Jocko Podcast - 508: The Mission Continues Beyond Ramadi. With Major Scott Huesing

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Retired Marine Major Scott Huesing, author of Echo in Ramadi, to walk through the brutal realities of combat in Iraq’s deadliest city, the cost of leadership, and the transition back home. Scott shares the powerful story of his Marines, the memorials for the fallen, his personal battles after service, and how writing became a new mission to honor and preserve these stories. From Gold Star families to fellow veterans finding their voice, this is a conversation about sacrifice, resilience, and keeping the legacy alive.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 508 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Erica. Good evening. I used to think about the medals and ribbons and parades when I was a young Marine and how they were a measure of one's success. Ten deployments and multiple combat tours later, I no longer did. In Ramadi, none of that meant shit to me. I was in command of Echo Company, second battalion,

fourth Marines deployed to Ramadi, Iraq. It was the third year of Operation Iraqi, Freedom and my command was assigned to the U.S. Army's Ready First Brigade Combat Team, which consisted of the largest armor and infantry alignment in modern warfare. I worked directly for Task Force 1-9 infantry battalion Manchu under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Ferry, U.S. Army. During this nearly nine-month deployment, our mission kill or capture anti-Iraqi forces, Echo Company stood in the line of fire daily in Ramadi, the most dangerous and most densely populated area of insurgent activity in 2006.

It would test us and would take the best of us. This story is about and for the warriors of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, and their families. It is their voices that tell of the battles we fought, the relationships we shared, and the pain we still bear today. It is a tribute to them, to those that are gone, those who served, and those who continue to fight today. During our time in Iraq, we didn't think about war movies, parades, and shiny metals. All I thought about was bringing my Marines home alive. That right there is an excerpt from the prologue to a book called Echo in Ramadi. It was written by Scott Husing.

Scott is a retired Marine with 24 years of service who rose through the ranks from enlisted Marine to infantry officer during his career. He completed 10 deployments around the globe, including the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And Iraq is the subject of this book. It's an incredible read. It gives a detailed insight of what it was like to serve in and lead a Marine Corps infantry unit. And it's an honor to have Scott with us here tonight to share his experiences

and lessons learned. Scott, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. It's an honor. I'm sad to report. We already had like about a one hour discussion about all kinds of things before we hit record. So I'm sure we'll get into some of that. Before we jump into the book, you know, how did you end up in the Marine Corps? Well, this is not a true confession I've said before, but I was a horrible high school student, you know, just barely got by. You know, I graduated ultimately with a smoking hot 1.24 GPA, and no one's ever been able to beat that. But I get a phone call from a friend of mine.

And I can remember just picking up that receiver off, you know, when phones used to be on a wall at 6662-3427, I can still remember the number in Waukegon, Illinois. He says, hey, man, you'll never guess what I did today. I'm thinking like he crashed his fucking card. He's going through him like socks. And he says, no, I'm down at the Marine Recruiter's office. He goes, I'm joining the Marines. I go, you're full of shit.

So I go down there and you know when you go into the recruiting office, especially when you're going to list of guys, like, man, especially Marine Recruers, they are the best salesmen in the world. And they got the ribbons. Unmatched. Their office at that recruiting substation was all camouflage. Like they painted the walls. There's camminats.

And man, they talk a good game. And up until that point. point, I was, like I said, it was horrible student, barely got by just to play sports. What year is it that you unless? 88 is when I signed the contract. So, but I, you know, I was, you know, drinking underage, you know, riding my motorcycle, running from the cops, getting caught by the cops, fighting, more fighting. And, you know, so I led a very high-risk lifestyle as a young teenager.

And when I met the Marines, I was like, man, I've never met. a bigger group of risk takers than what these guys are trying to sell me. And right there, I signed up. And, you know, it was probably the best decision I ever made in my life because through that, you know, my first four years and, you know, going to Desert Shield and Desert Storm, which I write about a little bit in the book. You write about it in literally two pages. It's two pages of Desherty's a better start.

Man, you know, I've gotten some shit from guys I serve with because, but in comparison to other deployments. That's the point people are doing. It's in comparison to their point, and it's like it seemed pale because it was such a short war. But it was very important and it shaped me and then, you know, pushed me into college, you know, and then, you know, I didn't much. What was your job in the Marine Corps? Were you infantry out of the gate? No.

I was, I must have scored pretty decent on tests. So I was a hawk missile operator and Stinger and then I transitioned. Did you go to school in Fort of Hood for Stinger? Paso. I went to that school. Yeah, El Paso. Yeah, I was a Stinger Missile qualified homie over here. Yeah, so that was, you know, Marines and Marines, like it doesn't matter what job you have. It was great. And then when I was in college, I still loved and missed the Marines. Did you get out of the Marine Corps to go to college? I did. There was, after Desert Storm, there was a big force reduction, which happens, as you know, after war, they, they whittle us down.

And they says, we got three jobs for you. You can lap move and go to a different job. And I And I was like, no, no, and hell no. Like, I don't want any of those jobs. So I hung on my rifle and I went to college, Illinois State. And I don't say that to brag because they only let us like 50,000 in every year or something. But I was just happy to get into college, man. And then I joined the reserves as a machine gunner because I was also 0-331. Hell, yeah.

And it was right in my hometown, Waukegan, Illinois. So I was doing that for a couple of years. And the drive just became kind of a pain in the butt. And reserve units are, in my opinion. opinion only really, really good or they're really, really screwed up. Yeah. So it's just basic leadership function because they rotate guys in and out all the time. So, but that's, that's how I got roped into the Marine Corps, you know, to answer your

question. It's not short answer, but. So then did you have to do ROTC or something to get your commission? How'd you end up getting your commission? No. No. So this, yeah, I'm going to use this show. Hopefully he's listening.

I was approached by another request. Bruder on campus to do the platoon leaders course, which is you do two summers like your junior and senior year. But I only went to college for three years because I was going to night school, day school, preschool, like I just went in and out because I was a little older than the average bearer. And Sergeant Connor, I haven't mean to go back through my paperwork, I was like, what is this guy's first name? But he's the guy that called me. And he says, hey, sir, you know, if you can come down and take a physical fitness test, he goes, I can get you up to Great Lakes and do your physical. because I get you boat space at OCS in January.

And right then, I was like, this is this fate. And this young sergeant, God bless them. They make stuff happen. And I always want to, like, I want to thank that guy. Yeah, that's what you're at. He really was like the catalyst, like that got me back in because I had planned on working for U.S. federal marshals. And there were some hiring freeze in the government going on.

I was like, man, I cannot wait tables or bartend for another year at age 26 or 27. You know, so it's Sergeant Connor, man. If you're listening to this show, give me a shout, brother. That just reminded me, I was, when I was just getting done with a basic seal training, my class officer who was a Naval Academy guy, told, you know, he kind of pulled me aside. And he's like, listen, you should go to the Naval Academy. You can, you know, if you put a package together, you can go to the Naval Academy, be an officer.

And I was just like, I didn't have the same reaction to you. I was like, hell, no, I'm not going to go to the freaking teams, bro. I don't want to be an officer. I want to be a machine gunter in the teams. So I denied his request. I ended up doing it later. But yeah, you don't always take advice from people. So what years that you could get commissioned then?

So I got commissioned in, oh, man, I want to say it was 97, 98. Okay. And then I was, yeah, my first duty station was in 29th, so back it up a year, 98. Yeah, so 1998. That's actually the same year I got commissioned. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

We had kind of similar trajectories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I did eight years enlisted and then got picked up as an officer program. I did the weirdest officer program where I didn't even go to college. I went straight from being an E5 at Seal Team 1, 13 weeks of OCS. And then I was 01 at Seal Team 2. And I had to go to college later.

My program was OCC officer candidate class. Nice. Like I graduated college and then went straight to. yes. Were you thinking, like when that guy, when that sergeant said, hey, I can get a slot for you, were you just kind of like, oh, I'm going to be in the Marine Corps for the rest of my life at that point? I think so. I don't know the rest of my life, but I thought, you know, when you transition too,

and you really don't know what it's all about because you see officers through a different lens when you're enlisted. And people ask me this question. I've gotten called on, and I might change my opinion, like, did you? being enlisted make you a better officer. My answer is usually no. I just tell people from a leadership perspective, it gave me an absolute appreciation for how valuable that young Marines time is. And I never, ever wanted it being wasted on ancillary tasks or mundane,

you know, stupid wall locker inspections. And, you know, just they needed to be training for war, studying, chasing girls, or PT, man. Like, that's the important stuff for the marine. Productive things. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think the culture of the Marine Corps in the absence of war, they find ways

to fill time. And I realize that, too, is like, I never want to be that guy. Because as you write about, too, is like, even bad leaders are great examples of who you don't want to be. And you drill down on that a lot and how you lay fright about it. that to teach them blocking tackling leadership yeah I get asked sometimes you know are the prior enlisted how are the prior enlisted officers and in the SEAL teams the prior enlisted officers are some of the best officers and some of the worst officers it kind of reminds me how to kid ask me

you know I'm trying to become an equal scout will that be helpful and I said it might be because if you take the skills and the things that you learn from becoming an Eagle Scout and you apply those to being a good leader, they might be helpful. But if somewhere in your mind you think you're better than other people, because you're an Eagle Scout, it's the road to disaster. That's a good reminder. Yeah, I experienced the same thing. Like, I've been there, done that.

I don't have. Like, that was just not me. No. You're right there. And you do get a little bit of street credit from the boys, you know, being a Mustang. but I really kind of downplayed it a lot. I never advertise it, that's for sure. The SEAL community is so small

that almost everyone you would know, like, when I went to the East Coast, I went to SEAL Team 2 after it was like a couple people that took them like three days to figure out that I was a prime list of guy. One of them was a senior chief that called me out about something and all the other guys was like,

hey, dude, that guy's been in the team's longer than you. Yeah. But it's all good. like, you know, what are you going to do? So you, what's your first, what's your job? Are you an infantry officer? Infantry. That was, that was my main goal.

We were talking about before the show, you know, is, you know, you got to have a passion for what you do. And we were, we were discussing about, you know, becoming a pilot. And we both know Dave Burke because he's an F-18 guy and I did, I did time in Yuma. But, you know, I don't know if you know how this works at the basic school. when you get commissioned in Quantico, then you go across the street of the base school is you're not guaranteed a job. You go into this profession as a Marine officer with one goal to lead Marines. It doesn't matter what job they do.

Marines are all the same flavor. They're all great. They all talk a good game and they're all a handful. But being in charge of Marines is the best job. And you have to be good with that. Now, you get your rankings. So you pick your dream list of job one through 20. 26 alpha or whatever the fuck it is.

And hopefully you get it. And the Marine Corps is interesting because I call it the equal distribution of smartness and dumbness. It's kind of the way they break it up. So if there's like 300 people, the top 100, middle 100 and the bottom 100, based off scoring. And the top three guys get their pick. So if there's only 10 infantry jobs available and you're the number four guy at the top, three of those jobs are going to the middle third. and then the last four going to the bottom third

or whatever it is for what the needs of the Marine Corps are. So I just happened to fall at the top of the bottom third. So now, okay, so let me just save my own ass because it's not like high school anymore. The difference between the top third and bottom third is probably like 95.1 and then 100%. So like they're a bunch of smart. Yeah, it's a tight group out of those 300 people at TBS.

But I got infantry, and then you just go right across the street again to the infantry officers course, which is, you know, probably one of the last bastions of secrecy in the military. They don't advertise it on the Marine Corps training website. I don't know if it's a good thing. I think the Special Force community has gotten better because they recruit more guys, but we don't really advertise it. It's still kind of a little secret society when you go over to infantry officer's course.

I had James Webb on the podcast, and he went from, you know, did the pipeline, the Human Team Academy, whatever, TBS, and then the infantry officer course, got on a plane, went to Vietnam, like took, got put in a Jeep, they drove them out there, they pointed in the ridge line, like your platoon is up there. There's no officer to relieve because the officer was wounded and gone. So, and he went up there. that night and they like got in a big big gunfight and he had to call for fire and everything and he's kind of talking through it and i said did you feel like you were ready like that's a lot to handle

on your first night and he goes oh absolutely which is pretty damn impressive to be rolling into combined arms combat on your first six hours in command in country it's pretty impressive so they do an outstanding job they do yeah um and then your first duty is what 29 palms you said beautiful 29 palms california uh again uh you know be careful what you ask for you just might get it um you know you get your dream sheet and i was like i want west coast and all i'm thinking is pendleton camp pendleton right here across the street uh and then uh the assignments come out 29 palms and i was like oh that's cool or no i was three four they're like oh you're going third battalion fourth marines is like awesome camp pendleton and then the company gunny

who's uh e7 he as i remember his name as it was Peterson. He goes, hey, sir, I got some bad news for you. Just shitty and grin on the case. He goes, three, four, just moved to 29 palms. I'm like, you're kidding me. So it's the high desert. But you know, as a young, well, not so young, second lieutenant, being in the combat center is where you want to be as an infantry guy because everything is live fire. I mean, you're just you know, blowing stuff up and shooting all day long because the whole base is an impact area, basically. But not great for young Marines at Libo, but. So where are you on September 11th?

So I checked into 3-4 in January of 99. And two years later, I was a first lieutenant. I was kind of like the senior lieutenant in the battalion at the time. And we were in Okinawa. And I was just telling this, obviously, because it's just a couple days after 9-11 as we're doing the show. But I remember watching the TV and I was on the phone. and I said that I said something just hit the World Trade Center and then I look at it

and said this is a terrorist attack second plane hit and I ran down the hall camp Schwab in Okinawa and I started banging all the doors getting all the lieutenants up I said you guys got to come see this and I remember huddling in our dorm room and in the barracks and we're all just watching this little tiny like 14 inch TV that we had and watching these events unfold and it was the madness that ensued obviously, you know, knee-jerk reaction, they've got reins on the perimeter with saws and, you know, machine guns. I'm like, yeah. Were you guys on deployment in Okinawa at that time?

We were. Yeah, we were doing a six-month, six-month rotation on the unit deployment program. And did you guys get to go anywhere from Okinawa? No. Yeah, we were stuck. Some units had it worse, like, like 27. I think they were stuck there for, like, like, 18 months or something.

It was crazy. Yeah, you pray to the war gods and it doesn't always go your way. We're on deployment. No, we're going to send some guys that are in the freaking states right now over there. Yeah, we, uh, any professional war you guys understand is like everybody wants their war. And it was funny, I was just telling Mike Sager this this morning over coffee is about how that transition, like you come back. And then I was the senior lieutenant.

And then I got selected to go to. Fast Company, which is a fleet anti-terrorism security team, which is run by the Navy. The C&O owns all the fast guys, and we go out and we do anti-terrorism ops, and my first deployment was in the med. It was a cool gig because you're always conditioned one. They're hand-selected Marines. No disciplinary problems. They've all got something to lose, so they want to be there. They don't screw up. They're varsity. I was one of five captains in the entire Marine Corps. They got selected to lead, and you're still in command, which is, you know, it's cool. And so now this is like, what, 2002, 2003?

2001. It was like right after September 11th. Yeah, it might have just been, oh, two, I just picked up captain. And because all the platoon commanders are captains and fast. And we work with the Navy, you know, we work with the squadrons over there and Rhoda and Cigonella. And that's where I met a lot of the seals on that deployment, who's still lifelong friends of mine.

So, but it was a good gig. But September 11th was, it was such a turning point, you know, in history that lit the fuse for where we are today. You know, and today, you know, we're recording this show today, which is, again, I think it's like the day we signed the Constitution, among other things. But this is the Battle of Antietam. This is the bloodiest day in American history, I mean, where we lost 5,000 people. You know, people in modern times, they think 9-11 is the bloodiest day, but it's not. We were killing ourselves on the bloodiest day in America. We don't like to talk about that world a lot, but definitely a turning point for sure.

So then how long are you with Fast Company for? It's a three-year gig. I was with Second Fast Company in Yorktown, Virginia, and we did deployment to Baghdad. Um, that one lasted, or no, the first, the first one was second fast was, uh, to Rota Spain. So we're out of Rota for like 10 months doing straight to Gibraltar transits. You know, we're, we're riding frigates and destroyers and we're cross deck in. And we're doing, you know, strong transits with seals and they're shuttling us over to boats. And we do security on all these ships going over to the Persian Gulf and the war kicked off.

And, you know, again, we're like, oh, we're just guarding, you know, these big container ships full of shit paper and, and, and. MREs for the guys doing the real fighting. We all want to get in the fight. We wanted our war. And so we came back and then we get the call that General Hagee, who was the commandant and the CNO, wanted a third fast company. So I was a plank owner to help build that in Williamsburg, Virginia. So we had this shitty little Navy base.

It was like a Navy supply annex and we didn't have a pot to piss in. But we were doing what we could do until we got all of our gear and stuff and we started fielding Marines. And then we went over to back. Baghdad to provide security at the embassy there at Saddam's Palace. And that place, man, I don't know if you were rolled through there. What year was not? That was 2004.

Yeah. Yeah. I was there in 03 and 04. So, and I was in Baghdad. So, yeah. Well, interestingly, we were there for 10 months. And it was prior to that, when I was married, I have a buddy who's in the Navy, and he's a, this is a coolest.

I like this story, because you probably know the guys, too. But he's flying to my wedding, and he's sitting next to this guy. He says, hey, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm in the Navy. So he was a team guy. And so Bob White, and his nephew, by the way, is the one that called me from the recruiter's office. So the White family is like they've been, I've known him since high school. Anyway, he says, yeah, you should call this guy.

He's also in Virginia Beach. or he's a damneck or something. And so it was Rich Devaney. And so Rich and I became like pen pals in Virginia. And we're emailing each other, like sharing the gas chamber or range like at Fort Useless or something. But we'd never met face to face. And so I'm in Baghdad in 2004 and I see these, you know, this convoy rolls in. And I'm in the chow hall.

And I see all these guys with a bunch of Velcro on their camys and pockets sewn all. It was like seals. And so I walk up and I says, hey, man, is Rich, rich around or a carp? And he says, yeah, they're out on the Circle Drive. And now this is a huge search. It's a palace. So I walk out and sure enough, there's Rich face to face. And of all the places we meet, they just come back down from doing DA hits up north.

And so we met face to face. Now, I got to finish this story. Fast forward, I'm going over to Ramadi and we're on the USS Boxer. And it's like one in the morning, come to the Chow Hall, and I'm sitting at this table, and there's this pilot sitting across from me. And I'm looking at his name tape, and I says, Devini. I said, you got any family in the military? He goes, oh, yeah, I got brother, twin brother.

I said, you're kidding me. So I tell Andy, his call signs count. I tell Count about that story about meeting his brother. He said, you got to be kidding me. And so you fast forward like another, I don't know, 10 or 15 years. counts retiring from the Marine Corps and Yuma. And I go to the retirement ceremony and we took a picture as the first time of me, Rich, and Andy in one picture altogether.

But throughout our whole military careers, you know, and, you know, Rich and Andy have both gone on to, you know, do great things. Rich just got a great book that came out called The Attributes. And so that's how I met those guys. But again, like this right here, man, this. power of human connection. You know, I walk in, he sees me in the alley out back. He's like, hey, what's up?

And we're trying to piece together how we all met for the first time. But, yeah, the Vinny Boys truck. Yeah, yeah. Rich has been on this podcast a couple of times. And I know him one more, by the way. So what are you, what are you guys doing in Baghdad? Was it good deployment? You're there for 10 months?

Yeah, it was right at the, it was a really interesting time. because you know how the tactics change. You know, we weren't doing a lot of direct fighting. We were more in a defensive posture because we couldn't have achieved the diplomatic mission over there without some semblance of security. So we did a lot of VIP security convoys to and from the airport. We were actually working with the Blackwater guys

when Blackwater got stood up out of LZ Washington in Baghdad. We used to fly around with those guys on their sexy, helicopters. You know, those guys are all 160 sword dudes that are flying for Blackwater now. And we can talk about a little bit, too. Like, one of the books that I helped publish is called, it used to be called Welcome to Blackwater, but now it's called Guns, Girls, and Greed.

But I used to, that book, too, is like, I hope they serve beer in hell. Like, we'll talk about Morgan's book, too. But he was a Blackwater mercenary. And we worked with those guys. And there were rocket attacks. You know, they'd shoot RPGs. from across the river, you know, try and lob them over all the concrete, you know, walls.

And it was a grind. I will say that. I mean, it was hot. Hot. Everyone always thinks Iraq's so hot all the time. But that deployment was, when I was in Ramadi, though, it was like freezing cold. But in Baghdad in 2004, it was like the Star Wars canteena. That's what the palace was like.

I mean, you had everything from business casual. I mean, Dave Petraeus was running the, running the place. You know, four-star generals bouncing around, civilians, contractors, USAID, Marines Guard in the place. But we were day on, stay-on, and all the Blackwater Yehues and, you know, Department of State guys were out in the pool, you know, getting on the piss at night and, you know, create more problems for themselves and need be. But it was, it was surreal, man. It really was like a Star Wars Cantina. It was just madness. The war is very different.

depending on where you are and what you're doing, man. Yeah. Yeah, going into the green zone and you'd see like people that look like humans. You'd be going, wait a second, what's going on? And I had it pretty good. We were staying out in Baghdad, but we'd roll out to some out station somewhere. And there'd be like some SF ODA team living in the shit. And like living off one MRE or two MREs a day and buying foods from the locals and half the guys

got diarrhea. And it's freaking gnarly. And they live like that for whatever it was, however long they're going to be there. And then you go to the, you know, buy app, had a big giant chow hall with the pizza hut and all that stuff. And then the green zone was just like a freaking luxury scenario. It was. And I think people, I'm not making it out to be more than it was, but like it green zone, people thought it was safe zone. But it wasn't.

There was, you know, there was. They were taking hits for sure. There was a big ID threat. You know, they're blown up cars all over the place. You know, there was sporadic machine gun fire. They were just, you know, randomly lob rockets and, you know, mortar fire in the city. And we used to just try and chase them down. It was just futile attempt, man, you know, in that environment.

