Jocko Podcast - 502: Crazy Horse: Courage, Loss, and the Fight in Iraq. With Pilot, Dan McClinton

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Apache pilot, Dan McClinton recounts the harrowing mission over Baghdad that claimed the lives of two fellow crew members. Through vivid memories and raw emotion, he shares the bond of the Crazy Horse team, the reality of combat in the skies, and the enduring weight of loss.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 502 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. By the end of February, the first Air Cavalry Brigade had participated in 32 separate engagements with the enemy that month. We had lost two aircraft with many others damaged as well. Worst of all, we had lost four fine officers, men who are sons, brothers, fathers men who's lost we mourn to this day we came away from that month changed there were lessons learned things that we probably should have seen before but either pride or stubbornness didn't allow us to but we mourned

learned and moved on it was all we could do it may sound cliche or corny but we owed it to to keep going. It is what they would have done. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Crazy Horse Flying Apache Attack Helicopters with the first cavalry division in Iraq, 2006 to 2007. And it was written by Daniel M. McClinton, who's a retired chief warrant officer four. And he served in the army for 24 years, beginning as a Huey pilot before eventually transitioning to the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

He completed three combat tours to Iraq, engaged the enemy in hundreds of contacts, and flew more than a thousand hours in combat. And after retiring from the army, he wrote two books, Crazy Horse, the one I just mentioned, and 37 months, another book. And he also produced a documentary film called The Longest Month.

On top of all that, he's a published photographer who specializes in, as you might guess, aviation photography. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his stories and lessons learned. Dan, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I had a real interesting time reading your book. This is the most in-depth I've seen from the air side of the Iraq War. And I was on the ground in Iraq. and you were talking before the podcast that we kind of missed each other on deployments by

months here and there, but definitely recognize the places that you are flying over in the areas of operations you were in. So great to sit down and talk with you. Before we do jump into the book, let's just get a little background on where you came from, how you grew up. Well, I was born and raised in Waco, Texas. My dad was a letter carrier for the Postal office for 35 years. We lived in the same house on E-Rath Avenue for, well, my parents lived there until they passed away. Okay.

But my whole childhood lived in the same house. And then when you were growing up, what sports were you playing? What was school like for you? I played a little bit of everything. being a child of the 70s like we were always riding our bikes around and playing whatever sport was, you know, the sport of the season. Organized sports, I played baseball most. That was the sport I played the most was baseball. I played it from the time I could until high school.

And then at what point did you start thinking about? the military. Well, you know, there's a, there's a picture of me wearing an army uniform like when I was seven years old. So, um, I got those two. But, you know, seriously thinking about one, what I wanted to do in life as far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a pilot of some sort in the military. And what was your, when did you start thinking about helicopters? Well, you know, Waco, Texas being in close proximity to Ford Hood, I saw helicopters all the time. In fact, I have a picture of me sitting in the front seat of a cobra. They would bring aircraft to the county fair from Fort Hood all the time when I was a kid,

and the fairgrounds were there were four blocks from my house. So those recruiting efforts paid off eventually? Yeah, they did. Eventually. what I actually wanted to do at first, I wanted to be, I wanted to fly F-16s. And I joined Civil Air Patrol as a teenager with the goal, like I wanted to go join the Air Force and fly fighters. And I would read everything I could get my hands on about, you know, there's a book called Thud Ridge about the Vietnam era war that I read. anything that I could get my hands on about flying jets.

I was doing it. And the Army, flying for the Army, I knew about it. I read about it, but my main focus was one to be in the Air Force. And then I went to college and fooled around. And I was actually told by the Air Force ROTC, the professor and you know the guy in charge well he asked me one day he goes what do you know why are you in the program and I said well I want to fly and he goes well I'm going to be honest with you not with those grades you want to fly yeah and the and the fact that he only had a certain number

of flight slots to give the people from his program and I was going to a junior college so he straight up with me even if you go to a finish out at another college the odds of that guy giving you his flight slots and not giving it to somebody who's been there for four years it's not going to happen so did you continue with college um or did he tell you about the army program he reminded me of it i knew it because we had a neighbor that actually talked to me about warrant officer flight training and how I worked in the Army. He reminded me of it. I ended up getting a degree in drafting and design.

And I worked for a government contractor in the Dallas-Four Worth area for about two years. Okay. And I remember one day I was sitting at the drafting table. And, you know, this is kind of a warning to folks like, you know, you may not want to get a job doing something that you think you enjoy because once you have to do it eight hours a day, five days a week, you don't enjoy it so much anymore. Because I always enjoyed drawing until I had to do it for a living. And I remember sitting at the drafting board one day, I go, I can't do this for the rest of my life. And the next day, I went over to the Army recruiter, and I said, I want to go to flight school.

and for anybody who happens to be watching who's thinking about joining the Army and wants to go to flight school, don't let them talk you into becoming a crew chief first if you really want to be a pilot. Recruiters, they want to do what's easy for them because it gets them the credit for recruiting.

And I don't blame them one bit, you know, because if I was in that position, why would I want to have to go through all the stuff you got to go through to get somebody qualified for a flight slot. And I kind of naively went in there and said, okay, if I can't go to flight school, then I'm not joining the Army. Didn't know that there were pre-study books for, you know,

the test you have to take or anything. Just went and took all those tests cold. Still made it. Oh, that's good. Yeah. You know, passed the flight physical, you know, went to basic training. And I went to basics.

when I was 25. So, and I hadn't, you know, it was 25 years old in the mid-80s, so I wasn't exactly, you know, working out wasn't a big deal in the 80s. So I wasn't really ready for basic training. They kind of kicked my butt, you know. I was going to say that two years sitting at the drafting table couldn't help much. No, I didn't. I mean, I played beer league softball, but that's not, that's not enough to get you ready to go,

you know, run a couple of miles and, you know, do all these pushups and flutter kicks and all the stuff that we did. But you were good enough to make it through. Yeah, stuck where they got through that. And this is the cool thing about it. Like you can go right from the street to flight school. So once I finished basic training, they sent me to Warren Officer Candidate School. I mean, I got to take a little bit of leave at home.

then drove over to Fort Rucker in Alabama, went to Warren Officer Candidate School, got through that six weeks. Then they told us it's going to be four months before you can start flight school. So between finishing Warren Officer Candidate School and starting flight school, I think I painted every trash can on Tor Rucker.

What year is this? This is 1986. Okay. So at that time, when you finish Warrant Officer Candidate school, you're still a warrant officer candidate until you finished flight school. Got it.

So I was, when you're on for a record, a warrant officer candidate is pretty much lower than an E1. So we were doing, picking up garbage, painting stuff, moving people's furniture, anything that needed to be done. So I actually volunteered to go to air assault school just to get out of picking up garbage. Like there were, I want to say, eight of us that went just to get out of doing all the details.

And, you know, it was good. I actually learned a little bit about how to plan aerosols and how all that stuff. It's not the hardest school in the Army, but it was better than picking up garbage and painting stuff. I would say so. So got done with that. ended up starting flight school in January of 87 and went straight through and proud to say never got a pink slip, which a pink slip when you're training and you have a bad day on the flight, you get a pink slip.

And how many pink slips can you get before you get? Back then, I think, you know, because it's broken up the phases, so it's not cumulative. So I wanted to say if you got more than two in a phase that you were going to get a prog ride, which meant another instructor was going to come and look at you. And if they thought you were salvageable, they could say, okay, we're going to send them for more flight time or, you know, whatever they thought they needed to do to fix you or they could kick you out. So you must have had some level of like natural ability in flying?

I would think You know, you would think so But like I remember being on that bus Because we rode back and forth Of the fly line on a bus And when I first started flying I remember being on that bus going Well I guess I'm going to be an infantryman

Because I can't fly this thing You know and I had My instructor was what we call it a screamer He would like yell all the time And it wasn't until I started Actually I got the opportunity to fly With another instructor that I realized That oh they are all

aren't that way, you know, they're not hitting you in the helmet with their little pointer. And there wasn't anything that I could do, you know, to please him. And it was like, oh, you know, what are you trying to do, kill me? And like his only, you know, he just kind of endured. And like when I took my check ride, I got a really good, you know, to get out of that phase. I actually got a really good grade, but he put me up with the minimum passing grade. because I guess he didn't think I was any good. But I guess I didn't really understand the program because when you fly there's a variance there, there's a window.

Like you're supposed to hold, let's say, 70 knots. Well, you don't have to stay right on 70 knots. You have to be between 60 and 80. That's a big variance. Yeah, there's plus 10 minus 10. But you didn't know that? It didn't really click with me because, you know, if I got off of 70 knots,

this guy's screaming at me. So I'm like, you know, working my butt off to like stay right on 70. And like when I started taking my check right with the other guy, he's like, hey, you know, loosen up. You know, you don't have to, the secret to flying is not being tense because the more you tense up, the harder it is to be smooth on the controls. How long do you spend in a fixed wing before you get in a helicopter? Oh, in the Army, it's no fixed wing. No fix wing at all. Jump in the helicopter.

Let's go. Dang. And a helicopter doesn't want to fly. So, like, yeah, you got, I want to say primary back then was 50, 50 hours. Yeah. And you're supposed to solo by about 15 or something like that. And this whole program started in Vietnam, right? Taking kids off the street.

Right. They needed helicopter pilots. I want to say, if I remember this correctly, there was 5,000 Hueys that were sent to Vietnam and 3,200 them were lost in combat. That sounds about right And a lot of them were accidents Yeah Yeah So

But they needed They needed pilots And so they started this program Where you could take A 18, 19 year old kid And they're out of high school And put them through this program And they go fly

Yeah back then they called it High School to flight school Yeah Now they call it street to see Because you get people with You know like I had college So I never met so many college

Dropouts in my life So I went to Army Flight School Yeah, we've had some of those guys on this podcast talking about what that was like for them. And, you know, those Huey crews, like the average age would be like 20 because the pilot would be 21 or 20. And then, you know, the crew chief might be 21. And then the door gunner's 18. It's just young kids over there.

And you end up, your first bird is a Huey. Right. And where'd you get assigned for that? Actually, you know, you get to put in your want list, and I found this out later. I wanted to go back to, I wanted to go to Fort Hood, Texas, which is about 40 miles from my hometown. And I got it. And I found out later, like, anybody who asked for Fort Hood's going to get it. Usually the only people that want to go there are people from Texas.

Everybody else is being forced to go there because it doesn't have a good, reputation in the army. And what was your first unit there? I was in the second armored division. It's a unit that doesn't exist anymore, but it was Patton's division in World War II. And what's that like when you show up there?

Are you getting good flight time? It was the unit I was assigned to was a VIP unit. I mean, we were responsible to be ready to do any kind of mission a utility pilot had to do, which meant air assault.

I was NVG qualified, but our primary job was to fly the division commander and his staff around Fort Hood or anywhere they needed to go, which, to be honest, actually helped me later on because it was a lot of jump through your ass kind of like, hey, you know, the aide would call us up and say, hey, pick up the general at this grid coordinate as fast as you can get there. And then, you know, you go out there, pick him up, and then they hand you another grid, take him over here. And it was go from one grid to the other. So, you know, you learned out to read maps because this is four GPS. So you learned how to figure out how to do that stuff really quick. And there's no sitting down and plan, and you pull out the map and go. How'd you like the Huey?

You know, to this day, if I had to, if somebody said, let's go flying, I would want to get in a UH1 because, If you get that thing started, you're going flying. Because it was reliable. It's pretty simple. If I had to go to combat again, I would want to go in an Apache. But if I was just going to fly around an helicopter, that's probably a Ui. Yeah, those guys that flew that thing, they just love that thing.

And it seemed like you could work on it. You know, it seemed like it was an old 70s muscle car, you know, or like a late 60s muscle car that when you open up the hood, you could kind of see what you're doing with not like a modern day car where when you open up the hood there's a bunch of electronic computer stuff in there and you wouldn't know where to start but there's no computers on the UH-1 the only computers like here um i ended up being a maintenance test pilot on UH ones um so i knew how to troubleshoot everything on the aircraft by the time i was done flying that thing and then what how the transition happened over to apaches well it's kind of a little

twisted story. As I just said, I was a maintenance test pilot, and I actually ended up being the production control officer for battalion, and the PC officer, his job is to assign maintenance priorities to all the aircraft in the battalion. So the battalion I was in had BlackOx, OH-58, Kiowa's, and Hueys, and so I'd have a meeting every morning and assign all these tasks of various people and and I also did maintenance test flights on UH1s. Well, despite having a job like that, I got passed over for CW3 and this was during the Clinton administration, like right after Desert Storm, you know, when they drew down the army. And the main reason I was told later on is because I was flying a legacy aircraft.

And so if you didn't have a path to what was called an advanced aircraft like a Black Hawk an Apache or a Chinook, they were getting rid of people. In fact, they were offering money. So after I got passed over and I went up, I talked to my career manager up at DA, and I said, you know, I want to stay in the Army. I've been in for 10 years. Like, what do I need to do?

And he looked at my records and he goes, I can't tell you what to do. Because there's nothing, everything on here, I don't know why you got passed over. I said, well, if you can't tell me, I'm going to take the money and get out because like how can I fix what they saw. Or, you know, why. You don't know what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, because if you get passed over twice, it kind of limits your options. So took the money, got out, actually went to work for petroleum helicopters flying offshore to oil rigs. And when I was out there doing that, the Army sent out a message basically saying, hey, we screwed up we let too many people go you know and part of the deal of me getting out I was in the individual ready to reserve okay and I got picked up for W3 and the IR did you keep that money I got to keep the money and I came back nice but the deal for coming back as I had to go to the

Apache course which was cool with me because to be honest when I went to flight school I wanted to be a cobra guy and it just didn't work out and like I said before I wanted to be a fighter pie So, you know, I always wanted to engage the bad guys if I had to be in a position where if I was getting shot at to be able to shoot back. So came back, went to the Apache course. What years did you come back in? 98. So I got out in 96.

Came back in 98. And then it's Apache school. And then where are you going to sign from there? Back to Fort Hood. Okay. So I was in fourth infantry division at Fort Hood flying A model Apaches. And at that time, the Army was starting to replace the A model with the D model. And shortly before 9-11, I got assigned to a unit called Third Squadron 6th Cavalry.

And they were forming up at Fort Hood to get qualified in the D model and then go over to Korea. So where are you on September 11th? I was at Fort Hood going. I was in a class going to a class about, it was something called Command Post of the Future. That sounds like a real DOD course right there. Yeah, it was actually most of this stuff actually exists in the real Army now. It's like it was basically digitizing everything.

Got it. So it was one of the first courses about how all this digitization was supposed to work, like Blue Force Tracker and all that stuff. And my job at the time was called the Battalion Tactical Operations Officer, which is a fancy term for a mission planner. I'm also responsible for tactics and stuff like that, but it's mostly mission planning. So because I'm in the talk and I was available, they sent me to that class. So we're sitting in this class and all of a sudden one of the instructor comes out and goes,

you guys need to go back to your unit. He didn't say what happened, but we knew it was bad because they go, hey, class is over. We don't think it's going to happen tomorrow or when. We don't know when. But you need to go back to your unit right now. And it wasn't until I got back to the unit that I found out, you know, what was going on. And then are you guys gearing up for deployment, like immediately, or what did that look like? Well, we were opening up the vaults and pulling out all the secret stuff.

