because we're, the guys were all on board with what we're doing. We're just hitting hard dudes, not just guys that were just mid-level management. We're going after the top dogs making a difference. those guys were a suicide network blowing up, you know, handicapped, putting bombs on handicapped kids and sending them into a store and blowing it up, killing 90, 80 people. So those are the targets we're going after, those guys. And they were well protected.

So it wasn't just like, hey, they had one bodyguard. It was like they had 10, 15 bodyguards throughout into multiple buildings and stuff like that. So we planned pretty good. and we were taking them out, and they were like, hey, we're getting tired of these guys. They don't have so many that just whittled them down, and then they'll probably go home. And they tried to do that.

Luckily, we stayed with it and got the job done. But it was a bloody one. And you lost guys on that deployment? Three guys, yeah, three guys, two dogs. I think I had 17 Purple Hearts total. but I called I had to get some reinforcements back from home to make up for some guys

and my head the whole command volunteering I grabbed I think I grabbed five guys that I knew I go okay I just want I know I want to know them I want to know who they are I want to have fought with them before

because I'd rather have five than 10 or 20 that I'm not sure about even though they're all good guys I just want to be very selective on this one like you were in Ramadi yeah it's such an awesome

statement about what seals are like when you've got a unit that has taken heavy casualties and you need replacements and you have every guy putting their name on the list that's like just

that's what it's all about right there you know they want to go and they want to get in the fight they want to avenge their brothers and they want to do the job and they want to help each other out and that's just it's just freaking awesome to hear

um how did how are you doing like now you're just I don't know 10 deployments deep or something like that what what's your uh how's your like personal life going at this point are you married at this point you got kids married three kids I have yeah that's what happens we've been talking for an hour and a half and we didn't mention any of that

that's what happened yeah freaking team guys are married to the teams yeah yeah uh three kids and married and we're doing good and things start getting a little bit heavier after more and more deployments and then I end up retiring in 2018 and then shortly after divorce and then managing the kid's stuff but but during this time period like 2009 2008-2009 your your wife at the time is just solid gotten through it yeah Solid. Yeah, there's something, you know, I know my wife, like when I was losing guys and my wife

is going to the funerals, you know, and that is, and she's going to visit my wounded guys in the hospital. And I think, I think that's a huge reality check on the home front. Like, it's one thing to see, oh, there's people getting hurt or killed overseas. And, but it's never, you know, it's not my, not my husband. It's not happening to my husband or his team. Right. It's like now all of a sudden, oh, it is.

It is happening to my husband's unit. And I think that was a huge reality check for my wife. And my wife, God bless her, like she never asked me about anything. She's like, she didn't, I bet she didn't ask me three questions in my time that I was married with her about work. And probably two of them were like, like are you going to be home this weekend or do you have to work? And I was like, I will, I'll be home or not home. But you know what I mean?

Like my wife was never wanting to know about anything. She was like, you go, you know, I get it, you do your thing. But man, going to, going to guys' funerals was a definite reality check. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Are you, so are you staying, you're at this command now five, seven, seven. 10, 11, 12 straight years at this point.

Yeah. How, do you get any downtime? Not really. That was one of my, not complaints, but like, like, it's a good thing. You're at war and you're being used, right? But after a while, it would be good to have like, hey, this month, just stay home, you know, just take care of family and take care of yourself and show back up 30 days from now. But we couldn't, we didn't afford to do that.

So we just had to keep going. But I think it burnt some guys. Yeah. And are you, now you're getting, you're obviously, you're promoting. And at some point you take over selection. Is that right? Is that you made Master Chief? Yeah.

And how was it? I know that for me, I had a, I always feel like one of the luckiest things that I got was, uh, as an E5 at Steel Team 1, I went into training cell. And like I said earlier, like, I thought everything I could, you know, every trip I could go on, I go on, whether it was CQB at the time, CQB, CQC now, but Mount, Land Warfare, comms. I did ran the dive course, like everything that I could do is like, I'm in.

And even teaching, we taught STT to the young officers. And so it was like, oh, now you're like sitting and you're watching and you teach it and then you watch it and then you teach it and you watch it and you do it. You're like, oh, let me show you how it's done. And I learned so much by being an instructor. Is that the same thing that you felt? Yeah, it was good because you're getting guys from different, you know,

platoons, basically. And everything's based off the basics, but there's also some idiosyncrasies that they do differently, right? So now you're seeing multiple ways to just do something right. And so you're like, okay, that's cool. I never saw it like that. As long as you're getting the job. job done, it doesn't matter.

You're not just going, hey, this is my playbook and this is why I do every time, and that sucks. You want to have like a couple plays in your playbook. So that was good. And then like you said, like you're seeing it done over and over and over again and you just become that much better. You're more reactive. You could see where an issue is about to happen and be there or stop it before it happens.

And then you're just like in tune. You're like in flow state for some really, like the toughest thing we do is for all of us, is a CQC live fire, right? Even with multiple entries, you know, where you try not to enter on other people, but it happens all the time. So you had to be on your toes as a cadre. And then you end up, you know, being,

being the CMC of some elements. Yep. Yeah. And how is that leadership? It was good, from a leadership perspective. Talk us about leadership now that you're in charge of hundreds of, people. Yeah. So I liked that my understanding of like a master chief CEO is like they're going be probably like top five or top 10 shots, you know, that they're still bringing it. Not like

they're sitting behind their desk, you know, with a gut and they're not doing anymore, you know, so I always thought, okay, that's how you should be. You should be like you should be. I saw a t-shirt the other guy, your guy had at the teams and said no fat team guys. Yeah. I'm just, When you start talking about a team guy with a gut, I'm like, all right, I got to break this up. So yes, that is not what you're supposed to be. No fat team guys. Exactly. And definitely no fat master chiefs.

Come on. Yeah. I mean, you got to like lead by example, right, especially if you're pushing the, you know, the mental toughness, the mental mindset. And then you're sitting back there, you know, not doing the training. So the other thing is like you got to be out there doing the training. Like so I can't be at a two week breaching course or two week sniper course or two week shooting course. but I could be there for two days, you know. And part of it is to see the new technology, like the snipers.

