Jocko Podcast - 486: Warfare: The Missions, The Men, and The Movie. W/ Elliott Miller and Joe Hildebrand.

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Two of the US Navy SEALS that were in the Battle of Ramadi in the events depicted in the Movie "Warfare".Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 486 with me, Jocko Willink. In October of 2006, tasking to Brugeswood's turning over with our replacements from SEAL Team 5. And Laif had been at Team 5 and had just deployed with Team 5 and Tony had been at Team 5 and, you know, it's the team so we kind of know some of their boys and their task unit. But it was definitely going to be a different type of turnover because it had been a different type of deployment and the guys from team five had been back in san diego reading the after-action reports for months and they'd read about what had been happening in romadi the enemy contacts

the gun fights the killing the casualties the enemy casualties and of course the the friendlies killed in action and wounded in action and these guys from team five had many of them gone to the funerals and memorial services for our guys from tasking a bruiser and when they showed up of course we wanted to stay longer we wanted to keep fighting but that's not the way it works and we spent I don't know a couple weeks downloading as much information as we could to them trying to give them a good turnover and and I remember the first kind of full muster when all the guys, because guys come, guys show up in theater in bits and pieces, many cases. So it was like the first full muster of the Team 5 task unit.

And I was, we were kind of giving the official turnover brief. And I was talking about the opt tempo and I was talking about the relationships with the Army and the Marine Corps and how important those were. And I was talking about the strategic impact of the battle. And I remember telling them something very direct. I told them you will take casualties. And it seemed a little strange telling them that because I wondered to myself, you know, before I told them that, is this defeatist to tell them that? Is it like it's unavoidable?

It's a foregone conclusion. Maybe it would scare some of the guys. And I kind of debated whether I should tell them that or not. But I decided ultimately that it was the right thing to do because it was the truth. The fighting was so heavy. the enemy was so immersed in the city if you were out there day after day night after night

eventually the odds would come into play and men would be wounded or killed and they needed to know that and I thought to myself that at a minimum they would think about how to handle it when it did happen and I hoped it would land hard enough that it would maximize their focus

for planning and preparation and execution And like I said, we poured into them, you know, at every level, the calm guys talking to the com guys, the snipers talking to the snipers, the senior enlisted guys, talking to senior enlisted guys, the officers talking the officers, trying to turn over the tactics, the techniques, the procedures that we were using, the loopholes, the radio procedures, the breaching protocols, the common enemy tactics, the best practices for planning and executing operations, everything that we could, we tried to give to them. And then we said, good luck. Godspeed. And I left with the last group of troops from Tasking a Bruiser because we also go home sort of in bits. And I left with the last group of Tasking a Bruges guys on October 21st, 2006. And we get home.

And of course, it's a whole another kind of administrative drama going. home you got to do turn in gear and you got to do debriefs and there's a bunch of administrative things you got to turn over but of course we're tracking trying to pay attention on what's going on with the boys that relieved us the guys from team five but you're also you know interacting with your family again and so you're you're you have other things to do but a few weeks later on november 19th 2006 we got word that an operation for them had gone sideways An overwatched position had been hit. There was, you know, we got reports that there was grenades.

There were small arms. Massive IED. Severely wounded guys. It was really kind of heart-wrenching to hear it. And also because the military rumor mill, it was hard to figure out what actually was going on. The story was all over the police place. You know, some was like a bunch of guys were dead. Then another one was no guys were dead.

no one was wounded that bad and then guys were wounded really bad and it took a while for the information to settle and it went something like this the guys were out on an overwatch position and they had been attacked a guy got wounded and then they called the army for casualty evacuation and when they were going to load the evacuation vehicle hit a massive iED and it killed some Iraqi soldiers and severely wounded two seals and it sounded like a nightmare and And that nightmare has now been captured for everyone to see in a movie that just came out, and it's called Warfare. And it was written and directed by a guy named Ray Mendoza, Ray Ray, Ray.

He's also a guy that made a while ago. He made a show on the History Channel called Warfighters, and he did one episode that was called Charlie Patoon in the story of Mark Lee. well he was also wrote and directed this movie warfare and this movie warfare he was on that operation and this movie depicts that single operation and it's really depicts it with no holds barred there's no there's no sugar coding anything that goes on in that movie it is ground truth it is rough to watch and it includes everything includes the horrible wound that were suffered by the two seals that day,

Elliot Miller and Joe Hildebrand. And Joe received devastating injuries to his legs. And Elliot suffered severe injuries throughout his body. He got shrapnel. He got grievous burns, wounds that eventually resulted in the loss of his leg. And he also received traumatic brain injury that impaired his motor skills and significantly inhibited his ability. to speak.

But thankfully, both of them survived through the hard work of the guys on the ground with them and the army and the Marine Corps risking their lives to go and help out. They made it. And it's an honor to have both of them here to share their stories,

their lessons learned, and their thoughts on the movie that captures this horrific story. Joe, Elliot, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it, boys. Now for Elliot, since his speech is inhibited by his brain injury, I asked him a bunch of questions beforehand and he wrote out some answers, which I'm going to read through. And then he's also got an iPad that he uses to communicate and insult the people around them and make fun of everybody, which is fine.

But let's get into it. Let's get into some background. So thanks for coming down, guys. Really appreciate it. It's good to see you both. Let's start with you, Elliot. So I was asking about where you, where your background was, where you came from. And you said this. I was born the third out of four kids into a modest family. We lived on a small farm in southern Illinois where we had some heads of cattle as well as a little amount of agricultural land.

It was there that I developed my love of the outdoors and hunting and hunting. I was always very interested in firearms as my grandmother on my mom's side was a Marine or sorry, My grandfather on my mom's side was a Marine. He was probably the reason I had become a Marine, which we're going to find out that you joined the Marine Corps. And he had fought on the island of Tarwa and Saipan 2, I believe. He had a small shop in town where he sold guns and other knickknacks. I was thinking, what do you, what's besides like, what do you sell guns and like

ramen noodles? What's going on there? Zippo lighters. Zippo lighters and ramen noodles. It's like a country store where you happen to have 12 gauges in the back. Plug a tobacco. Yeah. And he also sold some food as well.

Check. So you can get a hamburger at a 9-mill. You say my younger brother and I would go to work for him almost every day during the summer. And then one day he just decided he was going to retire. So we had a big auction where he sold. Oh, hell. I don't know. Let's just say somewhere in the neighborhood between four and five hundred or so firearms

as well as some other stuff that he acquired over the years, but I don't require, I don't recall anything other than that. You say I was also in the scouts where I had obtained the rank of Eagle Scout, which would pay off from me in the very near future as I was promoted to E2 right out of boot camp. Congratulations. You put in a lot of work to make Eagle Scout and just get E2 out of it. That's harder work than going to college and those people get a commission. Which is just an eight month, yeah, eight months later you get advanced.

Which in that, back in those days, met around 150 bucks a month raise, which was a lot. So what about you, Joe? Where'd you grow up? So I grew up in Arkansas, small town, 556 people. Definitely country living. What'd your parents do? So my dad didn't really do a lot of work outside of, he was retired from a Caterpillar Tractor Company. and my mom work for a uh she does like use cars how many brothers and sisters i got one brother he's older

and what what sports were you playing growing up so i played baseball any good it's pretty good yeah i mean i was it was pretty decent i liked it um but as i got a little older i figured out i could i could do work instead of play baseball and fund uh you know some some beverages for the weekends and pay for gas so i could go dirt roading with my friends what kind of card you have i had a uh well my first vehicle was a 1979 chivvy love i traded a horse for it 19 that was that little tiny truck yeah yeah yeah had a Mitsubishi motor in it the hood opened backwards like a corvette

had big buckshot mutters on it Elliot first vehicle what was it maybe he had some kind of a a pimp car like you know like a camaro or something yeah it's a Chevy son oh S-10 that was close there you know that's that's that's not a ranger that's that's the Chevy's version yeah well that's actually the version ahead of my my Chevy love the next thing was an S-10 the 1985 Chevy S-10 blazer Chuck.

That's a womanizing vehicle right there, bro. How did you find out about the, so you didn't, I know you, you end up joining just the regular Navy. Yes. Did you know you wanted to be a CB? No. Okay. No.

So I was, you know, post-high school, small town. Was white? Chuck. So small town, Arkansas, there wasn't much future there. So you either, you know, go to get out of high school and just go to work at a local whatever company and stay there. And I didn't want to do that. So I knew the Navy was a way to get out of there and go do something. And I had read some books about the SEAL teams and that was something that was pretty interesting to me.

But at the time, I just needed to get out of the town. And I was doing construction. So kind of the easy translation was Navy SEBs. Yeah, the CBs is a great job, a great job for people to get and a great opportunity. and they got a cool job in the military too. Like one thing that's cool about the CBs is you get to do your job for real all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

So, all right, Elliot. So you obviously didn't know about the SEAL teams yet because you end up joining the Marine Corps. You say this. So I joined the Marine Corps in 1986, straight out of high school as an infantryman, but I was actually just like a lav crewman, light armor vehicle crewman. and went on two deployments to Oki, one in 97 and again in 99. But on number two, I was the Mupiltoon, so I got to go to Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines, no combat or anything like that.

I mean, that was the Clinton era. That was me too. I did some time in the, in the, I actually got the tail under the first Bush, 19, I joined in 1990. Yeah, not a lot going on, but I'm sure there was some things going in Australia and the Philippines. From that smirk. For Lance Corporal Elliot over here, Corporal Miller. You say then, then I got out of the crotch, which is a slang term for the Marine Corps. I got out of the crotch and moved back home, Southern Illinois to go to college at SIU for just one year.

But I couldn't stand not having to carry a weapon. So I got the hairbrained idea that I would become an LAPD officer. How come you don't want to come a local officer? Because I wanted some action. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I remember in the 90s, you know, we would look at the LAPD. The LAPD SWAT team, the SEALs would work with them back in the day.

And they were getting, you know, they'd do a bunch of hits every month. So pretty good call. You figured that out. Back to what you were saying here. So I packed my shit along with a friend and we set out. for L.A. Then along the way, and I mean that too, as we were driving through Arizona, those chicken fuckers flew into the World Trade Center.

So almost immediately, I went in the recruiter's office there in Redondo Beach, and my original intention was to re-enlist the Marines, but they told me that if I was to re-enlist, I would have to go back to E3. So I told them to get fucked. And walked right next door to the Navy and told them that I wanted Buds and Corman too. So I had to go to core school in Great Lakes first, which was a joke, but I got that done and reported to Buds in March of 2002 and finished November that same year. Yeah, dude, that's right.

No rollbacks for me. Made it through one shot, huh? It's legit. So you must have been what, 24, 23? 24 years old when I graduated Buds. Chuck. So that's probably average. I don't know.

That's probably average because there's not many guys that actually graduate that are young. Most guys are like 23, 24, 25. I think those are the kind of prime years. Especially back then. Yeah. And so, but you Joe, so that's what you did. So Joe, you joined the Navy. You go to boot camp.

You end up in the C-Bs. And then how long do you spend in the C-Bs for? So about almost six years. because I went to Camp David So I didn't really get into the full CB work Like in a battalion So I went to Camp David, worked for the president there Did that for two years

What'd you do there? So Camp David's 100% Well, it's 99% military So there's one person that comes and plays in Oregon You know, for church But everybody else is military So you maintain the whole facility Got it.

So I was brand new to the Navy So I was the junior guy at the camp So basically all the young guys are mowing grass And I got to go learn how to take care of a golf green So I took care of the president it's golf green, just two of us, and there was only one green.

Dang, dude. Seven, seven T's. What a weird way to kick off your Navy career, huh? Really weird. Really weird. But it was, it was cool. It was fun. I enjoyed it.

Looking back, it was a great, great time. Yeah. And then from there, you went to a CB Battalion? So I ended up going to Guam. So I headed overseas and did, worked in Guam, and then from there back to a CB unit, and then to buds from there. At what point did you, like, make the decision that you were going? So going to buds.