Like the Blackwater guys would be flying. They're like, yeah, we're going to go target these guys. Like, that's not planning, man. This is not how we lead. And this is how the Marines do it. So we ultimately separated ourselves from Team Blackwater. But, you know, they had their purpose. So then you get done with that deployment.

What's next? School. School. I had gotten selected to go to the resident course in Quantico at the Expeditionary Warfare School, which is six months. And after that, it's a captain's prep course, basically. So it's like for company command. Yeah, you're a captain going through there, and then you've got a whole slew of majors that are your faculty advisors that guide you along the way because they've already been company commanders. And so they're prepping you for that.

but it's a lot of detailed planning, you know, mission prep. There's not really a whole lot of PT. You kind of do it on your own. So it's a very academic environment, but it's an important stepping stone, too, to prepare you for that next level of leadership. And that's when I got the call that I would not. This is interesting, too,

because the Marine Corps did have a great sense of humor, but they called like five of them. of us in and we go into the office of the director who's a full colonel at the time says you guys aren't graduating with your class and we're like what do we do they said you got orders to report in early so we're like you didn't get to walk across the stage or anything the formal graduation so I got orders to second battalion fourth Marines and they're like you need to check in now it was like they're getting ready for a big dump of Marines all the new guys and then you're going to start your training cycle so I live

Literally packed up all my stuff, drove across the country, towed my Jeep out, parked in the parking lot. It was like a Thursday night or something I rolled in with all my stuff. And then took command on Friday. And then the next week, we're back in 29 Palms training. And then I was living out of my office. And Marines hated it. They hated me for it. Like, oh, man, that guy's crazy.

You were just on 24 hours a day? Yeah, we just, there was no point to even get in an apartment or a house because the training cycle is just. so intense. Everybody knows that's been in the middle of the, like, you just want to go on deployment because the training is so relentless. Like the way we prepare our guys is merciless. And the fact that I lived in my office,

the Marines knew they were never going to break. I wasn't a tyrant, you know, but it was just convenient for me. Work to do. And so you guys finished workup, do you know where you're going on deployment? We didn't. We knew we were going with the 15th Mew. Like we knew we were doing a Mew deployment.

And there's always three mews that are running across the globe is the planet's 911 force. It's 2,500 Marines, soldiers, and sailors in the Amphibious Ready Group that carries us out there. But we didn't find out about our deployment until then Colonel Bedrow, now retired Major General Bedrow, got us all on the flight deck, the USS boxer, and announced that we were going into country. because for the listeners who remember, that was the surge, that President Bush and General Abizade and others, they ordered this surge. And I always explain it as up until that point.

And you were in it at the time because we were two ships passing the night in 06. The insurgency had become what I call this giant game of whack-a-mole, where we were just hammer them down in one city like Fallujah and we'd crush her asses into fine powder and they'd go to ground and then they'd seep away and they'd pop up somewhere else. And the surge allowed us to flood the battle space with, what, additional 15, 20,000 troops. And it was a tough decision to commit the theater reserve in the Middle East and that's what the Mew was.

But they did that and it allowed to really, for us to put pressure on all those pockets of resistance simultaneously. And as you know, in 06, that's just where all the bad guys chose to fight. fight. They pick Ramadi and they were going to make a stand. And, you know, like we were saying, it really was the Super Bowl of Combat, man. You write about that. It's like there's, to be a company commander, infantry company commander in charge of over 250 Marine soldiers and sailors in that environment where you're fighting every single day, four, five, six times a day on some days against a very well-trained insurgent force. It doesn't get any more.

intense. And, you know, we could talk leadership all day long, man, but, you know, the leadership at every level was the thing that probably allowed us to survive. And it was survival, as you know. It wasn't winning or losing. We didn't have real metric. It was survival. I mean, if you had to take, you know, the scoreboard, I mean, the amount of people my guys were lighting up and killing was we were lighting up the scoreboard. I mean, but that that was never really, quantified to us. The administration or the senior level never really told us what

winning was. A lot of guys have a problem with that. A lot of guys you have to know what that end state is. We never did. Killing bad guys is one metric. Mine was always bringing as many home alive as I could.

Just taking care of my boys and making sure that they knew what their mission was every single day at the lowest level. Tough. Yeah, you mentioned finding out, you know, the Marine Corps birthday. I'm going to go to the book who you say on the 231st birthday of the Marine Corps, the 15th Meek commander, Colonel Brian, how do you say his name? Boudreau.

Boudreau stood on the boxer's flight deck and announced that to the hundreds of Marines and sailors gathered that we'd be going into Iraq. They responded to the news exuberantly. I sense an excitement from the new Marines, the ones who had never been in combat before. Many, I suppose, still harbored romantic notions of how combat is going to be, running into the blaze of battle, firing their M-16s, and annihilating an untrained inferior enemy. If that's what they were thinking,

they'd know better soon enough. They were about to experience the intensity of combat and see death on a scale like they'd never imagined. You guys knew, or did you know, as a company commander, are you reading the intel reports every day of what's happening in Ramadi? Because I know I was supposed to deploy to Baghdad, and then two weeks before we left for deployment,

they told us we were going to Ramadi. But I had been following Ramadi the whole time. I knew what was going on there. you see the sit reps, you see how many people are getting killed there. We knew we were going into the belly of the beast. Did you have that same information? We do a fly ahead to the RCT at the time. We got a really good intel dump.

We were getting some indications and warnings on ship, but again, OPSEC on ship, they really didn't want us talking about it. We were in River City, which is complete communication shutdown for about two weeks. So can't call the family, can't hop on the internet, none of that. Are you guys tracking like when 3-8's there? Because I was there when 3-8 was there. 3-8 lost like 17 guys on that deployment. They lost, I think, 9 before I showed up.

But that's a significant amount of guys to lose. Are you guys tracking that? You see another battalion in Ramadi. You know what's happening. You see those casualty reports. Yeah. We were getting all of that once John Smith. And John Smith had Fox Company.

He's still inactivity. He's a colonel now. but he and I were assigned to Ramadi. That was the thing too. So rewind, they commit the theater reserve, which again is the muse, 2,500 Marines soldiers and sailors. And we disembark amphibious shipping from the three ships, but they send us out in piecemeal.

So Echo and Fox, we got sent to Ramadi to work under 101BCT. Now, I didn't even see John Smith for a while because they were farming us out. like scab labor and the other part of the mew went up to haditha and then we had the mew command element over in camp Korean village in rupa yeah which um we ultimately wound up closing our deployment out and rupa clearing that that truck stop of the city out um you roll in and it's the one one ad this army unit in charge you end up with uh chuck ferry the lieutenant colonel chuck fairly from They had taken over from the first of the 506. My guys were really embedded with the first of the 506.

I always trying to explain to people at Enramati. It was like, we're on the same team, bro, and like, let's go do this. Is that the feeling you got from working with the 1-9 immediately? Yeah. Yeah, Combat Chuck, man. He was a green beret too, you know. So having an SF dude, he didn't, the way he did business was cool. And we still keep in touch occasionally.

But he had his finger on the pulse of the tribal leaders. He took care of them. I remember one of the first days rolling into the talk at Corrigador. You guys were at Shark Base, but similar setup. We had unmanned aerial vehicles with feeds. We walk in one of the days they're conducting a QRF raid. One of the local shakes, the insurgents crossing the Euphrates, and they were attacking his house.

And we can see this real time happening, just like a Tom Clancy movie, man. It was intense. And, you know, Lieutenant Colonel Ferry, he sends out his QRF and just smashes these guys in the face at the same time wins over the shake. And allowed him to barter deals and even later on during that deployment,

you know, with the Awakening Knights and having all of these locals on our side, basically telling the insurgents, look, man, if you keep dropping mortars on these positions, we're just going to, like, they're going to cut their throats in the middle of that. night and that's was there you know Iraqi on Iraqi this is not US forces doing that yeah um yeah um you're you're the rest you know you show up and again guys I'm reading a

little ex parte excerpts of the book the book has all kinds of awesome detail in there great writing brings you into the situation I'm going to hit some highlights of it so get the book it's echo and romadi uh you say here this is like a photo op that you guys do you get done with this photo op and you say as my Marines fought now on bar province I want wanted the physical movement associated with killing to be instinctual I never wanted them to hesitate when it mattered most or to have them feel remorse for their duty to do so they needed to know that in the end I would bear the burden the inescapable burden of command I spoke in forceful confident tone and encompasses much of the advice I'd accumulated over the years from my mentors quote this is the first time you

in combat for most of you you will have to fire your weapon at the enemy you will have to kill I don't expect that this will be easy for anyone. It shouldn't be. But know this. I am ordering you to kill. You will kill. And when this is all over, it will be my responsibility. It will be my burden to carry because I am ordering you to do it.

We are Marines. We follow orders. You'll kill the enemy, but you will leave this place without regret. And we will win. Is that understood? Putting out the word to the boys. It's like a little nice little pre-combat post-traumatic. stress release.

You know, like, hey guys, you guys do what you got to do. This is on me. Yeah. Again, I had a lot of great examples of leaders that prepared me for that. So it's not like it's an original thought. I'm probably not the only guy that ever said something like that. But I think it was very important that they hear from the boss. And, you know, people got to remember when you're leading a large group of Marines or soldiers

like that, most of them are 18, 19-year-old kids. I mean, you rewind like six months before that speech. on the side of this hill with all these kids with their head shaved, they're probably playing high school football, man. And now I'm ordering them to do some of the most unimaginable things that humans have to do and to see and, you know, witness some of the worst things humanity has to offer and what we were dealing with in Ramadi, man.

It was, it was insane. But I never, ever wanted those guys to hesitate when it came down to, to taking another human life because that you as you know that that is an unnatural event for a human to kill another human it's just unless you're a psychopath or a sociopath or whatever i never wanted those guys to hesitate when they put the stock of that shoulder a stock of that rifle on their shoulder and look through the sights and had to make that one life-changing decision to squeeze that trigger and take another human life i didn't want to hesitate because their survival dependent on it mind did everybody around it and that's a tough thing to do man

but Marines are great a lot of things as you know like they can run fast they're you know smart asses they talk sharp but you know what they also they also follow orders they're really good at following orders and we breed that into them we train that into Marines and you know they never let me down man I wouldn't be sitting here today if if that leadership at every level and those young guys who man and they took care of each other and me better than anything I'd ever ever experienced you You write about that as the boss, too, is like how you built this love, man, for these guys. And, you know, when I go talk to big loot groups like you do in the corporate and private arenas, they want me to talk about leadership.

And I do. And I share that part of the story, as a matter of fact, is an important part. But, you know, the Marines are great at, you know, training for all these things. And, you know, in our locker rooms and commands, we've got these billboards with, you know, all of our leadership traits and principles. justice, judgment, discipline, and integrity, and like, those are important, man. But in a deployment like this with the stakes so high, what I saw and what I've seen really through my career is there's a lot of other words that don't make it into the textbooks

that professional warriors attend. And they're important. There are words like love and compassion and understanding and patience. man those are tested daily as you know and those aren't words guys like me and you you know big tough door kickers you know they those are words that are assimilated with weakness and i now through a little bit of age and wisdom and experience you understand those words are very important especially young leaders and i think that being able to share that with them in any setting And even in private sector or universities or whoever it is I'm talking to or first responders,

like those are very important words as a leader. Yeah. If you don't care about your people, they will 100% know it and they will not care about you. And that's the way it works. And really, if you think about every, you know, when I look back at my career in the military, the leaders, the best leaders were the ones you knew they cared about you. and you knew that they cared about your guys. And, you know, McFarland, of course,

and I don't know how much you got to interact with McFarland because you were over on the other side of Camp Ramadi, but like you could see every breath that that guy cared about his entire brigade that he had worked. He cared about every single individual. And you felt it. You felt it when he was in the room with you. You felt it on the street.

You felt it. And so, yeah, 100%. If you don't have that, it's not good. You can teach people a lot of stuff. You can teach them how to fight better, how to run better, how to shoot straighter. But you're right.

And I say this a lot. There's one thing I never figure out how to teach Marines, how to care. If you don't care about what you're doing, man, I'm telling you, get out of the military, get out of the job you're in, go sell ice cream or be an Uber driver. But you should love it. Like, if you don't care about what you're doing,

that's what builds great teams. is having those leaders in those positions that really understand that you have to care. Yeah. And then there's, you know, that's the ultimate dichotomies. You're going to take these guys that you care about more than anything else in the world

and you're going to put them in situations where they are going to be at risk. They are going to be at risk. And, you know, you rolled it right into the Malab district. And the Malab was like, you could start your stopwatch when you went on patrol in the Malab district and you were going to get contacted

in half an hour or whatever it was, 20 minutes, 35 minutes, like you were going to, get contacted when you rolled out there and you know that you're putting those your guys in harm's way every day that they roll out yeah i remember you you wrote about it you called the malab south central and like most people equate that to la and how bad it is rife with crime and gang that was the malab when you went south on route michigan man like you could just stick your toe over there and it's like rounds would start coming and then you jump back it's like and we were in a shitty

district too, Katana and the industrial district. But we were very lucky. I think we, I don't know how we digress, but about Chuck Ferri was like, took us in as a team member. We felt very, very included in what we were undertaking with them. And they were great force suppliers. I can't imagine how happy he was as a commander owning a shitty battle space and he has 250 Marines showed up, he must have been freaking pops.

And you talked about the casualties from 3-8 and the Marine Battalions that were over there. And, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the 2004 Ramadi vets from 24, from 24. You know, they lost a lot of guys in April. But when we went into the city again, even my Marines who were veterans of the 2004 fight in Ramadi said it's gotten so much worse. They couldn't believe it. And there was probably five times as many troops. in the city.

But when we checked in with Chuck, all those companies in 1-9 infantry with Manchu, their company strength was only like, in some cases, 75 or 80 soldiers. And they'd been slogging it out already for about 10 months on an 18-month deployment. And they were just taking some real heavy losses. So, yeah, when we rolled in, and I think I was at like 239 Marines were pure. Maybe it was like, maybe it was less than, maybe it was like $198 or something pure, like off the boat. Like we had our enablers. But when I got into country, I operated a little differently.

I mean, they loved it because we look like rock stars with our numbers and sheer force and aggressiveness. But I would see all these weirdos hanging around these camps like het guys. Like they're former green berets, but they're doing these biometric scanning things where they hold the thing up and they're cataloging all the insurgents. or good guys, bad guys. I'm like, you got a rifle? You want to go out and fight? Like, yes, sir. And I sent him over to my first sergeant, Tom Foster.

He's like, Jesus, sir, you're fucking killing me. So we built, like I had het guys. I had tag guys. Like, I had Ben Sledge. She's going to be on the next episode of this show. We're all Ramadi vets. And I'll tell you the story about Ben. But, you know, I had just a lot of enablers,

interpreters, dog handlers, you know, sci-ops guys. I took whoever wanted to get in the fight, and I brought them out there with me, and they were happy to do it. But it did give us a lot of freedom of movement, and we loved it. And working for, you know, Lieutenant Colonel Ferry, like he did love it. It was tough, though, man, because the Army got in this bad habit, too, of getting locked into one position. They didn't want to drive around the city because they were getting smacked with subsurface

IEDs and I mean huge bombs you buried under the road that were snapping Bradley vehicles into and it was it was really it was scary and I think it paralyzed them a little bit they were doing what they could but when we went in and we worked there and then they handed us off to 177 armor I worked for Bear Johnson and he's a great guy to work for too and I remember like when we checked in he's like hey scotty uh so what do you need from me i was like we're good sir he goes well how you're gonna get around the vehicle without vehicles he goes you want some want some humvees or bradley's i'm like nope well how you can get around the city i go we're light infantry sir we're going to walk he goes you're going to walk i said you're damn right we're going to walk sir

i said we're going to send teams of marines out of all these houses and we're going to clear through this city systematically and if a bad guy sticks his head around a corner, they're going to run into one of my squads or teams and Marines, and they're going to get fucked up. And that's what they did. And it was, those are long days clear in Western Romadi, but we worked systematically and then we, we kind of rallied at cop steel there in the center. But working for Bear Johnson, too, was as good as working with Chuck Ferry. I mean, they were just good commanders. They were good. And we're a little discerning within the service branches, but, you know, you could smell an imposter mile away. That's how we get to is like, you know,

your bullshit meter gets pretty finely calibrated after years and years of service. But they weren't imposters, man. They were switched on soldiers. You're getting like a, going back to being on the east side, you getting checked in, a guy named Captain John Tate. He kind of takes you out there, going to check out the various locations

that you're going to be set up, areas that you're going to control. I thought this was good. Tate turned to me, you're out, he's showing you around, he's giving you, what is it, called like a like a tour leaders recon yeah leaders recon um but it reminds me of like what do they do up in hollywood echo charles when you like drive around looking at the stars of the homes or whatever what's that called a tour yeah something to tour like a tourist run of seeing all the

we weren't on like an uncovered observation bus but you're about to get out of this home v and he's like tate turned to me and said okay so when we get out of the truck don't fuck around run fast and get inside we had a lot of sniper fire in the area cool cool it was good it was good advice to no sooner had we gone in the building that we heard small arms fire and the snap of rounds hitting the building and random gunfire in the distance and then you talk about living in you know what these various OPs look like which just look like the straight up you know world war two freaking blown out buildings filled with sandbags and whatnot and and then you guys take over you guys take over these positions um fast forward a little bit you say in Iraq I faced two pressing responsibilities

The first was to bring all my boys home safely. There were times when I told myself not to give a fuck about anything else but that. But I couldn't do that because we were sent to Iraq to kill the enemy. It meant I had to put my men into dangerous situations despite the admirable love I had for my Marines. I knew they'd have to fight and possibly die.

My only goal was that by killing more insurgents, we'd suffer fewer casualties, like an insurance policy that we'd have to pay for every day. That's what you and I were just talking about. And there is, in my opinion, being more aggressive is the safest thing to do. Like being more aggressive, if you sit on base,

the enemy will get you, especially in Ramadi. Like, they will surround you, they will mortar the shit out of you, and you will take casualties. Of course, at this time,

you still got your wife at home and your Bailey, your daughter, so you got that going on in the back of your mind as well. And you end up taking off, biting off more. Like once you're there,

you establish yourself, you take even more. Yeah, the opposite of Dave Norel. He was a major, and he was a one-nine infantry guy. And they just assumed like we could only handle so much battle space. And I wrote about it, but, you know, there's a big map on the wall, it's a plexiglass. And so I just grabbed the sharp. He said, man, I got this, sir.

And like, oh, you started adding real estate to what we would control because we knew that, you know, like John Tate's company and the other guys, you know, Jamie Godori, like, their company strength was so light. We wanted to try and help and take some of the burden off of them. So we own more real estate. Part of that was the Malab, which, again, was, you know, we got some serious firefighters down there. I mean, we got, you know, that's where Sergeant Espinoza got shot. He's going to be at our reunion next month for the 24 reunion too.

But again, John Espinoza was in Battle of Armadi in 2004, and then he came back as a squad leader. and took a sniper around across the chest. And, man, that's one of those stories, too. Like, I've shared this before, but, you know, when John got shot, we had to go in and we had to pull the platoon out. We had to get tanks, which you know are like a godsend over there. God bless him.

And so we roll in, and, you know, he's already gone. And, you know, as a leader, you just have this blind faith in the system. That's why I wrote about, you know, our C-130 brothers and, you know, how our wounded get back. But, you know, the story of Espinoza, is just one that you think only happens in the movies, but it happened in real life. And it doesn't just happen in my unit.

It happens a lot how this kid who's, again, he's a salty season sergeant now with, you know, another comment. But he's 22. He's a 22-year-old kid. And the responsibility of leading, you know, 14, 15 guys, that's a lot. And then he's shot. He flies out, dies in the helicopter, you know, flatlines, comes back. And then I don't know how he does it,

But he, Shanghai's rides back to his Marines. And when first Sergeant Foster found out, and he shows up in the Tackle Operation Center, his jaw about hit the floor. Because his family thinks Sergeant Espen knows is coming home. And this guy snuck out of the hospital with still in, with his bloody camies in a bag, and he's wearing like some goofy Air Force sweatsuit.

And, you know, gets a ride through Vermont. Like from the Army guys. It's like modern day Uber on the battlefield, man. It gets back there. All of that, that whole story, I didn't know it happened. I didn't know any of that because I'm in the fight. I have another 250 guys that I got to take care of every single day. So I didn't know any of this happened.

But when I was doing interviews and I did over 100 interviews when I wrote Echo and Hermotti. And his wife, Haiti, she's like, thank you for talking him because he doesn't talk about a lot. and when I finally shut up, and I told him about the book how I was writing it and the stories that were going to be important, the periods. And when I finally shut up,

he talked for about two hours, which is an astronomical feat for Espinoza. And he knows this because I love him. But he was never real chatty-cathy, you know, Jock. He was a businessman. Marines feared him. He didn't talk a lot, but he said a lot. It's one of those guys, you know,

and always took care of business and always took care of the Marines. It was tough when he got, you know, hit, but then shows back up, man. It was just surreal. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotten asked a lot about, and I'll ask you the same thing.

Like, people will ask me, did you know you were going to take casualties? And I don't think it's fatalistic to say this, but, oh, 100%. Like, you are seeing, there's wounded and killed every day. And your guys are going out every day. and you cannot play that game and roll those dice every day and think that you're not going to take any casualties.