Because, you know, like they're going to come some request to get gear. You know, it's going to be like thousands of dollars. And it could just be something, hey, we want everybody with new boots. And then, you know, usually it's the XO that sign, and they're running past a master's what do you think about this? I'm like, dude, these got new boots last week, whatever it is. But just like technology is like, hey, we already have GPSes, but, tell me why we want these ones.

It's like, okay, we want these ones because it does this, that, and this. Okay, well, that sounds like for our lead jumpers and our rakey guys. So get 10 of them instead of like 40 or 50 or whatever it is. So then you could make those calls. But if you don't know, and the worst thing is that you just deny it because you don't understand it because you're a dinosaur and you're like, hey, why do we need GPS? I used my compass, you know. That's how we did it.

You know, so you have to be in the game. you have to be present. You have to just a little bit. Even just walking around your team room just to see, knowing the guy's names is a huge difference. So it's like building those relationships, even a small bit is worth it. And you also went to trade at for a while, right?

I did. I did trade at twice. And how do you like going to trade at? I loved it. Yeah, it was good. It was good to see, the first time I went down there I noticed like

you know in selection we're seeing like some of the bases was getting dropped and then when I went to trade it I go okay this is where it's at it was like the one that the shift break punch thing the instead of just saying flank left because the whole idea is like if I if you tell me hey Jim flank left

there's a lot of freedom for me you can figure it out yeah and the shift break punch was created I understand why it was created it was for safety. You know, more control so nobody would get shot or there's less leadership in it, you know. Like, you're telling me to do something, but I had to shift along this line. And then when I cross the line, it's break.

And then everybody shifts fire, but it's way too soon. Like, I'm not even, I want you still firing at that target until I get to this area. And then there's always choreographed to, I'd always punch or assault through. But what if I get, what if I get there? There's a river or, you know, I get some high ground. I got the perfect ground. I want you to salt through. So there's no decision making in that call,

shift break punch. Whereas flank, that's all you decide when you get there. So that's when I came back to the West Coast and talked to Tony, who was also at trade at one. And I talked to him about changing that call back. And he agreed.

So that was, and the cool thing about Tony, he has like tons of influence. He's like the legend, right? So, and that's, I went right for the juggler. I didn't try to tell like a CEO or a master chief to get this thing changed. I went to tone. Ground level.

Yeah. Tony, do you agree? And we had a couple beers and at his house and he's like, yeah, man, you're right. Just do it. And then I just left. I didn't have to do anything else. He made it happen on his end and it happened. So, you know, talking, having a guy like that with his respect he had and his status was, was great.

Tony Tony. Yeah. That's a so I was saying this earlier like I feel so lucky that I happen to go to training cell at SEAL Team 1

and then my last tour was at trade at and so like I got to do the same thing again which is like watch a platoon go through a training scenario

and win-lose or draw but you can watch what the leaders do and then the next night a different platoon is going through the same thing and it's all the same thing. and it's all the success and failures based on what the leaders do.

Yeah. And so that, just watching that, being from a detached position and being able to see what works and what doesn't work, such a blessing. And I feel super lucky that I was able to wrap up my career there. At some point, obviously 27 years, you decide you're going to call it. Yeah. Yeah. What was the deciding factor?

Was there a straw that broke the camels back? Yeah, a little bit. There's a lot of personal stuff in it. and just time to hang up the old boots. And then I did my final tour at Trade Again. And that was cool to run the training department. And then I finally, before I retired, I came up with a SOP book just to talk about the basics,

leadership, like everybody at every level, you're a leader, you know, but what are you responsible for? you know and was really tied into the platoon chief and the um the co o ic like that relationship you know because if that relationship is messed up it's like you know um it's a marriage right it's like your parents fighting all the time they have to uh you had to have some common ground and then also understand that hey uh the o ic does delve into the enlisted stuff and the um nCO does dive into the higher end stuff and there's like a mix of that and you need to understand that you don't just draw a line hey sir you don't go into this tactical stuff no he does and same vice versa so it was

good to have that um book out so people could understand what their roles and responsibilities were and it wasn't like a strict thing it was just like hey this is a guideline but we need to have something put out especially for the junior guys yeah yeah it's so often like how can you hold somebody accountable for doing a certain task if they don't know what that task is. Exactly. And how can you expect for a leader to step up and lead a certain portion of an operation if they don't even know that they're supposed to step up and lead that thing? Or how do you expect them to know that,

hey, they shouldn't actually go and do this other thing. They should focus on that when you didn't tell them to do it. So roles and responsibility is a huge way to mitigate a lot of problems. And like you said, this isn't roles and responsibilities written in stone with no leeway or flexibility at all. No, actually, it's the opposite. And I used to tell guys, you got to know your job, your lanes, but you also got to know one above you and one below you.

So like you said earlier, when you were a point man, if your machine gunner doesn't, it goes down, you need to be able to step up and take his role. And by the way, if your OIC is going to, you know, doesn't know which doesn't make a call in which way we're supposed to move away from this contact, if he's not making a call, you're going to have to make it. That's what being able to,

step up and do it. And your OIC, if your chief gets hit, needs to be able to step down and, like, get out of that immediate firefight. So, definitely, there's something to clarify. You mentioned on one of your podcast, it was right on the money. Like, if you're waiting to move up, but you're not training the guy below you, you ain't moving up. Nope.

And you're going to be stuck in that position, you know, like, their, uh, COLs naturally mentor, you know, it's just like that big brother thing. They bring you in and they want you to learn. and there's a passion behind it. And guys, I think that's what makes the teams great. It's like there's huge mentorship stuff and guys want to give back, even retired guys like from Vietnam or whatever.

They're always, to hear a story from them, you know, I remember in Buds, they brought an old crusty guy back. You might have known him. I don't know his name, but he was living on a sailboat. Yep. Yeah.