And I was pretty certain, given where our division was in the pecking order, and especially the aviation unit, because they were in the pipeline to switch out aircraft. so they were already ramping down and I was pretty certain that we weren't going to go but still you know we were pulling out all the stuff off a sipper like what's going on you know and and like it was it was really

strange to see like M1 Abrams sitting at the front gate with a guy manning the 50 cow like when I came to work the next day It took me four hours to get on post because they were searching every single car coming through the gate. How long did it take before you started before you were slotted and you knew you were going to, your first deployment was to Iraq, combat deployment. So how long did it take before you knew that you guys were going to deploy to Iraq? Well, you know, as I said before, I got assigned a 3-6K out of that, that continued on.

And we went over to Korea. and I only spent 10 months in Korea and got orders to come back to Ford Hood to First Cav. And when I came back, they had already deployed, so I had to go through the whole pre-deployment shots and his shoe draw and all that stuff by myself. And then I got put on a plane with the spare parts and, you know, ended up over there. And I want to say it was May 2006 is when. No, 2004, May 2004 when I got over there at first. Yeah.

Again, that's interesting because I think I left in April of 2004. So we just did like a high five. Yeah. And how was that first deployment when you're over there? Well, you know, it's kind of eye-opening because, number one, you know, I've never been in combat before. I'd been in El Salvador and I actually, as far as the Army's concerned, I got a combat service patch,

but that combat is not the same as what I saw in Baghdad that deployment. What was your main mission during that deployment? It's always pretty much 911 troops in contact. We were doing counter-mortar, counter-rocket patrols, convoy security. but troops in contact and Madovac were always first priority. You'd walk out the door with a idea of what you were going to do, but if there was troops in contact, we're dropping what we're doing and we're going to that.

And on that first deployment, so like I said, I left in April, and right before I left, things had really started to spiral downhill. There was the Mottie Army was getting all fired up, Muktaud al-Sadr was going crazy. We had actually captured one of Muktaud al-Sadder's top lieutenants before we left, and that really pissed everyone off.

And so they started getting really nuts. So I think you showed up into pretty much a shitstorm. Oh, yeah. I spent the majority of a lot of missions around Sodder City, supporting stuff going on in Sadr City. In fact, that's, you know, the most intense. tense fire I've ever seen my life was during that deployment. I was flying down a route gold.

The ground unit, first BCT, first cab was given the job to go down that route to the Sauter Bureau. They were going to take out Sauter because we'd finally add enough. And, you know, spoil a little alert. We didn't take them out. But anyway, so they're going down Route Gold and they called us in. they wanted us to put rockets down the street in front of them to suppress, I guess. I didn't get a real warm and fuzzy about why they wanted us to do what they wanted us to do.

But there wasn't any harm to friendlies. You know, if I just shoot the street, it's not going to harm anything. So if that's what you want me to do, I'll do it. So we're coming in one after another, we're lining up on the street. And I was actually flying in the front seat then. And the fire coming to pass the canopy looked exactly like the final scene of Star Wars when Luke's flying down the, you know, through the Death Star. I mean, there's tracers just like flying past the canopy.

I've never seen anything like it before or since. And I don't know how my aircraft didn't get hit. No hits on the aircraft. Wow. Somebody was watching over us because the flight lead got hit. It's usually trail that gets hit. Our flight lead got hit in the tailroeder drive shaft. And this is like on the second or third pass.

So we had to go back to the FARP because anytime somebody gets hit, you need to really check out the aircraft because you don't know what's. And he got back to the farm and yeah, we can't fly this aircraft. So it was actually towards, we had like a four-hour mission window, and then another team would come up and replace us. So it was like, I think 30 minutes prior to us being replaced. So I think the next team took off early. But yeah, that was pretty high opening.

And how long was that deployment? I was over there for 10 months at that time. But the battalion was there for a year. We left, I think we got extended a couple of weeks, because they wanted us to cover the election, the first election. We covered the second battle of Fallujah. Got it. So that had to be very intense.

You know, they kind of kept us, some of our guys ended up going over the city. Most of the missions I flew were around the perimeter. Got it. And what was the reason for that? It was just, you know, deconfliction of, you know, what was going on. The Marines were the major show in the, in the city, so they had their idea of how they wanted to conduct CASS and stuff like that. And we did work for Marines around the perimeter, but most of the time we'd go out there and

work with the Army guys that were supporting the effort. We were flying along the Euphrates. One of our guys got shot up a boat that was full of ammo and guns. you know, for the insurgents that were in the... So, you know, that's sort of why we're out there, kind of like the handle piece. Interdict. Yeah.

So you wrap up, so that deployment's 10 months long, and then you go back from that deployment, and then what's next? Well, I knew, I kind of touch on it in the book. I kind of knew, because I start off the book talking about the end of this deployment, Like being down in Kuwait, we were there for a couple of weeks to decompress before we went home. That's not the best place for decompression, is it?

No, it was pretty useless. All he did was make people mad. But we knew standing there based on what was going on when we left, they go, we're going to be back. You know? So as soon as we got back, we got a new commander, and that kind of gave rise to the joke amongst some of the pilots about a being the reverse pony express. What is the reverse pony express speed? Well, the commanders in the army, you know,

before they take command, they go to some school or, you know, they're basically taking a break. They don't, they're not in it like the people in the unit are. So there's people assigned to the unit that are there for years and years and years. So commanders, tour of duties, probably a couple of years. Yeah, two years, yeah.

So the old commander, you know, he's like, go, go, go, you know. Like we've got to, you know, glory of the calf, all that kind of stuff. And he finishes up his command and does the high five with the new guy coming in. And that guy's go, go, go, go. You know, and we're like, okay, when are we ever, you know, we're the horse. Yeah. The horse stays the same and the rider changes. That's why it's the reverse pony express.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing. I saw that very early in my career. I saw that because you'd see these commanders take over and they would want to in some way outdo their last, you know, commander. So if the previous guy had done this many training operand this is during, there's no war going on. So if this guy did this many training operations, the new commander would want to do at least a few more than that guy did

and just raise the bar a little bit. So yeah, it's definitely their attitude when they're in there. And the other thing that's, that's, you know, I've been talking about with civilian companies, military leadership, like, you don't have, there's, there's military leaders that get promoted up the ranks that are not good leaders. And they say, well, how does that happen? It's because they're only in that position for two years. And it takes the troops, you know, five or six months to figure out, wait a second,

is this guy, this guy seems like he might be a jackass. Wait, do we, should we be listening to this guy? This guy seems like, and then, you know, by the time you get to a year, you've confirmed, like, Oh yeah, this guy is definitely a jackass. But now we're getting ready for deployment. So we know it's going to cause a bunch of drama if we do it. If we try and, you know, usurp this guy's command. So we'll suck it up.

And the troops on the ground are doing a good job because they want to do a good job because they're proud soldiers. And then that guy gets a good fitness report, even though he was terrible. But the troops were able to do a good job despite his leadership. And what happens? that guy gets promoted. So that definitely occurs. So you deploy,

you come back, you get a new commander, let's go, go, go again, and then it's back to Iraq again. Right. And then how long is this next deployment? 15 months.

And what's that one consist of? Or is this the one that we're getting into the book? Yes. So prior to that one, you get your, it sounded like you got a good workup for this next deployment that you're going to do.

You guys do go to Fort Irwin and you do, which is a, I don't know, for us, it's awesome training. Like when seals go up there to train, it's awesome because they have great, you know, urban towns. They've got targets to be hit. They've got all these crazy role players that, you know, speak Arabic or at least at the time. They were speaking Arabic. We have the army to interact with. They've got armor. We got aircraft.

So it's, for us, it's pretty awesome. What's it like for you guys? Well, what a lot of people don't know and a lot of pilots get frustrated because all these training center rotations, if it's in association with a brigade combat team, it's about training that brigade combat team. We as aviation are enablers and supporters. So if I get training out of it, I'm going to get training out of it regardless, but it's not focused. focused on me for the most part. Right. And it can be frustrating at times because there's, and I get it, because if you, if the, the

BCT's not getting its training, accomplishing his training goals because I killed the bad guy. You know, because I saw him and then I killed him and I just wrecked their whole training iteration. I understand why, okay, we're just going to reset this and a pat- you guys you can just go away now so and to be honest like this this training period before we went over the next time we went to JRTC 2 which is in Louisiana that was a little better and it had more aviation centric stuff for us to do that that we got better training over there I believe so did you

feel like you were taking some of the lessons that you guys had learned on the previous deployments to Iraq and you're starting to be able to train at least towards those those situations you know that you're going to be facing you know what's what's funny about that is um when i saw some things over there that convinced me that we needed to to be more joint that we needed to be able to capture the assets that were already on the battlefield and use their abilities you know like there's f-16s up there non-stop We weren't talking to them. You know, that guy is just circling around at 10, 15, you know,

whatever altitude they're at. Can use his optics and look for stuff that's not putting me at risk. And then we can use him better or even use him at all. We weren't using them. Right. So I saw that. I wrote a decision paper like and sent it up to division. Well, went through my chain of command.

and it ended up going to division to send our instructor pilots to the FACA course. Oh, yeah, you were telling me that before we hit record today, and you came out here to Coronado or to FACA course. Yeah, so I went to the ground school. I wasn't an instructor pilot, so they didn't let me go to Yuma. The instructor pilots went to Yuma, and they had to be an instructor pilot because the Marine had to fly in the aircraft to give them instruction. and if you're not an instructor pilot,

you can't fly somebody who's not raided in the aircraft. Before we jump into Iraq, you mentioned that on one of your previous deployments, you said you were in the front seat. What's the difference between the front seat guy and the backseat guy in Apache? They're both pilots. It's basically roles.

So usually the guy in the front seat is working the site. He's primarily in charge of the weapons. The person in the back flies the aircraft. usually the pilot and command is in the back. So he's telling the guy in the front what to do. Orienting him on what we need to look at or what our objectives are, what priorities are. And the weapon systems, give us a quick brief

on the weapon systems that we're using. So over in Iraq, the primary weapon system they were using was the 30-millimeter chain gun. I believe it's rate of fire. It's been about 15 years since I've flown one, so I apologize if I get this wrong. I'm sure somebody will correct me in the comments. I want to say it's like 600 rounds a minute, rate of fire,

but usually fired 10 to 20 round bursts. At first we were using 10 round bursts, but found that wasn't doing the job sometimes, so we increased the burst rate up to 20. Aircraft usually carry around 200 rounds on a mission. So had a 20-round burst, you got 10 bursts. Usually carried three to four hellfire and 36 rockets. And those rockets were a mix of point detonating,

flichette rounds, and we usually carried, I want to say four illumination rounds. Pretty good, pretty good savior to show up on scene if you're on the ground. And we're going to get into some of that stuff. All right. So let's get to this. Let's get to this book again. The name of the book is Crazy Horse. It's a fantastic read.

Get it if you, if you don't have it yet. Go order it right now. You guys arrive, Camp Taji, October 2006. Again, this is, I had just, I actually left in October, 2006. I left October 21st, 2006. You say this. they call the process rip or relief in place. And for those leaving, it can't go fast enough.

For those just arriving, it always seems as if you are being rushed and pushed into a position you aren't quite ready for. And, you know, again, I'm going to read just some high points of the book. But, of course, you have to attend a bunch of meetings. And the outgoing brigade commander is giving you guys kind of a brief. And you say, he had his own presentation where he bragged about his gun crews having tactical patients. And then he showed some gun camera tape that pretty much outraged me. And I know from comments that were made in the meeting, quite a few others as well. The tape began in the middle of a

troops in contact, tick situation. The presentation showed several U.S. vehicles and troops on a street just outside a mosque in Baghdad being fired on by some people on the high brick wall surrounding the mosque and from the minaret on the grounds. It appeared to me that it was entirely possible to engage these people within the rules of engagement that were in the effect at the time. Additionally, it also appeared to me that they could have done so without causing any significant collateral damage, but they didn't engage. They watched as American troops were being shot at and did nothing. And their commander held them up as an example of what was right. As I was watching the tape, I was thinking, shoot. At the same time, I heard several other people in the room muddered the same

thing under their breath. The longer we stayed in the room with that colonel, the more obvious it became why they didn't shoot. So you already had a little sense of they were being a little bit too restrictive. I think they, after talking with some people that were in that unit, I believe they had the attitude of they wanted to go along, get along, and they wanted to be the nice guy and just based on my experience the previous time I was over there people in that part of the world respect the strong horse if you're the nice guy if you turn the other cheek that's just weakness to especially the bad guys yeah turn the other cheek the other cheeks getting smacked too and I never really recognized the 30 millimeter chain gun as a nice the tool of the nice guy in my

opinion, fast forward a little bit. Eventually, all the left seat, right seat rides and local area orientations were done, and we had the controls. Our helpful hosts had packed up and left, and we had the mission. One of the first missions we flew came under fire while conducting a recon mission, resulting into damage to an aircraft. So that's out of the gate. You guys are getting aircraft damage.

You go through kind of the, you go through the, kind of the op tempo that you guys were on. And I'm going to run through this real quick. Wake up 730. Personal hygiene, 730 to 745. Breakfast 745 to 8.45. Make sure to allow the time needed to walk a quarter mile to a half mile to and from the DFAC. Briefing, 0,900 to 1015. Once we finish briefing is about a mile walk to the aircraft.

Pre-flight, 1030 to 1130. APU start up and run up. 1140. Cooling down the electronics usually took 20 minutes or so in the summer. It took much longer to get the fleer down to the proper operating temperature. That was something I did not understand at all is that since it's so freaking hot in Iraq, you had to turn on the aircraft, turn on the cooling, and then it would cool the electronics down enough where it would start functioning. Right. Takeoff 12 o'clock.

The goal is to depart on the schedule time, which meant taxi out and then conduct daily engine health indication test, test weapons, borsight, and before takeoff checks in order to be ready to lift off on the scheduled time. Scheduled landing, 1600. We would normally have a three to four hour mission if the BHO took place on time. If you were extended on station, either because the mission went long or your replacement had maintenance issues, all the following tasks would shift backward or right on the schedule. And then post-flight debrief 1600 to 1830. If you had nothing significant to report, the debrief would go quickly. If you had an engagement, however, depending on what happened, you'd be doing paperwork for quite some time. Dinner 1830 to 1930, this all

depended on the defact you chose to eat at or if someone brought you a sandwich on down the flight line, quarters, 200. So that's your daily. It's, you know, basically working the entire day. Yeah, most pilots, they flew five days on and one day off. And then how did you, how did you rotate like going night versus day? I forget what the, because I was, I was on battalion staff, so I would fill in, I was actually assigned to B company to fly with them.