Yeah. So early on, you know, every day was a battle. Like you love the Navy, you hate the Navy. And I can't wait to get out. Can't, you know. And then I realized, you know, I was in the C-Bs. I loved the C-Bs, but I realized if I wanted to join the Marine Corps, I would have joined the Marine Corps.

So, because they're very structured. And then I saw a seal platoon. And I'm like, I like, you know, you knew what seals do because you read the books. But when you actually see them, they're like, wow, you guys are grown-ups. They treat you like grown-ups. You talk to each other like grown-ups. I'm like, that's what I want to do. So then I went to, I was at Self-Help, which is a CB-B-B-or-C-Job in Point Loma,

and then I got my orders to buds from there. And what class were you in? 24-4. I was just behind L.A. A couple of classes. Right on. Right on. Any big challenges for you?

You're like a freaking stud athlete. I tried to be. Yeah. Like, okay, you're being humble, but you're even like talking to guys, I was talking to Lay from Team 5. He's like, yeah, you'd go on a, like they'd be doing an ocean swim. Team 5 would do an ocean swim, and you would do the ocean swim with no fins and still beat 90% of the people, which is totally ridiculous.

That's like being on a motorcycle versus a bicycle. And he said, in anyone that you didn't beat or anyone that beat you on the swim, you would just destroy them on the run. And where did, were you, did you do triathlons or something? I did. Yeah, so I did. Just, I enjoyed it. You know, I enjoyed working out.

And that was just kind of part of my life post small town living. And, you know, once I got in the military, I'm like, oh, you know, I enjoy this. I'm actually, I realize I'm actually kind of good at it. So, yeah. So you didn't start that until you didn't run track or cross country in high school or anything? No swim team, nothing like that. Well, so I was on a track team in high school for a short amount of time. But I was a fat kid.

So we weren't, you know, I wasn't out crushing it. So matter of fact, our town, I told you is 556 people. one of the you know so we didn't even have a track so I got on this track team I don't know how I got on it and we had a little there was a little road just by the school that we would go run our track on but there's a little restaurant there so I would go over there and just sit and eat ice cream at this little store I wasn't even running and then and then I had this big event it was the mile and I was going to run the mile and I'm sitting on the bus you know track meets are all day long you're sitting there and I'm just sitting on the bus waiting for my time to go well I ended up getting in a fight with a kid so I punched him the face. Then the coach wouldn't let me go run my one event. So that was my whole track career.

So I ended up, yeah, not running track. But, you know, to be fair, as I got a little bit older in high school, I did not like being overweight. So I figured that I figured out real quick. If I go run, you know, it was helping me manage that weight to get into some sort of shape. And then it became something that I don't know if I just internally challenged myself, but it became easy. And then when I did eventually run with people in the Navy, I was like, wow, these people were slow. I didn't know I was I didn't know I was fast I thought wow you know these people are slow and then I realized actually you know it was pretty decent runner it's more of a natural thing. So was buds what challenged you in buds? Like if you're good at running and swimming

yeah that's real nice. Yeah it was real nice well yes and then you know because I ran so much lower extremity injuries wasn't I was not prone to those so I didn't you know I had no I had no issues I thought buds was well for me coming from the CBs had a good work ethic to start with I just remember, you know, just laying in the water and people quitting thinking, well, I'm getting paid to do this. And I could see where I just came from across the bay there in Point Loma. I'm like, I'm not going back to that. So, you know, I did not think Buds was that hard. I think if I was to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me and Buds was the dirty name. And that was something, and that was something I got over real quick. You know, I cracked some ribs on it to start with.

I didn't understand it. But after that, yeah, I thought Buds was fun. What was your biggest challenge, Elliot, in Buds? Leif said it was keeping your mouth shut. That still is challenge. Probably the swimming. Yeah. That's what I'm surprised with you, Joe. For someone that didn't grow up in the water didn't grow up on the swim, to win swims is a big deal.

That's a big deal. That's challenging. I spent a lot of time in the water. So I've always been comfortable in the water and I've always been good swimming. So I started doing Iron Man. So I did five Iron Man before I went to buds. But it was a disclaimer. I did them all in one year.

So I got trained up just started crushing them. Freaking epic. But I think for me, to boil down, the hardest challenge for me is I was 27 in Buds. So those are dog years. Anything over, you know, anything over 25 is dog years. So, you know, those young kids are, you know, they'll go get beat up during the day and then they go out and drink at night.

I'm like icing. Like, okay. It's not the same. Fast forward a little bit. So you guys get done with Buds. Elliot, you say after that, so you get done with Buds. After that, I got my jump wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was back to Coronado.

so I could get my Trident, which I did in May of 03. Since I was a corpsman, I had to go back across the country yet again for my additional medical training at Fort Bragg, North Kakalaki for about another six or so months. So after that, I got sent back to Coronado to Team 5 and was assigned to Bravo platoon, where I did two platoons, the first of which was split. The first part, we did PSD for the interim VP of Iraq. And yeah, that sucked. but that only lasted a couple months because then we got slaughtered to go to Paycom we left Iraq and headed to Guam

and so this is kind of this is how you knew Leif did you were you in buds with Laif too so you guys were in buds together and I think Leif actually knew that you were when you were at medical school he kind of talked and figured out a way to get you put into his platoon with Zawi and Ray Ray and so you guys got a little core group of

new guys in there Was that, were you a new guy in that platoon too? Yeah. Yeah, there's first platoon. Yeah. Yes, array, Bob. That's right. You guys had a good little crew then.

You say from there, I'd gone to Thailand, South Korea, and finally to Singapore. Also, whilst in Guam, I was heloed down to the USS San Francisco. It was a submarine that had actually hit an underwater sea mountain. And one of the crew had smashed his head into. something and in doing so that pretty much killed him but that doesn't mean I didn't try everything I could to save him up to and including giving him a tracheotomy but that was no avail so I had to pack him up and send him off to get pronounced dead so this was a interesting event that took place it was 8th January 2005 the USS San Francisco was going max speed and I think that's

classified but it's fast and it hit a damn undersea mountain that wasn't on the charts or And it was at a depth of 525 feet. They almost lost the vessel. It was a, and I was looking at pictures of it yesterday, like it was all jacked up. Oh, yeah. It looked like a car getting in a head-on collision going 50 miles, or probably 45 or 50 miles an hour.

That's how bad it looked. Were you the only guy that went on, or did you send all the medics you had? No, we also got the group dive medical officer down there too. Got it. Got it. Ultimately, like you said, machinist mate second class, Joseph Ashley, 24 of Akron, Ohio, was killed in that tragedy.

So he's a medic. What was your job in platoons? In your first platoon? So because I was so senior, I was in E6 going through buds, so I eventually become the LPO of my first platoon. Oh, really? Yeah.

When you say eventually, did someone make chief or... No, so our LPO got relieved. Got it. Yeah, so I just kind of took over. That's pretty impressive to step up. But that was all because I believe that the seas were too rough. Yeah. Yeah.

So I started off as First Lieutenant. Got it. So I was running First Lieutenant and then eventually I just took over the LPO. Yeah, that's a big step, man. Yeah, to go from New Guy to LPO. Yeah. How'd the boys like that? So the interesting thing is, you know, we're talking about the core guys.

You know, all of us new guys that got them. there, we were new to the seal teams, but none of us were new to the military. So everybody had some, you know, life experience, some military experience. So there was a lot of maturity there. To be honest, I think the core group getting there had more maturity than some of the older guys. And, uh, well, to be honest, it's 100% true. So the core, you know, we all, there was not a power struggle. I think when the LPO was relieved, I think everybody was kind of, you know how it is. Like, you have that person, everybody already knows any of you relieved. And then once he was relieved. It was kind of like this sigh of relief. And the two senior guys we had was really,

really one senior guy, they didn't want the responsibility, you know, so they were kind of like all about just, you know, falling in line. Yeah. The dynamics in a SEAL platoon. And it's, now that I've seen so much leadership in so many different organizations, it's like if someone is stepping up, if there's a leadership vacuum and someone steps up and it's going to make things happen and they're listening, they're not being arrogant, it's like it works fine. In fact, that's what that's what officers do, right? The officer, the junior officers, they don't have any experience, and yet they're supposed to step up and lead.

And as long as they do it and humble and they listen, they take advice, like it works. Yeah, I felt like it was, you know, the guys want leadership and they don't care where it come from. So it didn't have to have, you know, have the experience, because I certainly didn't have the experience, the team experience, but I had leadership experience from being in the CB's for so long.

And that first deployment, you guys did half the time in Iraq doing PSD and half the time in Guam doing exercises. And I know Leif was telling me that he and a couple other guys, Ellie was one of them, went up to Samara and did some sniper operations. Nothing really huge, great happened, but he was at least excited to be able to do that. Did you guys, did you get it on some DAs at least or something like that?

In Iraq. Yeah. So, unfortunately, I did not because I was, I eventually, me and Kevin Katie, are OIC, we took the principal, he was from London. So we ended up spending it, we did a whirlwind tour of London. Saudi Arabia and all these places. But we moved the platoon over to where they could do DAs at Team 3 because Team 3 was deployed at the same time

that we were there doing PSD. So they got to go do some DAs. So you were like doing full-on, just diplomatic wearing a suit, the whole nine yards. Yes, yes. But it wasn't too bad. We got to some countries like, you know, England. You just turn them right over to Scotland Yard.

You know, we're just off just like hanging out. Dude, that's crazy. You had a freaking weird career. Oh, super weird. Doing the freaking golf course thing. I know. And now you're going to London. It gets weird.

It gets weird. Yeah. So you peel it apart. It gets weird. Yeah. So you guys get done with that deployment. You get home, Elliot. You say, after I got done with my first platoon, I'd gone to sniper school as well as some other

schools and then deployed to Iraq in the fall of 06 where we were supporting the Army's First Brigade, First Armored Division, providing sniper, sniper overwatch. You say, now this is where things get funky because I don't. have any kind of recollection of what happened to me on my alive day. The last memory I have of Iraq is that of my room and all the pornographic photos I had up on my wall in my little cubby. None of, nothing of any missions that I had gone on and especially nothing and I mean zero recollection of the day when I was blowed up. So they say that it'll come back, but I'm not buying it. Just because Joe Hildebrandt, who was all

also injured, though not nearly to the extent that I was, has told me the story probably a dozen fucking times, and then I'll just like forget. Yeah, dude, TBI is a real fucking bitch. I wanna talk a little bit about preparing for Ramadi as you guys are getting ready to go there. As I mentioned earlier, you know, and I didn't really think too much about this

while I was in Ramadi that are after actions reports. One of my buddies, when I got back, he said, dude, we were reading those things to the command daily. What was that like for you? Like as you're hearing the shit that's going on and you guys know where you're going? So I can probably speak for the whole platoon at the time. You know, we were reading that stuff

and it was the most real anything it ever been in our lives because we know what we're preparing to go do. And there was no shortcuts. We were, you know, we were honing our skills, we were sharpening our knives, learning how to keep our powder dry every single day. And it was not, you know, ULT was a whole new beast for us at the time because, you know, we'd taken diving out, we just whittled it down to like what really is important.

And then we were taking that time for sit, which it wasn't called sit back then, but we were taking that integration time to really hone down on what we're learning from your after action reports and to try to be as mentally and physically and, you know, tactically prepared as we possibly could be. And, you know, even for the rest of my career, I don't know, you know, we always You always think, you know, even as a platoon chief, I was trying to focus my platoon on what really matters. But that was a time where, you know, you were really paying attention to every little detail. Yeah.

I think that, I mean, I did seven deployments and there was no time where I was in your guys' shoes, which is like even when we were going to Romani, oh, I knew it was bad. But it was sort of bad in a good way. You know, oh, there's lots of bad guys there. and it's going to be a great deployment. And so I kind of had that feeling, not the, and by the way, we only found out we were going to Ramadi two weeks before we deployed. So we were really focused on Baghdad.