Butch McIntyre. Yes. So he came to the island during third phase and he told us some stories about Vietnam and like how he made a mistake once like on an ambush

on his first one he was a young guy and it was like a hasty ambush where he cut backwards and he went way so deep that the enemy couldn't see him but then he couldn't see that so the firefight happened

he's like I don't know what happened you know so on his next one he learned from that you know and it was like kind of powerful to understand that like hey you can't just hide way because you're scared, right? Because it's your first thing you're doing, right? And you should be scared.

But you also have to hang it out there a little bit. You have to see the target area, you know? And so you explain the next one way better. But like for us to hear that, it's like, okay, so he's made mistakes and he's learning. He's telling us this. You know, so in training, we make sure we can see the trail when we tuck it in, you know, for a hasty ambush. Yeah, those, those, uh,

lessons getting passed down and and like you said the the best lessons and even you take that butch telling you a a story he didn't tell you about when he was great he didn't tell you about when he was awesome he didn't tell you about when he kicked ass he tells you the main story that he wants to know is when he screwed up yeah and that's where so many lessons get learned and it's also sticks in your memory yeah um so you make the decision to retire yeah and uh you're wrapping up did you have a plan for what you're going to do in you retire? No, it came quick. And that kind of shocked me.

So retirement happened. I didn't really have a plan. And then the biggest thing for guys, I think for me at least, was like my purpose was like the teams and the mission. And then that goes away. And then you're kind of like, what the hell? You know, you don't have a purpose. And I didn't really understand that at the time. And I start picking up.

I still have like a bunch of jobs I'm doing. But you try and like recreate that purpose. you had and you can't. There's no way. So understanding that, like, okay, so take some time, take care of yourself and do things that you like because I always Roger enough for everything. Now, hey, can you do this? Can you do that?

I was like, yeah, I'll do it. Wait, this was on the civilian side? People asking you to do stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, whether it's like running a shooting course or talking about something or anything, you know, he can't come out this weekend to teach this shooting course. you know, saying yes to everything just to have some semblance of a purpose. Did you take any downtime at all?

No. Yeah, that was. And I was going through a divorce at that time too. So it was like hard to, you know, financially to do anything other than keep working. Yeah, I retired on a Friday and like Monday I was talking to a client about leadership. Like literally I took the weekend off kind of. kind of because I had prep. So yeah, you're still working.

It's just like nonstop, probably not the best move in the world. Was there anything that like really helped you go through the transition? Oh, yeah. I'll tell you. Like I got tied in with a therapist right before I retired and it was art therapy. And I can show you some paintings. So now that helped to actually process things. I even paint it an op, you know, that was significant.

And being able to do every brush stroke, it took four years to do this painting. I'll show you to you later. But it was significant because, like, the op, I kept going, why did they do this? Why did they fucking do this, you know? And then as I was painting, okay, this is uniform where we were. Oh, I remember they said this. I remember that guy said that. I remember I told him to do this.

and then by the time I was done with the painting I was like oh shit I had some accountability on this thing you know I can't just blame everybody because they didn't do what I said why didn't they do what I said because of these other situations that you know and they're holding back from me or something like that but anyways it made me realize that I had a huge amount of accountability for what happened and you know because we compartmentalize super well like almost too well yeah And we have to because if you think about stuff too long, you melt. Well, that's the war doesn't stop. Yeah.

You have someone wounded, you have someone killed. You still have to go and do your missions. Right. And that's just the way it is. And so what you do is like you said, you compartmentalize right now. Well, at some point, at some point you have to uncompartmentalize and process that. It sounds like a painting was really helpful for you. That was one way, yeah.

And also just giving time, like forgiveness of yourself. You know, that's one thing that I think we are hard on ourselves, all of us, because we want to do the best, be the best and all that stuff. And you got to like recognize like, okay, yeah, I made a mistake for sure. Yeah, and I always look at it. I've been talking about this because sometimes, you know, the book, the book titles extreme ownership. And so that means, you know, oh, well, it's my fault.

And sometimes people, they take that to the, the point of it's my fault and therefore I need to be punished over and over and over again and Never forgiven. Well just like if you know if I work for you and I screw something up Look if it's obviously if it's some egregious thing and you get rid of me okay, but if it's something that I screw up And it was bad and you can't forgive me we shouldn't I should just leave anyways Right if you can't be like dude I get it like you I know what you were thinking, I know you made a mistake, I know it's not going to happen again. I'm not going to hold this against you. Because if you hold it against me, we're going to, I just, it's not going to

work, you know, if your wife does something or if you do something to your wife and she can't forgive you, it ain't going to work. It's over. And it's the same thing with ourselves. If you can't say, oh yeah, here's what I did. This was my intent. I didn't intend for this bad thing to happen, but it certainly is something that I did. I'm going to learn from it and I'm going to forgive myself and move on. At some point you have to do that if you don't do that. If you don't take ownership of it and then say, yep, this was on me. My intent was not that, but this is what happened. It's my fault. And now I have to forgive myself so I can carry on and make this relationship that I have with my own brain function properly. So it sounds like that's kind of the process that

you went through. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough because like, you don't want some things you your mind can recreate a story and have a new story that didn't happen you know i mean if you think about if you say it enough to say enough it never happened but it did you know so you have to like that painting and doing every breaststroke i realized oh i did say that and i said this and and then it's like okay and then there's like forgiveness of um what happened to yourself and it wasn't just like um you know all one person all me or whatever there's a multitude of reasons, but to have, to recognize that there was also you involved, like myself involved, was key for me. Yeah, I believe that that's a, I think that's actually one of the

biggest remedies, right? And I think that, you know, when I, when that whole situation happened with me with the blue on blue, I was sitting in my office in the talk. And my skippers, he's on the ground like he had flown out to do like a debrief and really find out like okay who's going to go down for this and you know so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking that too like who's going to go down for this and there's something that was I just it was bothering me like there was some I couldn't point my finger at that guy and say yep it was his fault or yep it was his fault yep it was his fault I just couldn't do it and I'm trying to believe me my ego and my freaking you know personal wanting to not be wrong.

All those guys were in my head like, well, yeah, you could blame this guy. That guy shouldn't maneuver over there. That guy should have sent the report on the radio. That guy, like there was a bunch of that. But at the same time, there was a whole part of my soul that was like, no, no, not his fault, not his fault. And it wasn't, I was like, why can't I blame anybody else?