So I would fill in where their commander needed a pilot to give somebody a break. Got it. So I ended up flying like two, three times a week. And so does that mean you're flying with different people all the time? Yeah. And is that difficult or the standard?

operating procedure is so clear that everyone just kind of rolls the same way. After a while, I knew most of them. So, yeah, at first, you know, if you haven't flown with somebody, it's a learning process. Yeah, that seems like it'd be a little bit strange. I mean, yeah, there is an SOP of how things are supposed to work. But everybody has their own little things or, you know, the way they do things. And you would be either in the front seat or the backseat. just depending on what they needed.

Usually because I was a senior pilot, I would usually be the pilot in command. Okay. One of the things you talk about here is the fobits. What was the deal with the, what's a fob it? It's a person who inhabits the fob, the forward operating base, and they never leave it.

My only gripe with them for the most part is they were buying all the Dr. Pepper and the P.A. That's a problem. Yeah, so they're basically staying in the air conditioned, you know, nice chow hall and all that stuff while you guys are out. And it sounds freaking miserable. Do they have AC in the aircraft? Yes.

Oh, that's nice. If it breaks, you have to actually fly back because, well, to be honest, the AC's there for the electronics. I get what's left over. So, like, if you're flying in the afternoon in Iraq, the cockpit temperature is 90-ish. You know, you point the vent at your face. And I'm not going to bitch about that because I remember flying around looking out seeing some guy in body armor like out on the street. So, but it's not, you know, how somebody might think like your car, you know, it's 100 and whatever outside in your car is like,

you've got ice cubes blowing out the it's not like that but it's better than being outside so you um you you being the ops guy the other guys are they on they're running that schedule every day and is there more is there a schedule more

consistent than yours that they're flying like every day at 12 o'clock every day at 12 o'clock or is everyone kind of rotating around the schedule they would they would rotate I want to say was there it's either every two or every three weeks they would shift. Got it. So each company had to put up two missions a day

because we had to have a team up 24-7-365 weather permitting. So there's three line companies that fly in a battalion. So each company had to put up, you know, with a four-hour mission window, each company had to put up two missions a day. Damn. 24 hours a day, 365. and weather's generally speaking flyable, generally speaking. Yeah.

I mean, you get the sandstorms. I wouldn't say, you know, it's like flying around in the States where you can see. I remember flying around in Texas, you could almost see to Dallas. You know, the skies are so clear. I'd never see skies that clear in Iraq. There's always dust or there's always something on fire. Yeah. The bird.

Jack. Fast forward a little bit here. I was flying that morning, and this is January 23rd, 2007. I was flying that morning as lead in an AWT. What's AWT? Attack weapons team. With First Lieutenant Smith Griggs,

a west pointer from Dothan, Alabama, as my CPG. We were operating in the northeastern parts of Baghdad and checking NIs when we heard a Mayday call on Baghdad radio. We rushed toward the area. just north of the Green Zone, where the Blackwater aircraft was calling from.

So Blackwater, this is the private military corporation that was doing all kinds of stuff in Iraq at this time. They were working for state. Today they were working for the State Department. Doing, they were doing everything, and they had helicopters, they had, they had mini birds. They had some pretty good assets.

And in this particular case, one of them was calling a Mayday. I called Washington Tower, the entity that controlled the airspace in immediate vicinity of the, green zone and told them we needed to shut down the airspace to the northeast due to a fallen angel. That means we got a helicopter down. Trail called Battalion and Baghdad radio as we established ourselves in zone.

I was talking with one of the Blackwater aircraft pilots who was desperately searching for the lost aircraft. He thought they had possibly gone down in the Tigris River, so we worked back and forth in the vicinity of the river looking for signs of a downed aircraft. We could see no signs of anything resembling a helicopter or a crash site. There was no smoke, fire, or even massing of people that might. indicate the location of a downed aircraft. Minutes went by as we continued to search with no results.

After about 15 to 20 minutes of fruitless searching, we were tasked by attack Mike to respond to a ground unit a couple of kilometers away on the east side of the river that was in contact and receiving fire from enemy forces. I felt bad about leaving the Blackwater guys to continue their search, but they did have the other aircraft above us to lend them assistance as needed. We pushed over to the ground unit's frequency and quickly flew to their location. So when you get to like a troops in contact like that, you're getting called, told the location to fly to, and they give you a frequency to bump to.

Right. And then that group on the ground, and this is, you know, again, you and I were talking about this before we hit record. What's awesome about Apaches is it's almost like part of, once you guys check on board, it's like you're part of the ground unit. And the guys on the ground, you can just talk to them like human beings. So if you don't know this in the military, when you're calling you. for fire. There's special qualifications that you're supposed to have. There's protocols that you have to go through. Obviously, it can be a really complex thing, especially from fast moving aircraft that are 10,000 feet in the air. But you guys are more like ground aircraft. I mean, you are so

close to the ground and you just communicate in direct language with the guys on the ground and you can make things happen. Is that a good assessment? In fact, we had a road show where several warrant officers, we'd go around to the ground units that we would support and give them a class, you know, so we could coordinate better. So they wouldn't feel like, you know, because a lot of guys, they'd get on the radio and they weren't sure what to say or how to go about it. And we're just like telling them, just tell us what you want. Tell us where the bad guys are.

And we'll de-conflict. We'll do the rest. And I think it paid dividends. ends. We actually, in my shop, we made a card that we handed out to the ground unit. It's like, this is, this is what we're going to tell you. You know, because every time we called somebody on the radio, I told them how much station time I had, what kind of ammo I had on board and what we were. You know, so we told them exactly what we were capable of and how long we were going to be there if they needed us. Yeah. And again, we were talking about this before we hit record, but there's

really tight protocols to follow when you're calling, let's say, a fixed wing fast moving aircraft. And in this case, you know, I can say, hey, do you see the big white building? Yes. Oh, do you see the small white building next to it? Yes. There's bad guys in that building. And boom, you can clear yourself hot as the pilot to go and freak and engage that building, which is awesome. Going back to the book here, we found the unit easily.

They were moving through congested city streets of East. in Baghdad and striker infantry vehicles. A striker was as big as a small bus and greening color, so they were typically easy to spot among all the tan and browns of Baghdad. I made one turn around the friendlies, and as I came around, I saw the muzzle flash from an automatic weapon that was firing out of an open door of a side building that was attached to a mosque. A person inside the mosque was obviously shooting toward one of the strikers moving down the adjacent

street. The friendlies didn't have any dismounts out at the time. So what I saw made me concerned, it was something. that we could take a bit more time to get set up on. As you might imagine, a mosque is a sensitive area, and we needed to be careful about shooting up a church. I called out the muzzle flash to Lieutenant Griggs. I've got muzzle flash off the nose in the mosque.

I don't see it. It's right off the nose. I didn't know how he could miss it. So to make my point, I entered a dive, pointing the aircraft directly at the offending doorway, aggressively pushing forward on the cyclic. I said, it's right there in front of us. Okay, got it.

It wasn't the textbook way of handing over targets from the backseat to the front seat And if I had to do it over again, I would have done it differently, but it got the job done I don't know if it was the no if it was the dive or the noise the blades on the aircraft when they get loaded in a turn But the firing stopped we continue to circle but could never break out any one of the weapon in or near the mosque It happened this way most of the time when we responded to a troops in contact call as soon as the enemy heard the approaching aircraft or saw us They would break contact it was rare they would stand and fight if they knew we were about, if they knew what we were about. We jokingly called such situations twicks.

Troops were in contact. Seriously, though, if we were able to get the enemy off the backs of our ground forces, we had done our job. We relayed that info about the shooter of the ground unit and provided security for about 15 to 20 minutes. In the meantime, the downed Blackwater aircraft had finally been located. So that's good little indication, kind of what you guys are doing out there. Yeah.

getting your front seater to see the... It's not my proudest moment. Because there's textbook ways of handing over a target to a front seater. What's a more textbook way? Is it talking them on? So, yeah, well, as you probably know, like an Apache when you fly, you've got this monocle on your right eye. So that's what you can use to aim the gun with.

And I could have told him my line of sight, I've got a shooter and he could have set the site up to slave to my line of site. Got it. So that would have been the more patient way to get things done. That would have been the more Fort Rucker approved way of passing that target.

Well, I'm sure that Mujahideen fighter when he saw you freaking gut, head and right towards him, I'm sure that shut him down pretty quick. Well, something made him move. Fast forward a little bit. Fallen Angel again. in January 28th, 2007.

Again, these are like, you know, a few days apart that we're dealing with here. We were, fast forward, we were directed to fly about 15 minutes out of Baghdad to the vicinity of Salman Park. I remember this little area of operations and link up with a ground patrol in zone 202 that was searching for some individuals

who had taken a shot or two at them earlier. We were working, we were working this contact, looking in the reeds around the Tigris River for these shooters, when I got a call from Captain Daigle. Am I saying that right? Daigle. In the talk, the words sent a chill through me,

fallen angel, another aircraft had gone down. Unbeknownst to us earlier that day, a U.S. Army special forces team, along with their Iraqi counterparts, had been ambushed near the city of Anajaf by what ended up being a force of over 800 enemy combatants. Our sister battalion, the 4-27th AVN call-call-sign big gun,

sent an AWT in response to the call for help while engaging enemy forces just north of the city big gun five three an a h 64d flown by the crew of warren officer three cornell chow and captain mark resh was brought down by multiple hits from various weapon systems unfortunately there were no survivors their flight lead big gun five two being flown by cw four johnny judd and cw two jake Gaston had taken battle damage that disabled their 30 millimeter gun, but they had remained on station guarding their fellow troopers until help arrived in the form of another big gun team. We were dispatched to relieve them and pick up the fight.

So that's got to be a hairy situation when you know that aircraft has already been shot down, guys have been killed, the other aircraft's been hit and damaged. What's your thought process going into this situation like this? Well, to be honest, at the time, I didn't, you know, you only know what they tell you. So what we didn't talk about is like I responded to a fallen angel earlier. Actually in the first deployment, I've responded to one. And it's usually when you get there because the bad guys, for the most part, knew that somebody, you know, all hell's going to break loose if they stay around. they usually break contact as soon as something like that goes down.

So we're headed that way and because there's a lot of unanswered questions. Like at that time I didn't know there were 800 bad guys down there. We just heard there was like a troops in contact that we were supposed to go break up. That's something you were doing every day. And I think at the first radio call they may have said like 20 or 30, harmed insurgents, which is not that hair-raising. And it took 30 minutes to fly there from where we were at. So unfortunately, you know, that gives you time to think about things, you know,

because you're flying and there's, you know, not much else to do other than think. And the closer, as time went on, we get situation updates and the number of bad guys keeps growing and growing and growing. And so we're like talking to each other going like, what the hell's going on down there? And we're at least smart enough to look at the, we have a moving map in the aircraft, so we're at least smart enough to look at the map,

look at where the shootdown area is, and come up with a plan about how we're going to come in there. So there was a lot of desert out to the west of where the shootdown was, just wide open desert. So we decided, and it was late afternoon, And we decided to go out to the West and come in that way, so the sun would be behind us. So if the guys on the ground had a man pads as a man-portable air defense weapon, the sun would help us in that respect. And also just coming out of the sun makes it harder for them to see us to shoot at us.

So we set up out to the west out there, and I think we went through one turn, and my front cedar looked inbound on the site. and he saw like 20 bad guys just lined up on a berm, like shooting towards the friendlies. Yeah, going to the book here. You say we approach the flight from the north, swinging out wide to the west to stay clear of the fight until we were invited in. After getting situation update from Big Gun, we took over the flight around 1,500. Fight lead was talking with the JTAC on the ground, Titan 0-1, while I'm in contact with Big Gun CP at Calsu. after we made a couple turns in an orbit to the west I heard Jay exclaim man oh man I snuck a look out of my left side TSD where I had Jay's video displayed and saw two groups

of armed men each number between 10 and 15 arrayed along an east-west running north earthen berm firing it friendly forces to the north I called dog on internal and asked him do you guys have eyes on two groups of individuals on the east-west berm dog replied immediately that they did we devised I divided up the targets. On the next pass, lead would take the FAR group and we would take the near targets. I was trying to stay out of Jay's cockpit and let him set the aircraft up so he could be ready to engage as necessary. But this was going to be the first time he would fire anything in anger, so I wanted to talk to him about how I saw the engagement going.

I reminded Jay that on the basis of my previous experience, once we started firing, I expected them to scatter. So he should take his time and engage whatever targets he could fire at after the first burst. I lagged back a bit, so when Dog broke off his first attack run, I'd be in position to cover his egress and engage. I saw him break to the left and I called visual and inbound. As soon as lead was clear of us, I informed Jay, he was cleared to engage. His first burst of 30 millimeter was a little left, and he got no immediate effects on target. So he adjusted and fired again.

We got three bursts off on the first pass. The weird thing is that I was wrong. The AIF, that's anti-Iraqi forces, stayed in place, even though. 30 millimeter rounds were bursting around them. We found out later in the after-action review that the ground unit found atropine injectors and other types of drugs among the bodies. They were apparently higher than a kite at this time, which might explain why they didn't move. In retrospect, I wish I had fired rockets in our initial pass since a group of individuals in the open is a classic rocket target. On the second pass, we got a little better weapon effect on target. We broke off our gun run

and we were in the turn to pick up lead who was outbound. I looked back over my shoulder just to ensure nobody was trying to shoot us in the ass. Just then I saw a huge explosion to the north side of the berm. I immediately called dog since he was on the primary guy, on the primary guy talking with the JTAC and asked, did the Air Force just drop a bomb? Say again, did the Air Force just drop a bomb? We just had a huge exploding on the side of the berm, not that I know of. whatever it was that it caused the people who were able to start moving off the berm and down toward a trench at the base of the hill.

It was, in fact, a bomb dropped by an F-16 from somewhere up in the ether. I was amused to read in an article in Stars and Stripes newspaper a few months later that this bomb strike turned the tide of the battle, and the pilot of the F-16 received a distinguished flying cross for his actions that day. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell those brown dudes on the ground that the battle was over, so we turned inbound and fired all our remaining flichette rockets into the trench line. We couldn't tell till we reviewed the tapes back at Camp Taji, but we did get good effects with the rockets, which we followed up with the gun getting good hits.

That seems crazy that there's a freaking F-16 dropping bombs while you guys are in the area. Is that not like an error of some kind? I don't technically know that the J-TAC, I wasn't in, you know, range of it. it. The J-TAC has control of all that. I would have just, it was a communications problem is what it was. It wasn't, I don't think there was anything wrong that went on. Got it. It was just the fact, okay. You just didn't know about it.

I knew it was a bomb that blew up, but it's like, is somebody going to tell us that they're dropping bombs? Now, I wasn't, I wasn't on the freak with the J-TAC, so they may have told dog up in the front that, yeah, we're bringing in some guys to drop. ordinance. So I just think it was a communication problem, but you know, that's war. And then you read an article that that Stars and Stripes article that that saved the day, apparently. Yeah. And the funny thing about it is the awards that we were put in for were downgraded by division. And they certainly weren't distinguished flying crosses. You guys spend more time down there, get that place mopped up. we released to return to Taji after takeoff dog plunged in a direct route back home we flew the

aircraft as fast a week ago we arrived at Taji and taxi next into parking shutting down with over eight hours of flight time for the day I hadn't left the cockpit or moved out of the seat in that time freaking eight hours sitting in that thing what if you would you guys wear like a a piss bladder or something if you got a piss well usually what would happen is down on the flight line before we went out to the aircraft they had a freezer and it had like bottles of gatorade in it that were frozen. Put it up on the dash and about halfway through the mission, it's unfrozen so you could drink some cold gator in.