Like it's not going to, it's impossible. Did you get that sense when you got there? Or when you, you know, after the first three days or after you got to O.P. Hotel and looked around and went, oh shit. Yeah. I mean, O.P. Hotel, again, it's not like the Ritz Carlton by any stretch of the means. It was a, I don't know, what was like a six-story,

it looked like a six-story piece of concrete Swiss cheese. man. It was just a shithole of a building and it sat right on Route Michigan, which is a main artery for supplies and convoys and all that jazz. But we knew from day one. And, you know, I'd already had a few deployments. I'd already been to combat. And you just know guys are going to get wounded and guys are going to die. And that's part of our business. I think that's what people subscribe to when they raise their right hand and they make that decision to serve their country and we just need to keep inspiring young people to do that. I mean, that's a tough thing, too, when you write about stuff like this and you share this, a lot of our authors do who are

veterans and when you write about war, that's a dichotomy. It's like you share this, the grisly facts of what it's like to be in combat, but I also write and share the beauty that comes from it and our connection here and all the amazing connections I have in my life to this day, are somehow born through my service to my country and what I did. And I'm not saying that can't happen in other vocations, but it's very unique with what we do. You know, it's a beautiful thing to, you know, see those things come out of war, you know,

which is, again, some of the worst things humanity has to offer and the conditions are just ungodly. But there's also some beauty that comes from it. And some tragedy, you know, but I think focusing on all the greatness that came out of 20 years of war is probably what sustains me. And I know a lot of guys have struggled with it. A lot of guys in my company have killed themselves.

I don't ever sugarcoat it. I mean, they took their own life by suicide, and the numbers are just astronomical. I don't know what the disconnect is. I never try and do the math. We've tried for years and years to be part of this solution. but when you see things like that at such a young age, that's why it was very important for me to go back and order them to kill.

You know, they needed to know that just to have that pressure valve released a little bit. And in Hermione, it was tough. I'm going to fast forward in the book here a little bit. Lance Corporal Jonathan Nairus, am I saying that right? A fire team leader in fourth platoon's first squad raced to the rooftop of ECP8. He could see muzzle flashes of the insurgent weapons coming out of windows as close as 50 meters away. Nerris and the other Marines drew down on the insurgents,

aiming their sights on the enemy fighters, running back and forth between buildings. As Marines spotted them, they opened up with their weapons. The firing was intense. Defening burst rang out from squad on automatic weapons and medium machine guns, making almost impossible to communicate to each other as they fought.

Nerris could see the bodies of the insurgents drop to the ground as the Marines tore them apart. Neris caught sight of Libby out of the corner of his eye and then heard him say, I'm reloading my 203. Libby then took a knee to slide open the breach of the grenade launcher mounted under his rifle.

Moments later, Nerris looked for Libby to come back up. When he didn't, Naris looked down and saw that Libby had fallen. He immediately dropped down to his squad leader's side and saw a bulge in his neck. Libby's eyes stared directly back at him. Nerris's heart dropped. The other Marines quickly gathered around

illuminating Libby with their flashlights to assess the damage. Nairus couldn't believe what was happening. He stood frozen in shock. It didn't seem real. All he could say to Libby was, I'm sorry. Still not realizing the full gravity of the situation, Nairus instinctually turned back into the fight

and resupplied his Marines with ammunition. He had to think about the men who were still alive. They were now his responsibility. So fast forward a little bit. You say my convoy rolled up to the position. Fourth platoon, which held the ECPA, was commanded by second lieutenant Seth Nicholson and his platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Brent Miller.

Nicholson told me that Libby had suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the neck. The bullet struck him just above the protective ballistic plate. We didn't have time to wait. I asked Nicholson, is Libby the only casualty that needs to be Kazavac? He answered, yes. I went back and told Somerville, get the trucks turned around. We don't have time to wait for Kazavak. We are the Kazavac.

I ordered the Marines to get Libby into my home v. Four Marines carried him to the back of my vehicle. As they did, they yelled at each other. Be careful with them. Be careful. Easy with him. The convoy roared back home with Somerville's vehicle in lead. We pressed past enemy positions and rushed past O.P. South House, which was occupied by first platoon.

Firefights engulfed the city and our vehicles got caught in the crossfire. I heard Flanagan in the back of the truck yelling, hang on, man, hang on. Come on, Libby, hang in there. Flanagan leaned over the seat and yelled at me. Sir, I can't get a fucking pulse. There's no pulse. There's blood everywhere. Keep talking to him, I said.

The Marines got Libby out as carefully as possible. There was no time to put him on a stretcher. Doc had put a cervical collar on him and inserted emergency tracheotomy tube in his mouth to clear the airway. I stared down at Libya. I thought to myself, God, he looks so young. He's so fucking young. Please. Please hang in there, brother.

I couldn't believe this was the first casualty. The battalion was suffering. It was happening to us echo company. I tried to press inside the battalion aid station. First Sergeant Foster who met me as I exited the vehicle, grabbed my shoulder. Sir, I've got him. We've got it from here. care of him. Deep down I wanted to stop everything I was doing and stay with Libby. But the battalion

aid station had a top-notch crew of medics and Foster had things under control. He was right. There was nothing more I could do. I had to focus on the other 200 Marines that were still out there in direct contact. The chaos and bloodshed were not over. We had a long night ahead of us. It was just the beginning of the longest night of fighting we would encounter. Yeah, that's one thing that I think that in the 90s, growing up in the 90s, and I think you probably saw some of this in the 90s, but you probably didn't, I don't know if you got this in the Marine Corps. In the 90s in the SEAL teams, we were always kind of planning for one mission. And we would do, you know, in my mind, we would go and execute our mission and then we would be done. And, you know, Ramadi was not like

that. You go out, you do a mission. And when you get back, back, it doesn't matter what happened on that mission. The enemy will still be fighting. There's still operations that you are going to have to conduct. And in this particular case, you are going right back out immediately. Yeah, you understand it. And I lost guys before this, but Libby was the first casualty we'd taken in the battalion in the whole country.

And he was, you know, one of my guys. So it was tough. And, you know, I write a lot about Libya. I'm still very close to his families. Just like you and, you know, Mike Mansour, you know, when he got killed. Like, there's a lot of similarities between our careers and what happened and, you know, losing guys on the battlefield. And to this day, you and I are still very connected to the families that supported us while we fought.

Jeez, how do they do it? Yeah. Like Debbie. Yeah. You know, I always say, like, I don't know where goals are our families. families come from, they breed these young warriors, then you lose them in combat. I only have one word to describe them. Extraordinary. Just extraordinary people. To lose so much, but, you know, they continue to love us so much. I don't get it. Like, it's, it's, I don't

know where they get people like this. They're amazing. And that isn't something everybody has the capacity to do, as you know, to maintain that connection, you know, 20 years after we fought there, Jock, to pick up the phone and call and, you know, say, how are you? You know, Libby's brother and I are very good friends. You know, we've watched each other grow up, you know, over the last 20 years as well. But I think it is important to, you know, it helps me anyway to sustain me. I feel also that, you know, there's no expiration date on my commission as an officer. I think that it's a privilege that we have to be a leader for your entire lifetime. And that doesn't stop when you leave the Marine Corps.

It didn't stop when I left for Mardi. I'm still very, very honored to have that capacity. And I also understand that that's something that not everyone has. not everybody has that capacity. Not everybody has the capacity to write important stories and barf your life into 300 pages and hanging on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Costco. But you do it in hopes that it will help somebody. And for those people that don't have that capacity, because they're out there.

Not everybody has the capacity to do it. Not everybody has the capacity to lead. You understand the leadership and followership is equally as important in that dichotomy. one of the things from that that story you read from corporal liby being killed that night that will highlight what i was just sharing is you do it because you don't want the stories like romadi to fall under the other great battles like philuzia or bagdad or candahar like that's why i wrote the book not just to honor those you know brave warriors and the families and the interpreters that fought alongside it's a very important historical battle

and I didn't want it to fall into the shadows. But it's not really a book about war. You know, it's a book about people. And right after it came out, I get an email. And it's from this guy. His name is, I'll share it. His name's Phil Moorhouse. And he says, dear sir, my name is Staff Sergeant Phil Moorehouse.

And I was with Task Force One Nine Infantry. And I was there the night that Corporal Livy was killed. in the COC. He said, and I remember the call coming across the radio. I ran across the street to the cash, the hospital, and I remember your convoy pulling in through the maze of chemlights. And I remember your Marines carrying Corporal Libby. I remember the sound that brakes made on the vehicles

and the dust cloud that's around them when they stopped. And I remember you. and remember the look on your face and I remember every single step you took that night. He says, and I haven't thought about those things in about 12 years until I read your book. And so obviously, you know, he goes on in the email and I, you know, I responded back with, you know,

as many words as I could of gratitude, you know, for him sharing that to really show me how he viewed my leadership through a different lens. And, you know, that was, that was a tough email. And, you know, I've asked Phil if, you know, I can share that story. And he said, absolutely, because it was important to him. But, you know, Phil Morehouse, he was this nameless, faceless sergeant that, you know,

that I just probably breezed by every time I went in and out of the talk. And to see that through his eyes, you know, 12 years after the fact, I don't know what the word is I used to describe it other than gratitude. But you know, as a leader, you don't set out to do things for feedback, for appreciation or thanks. But I think that as a human being and as you move into different spaces, like most people are liars when they say it doesn't feel good to have recognition or to have somebody tell you something you never saw. So it was interesting, you know, when I got that email from Phil,

again, like I was just grateful that he shared it with me. And, you know, when you do share important stories of your life and writing is important, that's why I do what I do. I think that those just boil to the surface. And, you know, that's one, it's kind of a heart-rending story, but there's also have been some really funny stuff that is boiled to the surface as well. You know, thanks to social media to some degree, which I'm not a fan of, but it's an necessary tool. There's a chapter I write in the book about blowing up this huge weapons cache and throwing these mopeds on and, you know, I don't know if we're going to talk about or not, but we found so much, you know, the Marines were digging in the yard like dogs, digging up explosives and, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know,

I mean, it was probably 30 feet long and about, you know, three feet high of shit we needed to blow up. And you know how it was to get an EOD guy out there in Ramadi. Like, they were busy day on, stay on. And so this convoy calls to request permission to enter friendly lines. And so they show up and they're an EOD unit. And they're Marines, of all things. I said, where you guys from? They're like, Camp Pendleton, sir.

I go, all right, so we're doing the gripping grin and the staff sergeant. I said, hey, man, we got a real problem on our hands. I said, it's like three in the morning. I said, we got all this explosives we need to get rid of. We need to do a command detonation? I said, do you got any C4 on the trucks? He goes, oh, we got it done. So they line this thing up and they, like, the clock's ticking, man.

And you know, like when the sun comes up, the insurgents are ready to rise and start, you know, shooting at Americans. So we want to get this job done before daylight. And they pack it full and they say, sir, we don't, we need something. tamp the charge down. So we need to put something heavy on top of it. So everything just doesn't blow up like a big confetti bomb. So the Marines drag two minibuses over and they push it on to this thing. And then the ends are still exposed. And so the Marines go and they get these insurgent mopeds and they throw the mopeds on top as well. They're like, yeah, fuck you insurgents. We stole your mopeds that you're using. And they found them in the house. So that's the title of the

chapter by the way. It's called mopeds. But so the staff are, it's like, hey, sir, you're going to want you get your guys down. This is going to be one hellaceous explosion. And it was like, oh my God, like fireworks on the 4th of July. And sure enough, the Marines did not get down. And you can hear him like whooping and hollering like, yeh, in the middle of the night in Ramadi, like the big fireworks show, like a bunch of schoolgirls, you know, cheering at a pep rally. And, you know, we get, we get done and, you know, carry on business as usual. Well, fast forward again, like the book had just come out. And I get this strange DM from from on Facebook and he goes on and says hey sir I'm in Jamaica on vacation right now he's like

I'm not sure if you remember but I'm reading your book echo and Hermania I get to the chapter called mopeds that was me and so the staff sardin who's this name again a nameless face of staffs artist like he's in Jamaica on vacation or the Bahamas or something and he just happens to be reading my book and so there's a lot of great things that are born out of you know sharing important stories so anyway it was a good one i like that one i was uh we were hitting a target bad guy target we end up finding like we start finding little cachets around caches around the property and this was like just just north of romadi and like a little bit more of a rural area and then the guys it was a little bit of a farm scenario and there was a big like a like a barn that had a bunch of

hay in it and they start like poking around in the hay and sure enough if I start finding shit start finding more shit start finding more shit but it's a massive pile of hay and same thing like I'm looking at my watch going hey this is not you know we cannot stay here for much longer and you know so one of my just brilliant young seals came up with a brilliant recommendation of like hey why don't we just burn this thing and I had the brilliant you know leadership to say yeah sounds a good call and And they, then next, you know, so I give the, yeah, go ahead, let's burn this. You know, and then 15 seconds later, I see guys walking from the Humvees to the barn carrying the big cans of diesel that we carried for, and there, anyways, big fire, some secondary

explosions. But, you know, very similar thing where you're like, okay, well, I guess we don't have to worry about that cash anymore. It's no problem. Just when you think, like, you had an original operation or an idea, it's like, I wrote about that, too, when we were working for Bear Johnson, except I got you beat, man. I don't like to one-up, you know. This isn't like, you know, a measuring contest or anything.

But no kidding. Same thing. When we're in Western Ramadi, one of the Marines, you know, being smart, he's like, hey, sir, I figured it out. Like, who's shooting at us? They were wearing running shoes. And he's looking through his observation scope. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense, man.

No one wants to get a fight with the Marines and flip-flops. So he targets these guys. And they were running into this huge wadi. Like it's a ravine that's covered in reeds and, you know, tall grasses and we knew that they were running in there as a weapons cachet, but the thing was huge. This is like five football fields long separating that part of the city. So I call back to cop steel and I requested a tanker truck of fuel and no shit. I'd like to find this kid too because I didn't have his name. This private first class, an E2 in the army, rolls up in daylight,

in downtown Ramadi. In a freaking fly. Re fuel truck. And it's him and like one other jackweed, like, you know, A driver. And he's like, hey, sir, I'm PFC flip-flop. I heard you need to burn something down. I'm like, yeah, man, this is a huge weapons cachet and they're drawing their weapons from it. And this is where we're having problems. So he hoses this whole thing down with, I don't know, 250 gallons or just ooze.

Like, he's out there and he just checks out. Does it doesn't say goodbye or anything like, all right, sir, I'm out of here. Just leaves. Like, God bless that kid, man. Yeah, again, find that kid for me, man. Like, I want to give him a medal or a hug or something. But now we have another dilemma. Like, one of the Marines is like, hey, sir, how are we going to light this fucker on fire?

I'm like, that's a good idea. That good problem. So one of the Marines puts the HEDEP in his 203 is like, I got this. And like with one thud, thunk, whoosh. And we have a picture of it somewhere. I don't know. But it is. Yeah.

And then like yours, everything starts cracking off. You know, the rocket motors for RPGs are sailing into the air. and but that's I mean again Another day in Romantic Did they teach us this in school somewhere man Did we learn this in a class This was a good Good story here about

about Colonel Ferry Again I'm fast forward There's so much so much good Information here Get the book But you're about to drop some game learners Which is guided me Guided multiple launcher

rocket system. 20 foot telephone pole carries 200 pound warhead. You're making the call from the field. Manchu 3. This is Longhorn 6. Request Gimler's. One rocket each. Sector 265, building 66 and 6.7.

Immediate suppression over. The voice from the talk read back distance 1.65 meters from friendlies to target. My company officer, my company executive officer, first lieutenant Bobby Lee, was inside the talk when I called in the Gimler's mission. watching the video feeds from the drones buzzing over our zone. He heard my call for fire support come across the radio, as did the Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company Anglico Representative and the Army battle captain who stood watch over the talk staff.

Lieutenant Colonel Ferry was standing beside Lee when the battle captain turned to Ferry and said, Sir, you do know that each one of those rockets cost like $100,000. Ferry's response affirmed the unwavering loyalty he had for the Marines he had commanded in his task force. I don't give a fuck if they cost $100 million. Ferry replied with certainty, they killed the U.S. Marine tonight, approved the mission. Yeah, that's how he rolled. God bless him. Yeah, I was, uh, the colonel I was in charge of the first of the 506 when I was there. It was like, I'd been in Ramadi for like maybe a week and I was over. It's a guy named Colonel Ronald P. Clark, like, yeah, now he's a general. Uh, but he was just so outstanding. But I was in his

talk and he had guys calling for fire and just watching him the way he was calculating things the way he you know the way he commanded it was just epic and i felt so comfortable because i ended up leaving a detachment with him for the entire deployment guys that lived on corregular with him but i would i trusted that guy with with no reservation whatsoever but just seeing him the support he'd give to his guys my guys one team just epic is very similar to what you're talking about ferry here that Gimler's though was a lifesaver it was just kind of the outset of technology too it was GPS guided and you know it's a lot of explosives to park literally a football field away from your position and honestly it was kind of underwhelming when they hit because they go through the top of the roof

and just really suck the life out of everything but what was cool I didn't write about this was I had gotten a seed job You remember when we used to have CDs even of some of the footage from that night. And one of the Anglico guys, and they're a mix, like, you know, there's some army, but it's mostly Marines that were in the cell. And I knew the guy, and I says, hey, could you get this back to the battery? Because those rockets came from Fallujah. It's like they're not sitting at the camp.

And I was in the Chow Hall one day in Ramadi, and, which was rare because we were at Campromati, which is the big camp. We lived in the city, but we were back for a brief or something. And this huge superhero-looking soldier, big black guy, like just looked like a superhero. And I turn around, I see this guy because he puts his hand on my shoulder. He goes, are you Captain Husing? I was like, oh, shit, what did I do now? I always think I did something.

but he says, I got that footage that you sent back. I'm the Battery Commander, the Gimmer's mission. He goes, I want to tell you, he's like, no one's ever done that for me.

It was like I sent him, you know, care package. But, you know, the guys on the gun line, they never can see where those rounds hit. So I don't know

what made me think about that, but, because she just don't have a lot of time on your hands over there, but that's, I don't know. I was taught early on in my career, too,

like it's the little things that matter the most. You know, so that was probably the best care back you got. Yeah, I bet you guys were freaking stoked to see that. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Fast forward a little bit. Operation Sackett's Harbor was our last big push while working with Task Force One-N-N-N-N-N-ign. And again, I just skipped over 130 pages of the book.

So, like, get the book, get the detail. You're going up in the Sophia District. The first day of the operation was your birthday. So that's always a good sign. around midnight you're in position you get Marines and you guys start like finding all these blue plastic 30 gallon water drum each one of them is filled with AK 47s you have a vehicle get rolled over you know but luckily you guys were all right and fast forward a little bit at the end of operation Sackets Harbor we were exhausted we were also elated our tactic of applying relentless

pressure on the enemy and forcing them to react to us provided measurable results. We detained dozens more, we detained dozens more suspected insurgents and confiscated more weapons and contraband than we could count. Matched with the combined results from Fox Company, the task force commander was more than pleased with how his Marines performed. Echo Company had made a definite impression on the insurgents after only a short time in Ramadi. We had been in direct contact with the enemy two to three times a day ever since we arrived. We could almost set our watches by when we'd get attacked after morning and evening prayers. The mosques called to prayer broadcast from loudspeakers on the minarets

and served as our alert system to stand ready to fight. Throughout the action, the Marines expended over 50,000 rounds of 556, 762, and 50 caliber ammunition. We devastated the enemy with countless 120 millimeter main gun rounds and shoulder-fired rockets and lob dozens of M-67 high-explosive hand grenades into enemy positions in addition to the multiple Gimler's rocket strikes we'd called in on enemy positions. The task force had already credited the Marines of Echo Company with over 50 enemy killed and dozens more enemy wounded. The numbers were impressive.

We detained countless more that were on the task force most wanted list of HVIs. Echo Company had lost one Marine and we were fortunate that we'd suffered just over a handful of wounded in action. As satisfied as we were with our performance, we knew that more hard-fired. fighting was ahead of us and Marines were ready. Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot of combat activity. We redefined for Colonel Ferry and others how vicious Marines can be, if given the opportunity. They created these, what they called speedball ammo resupplies based off all of the different calibers, and they would pre-stage that at Camp Omadi at Corrigador, and they would have them on standby

because he knew we were going through so much ammo they couldn't keep up with us. So they'd have these palletized, you know, carry packages of ammo. And they would just ship them out. God bless them. Yeah, yeah, they were, again, they were getting at it. But that was, I mean, that's what we had to do. Like you said, you have to be aggressive, not reckless, but aggressive and disciplined and focused on what you're doing. And that's why we were there.

and it's not a spoiler alert. I literally picked up the phone and this is maybe I think he was during an interview with the book. I called Jared Norel. He's like a J.RITC principal now. And I says, hey, can you confirm this, sir? I said, I've heard urban legend that only a few months after we left Ramadi in 07 that they were doing like a 5K fun run down route

mission he goes that's God's honest truth he goes what you and I'm not taking all the credit here but you only know what you know what my Marines and soldiers and sailors did in that short amount of time really turned the tide of the war everybody did the guys and you know the Marines on our flank the the other task forces that were working in zone, the special operators, you know, and I tell a lot of the guys who were, you know, we had a bunch of ODA guys in there. We had the seals in there. And, you know, working with those guys, they're off, you know, doing specialized missions.

But I always tell those guys to their faces, too, is like, it's, you know, if it wasn't for the soldiers and Marines setting the conditions for special operators to do what they do without impunity, that couldn't happen in an environment like that where you're, you're You're in a city of over 300,000 people who are trying to live their lives to, you know, to grow up and hope for some sense of normalcy. You have to have those massive numbers creating that blanket of pressure. So all the bad guys on the target list, we can send in the joccos and, you know, the riches and all the ODA guys that were going through. Some of them, I think at times caused more friction than,

I would have liked because some things would go bump in the night and there'd be a ruckus on a grander scale than I'm portraying it. But it's basically a targeted hit or a raid and, you know, Seals or Delta would go in with a wrecking ball and they'd smash it and basically dismantle kind of the hearts and minds campaign because the neighbors would get their feathers ruffled, you know, and, you know, stuff gets broken up or, you know, but that's how you operate, man. And like there's no nice way to ring the doorbell and say, hey, can I please go abduct your uncle who's a terrorist cell operator? Like that just, you know, it's not protocol.