What is wrong? I was like, oh, you idiot, because you're the freaking guy in charge. This is your fault. This is your fault. And that was like, okay, cool. now I'm okay with it and you know by okay I mean like okay I felt okay finally blaming someone because everything else was just an excuse right it really was just an excuse and I think that if you go through life and you're continuing to look to other people at blame that little

excuse part of your mind will overpower and it'll just rot you and but I think if you can go okay here's where I am culpable here's the mistakes that that I made, here's how I'll prevent them from happening again. And I think that's the way out of it. I think that's the way to move forward in life. Right. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the painting was key. Now you guys probably heard of C4 Foundation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I have recently painted them something, a scene or whatever that's relative to seals. And then they auction it and do that's like, who is just like, because I don't paint unless somebody say, hey, I need this because I'm so busy.

And hey, you need a paint? I'll paint something, you know. And it's good. I'm getting better and all that stuff. And I'll show you the last one he did. It's pretty cool. It's just like a night sitting in water, like reflecting, like after a battle. Like he's like, fuck, you know.

But it's what we do. And it's part of that thing about you said, have I ever had a break? It's like, I don't think any of us had a break. And even as you doing training, you're still not taking a break. You're not fighting the war anymore, but you're not taking a break. And even operationally, like, that painting really talks about like, hey, after you just did something like an op, that you still, you have to take like at least five minutes and you just shut your door to your room and just go,

okay. And that may be all you get is three to four minutes, but you need that. You know, just to process what just happened. And then put it in the compartmentalize and then move on. But that little bit you need it. And I didn't realize how much we need it those little times. many things. Yeah.

You know Gardner, right, Jason Gardner? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Jason, when he retired at his, at his retirement speech, he talked about the NSW pain train. Yeah. And it was like, I never, you know,

he just was describing his career. And it's just the, which is Naval Special Warfare, the NSW pain train, it's going to keep going. And like, you're on it and you're part of it. And you can't get the, He would like describe some part of his career and be like, and the NSW pain train kept moving. And it's like he describes some other part of the NSW pain train.

And he's on that freaking train. And you can't get off. And you just like are. I mean, I guess you can get off, but it's a weird thing. It's like a, you know,

you could go to, there's jobs that you can go that you can kind of get off of it. But most guys aren't. Most guys are just there's on that NSW pain train. You're lucky if you get three, four minutes. And that's the way I was felt like. Okay, you got done with this operation.

We're doing another one. And, you know, for me, it was like, oh, I got these guys coming out of the field. Cool. There's still eight guys in the field over here. And you're in a gunfight, by the way. And it's like, there was constant, constant, constant. And so, and then coming home when I took over Trade Ed,

I remember I remember at Trade Ed, watching guys, like, when I right got home, watching like a new guy standing in the middle of street at Salk. And I would get like an actual knot in my stomach and, and go over and be like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, what the fuck you're doing out here? Like, you're going to get fucking killed. And because I really felt like he was going to get killed.

And you're just carrying that. And the NSW pain train just keeps rolling. Yeah. Until you get out that paintbrush, I go to Charles. Yes, sir. Do you sir, you're still painting? Yeah. And by the way, shout out to the C4 Foundation.

Awesome organization. Charles Keating, C4, Charles Keating, the fourth, his dad. put together this organization after Chuck was killed. Actually, I'm supposed to speak in which. I'm supposed to have Big Dave on the podcast at some point. I'll need to get that resumed. But what they have is they have an awesome facility in Southern California. And it's like a ranch.

It's the C4 ranch. And it has just a beautiful place where guys can go with their families and they can go and just freaking decompress. The thing that you just said of like, reflect. Yeah. And get off that NSW pain train for three, four days with their family. The cool thing about C4 is like they take care of the family when it's need it most at the beginning.

Like when you're in E5, your wife, your kids, you not, because a lot of foundations, they try to take care of you after, you know, at the end of your career. And you're already like, I hate to say broken, but you kind of like broken, right? you're already going through divorce. Things are not good. And then they try to help you out there. But C4, they take care of you at the beginning. They don't go, oh, you have to be at least a chief or a E5, E6 to get out there.

No, anybody can go out there. And then they run classes and seminars and stuff like that. We are actually starting art classes with them. Oh, sweet. Yeah, so out there. So we're going to be doing one coming up here pretty soon. Were you doing art in high school? You didn't mention it.

My parents were artists. Okay. And I didn't do formal classes. I think I did one. And I liked to paint, you know, and I did some before I joined the Navy. But that, you know, art therapy, you do a painting. And my first one was like this ocean. It was like this, like a tidal wave coming down, you know, in like a storm.

The freaking psychologist was like, okay, bro. She's like, are you going to put any bright colors in there? you know I'll show it to you later but I were like wow that's pretty damn good you know and then it was the scene you know that scene was like a big one for me because it was basically me painting something I didn't do like I never said goodbye to those guys

so in the painting is me saying goodbye to them you know because we had to go deal with a threat you know so it was good to paint something like I didn't have that opportunity to do but it was like closure for that so those things So I kind of had that I almost like made create it something that although I didn't do I did in the painting You know that's awesome helped me process all that stuff has that painting already been auctioned

No that one's not because no just because it has the the faces and stuff like that It wouldn't be respectful for the the families I don't think so what's your what's your what's your Let's get to your current activities what do you got going on right now so my primary job is a tactical gear company called Farrow Concepts. So they are good to go. They're very innovative. And you wonder like, oh, how many times can you reinvent a plate carrier, you know, backpack? But they do.

They got some good stuff out there. Every team guy can reinvent that thing every single time. Yeah. It's like sewn into the parloft, you know. But they got some awesome gear. So I love, you know, showing that gear to team guys, operators, Marines, Army. So we're starting to break out pretty good just because we got good stuff. And they take input very well, meaning like if I go to them,

I go, hey, we're looking at making some AW Gunner kit that we need. As long as there's enough people that are into it. And I think it's like something that we need to create, they'll create it. And sometimes they hand me back a prototype within a week. So it's a pretty good process they got going on. And what's your role there? I'm like the government sales guy. Got it.