In Baghdad, I had been to Baghdad and kind of done the same kind of operations that were done in Baghdad. So it was very much, okay, cool, like it's going to be a great deployment. But then we find out we're going to Ramadi. And, you know, we get old, we barely even had time to talk to guys that were over there. No pre-deployment site survey. we just show up. And it was real obvious when we got there, though.

Like, oh, okay. And I knew it. I mean, I knew how bad it was because you're seeing the casualty reports in Al-Lombard province. And most of them are, most of the casualties are in Ramadi. But I don't, I never went on a deployment where, like, you guys knew 100% what you were getting into as much as a human being can know what it's going to be like. And there's only so much you can convey. You know, I was talking to a kid that was going through pool comp. He was going to go through pool comp.

And I said, hey, man, like, it is, pool comp is really, really messed up in buds. And, you know, the kid's like, you know, he's a surfer and comfortable in the water. And he was doing good and all the other aspects. And he's like, oh, it's, you know, how bad can it be type thing? And he failed it. He failed the first one. Failed the second one. Finally passed on the third try.

and I said to him, I was like, hey, you know, I tried to tell you how messed up pool comp was. And he looked at me and said, nothing you could have told me would have conveyed to me how fucked up pool comp is. And so I feel like that was kind of where you guys were at. Like we're telling you guys, hey, you know, it's gnarly. And as much as you guys could possibly understand that, you guys understood it. Well, you know, I think we fully understood it because, you know, after action reports, you're always getting and they're always inflated. They're always trying to make something, you know, we did this J-set or whatever and you build it up to do it. We did all these things.

But this was the first time that we were reading these after-action reports. We knew it was true. These things were very truthful and this was what we were preparing to go do. And I think that was across the board. Everybody knew that. I got some emails between Elliott and Laif and Laif and Elliott. This one is from Elliott to Laf, May 17th. So this is like we're only a couple.

We're like a month and a half into deployment from Elliot to Laif. Damn, dude. What are you tasking a bruiser dudes doing over there? All the different rumors and stories we're getting back here on the strand. Make it sound like blood, spit, and ass are just flying everywhere you go, including chow. Good stuff. Too bad about Cowie. So Cowie was in your Bud's class with Laf and Elliot and he was wounded bad in May of 2006.

You said too bad about Cowie anyways do anyway dude Holler back whenever you get the chance And then Leifrope back that day Broseph what's happening You guys finished up with ULT We're doing a lot man There's a few places out here there in Caltown That are going to need a little remodeling

If you guys are headed out to relieve us Then you are set because this is the place to be Downtown has got some crazy shit going on How are things in Sandog? Fast forward a little bit. July 24th from from Elliot. Dude. And I'm not 100% sure what this means.

Dude, you boys got the top down with your lean on or what? For those you that don't know, and I'm assuming this is a gangster rap thing because Leif Babin is like a gangster rap affectionato. Yeah. And so I'm assuming that's a gangster rap thing. Got your top down with your lean on. We be hearing good stuff coming out of your hood.

Just try and save some for your old boys in Bravo. We don't want to get over there. You guys have turned that place into a ghost town. All the fellows are doing good though and everyone gives you a shout. I'll tell him you said, what's up? Anyhow, take care, dude. And it's funny. You can't, it's very hard to understand the mind of team guys where that's,

you know, he's kind of half joking. Elliot's kind of half joking, but like leave some for us. Like, you know what I mean? That's the attitude. Leif replied, Elliot, all is good here. Lots of shooting going on regularly. Always a good time. Be ready to get your sniper on.

Make sure the 300 wind mag is doped in as you should be putting her to good use. Slap Al and the nuts for me. Keep it real and take it to the house. Fast forward a little bit. And again, this is what's happening as you guys are preparing to deploy. Do you know when you guys found out you were going to relieve us

when that got confirmed? I don't remember exactly when it was. I think it was like later in ULT, but we knew, I think, because, you know, our leadership was very keen on people knowing where they're going to as a result. It wasn't that little game at the end, you know? Yeah.

I think about six months out was when we knew. Check. Yeah, and that's basically when we got there. So as we got there, you guys were probably, all right, let's see what these guys are doing, and then you're tracking. Here's another email. This one's from August 19th from Elliott.

Sorry to hear about everything. And that right there is just a reference to Mark Lee and Ryan Job, you know, Ryan getting wounded so bad and Mark getting killed on August 2nd. But I'm glad to hear you're all right. Everyone is pretty anxious to get over there and replace you guys so we can put a little hurt on too. Got to admit, though, T.U. Bruiser has set the bar good and high.

But who are we kidding? You're only as good as I taught you, young Jedi. Well, as usual, I don't have much to say. Take care, brother, and always remember, Elvis isn't dead. Mickey Mouse is really a master conspirator of communism, and Chuck Norse is just a fucking actor. Have fun, dude. Leif replied the same day, E. Rex, which is one of your nicknames. Your other nickname is Bougar, which you get that got that from your parents? No, who gave you the nickname Bugger?

One of the things you wrote, E. Rex. Thanks for your words, brother. Rough times here, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be a lot. You just became Bougar at some point. But I think that it was Dave Tindle and Zawi who gave me that nickname because I had said one time that I wanted to bugger some chicks. Then it stuck with me. Fair enough.

Reply to that email. Another nickname that you had was E-Rex. It said, this is from Laif. E-Rex, thanks for your words, brother, rough times, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be lots to do here as long as your headshed lets you do it. Depends on how much risk they want to run.

Obviously, it's some dangerous shit. As always, I'm still your daddy. enjoy your last six weeks in the world and we'll see you out here soonest give a shout out to al ray ray kC jojo and baby lou for me peace out your grandpappy um so there was still the rest of that was that was in august that you sent that email there's still august the rest of august september october before you guys deployed and we would send home more wounded and of course um september 29th mikey monster was killed Were you guys still, did you guys go to his funeral?

Yeah. I mean, I just can't imagine a more sobering pre-deployment event. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough watching the guys too. You know, we're getting ready to step out the door and seeing that and seeing him come back and go to his funeral. Yeah, it was hard. It was hard to keep focused on what was going on or where we're going. But it was also a good way to focus on where we're going.

So it was, it was a hard time, though. So you guys show up Do you get do you remember me saying like hey you're gonna take casualties? I do Yeah yeah yeah that happened right as we got there We did a quick so Elliot and I when we got on the ground there we got back over to to Markle and we reorged really quick Because we headed to Corrigador To go turn over Seth yeah So yeah that happened really quick we were there

How was the turnover? It was good. Yeah I mean it was a typical Seth turnover you know we we walked right out into a gunfight like what are we doing we just went out and on the turnover up we just went out just blowing loopholes everywhere just getting after it and I remember we got back we're like what the hell just happened like but it was a good turnover you know we got out and because you know we none of us had been in any real gun fights up to that point so that was a good way for us to like kind of break into it and then and then they they were gone you know that you know how fast that rip happened we we basically got a lay of the land one night two nights and it was like okay we're out and you know normally you have these long turnovers in places that doesn't even

really matter and this is one of them that really mattered and but then again it's good to get that leadership to get those people out of the way so you can you know start focusing on what's next yeah it it definitely felt like we wanted to give you more turnover absolutely like I remember uh so I don't know maybe a couple weeks before you guys started showing up. We were out doing some operation and I was like out there with the platoon and we're peeling back and I'm looking at the platoon. You know, it happened to be like holding security or waiting for my turn and I'm watching the platoon and you could see like they're just freaking good.

You know, everyone is just so in the game mode that and everyone had learned a million little tiny lessons a million little tiny lessons every guy had their own little thing that they'd figured out and shared but it's just like the experience there's no other way to get it you know and i just remember thinking like man like like just praying like please like let it let you guys get some time to kind of uh uh get more experienced you know like let you get some time before shit hits the fan. And unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. The enemy doesn't get a shit.

In fact, the enemy knows and they can, they, they have their own little intel network. And they all of the new, new group took over. They did that shit all the time when, when, uh, the army would start to turn over with the Iraqis somewhere or a new unit came in. It was like guaranteed you're getting hit. Yeah. And, um, they did that when the one one AD showed up like new new, new, oh, new humvies. Yeah.

Are out in town. Although that means there's new people. That means they don't know. They're not experienced yet. And they hit him. And I remember actually Leif was talking about it with me yesterday. You know, he was watching. You guys were getting ready to head over Corregador.

And, you know, he was just telling me like how Elliot you were so like fired up because after however many years in the military you're going to go and you're a sniper. You're going to go do 100%. You're going to go do the thing that we trained to do. and he was telling me he was watching you you guys were getting ready to take your convoy over to Corregador and he's like watching you in the 50 Cal turret and lock and load in your he's he's just sitting there looking at you and he was telling me he could see how freaking stoked you were and he was super pumped but at the same time he was just like man like it's the same feeling we all had like it's

It's freaking, it's real, man, and it's gonna, it's real. And just pray. Like, we're praying for you guys. Like, please just like, let these guys, let these guys get, get their bearings. And please let them, you know, you just feel like no matter what we did in that short period of time, you just leave going, damn it, you know? Just, you know, you're out in the streets in Ramadi, and I don't even know if you guys had the opportunity to get there.

We were out there so much. It was like, we know exactly, you can just drop us off anywhere and it'd be like getting dropped off and, you know, by my local freaking Starbucks. I think I know exactly where I am. I can walk home, I can go. And, but it takes a little bit of time to get that. But it's so useful to have that when you know exactly.

Like you know the, we knew the building numbers. Yeah. You know, we know the building numbers without having to look at a battle map. That's just time. And, yeah, it was definitely, it was hard to leave. It was hard to leave.

And by the way, one interesting fact that I always like to point out, we were, we had the siege of if came down to do a visit with us. We were like, had been there for maybe a month. And the siege of soda came down to visit and we were giving them a brief. And I was in the middle of telling the, the colonel that the guys out at Corregador had done 23 straight operations and had been in an enemy. contact on 23 straight operations. And I'm not kidding and I didn't plan this.

But as I'm saying that, the talk chief comes in. It's like, hey boss, just a heads up. The guys in Corregor are on a tick right now. And I'm like, Roger. And I looked at the colonel, I said, make that 24 straight. And because that's the level of enemy contact that was happening. So for you guys to roll out with Seth on your first operation to get a big gunfight, it's like, welcome to Corregor, welcome to the Moolob.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was. But, you know, what you were saying is interesting, you know, combat maturity, you know, that's something that you don't typically have, you know, unless you've been in a lot of combat. And even if you had, every conflict's different. So getting that, and every deployment's different. Getting your bearings and getting that combat maturity, we just didn't have it.

You know, we got there. And, you know, unfortunately, these rips happen on a timeline. You know, the Air Force is directing, you know, how we're going to move our troops around. and this was a time that, you know, had we had the opportunity to push back and keep two platoons or two teams deployed at one time and have that overlap by a month, you know, something, you know, that would have been important. But, you know, like team guys did, we figured it out.

And luckily, you know, we, you learn those lessons because there's a lot, there's a lot of risk in learning those small little lessons. And there's no way to pass that, you know, that knowledge quickly, you know, especially in a couple of day, you know, turnover. But, you know, God loves Frogman. And we were pretty lucky, you know. So we learned along the same lines. And what was your opt tempo, like when those first out at Corregoradoer,

those first? We just turning to it. Right into it. You know, one of the last things Seth told us, and he did just right on our turnover up, he's pointing on a map, like Papa 10. He's like, where Mikey got killed, and that's where we got hurt. He's like, don't go there.

He's like, Papa 10, he's like, that's bad. He goes, unless you want to go there. You know, he's like such a Seth thing to say. He's like, don't go there. He's like, don't go there. Unless you want to go there, then go there. It's going to be good. So we the next time we went in there was when we got hurt.

So that was definitely a gnarly little area. Oh, man. What was the, so like how many, how many opposite do you guys think you did between, between when you landed and November 19th? Probably like 10, 12, 15, like a bunch. So you guys were racking them up. Yeah. Because, you know, sometimes you go direct action into an Overwatch.