We, we and because we were working so closely with the Army and Marine Corps, like, it became a point for us where we'd get like a target package because I had guys that had sources throughout Ramadi. And they, they would give us a target. Like, these were my guys. So we'd get a target package from my guys. and it would be like, oh, this building, whatever, Building 17 in, you know, J Block. And he'd be like, cool. And we'd call the Army Company commander

and be like, hey, dude, can you go roll up a military age mail in Building 17 on J Block? Be like, yeah, I'll call you in 20 minutes. And they'd go do a clearance, get the guy, bring him back, say like, yeah, we got him. Is this him? Yep, this is him. Cool.

Send him up here. We'll take him. And like we did that more than we did our own direct action because we only did probably like 30. or 35 or something like of us doing a direct action mission because it was just wasn't like the the Marine Corps was in that part of town or the Army the 135, the 137, the 506. Like they were just there. They could go, oh yeah, we'll go roll up.

We were in that house yesterday afternoon. We didn't know that was a bad guy. We'll go get them. You know, it's pretty, pretty awesome to see. And the other thing that was cool for us is like because we got to go and work with these other battalions so intimately like it was cool and especially now like I've had a bunch of them on the podcast and you talk to them and what they were doing and how you know every every person was making such a concerted effort to do a good job you know for everyone from the privates down to

the battalion commanders everyone is like so focused on doing a good job and it's just you know it's weird too when I had Colonel McFarland on here and in preparation for Colonel McFarland coming on, I was going through like, you know, how often we were building combat outposts. So, you know, when before you got there, we were building, there was no combat outposts when we showed up. There was none. There was a, the whole city was nothing. But you couldn't, you couldn't go into the city.

Like, it was gnarly. But we were building those combat outposts, like massive battalion plus sized operations, like every four days, every three days in some cases. And you're like, how did, I go, where did you, you know, sir, like, where did you get 250, 12 foot tall Jersey barriers into Ramadi? And then three days later, you had another 250. Like, that's major religious. He's like, yeah, the team took care of it.

So there's so much going on. And everyone, like, you know, you're taking your company-sized unit and doing everything you can to take the fight to the enemy and secure your zone. and like that's what was happening in every little corner of Ramadi and every you know every squad that was clearing a building was doing their best to make that happen and it's just it's amazing to look back and to have played a little bit of a role in that and more important for me it's like just to have seen it all taking place and been in those buildings isn't it weird

you look at a map of Ramadi you're like oh I remember that building I remember that building oh we were over there yeah I remember that's kind of crazy I have some of the maps that I'm probably not supposed to have, but they're declassified. But that's when I'm being exacting about that building number. Like, I have that map. Yeah, you have the battle maps. It was folded up in my pocket, you know, and we highlighted stuff. And it was very important to me, too, to, like, not just write inaccurate stuff.

Because you know what Marines especially, like, they will eat you for breakfast, man, if you get it wrong. And I remember, you know as a writer, too, like, you hit the big red send button to your publisher. And you're like, ah, it's great. It's clean. Like, there's no tight. Oh, yeah, no. And then I had sent it to this guy who's a gunner in the Marine Corps, a chief foreign officer. And he calls me literally the next day.

He was reading an advanced copy of my book. And he goes, hey, sir, I just wanted to let you know. I was reading that chapter about when you were in that firefighter and you climbed on top of that tank. And you talk about the coax, you know, 50 caliber machine gun. He goes, it's 762, sir. I'm like, holy shit. I call my editor. I'm like, Alex, we've got to change this.

I look like an idiot. They will kill me. They will cruise. justify me. And they do. They, they're pretty merciless. So I was, it took me a, you know, a long time to write it. Everybody always asked that when you're up and how long do you write a book? Like, well, you know, for this, it was 10 years. I say that euphemistically, but soup to nuts, it took me about a year of interviews, writing, and then the whole process of finding an agent, you know, finding a publishing house that, you know, the mainstream world

But it took 10 years before I could get the Espinoses to share. And, you know, they have to, everybody has their sweet spot when they are able to unpack some of that trauma. And that's not an easy thing to do. And, you know, I think, I always used to think about that, too, how young those guys were not having an experience. You know, like, I was a 35-year-old captain with a couple of combat tours. and a lot of life experience, but I always wondered, like, how are they going to unpack this at such a young age? And, you know, again, sadly, some guys killed themselves, others drink themselves or overeat or whatever it is, man. Everybody is a way to deal with it.

We're very lucky, though, as we sit here, too, is, you know, we've got a pretty dialed-in support system of a lot of veteran nonprofit orgs that, you know, we can lean on or send guys to, you know, I worked in that space for, you know, eight years. And, you know, I'm just kind of dipping my foot back in it, too. Actually, with Mike, Ritland, I've got some guys I'm sending his way to, you know, help his team out at Warrior Dog Foundation. I love what Mike's doing. I love his, like you, too. I love as a storyteller, like, you know, we're doing it for each other, you know, in a sense. Yeah, and just speaking of storytelling and going back to, like, writing a book, I strongly recommend that if you write a book, you try and make it as accurate as you possibly humanly can. because like you said like people are going to read the book and if they were there

and look I get it that people have different perspectives you know people in the same firefight will have a different perspective of something and it can be a pretty it can be a pretty dramatic difference but it won't look like a different movie that won't look like a different like a different dream you know it's tough too because you know one of the things I'd ask you you you can answer this question too I ask it of myself when you write a book about leadership or combat or baking pies, I don't care what it is. You build this narrative and I did extensive research and I did ask this question like, hey, do you remember this going down like this? Because I remember it just like this. And 99% of the time the guy's like yes or

did that. And then you'd find, you know, you'd pick the scavela more and you find all these little hidden gems and then I'd get to write about that through their voice. But I find myself asking myself this question as a writer and as a storyteller, is this all I know or all I can remember about this? I feel like I've, you know, after hundreds of podcasts and speaking engagements and telling stories, because this is what people love to talk about. So I love it when, you know, when you're in the studio and the guest or the host says, you know, and you respond like, oh, that's a good question. Like, I love that.

That's a good question moment. This is kind of one of them's like, I feel like, man, is, are. Are there stories I'm leaving out? Because I thought these were the important ones. I will answer that now. Yes. And the reason I can answer that now, yes, you're leaving stuff out is because just like you gave that perspective of the person that watched you walk into the battalion aid station, that to you, you're like in a detached moment. You don't know what that looks like from the outside.

And I realized this. So when I was in the later, the end of my career, I was in charge of. of the training for the West Coast SEAL teams, right? And when I would go, like, back to an event at the SEAL teams, there would be a guy, now this has been, you know, five years or seven years later, and there'd be some guy that was a new guy that I put through training, and they would tell me stories

about me that I didn't, you know, I'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, like, there's one guy told me the story, you know, we, I gave him a bunch of down men, and one of the guys like, I can't feel my face, you know, like these stories, that I do not remember because it was just day to day like well that's what I'm doing and so for you You know when you're you're a company commander like there is a

Corporal that was looking at you at a moment And he was detached from that moment and he was watching what you were doing or he was watching you know Even if it wasn't watching you he was watching what the enemy was doing and you thought the enemy was doing this but he saw something else and so Yeah trying to gather as many of those perspectives as you can is going to be be awesome. And even I had Colonel Dean on from 1-35. And on August 2nd, Mark Lee got killed, and Ryan Job got severely wounded. And on that day, I had actually had a whole other element of seals. That took place in 137's A.O, where Mark and Ryan, Ryan got wounded, Mark got killed. I had totally forgotten that in 1-3-5's A-O, which was Tamim, we conducted a huge,

huge operation over there and I had seals there in support that and I had literally forgotten that completely. And it wasn't until I was reading his book and I was like, oh yeah, that's right. And as soon as I remembered it, it's like, oh yeah. But for him, that was what was happening in his world that day, seals were there helping out. I had forgotten about those seals because it was a relatively, it was a great operation, but it was relatively uneventful. But here I am and all my focus was on the day that Mark and Ryan got wounded Mark got killed. So yeah, I think it's always difficult to capture everyone's perspective and there's going to be things from other people's perspective that were not there to you, you know? So, yeah. So I just, I also feel like I don't want

to be canned, you know, I always strive for authenticity, but you, you bring up something important too, but is that the impact you make as a leader, you rarely see. And, you know, when you're talking to civilians or groups and you're sharing these things that we're fortunate to learn in the military is you know having the capacity to do what we do and make an impact I think that's really the the keynote when I talk about is that impact of leadership is you may not realize you're doing it but you everything you do is leaving an impression and an impact on on those you lead good bad or otherwise yeah yeah and that's one one thing that you did in this book, which I didn't read it in the opening,

but you say it in the opening is like, you're showing some warts. You know, you're showing like, hey, here's mistakes that you made, here's bad things that you did. And for me, anytime you're doing, anytime you're trying to create something, if you're not revealing some stuff, if it doesn't hurt a little bit,

the opening chapter, for example, of extreme ownership, where I'm talking about, there's a freaking blue on blue, there's an Iraqi soldier killed, one of my guys wounded, like, that shit's just awful. I want more than anything to, you know, deny that that ever happened and ignore it and pretend.

Like, no, that happened. Here's what happened. It's on me. And if you don't feel like a, if your ego doesn't hurt when you're putting your pen to paper, you're not doing the right thing. So you did a great job in this book of that, of like, hey, this, I'm sure some of these things you were writing, you're like, this hurts to write because you're looking back now and you're going, I should have done that.

Maybe could have done this different. Yeah. I was very fortunate to when I found my editor, and I interviewed probably a good dozen or so, and Sylvia Mendoza, she's right here in Southern California. And it was important for me also to find a female because, obviously, I want 100% of the population to read this story, not just half. So she gave it some really great balance. And when we got to part of it, you know, she was, really laudatory in the fact that she's like I love how I can feel like you know I'm with the

Marines and like the way you describe things and the texture and the way you write and you know she would joke too she's like how did you get out of high school again is like yeah I did better in college like so it was important to me but she said to me one thing jaco is there's not enough you in this book and I did have to go back into it because I honestly thought as a again as a writer as an artist as a leader, it was not fair for me to do all those interviews and pull all that pain and pick open the scab and make others bleed if I wasn't willing to do it myself. And you know, towards the end of the book, you know, I really pick it open and talk about some of the, you know, challenges I've faced. And that's not easy thing to do. And as you know, when you write about

it and you share, you know, online or when you go to speak in front of a thousand people, is not easy to pick that scab over in front of, you know, total strangers and bleed. But you do it in the hopes that you make an impact and that you can maybe change or save some lives along the way. I don't know. It's not too esoteric to say that. Yeah. Or lopie of a goal. That's definitely the hope.

I know that the chapter one of extreme ownership was not in extreme ownership. And Lief was, you know, Lief had been through. I used to teach that blue on blue. over and over and over again to the SEAL team. So make sure that everyone learned the lessons that we learned. So every SEAL team that would form up and start going through training, I would give that to them. I'd give it to the junior officer to the junior officer course.

I'd give it to the, what do they call it, the ground force commander's course. I would give that brief to them. So, hey, here's what we messed up. Here's what you have to watch out for. Because in Vietnam, there was a SEAL platoon, X-ray platoon in Vietnam, had a blue-on-blue and killed their officer got killed. And I never got a debrief on it. I knew it happened, but I never understood why.

I didn't learn anything from it. And so I didn't want that to happen. But then, you know, as we were getting kind of kind of close to finishing extreme ownership, Leif's like, you should, you should do the Blue on Blue story. And I said, yep, you're right. I do. I should do that. And I did.

And as soon as I was done with it, you know, we were looking for like chapter 12 and I got done with it. And I'm like, yep, this is chapter one. Like, this is how we open. So definitely if you're writing and it hurts, you're doing a good job. job. And admitting the flaws, I think, you know, we, we love to talk about all the, you know, the wins and, you know, kicking doors in and killing back as this school.

Like, talking about the failures, man, is really what real leaders do. You talk about it a lot. Even in your psychotomy, like, you even talk about how you've fucked up the title of the first book, I think, at some point. It's like, yeah, the biggest thing we do, we should have called it this because people took it out of context. And, like, even, like, there's, like, so many layers to that. that, you know, mirrored hallway.

You're looking at us like, yeah, we did this. We're teaching about leadership. And then we screwed up this in writing. And it's humble, you know. It wasn't lost to me is what I'm saying. So, yeah. Going back to the book here a little bit, you say it was not a matter of if a unit would get investigated, but when a unit would get investigated for alleged detainee abuse in Iraq,

after the massive scandal in Baghdad with the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 handling detain eastern combat operations became a sensitive subject. So you talk a decent amount about that. So you talked about how much I interacted with Sean McFarland. Outside of our reunion, which is, again, how we got reconnected, luckily, because we're doing our 20th anniversary in El Paso. The first time I met Colonel McFarland was because of detainee abuse. I literally was ambushed. They're like, hey, you got to go to Camp Armadi.

So we jocke up a convoy, we roll over there. And there's actually kind of a cool part of this story, too, aside from me getting ambushed about this detainee abuse. My battalion commander's in there. Didn't even know who's in town. Like he drove down to like, am I getting investigated? Like, yes, I was being investigated for detainee abuse. Not me, my unit.

Like, so some of the guys we let go, they, you know, made allegation against the Marines that they were mistreated or whatever. But here's the thing. there's no class that teaches you how to be a prison guard as a Marine infantry officer. So these young Marines don't know what they're doing. And they weren't taking a wet hose of these guys. Like they were uncomfortable for several hours. But also the task force over there had no way of sending vehicles into the zone and quickly extricating them to turn them over to siops.

Because there wasn't even a jail. There wasn't a prison. It wasn't a hoeing cell. So like we're rounding up all these fuckos on the battlefield who are trying to blow us up and shoot at us. And we caught them red-handed. It wasn't unfounded, but these young guys didn't know it. So I roll into the 1-1BCT headquarters. That's my first meeting with Shauna Farland.

It's like, you're on an investigation. I don't know if they read me my rights or whatever, but they were looking into it. They really just wanted to get some answers to the questions. And I remember that same day, you know Megan McClung was. Yeah. So she's this. gorgeous redhead kick-ass marine public affairs officer who was right in the bowels of the city with us.

And so I'm sitting at this computer in the hallway at 1-1BCT. This is a side note, but it's a great story. And I'm getting some pictures sent of my daughter. And she looks over and she says, hey, what are you smiling at? I said, I'm looking at your future competition right here because my daughter's gorgeous redhead. and looks like, you know, the character, Brave. Like, it's just crazy, great red hair. She gets it, I don't know where she gets it.

But Megan looks at. She says, oh, my God. She goes, where's she at? And I said, well, they're still in Virginia. I just came from Fast Company. She goes, really? Which company? I tell her.

She goes, oh, my fiance is in Fast Company. I said, what's his name? Because we all know each other. It's Judson Daniel. I said, you're kidding me. I said, I was hunting with that guy four months ago. Damn. It's a small world.

But anyway, I loved it, you know, being able to meet Megan that one day, knowing her as a Marine and, you know, what she did. And then on December 6th, the same day, Corporal Libby was killed. Megan was killed. Yeah. And Travis Patrick Green as well. And there was another, this is terrible. Yeah, it was tragic. But, you know, her memory lives on through, you know, great organizations, like Carrie.

the load on her to one year. You know Clint Bruce. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. She was really a force of nature. She was.

Just super. One of those people are just super positive. Like ready to take action to make things happen. Yeah. She was. I feel like I know her more than I did just from. I think that one drop in brief interaction with her, you know, was enough. And knowing who she surrounded herself with too and who she was going to marry, you know, it was just crazy. Dang. So I guess, I'm guessing.

Yeah. Do you keep in touch with her fiancee at all? That's freaking terrible. He went dark for a little bit or I don't know if you went dark, but he went under the radar. And I just got back in touch with him again when I called the check in with another fast guy, Jim lively. He's a general now. I said, man, Rinkler really got it right, Jim. Because I love Jim. Like you want to talk about like Eagle Scouts. Like this guy is like, he's the best, man. And I was like, yeah, I love it when they get it right. And I just call him to check in. He's like, oh, man, I'm so glad. It's like, I didn't even know if you kept my number. And I was like, he's a general now. But we were captains together. So, yeah. Yeah, that this is a case for the,

you know, the young, young military personnel that get married before they go on deployment, like in secret, they make it happen. And Mark Lee actually did that. Mark Lee actually got married before he went on deployment, didn't really tell anyone. Because just in case something happened to him, you know, wanted to have that. And he did it. So, It was a little surprise to a bunch of people. But I'm glad he did it, you know. That happens a lot too more than people think. Yeah.

I'm sure. Fast forward a little bit. Echo Company was ordered to the west side of Ramadi to support another U.S. Army unit. You talked about this. This is the TF-177, Steel Tigers. And they came from Germany. You mentioned, you mentioned, you know, you're checking in with a new boss. You said, I met the task force commander, lieutenant colonel Machiado, Michiato, Bear Johnson.

In his office. Mickeyado. Micchiato. In his office before the command brief, we chatted formally for a while, but I could tell he wasn't much for standard protocol. He put me to ease right away. He was a thick man, about 5'9. He was 42 and had a thinly trimmed mustache that ran neatly to the corners of his mouth. He had a big, bright, toothy smile underdoll, clad in traditional Army-grade digital BDUs.

He wore a tan leather pistol holster strap through his back. His bretted a 9-millimeter service pistol dangled under his left armpit and two ammo mags under the At first glance, he reminded me of the famous actor and comedian Cedric Kyle, better known as Cedric the entertainer. But there was nothing comical about him. He was aggressive and proved to be one of the most skilled commanders I ever supported. So, and this is when you say, hey. I did call Bear Johnson and say, hey, do you mind if I describe you like this?

He goes, no, I've heard it before. Again, I looked like Cedric back in the day. So for those of us that know who Cedric is. And then you guys went out into Tameen. and just started going, you know, which to me was like the neighborhood on the west side of the Habania Canal and the west side of Ramadi. And it was a real fertile ground for the enemy. Yeah.

And you guys just started going house to house door to door. Yeah. And no room left unturned. And it's exhausting. I mean, and filthy, dirty work. like I don't know like I should be on Mike Rose show dirty jobs or like that because that we could tell some stories like if we're on Mike like that was a dirty job like grimy like Marines are fun and digging stuff out of sewers and like they were just merciless man and I don't know how they did it but God bless them yeah um go ahead no yeah just like to describe that too that to me I mean it's a well-developed city, you know, Ramadi.

It wasn't like a, you know, shanty town. I mean, there were homes and multi-level homes, just like a urban subdivision. So imagine going into your house and like having to try and find something in every closet, every piece of furniture, sliding the furniture out. Like this is what they did every single night as we're patrolling for like eight to 10 hours under cover of darkness going house to house and leapfrogging platoons. And oh, by the way, like occasionally getting in firefights.

with the enemy. A lot of the firevites happen during the days, you know, too, where they were active because you know what about as good as those the search of words

and we gave them a little bit of credit, they're pretty lazy too. And like when the big orange ball dipped down and the, you know, the moon came out, they wanted to sleep.

So a lot of the guys on the HVIL list, we rolled up at night in their sleep. Yeah. They also knew that we own the night. They had night vision at the time,

you know, so they didn't want to go out at night because they couldn't see us. In the daytime they could see us, they could blend in with the local pompous. The local populace a lot at night.

So, yeah. We learned that fast and early on in that deployment is like, we're not going out during the day. We did it once. We responded to a QRF call it. Colonel Ferry sent us down there. He's like, Scotty, do you got a convoy? I'm like, yeah, let's go, sir.

I'm like, don't do you know, superhero, like stupid, stupid regret. We would. Sergeant Israel got shot, took one across the nose and a couple of the guys got banged up. but we would operate in the day usually um just because we were out in overwatch positions so that put us out there in the day and if the iraqis were doing a big clearance and it was our iraqis that we were training to do these big clearances we'd go out there with them you know because that's part of the part of the job and iraqi's doing a clearance at night was kind of a non-starter because they didn't have night vision day you'd really have

flashlights you know so that's how we ended up in the day um That's the way it is. Yeah. This is an interesting chapter. It's called damage. Uncontrollable variables occur in war. Sometimes innocent people die. It's unfortunate, but true.

These people and their deaths aren't just statistics to Marines who fight or those that wind up as some sensationalized news story on cable news. There are terrible realities that we have to live with for the rest of our lives. And, yeah. You know, you go into a story here about echo companies under heavy attack. ECP8, quick reaction force, small arms fire. It's like all the things are happening and you hit him with the Gimler's. And you end up walking out, walking to see what you guys, what you hit. Like once a Gimler's hit, you start moving on those houses, those buildings.

We pressed into the houses that not yet engaged. I moved to the living room floor and found an Iraqi family gathered around someone on the floor and wailing uncontrollably. I moved closer and saw they surrounded a man in his mid-40s lying on the floor. It appears he had a single gunshot wound to the head. His face and head wore dark purple and grotesquely swollen, but he was still alive. The platoon's corpsman rushed to his aid, began triage. A woman stood next to me holding a child half-dreft, loose-fitting shirt that came down past his waist.

The baby had long, thick black hair. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Child's legs were covered in someone else's blood, but he wasn't crying. He was in shock, I suppose. But the child's silence lent a surreal air to the situation. My turp Bruce began to question the dying man's wife. The woman told him the insurgents, we've been hunting and burst into their house, demanded the keys to the family car so they could use it to escape when the man in the house refused to surrender the keys. An insurgent shot him at point blank range in the head with a pistol.

Another one, another incident here. Bam Bam was on watch in charge of the company operations center and received information from the talk at Camp Corregador that a blue four-door sedan needed to drive through our area in order to transport a woman who had miscarried. her baby to Ramadi General Hospital a thousand meters west of ECP8. Bam Bam contacted the radio operators at all of our positions and relayed the specifics of this important request to ensure the family's safe passage to the hospital. The call went out to all stations on the radio net. A blue four-door sedan would be passing through our area directly past O.P. South House and then ECP8 on Sophia Road with four passengers bringing a woman to the hospital for emergency

medical attention. Everyone was explicitly advised that the car would be marked with glowing green. chemlights taped to the roof and behind the windshield. Bam Bam also expressly instructed each radio operator to pass the word to their respective platoon commanders, platoon sergeants, and Marines on watch and report back when they completed the task. Bam Bam went back to his normal routine and listened to the radio transmission sentently. A few minutes later, he was startled by the distant sound of machine gun fire. A sinking feeling hit the pit of his stomach. Bam Bam called each platoon for an update. They all confirmed they had not opened fire. Opie South House and ECPA were verified that the

sedan had passed by their position safely, but when he checked in with a U.S. Army radio operator that was adjacent to our position, his worst fears were confirmed that sedan had driven clear past our positions as it slowly as it could in the boundaries of another Marine unit to our northwest. It crept up an unimproved road directly in the line of fire of some Marines on post. The one who had manned the post earlier were aware of the Saddam's passage, but when they conducted turnover at the post, the war didn't get past. Fearing for the safety of their fellow Marines when the sedan came into view. you, they opened fire on it.