So they were just doing really good just by having, you know, people clicking the stuff online. And they had government sales, but they didn't really have a big process for it. So I came in to help them out with that. Okay, that's check one. What else we got on? Check one. I got my own company, Actions on Consulting, which is like leadership and also shooting and things like that.

And then I work for another company, Active Crisis, which is a bigger company, and they do everything. So I'm a part owner of that company. And anything from training, vehicle, tactical driving, tactical shooting, CQC, to red teaming, certain things, to testing security, making suggestions for security solutions, all that stuff. So that's the bigger company. And I saw that you had Colin Kilrain as part of that activity.

Colin is part of us, yeah. Yeah. He's a great, great ad on. Yeah, he's freaking just awesome. Yeah. There's another guy I was supposed to have one. I got to hit him up. Yeah, he was, he's just like, when I tell, I talk about jiu-jitsu a lot.

Echo Charles sometimes. But one time back in the day, I was talking to Hicks and Gracie. And Hicks and Gracie was like, yeah, you know, when I was training in the late 80s here in Torrance, California, in the garage, the legendary Gracie garage, he was like, yeah, there was this one big Navy SEAL wrestler, and he said we would have wars. And Hicks and Gracie is like the best fighter in the Gracie family kind of universally accepted.

And that big wrestler, that big Navy SEAL wrestler was Colin Kilray. That's awesome. Who wrestled at Lehigh and like, He started wrestling his sophomore year in high school and became, you know, like a champion wrestler. He's just a stud. And he's an awesome guy. I mean, look, do we give a lot of credit just for being a good wrestler?

Yes. We do. But he's also just a freaking great guy. So that's an active crisis consulting. And then yours is actions on consulting. Right. And so what's the difference between those two? Mine's just smaller.

It's just me, you know. And I had started that when I got out just to have, something to do and teach, you know, shooting skills and stuff like that. Now, active crisis is just a big, bigger company that I'm part owner of. And we're starting to break out with bigger contracts and things like that. And it's like funner because like I don't have to do all the legwork to finding, you know, a facility to host 20 guys that want to do breaching, shooting, you know, all that stuff. We have people to do that.

Nice. What have you noticed on like the, they're getting us so much into CTE right now with like breaching? and now they're saying like every time you did a breach, every time you shot a Carl Gustav, every time you hooked a flash or a crash grenade, like that has an impact. Yeah. Are you feeling any of that?

Yeah, I think the thing is that it's like that shockwave, right? So like we could, it was like, hey, if it doesn't see you or if I don't see it, don't see me and I'm just like six feet away cracking or, you know, breach off, you still get that shock wave. And then that shock wave is what's fucking guys up. So like when they said they don't know if you have it, but if you die and they look, you'll have it. You know, so a lot of it, they say, hey, every team guy has it. Did Timmy Farrell put you through STT?

He was there, but he did not. Okay. So he died, unfortunately. But Timmy Farrell, we were doing Claymore's. And I am not kidding. We were like a backpack and a smart. depression in the earth away from claymores clacking them off yeah like it was nuts like if i was a new guy i was didn't even have my bird yet but looking back i'm like what the

cool you're doing like that is crazy and i guess he was trying to prove to us that you know like there's a safe distance and you can probably close in on that a little bit but yeah that they're seeing what everyone's saying about the cTE right now and how those shock waves. I remember watch, I'm like up on the wall when Baghdad, and I'm looking at my breacher, you know, so I'm the assault force commander. So I'm like on the wall,

looking on the ladder, looking in, letting, you know, like observing and make sure, and I see my breacher, and he gets the breacher on the wall. And I seem like trying to back away and he gets,

there's like something in the way, and I'm watching him. And also like comes on in the house and I'm like, oh, this sucks. And he just, my breacher, he sees it too. And so he just lays down. And I'm like, oh, this is going to suck.

And I hear him turning steel, boom, I duck down behind the wall. Freaking shit goes everywhere. I jump over. I start running. I just like, like, walk by him. And I look at him and he is freaking rocked. Yeah. But like that's not that uncommon to have to concuss the shit out of yourself.

And guess what he was doing two days later? Another breach on another door. So. scary stuff but you're still out there just teach and breaching let's go yeah well they didn't do a baseline until we had a hb iED go off you know and uh killed a guy buried a bunch of other guys and then they started that was like in 2008 and so then they started to do like baseline like okay we should probably do something like that in case so at least we have something to go off of like if something happens we could say okay this is you two years ago now you're down here

But they didn't do a baseline until some major stuff was happening, which I'm glad they did. Yeah. No, I think they're definitely taking better care of the guys now. And the families as well. Like, dude, I mentioned my wife not asking me about anything. Not only that, but she didn't meet any other. Like she wasn't, she had a couple team guy wives that she was friends with.

But there was no, there were no potluck supper. She was going to do or nothing like that back in the day. It was, you were kind of all. on your own and they're super supportive now, way more supportive, which is good to see. So we got Farrow Concepts and they're making all kinds of tactical gear. We got Active Crisis Consulting and that's Activecrisis.com

and Farrell concepts. What does Farrow mean? Farrell, so that's just the name that they came up with. So this is interesting. So this came up, they started making gear in their garage for like paintballers and the airsofters. And then it became popular. then they just took off from there and then it went to the tactical side.

But I don't, it was just, I don't, just the name. Yeah, just the name. So Farrowconcepts.com, activecrisis.com. And then yours is, is actually Jim Foreman Leadership. Dot com. Yeah. So that's just new. I just got that website gone.

So it was, it is actions on consulting and then Jim Foreman leadership ties into that. Check. You're writing a book. I am. Are we talking about that? Yeah. So I've seen the draft. It's great.

You're going to continue to pound on that thing and get it dialed in. What made you decide that that was something you wanted to do? So I do leadership talks and somebody came to me and goes, hey, you know, we would love to have a book. And if you're going to be teaching leadership, you probably should have something, you know. They said that last year. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. So I started doing a book. And the book is not like a whole lot of war stories.