So, you know, it's like multiple operations going on. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about this, this operation. That's the subject of the movie. And if you haven't gone to see the movie, go see it while it's in the theaters. Yeah, for sure. IMAX.

It is, it is, I didn't get to do the IMAX thing. Maybe I'll try and find that. So I actually went with my wife in Washington on IMAX when it came out, totally different than seeing it, you know, in a regular theater. But theater's still a million times better than on TV. Normal, you guys are planning for it. Planning cycle goes you probably aren't that's the other thing and some some people talk to me about the movie They're like well it just kind of started and ended I'm like exactly yeah I'm like that's exactly right

This is one day in yeah it's one day and there was many many many many many days like this yeah You guys do the nighttime insert night time infiltration you know and this was this was something that was kind of new Yeah at the time like going into a building you know what we learned in the in the 90s, you know, you're breaching everything. And even, even up until that time, a lot of people, everything that you go in, you're going to smash the door and you're going to kick the door in. And we probably turned over with you guys, hey, listen,

if your Iraqi soldiers are good for anything, it's they know how to get an end out of these houses. So they know how to open the doors. They know how to deal with, you know, what's going to be in the courtyard and all that stuff. And that's portrayed pretty cool in the film. But we didn't start off that way. I you know we got on the ground there and it's just like always you know we're like hey let's

blow this front door through the house at 3,000 miles an hour and then we learned real quick like hey did you check see if doors open you know it's like there's there's a lot better way but again that's that operational maturity yeah yeah and this another thing is I mean we had to have told you guys hey listen if you can go quiet oh you did it but guess what a breacher wants to do oh yeah and and the other thing is your your your propensity for risk, you know, it seems like, are you serious? You're going to walk in there, like, quietly? That seems crazy.

Let's breach the freaking door and get the advantage. And that seems like a logical thing until you realize that it's pretty easy to sneak in those houses. And when you breach the door, all of a sudden, you're giving away your position, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what's interesting about the movie is you're in, there's actually two elements out there. You're set up in mutually supporting Overwatch positions.

And they only show the, they only show, your guys' house. That's the whole movie. There's actually three elements. There's three elements. There's three. They talk about in the movie, OP1, OP2,

but there is a scene in the movie where the two elements that are moving to us at OP1, they link up. That's right. Yeah. One thing I've been telling people about the movie is that

it doesn't give the audience any clues. No. No. There's no clues for the audience. Like, a great example that is there's Anglico in the building with you guys

that play a pivotal role. Anglico played a pivotal role with us. Oh, yeah. Like we, I'm one of my great friends right now is Dave Burke, who is one of our Anglico guys. And, you know, they did scores of missions with us. There's no way that anybody that's watching that movie that doesn't know like what Jocko Willink knows, knows that that's an Anglico guy.

And there's no hint. You know, you know, a normal movie, they'd say, hey, throw a piece of dialogue in there to explain that those are Anglico Marines. Like, you know, and someone would say, hey, check with the Anglico Marines and see what they say, hey, Anglico Marine, what's the deal here? Well, here's what's, but there's none of that. No. They're just, they're just like, we're moving forward.

And there's no clues for the audience. Just like there's no clues about what's, you know, what's the plan? Well, no, you're on the mission. There's no clues and it's, it's, um, it's a different feeling for watching a movie. And I'm, I have it with all my knowledge. Like, oh, I know exactly what they're doing. I'd freaking know that a.O. I know like oh you didn't pop a 10 like oh yeah I was looking at some of the scenes and I was like wait

they might have used pictures of my guys on on some of those street corners because it's like we have there's good pictures of tasking bridge I was like it was exactly like that it was exactly like yeah it's the same stuff but the way the movie is done you don't get those clues as the audience you you're just immersed in it and it's a really powerful thing um you know they did a great job of the first half hour of the movie is just like sitting on an overwatch position yeah how boring boring slow yeah and I was like man if they they should do this for a long time and they did yeah and the other interesting thing there's no soundtrack no no there's just the noises and I was I was reading an interview I think it was with ray ray and they would like when a

Hollywood makes a movie, a shot is like one minute. Yeah. They were doing like 12, 15 minute shots because they would capture what the guys were really doing. They're hot. They're uncomfortable. They're itching their head. They're adjusting their gear.

Like that's what an actual overwatch is like. And they captured it all. They got Elliott sitting on the gun looking scanning. Man, you want to talk about getting the blood flowing? Like, I'm sitting there watching this. stuff and just like yeah um call to prayer comes this stuff is just so emblematic of what these operations are like called the prayer comes interpreter comes in hey here's what they're saying that's those call to prayer would be followed by like hey it's time to get our jihad on yeah oh yeah um

finally end up after this massive suspenseful and do i need to say spoiler alert is that a thing because we're about to talk about this whole freaking movie no i think uh the trailer shows at all i think spoiler alert so grenade comes in um elli gets wounded now when elli gets wounded what was what were those initial wounds he just had uh just some frag in his his upper arm like underneath it was nothing uh you know the interesting thing there's three guys in that room and that frag came in it wasn't a big room and it only hurt just Elliot. And it takes me back to like,

there was a lot of things that we would talk about sitting around the platoon space or sitting around the, the hooch there. And Elliot used to say as a medic, you get hurt, you get shot, you get in the street, you better get your ass off the street.

He goes, you better start getting, we're not coming to get you. We come get you, we're going to get shot too, you know? And that wasn't a selfish thing. That was like, just kind of a wise, like, hey, start trying to get out of the street. And then the same thing with a grenade

because you know, at full metal jacket there, at Corrigador. We got mortared every day. and you know we would go up on the roof and see where the mortars would hit and there was always this they would hit and it would spray upwards so elliott say hey just lay on the ground if you know a mortar comes in or grenade just lay on the ground don't jump on top of it just lay on the ground and it'll hopefully get around you and that's what they did and three people in a small room with a grenade

and it only hit elliott and it didn't even hit him bad he was fine he would have been fine um that being said the call gets made like hey he might be fine but we need to make sure let's let's cassoac him yeah so the plan was we were he'd been hit so we needed to get him out of there no matter what and obviously now you're fully compromised when they're putting grenades into your the mission was pretty much over anyway you know this was kind of typical like hey we need to it's time just go ahead and call it anyway we've done what we need to do and you know because we always got shot off target by the end of the the end of the overwatch it was always like okay We're, you know, we're going to leave, you know, we'll extract hot, you know, and we'll get out of there.

So this was time to get him out of there. He'd been hurt. No reason to keep him there. So the plan was calling a section of Radley's, get him in a Bradley, get him out of there, link up all of our units, call him more Bradley's and get out of there. Or leave on foot because we patrolled in on foot. We were just down the street from Eagle's Nest. That's another crazy thing is like you're probably 300, 400 meters away from like full friendly

forces. I mean, Ecosness was a fully yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, it was just right down the street. It's freaking, what a wild scene to be in. Yeah. So that was the plan. We're going to get him out of here.

And then we'll either follow out. Either foot patrol or consolidate the troops. Because we knew at that point it was a consolidated or a coordinated attack because they had just contacted the Alpha Patoon, which was over at Mark Lee, and they pulled our air over to support them.

So we could only suspect that they knew what they were doing. So pull our air so they could get on our roof and get a grenade through a loophole. They were good. They were. They were. And, you know, I think that's something that we, back to your after actions, you know, up until that point, you know, we like to call them booger eaters. And I think you downplay your enemy a lot, especially going, you know, through the whole pipeline of buds. And, you know, instructors are always talking about how, you know, the enemy's stupid or whatever.

They're not. And if you underestimate them, you will have a bad day. I would tell guys, they did everything that we did. Meaning they had comms. They didn't have cell phones, but they had radios. They would call for reinforcements. You could watch reinforcements come in. They had Kazavak.

They would take guys that were wounded and bring them up to the Ramadi General Hospital before it was secured by the Marines. And they did supporting arms. And coordinated arms. So they'd start an attack with machine gun fire, get the heads down, then RPGs to get the heads even,

further down and then in would come mortars and the final thing would be a vehicle-borne ID. That's like that's what they were doing. That is advanced combined arms operations by the enemy. And this is a classic case like what you just said. They do an attack somewhere else. Get air support pulled off and then now they can get to rooftops. They can they can maneuver on your element. So that's a lot of coordination that has to happen. You guys recognize what was happening. It's like, all right, we're calling it. And that's a, there's no right answer. It was always, you know, okay, do we stay here?

Because we don't want to leave in the daytime. Because we, we generally speaking didn't want to leave an Overwatch during the daytime. Right. But at a certain point, like, this is no longer, or this won't be a defendable position much longer. Let's get out of here. And it's always, it's a decision. Yep. And there's no right answer.

And sometimes you're going to be right. Sometimes you're going to be wrong. That's the way it is. Same thing with being on the rooftop. There's another debate we would have. you put a guys all you can put guys on the rooftop they're exposed to grenades if you put them on the top floor inside the building well you're blown loopholes but you still don't have quite the same amount of angles that you can see so there's more threat so you're it was

a constant game of of okay what well you know what risk do we want to take yeah do we want to take the risk of putting guys on the rooftop or do we want to take the risk of putting guys one level down where now we don't have the full visibility and And that's what we had to calculate that night is because we typically were on the rooftops. But this time in Papa 10, that's where, you know, Mikey got a grenade thrown up on the roof. So we're like, hey, let's go the one,

the top story below the roof. And we definitely lost a lot of situational awareness by that. And, you know, and then, you know, those roofs were really close together. So they were able to just kind of step roof to, you know, roof to roof. And we couldn't see them without our air support. Jack.

So the decision gets made. Bradley's are coming. And by the way, this is something I always point out, and I've heard Ray talking about it. Of course, again, there's no clues. You don't get these clues in the movie. It doesn't spell everything out for you. When we would call the Army or the Marine Corps

for a Kazavak or for fire support, they would risk their lives to come and give that to us. Those roads that they were coming down, the 1-1-A-D lost nine Abrams Mand. main battle tanks and 15 Bradley fighting vehicles while we were there. So when these guys were jumping in their vehicles to come and rescue us, it was at great peril and risk to themselves, their vehicles, their forces. But they did it over and over and over again, and they did it here.

Yeah, without hesitation. Yep. No hesitation ever. It was just the, just awesome, awesome that. These guys would, and you know, sometimes you're calling a Kazavak from some company or element that you never met before. You haven't worked with them before. Over time, you get to know them, but they don't care. They don't care if they know you or not.

You're an American. They're going to come and do everything they can to help you. So that's a situation you guys are in. So they come in and what is, who's in the, you guys are just going to break out. It's like a couple Iraqis go first or a few Iraqis go first. Yeah, we had four, yeah, four Iraqi scouts. And then you two. And then me and Elliot.

And are you just going to throw him in the back of the Brad? Yeah, we're just getting him, get him in the Brad, and then we're going to head back in the house. What do you remember about what happened next? So I remember, I mean, I remember pretty, pretty well, most everything, but a lot of smoke. You know, we got our smokes out and heading to the Bradley. I just remember we stacked up in the house.

We got our scouts out first. And then, you know, Elliot and now we're going to go to Bradley. So even though, like I said earlier, he was barely wounded, but he was still wounded. I wanted to keep him close because of the smoke. So I had my hand on his shoulder as we went out the gate. And then as soon as we got right to that Bradley, because the Bradley was just right there.

As soon as we got to the Bradley ramped down, that's when the blast came in. And yeah, and that's when, yeah, everything started to go south. The way it's portrayed in the film, like slow motion, overwhelming noise, but then overwhelming, like, silence and slow and muffled, What how does that compare it and I think you worked with them to try and yeah that's your perspective on it absolutely and that's you know that's exactly kind of how it plays out in the movie

this is very realistic to me you know I mean that's that's the way it seemed that slow motion there's a lot of pain that's coming it's like when you stub your toe and you don't know you know it's going to hurt here in a minute but it's not hurting yet same thing you know that you have that deafening um you know slow motion pain but the pain's like dull and it's starting to become more and more acute as the seconds go on. And you start to, as the seconds go, start going on, you start to realize that, you know, things start to speed back up. You're starting to hear things like gunfire.