Multiple three to six round bursts of 762 machine gun fire blazed from the muzzle of a weapon, ripped through the car, bring it to a hole. The driver who was the husband of the woman who had miscarried her child survived. She and her sister did not. I talked about the incident with Bam Bam. He knew he'd done everything within his power to ensure the Marines of Echo Company left the sedan through safely, and they had done so. He said, if I could go back and do it all over again, Scott,

I would have checked with the battalion headquarters next door to verify that adjacent units were notified between higher headquarters. I did everything I could. I told them you did. Hindsight's always 20-20 in combat. It's often the only way to learn some hard lessons to pass on to other war fighters. Later, the husband received payment

for the deaths of his family from civil affairs personnel. It wasn't a disgrace to accept money by Arab standards. The DIA, essentially a non-negotiable payment of blood money is customary, if not downright expected in cases of accidental deaths. Yeah, the, um, as much as, Ramadi was a complete war zone filled with insurgents there was 300 or 400,000 civilians there and

You know things like this would happen civilians would get killed And when it when a civilian got killed and you know I've heard people talk about like oh there's civilians like getting killed Wantonly being killed would just being murdered and like that just cannot happen you know like there's the civilian popp is there. The shakes are there. The shakes are working with the battalion commanders on a daily basis. There's relationships. Like there's a government center with a government that's trying to be functional.

So, but this is a good example of how this thing does happen and then how it gets handled, which is like there's an investigation. You go out and pay the family. These are the things that happened. Yeah. Yeah. And again, like these stories. aren't, you know, exclusive. I mean, it's similar to, like, you and Laf, you know, you're talking

to your peer, you know, and Bam Bam was a captain, too. He's a pilot. He's the guy, you know, calling in airstrikes for us. And, you know, I used to drag that guy around the battlefield like a rag doll with his radio and, you know, Chris Mussel on the other side of my radio operator and, like, making decisions. But after that, he, it was hard for him to share that story and go back and revisit it, too, you know. But it was important that he knew that. But as his commander, he did do the right thing. He did everything humanly possible. But in that situation, under the circumstances, like, bad things do happen.

And you can't hide them. You know, I know there's a lot of mistrust sometimes through the military and what we do. But you can't hide those things. And it was sad, man, you know, that I always say, you know, these people that lived in this city, They weren't collateral damage, man. They were people. Just like anyone, they wanted to see their kids grow up and drive a car for the first time or go play soccer on the weekend. They wanted a life back.

Not an American life. They wanted their life back. And that's, again, American hubris, thinking we can impose our pissant 250-year existence and culture on a culture that's been around, you know, almost 4,000 years. You know, that from an academic standpoint, from an educated standpoint, it's like, always bothered me a little bit that I think we'd have done a lot better. Would you agree from Iraq and Afghanistan and training our young soldiers on the importance of culture than we did in Vietnam, Korea, World War II? I think we've done better. Yeah, I think we've done better. But I think the key point that you said was hubris to think that they're going to change their culture to match.

jars and it's like that is not going to happen and if we would have understood that from the start I think we would have been in a much better place you know if you go into if you join a team somewhere and their their their culture is different than your team and you're an individual showing up and you think you're going to convert this team that's been around for longer than you and you're just going to convert them into your culture it's not going to happen now they might adopt some small parts of your culture that you're bringing in and you're going to but you have to adopt their culture and work within their culture. Otherwise, you're going to have significant problems. You know, work with a lot of companies. They, you know, mergers and acquisitions. It's like,

you can't just impose your culture onto this company that you acquired. You have to have an open mind. You got to look, okay, what's good about their culture? How can we incorporate? How can we unify the cultures? As opposed to like, you guys are just going to think the way we think. And actually, that's easier to do that within a company than it is within a country. Like you said, it's been around a culture of people that's been around for thousands of years. And they're very set in their ways. And so they're just not going to change because you say, hey, I think my way is better. No.

But you remember they were talking about it on the news a lot, too. You hear it from political pundits about how they're trying to, you know, breed democracy in Iraq. And like, and again, going back to what you just said, like these great questions you should ask before you start turning, you know, chairs over, do you want a democracy? No. They probably would have said, no, we don't want to. And then we've gotten into the thing. It's like, oh, we're going to have America. democracy. I'm like, I talk to guys like, you know, in pithy conversations, like I say,

what is American democracy? Like, no, it's just democracy. It's not French democracy. It's not British democracy. It's just democracy. And everybody has their own, you know, handles their own rules and protocols and policies differently. But we went in and tried to, you know, set up a democracy and infuse American culture on how we do business. And that created friction. Yeah. And tried to do it quickly, right? Yeah. Because if you want to change a culture, it's going to take generations to change culture. Generations.

It's not going to happen in four years. Yeah, I don't think, I think they put too much emphasis on the democracy before they did the freedom and security. But it should be security, then freedom, then democracy. And they were trying to jam, you know, 10 pounds and a five pound bag. And for us guys on the ground, you know, I'm sure you get interviewed a lot. And they ask you questions about political administration. of levels of decisions. I was like, look, man, again, I was there to survive. And I wasn't concerned about those levels. Now I can talk about them. But our only responsibility was taking care of each

other and killing bad guys. Like, that's what we were there to do. And we did it well. January 2007, you guys start putting like Iraqi police stations in. And you say, I never knew if the Iraqi police occupied that police station. It wasn't my problem either way. That was Echo Company's final mission with Steel Tigers. We. had orders west, which is actually a really good sign if you think about it. Like the fact that you guys were getting ordered out of Ramadi in, and I know you, you know, you didn't get to see like the, the 5K fun runs down the street or anything, but it felt weird.

Yeah. But we were seeing, we were seeing, because I was back here, you know, I left, you got there in November. I left in October. And we were reading the reports. And like, the enemy attacks were absolutely going down. And there was definitely stability. at least was visible.

Like you could see it was changing. It was changing. It was getting better. And that had to be the case in order for them to send you out to Rupa. You say Echo Company departed Task Force 177 headed to Camp Korean Village, 40 miles west of our ultimate destination, Rupa, Iraq. And so that was your next location. It was heading out to Rupa. How did you feel about going out there?

You're conflicted. because Ramadi was where the real action was. But, you know, there's, again, we were part of the surge, so we went where they needed us. And it was a significant emotional event to move that whole company out of zone, do the relief in place with Army units. Luckily, again, you know, working for that task force

and everything under Colonel McFarland at the time, they're pros. Like, there's some of them who were switched on soldiers that I've ever encountered in my 24 years in service. and I just loved working with them. They got us rides out to Rupa. We tried to fly. It was funny.

Like the only helicopter ride was into Camp Corrigador, and it was on Army, CH-47s. I love those dudes, too. And we were a helibone company. Like, all we did during the pre-workup was, like, Hiloops. And- Oh, you did around Ramada. Drive and walking around.

Yeah, that's all we did. Like, it was interesting. I always joked here because, like, I never did a, real mission in a helicopter. You know, I was in trucks wrong foot. In Iraq, I never went in helicopter for a real mission, which is kind of a bummer. But, you know, it also shows you that that's what the war was at the time for me, you know.

I talked to some, I was talking to some guy the other day and, like, he did almost all helicopter. Because when he was in Iraq, he was with a, with a strike force. And they were just flying everywhere. And then when he was in Afghanistan, all helicopters. So, like, we, he had the, the absolute opposite. experiences me. I was like all vehicles and foot. He was all helicopters.

No vehicles, no feet. Pretty crazy. Yeah. Other than foot patrol once you know. We know too, like it looks sexy on recruiting as like fast roping and jumping out of airplanes. I was like,

but the fastest way to get there is actually drive or like walk or like land a helicopter and just walk out of the helicopter. Like that's the fastest way. Just doesn't recruit as many young studs. You say this. When you get there, you say our mission in Rutba, was focused more on support and stability operations rather than daily raids and constant

firefights in Ramadi. So what did that mean to you guys support and stability operations? Well, that was the brief that we got before we rolled out. And again, the Mew Commander was over there. There was a reconnaissance company. The Maritime Special Purpose Magtaph was over there. So we kind of knew what they were doing in Rupa itself. So again, if most people aren't familiar with it, like, this is like the truck stop of Iraq. It's on the western border in Alamara province. It really is like a truck stop. There's a Buckees in Texas.

It's probably bigger than Rupa. I mean, it's where they would come in through a porous border on Syria and they'd, you know, drive a Rammatian fight. And so they had taken some resistance over there. when we finally arrived after another series of significant emotional events and friction, like Bam Bam's truck broke down on the road out. Like, you didn't fly us over. Like we didn't even get a ride over there.

Like I flew over, not out of privilege, but like it was available. So I took some dudes with me and we did the recon, but they had gotten some sporadic, you know, gunfire. And it seemed like their tactics were off. But they hadn't been in the city to clear it out. So when we got over there, luckily for me, the MUOPSO was one of my faculty advisors at EWS when I was a captain. Paul Nugent, love that guy. He gave me great autonomy and understood what we were doing in Ramadi and how desperate the situation was over there. And again, they were relieved.

Now, before I get into the planning and talking about what Paul let me do is like, you probably probably. understand this is as leaders and what we do is is you know guys that kick doors in for a living is it's pretty easy and it's not much of a leadership challenge to give a young guy you know sergeant echo a machine gun and a box of ammo and a little training and have him go from zero to 60 and engage the target and kill them with pretty pretty good efficiency the real leadership challenges take that same guy move him to a different spot and get him to go from 60 to zero that that That is a real leadership challenge for a 19 year old kid. It's a real leadership challenge for a 35-year-old commander in charge of 200 plus people.

So as we transitioned to Rupa, the rules of engagement also changed. So now you're in this mindset where the ROEs in Ramadi, you know at the time is like, if they're digging a hole in the street, shoot them. If they're driving a car at night, shoot them. If they've got a phone, shoot them. If they're doing this, shoot them. Like it was very permissive. that changed when we went to Rupa,

but it wasn't because that the city was at peace. They just hadn't been in and cleared it out. There had been units going in and out, but they never had a presence. So when they brought us in, I was very fortunate to look over the map and get the afteractions from, you know, Paul.

And so, you know, Newt says, what do you want to do? We're going to do this. I said, no, sir. I said, I would prefer to do this. And honestly, I was a little. little paranoid because coming out of RMI is like, you know, we're not doing it during the daytime, like first and foremost. Like we're doing this at night. I said, I want to do this. And I came up with a

detailed plan. I said, we're going to go in at night. We're going to have insertion points along the southern border. And we're going to clear the city from south and north. And if you give me, you know, 72 hours, we'll have Marines occupying different positions throughout. And then I had my good friend Stan Hawke, who was a recon company commander. on my flank and a couple of other subordinate units. And it took us a little longer. It took us like 96 hours. But then we stamped that city clear.

And when we went through, you know, I took a great amount of shit, I think, from some of the leadership. And, you know, I think it was a misunderstanding of really what the standing minister of defense in Iraq allowed weapons in homes. Like, no, they're allowed to have weapons. Like, they're not allowed to have weapons.

I'm like, I used, like, I lived in Baghdad for a year, like in the palace. Like I know all these clowns who wrote the laws and the new constitution or whatever is, I said they're not. So it was like I told the boys and they fucking hated me for it too. It's like crazy Husing's going out of business sale. Like every weapon must go. And oh, by the way, we figured out the more weapons we'd pull out on raids and patrols

every single night doing clearance ops, we got shot at less during the day. Go figure, man. Again, I don't like to do math in public, but those stats speak for themselves. But I did get some push breaker. Like, no, they're allowed to have a... I go, no, they're not allowed. I go, and I had to literally show it to some of the senior commanders, like, look, this is not. But now you got Marines clearing, and sometimes we would do patrols during the day.

We're doing like 8, 12 patrols. It was a grind for the boys. And then if they're clearing, they're slinging 8Ks on the back, you know, that's another eight pounds. There's another 16 pounds. And now they get into firefight and they've got to run and save their lives and they got all this extra gear. Like, we're not carrying enough shit.

get on her backs already. Yeah, because most people did have AKs in their house. So, like, if you hit 10 houses, you got 10 AKs, most likely that you're now lugging around. Yeah, and if they came by those weapons legitimately, that's fine. None of it was registered. But one of the things the insurgents are really smart at because they didn't wear a uniform, we didn't know who they were, is, you know, they would intimidate the locals.

And they say, look, we're going to store our weapons in your house, Jocko. if you tell anybody, if you tell the Americans you got these weapons, we're going to come back and we're going to slit your throat. That's how ruthless they were. It's smart tactics. Just stage weapons all around. Then they would be out at the market, be bopping around, doing what insurgents do, having a little insurgent

chit-chat. And they're like, oh, here comes a patrol. And they dug in a house, grab a weapon. They just intimidate the people like, wear their weapons. And they grab and take some shots. And then they blend back into the landscape. That's the enemy we fought. It was tough. so we had we had to clear everything out man i didn't want to give an opportunity to kill any more of my marines man that's just so we i got some photos like some of the nights we raid and hundreds of weapons thousands yeah yeah there was a an army captain mike bima who was a freaking awesome guy

and he had that too and he he he in his little uh combat outpost he kind of put he hung all those weapons up. Well, not all, but a bunch of weapons up. It looked very like a, like a hunting cabin with a bunch of, you know, buck heads up there. A bunch of trophy room. He just had freaking AKs everywhere. It was pretty good to go. But it made you feel a lot safer rolling out. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, we'll get these, get these people. They don't have a second amendment. Like, don't talk to me about. Oh, yeah. That's how that's how it was screwed up we are, too, is, you know, I always say it's like, you know what Marines are really great at breaking shit up. You know what we're really bad at building stuff up.

So don't act like you know governance or you know this. Like that rubbed me the wrong way. I know what I'm good at. I know what we're not good at. And to think that in the middle of a war, like they're allowed to have an AK-47. Like, no, yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that one. Jack. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here.

21 January 2007, we formed up and stepped off sweeping north, knowing there was plenty of work ahead. of us that first night six hours later I dropped down on the cold marble floor of building which we had just gone firm I was exhausted I stared up at the plastered ceiling dizzy yet feeling relieved and excited that we had pushed so far in one night I was still in my gear and lay there stretched out trying to get my second wind I was pretty sure I could have fallen asleep if I wanted to then I heard a call across the net that we had a casualty an adrenaline rush instantly flooded my body and a gut dropping feeling a combination of anxiety and rage hit me hard the Marines came in and gave me the news Lance Corporal Sanchez was down shot by a sniper

Maccibbon was in fact fast forwarding a little bit McKibben was off post at building 500 and this is one of the buildings that you guys had taken on the first floor of a three-story house when he started hearing shots fired outside around zero 700 McKibbon immediately pressed to the roof not knowing one of his Marines lay wounded concerned there might be a sniper about he did a turkey peek around the corner of the doorway that led onto the roof. He saw Marines racing around yelling Corman, Doc, Doc, get the fuck up here, Doc. The top of building 500 was a large flat concrete slab with massive gray cinder block ledge around it that stood nearly six feet high. It provided excellent protection and concealment for the most part for the Marines on post. He raced over to the

back wall where four or five Marines and Docs Lee and Leva Lava were already performing first aid on Lance Corporal Sanchez. McGibbon stepped in and helped take off Sanchez's gear. As he did, he spoke to Sanchez. Sanchez, hang on, man, we're here. We've got you. Just blink or squeeze my hand if you understand. Nothing from Sanchez.

McKibbon heard the other Marines on the roof shouting. What the fuck? Where's the shooter? No one had located the sniper. It was not the first time McKibbon had been in a firefighter. Seen his brothers get shot, but he still felt scared and helpless at the moment. the sight of it all took his breath away. The Marines moved Sanchez off the roof to a convoy that would carry him to TCP3,

where he would be transferred to a helicopter that would fly him to a medical station. As he watched the vehicles leave, he felt a sense of responsibility, and his heart felt broken. Not knowing if Sanchez was alive or dead weighed heavily on him that morning. Foster rode in the convoy with Sanchez as they rushed to TCP3. The Marines gently moved him from the Humvee to the landing. zone as a radio operator made contact with the inbound CH-53 helicopter that was providing the Kazavak. Foster sat beside Sanchez and could clearly see the hole from the bullet that had pierced the right side of his Kevlar helmet. Sanchez was silent, but Foster could see agony in his face.

As Foster listened to the radio transmissions, he knew it was only minutes until the Kazavak would arrive. The corpsmen and the other Marines tried to stabilize Sanchez. His breathing was labored. As they inserted the intubiation tube to free his airway Foster Helplier. his hand. Sanchez gripped Foster's hand and rubbed it feverishly as he fought through the pain of his wound. His hand was warm and dry. Foster rubbed it gently, trying to smooth off the cake dirt. But as he looked down, Sanchez's hand lay soft in his own, covered in dried blood. The smacking of the helicopter's rotors was loud as it approached the LZ. The Kazavak team moved Sanchez so they wouldn't get pelted with loose gravel kicked up by the helicopter's

downwash. Foster instinctively knew Sanchez would not let go of his hand when they moved into the helicopter. Foster held on and moved with him. The Holking CH53 Superstallion was on final approach to the LZ. 30 seconds out, Sanchez stopped rubbing Foster's hand. Foster felt it go still. It slipped out of his grasp as the aircraft landed. And as I mentioned earlier, the fight doesn't stop. Continuing on as we geared up for another fight, a second gut-wrenching call came across the net. another Marine was shot and being Kazevac to TCP3 to the south. Again, my heart sank.

I could not believe that in less than 24 hours in zone, we'd suffered two casualties. After McKibben had watched Sanchez carried out of building 500, he went to his squad on the first floor. Hey, I need someone to volunteer to get up on the roof now to take over Sanchez's post. Without delay,

Lance Corporal, Andrew Mattis chimed up. I got it, Corporal. Who does that? What kind of person unhesitatingly jumps to the task and challenge of assuming a post where another Marine had been shot. What kind of character do young men have that drives them to go into harm's way without a second thought? McGibbon walked with Mattis over to the wall on the backside of building 500 almost exactly where Sanchez had been shot. Mattis was armed with his M16A4 with a 203

grenade launcher fixed to the bottom. The wall was too high for Mattis to see over. He found an ammo can and slid it close to the wall for a step so he could view his sector of fire that McKibbin had laid out for him. He placed a hand on the ledge of the cinderblock wall and pulled himself up for a peek. McKibbin said to Mattis, keep your eyes open. There's a lot of windows and doors out there, brother.

McKibbon took five or six steps away when he heard a strange noise like the sound of a hammer, cracking the bottom of a frying pan. McKibbon turned back toward Mattis. And as he did, he saw Mattis standing, facing the wall, almost floating. He fell backward, slowly. as if someone was behind him waiting to catch him in a game of trust.

Doc, Doc, get over here. McKibbans shouted in panic. Mattis lay on the roof motionless. His eyes were bloodshot and he wasn't breathing. His face began to swell. And he was limp as the other Marines quickly moved him onto a blanket to get him off the roof as fast as they could. Yeah, that's a Marine right there. Yeah.

You know, a guy gets shot. We need someone to take his place. I'm on it. when again i i i i wasn't we were at three different positions that that was the morning or day three or day two of the clearance op in rupa and um you know again my paranoia was i guess justified because there were some bad guys there and um you know me kibbin told me that story you know when i was interviewing him for the book he he sent me a bunch of tapes like on a little cassette recorder he had a really hard time sharing that story with him he was a corporal at the time

and he's still on active duty. But I think, and again, you know, I never professed to say, like, I knew my Marines, but I didn't know, like, Matisse or Sanchez well. They were kind of quiet kids, you know. You know, Matisse was from, you know, like O'Clair, Wisconsin, and I didn't even know Sanchez was Native American, and probably one of my favorite chapters in the book is Pueblo, where Sanchez's family invites me out to their annual ceremony that they do at their reservation in the Pueblo. And it's like very emotional for me and very impactful as well.

And I'm really, really good friends with Sanchez's older brother, Joey, who's like, I don't know, he's like 15 years older than Sanchez. Like, yeah, he used to get accused of being his dad, which rubbed him in the wrong, he's like, no, man, we're brothers, you know. And there's this huge, cool tribe of Keros Indians that, you know, live in New Mexico. And to be welcomed in, you know, again, from the family members of, you know, Marines you've lost, that's tough, man, for some guys. And it's tough for me. You know, you kind of sometimes like, what do I say or I do? But again, I think if anyone's listening, because there'll be another generation that has to go through stuff that we went through.

It's just inevitable. You just got to be yourself, man, be authentic and be there for him if you can. Not everybody can. I get that. It's tough. But we have a lot of fun together, too. And Joey, his older brother, makes a habit of doing surprise appearances when he catches window something of me speaking at an event on social media.

Like, he pops up and literally surprises me. I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, you know, bear hugs ensue. and it's again, you know, these people who lose, you know, Marines and soldiers, you know, like the Libby's, they may have lost, you know, Dustin, but, you know, they inherited another 200 Marines, where they like it or not. We still keep in touch, you know, I think it's important, but that was tough, too, because fighting in Rupa, you know, we did kind of make some assumption. I think the Marines did that it would be a more permissive environment, and it just wasn't. Even though the ROEs were more restrictive, I think they had their own set of challenges there too. But again, they're doing a lot of stuff too that Marines just aren't trained to do.