It's more like I could talk about a couple of them just for mental stuff. The mental drive that you need to have for certain things, right, and how we think. And there's a lot of lessons learned like, hey, yeah, I missed this in one of my leadership roles and this is what happened. Or I couldn't get this past. And this, as you know, applies big time in civilian, corporations. Like, yeah, I couldn't get this thing going. And then, and I went to all my department heads and they agreed with me. But then a week later, they disagreed with me. So somebody's influencing them, you know. And so I'd have to do some homework and I find out who that is.

And it's probably some junior guy that's super influential and very well respect it. And, okay, that's just like with Tony. Instead of going to the top dogs, I got to go to Tony. Tony's actually the top dog. Right? So, but I don't go to the, the, you know, the structure top dog i go to the guy that's the most influential they could get things done and that was tony for that um for this other thing it was uh end up being this guy at trade it that was a e5 that was a big into um uh fighting you know like m mma and once i talked to him and he agreed that was done makes you know the department heads agreed two weeks later i got that that was for the sop book got and then i could get that because i was like man i'm retired

pretty quick I got to get this thing going I can't you know just agree with everybody I got to have some standard and I need this guy I'm on board so a lot of things like that like corporations don't understand sometimes like hey it's not just your department heads you need to find your key influencers and sometimes they may be a counter influencer that's against you and then if you can if you don't need to fire that guy if you could turn him to be on your side that's your best move you are done it's like You got to play chess, you know, and you want to understand people and also help them understand you and what you're trying to do.

And if they agree with it, then you're, they're on board and you're moving forward. Check. Well, the draft that I looked at, I'm sure once that thing's done, we'll have you back on here and go through all these leadership principles and some of those stories and a little bit more detail. Because even the draft that I read is freaking, it's great, but I don't want to spoiler. Is that what we're doing over here? We don't want to be a spoiler. But we'll move that thing along. I think it's going to be going to be epic.

So does that kind of get us up to speed? Yeah, that's it. We're getting there. People can find you. Where can people find you? So you've got Jim Foremanleadership.com. Yep. You're on Facebook at J.F. Foreman.

And then you're on Instagram at Actions on Consulting. That's right. So if people are looking for you, they want to find you. That's where you're at these days. That's it. Getting after it. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yes.

I do. Rewind a little bit. We're talking about sniper school. You said something about a pool table. Somebody running across a pool table? What does that mean?

A pool table? So out in Nileland, especially Kalinga, is flat. So it's flat like a pool table. Yeah. So when you got people looking for you and you got like a couple of bushes,

you're like hiding behind like weeds, you know, and you got a gilly suit, of course, and you're trying like not move too quickly because movement people pick up. So you're like inching around like an inchworm

trying to find something to hide behind. And so when that one guy stood up and ran across that pool table. 6-3, by the way. Yeah, 6-3. That was super noticeable. And it was like so egregious that they'd even say, Snapper at your feet because, okay, he's not going to get, he must have just, maybe I'll get a set.

If I take the hit for him, I'll get a seven. I want a 10, but I'll get a seven. I'll still get Honor Man for sniper school. And no, it was like zero. Like I ate it for him. So the pool table is essentially like a known feature or so what like a slang term. Yeah, just meaning completely flat. Flat.

No cover or concealment. No cover or concealment. No cover or concealment. Look at tactical echo Charles. It's ended with the chat. And so his running across the pool table is yet a compounding violation of what's the sniper. Right. Yeah.

You never, you never stand up ever unless you get busted. or you're done and you never run because like number one movement they pick up and if everything is flat and somebody stands up it's like oh what's that guy doing okay so you for damn sure don't run across the pool table and then you're running you're just doing everything wrong okay so the pool table is just a big flat in the clear scenario yeah yeah it's just an analogy for exposed terrain real quick back to the art therapy what's the prompt what does the therapist ask you to do So it's kind of cool. Sometimes you don't have to paint.

Like sometimes I go with them, you just talk, you know. And they may run you through a couple of things. They may be like an anger thing where they just got like this eight by eight canvas. And you just like throw on paint on there. I might be able to pull that one on. I think you could. That would be pretty interesting. It would probably be black and red, right?

Two colors. That's the difference. So And it's just like, you know, getting things out, you know, like things that you've been holding. Like what will the, but what will the therapist like say? Will they be like, oh, here's your eight by eight painting? Do something or like what is it? Like most likely that therapist was talking to the person about something.

And they're like, okay, let's get it out there. And or for me, it's like, you know, I was talking about this one thing. and she goes, okay, well, why don't you paint that? And then it's like, it's almost what you're doing is you're just releasing things. And there's so many things that we do that you can't do all. Like talking to somebody, here's the thing. Like talking to somebody, it's really tough because you don't know if you trust them. You don't know like if you can say everything.

But painting something, it's like you don't have to say anything. You're just painting. And you don't have to have an explanation for anything. And it could be even abstract or just like, like, like I was saying, just throwing pain on there. But it means something to you. You know, it's like, okay, yeah, I know what that means. Oh, that splatters and stuff means something to me.

But you don't have to say it, you know, because some things you may not want to say ever, you know. But through the art stuff, you get it out. Yeah, that always felt like a mystery to me, why stuff that can go on in your head, like can turn and morph and mutate into like something toxic versus if you get it out, in whatever way

where it can make it better. Like why is, do we fill in gaps in there or something? Like, and then when it comes out, it's kind of like you can't really fill in the gaps because there it is, it's more,

I don't know, tangible. I think it gets organized somehow. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, huh.

Yeah, I think you're constantly filling in the gaps whether it's accurate or not, you know, because you're struggling with trying to identify it or process it. And then, you know, if you could actually talk about it

or if a therapist a good trained therapist could actually pull it out of you, because you may not, it may be all subconscious, and you may not understand why you're not sleeping or whatever. And if they could get that out, that's one thing, but if sometimes you may know a little bit about it, and then, like for me, that pain it took four years to do. You know, I even had it in my bed.