When you empty the bottle, you got something to piss in. Check. So if you need to pee, you transfer the controls to the other pilot and take care of business. I don't know what the girls do. Jack. Yeah, you continue to say the battle went on all night as the U.S. Air Force and our attack helicopters continue to pound enemy positions. After the battle was over,

ground forces found at least 600 enemy dead. That's freaking crazy. For the Iraq War, that's a lot of dead people at this time. And I know once ISIS started moving with mass troops, with carrying flags and big convoys, this is a little bit more common. But during the night, two AC-130 gunships expended all their ammunition.

It was the most extensive air battle of the entire Iraq War. Our brigade maintained aircraft on station over the fallen aircraft until everything was recovered. The A company AWT remained on station in excess of eight hours as well and ultimately escorted one of the friendly units south through the city of Anjaf before returning to the end of mission at Taji. During the unit's next appointment to Iraq in 2009, word was received that the 4th Battalion

227th Aviation 1CD had received the Valerous Unit Award for their actions near Najaf on January 28, 2007. To date, the elements from 1st Battalion 227th, AVN that participated have yet to been recognized by the Army for the part we played that day. It's typical. I was going to say, are you holding your breath on that recognition? No.

In fact, we got my unit, the first time I was over there, got a naval unit commendation in the Battle of Fallujah. we still that unit still doesn't have to streamer on their on their battle flag Jack Going back to the book here

What started with the shootdown of a UH 60 With the call sign of Easy 40 on January 20th Escalated over the month of February Eventually a total of eight helicopter Would be brought down by enemy fire Resulting in the loss of 24 lives Between January 20 and February 22nd Most of these incidents were

in or near the crazy horse area of operations. Some of us it appeared that something we had feared for a long time was coming to pass. The AIF, which is anti-Iraqi forces, and the AQI, which is al-Qaeda and Iraq, we're beginning to specifically target helicopters with teams trained specifically to shoot them down. Yeah, that's a lot of heloes going down. That had to start to give you guys some nerves while you're flying. To be honest, you know, because it was my job to think about those kind of things. I was surprised they didn't do it earlier because all you had to do is look at what happened in Mogadishu.

You know, and no hit on anybody in a convoy or anybody on the ground. Nobody bats an eye in the States when somebody blows up a truck. You start shooting down a bunch of aircraft. It's on the evening news and it's a big deal. and it just surprised me that they didn't get around to it sooner. Yeah. February 2nd, 2007, I knew something was wrong almost as soon as I got out of bed that morning. When I tried to check my email, the internet was down.

I stuck my head outside the trailer and it was unusually quiet. Something just didn't feel right. Since I wasn't on the schedule to fly that day, I took my time putting on my uniform and set out for the talk. It was immediately apparent when I opened the door to our CP that something terrible had occurred. We had an aircraft down and the crew was lost. When they came to work that morning, CW4, Keith Yolkham, is saying that right? And CW2 Jason Defren. That's right.

Attended a mission briefing with their wingmen and flight lead Crazy Horse 07. They walked out the door as Crazy Horse 08 did their pre-flight, ran up, and took off just like every other mission they'd flown in Iraq during that deployment. As they approached the test fire area, the flight ran into a anti-helicopter ambush. Much like the crew of Easy 40, almost two weeks before, Keith and Jason were surprised by a coordinated attack by multiple weapon system designed to bring maximum firepower to bear against an airborne target. On that day, Keith and Jason were flying slightly behind flight lead as they entered the ambush area. As is their want, the enemy chose to engage the trail aircraft. since it was in the middle of the ambush zone. Keith and Jason's aircraft was struck with multiple rounds

in its aft part near the rear avionics bay and the hydraulic fluid reservoir. In the cockpit of CZ08, they knew the aircraft had been hit. They pushed through the ambush and attempted to evaluate the damage to their aircraft. Keith announced to lead that he had received enemy fire and had a utility hydraulics failure. The emergency procedure for that failure

would have been for them to make the five-minute flight back to Camp Taji or, in a worst case, pick a spot and find a place to land. But Keith and Jason elected to stay in the fight. During the rapid turning, turbulent fight that followed, CZ-07 never noticed that fire that had begun burning through their wingman's tail section. Keith and Jason had no way of knowing they were on fire since there are no sensors to detect one in that area of the aircraft. So minutes after initially coming under fire as they were attempting to engage the enemy with 2.75 inch rockets, the aircraft finally gave up coming apart and falling to Earth.

Crazy Horse 08 was lost. A QRF was air assaulted in to secure the site. Initially, it took a ground convoy from 1BCT over seven hours to fight their way through multiple IEDs, taking casualties in the process of getting to the site. but they persevered and eventually made it. It was a particularly bitter pill for those of us who had been here during OIF2 to see that this area had been cleared of AIF was riddled again with IEDs and other enemy activity. The pilots' remains were secured and returned to Camp Taji where they were prepared for their journey home. The rest of us were left to think about how this event occurred and how we could work to make sure something like that didn't happen again.

In the aftermath, we applied the lessons learned from this event, and we put our heads down and drove on. Anytime a unit loses someone, there's a ceremony that according to tradition must be carried out. This occasion was no different. A military memorial can be quite affecting. I sometimes think that the army sat down and tried to make something so emotional that you would get it all out of your system at once so you could go on and get past this painful experience. The war doesn't stop when you lose guys. Nope. And it, like, you know, here are two awesome people that you know and you're with them and you're talking to them and then they're gone.

And as much as that hurts within hours, if not days, you get your gear back on and you got to go out and do your job. There was another team out there right that second that was still flying mission. And they knew those guys were dead. So you've got to keep going. Because there were people depending on us. Did you do a really great job. You go into some of the ceremony itself and how that went and what that's like. how did that impact you guys and what your thought process were you know you as a as a

senior flight guy did you see guys start more nervous did you have anybody that was uh you know that you had to talk to and and kind of help them get through it you know to be honest um i saw people put their heads down and and go to work um the especially the folks they were in a company, which was the company that they belonged to, they like, it was like a switch was thrown. They like redoubled their efforts. It wasn't like they, you know, somebody lit a fire and they're out there killing everything in sight, but they were, you know, if you flew their aircraft, their aircraft were the cleanest

aircraft out there. And Mr. Yocum was their maintenance officer. So all those crew chiefs worked on those. aircraft in his honor. If you got in one of their aircraft, it was immaculate. And it's no shade on any of the other companies. But it's like those guys, it's just, you know, incredible. And direct answer to your question, I didn't have to talk to anybody.

I think we all, like, sat down and thought about, you know, why it happened. and I kind of explain in the book it's obvious why it happened like 75, 80% of the shootdowns in Iraq were because of patterns at it. Yeah, that's a big point that you cover in the book the pattern was you go to this area, take off, go to this area, do a fight, test fire,

and then go do your mission and the enemy will track your patterns and eventually they're going to try and capitalize on what you're doing. Um, yeah, this stuff goes on. Um, fast forward a little bit in the book here. This is a story, um, from correspondent Lori Ann Moss. Only a few minutes into the four hour, the four boat patrol, Sergeant Ken Thomas, 23 of Utopia, Texas heard a machine gun unload on the boats from the river's shore. Then numerous insurgents popped out of buildings on both sides of the river and peppered the uncons. The

unconcealed blue boats with bullet holes. Bullets were everywhere. It was pretty wild, said Sergeant Thomas. The soldiers had a gut instinct that the mission wouldn't be a quiet cruise down the river, so they brought extra ammunition. Thomas estimated that he shot at least 570 rounds from his M4 during this firefight. First Lieutenant John Dolan, Thomas's lead in the boat, had no choice but to give the order to turn back, but it was too late for the first two boats while steering around an Iraqi policeman driving Dolan's boat was fatally shot in the stomach and fell against the wheel, making the vote veer towards an island where it ran aground. Thomas's crew in the second boat went to help, but his two-engine boat lost power when

bullets destroyed one of its engines. The boat also got stuck in shallow waters, forcing six soldiers to bail out into the polluted river. Wayed down by roughly 80 pounds of combat equipment, the soldiers struggled to swim in the murky water to another island about 50 meters away, Thomas said. Staff Sergeant Alan Johns ordered Thomas to climb the steep muddy riverbank and look for a way out while the rest hunkered down. As he climbed, Iraqis armed with AK-47 rifles as close as 50 feet away were taking aim and machine gun fire continued from across the river. Soaking wet, Thomas went about cutting through an electrical fence

to gain access to a building where his group took shelter, a second group with, with the wounded first lieutenant dolin was isolated pinned down by enemy fire on the island in the middle of the river this is a nightmare i mean you got boats in the water you got you know sounds like almost a 360 degree ambush you got wounded guys you got downboats um just a terrible scenario right uh of course it's a little less terrible when you guys show up uh fast forward a little bit finally after doing a fight a fighter check in with iron horse main we were pushed down the Gary O. and Mike one seven cav and then eventually

to Comanche White one. Along with that, we finally got a good grid of their location. As Lieutenant Griggs talked with them, I could hear gunfire in the background. They had KIA and wounded. They were under attack and running out of ammo. They needed help now. When we came into the view of soldiers

trapped on the island, Lieutenant Dolan made a radio call and said, you are really angels on our shoulder. For a split second, What he said made me wonder if he watched saving Private Ryan one too many times, but having heard his situation report, I knew it was real and not some attempt at being funny. He's calling you to try and talk you in. I called no joy on the ground forces back to Comanche White. Immediately after my radio call, some crazy dude in ACUs stood up waving an orange VS17 marker panel. That crazy dude was Staff Sergeant Matthew Schilling, one who had laid a laborer. to receive a Bronze Star with the device for his actions that day. I was quite shocked to see him and took my left hand off the collective and waved at him

to get down. I could still hear gunfire in the background when Comanche White acknowledged my call of visual. I would find out later that day they had been told by their interpreter that the loudspeakers on the mosque in the village had been giving a call for everyone to gather to kill the Americans. This no doubt added to their anxiety about being stuck on the island in the middle river surrounded waiting for help.

Comanche White requested immediate suppression to the south of their position on the island. From above, I could see an area south and east of the island that was full of reeds and it had to be concerned that someone might be hiding there, waiting for a chance to attack. We were down to about 100 feet AGL

as I turned inbound and slowed. I had control of the gun and it was slave to my helmet site. I called Comanche White once more to make sure. Confirm there are no friendly south of your position. He called back immediately. Negative friendlies and I fired. I put three 10 round bursts of 30 millimeter into the reeds

and tall grass on the southeastern and southern end of the island near the disabled boat. I was about to fire again when Lieutenant Grigg said, that's enough. Fast forward a little bit. We climbed back to a higher altitude and establish a wide orbit over the village and the island. I could see Lieutenant Dolan's section hunkered down in a low spot near the middle of the island. His boat was abandoned on the southern end of the island about 100 feet from the shoreline. There was a second boat that was run aground on the eastern shore of the Tigris near the village of the northern tip of the island. While we were assessing the situation, it became apparent that Lieutenant Dolan and others needed medical attention.

I asked Seabas if they could contact attack Mike and have them get with Second Battalion to get the Medevac headed out to the island. In my mind, it shouldn't take that long because we were almost in the traffic pattern for the airfield. Additionally, we were talking to Gary Owen, Maine, who hopefully reminded us that it was very important that we try not to damage any boats. any more than they already were since they were brand new and iron horse six didn't want them destroyed now it was a little late for that at this point we actually had a conversation in the cockpit between me and lieutenant about are we going to tell him that we already fired like right next to the boat so we probably put more holes in them uh fast forward a little bit our conversation with gary owners were uninterrupted by a radio call from some other boats belong to one seven cab who were now a couple miles up the river near the bridge area we called Airfield Island they were apparently under fire again we widened up to our orbit to see if we could see what's going on up there but I was extremely reluctant to leave these guys on the island who were exposed and almost out of ammo it smelled like a ruse to lure us up there

leaving the guys on the island exposed we monitored the situation and the guys in the other boats were eventually able to break contact and meanwhile you're trying to get this medevac after hearing that info from sea bass I called Comanche white and asked him how they were doing the voice on the radio said he was okay but that he was feeling kind of woozy after hearing that bit of news i told lieutenant griggs that if the medevac wasn't there in the next few minutes he was going to get out and strap himself to the outside of the aircraft and we were going to transfer these people ourselves using a technique known as a spur ride it wasn't the way i wanted to do it but i'd be damned if i flew around listening to these guys on the radio while someone bled out

with a damn medevac bird sat on the ground less than five miles away and you know it turns out that shockingly, you know, when you call a Medivac, it still has to go through the proper channels and this was just taken forever. Yeah, the aggravating part of it was our headquarters and their headquarters were in the same building. God. So all somebody had to do was walk out the door

and go down 20 feet down the hall. But they couldn't launch until it came through. The official channel. The official channel. Luckily, they got them. The Medevac eventually showed up. Strikers showed up. And for the next couple hours, you say,

we alternated between cord and search taking place on the west side of the river and boat recovery operation taking place on the island. Fast forward a little bit. During the AAR process, we were told that there were 20-plus confirmed AIAF killed along with 50 wounded that day by 1-7 cav. One Iraqi police officer who was shot in the stomach and would later die of his wounds was the only death for coalition.

forces. After we turned from Iraq, we were able to meet the newly promoted Captain Dolan and some of his soldiers who were on the island that day. I was humbled and embarrassed when he thanked us for saving his life that day. I told him we were just doing our jobs that anyone in the battalion would have done the same thing. He also told me then that he didn't know how he was going to, how it was we didn't get shot down that day when I made a gun run on the island because the AIF were all firing at me. Thank God they were bad shots because my aircraft returned. with zero damage. It's again, I told you that this is like the first book that I've read that is kind of

from the air perspective. And it's so wild to think of the mobility that you have in the aircraft. You know, you can travel however many miles in a matter of minutes. And, you know, for me on the ground, you're hearing reports. But sometimes, you know, they might be, they might be 10 blocks away. They might as well be 100 miles. away because you can't get to them. It's going to take you forever to get to them.

It's going to be a massive fight. But you can just hit your, you know, hit your stick and show up there in 30 seconds. It's like a totally different mentality and perspective that you guys have. Yeah. And, you know, anytime we got a tick, it was balls to the wall to get there. We kind of had to back off that a little bit because, you know, sometimes you just walk into the middle of something that you probably shouldn't have. You probably should have set up away from it a little bit and assessed what was going on.