And, you know, we tried to operate as best we could. And after the book came out too, like you see how the Marines will reach out. And it's funny too. Like, you know, when you write about someone, like you think they're like, hey, thanks for write about me book. Or like, hey, that was cool. that something I never even hear from. It's not that I need the acknowledgement or anything, but they see things from my perspective too now,

like some of the bullshit we had to do. Like I was just like any Marine, we do take orders, myself included. And some of the things we were ordered to do were very hard for me to stomach. And it wasn't until I was able to share those in this story that, you know, the Marines like, God, sir, like, I never knew you had to do all that

bullshit and I was like yeah well it wasn't my place to bitch down so leaders don't do that I was very lucky though that I had Bam Bam and we're still very close friends of this day he's he's an airline pilot now for major airline and he's coming out to my ranch in Texas next month as well so I could see him and his new baby and yeah it's cool but outstanding he he was able to be my sounding board you know even first arm foster like tom and I what was bam bam's position he was my fact He's a forward air controller. He was a CH 53 pilot in the Marine Corps and just completely unflappable. I mean, you probably have come to terms with this too because I'm an emotional person.

I don't get overly emotional to influence my decision or anything. But I sometimes think, like, should I be feeling this way about this or like express or let anger boil over in some cases? And like, I just came to terms with it. Bam Bam was a pilot through and through, you know, very procedural. Like there could be, you know, stuff blowing up and he, yeah. Like I remember, you know, it was like, did you see that, Bamming? He's like, yeah, I saw that. Like, Roger, you ready to go?

We're going to head out here in about five minutes. Like, just really unflappable. Like, we could be in the middle of firefight and like, Roger, Echo Six requests, blah, like he's, it's, pilots are built a certain way. As you know, because we know a bunch of them. But just very unflavel, but from a friendship standpoint, too, to have another guy who's a captain that you can kind of release the valve on in that situation, too, was important. And thanks, Ban Ban. Fast forward a little bit.

After the shocking loss of Sanchez and Mattoos, I think I mispronounced that earlier. Sanchez and Matus is sniper final 21 January, 2007, my boys weren't true. on the new rules of engagement. It frustrated them when I told them to use more restrained. As an infantry commander is not a significant challenge to train a 16-year-old or 19-year-old how-old machine gun. That's where you're just using with a go, like, getting them to. And you have to, that's like the worst-case scenario, right?

You've got to train these guys that are going to have to go into face a determined enemy in a gunfight. Like, that's what you've got to get them ready for. Yeah. Everything else, okay, well, we'll figure that out when we get there. And when you get there, it's not so easy to pull the leash on these dogs. Yeah, we did one op where, and you mentioned, you know, you talked about the uniform of the insurgents, like a track suit with an AK-47. And we did an op over by the, what the University of Alambar province, right?

The university, which is on the east, west side of Tamim, right? That whole complex over there. And they had government sanctioned. So we get told we're getting Intel. There's like there's a security element there, a government security element. Okay, how do we know? What uniform are they wearing? They're wearing track shoots, track suits and carrying AK-47s.

I'm like, all right, we must have, I briefed, you know, Laif, it was Laif-Splatoon, like, Laif briefed them up and down. Like, we cannot shoot these guys with AK-47s with track shoots. They are, they're friendly security element. I told them that 10 times. And sure enough, we rolled up, the first thing we rolled up, there's a gate. And it's like, there's a guy with an AK-47, and it's a, track shoot and I'm like nope and he did you know he like you know all right good so yeah it's like

cats sleeping with dogs man it's just you can't half the time in that environment make sense of it and uh god those stories are funny man you uh another thing you talk about is you get permission to hit like one mosque and you get you have good intelligence that there's enemy or weapons being stored in this mosque so you're gonna hit one but then you get like you look around you're like well there's three actual mosques that could be used. Let's hit them all. And that's kind of a big deal because you have to have, for me it was the first 06 in the chain of command would have to give you permission to hit a mosque.

But you didn't have time to get that permission and you hit three mosques. Colonel Budrow gave permission for the one because we had verifiable information and that they were storing weapons there. And then, you know, I made an audible as a guy on the ground. I mean, these guys are 40 miles away, you know, so they can't really make a call. But the, you know, I had patrols in the zone. I'm like, fuck it, hit them all. And it paid off.

It also sucked, too, because we had a civilian get injured. She got shot in the elbow. And it turned into a whole episode of, you know, added friction in the middle of the night after we raided. But we did discover a shit ton of weapons in those mosques. Like, they were using the mosque because of safe haven't. We all knew that. But again, at the end of the story after we, you know, are wandering the streets of Rupah, 0,3, and trying to find medical care for this Iraqi civilian, her brother steps in and we pay him some cash

and come to find out he doesn't even take her to the hospital in Ramadi and drive back. It's like three-hour drive. There's no hospital in Rupud's. Again, it's a truck stop. They didn't have a first aid kit. And then we shot someone. accidentally she charged one of the Marines in a dark room and luckily it just went through her elbow but you know we find we found out later she might have lost her arm it wasn't verified

but you know the next day too after that whole episode I get a call oh yeah career warning light is flashing quickly and I'm summoned back to go talk to colonel bedrow and um first office I go went to his major Newgent. So Paul Nugent's, he's like, yeah, I just think the boss wants to talk to you about it. And I was like, I'm going to get fired. I'm like, this is twice now, like I've

gotten called in these rooms with full colonels, you know, and I'm like, I'm getting fired. But thankfully, you know, Colonel Madreau was, he's a pragmatist, I think, he's an interesting guy, too. He's coming to my reunion. I invited him

because he was a mere commander. Really big dude. You know, just looks like a, you know, football players, great shape. He's salt and pepper, you know,

flat top. And he's a very soft talker. If he talks very soft, even in briefs, like he's like, all right, um, absolutely,

we got that. I always liked it. It was hard to hear and like, I was like, does he do that so people listen to him more? Like, when you're that big, like you really don't have to,

like, but it was effective. Um, and I was thankful for it that, that morning. when I walked in and it was it was funny though before I stepped through the door you know I go to Paul Paul Nugent's office and I walk through the operation center and you remember that scene in saving private Ryan when Hanks is at the I don't know it's a little forward staging post and all the soldiers

have sandwiches and they're like you know grab ass in and drinking hot coffee and like nice uniforms. So here I am. Like I'm, I walk out of zone back to CKV. Yeah. And my nose was cut. I had like,

just gash across my nose because like, uh, we were in a firefight and I took a header and, you know, busted my nose open. And, uh, they're all just,

like you'd her pin drop. Like, they're looking at me like, yeah, like a savage. So then I go talk to the boss and, um, he says,

uh, it's my call. He says, don't worry about it, Scotty. is my call. You do the right thing. I was like,

holy crap. Saved my ass. And trust me, like, you know, there was a couple of the meetings I think I have with Colonel Boudreau, too.

He rolled out, we took over the bank. It was literally a bank, the bank of Rupa, but it afforded the best position. And he had come out one day. I was out on another patrol. And I don't,

this is non attributional. Like, he's just being the colonel. He knows he'd be a new commander, but he didn't like what he saw. Like, there was, by the way,

There was like two platoons of Marines living in a bank. And when he walks into the bank, so they're safe. It's a bank. Thick walls. And they're in flip-plops and PT shorts. And, you know, so he didn't like that for some reason. It kind of rubbed them the wrong way. He thought it was a sign of maybe being loose or undisciplined.

And then so he's got me in the office. And I've told him this story, I think. I might not. If not, I'll tell him someday or next month. he questions Tom Foster. He goes, and what's up with your first sergeant? I says, what do you mean, sir?

He goes, well, he just doesn't strike him. He's a typical infantry guy. I go, he's not. And in the Marine Corps, you don't have to be in the infantry your whole time to become a first sergeant because that's an administrative role to a large degree.

So I said, he's not, sir. I said, Tom Foster was a legal clerk and a legal chief. He's been in a legal field his entire time until he got into the Marine Corps or in the Marine Corps and then he got First Sergeant and he was assigned to an infantry unit

and I tell you, I wouldn't replace him with some 20 year burnout grunt. I said I would take him every day of the week and twice on Sunday because Tom loved it like everything was new and exciting

like everything he had sold as a recruiter he was getting to live to the point where I'm like hey Tom like you need to get the fuck off that tank and do some admin shit so I kind of would put him in there and we're still great friends

to this day he lives in Colorado So, but I told that to Colonel Boudreau, and I says, you know, sir, we're running eight to 12, you know, combat patrols a day. And, you know, the Marines need a place to let their hair down and decompress a little bit. And it was a light switch for him. And so, you know, again, he cut me off the leash again. He's like, so he was a really, really good guy to work for, you know. But it was also a little different than Ramadi because, you know, we had a little more top cover. I don't know.

It wasn't a micrameasure. It's not what I'm saying. It's like, but there was just another layer that we kind of had to deal with. Chuck. Yeah. You guys are, you know,

pushing these clearances. And then I got to cover this, this section right here. You say this. We approach a group of young Iraqi males. They were posturing like tough guys as we advanced. One at his hands tucked in the back of his pants underneath a lightweight jacket he wore.

He was young, maybe 16 years old. I forcefully told him in Arabic. erini yadaic show me your hands he stood there with his gaze fixed on my Marines and me we had our rifles at alert but we're not pointing them directly at the boys I repeated the command the boy still didn't comply defiant then he bolted to me it confirmed he had a weapon I shouted keef keef stop stop I instinctively took off after him I had a habit of doing this much to my Marines frustration Lance Corporal Zach Shores followed close behind me for cover

Another veteran of the battalion's 2004 deployment to Ramadi. Chores was big, 6-2 and more than 200 pounds. He was scruffy and surly and exuded a I don't give a shit about nothing. Attitude most of the time. In a firefight, however, he was dependable and as dangerous as they come, a killer. I pursued the boy as he made it around a corner, yelling at him again to stop. This time he did. And then he turned to face me, a hand still in his coat.

I trained my M-4 on him, ready to shoot if he drew a weapon. I could see him looking around for an escape route, sensing he was about to dart into an alley. He made a move. I fired two shots, not aimed at the boy. I drilled two rounds into an air conditioner unit that was on the ground 10 meters away from him in a vain effort to get him to comply. I had just violated our own policy of never firing warning shots. The boy took off. Shores grabbed me and said, sir, he's gone.

Fuck him. Let him. Let him go. It was nothing. Let's get back to the squad. As we moved, I could still feel the effects of the adrenaline. and rush. I was out of breath and sweating. The men in the street looked at me cold, coldly, scornfully. And this was all for you guys to set up a meeting at a government center and they were doing a meeting with like the key leaders of the city out

there. And the meeting ends. And then a guy, you see Staff Sergeant Slaughter sitting on an elevated concrete sidewalk, dangly's feet over the side. I walked over to him and I sat down. I took off my helmet and stared at the ground. Slaughter was 29 years old from Santa Fe, Texas, married with two kids. He stood five, six. He was rough and built like a fire plug and constantly had a big, thick dip of Copenhagen snuff in his lower lip. He took, he always had an air of seriousness about him, maybe because he was on his second combat torn Iraq. A sense of vulnerability and uncertainty hit me as I sat there. Slaughter sensed it. So, sir, how'd the meeting go? I said, same shit. He dug deeper. What's going on, sir? You all right? I didn't normally divest my emotions with Marines.

but when Slaughter asked me if I felt I had an overwhelming need to share with him. Staff Sergeant, what the fuck would have happened if I had a shot that kid? I don't know what I was thinking. I just can't get it out of my head. Why did I even shoot my rifle if I wasn't going to shoot him? Slaughter didn't hesitate to respond. Sure, you did the right thing. It wasn't worth it either way.

It's this place. It's a fuck story. And it gets to everyone. That includes you. You're good, sir. I felt that Slaughter was right. At least that's what I wanted to believe at the time. He was, though.

I thanked him for listening. He gave me a quick head nod. I told him to get the boys together and get ready to go. That moment weighed on me for days. That young kid, cocky as he may have been, would never know how close he was to his death. Either way, slaughter and shores were right. That's some combat fatigue mentality going on. I forgot about that story, man.

It's funny, like, having someone read your book to you, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that. That was, like, just listening to, have you read that as, and no and Jeremy Slaughter, too, is, what a cool name. Like, Sergeant Slaughter. Yeah, for sure. He was a good dude, you know, and like to, I don't know, he's a great leader too, you know, and he was able to balance me out that day. And you got to have that.

That's why, you know, everything, I remind you to this all the time, is everything I know about officer and I learned and was taught by the e-dogs, enlisted guys, staff and NCOs. So I, they are the balance when you, when you talk about the important things of, you know, leadership and, you know, listening is one of them. And it's not also not lost to me as I'm sure you get this, is a guy that runs his mouth on, you know, podcasts. He's speaking public and you write it. I was like, listening is probably one of the greatest attributes the leader can have. It's a learned attribute in some cases. I'm one of those guys. But his ability to listen is what creates that great balance of leadership in a team. And, you know, we weren't some hand-selected super company of Marines.

Like, we took what we got. We had this remarkable chemistry, I think, that we all had a hand in as leaders at every level to really, you know, be able to listen like that. That's, I think that's tough. I always love the guys. You know, like I've read about Pete Somerville. and he was like a ninja like he'd always been on the forensics of those guys and you know they're in meetings or parties and they're kind of just like a ninja they're just sitting there

taking all in and i'll spot him now because i've been trained like god i wish i could be like that like i can't be like echo like he's sitting in his whole podcast and like has said a peep i mean you know like how does he do that as the ovan said you sure don't say a lot for a guy named that he's a savant he's a son how he does that how do that i don't know what he's doing down there Um, you know, I'm going to fast forward. You cover a couple more. You have another couple civilian casualty. Um, again, this is just, it's so good that you put this stuff in the book so people

understand what it's like. Uh, and then we get to this. Our departure date from Iraq was finally announced. We would be turning over our battle space and route, but with first battalion, second Marines. For the most part, the Marines were ready to go, but they also had become accustomed to living so close together under such austere conditions for so long that the reality took a while to sink.

in. After being extended on deployment twice already, they braced for the impact of another letdown. This time, however, there would be no letdown. We were headed home. Had to feel pretty good to be getting hell out of there. Yeah. I've been cursed with having extensions on deployments. Normally

a marine deployment is like six months, but they all knew too. I had a track rate of like getting extended. It was good, but this... The boss bringing the bad luck with them. They psyched us like a couple times like, yeah, not going home. Sike. And that just happened. Marines bounce back, but

yeah, I was, I liked it that we were on amphibia shipping too, and I'll give it, I have multiple times given a lot of credit and thanks to our Navy brethren. From that arg, they stayed on station. They could have gone back home, but they waited for us to get back on those ships.

They, you know, not kicking indoors or anything, but they knew how important it was for the Marines to return to their own stuff that we just left, you know. And in our case, it was garbage bags of moldy green camis that were stained in red soil from training in India as the first U.S. force to ever train with the 21st Punjab. But they had to store it. They didn't have, when we got the order to launch, like, they didn't even have time to do the laundry on the ship.

So like bag it all up and, like, they were destroyed. But the Navy waited for us, man. And that cruise home and stop in Australia, I think, was, that was important. Were guys like, no, I don't want to go to Australia, just take me the hell home? Or were guys like, hell yeah, take me to Australia? Oh, they want to go Australia. I'm sure the young single boys were freaking a rock Australia. They were pretty jazzed about that.

I've always talked about the fact that, you know, in World War II, when the war was over, you got in a boat with, you know, whatever, 3,000 of your brothers, and you debriefed on the way home, and you discussed things, and you talk about what you did right, what you did wrong and you had a chance to get stuff off your chest and what have you. Whereas for a lot of people in the GWAT or even Vietnam for that matter, it was like, hey, I'm here in a totally horrible place. I'm going to get on this freaking airplane and 24 hours later or 36 hours later, I'm back at home. I'm walking down the street and there's my kids and there's some bum, you know, some bum, you know, want money for me and some, you know, 18 year old high school.

school girl in a freaking Mercedes that's like telling you honking or horn at you or whatever the case may be like that can be a little bit of a rough transition did you feel like it was helpful that you and your guys got put on a ship and you guys got kind of quarantined from the world for a little while yeah I think it was smart I agree with you uh you know like World War II like that decompression time I think it's important it's just it doesn't feel natural like to hop on a plane even to being on the plane and getting like would you like a diet coke or something like that feels weird like no one's off and you diet rippets in iraq you know it's like it's just no service like you know it's just it's it's it was very um beneficial i think um and i wrote about it too is like interestingly enough

after going through all that we didn't have a single liberty instance like no bad behavior from the boys not one it was nuts i don't know if the whole me you did but i know echo company like we were good boys and they took care of each other out there but yeah it was it was tough from me too, like adjusting on ship. Like I didn't, my roommates were, you know, other company commanders like, are you ever going to sleep? I'm like, I can't sleep. Like, I'd have the TV on in the state room and, or I'd be up and I'd be wandering the ship.

And like, I still don't, my sleep has gotten a little bit better. But, you know, back then it was, you're working so much. You're operating around the clock and you're, it's not good to operate on little sleep. I mean, we're the worst at advocating like, oh, we can do this. But it's not effective to be sleep deprived as a leader in any environment. So a lot of people brag about like, I haven't slept in three days. I'm like, well, you're a walking idiot right now.

So do you feel like you might have some genetics that are that you need less sleep? Yeah, I, I don't know. I'm no geneticist. Illinois State doesn't have problem. I kind of get that from my, so I don't need a lot of sleep. My oldest daughter, like when she was in high school, she'd be up at 11 o'clock at night studying. And like I'd go to bed and I'd wake up at 4.30 in the morning and she'd be up studying or she'd be like up studying. Like she was, she needed very little sleep.

My middle daughter, if you want her to get out of bed, you better be ready to scrap. Which is also what my wife is like. Like my wife, she likes to sleep. My son's kind of like in the middle. And then my daughter's a sleeper. But I've always, and I would not need much sleep. and be like, you know, I would, you know, people like, oh, if you haven't slept eight hours, that's like three beers or whatever that thing is.

I'm like, bro, I've been operating on like a 12-pack forever then. But did you feel like that might be the case a little bit? I function pretty well in limited sleep. I will say that. But I never have really slept eight hours. I don't know, but I know this, and we are completely opposite on this. Like, I do not like getting up early. Like, I know.

Do you do that naturally? Like you're just like, bang, it's 430. I'm taking a picture of my watch. Actually, I told my wife this morning, I was in the deepest sleep this morning when I woke up. Like the alarm clock went off. And I was like, where am I right now? What is going on?

And it was like my whole sleep took place in like 30 seconds, you know? But so sometimes it's the alarm clock. Sometimes it's not. It's a little bit above. I don't like getting up early. I don't like being cold. I don't like being wet. Pretty much a really horrible career joys for 24 years.

Like being in the infantry. But, you know, seriously, like even though, I was like, sir, like, you don't like get out of the bag of the morning. I'm like, no, it's cold outside. But I'd do it, you know. I was like, I wasn't tardy or anything. But how was it when- You get bragging rights though, right?

Yeah, yeah. How was it when you got home? Like, so now you're in San Diego. How was that? I, for me personally, it was a pretty easy adjustment because of my experience, I think. And then, you know, we had, you know, welcome home ceremony and, um,

the city of San Clemente, California up here, like just Chamber of Commerce adopts a battalion. Each city does. Some do, some don't. But we're very fortunate that the city of San Clemente adopted us. And they did this huge welcome home. And then, you know, it was a few weeks later. But they invited all the Gold Star families out. And yeah, I don't know if I wrote about it or not.

But it was beautiful when the Sanchez has showed up. There was like the whole tribe. It was like 40 people. Those when they had the T-shirts on. Yeah, yeah. I didn't remember that. Yeah, I can't, I can never remember. But it was so heartwarming, you know, to see them.

And, you know, but, you know, the transition back, I think for most guys was relatively easy. I think it's like, and you know, it's that Tyler writes about this in his book, Forging Chaos. It's like, it's that lack of traumatic stress disorder. Like, I use it differently. Everybody shares it. Like, mine is a friction. I was like you have all this friction in your life and especially in combat is like when you remove that it's for me it was like the absence of that friction like how do you replace that type of adrenaline it's it's hard to replace but you got to find ways to do it um you know maybe it's working out maybe it's doing this maybe it's baking cupcakes i don't care but you got to find something uh i don't know if there's a big adrenaline rush baking cupcakes but who knows man mecca might like you know some skills well i want to close the book with the memorial service that happens.

And this is 15 June 2007. It was a warm sunny day when the magnificent bastards of 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marines honored their fallen brothers. We held the last memorial at Camp San Mateo, a smaller camp aboard Camp Pendleton on elaborately decorated parade ground behind our battalion command post. It was lined with all 50 state flags that ruffled slightly in the wind as it blew through the base of the mountains surrounding the camp.

aluminum bleachers were set up to accommodate the hundreds of attendees. We had the customary memorials displays, eight dressed wooden pedestals with eight upside down M16A4 rifles. Their bayonets thrust into a sandbag at the bottom holding them tight. Combat boots at the base of each pedestal with a camouflaged covered Kevlar helmet on the top of the buttstock of each rifle. Dog tags of each Marine dangled over the rifle's pistol grips. Every pedestal had a hand-drawn charcoal portrait of the eight Marines that died on our deployment in 2006.

2007. Three were from Echo Company. The tribute we paid to our fellow Marines that day was a fitting ceremony after the oral omages. Music played softly over the speaker system as the crowd filters slowly out from the bleachers. Marines were the first to gravitate through the eight battlefield crosses on display. Individually or in groups are three or four, they stood before the memorials, placed their palms on the tops of the helmets that rested on the rifles. Some reached down and gently rubbed the aluminum dog tags between their thumbs and four fingers, pressing the tags into their palms. Some wept. Other Marines swarmed around their broken comrades, wrapping their arms around their back, supporting each other and trying to fight off their own

tears. Some of the Marines stood paralyzed by a motion in front of the pedestals, unable to leave. I watched from afar at first, then I felt compelled to rush to the men and hugged them myself. Heat and emotion welled up inside of me, and I blinked hard to fight back the tears. I sniffed sharply and swallowed against the tightening muscles in my throat. I was heartbroken too. Watching my Marines in pain was hard. I'd always tried to safeguard them from danger and during our time in Iraq,

but there was nothing I could do now to protect them from this. The Marines lingered at the memorials for a while and were given respect from the families and friends that watched this immense display of affection and loyalty. As they had while they were in Iraq, the family supported us that day, even though our job, to be there for them.