I took it home because, like, okay, I can't come in that much, so I'm just going to take it home. And I had it in my bedroom, and it was not a good thing to do because every night I looked at it, and stare it at like the faces and then when I woke up I stared at the face

so it was depressing you know so I had to eventually move it into another room where I just paint it and then I would just go there to directly paint instead of just staring at it because that was like rough

to stare at like you know death basically yeah your friends yeah but useful useful the whole process yeah and everybody some people do it in woodworking

you know like just like doing a project just like it's like meditating you know like you're going through you could actually think even like i i can't run now because i got bad knee but like just even just when i used to run i just like okay i could think about things yeah it was just like meditating yeah i've always like what i kind of assembled in my head was like when i lost guys i would i would always end up seeming to do like the eulogy yeah and so that means and a guy to the point where I would just like when someone died I would start writing the eulogy because I would

I know that I was going to get asked to do it but man like all of a sudden you have to process everything you have to process their life your feelings the impact the the sadness the anger you had to like put it all on paper and I found that over time I was like well it helps like I think that and then you have to get up and like say words and so I thought that that this reminds me of like the same thing like you're going through this you're writing down like this this is this is you're thinking through everything and you're putting it on paper and as you pointed out echo it's like a release but for me it also like organizes like the feelings that you have and the emotions that you have and you're like now i'm now i can see them yeah kind of like when you're painting you can see

what those emotions are yeah um very i think you got to have some kind of release i really do yeah Yeah. It feels, okay, so this might be an oddball analogy. So when I was like, I don't know, 12 years old, right? Before I knew the gun safety rules, I had a BB gun and I shot my hand. So the BB gun got stuck between all the tendons in my hand. And then for days they were trying to get it out, right, with surgery or whatever, but just, you know, the kind of, what do you call it?

It's a certain kind of surgery that they don't, like, put you under nothing. They just kind of dig in there. They couldn't localized. Yeah. So for days, I was like, man this BB is in here basically haunting me right my hand like I don't know what it's almost like it had a personality of its own at this point because it didn't want to come out you know is hiding somewhere in there meanwhile the x-ray you see it but you're like how can we find this dang thing

you know so finally they put me on under like I don't know a week or two later and uh they take it out and when I wake up they're like oh yeah you want to see the BB and I'm like yeah so I see the be me and I'm like oh that's that motherfucker that was in my hand the whole time but it kind of like things started to kind of make sense a little bit. You know, it's kind of like you can identify that mysterious monster that was inside, just tormenting you from the darkness, you know? And then now it's kind of out. And you're like, oh, that's what it was.

I'm still injured, keep in mind. But I see it now and I, it's so it starts to make sense in that way, you know? It's almost like that kind of happens. Echo, you are one deep motherfucker. That was good. And then you can heal. And then you can heal, man. Yeah.

And, look, healed up. Good to go. That was a good analogy. There all that go, man. Anything else, Echo Charles? No, good to meet you, sir. Yeah, you too. Jim, any closing thoughts?

No, man, I appreciate getting on here. Right on. Right on. Well, thanks for coming out. Thanks for sharing your lessons and your experiences. I'm looking forward to the book. It's going to be awesome. And most important, thanks for 27 years.

Always at the front. Always training for or fighting the war. 27 years of service and sacrifice, carrying the weight of the nation, carrying the weight of the teams. Much appreciated, bro, as an honor to serve with you. Yeah, you too, bro.

Thanks. And with that, Jim Foreman has left the building. And clearly got a lot of work to do. We all do. You know what I'm saying? I know what I'm saying. The NSW pain train rolls on.

And you got to get, you're either on the train or you're off the train. Yeah. That's but even when you get off the NSW pain train Mm-hmm life is rolling on and you gotta stay in the game you gotta stay on the train Mm-hmm, you gotta keep getting after it you gotta keep pushing To get better Leadership knowledge mental physical psychological fitness maybe you gotta break out a paint brush

You know what I'm saying and by the way he showed us some paintings afterwards Dude good those things are not just good those those paintings are sick. Yeah. And you got to. As soon as he showed the wave, I was like, oh, this is going to, this is going, this is going, this is moving in the right direction. Yeah. Because let's face it.

You know, we could be having, we could be not talking about this right now. You're absolutely. It's been like painting. Yeah. It's a good. It's good, a good outlet. Yeah. But no, he's painting some legit.

Yeah. I actually kind of want that wave hanging on my wall. Yeah. And it's, um, making him an offer on that bad boy. All right. Yeah. Yeah. for a legitimate kind of looks like you know the the the the Japanese tsunami type thing right

it looks kind of like that but like way more yeah cool and realistic yeah exactly more realistic it's a different style you know that like the Japanese style that like that's a yeah whatever is more like yeah is because you got to admit like most times and I'm not saying I was thinking this not saying I wasn't thinking this but you know what expectation well I didn't have any at all under really um as far as expectation I can see where you're going. Just say, but carry on.

What were you thinking? But I think under most circumstances when someone talks about, oh yeah, like I'm into drawing or painting or something that you know. You know, you have that feeling like, okay, because there's levels to it,

just factually. Like, you know, and so, you know, it's really good outlet for me. People say that. That's a thing that people say.

And then sometimes, not all the time. Sometimes when you see it, you're like, just like how you implied, or it's like, yeah man I'm good that it works for you you know but it's like it's there's not much skill involved you know sometimes it's not let for you for you yeah for the rest of us but this is no

this one it was not like that Jim is freaking obviously very skilled even that first one oh the wave was the first one yeah and I was expecting I mean I had low expectations I'm not afraid to say it because painting is hard right yeah and you don't expect someone that's never painted before just to be able to paint something that's very cool looking yeah Well, we saw something that was first one. I was like, oh. And then you think, well, how's the, you know, how's like a person going to look? Then you see the paintings of people.