And you're starting to see a little bit better because the smoke's starting to clear. And your, you're kind of your haze is starting to go away a little bit. And then you start, I started to realize kind of where I was as far as, you know, in a bad place. But to be honest, my very first thought, and I don't know why I remember this, But I thought that I got hit by an RPG 7. I thought it had landed right at my feet because we had just been talking about these RPG sevens and how much more powerful they were than, you know, so in my mind, I had just got hit

with an RPG 7, which obviously was not the case. And what was your recognition that your legs were jacked? So, yeah, I knew that immediately because, obviously, the pain, but I remember it being real, like real smoky not just from our smokes but just from the blast and the dust and and I remember I could see the sun up in the sky and I remember raising trying to raise my feet up a little bit so my legs up so I could see you know to be fair I've been watching Banner Brothers you know so you know I just expected this gruesome you know this is it but as I could see my pants just kind of went up and fell so I thought I

thought my feet were both gone you know I mean in my mind like they're not there so but that's not something you're really worried about at the time more worried about you know getting shot at still, you know, and so getting back in the house. And that's something that we don't, it doesn't, you know, Ray and I talked about this later, but you know, I remember telling Ray, because he said I was fine, he's like, you're gonna be fine. He's like, you're junk still there.

And I remember, like, I appreciate that, you know, because we talked about these things, but I remember saying that my feet were gone. And I remember him looking, he's like, no, they're there. There's some wrong place, because they were like pretty, pretty jacked up. And how many Iraqis got killed? Two.

So two. So just to clarify for people that don't know, you said scouts. You said scouts went out. And those were Iraqi soldiers that were like a scout platoon. And so we'd call them scouts. And so two of those guys were killed. Your OIC is like concussed, bad.

And they get you guys inside. And again, go see the movie. We could sit here and talk about it. Go see the movie. We're sitting here with two guys that were there that and the movie was made by a guy that was there. And we're not gonna do it justice. We're not gonna do the movie justice.

And you know, it's funny, I put it out on social media and people were saying like, well, I guess, you know, I haven't approved, I don't approve a lot of war movies, right? Like, oh, this is a good one. But man, this is a good one. And like I said, there's no punches pulled. And so getting the details of that, go see the movie. you end up, you guys both end up, you're in pain,

you guys get more a fiend, there's confusion, there's chaos, and it really is portrayed well in the film, like the mayhem. Yeah. And at one point, I was really paying attention to it, but they have all, all the radio calls are coming in, and radio calls, radio calls, radio calls, and they're like radio calls on top of radio calls,

which is 100% what can happen. in chaotic situations and it's 100% what's happening and finally Ray just unplugs his headphones because he can't like he needs to just get to the what's right in front of him yeah but they did a great job of portraying that and you notice it because all of a sudden he pulls that out all that's crazy traffic stops yeah and you know I I had like in my in my platoon in my task community like you weren't allowed to talk on the radio like you no one talked on the radio was like unless you had something just level 10 critical but that doesn't apply to

everybody because you got different units that are out there and they're trying to figure out what's going on they're trying to coordinate there they got wounded there's other firefights going on um finally the other squad and again i'm just go see the movie this is this is this is as good as you're going to get the guy that was there made the movie the guy that was there that made the movie got the input from all the guys that were there. Like it's, and he had pretty free reign. It sounds like to do what he wanted to do. Yeah.

And so go see it. Finally, the other, the other, like you'd mentioned earlier, there was actually two other overwatch positions. They consolidate. They move to your position. How freaking stoked were you to see those guys? Yeah. Yeah.

Really stoked. Let's take a step. Yes. I don't think. You know, so one thing the movie does not capture. And we had one medic. LA was our medic. So now we're,

you know, we're in a really bad place. We have two wounded seals. The rest of them are either holding some sort of World Watch or keeping us alive. So we were in desperate need of getting these other guys

consolidated us, which they're in a tick. And, you know, these bad guys were talking about being, you know, coordinated. It's as if they were coordinated enough to keep them from coming to us. That was their goal.

It was not necessarily to kill them. I mean, that was their overall goal, but to prevent them from consolidating on us to give them an opportunity to get on top of us and do what they needed to do there. But yeah, so the movie doesn't even start to allude to Elliot being our medic. Elliot was our medic.

So, you know, we had Ray working on me, which is a calm guy, and then Anglico working on Elliot because they thought Elliot was going to die. You know, and I hate to say it that way, but he did not look like there was anything they could do to help him. So that's why Anglico was working on him. So, yeah, we were in pretty dire strait. We went through every contingency you could possibly go through at that point.

Yeah. Well, it's dire in the movie. You're definitely feeling it. And, you know, I don't know, I don't know from being in the teams myself if it seems worse in the movie or if a civilian would look at it and go, that's level 10 bad. Or if they'd be like, well, probably like level seven. Or if they're like, no, that's a 12. Or if, you know, I don't know how a civilian, but reading really, you know, reviews of it, people get the message.

Like, this is a terrible, terrible situation. And yeah, just to give a little more clarity, you got two severely wounded guys. You got guys trying to keep them alive. There's not that many freaking people on the team. The Iraqi soldiers, they're gone. They bailed. Two dead.

Two gone. Two gone. You cannot hold security barely in a building like that. Like, basically you can't. So you're trying to, you know the enemy's closing in on you. just a it's just a nightmare um the other the other squads consolidate they show up um they now they can start to actually make progress it's like you guys as a as a smaller element you guys are just treading water just barely keeping your head above water yep just your lips and yeah just your

lips barely in one nostril and so finally when the other guys show up now you can start making progress towards coordinating and getting out of there That's right. And, um, but that was a, that was a glorious moment when they came in. Because you could hear the gunfire coming and you could tell it was our gunfire. And then when they got there, they set security and then they,

you could hear those 60s rocking and rolling and it's a good feeling. And then you get, you know, these fast movers doing show of forces and I've never had an aircraft that, you know, a fast mover that low. I thought the buildings were going to collapse. I mean, it felt like they were going to collapse.

You guys get extract. Um, and then, And like I mentioned earlier, the movie, look, they show the family come out. The family's kind of looking around like, damn, what the hell just happened? And then they show the insurgents kind of coming out and debriefing, walking around, seeing what's happening. And then just the movie ends. Yeah.

And, you know, I've read, I've actually not just read, but I've been talking to people and they're like, well, it just kind of ended. And my response is like, this is just a. another day. Yeah. And these freaking extreme heroics by the army guys that came to get you out, by your guys, but by you guys being there, by the people trying to keep you alive, by the other squad maneuver to you like those heroics, that's what happened on a daily basis, almost a daily basis in that city.

Yeah. And so to say, yep, it's over. There's no, there's no like, oh, we, we go back and we're going to have a party now and we're going to celebrate our hero. It's like, no, actually you're going to go back debrief and go out the next day. And the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. And that's, to me, one of the most important messages is like, no, we're not, we're not glorifying this one day. It's like, these guys did heroic things and made huge sacrifices.

And yep, we're on to the next day. Yeah. Um, when you went, so you went and saw the movie. Did you see it with civilians, like a normal day? So I've seen it, you know, I saw it several times, you know, through the process. Actually went to the red carpet and watched Elliott and all his picture taken there. But yeah, so I, you know, I was able to see the movie several times. But yeah, when it came out, my wife and I decided like, hey, let's go watching an IMAX.

And, yeah, just a bunch of civilians. But funny is they put our pictures at the end of the movie. Well, all these clowns, you don't think. anybody recognizes you know I don't think I would see somebody and be like oh that's him they knew they knew right away to the end of the movie people started looking at me like hey that's that's you yeah so it's pretty interesting but uh when iMacs um yeah it was really cool loud yeah so i went down opening night my wife and i went down i sit down in the theater and sure enough all of a sudden guy comes over to taps me on the shoulder what's up bro and it's one of my

brothers from tasking a bruiser and his wife and we sat there and watched this thing like totally uncoordinated but um yeah it was it was uh definitely it's wild to see and plus because like just knowing you know everybody you know knowing all you guys not not like best friends with anyone but know all those guys. Worked with all, like all those guys and over the years. So knowing and seeing it and seeing what you guys went through is working,

definitely go see the movie. You guys get Kazivak. Where'd you go when you guys get Kazavak? So we kind of stayed together for quite a while. Actually, all the way to out of country. So from there, you know, we went back to the med station across street from Crigador. And that's where we left.

You know, went there for just a hot minute. They got us in a 46 and flew us, I think it was a 46. I know I eventually ended up in a 46 at some point. Because, yeah, so they flew us from there to TQ and then TQ to Belaude. And then while we're in Bollad, we're there for maybe four or five days, got stable there and then flew to Germany. By the time you guys, you know, we're getting this word, like I mentioned earlier, I'm going to go to Elliott a little bit. by the time you get back um so laif you know who's your brother laif um he was like immediately engaged yeah and uh you know it's interesting talking to laif he because you ended up in san antonio pretty

quickly elliott and talking to laif like when laf got his stuff together to go to san antonio he packed his blues and for those you that aren't in the in the military or in the navy like when you pack your blues, that means there's only one reason you, there's two reasons you put your blues on. Wedding, funeral. And so here's your brother Laif, like back here in San Diego, getting ready to go, and he packs his blues because from the reports that we're getting, it was not looking good for Elliot.

He wrote this to a group of us on December 2nd. Laif did kind of send out the email. He said, what's happening, brothers? I'm in San Antonio with Elliot. I wish I could say things were better than they are. It's a fucking bad, bad deal, and it hit me like a freight train when I walked in there to see him early this morning.

He has suffered some brain damage so no one can say for sure how minor or severe it will be. A distant second is that the doctors have not made a decision yet on whether or not he will keep his left leg. This problem, however, seems insignificant to the brain injury. There are some small signs of hope, however.

Eye movement, response to pain. We are all just hoping and praying that he wakes up and slowly comes back to the Elliot we all know in love. As bad as all this sounds, he certainly has a fighting chance. And the fact that he's probably the toughest, most bullheaded bastard I know gives me confidence that if anybody can pull through it, he will. It's time to get down on our knees and ask Almighty God with all our hearts to heal our friend and brother, Leif.

Here's what you write about this time, Elliot. You say, I woke up in the... ICU room in Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio with my left leg still attached, though it was pretty much useless because it was just a big club of a foot and my calf was also blown off and surgically reattached with a giant fixator on my left leg and also I had one on my right arm too. They told me that I would probably need an amputation but I declined it first. I guess that I was actually just hoping that it would get better and I would be able to join my team and finish my 20 years and retire. However, looking back now, I

I see just how naive of thinking it was, because I've never seen a one-legged frogman that couldn't speak. Have you? Didn't think so. I know one of my old assistant platoon commanders from SEAL Team 7, he actually brought his whole platoon out. They were in Texas doing training,

and he brought us whole platoon. They all scrubbed, all went in to see you. And what was the nature of your injuries? Like how, you're, I thought you were losing both your legs. That was kind of the reports that I was getting. Yeah. How'd they save them? I don't know.

You know, I mean, at first, I mean, by grace of God and the right, the right surgeons, and all reasonable, all reasonable, I guess, they should have just taken them off in Iraq. And that's what my doctor's here were like, hey, they kept them on. They kept it on through Germany, so we're going to, we'll see what we can do to fix them. So there's a lot of surgery. And then eventually they put nails in them, rods and both tibious. And one fibula, one of my fibros is still broken. And just a lot of hardware and then just a lot of rehab.

Just metal. Yeah, yeah. Metal and rigors tape. That's right. Some baling wire in there. But yeah, I mean, they really probably should have, for simplicity, just taken, at least my left one off in Iraq. And was it just broken bones?

Broken bones and a lot of flesh missing. So they eventually had to harvest, so the inner gastric calf muscle to put over to flap over the front because you could just see my tibia. There was just a big hole where my tibia was there. And you know, you could see the tendon that went down to my big toe, which traveled right along the tibia, which did not get injured, which is crazy because it was just exposed. But they were able to cover it up and, yeah, get it up and going. So bilateral tibb fractures missing a lot of flesh.