I'm sure seeing us so vulnerable hit them hard in contrast to the hard charging warriors they watched go off to war. The families descended upon us with hugs and support as we stood there weakened by our grief. They put their arms

around us, still saying, it's all right. So, great book. And again, I read some of the highlights of the book, but there's so much detail and it's just a great, incredible history of what you guys went through.

And you know what I didn't do? One of the best things that you do in the book is you give a great, basically a biography of everyone that's in the book. And I was throwing out names today, like just one off, you just hear a name like randomly. But you give where that person's from, what they were like, you know,

whatever they went through in high school, what, you know, how they ended up in the Marine Corps. And so you realize that these people, that these Marines that you're talking in the book, about in the book are people. And I didn't do a good job of reading that today. But when you get the book, you really get to learn about these men.

So that's just awesome. So pick up this book. The book is called Echo and Ramadi. Firsthand story of U.S. Marines in Iraq's deadliest city. What was your job after that? Like, what was your job in the Marine Corps? Yeah, I like the Marines too. I will say this because when you're writing and you're doing like character development,

I would have written about all 250 of those guys if I could have, but that would have been a big, fat, thick book and no one would have read it. And when I share those details, I thought it was important. And I have kind of a formula. You know, there's kind of a rhythm on how different writers are in their style. But I wanted it to be emblematic of all the Marines. You know, I wanted people that know there's like this such an awesome cross-section of young patriotic Americans, men and women who raise their hand and volunteer to serve their country.

And I'd like to share a little bit about them. And not just the physical brown hair, tall, fat, short fat, a little bit of that. But like the lengths it takes for this kid in North Dakota to even drive to recruiter station. You know, it's like, you know, that's dedication, man. When you get in your pickup truck and you drive three hours just so you can sign your life away and go fight and, you know, die for your country. You know, it's, it is impressive. So, but after, after that transition with, I stayed in the battalion.

Ultimately, I became the operations officer. Worked for one of the best Marines and boss. They had Chris Wirtman. He's a general now. And went on their deployment to Okinawa and did another mew. Then I went to Yuma, Arizona as the, again, the token grunt at the Marine Corps' version of Top Gun. which is a premier aviation school. It's a Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron 1,

and they are the best pilots, rotary wing and fixed wing. I was a department head out there for three years. And again, it was a cool job. I went kicking and screaming like I told you. You know, I called my boss, I monitored C.J. Williams. My ex-o at the time in the battalion, I was the opposite.

He goes, hey, man, you're going to Yuma. Scott Garris. He's a full colonel, not so he's about to retire. And Scott goes, you're going to Yuma. I said, you're full of shit, man. I said, I'm not going to Yuma. So I called CJ. And I says, hey, sir, what's up with these orders to Yuma? He goes, well, Mott's gets what Mots wants. He says, hey, Scotty, by the way, isn't it like three in the morning in Okinaw right now? I go, yeah, sir, this is the shit that keeps me up at night. I go,

getting orders to Yuma. But it was, again, you know, you got to make the best out of a bad situation. Like, I wasn't, you know, loving the commute back and forth to San Diego, Camp Hamilton. And, you know, and, you know, to Yuma every week and living in the dorms, like a, you know, college dorm puk and sharing a bathroom with another major. But you learn so much and the talent is so impressive at Motz won. And that community, too, is, it's a little mafia, Mots is like if you get the, they call it the chicken patch.

It's an eagle. And if you're a weapons tactic instructor, that's like being a top gun. Like, you're that guy. Like, you don't become a student or an instructor at Mott's unless, you've been hand selected by your peers or by the schoolhouse. So it was cool. But again, like the community, it took its toll on me, you know, running that, running the program twice a year.

And then I kind of did a little hookup deal with the monitor who, again, was one of the guys who was like five guys standing at EWS is like, you guys aren't graduating. And Brian, Brian Mulville was like, he did like screw up or he got in trouble or something. but now he's a full colonel. He's a regimental commander. And so he was by my honor. I said, hey, Brian,

like I need a cool job. And Sean Carroll, who I was in Fast Company with, again, this is like nepotism, but it happens, you know. Sean says,

hey, I'm the 15th Mew, Sisson, so you want my job. Like, he was finding his own replacement. So Sean called me, and I call Brian and says,

hey, man, I want Sean his job. He goes, well, they're going to have to let you. out of Yuma a little bit early. So I had to kind of plead my case to the boss at Mott's 1. And luckily, you know, Colonel Heckel, he was a good dude.

And like he had respected how much I'd done for the institution and kind of gave me an early out or parole or something. But, you know, there's one book I don't brag about too much or never get credit for writing. But I wrote this book, it's called the, it's the new helicopter-borne operation. is a book, but it's called Air Assault, and it's Marine Corps doctrine. I don't talk about a whole lot because there's nothing sexy about it, but for a Marine in that schoolhouse, we used to do this, you know, run off the publications, the infantry guys. It was called, you know, how to plan a helo operation or, you know, helicopter or operations. Well, we bought this plane called the Osprey,

not a helicopter. And those pilots were like, it's not a helicopter. So I took a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters to an offsite in Fort Worth, all pilots, aviators from the schoolhouse. and we wrote that book from scrap. I mean, and it took like eight years to get published through the Marine Corps doctor process. Like, we suck at that, by the way. So that was one of the good things that came out of that. And then, you know, I went to the 15th Mew, did another deployment.

And I had an Australian counterpart that came with me. And so we had kind of overlapping jobs, but I was in Bahrain as the Centcom L&O. So, you know, after 10 deployments and, you know, shitty duty assignments, the sun shines on the dog's ass for once in a while. So I was staying at the diplomat in Bahrain, getting all the radisson points and, you know, sushi in the club. And so I'd go into the office, you know, during that whole deployment. It was just, you know, they were doing training exercises afloat and stuff. And they did some real world stuff in the Middle East. And it was a cool job, though.

I go in brief the admiral. and I wish I remember that guy's name but he was funny man the captain was the of the arg he was a country boy from like West Virginia or something man as redneck as they come but he's a fool card like he's smart guy obviously but he he used to love it and you know he all the sailors they're hated to you know they're all like swow dudes and whatnot and they I'd roll in he's like Scotty like unless you have to brief me or the admirals on some. I think it was like Admiral Scott was on the show over there at the time.

He goes, I don't expect you to be in his office. And so I just rolled in flip-flops and civvies. And, you know, it was, yeah, I'm sure you're familiar with that. Very. Yeah. It's like, it was a cool gig, you know. And, you know, you're, but again, that deployment got extended. So, like, I didn't get, I needed to go early.

But that, that, too, was where I kind of made the decision where I was going to retire. because after getting blown up in Iraq and having a lot of spinal surgeries, my neck and my lower back, you know, thanks to the guys right in your backyard, you know, Balboa Naval Hospital. They took good care of me, but I was having a lot of problems. And you know this. After the daily grind we put on our bodies, like, it's a young man's game. And I honestly knew and my boss knew, you know, I wasn't even allowed to run a PFT the last. two years I was with the 15th me and I was coming up on on my 20 as an officer so I could

you know retire and you know my boss was cool about it Scott Campbell he was an operator dude he was an orange guy and Anglico guy he's like look I don't you know I've never needed you for your body he's like you're in great shape you know because I was swimming and I'm always hyper conscious that but I couldn't run a PFT because I need you for your mind he's like you're one of the best planners I've ever had on my team he goes And he goes, that's what you're going to do and you're going to keep doing that. And I want you in Bahrain. Like, I want you to be my mouth to these Navy guys of how we're fighting the Mew in their AO.

So it was cool. It was a good deployment. But, you know, on that same deployment, I made the decision, like, I'm going to retire. And I always told myself, when it stops being fun, like, I'm going to hang up my rifle and try something else. And never thought it would be, never thought it would be writing. And honestly, I've shared enough of that background. But, you know, I like talking about that. Like the guy I'm staying with here, Mike Sager, like, I love talking about writing.

And I love telling other veterans about the importance of writing and sharing great stories. I'm not saying everything has to be a bestseller. I'm just saying it's like you, there are ways to, you know, tell your story and do it the right way. And that's kind of one of the cool things, too, that, you know, I created it for. for myself after I retired and worked in the private sector for a little bit. I just didn't love it. You know, money is great, but I just didn't love it. And that's when I, what did you do in the private sector?

I worked for a private security firm in, in Hollywood, and basically wrote their training plan. And, you know, there was a lot of veterans in the company as well. But the, I, I just found that there was a lack of culture that didn't, that I didn't like. And so, you know, I transitioned again. And I just said, hey, I'm going to lock myself my student. I'm going to start writing. And that's when I started working on Echo and Armadi. And then...

So at that point, in the book you talk about, you had like the neck surgeries, now you're on painkillers, you're drinking. You end up in a drunk driving crash. Yeah, I almost kill myself. Or someone else. That would have been worse. I mean, luckily it was country road. Were you in the Marine Corps when that happened?

No. This is after you retired. Got it. So I'm writing the book. So when you were, because it sounds like you were in a pretty rough spot. Like you were drinking a lot, you know, painkillers. You were having panic attacks. All that stuff is after you retired.

I had, I had panic attacks started while I was on active duty with the 15th Mew. Just a couple of them. And then I would continue to have those occasionally. But I think I got them under control. control. It wasn't frequent. I mean, I could count on both hands like the number of times I've had it. It's a weird feeling if you've ever had one. Yeah, the physical. It's just overwhelmingly you have no control over it. But it's, you know, it's explained to me. It's like, you know, your body's way of release in its own pressure valve. But it feels like a heart attack.

So, yeah. Then, you know, as I'm writing the book, you know, and I'm, I'm still in a lot of pain. And, you know, again, this is kind of like where I was talking about Sylvie's like, there's none of you in the book. And I had to share this part of my life. It's like, it wasn't easy. But, you know, it makes you feel a little bit more human when you share that part of yourself. It's like, look, I know I'm not the only guy that's dealing with this. And again, I was, you know, just trying to replicate that friction, man, that adrenaline.

So, you know, I'm drinking, I'm self-medicating. I'm taking pain pills. and then, you know, I'm going to my buddy's house. He's like a pro, he's not a biker, biker, like, you know, Hills Angeles. He's like, he's one of the lead pro motocross, Jimmy Fitzpatrick. He was my neighbor and, like, you know, Fitz Army and Metal Militia, like, you know, all those guys. Anyway, that's Jimmy's, like, he threw some ragers. It's like Playboy Mansion, you know, the Grotto, you know, big house.

Like, they weren't Playboy bun. I'm just like a bunch of, you know, party animals over there. We go over and we're hanging out. Like, I'm fighting Jimmy. And, like, he's like, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm like, He's a young kid. Like, he's in good shape, too. He was like, and I was wasted.

And, you know, I drove home that night. I don't even remember getting in my Jeep. And then I was only literally less than a mile is how close you were. But I made the stupid decision to think that I could drive. And I woke up surrounded by yellow dust. And that was the airbags that had gone off in my Jeep. and I had crashed into a culvert full of, you know, eight-inch rock and steward drain. And someone from the party drove by.

But, you know, again, you know, I wrote it was like, that, that was humbling experience for me. Was that like a rock bottom scenario for you? Pretty much. Or not quite. Yeah. Did you stop drinking? I did. Yeah.

So, because that's what a lot of times you hear people talk about. I mean, I stopped cold drinking for a room. a year. Like I just couldn't physically go by it. And like that was kind of a switch to is like I never want to be out in public where I can lose control. Like I still drink if I want to. Um, but you know, I don't, I don't feel like I did then. Like I was using alcohol to do this. And I was using as a tool. But yeah, that was kind of a rock bottom thing. And to share that too is pretty tough. You know, it's like, you know, especially when we have family and, you know, it was kind of swept under the rug. You know, it's nothing really like to brag about, to be quite honest with you.

But again, I'm human. You're a human. I think the people we lead and surround ourselves by or people that see us on social media from afar, they think you can become infallible. But when you share that about yourself, it was a real, real lesson for me that I have. I had to find a new way to replicate what I was missing in my life. Maybe, I don't even know of writing about it was. I don't know if you ever get this too. Your story is so much different, though, even though you share a lot of those,

people ask you, when you finish the book, was it this big cathartic moment for you? No. It wasn't, I didn't like, oh, man, it feels so great. Like I should, like, I can sleep well at night. It wasn't any of that for me. Writing is a job. It's work. It's a lot of work.

It's a kick in the balls most days. But sharing that story was important, but it didn't provide that relief. But I also liked having something to focus on. Like when I'm writing this book, man, when I'm writing anything, like I am in it. Like, I am doing the work. Yeah, you have a mission. Yeah. When I'm helping other authors with what we've created, like I'm in it.

Like, they are getting everything I have for them. And it's a lot of work. And it's a very, very long, discouraging process. It is indeed. Man, I don't know if you do it. Like, I go into libraries or bookstore, Barnes & Over, whatever. And I look around like, it's hard for me to read. Like, I'm disciplined in how I read.

Like, I make it part of my daily routine as a discipline. But I wouldn't want to read most of the stuff that's on the shelves, but I can totally respect the process. that it took to get that one little book sitting on that shelf because the ones that aren't sitting there, I know where those are too sitting on someone's computer because they didn't do the work. Yeah. When people come to me and they want to write a book, I'm always like, well, it's a big

undertaking and selling books is really hard because not only you're asking for someone to give you 20 bucks and like 10 hours of their time because that's what it takes to read a book. It takes like 10 hours to read a book. So, hey, Scott, give me 20 bucks and then give me 20 or 10 hours of your time. That's what you want. So that book better give them something back, you know? Otherwise, well, they're probably not going to read it. It has to be entertaining, too.

When I coach people, so Ben Sledge is going to be on the show next week. This is another great story. I love telling the story about Ben, too. And I haven't shared it a lot. It's usually just not in public. but um so there's there's a couple pieces of this story and i brought some props and they're sitting here on the desk but uh that are these linkages which is cool so this this guy i haven ingram just wrote this book once we pledged forever published by mike sager who i'm staying with here

as i came down to hang out with you guys i get a phone call from ben sledge hey sir uh this is ben sledge uh I'm not sure if you remember me or not, but I want to let you know that I wrote about you in my book. I said, really? I said, what's your book called? He goes, it's called where cowards go to die. I go, man, that's a cool title. Great title. I said, who's your publisher?

He says, Regnery. I go, hold on a second. I said, we have the same publisher. And they didn't call me and ask me for a blurb or like endorse it or help. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't get it. You know, I told them about you. And this is like, and they suck.

I'm like, you know, this isn't an indictment. I'll hold me. I'm just saying like that they missed a beat and so he says and I'm not sure sir if you remember me goes I actually fought under your command I said that's why I wrote about you I says well man I'm honored I says uh who were you with he goes I was one of your CAD guys like civil affairs I said I don't remember you man I said uh but there are a lot of guys on my command and they were in and out and uh this is when we're at western romadi and he goes you actually gave uh you actually gave us some awards too like before he rolled out and gave him a guy some mail and says i don't remember that either i said but

i'm glad we were taking care of the boys and so he goes on and on and uh you know it was just kind of a cool little reunion um and he asked me what i was doing and you know he was very congratulatory about echoing or mattie and i says well honestly man i said you really just started helping this other guy ivan who's a marsock marine raider special forces dude uh Ivan calls me and And he's like, hey, Scotty, I really would like your help. I want to be a writer. And I know you can't teach me everything you know in a one-hour phone call. I'd be a waste of everyone's time.

I said, you're right. I said, and I don't do that. I said, and we were lieutenants together. We went to the base school that are like, I'm known in my whole life, smart guy. And so he says, how about you think about it? And I want to pay you. It goes, I insist on paying you. And so he would just Venmo me some cash.

And so I created a syllabus from like soup to nuts, like creating a story arc, character development, how to find an agent, how to deal with publishing houses, everything. You know, and the whole process I went through, so he didn't have to do a million Google searches, but I wrote it all down. And so I said, all right, man, you're going to call me on these days. And we're going to talk for one hour. You're going to shut up, take notes, and this is going to be what you're due. So I told Ben about this.

He goes, hey, sir, he's like, yeah, you should make a company out of this. You should create a website. I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's like, I got enough websites. I had like three already, like a speaking website, the book website. And he goes, no, I'll do it for you. And so what do you mean? So he's also a web designer.

Ben is among other talents this kid has, which is why I threw him under the bus when we were playing in the Ramadi reunion in El Paso. I was like, oh, Ben's going to do that, sir. I told General McFarlane. He's like, he's perfect. And so he creates. this website and we started this company in Texas, solid copy media LLC. And so I started teaching guys. And really it was cool too because then I realized, well, I need to bring in other people

who supported me and are smart and other bestselling authors. So I brought, you know, I said, told Ben, I was like, hey, congratulations man. You're not the managing partner. And he goes, really? I go, yeah, it doesn't pay much. It's what we give. It's like right now. So we launched this. And just through word of mouth, we've started helping coach and mentor aspiring writers because they, I brought like Michelle Black in who, you know, wrote, you know, sacrifice. And then word of mouth just started spreading. So, you know, here's a guy I went to TBS with. And now through my connection with Mike Sager, who, again, I met from my neurologist here in San Diego and I was getting treatments, you know, he's an award-winning, you know, journalist with Esquire and Rolling Stone

is I says hey I think you should work with Ivan and we should publish his book so he did and it just came out last month it's called once we pledged forever and it's a novel but it's you know loosely based off of as you can guess a marsock special borders operator fancy that yeah and so that's how that kind of you know just came full circle but so what's the name of the company solid solid copy media LLC and uh is it is it solid copy media dot com.com? Yes, solid copymedia.com. So if people are interested in this, that's where they can find it. Yeah, you know what this company is, has become, I created the world's best bullshit filter that I've ever created because here's the thing.

I used to get and still do, me and Vinnie Vargas were talking about this when I was doing this pot up in Salt Lake. He's like, how many people hit you? I'm like, hey, can you help me write my book? Or hey, will you read my book? It's like a lot. And again, I don't have 10 hours of my life to just wait. And then they want advice. And then they want this.

I'm like, man, I just got the point where I'm just like, delete, delete, delete. And then when I started helping Ivan and Ben came in and we kind of formalized it and I created syllabus and the website is awesome by the way. He did it in his sleep. It's really amazing. And I tell people it's like, hey, if you want to do this course, it's going to cost you money, you have to invest in yourself. And I never hear from him again.

I'm like, self-correcting problem. I'm like, perfect. Like, obviously they're not a pro. They don't want to do the work. and I never hear from them again. They never keep passing me like, read my book, read my book, read my book, because it's an investment.

And sometimes when I hit the delete key, it might have been the next, you know, New York Times bestseller, but they don't want to do the work. Like I doubt that's the case. It was probably, you know, a couple hundred pages of garbage. So we built this company and, again, we just,

I really enjoy it. When you're in training command, like teaching and instructing people, like I really enjoy that. I really love, you know, sharing that with people. And sometimes people, you have your own disciplines and like, I do four things every day. I try to do four things every day. Like I try to do something physical.

Maybe it's just on my chainsaw. I try to educate myself. I try to read or do something that will inform myself. I try to put myself in difficult position. Maybe it's, you know, flying to California again. doing a podcast. Maybe it's speaking in front of a group of high school students. That's an uncomfortable position, by the way.

But I do it. I force myself out. And then the last thing is like I always try and help someone besides myself. And if I was able to do that for one hour a day, every single day, like there's still 20 hours left in a day. And I don't beat myself up if I don't do that every day. I give myself a break. But being able to help people share their stories and bring in other bestselling authors in,

we have former presidents of publishing houses, we have freelance editors, we have publicists, we have podcasters, we have screenwriters, all people are successful in this business. So I brought them all under the umbrella, says, hey, you want to be part of this company? And we do a percentage and do this. I said, but what we've created is access. Now you have access to a screenwriter. You have access to a podcast or you have access, like, how do you do this? And you can get a consultation from them and learn from a process. pro. So you're not doing a thousand Google searches like how I had to learn. And so, you know, that's how we started the company. But even, even before that, that's like, you know, when we're

talking about like, what do you do in transition? How was your transition? Like, I never thought I'd be doing this. I don't know if I'm going to do it for another five years or 10 years or not. But, you know, how did I become, people, Tyler likes this too, because he loves calling me his agent. You know, I'm like, hey, man, don't call me a literary agent. But I'm like, hey, man, don't call me a literary agent. I am a literary agent. I have sold all these books to mainstream publishing houses. That's something that is, you know, just come into my life. And, you know, again, I'll tell you this story how it started. It started with this, with Andy Beggio's book, The Rifle. This is literally how, like, all of these books have, I became an agent, even though, again, I kind of

shun the title because I don't want to be lumped in with, you know, scummy ambulance chasing lawyers or whatever agents like they you take it over the head you know what's funny do is before i share stories like you know the veteran community is tight and the reason i do it is because i like sharing the stories we were talking about that but you know the minute things go sideways like i stopped being a fellow marine or veteran like now i'm just the agent like why did you this you you know getting all caps text i'm like hey man remember like when everyone else said no to you like scotty said yes because i did the work but why won't my why isn't my book selling the way you would said it would.

So this story written by Andrew Bejou is called The Rifle and it's combat stories from World War II. He is a huge following. He's a lovable guy. Marine reservist and Boston cop. So I get this message on LinkedIn, Jock, and it's from this

kid, Andy Bejillo. Hey, sir, I bought 20, I don't know, he bought like 25 or 50 copies in my book. He goes, I'd love it if you came to Boston and signed him at the VFW and blah, blah, blah, and we do this motorcycle rally. And I really love your work. And I said yes.