And you're like, oh, okay. So I know art, like actual artists that have been doing it for decades that have painted waves, by the way. Not as good as Jim Foreman. And I'm not joking. Obviously, that's my opinion because art is very subjective, but still. Well, once we look, we'll get some art out there. Yeah. And I think, I mean, honestly, I think people will be.

willing, I'm willing to pay for that art. So I think people are going to want to pay for some of that art. He's going to need to get a freaking art website up for some of his stuff. Well, whether you're painting, whether you're lifting, whether you're training, you need to fuel yourself and you feel your body, feel your mind. Go to joccofield.com. We got everything that you need. We got mulk protein, ready to drink protein, powder protein, hydrate greens, supplements for

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Also, text Jock Fuel to 246, 7, 2, and then we can send you messages, voicemails. I send voicemails sometimes on that. Yeah, hell yeah. They're short. They're like seven seconds long. Yeah.

Brief. Yeah. Very brief. Check it out joccofuel.com. Also, you're going to need some clothing. You need some American-made clothing. You're going to need origin USA.com. Hunt gear, jiu-jitsu gear, jeans, boots, hoodies, t-shirts, belts, wallets, hats, hats,

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Yeah, man. Life is kind of crazy sometimes, but it is up to you what you put in your body, on your body, and in your head. So keep that in mind. We've actually covered on all fronts.

All fronts. In your body, Jock Fuel, on your body, Origin USA. In your head, Jock podcast. You listening to.

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Whatever. If we're representing, Discipline equals freedom is where you can get this stuff. jocco store.com. Yeah, so we got some shirts on there, some hoodies on there, some hats on there. Shorts on there. Sox on there too.

If you want to represent in the airport, when they make you take off your shoes, you want to flex on them a little bit. Boom, discipline equals freedom. You're welcome. Oh, yeah. All day. yes jacques jarlock oh also the shirt locker subscription scenario new design every

every month that's a good one you're gonna like this uh this next month's one what is it you don't even know i know i do but i remember i know what the design is because i made it but it's a skull okay i like it skull with but it's like a hand drawn skull kind of kind of like sketched and it says comfort is a curse that's what it is all right yeah it's a good Looks good. It looks good, I think. But go to joccal store.com. Check it out.

It won't be on there until the first, which is, yeah, yeah. What if you like something there? So yeah, if you like something, get something. That's fair enough. Check out primalbeef.com, Colorado Craftbeef.com. This is American steak, American companies. And it's awesome people, awesome companies, awesome steak, awesome burgers, awesome hot dogs, awesome beef jerky, awesome beef,

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what's it called it's called some kind of sauce summer sausage yeah got into that bro bruh that would be good check also subscribe to this podcast

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answering questions, covering subjects that we don't necessarily cover on this podcast. Jocco underground.com. Check out our YouTube channels. Check out psychological warfare. Check out a bunch of books that I've written. We've got a book coming sometime in the future from Jim Foreman. But in the meantime, we got, what do we got, a re-release of the leadership strategy and tactics field manual. We were just looking through the Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual.

It's not a normal book. No, the publisher, I asked him, I said, have you ever taken this much risk on a book? Because let's face it, Discipline equals Field Manual. You'd never seen a book like that. It's risky. Very risky. He said it was not even close. Yeah.

He was like, it's not even. There's no other book that even comes close to taking this much of a risk. Yeah, makes sense. And, you know, they model out like sales. Sure. He's like once it came out, he said, we had no models that predicted this many sales. Yeah. Like they didn't anticipate anything close.

Yeah. So that's the discipline. He goes freedom field manual. I've written a bunch of other books, written a bunch of kids books. Miking the Dragons about face. I didn't write about face, but I wrote the forward to it. Extreme ownership. You heard a little excerpt from that today.

Little section that Leif Babin wrote. Check that out. Also the dichotomy of leadership. There's another Laif was saying, oh, either use this one or this one. There's a dichotomy of leadership. There's a story in there that's also got a little Jim Foreman-centric. So check those out. Also, Eschlonfront.

We have a leadership consultant. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eschlonfront.com. We've got the battlefield coming up. We're going to tour Gettysburg. We're going to learn the lessons that they learned or should have learned. We've got the mother. in San Antonio, Texas, April 29th to May 1st.

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Not just your business, not just your, hey, I need to figure out how to deal with my boss or my peers or my supporters. What about how to deal with your spouse? What about how to deal with your family? What about how to deal with your neighbors? What about how to deal with your own head? You need help.

And we got you covered. Extreme Ownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help the Gold Star families out there. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Leach. You got an incredible charity organization.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, don't forget to check out here. Rosenhorces.org. Micah Fink, teaching people how to get back to their soul through nature. And then Jimmy May's organization, beyond the brotherhood. Dot org, helping seals get into the civilian sector. And finally, if you want to connect with us, Jim Foreman on the web, Jim Foremanleadership.com.

He's on Facebook. J.F. Foreman. And he's on Instagram. Actions on Consulting. For me, I'm at jocco.com. And then on social media at joccoe, Willink. I go side echo Charles just be careful because you could be learning how to paint you could be getting stronger you could be getting faster you could be getting smarter you could be learn to play

guitar you could be learning to play the clarinet could be practicing ping pong and any of those things would be a lot better than scrolling doom scrolling doom scrolling how's those reals that's what's happening in my house right now you know for a while my house was dopamine dopamine dopamine dopamine oh yeah you picked up your phone for any reason, everyone in the house was going dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dope. Right now, if you pick up your phone, it doesn't matter if you get a call from the hospital. The people in my family are going to start saying, oh, how's those reels? Reels. How's those reels? How's those reels? Oh, what real are you looking at? So you can't do it. It works. Yeah. It's pure pressure. Yeah. It's good. Don't let it happen to you.

Don't get caught up in the reel. It'll take you down. Thanks once again to Jim Foreman, 27 years of unrelenting service. Thank you for holding the line and being a true frogman. Thank you, brother. And to all our military across the globe who right now, right now at this moment, picked up their weapons and are standing the watch. Thank you for your service. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for standing the watch here at home. man to everyone else out there. Things are not going to go the way you expect them to go. They're just not. You got to expect that. That's the reality. But here's what you can do.

Like Jim Foreman. Prepare as much as you can. Train hard. Study hard. Have contingency plans. And then be decisive. Take action. And do not quit.

And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, Zekko and Jocko. Out.