How long was like when they started putting your legs back together, how long did that take to put them back together, where you could walk again, when could you run, again. Yeah. So, so after all the surgeries, I was in the hospital here in San Diego. I eventually made it back to San Diego for my surgery. So I did all my big surgeries here. So I was in the hospital up until almost Christmas time. And then I had to break out of the hospital. I could not stand the hospital anymore. And then it was a few more months for I was able to kind of stand on a walker. And then, yeah, so probably running was a while. So they ended up group one bought a underwater treadmill, which I thought was really cool, state of the art at the time.

Not so a state of the art anymore. So I was able to kind of get in this treadmill, you know, flood it with water and run. But to actually be on my feet, like non-assisted, it was probably, I think, six months or a little better. Was the prognosis from the beginning, like, hey, like you're going to be, you'll be able to walk again or where they kind of? No, no.

Everybody was, you know, and I don't know why these, some of these surgeons or these doctors was just kind of default to the worst. And at first, like, you're probably not going to walk, you know, normal with the way your legs are, you know. And then as I started kind of getting better, they're like, well, you're going to always walk with a limp, but you won't run, you know, and all these things. And not to take them and turn them into, you know, kind of a motivational thing, but it was more

of like, okay, I didn't believe them. You know, I'm like, we'll see, you know, we'll see what we can do. And then to find, you know, that new, you know, because basically you got to find where you can work from because I didn't know where my where my baseline was now once I found my baseline and started working I caveat that real quick before we move on also suffered an injury to my junk too and when I was in the hospital there in Iraq I believe but anywho there was a surgeon there who was a urologist and he put my junk back together for me God bless that guy yeah we need to give that guy at least the achievement medal.

At least. If you're out there and you're listening and you did that, we want to have you on the podcast to talk about the heroic achievement, especially that type of micro surgery on Elliot's junk. Here's another update email from Leif. And I remember this one. The subject line was, bugger is still in there.

It says, the miraculous breakthrough that we have, been praying for happen tonight. Me, Dave, and Elliot's dad, Joe Miller, went to see Elliot tonight and immediately noticed that his eyes were wide open, much more so than before, and was clearly looking around. He very perceptibly looked over at each of us as we talked to him and focused on us. I asked him to blink for me if he clearly, and he clearly responded. His dad talked to him, let him know where he was and then he had been out for a while. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Sue.

No response. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Elliot. Two definite blinks. He then indicated that he knew it was his dad, me, and Dave. Elliot has always given me a lot of shit from my lone star state heritage. And I told him that since we were in

San Antonio, when he's well enough, I would take him to the Alamo to pay his respects. He clearly furrowed his brow at me. First indicators that I have seen that booger is still there. I can't describe how incredibly uplifting it was to witness this while he still has a long road ahead and many challenges ahead for recovery just knowing that Elliot is in there that he hears us and that he knows who he is and who we are is a huge step in the right direction I hope all as well with each of you and we'll keep you updated as often as I can word to your mom's life and then in January you got a visit from your platoon commander who is actually the the platoon commander who is actually the the platoon commander that's in the movie that's on the mission, the guy that was severely concussed.

And he wrote an update to the guys in Ramadi and some of us about both of you guys. And this is what he said. And he's still active duty. Obviously, we're not using his name. You don't use his name in the movie. Joe is awesome physically, mentally, spiritually. He makes me feel like a little bitch. He is kicking ass and I'll put money down that he will be walking unassisted when we all

turn from deployment. Joe and I went and visited Elliot this weekend. We spent two days with him and left amazed. Elliot makes Joe feel like a bitch. So where does that put me? When we all talk about Elliot, you have to understand that his improvement is all relative. That doesn't discredit his progress though. I think some of the things have gotten lost in the rumor mill and the email chain. So I want to try and paint an accurate but relative picture. To do that, I have to go back, give a little background that I didn't quite know all the details about. When Elliot finally made to San Antonio, he was an intensive care unit and his parents and Laif didn't know if he was going to live through the night. He was rough, so many wounds, so much trauma to the body and brain,

so many complications and treatments were slowed and put on hold until his body could handle the extra stress. He was in a coma, had brain swelling, his stomach sliced open to see if he had any internal damage, covered in burns, had pockets of swelling where the pressure had to be relieved by cutting open his skin, etc. Now let me tell you the awesome. some shit three days ago he was moved out of the ICU which means he's going to make it he's still drugged up on pain medication and gets extra when they change his bandages or have to do something that they know is going to hurt this makes him pretty incoherent he goes in and out of conscious and sleeps a lot when he isn't too drugged up he's totally different from the coma

and from having tubes down his throat for so long all the muscles in his bodies have atrophied his speech suffers from this but if you spent even just a little time with him you know Elliot is in there. He mumbles a lot and repeats things, which I think he does because he knows people can't understand him very well. That being said, Joe and I had some alone time with him, and we had some awesome short conversations where we could totally understand him. No shit. He listed all the guys at Camp Corregador and his close friends at Camp Mark Lee, and he said he missed them. We think he has some short-term memory issues, but I think a lot has to do with the drugs he's on. You just can't always tell if he's listening or on a morphine trip. So that's

That's probably why he forgets things. The second we came in, he recognized us. His eyes widened like hockey pucks. He looked at his dad and then back at us in amazement. We were fired up and took everything we had to keep the tears away. I'm not gonna lie. He's not in the shape that I expected and I was not prepared for the scene, but when you hear the state he was in only weeks ago, he is doing awesome.

Elliot gets the best care in the building just because his dad is by his side every second he can be. There's no one that I want more to be with Elliot than his dad. Elliot makes me so fucking proud because he's fighting hard. Last night around 11 p.m., he asked Joe and I to take him to the gym. You already know this, he is an absolute beast. Joe and I did our best to represent you guys. We told him everyone loves him about a thousand times.

He said he loves us too. So progress is being made. It's slow, but it's there. You say this, Elliot. After I spent two to three months down there, I'd gone up to San Francisco to the VA Polly Trauma Center at Palo Alto because of my TBI. I was there for another three or four months, which totally sucked ass. So after about five or six months in a goddamn hospital, I finally got back to SD Balboa

to be exact. And before you return to San Diego, you sent an email to everybody on 24 May 2007. You said, hey everyone. I'm coming home in like a week and a half for good. So put the women and children to bed because it's going to be on like Donkey Kong. No, but seriously, I will be home soon enough. Can't wait to see all of you again.

And you get home, you got after it. This is how it looked. This is another thing you say here. It was there that I decided to go ahead and get my leg chopped off almost nine months after my actual alive day. So I went under the night for the second time, for the second of the last time in July.

and got my leg amputated. I went to rehab there at Balboa, which is where I met my wife, as she was my physical therapist. But we didn't start dating until about a little over a year and a half after we met because I had gone to Omaha, Nebraska for another rehab center. It was then that we started dating. So like a typical frogman,

you go and you start going out with your freaking physical therapist. And you hook up with her. and eventually get married to her. Awesome woman. Kids? Two kids. So that the surgeon in Balad or whatever did a good job. Fully functional fire equipment.

And then after I was done with all my rehab centers and whatnot, I finally returned to SD to begin my retirement process almost two years after I was injured. What did you do afterwards, Joe? So you get healed up? It takes what? A year before you're functional again? It does.

It takes a while. So funny, the first phozo, which I never met the guy up into this point. He actually came to Boboa to the hospital and he offered me a job. He's like, hey, because he knew the platoon was gone. He knew the team was gone. He knew I was going to be in a pretty dark spot or a pretty dark place. And, you know, looking back at the time, I had no idea that he, you know, it's pretty, that he was thinking like that far ahead you know yeah and anyway so once I got out the day I got

out the hospital um checked into physical therapy um in the trailer you know it's like we think of the seal teams having this like state of the art that which they do now they do now but then it was a trailer um and behind team five and checked in there starting my rehab or at least started the process and then freaking jason that's right jason yeah man he is yeah that guy incredible um i just talked to him the of the day in Coronado, I hadn't seen even, he's like, what, he, he didn't even know as part of this. He's like, you got hurt there? I'm like, Jason, what do you think you were, you know, who you were doing the whole time? Yeah, but anyway, so then I went to Buds and I'm in Buds, I met Buds, first phase in a wheelchair, you know, and it was just a liability, but I at least

was there and around all those young men and it was interesting. But, yeah, so I did that. I did that. And then once I was able to be back on my feet, I got orders to Buds. So I did the next few years of the first phase instructor, which really helped me get back on my feet because you got to, you know, you're in front of these students. You know, you can't let them, you know, push you around. You know, you can't be the weak guy around there. So you got to heal up.

But funny story is the first class, I don't remember what class it was, but during Hellweek, I was out there on my crutches. And there was a Hilderbrand and a Miller. And they were in the same booker. Damn. And they both quit during Hellwick the same time. Freak of shame. I remember telling Elliot like,

hey, our replacements are here. And they both quit. I said, they're out of here. So, yeah. Placed YouTube now. Well, it's weird because, you know, it's like both of them in the same book here too. That's wild.

Yeah. But anyway, so I stayed at Buds for a few years. And then once I was really fully healed up, then I was off to, I did my platoon chief at Team 1. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How was it going back to a team? You're, you're now like,

you got this experience and you're going to be put in charge. Yeah. this time kind of not getting thrown in the last minute as the OPO, but your platoon chief, man. Yeah. Like God in the SEAL platoon. Yeah. Well, so actually, that was my second OPO when I got hurt. So that was our second platoon.

Oh, that's right. That's right. So I did it. I did a partial full one. And then a full one. Yeah. But I think, you know, preparing a platoon is a little different now. As a platoon chief, I had a whole different mindset on what is important, you know,

and what you should be preparing towards. So we did a lot of, and actually, you know, Flynn was about. Paltoon commander. So, yeah, so we had a good time. We had a good time, but we were able to focus on what was really important. Yeah, for the platoon. Yeah, and we, you know, the things that we did in trade at, you know, when I got back and just really stepping it up to try and make sure guys were ready as we possibly could,

you know, everything we could. Oh, yeah, we've carried our whole platoon through Nileland for you. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's, it's one of those things where in the, in the, in the 90s in the teams like a down man like okay you're like oh yeah we'll find the lightest guy find the lightest guy and put him down and he can help you get up and all this stuff and and by the way you know in the 90s there was no body armor um it just was a totally no helmets just it was not every single guy had a radio so you know you're picking up like a 200 pound guy okay cool well now you get to the the war

and now the guys wearing body armor he has a radio he has a helmet he has night vision this guy all of a sudden weighs 250 pounds and and by the way as it's depicted in the in movie yeah it ain't freaking easy to carry a down man no and we did a lot of down man yeah well it's important you know I mean like you like you said it's not so easy picking up a down man not when they're not assisting you not when they really weigh a bunch they have gear um and you don't the adrenaline doesn't kick in and you have superhuman strength yeah it just doesn't happen You get done with Appletoon. What's next after that?

So did Appletoon, and then I went off to Kodiak for a couple years. Oh, nice. Yep. So I was a senior chief out there, and then Kodiak came back, did my troop chief at Team 3. Nice. Yeah, did that. And then after Troop Chief, I ran SQT for a year.