We didn't get anybody shot down that way, but we got people shot up that way. So eventually you learned to have a little slow down a little bit of tactifications roll ahead. You got a section here on leave. You know, for every soldier that's doing more than 10 months, you get something called environmental leave and you know we do short shorter deployments in the navy um you know we do like a six seven month deployment something like that so we this is something we don't do and i'll be honest with you when i whenever i talked to someone that had this leave i'm always like dude i don't know if

i would have wanted to take it you know what i mean like i get it you want to go get some good food but being in that locked-in mentality of you know accepting death accepting your situation being like, all right, we're doing this job and then going home and eating at a freaking applebee's or whatever with normal people, knowing that in nine days, eight days, seven days, six days, you're going to be right back in the shit again. What did you think of that?

It was like, it was almost like I was on the Starship Enterprise and I got beamed into the middle of Texas. You know, my brother, he lives, in Fort Worth pick me up at the airport. And you're just driving down the road. And like two days ago, I was in Iraq flying combat and just seeing people go about their lives. And, you know, the vast majority of those people didn't,

I mean, nothing against them. I don't think they meant it this way. But the vast vast majority of these people had no clue what goes on over there or what we were doing or any of that. They were just living their life. Did you feel like this is just all fake? I'm just going to be back in the shit.

And like I said, nine days, eight days, seven days, six days, it's coming. No, I mean, I enjoyed it for what it was. The weird thing was getting off the plane at DFW because there's, I'm trying to think of how many, there was a lot of people there that took time out of their lives to come and welcome people back. And I don't know if they knew that we were just there for like two weeks. You know, because they're acting like I'm back for good or something, you know, like, welcome home.

Like you made it? Yeah. Not quite. You know, slapping people on the back, you know, and cheering and all this stuff. And I got, I'm not so certain I really earned that, but I appreciate it. I mean, it's, they didn't have to do that. Yeah. So I'll remember that until the day I die, like all those people.

but it was kind of, in a way, it was kind of misplaced because, like, we're not done. You know, I don't know why you're doing this because I'm just going to turn around and go right back. And that's what happened you say in the book. For the next nine days, I enjoyed some of the things I'd been missing over the last six months.

Before I knew it, I was back at DFW standing in line with about 200 other soldiers getting yelled out by an NCO with no combat patch about the weight of our rucksacks and being told to take off our boots and belt so we could go through the TSA line. 48 hours later, I was back at Camp Taji, 72 hours after that. I was flying with Captain Fleming, conducting a mission on the wing of Major Welch and Lieutenant Haas over Baghdad.

That night, our team had two separate engagements. Welcome back. Welcome back. You know, what's funny about that TSA thing is like a civilian saw us standing there without our boots on and started screaming at TSA. It was funny. Oh. Like none of the soldiers were complaining, okay, we're just going to do what I'm told. But like the civilian pastures getting on planes going through TSA, they were just absolutely letting TSA have it.

That's insane. Oh, God. Fast forward a little bit. We knew in January when President Bush first announced that the surge was coming. Most of us also knew that meant our tour would be extended, but that wasn't official until April 11th, 2007 on that day, the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, announced that effective immediately, our tour was now 15 months long. Get some. That reminded me of the book, Catch 22. You ever read that book? Yes, I have. Yeah. So it's like, Echo Charles in this book, you've got to do 25 missions to go home. These are the guys in World War II. And then the leadership changes it to 50, changes to 55, changes to 60, changes to 70. So no one's ever going home. that's what's happening. And the real number was actually 25.

And what I find interesting about that was the expected casualties on those big air missions. The Army calculated was 4%. So we're going to take 4% on all these missions that we do. So if you do 25 missions, you can go home. Well, what's 25 times 4%? It's 100%. So guess what? It ain't happening.

And very few of those guys ever actually completed 25 missions. It was a very small number. But here you are getting extended back, back to the book here. Fast forward. Around 21.30, we get a call from Captain Paul Daigle, the battalion battle captain that evening directing us to fly towards some suspicious activity that was going on in Zone 9, which was located near Sodder City, is an area from which a lot of indirect fire and bad guy activity had been occurring since forever, but especially over the past several months.

We were still several kilometers out when Brian called that he had the target in sight. And this is fast forward. I had his video an underlay as an underlay on my left display, so I glanced down and sure enough there was a van and what looked like a lot of rocket launchers are arrayed across a soccer field, all aimed in the direction of the green zone. I called lead and let them know we had tally on target. Attack 6 then called strike main, described the target and asked for permission to engage. Immediately strike called back. Crazy horse, 06, you are cleared to engage. Kevin had already rolled flight inbound toward the target.

I had slowed down in order to give us enough spacing behind to cover to behind lead to cover their break and be able to engage our targets as quickly as possible. Lead is pressing in the target and begins firing his 30 millimeter can cannon on the van. Brian tells me they are hitting our target. So I glanced down just in time to see leads 30 millimeter rounds striking the van, not wanting Brian to try and shift targets at the last moment and possibly screw up the shot. him to go ahead and hit the van again. Brian fired two 10-round 30-millimeter cannon burst into the van, which caused the smoldering

van to burst into flames. As the flight came around for the second pass, Kevin relayed to us that he was going to take out some rocket launchers. First, they fired two pairs of rockets with little to no effect. Continuing the pass, they began to engage with the aircraft's 30-millimeter cannon. From my position, it appeared that they were almost directly above the target. I could plainly see the rockets exploding as they were struck by the 30 millimeter rounds. Some of them were cooking off and flying around the soccer field, almost like some

pyrotechnic snake gone wild. It was spectacular. Since Kevin had slowed to almost a hover, I maneuvered around to protect him as best I could by flying a figure eight pattern to the south and east. During this, one of the rockets lit off and launched going just underneath Kevin and ATK's six aircraft. I was worried they were just about to shoot themselves down, so I called a warning.

You just had a rocket go under you. Immediately after the call, lead accelerated and moved out to a little more respectable distance from the exploding ornets. This sounds like freaking chaos. Well, there's a phenomenon that happens quite often amongst Apaches. And I kind of call it swirling around the toilet bowl. Like the longer an engagement goes on, the closer we get to the target,

because it's almost like you're sucked in. That they could have easily shot at that stuff from a greater range, but it's like moth to a flame. And Attack 6 is the battalion commander in case, you probably knew, but in case the audience doesn't know. So it even happens to like most senior people out there that you just, if you don't watch it, you're going to get sucked in. Closer and closer.

Next thing you know, these rockets that you're blowing up are near misses. Fast forward a little bit. The next day I received an email from the S3, asking me to fill out a sworn statement on the mission from the night before. Sworn statements are usually filled out only when there is going to be an award submitted or someone is in trouble. I knew he hadn't done anything wrong, so I assumed it was an award situation. I knocked it out quickly and sent it back with a note that have said if they need anything

else please let me know. A few weeks later, I returned from flying a mission and spotted a green binder on my desk. It was one of the binders the Army uses for awards. Opening it up, I saw the citation for an air medal for the events that took place on June 2nd, 2007. These types of things were usually done with a bit more ceremony. I guess it was a good thing I decided to come to work that day. They just throw that thing out there. Yeah, I never, well, I didn't ask about it, but that was kind of odd. They usually at least have a formation when they hand those things out. I mean, I had seven of them, so

Yeah. I guess they're like, hey, this is just another one. Another one to him. July 2nd, a team of OH58D, Kiowa Warriors. There's they're out, came under some fire. There's a report by a Washington Post

writer, Ann Scott Tyson, who says this. about the situation. We're taking fire. Chief Warren officer's second Stephen Sifrenti, see if Frinti yelled, 27 yelled to his co-pilot. As he looked out the helicopter door and saw Tracer rounds flying his way.

Hearing Sir Franty's warning, Chief Warren officer to Mark Burroughs 35, banked right to evade bullets from a heavy machine gun that had opened up across the field. Then a second machine gun began firing at them. Burroughs turned again only to face a heavier barrage. The whole world just opened up upon us. It seemed like Sifrini said in a telephone interview from Iraq,

we zigzagged whatever we could do to get out of the guns target line. Then we started taking rounds from behind. That took down the aircraft. So we got another aircraft going down. At 0711, CZ16 and 17 received a refined grid for the fallen angel and began to search for the downed aircraft. They arrived in the general area where the aircraft had gone down and assisted three Kiowa crews already on site and searching for the downed helicopter.

After several minutes, one of the Kiwas reported that they had spotted the missing crew hiding near the crash site. A few seconds after the sighting, the 58s asked CZ16 and 17 if they could execute a spur ride extraction. Davidson responded in the affirmative and then maneuvered CZ16 to land near the crash site. They waited about 30 seconds without seeing anyone, exposed and vulnerable in the area where one aircraft had already been shot down, time crawled. They couldn't wait forever. As the aircraft was lifting off, one of the scout pilots called that the crew was on the

opposite side of the crash site in the reeds. Davidson maneuvered the aircraft, and sure enough, there they were. He set the aircraft down about 20 meters away from their hiding place. They got, they came out of the reeds running toward the wading Apache. Micah Johnson, who had gotten out of the front seat of the aircraft to assist, said that, when he first saw them, he wasn't sure those guys were even pilots since their flight gear was soaked and stained with canal water. As they boarded the aircraft, Johnson placed one of the aviators in the front seat where he had been sitting. The other went on the left side where he assisted in hooking him up. Finally, Johnson hooked himself to the outside of the aircraft on the right side.

After Micah gave Davidson the thumbs up, signaling everyone was ready, the AWT and friends departed and began the 10-minute flight back to biap. Al was understandably a bit amped up and was flying around 110 knots. For anyone has ever stuck you their hand out of your car window at 70 miles per hour, imagine doing that at 120. The guys on the outside took quite a beating. But they held on to make it back to the third Intrategie Division area and biap. The downed aircraft was later destroyed by an A10 to prevent sensitive materials from falling into enemy hands. So that's like a legit thing, these spur rides.

How come they take the pilot out of one of the seats and he rides them? the outside of the aircraft. Well, to be honest, according to Micah, when he looked at that one guy, he kind of looked like he was, he thought he looked like he was out of it. So he wasn't sure he could handle being on the out, you know, sitting on the outside. So he gave up his seat and found out later, one of the guys said, no, that's just the way he normally looks. Yeah.

But you guys drill that? Do you guys were? Is that something? You know. It kind of requires special permission to actually train it. But we talk about it. They do it occasionally, but obviously that's kind of a risky thing to do. Do they have a like a, the pilots aren't wearing anything to clip themselves in, are they?

Yeah. Or they're a gunner's belt? Our survival vest has a lanyard and a D ring on it. Got it. And then there's something to clip it to on the aircraft? Or is it just like? a handle on the outside of the aircraft. I'm not sure if it's stressed for, you know, your body weight, but, you know, you brace your

feet against the rocket rail and hopefully the guy's kind of not flying like 110 miles an hour, but hopefully, you know, the guy's not, you're not, it's not designed to go a long distance that way. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Again, I'm, there's so many more stories in here. just kind of hitting some of the highlights. That one was definitely one of them.

But there's so many revealing and informational operations that you guys are conducting really does a great job. But I wanted to get into this one right here. An engagement called collateral murder. You know, that's the in the air quotes, collateral murder, July 12, 2007. And I'm going to go straight to this. You say this. I know all the aviators who were involved that day.

and they were and are men of courage and honor. They are men who are fathers, brothers, and sons. They are also quite human. A short description of the day goes like this. A 0953 local elements of 216 infantry call sign Bushmaster received enemy fire while conducting operation cure in Zone 30 in the strike brigade area of responsibility, southeast Baghdad, and requested aviation support. CZ1819, which was conducted.

Conducting operations at the same time responded to the tick call. The CZ team checked in with Bushmaster and was tasked to identify the source of the enemy fire. Initially, after checking in on station, CZ18 and 19 cited several different individuals on rooftops of buildings in the area. After determining that these were friendly forces, the AWT then spotted eight to ten individuals staying in the street, some of whom were believed to be armed with RPGs and small arms and reported this to Bushmaster. At 1030, Bushmaster cleared the AWT to engage this group. So again, you got the aircraft show up. There's an element on the ground, call sign Bushmaster.

They're taking fire. They're asking, hey, what are you guys seeing? Can you help us? We're in contact. The aircraft show up. They see people on rooftops. They determine that that's friendly forces. Okay, then they see eight to ten people standing in the streets and the AWT reports that and the Bushmaster says, all right, yeah, engage them.

Those are bad guys. Going back to the book here, 1030 Bushmaster cleared AWT to engage this group. CZ1819 engaged a group of individuals with 30 rounds of 30 millimeter. Soon after the engagement, a van arrived with three to four persons inside. The personnel in the van were observed as tempting to evacuate the individuals and weapons from the street. CZ1819 received the clearance to engage the van and engage with 30 millimeter destroying it. At 1040, ground forces cord in the area and began to evaluate the casualties confirming 11KIA. They also found one RPG and small arms.

At this time, the ground forces reported two children had been wounded in action. Both children were removed from inside the van. They were evacuated to fob loyalty as urgent surgical. At 1102, CZ18 and 19 reported citing three more individuals with AK-47s and RPGs at another location. The AWT engaged that group with 10 rounds of 30-millimeter cannon fire resulting in no enemy casualties. At 1118, the ground unit attempted to conduct a court in search of the structure. The unit took sustained small arms fire and requested destruction of the structure. CZ18 and 19 then engaged the building with two N model and a single K model hell fire missiles

causing an estimated 8 to 10 AIF killed. Bushmaster, Bushmaster talk cleared all fires. So this is, you know, kind of the breakdown of what happened and how it went. Obviously, you end up with some kids that are wounded. and it turns out that amongst this group were people that were allegedly reporters. And so again, anytime there's civilian casualties in Iraq, there's an investigation. When this happened, did you think of it was a big deal when it happened?

Or was it kind of just another day in Iraq? Actually, when they got back from that mission, anytime there's an engagement, the S2 looks at the tape. And I don't know how long it took, but I was called in and say, hey, you need to look at this tape. Me and the head instructor pilot both looked at it. And we look at it, we try to look at all the engagements,

not just that one. But I think they were concerned with that one because I think by that time they'd already heard that Reuters was saying that we killed some of their reports. orders. And to be honest, when I looked at it, my main concern was there, because we know, like, people above our unit always see the tapes. My concern was not necessarily the way the engagement was carried out, but what they were saying. And I would tell somebody who has problems with what they see on that tape to watch it with the sound off.

because what those guys say is emotional. And at that point, we've been there almost a year. And you've got to, you've heard a little bit about what, you know, the kind of stuff we saw all the time. And if you don't expect somebody to be emotional when they see bad guys, they're shooting at friendlies and say stuff. then I think you're not being realistic. In fact, like, they should hear some of the stuff I've heard ground guys say to us over the radio because they don't realize they're being recorded. I mean, if they recorded everybody who was on the battlefield,

what you heard on that, what you would hear on that tape is nothing. Yeah. I think you also need to look at the results of what happened versus the emotional response that people have about what happened. I would also say that I have told people that actually I don't know how this guy got a hold of me but the alleged boss of those reporters got a hold of me and I told him he because he asked me if I would have shot I said yeah I would have shot I said I may have not done things exactly the same way as those guys did but as far as engaging that group of individuals

yeah, I would have shot because there were weapons there. And the whole thing a lot of people have an issue with is because one of the guys that was prairie-dogging around the corner had a camera. Even if we knew it was a camera, AQI used cameras. When they circled around and they saw people with AKs, that's what, that's the determining factor that they're cleared hot. It's like there's no.

not just this thing that I saw sticking around the corner. Now I see multiple weapons. Going into this, you have, there were two official investigations accomplished regarding this engagement. One by our parent unit, the first Air Cavalry Brigade, and the other by the second brigade combat team.