And then I was a match chief there. And then back over Team 1, opposite matchee, MADC. Nice. Yeah. And finished out your career. Yeah, finished out there. And then what do you, you retired out of that? I did. So I retired in September 21. And then I just, I work here at a tech company here in San Diego. Okay. And, yeah, flowed around here. Just working at a tech company now. Yeah. Isn't that weird? You go to, what's your job at the tech company? I'm a trainer. So I work a lot with special operations still. Okay. Yeah. Check. So I'm not the techie kind of guy. I was going to say if you're like, hey, go check with that guy, Joe and see if he can get your computer back up. I can't even get my computer back up. That's always the jokes. Like my little, my little group of people are a bunch of, you know,

fire seals is like we don't know anything about computers we work her a tech company that's awesome um any other any any any any closing thoughts from you jo um well i mean just you know this whole process you know like ray writing the story uh or no you guys he didn't write the story but telling the story you know getting it out there it's definitely been very therapeutic i think for most of us if not all of us because as you know these operations we all carry a certain amount of guilt with us a certain amount of you know that that baggage that you know we never had an opportunity to kind of decompress it and like lay it out on the table so I think we all carried a certain amount and through this process we're able to kind of lay it out there and and realize like hey you know there's a there was a lot of

you know bad things that happened that weren't people's decision process that got us there so we're able to to kind of lay all that out and that's been very therapeutic for all of us and then just, you know, for Elliot, for him to finally be able to really see on the screen, you know, what, what happened. Yeah, it's been a huge thing. Yeah, the decision part, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but, you know, like I said, you go on the roof or do you go on the top floor in the building? Which one of those is correct? Yeah. Well, you don't know.

Do you leave during, do you leave during the day or do you hold out all night? You don't know. You're making a decision with the information that you have at the time, and you're going to make the best decision you can, and you might get it right, and you might extract, and you get in the Bradley's and everyone's okay, and that happens, and it happened plenty of times,

and you might, it might not happen that way. You might walk out there, hit an ID, you might lose a guy in a firefight. You know, all those decisions are, there are decisions that are being made at the time with the most information that you have, with the information that you have available at the time. And the other option is no decision, which that doesn't work.

You can't just sit there. You have to make a decision of what we're going to do. I think that, and this is something I learned, you know, when I lost guys and my lost friends, for some reason I ended up a lot of times being the guy that was delivering like the eulogy at the memorial service. and so what does that mean? That means 12 hours after you lose one of your friends, you're sitting down, I'm sitting down writing thoughts. And I didn't think about this at all at the time,

but over time, I recognized that sitting down and writing down what my thoughts were, what my feelings were, what I was thinking, what I'm gonna miss about them, what good memories I have, that seemed to be a therapeutic, thing. And then, you know, writing about the stuff and talking about on the podcast with different people and being able to talk through what our experiences were, I think was very helpful

to me. Being able to, for you guys to have never sat down and talked about it, that I can't imagine, you know, you're thinking, well, what if I would have done this? It's like, all you need is someone to say, actually, Joe, you couldn't have done that because of this thing over here. You go, shit, I didn't know that. Or, well, what if I think we should have done this? Well, we couldn't have done that because of this thing over here.

And people's perception, you know, what do we do as seals? A lot of times we just look at what, okay, this is what I did wrong. This is on me. I wrote a freaking book about it, extreme ownership. Like, this is on me. But if you take that and you go, oh, this all happened because of me. And someone goes, hey, actually, Joe, like, you couldn't have done anything over there. Or, yeah, that didn't happen that way.

And so I think the fact that this is, that you guys. guys were able to sit down rehash it see all the different perspectives and go all right and get to a point for lack of a better word get to a point of like get to a point of forgiveness forgive yourself forgive your teammate forgive your you know whoever and go yeah this is what happened there's nothing we can do to change it we all were doing everything we could at the time that we were capable of doing to try and get through this situation. That's what happened. And I think that's a huge part of overcoming

and what's that word? I think it's a huge part of processing these situations is the recognition that everyone was doing the best they could, including myself, including yourself, everyone's doing the best they could at the time. And this is the shit sandwich. Yeah. That happened. Yeah. No, you're right. And just, just writing it down, you know, and having Ray write it down for us here, you know, so that, you know, this was the beginning of our journeys, you know, like this, like, you know, talk about the snapshot of the movie. That is a snapshot of, you know, us getting hurt. But that was kind of the, that's one battle, stepping into the next battle. And I've been, you know, writing kind of a memoir on that for my kids because my kids, my older kids are kind of, you know, they kind of lived a lot of it. Or at least were around it. I got two younger kids. I've got two younger kids. I've got one. one that's two and one that's seven months.

So I've been kind of jotting it all down to try to put it into perspective so they can see what that process, that next battle was really like. And so that's kind of progressing. And I think I'm going to release that out as an actual, an actual, like more like a self-help book, not a sealed book, but more of like, hey, this is what you have to do when you kind of hit bottom. You find your bottom, whether it's through war, through trauma, you know, loss, failure. How do you find a new roadmap? How do you find that blueprint to get out of that?

and claw your way back to be in a new normal person you know maybe somebody that's stronger more wise so yeah kind of working on that right now oh that sounds awesome yeah it's it's another thing is the expectations

and going into the like the movie I mean of course people get portrayed in the military as superheroes yeah and like oh yeah they're going to do everything awesome and they're going to be awesome it's like oh no it's it's like you just got your free freaking legs blown in half, like what's gonna happen now?

And the realism of the movie in that perspective is freaking legit. Yeah. How deep you into that book? I'm pretty deep. So it's not hard to write. I'm not a writer, but it's not hard to write when it's kind of a true story.

So yeah, and I'm tied on it alone in the platoon space because I think that's something that we kind of miss a lot. We think that we're, you know, people can help you on these recovery paths. Nobody can help you. You're by yourself. People can be around you and root you on, but you've got to find your own,

you know, you can't quit on your own. You've got to find your own grit to kind of, you know, get through those hard times. People can rally around you all they want, but you have to do it yourself. And I think that's a culture, or that's a thing that we've got in our culture now where we try to, you know,

we ask for all this help. Nobody can really help you. They can provide you things. They can provide you assistance. You know, they can give you resources, but they can't do it for you. So. Yeah.

Dan Knawson. You know, Dan, right? So, probably five, six years ago. We met up, Leif and I were in wherever he was. I think we were in Colorado and we meet up with him. We go out to dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're talking, you know, of course, it's like heavy talk about what's happening.

And, you know, at the end of the night, he was kind of like, he said something along the lines of like, hey, when I go home, like when I had home right now, I still don't have legs. and we sit there and interact with him for an hour and two hours, dinner and like, oh, yeah, you're doing this, you're doing that. And hey, you're training for this.

And he just was letting us know that, like, this is the everyday thing that he deals with every single day. And that's just what I thought of when you said alone in the platoon space. Like, look, your platoon mates, they want to help you. But ultimately, you're going to be alone in that platoon space, Dancan Austin. I didn't go home with him that night and help him, you know, get it and out of his car.

And he did all that stuff himself. Yeah. And that's, so that's a powerful concept that you're talking about there. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Trying to get out there. I'm actually wanting to get it out by November 19th.

That's kind of what I'm looking at. Right on. Right on. Yeah. Kind of a special day for us. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

For sure. But I think it's going to be helpful for people, you know what I mean? Because it's not about a, it's not about a seal. It's about being human, you know, and humans have. You got to fight through things and just not quit. I want to close this out. And by the way, when that comes out, we'll have you back on here. We'll go into the details of the rest of this stuff.

But I want to close out with what Elliot closed out his notes to me. He said, today I'm just waking up each and every day with the memory of my old self thinking, what if? What if I just shot that dude? Would have made any difference? I don't know, but maybe, just maybe it would. But I'm doubtful because I know. now that it was just an IED and even and that even if I had gotten the shot it still would have caught up to me I mean those IEDs don't give two shits whom they get and I

guess that it was just my time better me than anyone else I'm glad that it happened to me and not anyone else just because I don't think that anyone else would have the intestinal fortitude to be able to handle what I've gone through and I'm referring to all the surgeries and rehab and the worst part of all was the separation anxiety that I suffered from my teammates who were still fighting the enemy and still are to this day. Elliot, I agree. I don't think I know anyone else I could have gone through what you went through and what you've gone through with the same intestinal fortitude and the same incredible attitude

that you have. and I actually know this and you should know this that while you were forced off the battlefield, you continued to inspire your teammates and to this day, to this day, the next generation is inspired by you and the example that you have set as a true frog man. And it's shown in the movie

and it's shown in what you've done since then. and it's an inspiration. Thanks to both of you guys for coming out for joining us. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice for the nation, for the Navy, and for the teams. Thank you for your kind words. I don't know what else to say. Other than thank you for the opportunity to be able to share my story and experiences.

I'm not a talker. But before we go, you want to hear a funny story about my stay-in. in the hospital there in San Antonio. I had recently seen a pick of me with Joe and Clint, where I am staring off into space. And when I asked my dad about the picture, he said, morphine, it's a hell of a drug. I've got it in my phone if you guys want to see it.

After we're done? Outstanding, man. I guess that says it, man. Yeah, awesome. It's an honor to be able to share your story. I'm glad that your story of your platoons getting out there to the world. Thanks to Ray Ray for making that happen

and all the people that put that thing together. It's really going to help people understand the nature of warfare. Also one more thing real quick like a bunny. But if anyone from Brown Ability is listening to this podcast, I've got just two words for you. Fuck you. And I really do mean that too.

Because you guys just plain old. I have sent you a couple emails, but since you guys probably have a lot of complaints about her product, I guess that it just fell on deaf ears. Never missed an opportunity to talk shit. Yeah, they're the makers of the wheelchair lift that I've got for my truck. Roger that. I'm sure we can put some pressure on them and get you a wheelchair, kick-ass wheelchair lift for your truck.

We'll do it, brother. Right on. Awesome, fellas. Thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you. Right on, brother. Thank you, guys.

And with that, Elliot and Joe have left the building, and also we have left the building. We've relocated back to our normal studio closet. Sure. If you're watching this on video apparatus, you'll see that. And interestingly, you know, talking to the boys afterwards. towards as as hard as that mission was, as hard as Buds is, as hard as seal training is,

all that stuff, the recovery, both those guys, the recovery that they went through, you know, they're both saying the recovery is the hardest part of the story. So, you know, Joe having to get his legs repair Elliot having to get his leg amputated, relearn just life, both of them, you've got a new starting point.

So for both them to go through what they went through. It's pretty awesome to be able to sit down and talk with those boys. And especially because I haven't seen him in, you know, quite a few years now. Yeah. Seen Elliot a little bit more often. I haven't seen Joan a bit. but if they can go through that,

I think that we can all step up and work a little harder. If you remember correctly, it's been, I remember after we did episode 50, that's when you, those, when you first introduced the idea of Elliot coming on,

really? How do you remember that? Because you said, you were like, hey, he has an iPad to talk and it'll like, you're explaining that to me. Did I say that on the podcast?

No. How can you remember it? Because I remember thinking that's a very unique approach for an all audio scenario and then We were kind of spitballing it for a little bit and you're explaining kind of what happened I was like man that that could come out kind of crazy But yeah, so yeah, I always remembered that and it was interesting to connect all the dots with like the movie because I saw the trailer for that movie When it like this is before you when it first came out You didn't talk about it at all. I just saw it yeah, and I was like damn. This is like a very well done

promo like trailer you know you know that's my chance the trailers let's face it yeah and yeah the way that came out was so good so that was always on my radar like okay this is going to be like a different kind of presentation for a for a war movie you know

it's a different kind of presentation for any kind of movie yeah and then just with the hype or whatever and then it's like okay that was about Elliot the guy Jock was talking about back then so I'm like connecting the dots I'm like, wow, that's crazy. That's cool, though. Yeah, and I had some emails going back and forth with Elliot for years of like, you know,

hey, dude, you need to get on here. You need to come on the podcast. And then he was fired up, you know, like, so I'm glad we were able to finally get it done. And, you know, I think people hearing that part of the story, even especially after seeing the movie warfare, after seeing the movie and then listen to this or maybe they'll listen this and then go see the movie. But either way, you get a more, you get a bigger connection. You get more context, I should say.

More context to the whole thing. When Joe was talking about recovering and, you know, the doctors tell them like, hey, you won't really walk that good again. Or you won't walk or then you'll always walk with a limp or whatever. And so I think I was talking about this. Cake nuts. Cake nuts. Hell yeah. And he had his pack reattached because he had, you know, tore it or whatever.

And then, you know, they give you the your percentages. and all this stuff. And we're kind of, I don't know if this is true, but I think this is true. This is something to think about. And what Joe was talking about really reminded me of this, maybe think even more about it. Where when the doctors tell you,

oh yeah, you have like a 25% chance or 1% chance or whatever, right? It's based on the past. It's not based on like other stuff that might land as actual probability goes. It's based on the past. So it's essentially, let's say 100 people got this, particular ailment that that you got out of those hundred people 25 have gotten to a certain level of recovery that's for the sake of this discussion say a hundred 25% get full recovery yeah okay and then they'll say you have about a 25% chance of going full recovery right so it's kind of

like okay cool that that actually does make sense right because the only we'll say factor that they're kind of considering is your injury and out of 100 people you know we'll say roughly 25% So that's 25% chance. Okay. So it doesn't really take into consideration your approach, your mindset, your work ethic, which is a big one. Because they told me that when I blew out my knee. They're like, oh yeah, it'll be about a nine-month recovery.

That's how it is, like a nine-month recovery. So I'm like, all right. I was like, what are the chances of me getting like back cleared to play? Meaning you got to pass all these physical tests and stuff before that. They're like, it goes down and all this stuff. Give me all this probability. So freaking three and a half months, I was cleared to play. three and a half months, but it's because I approached it like an actual, like fitness program

that I had a goal, you know? And I was like, I remember thinking, again, I made up my own fitness program. So I was like, all right, I feel like, that's when I first started believing, okay, they didn't take into consideration the work ethic that people take because everyone takes different work ethic. You know, see what I'm saying? They have different work ethic and they approach it differently. Now, when you consider an injury as like, let's say, let's say I'm a 47 year old average person and I get a peck tear or whatever I work and you're not used to being into fitness or whatever you're going to approach it way different so they're taking into consideration those people as well in that 25% see what I'm saying so it kind of in a way doesn't apply to you if you don't let it

which is kind of the point of kind of Joe's thing not even kind of that's straight up the point where Joe probably was hitting on this notion without even knowing it where it's like I didn't believe the straight up doctor now I didn't believe it because this doctor doesn't know me. He doesn't know my work ethic, right? That's what he was thinking. And guess what? He was right.

It's absolutely right. And I think that applies to everybody because it's true. They don't know your work ethic, you know? That being said, I'm sure that the doctors are trying to set expectations properly, right? I imagine so. Because what I don't want to say is like, don't worry, you'll be back to 100% and you never get there. And now you're mad. That being said, I would hope that someone say, hey, listen, you got a 25% chance.

of getting full recovery from your peck tear. But if you apply discipline, work ethic, follow the protocols, you're going to increase that by a lot. And so then they at least recognize that it's kind of, that it's on them. You know, that's the thing. Physical therapy's on you, you know? Physical therapy's on you.

You got to fix it. And you got to protect it. You know, you got to be the, use your judgment to know when, because like, I'm glad you got cleared at three and a half months. But sometimes people think they're okay and they start doing stuff when they shouldn't be doing stuff. And something's not fully healed

and they do it anyways and they can get hurt or they don't do things soon enough and now they're not pushing. Now the thing doesn't heal right. Yeah, fully. And oh, I don't doubt that. And I don't doubt that there's probably even more to it than that.

But I'm saying this factor when you're, when you have like a really, really strong work ethic and you know a lot about, you know, physical like training and stuff like that, you're lumped in with the rest of the people who got that same exact illness and don't have your work ethic. See what I'm saying? So you're part of that 25%.

But if you just isolated you and everyone like you, right, might not be 25%. And we don't know what that is. I get it. Of course, we don't. What I'm saying is probably what Joe's thinking in his brain where it's like, I don't care, you give me a 1%? Guess who's the 1%?

Neat. See what I'm saying? And now it, if you kind of do the numbers kind of in retrospect after he can walk again, it's kind of like, well, isn't that 100%? Because I'm the what do you call the sample size me 100% see what I'm saying and everyone like me 100% So it's not you know it's not a cut and dry thing, but it is almost like a in a way like a Practical and logical way to look at these quote unquote odds that people can impose on you Yeah, I didn't listen to the odds on anything. Yeah, because it kind of like you know

They don't have to apply it they don't accept it. Yeah, but it not only boils down to discipline and work ethic it also boils down to the fuel got to have the right fuel so imagine you've got some kind of a physical ailment get the right get the right fuel we recommend jaco fuel

check it out get the get the joggle protein milk protein ready to drink powders we got new flavors of powders coming out we got it just tastes delicious by the way joint warfare super krill these are things you should

take every day time war these are things you take every day these are things that are so helpful i got i'm so stoked like my kids who are young adults they're all on it because rana like a few months ago she's like dude oh no there's more than a few months ago but she's like i see you rolling with freaking meha west dean uh young bucks right people that are stu's Sloan, Wyatt, like people that are legit, competitive grapplers. She's like, I see you doing that,

and you're almost 54 years old. She's like, how is that? I said, lift weights. I said, never stop lifting weights, never stop working out, and take the stuff that I take. Take joint warfare, take super cruel, take time more, please. I go, if you do that, it's gonna just make you so much more durable. Over time.

Keep you right in the game. Keep you in the game, bro. You got to stay in the game. So we got all that stuff. We got hydration. We got greens. Creatine. I'm on the mega creatine right now.

Yeah, with you. You're with me. 10 grams a day? I just got back from the I know. We call that the land. Yeah, the land.

And I failed to bring the creatine. So the moment I got back, I started double-dene. Creatine sticks, by the way. We have the little creatine stick packs now. Oh, right, right. So it's so awesome. So I go on.

travel. And I just, oh, I'm going for four days. Cool. Eight creatine stick packs. Boom. Done. Easy. 10 grams a day. We're in the game. And then I get home because the creatine stick packs are obviously a little bit more expensive because it's packaging. But then when I get home, you get the big bucket. It's like, well, it's not a big, I have a small, like a small bucket of creatine of creatine. Morning and night, five grams, five grams. I'm even thinking I was listening to Rhonda Patrick, you know how that is? Yeah. She was talking about, she had an individual on there. She was talking about, Like, oh, sleep deprivation, up your creatine. I'm like, cool, I'm in the game.

Oh, if you don't get that much sleep. Don't get that much sleep, more creatine. Oh, that helps. Okay, all right. Good to know. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Good to know.

So now when I travel, I'm probably going to put two extra stick packs so I can do a little maybe a 15, maybe a 20 because sometimes that jet lag, you stayed up too late. Still got to get up probably. So get yourself some creatine. So the packs of creatine is 10. 10 grams? No, it's five. Oh, okay.

So I bring, if I'm going for four days, I bring eight. Got one in the morning, one at night. Jack. And by the way, I'm just straight dry scooping this all the time. I'm not mixing it with water or nothing, just pouring it in my mouth and then drinking some water. I don't get it. That's what we're doing. They do it, man.

I don't know if I can get there, but all good. You can get all this stuff that you need here, joccofuel.com. You can also get at Walmart, Wawa, vitamin shop, GnC, military commissaries. Afees, Hanifer, dash stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite. H.E.B. down in Texas has walls of Jaco Fuel. Thank you, Texas. Meyer has walls of Jocco fuel up in the Midwest. Wegmans, pallets of Jock Fuel, Harris Teeter, Publix.

Public. Hey, Florida. What's happening in Florida? Publix crushing. Thank you, Florida. If you want Jock Fuel, go to Publix. You can get it. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and whatever gym you're at. Hopefully they have a jocco fuel.

If they don't email J.FSAils at jocofuel.com. We'll hook you up. Also, America. We have people that fought for America and yet there's people that take their money and spend it in a foreign country a communist country a country do you like communism? I don't you know no not really okay you don't like communism do you like slavery no I don't okay do you like child abuse no I don't okay you see what I'm saying you see where I'm going with this there are nations in the world that that's what that's how they roll communist slavery child labor child abuse, it's heinous. And yet, just giving them money. Just giving them money.

You don't need to do that anymore. Origin USA. OriginUSA.com. Go there. You need jeans. Gee for Jiu-Jitsu. Rashgard, hoodie, t-shirt,

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Yeah, true. Also, truck as a store called Jocko Store. So it's Jocco's store. Anyway, you want to represent discipline equals freedom? We got your shirts there, merch there. The idea of good, we got those shirts as well. A few options there. We got some socks on there.

Hiped about the socks. Sox are on there right now? In hats. They're on there right now, yeah. Send me some socks. I will. Just like two pairs. Two pair, you got it.

And then yeah, also the short locker, which is the different shirt design every month. It's a subscription scenario. People seem to like that one. A little bit different types of design, but still, design's representative of the path, big time. So check that out. You go on jocco store.com, click on the top of the top of the shirt locker. You can kind of see some of the past design, see what it's all about. Anyway, check it out.

If you like something, get something. Also check out primalbeef.com and Colorado Craftbeef.com. Awesome people. Awesome steaks. Awesome jerky. Meat sticks. beef tallow what do you need we got you promulbeef.com Colorado craft beef.com also subscribe to the podcast check out jaco underground.com it's another little podcast that we do

answering your questions check out our YouTube channel jaco fuel YouTube channel origin USA YouTube channel check out some books final spin the way of the warrior kid books we got a movie coming with that Mikey and the Dragons I just read I'd do that the other day randomly. It's a good one, man. It's a good one. Get that for your kid. Get that for your neighbors.

It's going to help them. Also, echelon front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. All the things we talked about today. The combat that we went through, the combat that we went through required leadership. And we utilized leadership principles that were tested on the battlefield.

And now we teach them to be, If you need them inside your organization, go to Eslamfront.com. If you want to come to one of our events, go to Eshalomfront.com. You want to come to the muster. The next muster, April 29th through May 1st. There still are some seats available. You need to get there quickly. Check it out.

Eshalonfront.com. We also have an online training academy. Extreme Ownership.com. Learn these leadership principles through the online academy. Interact live questions and answers, tests. It's an awesome program. And you can learn these actual principles so you can have a better life.

And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org.

And check that out. Also, Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink helping our vets find themselves up in the wilderness. And finally, Jimmy May. Jimmy May's got an organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org. And actually didn't mention this today,

forgot about it in the moment. Jimmy May was in Ramadi with Taskin to Bruges. He joined us probably halfway through deployment. And then he stayed a little extra time. Remember how I was saying, like, we didn't want to go home? Well, because Jimmy hadn't been there long,

he didn't have to go home. So he stayed a little bit longer and he actually got shot. I want to say a couple. days before November 19th, but he wasn't wounded too badly. Thank God. But he was going to leave, so he wasn't on this operation. And when these guys got hurt, he's the one that escorted him home.

So Jimmy May, he's got his organization beyond the brotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, first of all, for Elliot Miller. If you want to follow Elliot Miller, he is on Instagram. He is at Dude Bro underscore 78 D-U-D-E-B-R-O-U-S-S48 I don't have

I don't have Joe's we figured out We'll link everybody And also for the movie The Warfare movie On Instagram it's at Warfare movie And then for us You can check out jocco.com

And on social media I'm at Jocco-Wilink And Echo is at Echo Charles Just be careful Because there's an algorithm there Trying to destroy your life. Don't let it. And thanks to all of our military around the globe right now.

And a special thanks, obviously, to Joe Hildebrand and Elliot Miller. So severely wounded. But who survived thanks to their teammates from SEAL Team 5 and to the Army and the Marine Corps. You saw the Anglico in action in the movie. You saw the Army in action in the movie. That happened time and time. and time again our service members working together as a team that was the ready first brigade combat team we thank you all for taking care of our teammates and thanks to our police law

enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officer officers a border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders thank you for taking care of us here at home and for everyone else out there do you need a better example of fortitude and perseverance than Elliot Miller. Because if you need someone better than that, I don't have anything for you. If he can get up and drive on every day and get married and have kids and carry on, if he can do that, then we have no excuses and we have no other option other than to get up every day and get after it. Thanks, Elliot.

Thanks, Joe. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, Zekko and Jock. Out.