They are both included in their entirety in the appendix section of this book. What the reader may find enlightening, though, are the findings of the one ACB investigation. It says this. The AWT was on a directed mission, conducted the appropriate check-in with ground elements in contact, and received an adequate situation report describing the current status and disposition of forces on the ground. At this point, the AWT began to develop the situation in concert with the ground element in contact

and maintained positive identification of friendly locations throughout the supported period. As the situation developed, the AWT exercised sound judgment and described. during attempts to acquire insurgents or moreover to identify personnel engaged in hostile or threatening activities against our brothers on the ground the AWT accurately assessed that the criteria to find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement fundamental to all engagements is the principle of military necessity this was clearly established and supported by the friendly forces inherent right to self-defense and the ground commanders obligation to ensure that all necessary means were employed to defend or protect his soldiers from hostile acts. In this case, the AWT was employed to destroy insurgents from attempting to kill friendly forces. The attack weapons team, one, positively identified the threat. The AWT, with reasonable certainty, identified military age males both in location and with weapons

consistent with reports of hostile acts conducted against friendly forces. While observing this group of individuals, the AWT satisfied all. requirements to initiate an engagement established hostile intent hostile intent was exhibited by armed insurgents peering around the corner of a home to monitor the movement or activities of friendly forces and was confirmed by the presence of those personnel carrying an a an RPG and AK 47s these West weapon systems were reported in the initial check-in as the type used to engage friendly forces three conducted collateral damage assessment the AWT

accurately assessed that using a 30 millimeter cannon was proportionally appropriate to omit the threat while reducing the probability of excessive damage to surrounding structures, vehicles, and real property in the area. Four, received clearance of fires, having already identified through voice communications, physical markings, and ultimately visual recognition of friendly positions, the AWT again requested and received clearance from the ground unit that there was no friendly forces in the engagement area. And finally, see, only after an end up.

extensive review of the AWT's gun camera video and with the knowledge of the two missing media personnel it is reasonable to deduce that the two individuals intermixed among the insurgents located in the engagement area may have been reporters there was neither reason nor probability to assume that neutral media personnel were embedded with enemy forces it is worth noting the fact that insurgent groups often video and photograph friendly activity and insurgent attacks against friendly forces for use in training videos and for use as propaganda to exploit or highlight their capabilities. The air crews erroneously identified the cameras as weapons due to the presentation slung

over the soldier with a shoulder with the body of the object resting at the back rear of the torso and association personnel collected with others having RPGs and AK-47s. Yeah. And you know, this is always interesting because I always trying to explain to people that that if you go to war, civilians are going to die. And when you are in, especially in an urban environment like this, civilians are going to die. And that's one of the reasons we should be very, very cautious

before we enter into a war. But these, you know, as I actually, you can go online. You can watch this video, you know? You can go on YouTube and look up collateral murder and you can watch it. And like you said, you watch it with the, The sound off, because when you said the sound off, like you've got the quotes in here,

but the guys are saying stuff like, hey, pick up that RPG so I can engage you like that, that kind of thing. And they're wanting to take these guys out. They're enemy fighters that are engaging their American brothers on the ground. They want to kill them. God bless them.

But when you watch the video, if you watch it, if you have any remote level of combat experience, there's not even one doubt that these guys should be taken out, not even one. And if you're a reporter and you embed with enemies of America, don't think that you're going to be spared when those enemies of America are trying to attack and kill American forces.

It's not happening. And by the way, it also points out here that they didn't have any, like, press. They didn't have any indications of being anything other than insurgent. And you go on, this is kind of your narrative here, which you kind of covered, but it's worth saying again. Of course, as I said previously, none of this is going to change the minds of those who would like to see us as murdering killbots who were bent on death and destruction instead of imperfect human beings who are required to make split second decisions on the field of battle. Because someone says things like, look at all those dead bastards. And again, these are quotes.

Or urges wounded enemy with the words, come on, buddy, just pick up the weapon so that we could legally engage him. Doesn't mean we think this is a game or find that. particularly amusing. It means we are sick of seeing our fellow soldiers and innocence hurt and killed. And when you feel you have finally gotten one of the people who has been doing these things in your sites, forgive us if we don't show much sympathy or even professionalism, because by this point in the deployment, things have become very personal. If you find these comments disgusting or particularly brutal, I can assure you that this

is nothing compared to the things I've heard and seen on other deployments when talking to people on the ground or listening over their radio network. War is a brutal, ugly thing. And if you are offended by language, that is unfortunate. The language is also a coping mechanism that people tend to use to depersonalize the ugly, vicious things that we must sometimes do. I am also quite sure that infantry men and tank crews are happy that their engagements aren't taped.

I think the pilots who are involved in this event would be the first ones to tell you that this was not a textbook example of how to conduct. and engagement. I also feel safe in saying that most of us in the unit placed, if we were placed in this situation, every single one of us probably would have done it differently. The point being this, a troops in contact scenario is a dynamic and changes by the second. Each tick is different from the one before and things happen in a hurry. This crew followed the rules of engagement that were in place at the time and while it might not have been pretty and people said words or expressed feelings that you might not have wanted to hear.

What is what, that is the reality of what happens, but it isn't a war crime. Did you guys get any kind of like pressure during the deployment because of this? Because of, because of this incident? No. In fact, the shit didn't hit the fan over that until I was on my third deployment. We're getting ready to come home on a third deployment when that, uh, that guy. release the tape. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

The WikiLeaks guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's... Like I said before, the only grief we guy was about being professional on the radio. When you're talking. Yeah. You know, talk through the engagement and be professional.

Yeah. I had a very strict rule when I was in charge of a platoon, I was in charge of a task unit, which was, you be professional on the radio. And it was like, that's why. You know, I would tell guys, like, everyone is hearing what you're saying. And if you're not professional on the radio, it's going to come back. And so we were very, I was very, very strict about no joking around on the radio.

No, just be 100% professional all the time because of this thing right here, you know, because of this type of thing. But the other thing is, is like, the amount that America and our armed forces bends over backwards to prevent collateral damage is, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable the lengths that we go to to prevent collateral damage, to prevent killing or wounding civilians. You know, the, the efforts that we take is truly, sometimes it seems a little bit crazy to think. that you know we would rather you know getting shot at from a mosque well we can't enter the mosque okay well we're literally getting shot at from the mosque okay well we're gonna just back away and let them continue to do it i mean sometimes we'd get the uh the authorization to assault but sometimes it was like no we're not doing it so the the efforts that we would make to you know

respect the locals and try and protect the locals was immense and you know when something goes wrong, there's massive investigations. You know, this is an example. And you put the investigations in the back of the book, which is really cool. You know, because all, you know, when civilian casualties happen, there are absolutely investigations. And if something was done wrong, someone's going to, you know, either get punished for it, maybe go to prison for it.

But, but also maybe a mistake was made and people will try and learn from that mistake. Because there's a huge difference, and you point this out really well in the book, There's a huge difference between the confusion and chaos of combat and someone making a split second decision. And it turns out to be what when I was with the army, the army called good shot, bad result. Meaning they were doing something that looked bad. It's an enemy tactic, technique, procedure. A U.S. person engaged. And it turned out that they were wrong.

That's a good shot, bad result. And that's what we look out for, you know. And we try and prevent it to the utmost of our ability. But when something does happen, it goes through like the most thorough investigations like you put in this book. So one of the big pressures that I saw in 06 was, you know,

this, the whole thing had just happened with the Marine Corps up at the Haditha Dam. So everyone was like hyper paranoid about collateral damage and civilian casualties. And, you know, that's when I asked you about pressure. Like,

we definitely felt that. Like, be 100% aware of what could happen, what would happen if something bad happened. I think from the get-go, we were always really serious about getting P-I-D. So in that respect, nothing changed. I think they had P-I-D anyway. So it's like it was just, like you said, good shot, bad result. Yeah.

And plus the damn damage that it does strategically when you, when you kill a civilian, it really hurts the strategic efforts. And, you know, you're going to get the big protests. You're going to get the Al Jazeera TV with the dead civilians. Like it's an awful nightmare. And yet another reason. It's like, yeah, it's terrible for an individual, terrible for the civilian, terrible for the service member, and terrible for the strategic efforts when this kind of thing happens. So that's why we got to be professional about it. And I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why a lot of our shots were on the sipper for that guy to, you know, scoop up.

Because anytime we engage something, we sent our engagement down to the landowner. So the owning aviation or the owning BCT, we sent it to them. So if locals came and say, hey, you shot at my house or they could show them the engagement and say, look, there's a guy in there with an RPK. Like, that's why we shot your house. Yeah. We didn't quite have that, but what we did have was sworn statements. So every one that we shot, we'd do a sworn statement. It would say the date, the location.

And for the exact same reason. Like if someone was to come back in two days or in two years or in 20 years and say, oh, yeah, this, you know, my uncle, brother, cousin, whatever, were shot, like, oh, well, where was it? Well, that wasn't Americans. You know, we didn't, we didn't do that in that day. Well, there was no one even in that area on that day. So good, it's pretty cool that you guys have the video of it. Makes it real cut and dry, or at least more cut and dry.

Right. It's still open to interpretation sometimes. Yeah. There's a section here called Cav hats and Combat Patches. Tell me about the Stetson, the iconic Stetson. Well, there's. What's the history of it? Well, it actually goes back, obviously, to the Calvary of the Old West.

So over the years, it actually got brought back during the Vietnam War, a guy named Lieutenant Colonel. No, actually, Lieutenant Colonel Stockton. He was the commander, I want to say, a one-nine cav and first cab during Vietnam. He's the guy that brought the hat back. So after that, everybody in First Cav pretty much started wearing Statsons. And are they not authorized or are they authorized? It's an unauthorized headgear.

Okay. All cavalry units in the Army, their soldiers wear them in some way, shape, or form. I've got gold spur. You earn gold spurs when you go to combat with a cavalry unit, so I have gold spurs at home, and I've got a certificate on my wallets that I earned gold spurs. But there's a whole ceremony surrounding the hat. Like when you get your new hat, you have to wet down the hat. So when you're in the States, it normally means you've got to go down to the O Club

and they fill your hat with all sorts of junk. And you start to drink out of the hat. So that comes from the tradition and the old. west of giving water to your horse out of your hat. So the soldier starts drinking out of his hat and they end up dumping most of that stuff on the soldier. So it's, you know, looked upon in cavalry units very fondly, but there's a lot of people in the army that don't like them.

And there's a lot of people that are afraid to embrace it. So like when you get into a situation where you're, you know, they might be judged or whatever they don't want to let you wear it because they're afraid it might come back on them that your soldiers are running around like loose cannons wearing stetsons and you know so it's it's kind of it's authorized but it's not uh-huh it's wild too because the point you make in the book is here's the army and i forget what they're doing to try and instill esprit decor and try and give you something unique to be proud of and you know you're like hey dude we got this freaking like tradition that comes that is part of what we do and we're not we're

banning that and we're trying to create some new you know new fangled form of of a spree decor that's just dumb right i mean i think every commander almost every commander they come in there with we got to you know we got to improve this or you know they got to come up, they got to find some way to make their own mark. And often the solution is right in front of them, but they refuse to take the obvious answer and they got to come up with some crazy scheme on their own. Yeah, I mean, I guess it kind of happened with the berets too in the army, right? Because it was green berets for special forces and black berets for Rangers. And then what the army authorized black berets for the whole army, right? So General Shinseki was,

was the chief of staff of the Army. And I believe he was a tanker. So this may have been where the black beret came from with him. In the post-Fietnam era, tankers in Germany wore black berets. Got it. So he may have decided, I'm going to get back at these rangers or whatever, you know, because there's always like an armor, infantry. I'm an aviator.

I don't know how all this stuff works. but the ground guys like, you know, fight with each other about who's tougher, you know, stuff like that. So I think that's where it came from, honestly. And then the Rangers ended up going to like the tan, the tambouret. Very interesting the way these things work. But I did not know that the cat, that the Stetsons were not an authorized piece of, so you don't wear them.

When do you wear them? When do you get to wear them actually? when I was in every Friday you could wear it but it was only in the the battalion footprint or in the brigade footprint so you couldn't go like hey let's go to everybody's going to Chili's for lunch you can't wear your stepson you better have another head gear with you damn you would wear them like if there was a ball

or some formal event everybody'd wear them if there was a change of command people in the certain officers would wear them at the change of command. Damn, that's a bummer. I always thought that was a, I thought it was an authorized piece of headgear. I wish it was. I think, you know, because they're always worried about people getting sunburned. Yeah.

Well, there's a thing that's perfect to keep the sun off of you. Jack. Fast forward July 31st, 2007, just before 9 a.m. while moving through the scud on the edge of Zone 77. The pilot in command of Crazy Horse Zero 3 made a call over the team internal radio frequency that they were hit and going down. Later listening to the recovered voice recording, one could hear a loud bang, followed by the sounds of extreme vibration, telling the pilot control, telling his front-seater to make sure his seatbelt was locked, and then several seconds later by the aircraft striking the ground.

Crazy Horse Zero-3 had been struck by a missile, which, which had failed to detonate, but still managed to break one of the four pitch change links, which controlled the angle of the rotor blades. Now the blade was connected to the broken link, was free to do whatever the laws of physics and aerodynamics compelled it to do, which for now meant causing a great deal of vibration. It caused so much vibration that the cockpit canopy shattered in several places. The crew, of course, had no idea of this. All they knew it was that the aircraft was darn near uncontrollable, and they needed to find a place to land.

now. They spotted a field just ahead and set up to make a running landing. But a slow, broken rotor system does not a soft landing make. When the helicopter struck the ground, the landing gear bottomed out exactly as designed, absorbing a lot of the impact of the forces. They had so much forward energy left, however, that a rocket pod, the 30 millimeter cannon and several other items were ripped loose from the aircraft as it finally came to arrest. Crazy Horth, 04, flown by CWT, Micah Johnson, and Captain Laura Perunick. Pernick witnessed the entire landing sequence, and when 03 came to arrest and swooped into assess the situation

and discourage anyone with ideas of approaching the aircraft, they fired two bursts of cannon fire in an open field nearby their wingman to let anyone know they were serious. Seeing an opportunity to possibly extract their wingman, CZ-O-4 landed nearby the broken carcass of CZ-O-3, The PIC and CPG of CZ-O-3 got out of their ruin of an aircraft and made their way to their wing band's aircraft. And after attaching themselves to the outside,

were on their way back to Camp Taji. So there it is again. Right. Another freaking spur ride. I mean, we talk about it every day in mission briefs before we launched on a mission. This is what we're going to do if we go down. That's like the primary course of getting those guys out of there. Spur ride.

So I'm not leaving you on the ground to let somebody kill you. you and drag you down the you know the streets drag your dead body fast forward a little bit as the days ticked by in our deployment rapidly grew drew to a close and the number of and intensity of engagements decreased dramatically so you felt things starting to mellow out a little bit you know the commander he actually had a good good idea and like you know every day before we went on a mission we had the s2 gave us a brief so they they put up the PowerPoint presentation this is what happened in this section of town, blah, blah, blah. So they put up a slide.

The very first slide was significant actions one year ago today, significant actions today. And you could physically see when you looked up there that it was going down. Yeah. So like I said, I left in October of 2006, and you know, you fast forward six months from them, The seals that relieved us, man, they were in a totally different world in Ramadi.

Like, there was 30 to 50 enemy attacks when we were there, and it was down to like one a week by the time they were coming home. So it was dramatically different, and that's kind of this time frame. Fast forward a little bit. You guys are now, like, you guys are packed up. You guys are getting ready to fly home. On the appointed day and time, we got up short of sleep since we all been working all day. loaded the last of our belongings into our aircraft and launched into the darkness headed south to Kuwait as we cleared the Taji airspace for the last time we radioed the tower

Taji Tower crazy horse zero one is clear to the south frequency change negative ETR and the ETR is estimated time of return and so you're saying we're not coming back that had to be a pretty good call to make and the tower said we'll see in about a year They had to drag you down a little bit You guys do a stop in Shannon Ireland Still under the rules of general order number one So there's no drinking Finally get back to Texas

You guys are You know it's plane trains and automobiles And finally you get on a bus And then another bus and then another bus And finally the last bus The bus carried us to the first cavalry division headquarters The street out front was blocked off. There were guys on horses.

The band had somehow made it over there now, and families were in bleachers cheering. It was an awesome sight. The buses pulled up next to the curb and parked so we could exit away from the families in the stands with the vehicles blocking their view. Everyone got off their bus and scrambled into a massive formation. When we were all set,

the bus is pulled away to reveal us standing there in front of the crowd. People were cheering, horses nade, and the band played Gary Owen. We marched forward in what had to be the worst display of drill and ceremony in the history of the military, but nobody cared. Some officer stood at a podium and said something, at least it was short, and then we were dismissed. Bedlam erupted, and kids, wives, family, and significant others rushed into the ranks. I made my way to one side of the mass of people and eventually spotted my old aviation photography buddy from North Texas, Keith Snyder, who had the keys to my Mustang. that he had been storing for me while I was down range.

I went over, shook his hand, grabbed my bags, and then left to go get my car, eat a steak dinner, and find a place to live. What an odd feeling it is after 15 months of deployment to walk to a car, jump in, and just drive off with nothing to do for the next several days. I hope I could remember how to drive a stick. 16 months later, the battalion would be back in Iraq

to do the whole thing all over again. attack. And I'm going to close the book out with a quote. And this quote comes from one of the brigade commanders that you all worked with. And I thought it was just an awesome example of what you guys did over there. It says, First Battalion 227th Aviation Regiment has been an outstanding enabler for the strike brigade combat team during our deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 06 to 08. For the past 10 months, their extensive support. has included hundreds of missions, including reconnaissance, security, and close combat attack missions. First attack's responsiveness and courage under fire is a testament to their skill and

valor, and on many occasions their combat power has been the difference between failure and success on the streets of Baghdad and throughout AEO strike. The men and women of the strike team are emboldened by the mere presence of the fine aviators of first attack. Their fearlessness and aggressive nature have proven to deter the enemy from attacking our soldiers and saved many lives as a result. Whether it be a kinetic strike against the enemies of Iraq or providing a security detail for logistical patrol, the pilots of first attack have displayed amazing balance of lethality and tactical patience. When the call for support goes out from our headquarters, we are never let down. Even in the face of extremely dangerous surface-to-air threat,

these men and women from the 100 from the one two hundred hundred 27th aviation regiment will not hesitate to come to our aid they are the essence of selfless service and that's from colonel geoffrey banister commander second bc t second id there's a few more of those in there but um i mean that's the the essence of selfless service as he says well we kind of being one of the senior guys that's something we I say beat into the junior aviators when they arrived at the unit that we don't fly for us

we fly for the people we work for on the ground and everything we do is about them we're not out there just because we want to go flying we're out there for them yeah the risk that you guys take to get in there and help out over and over again especially with losing so many air

craft and pilots, you have to have that commitment to the guys on the ground. What did you, how was your reintegration back to the world when you got home? It's always kind of weird. It's a good way of putting it. And I tell you what, like the frustration with the way things are in back home would really reveal itself if I was driving because you see how selfish people are when you're out there on the highway. I mean, if I'm just existing, like, going out my day, like, go to a restaurant or something, it's not really that apparent. But when you get out on the highway and people are cutting you off

or people are, like, driving like idiots, it really reveals itself. And for some reason, and I'm not going to say it's PTSD, but for some reason, like right when I got back, it really bothered me. I mean, it almost made me want to have road rage, like when people just act like idiots. I mean, I talk myself down off the ledge, you know, and not do anything. But that, for some reason, out of everything else, is just driving it really was hard to deal with the way people. are. You know, just dealing with people on a day-to-day basis, I don't expect anybody to know what I did or even appreciate what I did.

They just, they're doing their thing. They're living their lives. But like when you interact with others and you see how selfish people can be, that's when it really would bug me. When I witnessed selfless acts or heard about selfless acts, and see people actually literally give their life for somebody, and then somebody can't wait, you know, a couple of seconds on the highway. They've got to cut somebody off because apparently what they have to do

is so much more important than what anybody else has to do. I don't know why it is that way, but that's the one thing that really would catch in my craw. Yeah. Well, that selfishness on display, especially when it's the exact opposite of the people you've been working with for the past 15 months. What was your next job? Well, I stayed in that unit until I retired in 2011, so we did another deployment. I stayed in the job that I was holding. And actually, the reason I retired from the Army when I did is I was on orders to go to Fort Rucker because I told my career manager, I need a break because I've been. been on three deployments in a row. So between 2004 and 2010, I was gone for 37 months in Iraq.

And before that, I was 10 months in Korea. So I said, hey, I just need a break because I don't know how many chances I want to give these people to kill me. You know, I've been shot at so many times I can't begin to say. And to go, okay, we'll cut orders for you to go to Forerucker. And just because of the way the war in our deployment cycle went, I had not been able to get a good promotion photo done or set up my packet to get promoted to W5. And I got passed over for five. and at that time I really wasn't that concerned about it because the policy was that if you made W4,

you could stay for 30 years, and then the Army changed the policy. So my career manager called me back and said, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cancel your orders. You can be retained. You'll go before a board. They can retain you at W4. I don't see any problem with you getting picked up. And I said, well, the problem is my unit's on orders to go to Afghanistan, and the whole reason I wanted to go to Rucker was I didn't think I could,

my mind wasn't right to deploy again. And he goes, sorry, I can't do anything about it. So I go, okay, I'll drop my paperwork to retire then. Because if I'd stayed and wait for that board to happen, I would have been going to Afghanistan with the unit. and I was just at that point I was just done and so okay I'll retire and before my block leave was before I used up all my leave I had a job at a flight in a major company that does flight instruction up in the Dallas-Four Worth area so I went to work for

them boom now you ended up you just mentioned your on deployment for 37 months and you you made a book that's called 37 months and I actually I ordered it but I don't have it yet but it's it's a primarily photography right yeah it's almost it's probably 90% photography there's some captions but there's not a whole lot of text in there what kind of camera did you use on deployment I've got a well back then I had an icon well some of the some of the actually some of the photos are in there are slides so that was from a nine Nikon F4. And then I went digital and I had a Nikon D300.

So I think I didn't switch the 850 until I was out of the Army. So I think they're mostly D300's and the F4. And photography was just something you were always into on the side? You know, it's a funny story. I got into photography. You know how I said a while back, how I used to love to draw. So I drew pictures of airplanes right and left,

and I was using pictures out of magazines to draw from. And one of our neighbors, a friend of the family, said, why don't you take your own photographs and use those as your reference? Because if you're drawing off of somebody else's photographs, you're kind of just replicating their image. So that kind of got me. started and then I took a photography class in college and eventually when I got in the army it was easier to take a picture than draw and there's also a drawback in the military if you

have a talent like drawing and people find out about it you get used for that talent so I tried to keep the fact that I knew how to draw things and was fairly decent at it I tried to keep that kind of on the download. Who published 37 months? That one came out first, right? Right. I actually self-published it. That's,

and I'm sure it's all full color. Like, those are expensive books to publish. Well, that's, that's, and not trying to drive down the sales of my own book, but I'm not exactly happy with, and this is a problem when you do your own printing is the quality. and like you were alluding to just there,

if you want to get really high quality a book or the pictures, well, Crazy Horse book, the printer did an excellent job with the photos in there. Yeah, it's impressive.

So to get that quality photos in a book that's nothing but photos, it's going to be a really expensive book. And I wanted to get something out basically for the people I worked with because, you know, I would show people would see the photos I took and I actually gave some of them to the PAO that like some of my photos have have appeared on the Army's website is you know with my credit on it.

So people have seen my photographs but I wanted to give them more than that, you know, so the guys that I worked with, the people I flew with, the people I worked with that they could have something and it wouldn't break the bank for them to. get it I wish I could find a better way to publish where the quality of the photos were better were better they're not exactly where I want them to be and actually on Amazon some of the commenters have said the same thing is like I feel like yeah I know man but it but it only cost you I think it's like 30 bucks or something I don't know you know but yeah 40 bucks I just, I ordered one of, like, I don't know, a week ago and hasn't shown up yet. But, and then what, what made you decide to write Crazy Horse?

My whole life, I have read military history and enjoyed reading books about warfare and stuff like that. And at the time, all this stuff was going down, I knew that somebody needs to tell these stories. because if somebody one of us doesn't tell it nobody is and honestly the way I don't know how historians

in the future are going to you know how like now when people write World War II books they go back to the source material and they find all these diaries and stuff like that well the Army now

when you leave theater they wipe all the hard drops it's freaking crazy so I don't there's no historian that's going to go back in, you know, 15, 20 years from now and figure out what happened. Do they, I know that there was like a hard drive that had like basically every, had my entire deployment to Ramadi, the entire deployment, like every message that was sent, every concept of operations, every award that was written up, every, uh, AAR, like everything

was on one drive. And we turned it in. They, they, they, They have it in a safe somewhere. They didn't wipe it. But, yeah, at some point, he's going to get a hold of that thing. And, like, they'll have a lot of really good documentation. Right. What happened, you know?

And I'm sure that the brigade has that. I'm sure that the various battalion, the Marine Corps battalions that were there, the Army battalions that were there. I bet these things exist. I hope they exist still. I hope they just didn't wipe drives. I'm not as optimistic,

but I hope. I hope they are, I hope they're out there too. I mean, when I, I made a definite effort when I thought about writing this book. Like, I saved that the reason I've got, like, what people were saying is not my personal recollection. I saved sworn statements. I made a point of going on, and those aren't classified. I made a point of printing out sworn statements on missions of note. Nice.

And because I wanted to make sure if nothing else, you know, I wasn't, I don't need this book to make a living from, but I want to make sure that these stories are told so people can see what these people did. And it's not necessarily, as you know from reading the book, you know, 75% of it is not about me. And I don't want people to think that story's about me. I mean, I was there. Yeah. And there's stuff in there about me, about stuff that I did. But the real stories are about other people. Yeah, no, it's a great story.

It's a great historical document. And again, like I said, for me, just kind of filling in holes of my deployments when I wasn't there, when you were there, and just seeing how things transpired. And then what about this documentary that got made? How did that come about? It's called the longest month that you can watch it on YouTube. how'd that come about? It's also on Amazon Prime, but how did that come about? The guy that I made it with, his name is Ken Christensen.

He's a filmmaker. He started out making commercials for different companies on the West Coast. He was actually living in Oregon at the time that I met him, and I met him online. And it was actually on a political kind of west. website where people were talking about Iraq and history and stuff like that. And he was, he was a kind, he, how do I say this? He was a supporter of the military. His father was a World War II vet like mine was. Um, how do we miss that? What'd your, what'd your dad do in the army?

Um, or the, whatever branches are. Well, he was drafted into World War II. Uh, actually, I had an assignment when I was in elementary school to ask my dad what he was doing the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and my dad was on a train going to basic training so he ended up in he went and ended up going to Cooks and baker's school and he ran a kitchen in a field hospital in North Africa Sicily Italy he was at Anzio my father he didn't only had like two or three stories he ever told about war war two and i read a book about the italian campaign after my father passed away and i finally realized why he never talked about it because it was brutal but he was in a field hospital so he probably saw some pretty horous horrific stuff

nightmare um so this guy that you're going to make this movie with that's he his dad was world war two and you guys connected yeah he's he's his supporter of them military and everything and I come at first I kind of talked him into doing because my old unit was having it's 50th anniversary so I talked him into doing a little piece it's still out there on YouTube it's called the history of the 1227th we actually got Nick Searcy the actor he was on a show called Justified okay we got him to narrate it but it it tells the whole story of the unit and everything and while we were doing that I showed him a rough draft of that book.

And he goes, wow, I wish I had the money in the backing to do like a band of brothers kind of show about that book. And I started thinking about it, and I go, well, why don't we do a documentary about this piece of the book? And it's the longest month is about that period of time when all those helicopters got shot down. Yeah. So we spent two years going out and interviewing people, and we made a point of interviewing not just pilots, but guys who worked on the aircraft on the ground. Folks who were in the talk,

we actually made a real effort to get out there and talk to people that we supported that were on the ground. So I'm real proud of that, and it's won several awards at film festivals and whatnot. and it's uh how did you fund that thing we did a go fund me oh cool and uh yeah that raised most of the money yeah that's awesome and me and can paid for the rest but uh um and once again it wasn't really about making a lot of money uh and it's for free right now on youtube and if you have amazon prime it's free on there too uh but uh

And yeah, I mean, it's a lot more accessible because I know how little people read these days. But I used to joke with Ken because his original cut of that documentary, it was like almost three hours. I said, look, even if people really care about what they're seeing, nobody's going to sit still for three hours to listen to us, Yak, about this, that, and the other thing. But we had a premiere for it in Fort Worth when we finished it and got a bunch of people from the – it was like a mini-unit reunion. Nice. And I probably shouldn't say this because people who haven't seen it might not want to watch it, but like people were coming out of that are crying. And I think it has a lot to do with it. You know, they were in the unit and they knew the people that were talking about.

And obviously we cover some like tough ground there with those two shoot-downs. and so but uh i think at the end there's there's some redeeming you know we kind of took care of the the people that caused the hurt which could have got it done sooner but they got him eventually so what's what's next for you what are you working on now i am working with ken on another documentary uh we just spent like a week at fort rucker uh out on the flight line we're making a documentary called gun pilots. So we interviewed like people who've been doing it for 30 years and kids that are going through the training. And so hopefully it'll tell the story of what it takes, you know, to be trained up to go flying Apache these days. And also we're kind of

contrasting that with people who've done it like a whole career. And then and their takes on what they did during their career, what's important, like their advice to a new pilot. So I think it should be for people who, you know, like that sort of thing, I think it'll be something they'll enjoy. Yeah, I know we talked briefly before we hit record about William Reader. He might be cool to interview for that. He's just a freaking awesome guy with pretty amazing stories.

And I think he did. I mean, when he got done with, when he got out of, the Hanoi Hilton, he still went on for another, like, 30 years in the Army. I mean, he spent almost 40 years in the Army. And he flew Apaches at the end. I'm almost positive he flew Apaches at the end. Yeah, he did. I recognize the name.

Yeah, yeah. And so he was Cobras and Apaches, and he'd be pretty awesome to have on that thing. So that's the latest project, huh? Gun Pilot. Yes, sir. Sounds freaking outstanding. Does that get us up to speed? I think so.

if people want to find you you got a on the internet you've got a website danger pig right is that right well it's d n grpig.com yeah d n grpig dot com you can get the books there you can get various other items there you're also on social media at dan mclinton one that's where you're at um And that's where you can find you. What else do you have on Danger Pig? Where Danger Pig come from? Well, when I flew Hueys, I was in a unit that was based in Honduras, but half our company was in El Salvador.

And we were supporting U.S. Mill Group, El Salvador, which had Navy SEALs, Special Forces. So we would fly those guys around. And the battalion that I was assigned to was half Hueys, half Blackhawks. And the Blackhawk guys, to be honest, were tools. So they would refer to us as slug drivers, pig boat drivers, you know, whatever aspersions they could cast on us they did. So we took the pig, we took ownership of the pig and we turned it around because we were the only ones that were flying in El Salvador earning combat pay because they wanted us to blend in. with the Salvadoran military because they're trying to keep our presence on the download. So we were the ones flying in the combat zone.

We were the ones getting danger pay. So we were danger pigs. Yeah. So we, I drew like a pig on the nose of the aircraft and we named them like Miss Piggy. Oh, you got pictures of those of those pigs? I do.

Oh, you've got to send me some of those. When this thing comes out, I'll post them up. That'd be awesome. So that's it, D NGRPig.com. Social media's Dan McClinton, MC Clinton,

one. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Oh, yeah, real quick. So the, uh, the, the Apache attack helicopter. Those are pretty big, right? It's a 48 foot rotor span. So how fast do those go?

Like top speed? Well, it depends on temperature and weight and all that, but, uh, on a good day, you can probably get it up to 140. Yeah. And then what, about altitude how does that work like to the you know well that's once again weight temperature

dependent i know over in afghanistan they were fighting with with those aircraft at like 12 000 feet so you guys aren't really zipping around or because that you figure the hughy is a lot smaller am i correct it is smaller yes yeah okay are you still drawing i actually draw you know we were talking about danger pig dot com I've got a bunch of stickers on there that I did all the artwork on those. And you got a bunch of old aviation patches on there as well. Right. And you do.

Oh, okay. Yeah, got it. Okay. That's it. That's all I got. I want to see the Danger Pig Uy's. I'm looking forward to that. Are there pictures of them on Danger Pig?

I don't think so. Chuck. Because I'm pretty certain, like, the only pictures I got were like prints, you know, because back then I was not as sophisticated in my photography. photography as I am now. But there is proof out there. Awesome. Dan, any closing thoughts?

No, I just appreciate the opportunity and thanks for having me on. Yeah, no, it's awesome. I actually linked up with you through Twitter. So that's where I first saw your book. And as soon as I saw your book, ordered it, we got in touch. And here you are. So thanks for making the trip out here, joining us. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned.

and thanks for documenting, you know, the history in your book. And most important, thank you for your service. As a, for myself as a guy on the ground, there's nothing better than the guys in the skies above us that cover us with fire support and get us to safety when we need it. So thanks for you and your team and all that the Army aviation did

to help us execute our mission and the 37 months that you did supporting us on the ground. Thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate it. And with that, Dan McClinton has left the building. And, well, when he left the building, I put down a little break.

I drank a jaco fuel vanilla mulk ready to drink. And I came to the conclusion that vanilla is an underrated situation. I'm going to agree with that. Look, and I highly rate it. Yeah. But I was looking, we have all flavors here. I was ready to drink. Banana, chocolate, vanilla.

And I thought, you know, of course, let's face it, chocolate is kind of the standard go-to from a lot of people. Banana, I was, it's always a good option. But I said, you know, we're going with vanilla. Because I remember that melted ice cream, that this is what it tastes like. It tastes like melted ice cream. And as soon as I drank the first sip and it hit the lips, I was like, yo, this is like really good.

So, Jocko, ready to drink, milk from Jocko fuel is underrated. I don't know if you realize this or notice. What? I got that vanilla as well. Did you? I did. When did you drink it during the podcast? During 100%.

Yeah. I get chocolate and banana on repeat at home. And then, yeah, I looked in the thing. I was like, wait a second. I haven't vanilla in a long time. I wonder if there's some weird, you know, what is it? like telekinesis that we have with each other, that you had this feeling for vanilla

and I had a feeling for vanilla? Are we just broying out over here? It's possible. You know, or it just sort of could be like one of these undeniable common knowledge, truths, you know, one of those, but either way. So we got that for your jockle feel.

Also, you know, speaking of where you and I might have some telekinesis connection over vanilla mulk, you're all into these origin Chelsea boots. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Did you get a pair? No. But you're just observing from afar. Every time I see them. Yeah, yeah. You know, you see that, you know, they pop up on the internet and stuff. They're not my thing. Yeah, no.

But in fact, they're so not my thing that I had got a pair and I gave him to Kerry. Right in front of me. And Carrie was freaking pumped. Wait, that was in front of you? Yep. Remember at your house? Yeah. How come you didn't say nothing?

Because it was, you know. Just emotionally hurt. I held the emotions inside. Karate man cry on the inside. Chelsea Boot Man cry on the inside. Yes, sir. But I will say, so Chelsea Boot, look, if you wear it that type of thing, there's just no scenario where I'm breaking out the Chelsea boots, right? There's no, I understand.

I'm either working or I'm not working, right? And when I'm working, I'm wearing the blacked out. I have the blacked out pair of mock toe boots. Those are totally legit. They're outstanding. They're comfortable. Have you, did you try on the Chelsea boots? No.

Because it's this good year, welted soul. And they do something with cork. Right. Yeah, yeah. And they, like, put this glue cork stuff in there. And I think that's what gives it the max comfort. But damn, these things are comfortable. Yeah.

These new origin boots, super comfortable. Comfortable and, of course, Maine America. So check out the Chelsea boots. OriginUSA.com. We got that for you. Now, at Jocco's store, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have, what is it, deaf five? Discipline equals freedom, version,

five, you know, I forget all the Mark mods, whatever, but we'll call it the fifth version, 5.0, if you will, yeah. Yeah, I thought, I figure, you know, we've been kind of in this outfit for 10 years now, and there's only been a handful of discipline equals freedom updates to the apparel, you know, we're out here representing. So, you know, everyone's kind of got that old design, which is good, of course, but, you know, I figure it was about time. So yeah, that's coming out. gave me some insight into the next shirt locker shirt too. Oh, yeah, yeah. With the,

it kind of looks like a college situation. Yeah, yeah. Like the discipline. And then it looks like a college shirt that if you didn't, you know, analyze it a little more deeply, you know, might not recognize. Yeah. But as soon as you recognize, you'd say, oh, hell, yeah.

Yes. So perfect. You see how you just said that in the game? So it's like, uh, sometimes like the word, like the expression in the game. That's what it's from. So it's like like you know you always say in the game. So if you're in the game It's funny because when we started the podcast and stuff and I'd be out talking to someone and I could tell that they were in the game and then I'd ask them. I'd be like oh how'd you get in the game and they would know what I meant by the game and they'd say oh I heard you on Tim Ferriss or I heard you on Joe Rogan or hey I read extreme ownership and then I got the pond and but they'd have a they'd explain to you or they'd say something like oh you know my nephew or my cousin or my brother my brothers was like in in the game and I started saying what's going on so yes you made a t-shirt that's kind of like in the game yeah I figure that what design would kind of strike you if

you thought of the expression in the game so that's what it that's what it currently is I don't show them to you often but I was compelled for whatever reason I'm glad you're happy with that I think I'm gonna need some of those yeah maybe two two of them yeah don't make that face you know I feel like all the people who are in the game oh you just made that first priority you just remember that you didn't even get me the ones that I requested. Okay, so more so, yes, at the end of the day, yes, but, you know, as far as the, we'll say obligatory, not obligatory, we'll say required details of that scenario.

I did, but they all went out to the people and there wasn't. Wait, so I don't even get one? There was not as many leftover as I thought. Not even one. Of that other one, the comfort is a curse. Yeah. We're out. We're sold out.

I mean, I can do another run. Has a shirt locker shirt. ever become a like staple permanent shirt on the store. No. Is that part of the scarcity of the shirts? Is it not happening? No. No, no, no.

I just never really thought about it deeply. I mean, I guess could, right? One, like, yeah, there's a few that I could see happening like that. There's one called good, you know, that good one that I wear. Like the fancy good? Yeah, yeah. What do you call it first world problem? First world?

High level problems. Yeah, yeah. You must be so weird to be in your head With all this strangeness going around Like whatever part of your brain thought of that Yeah I and then got out the friggin A Adobe illustrator And started tooling around with it

Yeah, we made it happen You know There's a sugar-coated lives one That that seemed to be a hit The Krispy Creams bro. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah That old that one of the OG ones Is the G-I-J-O-1

That people that it was good That one came out really Joe is it is it like on a tank and everything like a comic book no no that that one was good too but no it was just it just as discipline with the oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah look like a gijo logo yeah there's a few but uh no not yet to answer your question what's the deal on cease and desist with like when you when you imitate someone's brand like that because we have a snickers bar one too right yeah but yeah i guess so can they sue you and desist you i don't know so i read some other stuff about copyright long time ago and it was uh it had something it's like a certain percentage has to be different

so whatever's trade and whatever's trademarked about this logo yeah you can't use that so yeah i mean i can't use any snickers logos i mean but what you know you can put so you can make stuff look very similar yeah yeah especially if they're real basic so you figure the snickers that's just blue lettering that's kind of tilted and like you put a white background in a whatever background with a brown shirt. So yeah, it looks like it. I don't know. But yeah, if anyone sends me a cease and desist, won't happen.

I don't think. Well, first of all, we already ceased because they're all, they're just shirtlocker, right? Right. So you could say, oh, you send all the letters you want. We already done it. I'm trying to convey a message. I'm not trying to capture the audience from Snickers. Do you have to be trying to capture their audience to do that?

That's part of the process of violation. Yeah. It's good to know. It's weird. Not in violation at all. I don't feel so. but hey, you know, like I said, hey, I'm trying to help. That's good.

And then, you know, finally, you, you kind of came at me a little bit. Yeah. Because you were talking about Eshlam Front. And you inferred that I wouldn't think that saying that the principles of extreme ownership are kind of like the force. Yeah. Now, first of all, Jason Gardner would be, you know, if I said anything negative about Star Wars, Jason Gardner might come at me

even harder. I understand. But it is kind of like the force, right? It's like a thing you use, if you have these principles, you can utilize them. Yeah. And they will be very helpful in overcoming the darkness. Yep. And actually, is it the dark side?

The dark side. Yeah, yeah, the Sith or whatever. The, uh, the reason that I first thought of it. Is it the Sith or is it the Sith? The reason I at first thought you wouldn't because I remember, You're saying a few times, hey, this isn't some Jedi mind trick. You're trying to, like, manipulate somebody. You'd say that, but I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true.

And there's a big difference for sure. The force is, like, when you learn kind of the way, you know, and it's for everybody. But you use the force for good, right? Oh, but I guess you can use it for the dark side. If you're on the dark side, man. Do you love Star Wars? But you are correct. Yeah, man, I get down with Star Wars.

Was that starting when you were young? Yeah. Yeah. Star Wars one was made, or not one, sorry, part four, but it's episode. episode four, it's the first star was it came out, came out the year I was born, by the way. I saw Return of the Jedi in the movie theater, too. I think I saw the first one in the movie theater because I'm older than you. Yeah.

So you might even know, when you were a little kid going to the movies, you just didn't comprehend anything. Well, when I saw Return of the Jedi, so I was like, I don't know, I don't know how old. I comprehended that. That was sick. That was legit. The rancor, that big monster was crazy. What was the big monster? Rancor.

That's what it's called. What Luke Skywalker. Well, it's Luke Skywalker has to fight him in the cage, job of the HUD. job of the hut you know oh oh oh yeah wait is this when he falls in the water and he's under and the the side starts shutting no no no that's the that's part episode for a new hope winning there in the trash disposal oh yeah yeah yeah that's a different one there's a big monster in there too well a little snake monster yeah for sure medium whatever check well if you want to use some of these principles go to ashlandfront dot com or go to extreme ownership dot com if you want some of those cool shirts go to jocco

store.com. If you want some of those Chelsea boots or other comfortable clothing, go to origin usa.com. And if you need good protein, good energy, good immune system activities, go to joccofield.com or just go shopping. We're getting kind of everywhere right now. That's where we're at. Also, if you want to help out through it from a charity perspective, check out Mark Lee, my brother, his mom, created an awesome charity organization. It's called America's Mighty Warriors. You can go to America's Mighty Warriors.org if you want to get involved or you want to donate. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org.

And finally, Jimmy Mays organization beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs for Dan McClinton, check out that d N-G-R-Pig.com. Got all kinds of cool stuff on there. Also, he's on social media. media, he's on the Twitter, Twitter X, as they say. Actually, I guess that's what I say. He's Dan McClinton, M-C-C-L-I-N-T-O-N-1. And then for us, you can check out jocco.com.

You can check us out on social media. I'm at Jocco-Wilink. Echoes at Echo Charles. We're there sometimes. Not that often. We were discussing why we weren't there that often the other day. What did you say? People dancing, right?

There's people that feel like they have to dance. Online? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, online. They got to, yeah. I went pretty deep, but yes, the, it's, um, yeah, people oddly, metaphorically, yeah, metaphorically put on their clown makeup and do a lot of dances for everybody on the internet.

It's odd, some odd behavior. Yeah. You made robots dance on the interwebs for, uh, literally. Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, that served like three purposes in one, but hey, that's a whole other thing. Well, if you want to check that out, we're there sometimes. Also, thanks to Dan McClinton one more time for joining us. Grateful for your service to our great nation.

Thanks to all of our armed forces for protecting us with a solemn salute to Army Aviation. Men and women like Dan McClinton, who put themselves at great risk to support the troops on the ground. We thank you for your service and sacrifice. And finally, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other. responders, I thank you for holding the line at home to keep us safe. And for everyone else out there, in Dan's book, Crazy Horse, he put in there the U.S. Army's core values, and they are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity,

and personal courage. And they have a note or like a description about duty. And it says, fulfill your obligations. fulfill your obligations. That means do what you're supposed to do. That means no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no sweatless solutions. In other words, no slack. Do what you're supposed to do.

And you know what that means. It means get after it every day without fail. That's your duty. to go get some. That's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this Zeko and Jocko. Out.