I kind of e-stalked him a little bit, you know, and did this scouting report. And, like, he was legit. And, you know, we had spoken on the phone and, like, I kind of gaffed him off. And, like, he calls me again. It's like a couple weeks before the event, man. And he says, don't worry about it, sir. He goes, I understand you're busy. You know, you got a lot on your plate all the time.

I said, no man, I make time. I said, I'm going to fly out. I said, I'm getting my ticket today. I say, you can pay me back for it or not. I don't care, but I promise you, Marine, I'm coming out. Because he was a young sergeant, Iraq, Afghanistan, vet. He was a reservist, like I said. And so I fly out.

And I have no great expectations. He also asked me, he's like, you know, they do this motorcycle rally. He's like, you know, would you say a few words at the rally? I was like, yeah, cool. Not a problem. So I land Boston Logan. Doors open up. I grab my bag off the luggage thing.

There's these three burly Boston cops there, are you major Scott Husing? Hell yeah. I said, uh, yep. You go, get in the car. You come in with us. I was like, all right, cool. Like they drive me to this like embassy suites and Winthrop Mass.

And there's this huge event going on. Like all these disabled vets are there. Hershey Woody Williams, one of my personal heroes and friends who we lost last year is there. You know, a great group of Bostonians. You know, we're all hanging out. And so I'm like, this is cool, you know. And then the next day we get up for this little motorcycle rally.

No, 2,500 Harleys around the whole city of Boston. And then it ends at Suffolk Downs, which is this like state fairgrounds, man, if you can imagine. It's huge. And so Andy wants me to be the closing speaker. in front of 8,000 people at Suffolk Downs. And I'm not just a closing speaker. I'd prepared some notes, and here I am out from California. And I'm actually standing there as a closing speaker behind, you know, some pretty

well-known people. And Herschel was there as well, and I'm kind of on Woody Watch, you know, making sure no one bumps into him. And it was funny because, like, that year, like, me and Woody had been to the Nixon museum speaking together. Like, he must have thought I was, like, stalking him. But we've known each other for a long, long time. So I get on stage.

and I'd prepare some notes, I wad them up and throw them into the crowd. I said, Andy, in his true humble nature, did not mention that I'd be flying out here to the great state of Massachusetts. And speaking after the governor of the state of Massachusetts, Olympic gold medalists, all these heroes, Herschel Woody Williams, I said, so I'm not going to say what I plan on saying. So I kind of winged it. The crowd loved it. And so we go back to Andy's house.

And it's a family home. Like it's, you know, this whole family's always lived there since like, 1900s, like this old Boston home. Since Plymouth Rock. And so as we were talking about during our break, grabbing some Jocko fuel, he says, hey, sir, I'm writing a book. And I go, oh, here we go. Everybody's writing a book. And I'm like, he's going to have to drop the hammer on it. He was such a nice guy.

Like, Andy, he can be talking with these World War II veterans and with this air of, of reverence and yet busting their balls at the same time like a good soldier would do and they love him for it. Like it's just remarkable talent that he has. It's just him. So he tells me about this book and I says, yeah man, why don't you send it to me? So he sends me this manuscript and I start reading it.

I start reading it. I was like man, this kick him right. Because Andy might play a caveman on TV but he's got master's degree in history. He's a resident smart ass even to this day. So I read this thing and says, hey man, I really think that this book should be published. I said, are you ready for that?

And so we gave him the highs and lows. And so I reached out to my editor, Alex Novak, at Regnery. And Alex is the son of Bob Novak from CNN Crossfire. Alex Sharp dude. He's become a great friend and great publisher at Post Hill Press. But when we were at Regnery, he was my editor. And so I call Alex. I says, hey, man,

I really think you should take a look at this and the history and print probably going to love this. And this kid's got a big following too already. He's like they love this video content of this rifle that he's got. And so he reads it and it sits for a while. And I'm not sure if they're going to buy it, you know. And I'm just another author who's done pretty well recommending a book of a friend. But Alex knows like if I'm reading it, Scott, he's probably giving it a sniff test. It's going to be good.

So this A couple months goes by and I'm in San Antonio and I pick up the phone And I says hey Andy I got some news for you I said congratulations you're going to be a published author I think he started crying on the phone I'm not ashamed to me that but he was very taken aback So he writes this book

You know this amazing book called the rifle about this M1 grand And so it's Andy And people always ask me like well How did he like, why do you run and write this book? I said, well, like any Marine, you know, he's curious. So he goes into his grandma's basement or something. The family trials grew up at some point when I ever I tell the story. But she went through these, he went through her letters from his great uncle, Andrew.

And then there's a street named after him right by the house too. And he wrote how in World War II, and he was killed in Anzio. But he loved this rifle, this M1 Garan. He loved it in training. He loved carrying it in war and all this. So, you know, Andy, after reading all these letters, like any Marine would do, you know, and he's a cop too. He goes out and he buys a rifle. And so he says to himself, self, what the shit am I going to do with his rifle now?

So he goes down three doors and starts talking to PFC Joe Drago, this 90-year-old, infirm World War II Pacific Campaign Marine and he hands him this rifle and his eyes light up and he starts waving this rifle around the room and he's like, hey, tell him these stories and he can't get enough of it and he won't shut up. He's like, go to that dresser and get that bag out

and like there's a bag of gold teeth from like Japanese soldiers and like he's sharing all this stuff that he'd hidden away his whole life. And right there, Andy says, says, I'm going to take this rifle and put it in the hands of as many World War II veterans can and capture their stories. And they're going to sign the rifle. So over 400 signatures later, we have this amazing story. And there's also the rifle too, which talks about the journey of Andy. Because again, when I'm teaching people how to write and I'm like, you know, being there a Sherpa on this, this grueling ass-kicking journey of being a writer is there's great parts and

there's low parts, I said, you have to be in the story. You're the hero of the story that all the travels and the journeys. And if you follow the rifle and Andy on Instagram, like, man, there are some of the most heartwarming stories with these old geysers. And like, he's a geyser magnet. Like he just, there's just something about it, man. I love watching them. And hearing these guys, some of them are like over 100 years old.

But Andy has all the stats and they signed it. And in the second book, he talks about some of the boys. bullshit stories. Like he found out like one guy's like like he was he was found out. He's like I was storm of the beaches on Omaha Beach. I'm like no, tuba player. U.S. Army band never deployed.

And so Andy has got this rifle, which you can see is like hundreds of signatures in paint men. Now he's here with a Q-tip like stolen valor. Stolen Valor. World War II, man. You know when you go to Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania Monument and if you go look at the names of the Pennsylvania Monument, it's got the names of the guys that served, but some of them are scraped off.

Really? Because the same exact things. People are like, bullshit, you weren't there. Whoa, Scott Hussig, you put your name on this monument? You weren't there. They go, they scrape that thing off. So that shit's been around for a while, apparently. I know, man.

It's, uh, yeah, so, you know, they existed back then, but that, that's, you know, technically how it, you know, became a, an agent. So now what do you got for books? Read them out. What do you got the rifle? We got, yeah. What's the one underneath that? So, and again, like, like, you know, like,

Like through word of mouth, this is Fred Galvin and Salmana. It's called A Few Bad Men. And so... What's that one about? The Marsok 7. So he was a Marine, you know, Marsok guy, one of the first guys in Afghanistan. And, you know, they're sent, ordered out into the hinterland. Ambush goes sideways.

They return fire. And then, you know, the essence of the story is, you know, you've got these seven, you know, especially trained operators that are, you know, accused, charge, tried, convicted, and then later exonerated of this ambush gone wrong where civilians were killed, there was crossfire, but never exonerated. So it really is, you know, indicative of the title, and even Fred to this day, you know, and it's funny, too, like, when I get pitched these stories, and you were talking about it's like, you get a lot of them, too. It's like, so I don't know, Fred and I were both in Fast Company.

We know a lot of same dudes. And when he sends me this book, I read it. And it's in Career New, Pitch 12, single space. I said, man, I said, I got to tell you, Fred. I said, this book is really good. Like, this is a story. I said, but it reads like an investigative journalist, fucked a Marine officer and had this as the baby.

He goes, well, you know, I was a Marine officer. And Sal is an investigative journalist. I was like, I said, yeah, man. I said, I'm going to put you in touch with my editor. that says, and she's going to take this from good to great. And that's what great editors do. Stephen King wrote some books. You might have heard of this guy.

But he always said, to air is human to edit divine. I was like, yeah, Steve knows a couple things about writing. So when I handed this off, that's what happened. And then, again, you know, I called Alex was one of the first guys. I kind of always give him, he's kind of my default. Like, I give him first ride of refusal, but he loved it. And the book's done really well. I think this, again, is, this is another story of great importance that, you know, it's a lot of the injustices, too, within the military.

And you know what I loved most about this book is that he names names. He does not mince around it. So then you got this book, forged in chaos? Yeah. This is the latest one that, again, the connection came through Ben's Ledge. is he says hey you should meet this guy Tyler I have no idea who Tyler Gray is I have no idea who's in you know Delta Force operator

you know tier one dude actor writer producer on the CBS Paramount Plus TV show SEAL team and so my phone rings I'm building out my horse arena and I'm all my chains are so I'm kind of phone rings and I'm like hey what's up man and like he's telling me a little about it

and he can kind of be a little all over the map sometimes you know and he tells me about this story. I don't hear from for a long time. And then he introduced me to his co-writer, Lauren Engeldy. She's amazing, talented woman again. She's written 12 books. She wrote Darrell Utts book.

Grit to Glory. He's a former Green Beret. She's just phenomenal. I don't know how she puts herself like an alien in a human suit and can speak special operator, and she does an amazing job. But I don't hear from him. And then so he finally makes a decision. Like he goes, yeah, I want to work with you.

Because although, yes, I'm an agent, I'm more of a hybrid because I do way, way more than any typical agent does. Like every, every blurb on this book, I think maybe might as well, Jack Carr included. Like I solicited these guys. And I would say that slimy, like they're friends. I'm like, like Scott Mann. I'm like who, you know, was the author of Pineapple Express. I met Scott Mann through my terp who I wrote about my book when I promoted him to Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Cyber Warfare.

He goes, you got to meet this guy, Scott Man, sir. He's like, good guy. You meet him. And so we go over hanging out at Scott's place on the lake. And that's how me and Scott became buds. And so when it comes time to like sharing great stories, I'm like, Scott, you got to read this book. Jack, you got to read this book.

And, you know, that's something. people say like blurbs don't really mean anything it's not really why i do it is uh you know this this story that he has written is the reviews that i see too is what's cool about this is you know we're talking about making an impact civilians are posting comments on amazon is like i needed this book i really needed this book because he talks about the his theory of lack of traumatic stress disorder that he dealt with and his man you want to talk about rock bottom moment like again like it is it gets pretty pretty pretty greedy down there right with Tyler um but makes me want to read it i read it in two days man i'm i'm not kidding you is this was one of those books

and again for a kid who has short attention span of theater like i i kept going i was like i got to get back and i got to read some more than that book i wanted to know how this book was unfolding and how it ultimately end and Lauren and he did an amazing job and um you know what's cool too is because because of what I do and like my hybrid nature, like I'm helping promote it. I'm helping, you know, whatever I can. I'm editing. Like, agents don't edit. Like right now, Lauren calls me like after this, like before the book even launches last month.

She's like, I want to work with you again. She goes, I have been sitting on this story, but I have not found the right person. And it is just one of the most, I'm very excited about this project. And I can talk about it publicly. because it's already been out there. Lauren has written the story of BB Aisha, and most don't know the name, but we'll remember her photograph on the cover of Time magazine

as the young Afghan girl that had her nose and ears cut off. And we just finished the final edits. We're on the cusp of, you know, introducing it to major publishing houses. But it is one of the most important stories for people to read. Not men, not women. people. What this young woman went through is for a battle, hardened warrior, like, you know, me or you, to read this, you think, yeah, just when I thought I had it rough. You read about

one of the victims of the brutality of the Taliban in that culture. And I tell I couldn't be more proud to be part of the project. And it's one of those things where like helping veterans and even civilians now have, you know, asked for me to help them out because of my love of sharing great stories, not just military ones, but, man, this is going to be a good one. I'm excited about it. And then guns, girls, and greed, we were talking a little bit about that. I get a phone call from, I was with the Writers Guild in L.A. and I was in a course. And one of the mentors, he goes, hey, man, he goes,

I think you should take a look at this book. And this is a couple years back. And he kind of got hosed over by some indie press, and they took a bunch of his money, and they didn't do anything for him. So I read the manuscript, and no kidding. I'm reading this book on the shitter. And, like, it reads so fast.

I think I was through the first four chapters. I'm like, I gotta get off the toilet, man. Like my legs are going to fall asleep. It was like, I was sucked in. I'm like, and I'm reading it on my phone. And so I call the guy, I said, you got to introduce me this guy, Morgan, Lorette. I said, I want to read this book. And man, it is like rapid fire.

And it was, he makes no bones about him being a mercenary. And he's a Air Force veteran, Army veteran. He was all over the map. He lives in Arizona now. but um and i i told him i said hey man i think we should you know get this book published um and he he i told him this to his face he he thought he was doing me some favor and i was like no it's kind of the other way around uh but i'll just wait to hear back for me so he goes with his other place and he gets screwed over and well sure enough phone rings hey scott uh how's it

going uh i'd really like to like you to be my agent and uh help me in this book i go i can't help you I said it's too late, it's downrange. Because it was hung on Amazon. I was like, shit show. You know, we had to go through all this. And I said, I can't talk to you legally, like, until you get the rights back. Like, you just, it's not how the business works. Like, I got to, you know, protect everybody involved.

So he calls me, like, months later, he gets the rights back. His court case. There's all this. And like, so we got to find a way to kind of relaunch this amazing story. Because I wouldn't have even picked over the phone. Because he, Borg is a friend of mine, too. Like all these guys are friends of mine. They're all veterans, you know.

But man, he's a handful sometimes, you know. So I kind of had to lay it down a lot. I was like, look, man, this is the way it's going to work. I don't hear anything about what your wife wants. I want this. I said, you're going to do this. What I say, when I say? And how I say?

He's like, you got it, man. Roger that. So we added some other crazy, crazy stories in this book called Guns, Girls, and Greed. We came up with a new title and kind of like rebirthed it. And it's done great. I mean, I think that, man, it's crazy what mercenaries do. And, you know, when you're talking about Blackwater, especially, like, and we all know that the guy that found those Navy SEAL, Eric Prince,

but there's a lot of scandal going in that community. There's a lot of turmoil with so many multiple agencies, and we worked with all of them. I mean, especially when we're in Baghdad, man, it was like ages, triple canopy, Blackwater, like, Mom and Pop Gun Clubs. going over there doing private security man is like some of the stuff that went down Morgan shares that and again he's another one of those guys like I respect it if you're going to name names or bar for 300 pages and hanging on Amazon like you better pony up man give the reader some entertainment and some information at the same time that's tough to do so but

it's it's been a journey man um you know again I didn't read growing up my mom didn't read to me. My mama didn't read to me. No, I was single mom. You know, worked two jobs and I'm grateful for that. But, you know, I didn't read, even in high school. I didn't read either. I didn't read a book cover to cover.

Cliff notes, like I barely squeaked by. And I said when we came in, like I wanted to talk about, we know a lot of the same people and a lot of your guests on the show. But Johnny M. Clark is one of them who you had on. I think it was last year. Yeah. Just like the best. Because it was funny.

I get a phone call. Hey, man, I'm supposed to do this podcast. The jaco willing guy. He goes, Scotty, do you know him? I go, yeah, he's a good guy. So, like, he's in Florida. And in any event, let's rewind and rewind. It's the first part of the book.

I'm in Desert Storm. Young Lance Corporal sitting on a 50 caliber machine gun in Bahrain outside Shaky's Air Base. And, you know, we used to get these care packages, you know, in the, say, any service member. And so I am opening this up. and I go through it and it's corn nuts and there's letters from kids and crayon and there's magazines or comic books. In mine, there's a book and it's called Guns Up by Johnny M. Clark. And I'm like, out of sheer boredom, I start thumbing through this paperback.

And man, it's about a machine gunner. And oh, one of the characters is named Big Red, this big redhead from, I think the Midwest. And so I get into this and like, I read it. and I finished the book. The very first book I read cover to cover is Guns Up by Johnny M. Clark. And so, fast forward, I've published my book. And just out of curiosity, like, I must have been telling that story. Is someone, the story gets better because I e-stalk him and see where he's at in the world.

And he's a black belt instructor down in Tampa. I was like, you got to be kidding me. Like, this guy's still kicking around. Like, he's 70-something. And so I email him. And we kind of go back and forth. I said, hey, I'd be really honored to send you a copy of my book. And I told them, like, Guns Up was the very first book I ever read.

I tell them the whole story. Weeks go by, and I pull a Manila envelope out of the mail. And guess what's in it? A signed copy of a paperback edition of Guns Up. So Johnny and I have been friends and pen pals for years. I mean, because this is 2018, is when my book came out. So last year I met a two-four reunion in Miami or closer by. But I called Johnny.

I says, hey, man, I'm doing this reunion. I said, but I'm planning my trip. If you're going to be home, I'm going to do a layover in Tampa. I said, I would love to get together with you. So sure enough, last year, I can't remember what month it was, but Johnny picked me up at the airport, drove me to his house, and we cruised out on this pontoon boat, and we're drinking beers and having snacks.

That's the first time we ever met. face to face, but it all started during Desert Storm when I opened that care package. So when you talk about things coming full circle, all of these stories I've shared is not to gratuitously promote books of clients of mine or anything, but it's like, because guys sit in a room that are like, we're lovers of education, we're readers. It's a struggle for us to read. And then, you know, this power of human connection, man, from everybody we've served with over, you know, the better part of our adult life to what we're doing now, I was like,

I remember when Marlissa sent that, you know, questionnaire, I was like, man, I just can't cover it. Like, I'm a writer, but like, I felt like I did a disservice to her because I know she's got a tough job. I'm not just following the protocol. It's all great. I know, but I felt like, and I was like having that epiphany on my tractor. I'm like, man, that's what I want to talk about with Jocko is this, this power of human connection and really what we share and, you know, I get it, like, how hard it is to do a show like this. Like I was telling you story about Mike early in the hours that go into it.

But there's also a lot of cool stuff that comes out of it, you know, and I appreciate that too. Yeah, no, like that's such a great connection. I've got a bunch of things like that have happened with me with the SOG guys. You know, I started getting it with John Strachram. I went through all these different SAG guys. Sometimes they didn't even know each other. They didn't know about each other's operations. Then I had, you know, end up with their Vietnamese counterparts.

Then the Vietnamese pilots. I had, you know, when I was a young seal, when I was putting in for that to become an officer, the admiral in charge of all the seals was this guy named Admiral Richards. Then his nickname was Hulk. And he had been, when I was a brand new guy, I was in the gym working out at SEAL Team 1, and I've got the Metallica cranked up. And the captain walks in at the time. He's the captain over at the center. And he comes walking in. So I like run over and turn down the radio.

And he goes, hey. And I'm like, yes, sir. And he goes, turn that shit back up. And I was like, okay, and he started throwing big weights around and stuff. And then later, he wrote the recommendation, wrote a recommendation for me to become an officer. You know, so I went when he became the admiral. So years later, I'm not a new guy anymore, but I'm still a young enlisted guy. And he writes a recommendation for me to become an admiral.

Well, then I had him on the podcast, and he was, he is famous within the seal teams because they got in a big gunfight in Vietnam. And he ended up, he was a big, strong guy, hence the name Hulk. and he ended up dragging a bunch of his wounded guys out, throwing his guys onto helicopters and on the Navy Sea Wolf helicopters, throwing guys on and like hanging on by the skid to get out of this terrible situation.

And then a few months later, I had the guys on that were the Sea Wolf helicopter pilots that pulled him out. So yeah, you get these great things to go through and capture these stories. And, you know, I've unfortunately had a lot of guys on here, World War II in Vietnam, that died. And so, you know, to capture the oral history of Dean Ladd, you know, who was a Marine that was gutshot going into Tarawa, it's like just epic to be able to do that.

So I think you and I are definitely have a lot in common from that perspective. And yeah, getting Johnny Clark on here was just just awesome. That book is absolutely freaking epic. It's absolutely freaking epic. If you haven't read it, and I don't know how spiritual you are, but he wrote a book, walk a little further with me. And, man, it is, it's something you wouldn't think from this, you know, Vietnam vet, you know, battle-hardened dude like Johnny, but like, man, it is just remarkable story.

He's written several books. Yeah, guns up. A whole bunch of them, yeah. Obviously one of the most popular. But it's just a metaphysical thing that plays. Oh, it's great, man. Johnny, you're amazing. Even, like, from the book side, you know, about face, which is what was.

my favorite book, right? My favorite book of all time was about Face. Hackworth. Yeah, and I started, I started talking about about Face, covered on the podcast, referred back to it a bunch, and it started selling really well again. And they took what they call, I think they called an archived book where it doesn't get printed anymore, just out there, but they still own the rights to it. It started selling so much, like on the eBay's that they reprinted it. When they reprinted it, they asked me if I wanted to write a Blurib. I was like, Blurib, I'll write a new forward for that thing. So I was like the biggest honor to take this book. And I stole so much leadership. stuff from Hackworth and I never met him but I stole so much leadership guidance from him.

Yeah. And here I was having the honor to write the forward to that book. That's, I didn't know that. That's awesome. I got shunned one time by a nameless commander, even though I just said I like name and names with this guy. I had, I was a lieutenant. I'm reading about phase.

Oh, yeah. He's like, that's a fine example of read. He's like, that's an example of how not to lead. I was like, did you read this book? Man, you're crazy, man. That's like thumb in your nose at once an eagle by anti-Mire. They've re-accepted. Like, Hackworth is accepted in the Army and the Navy as well,

because, you know, he wrote an article speaking of stolen valor. He wrote a stolen valor article about the chief of naval operations, having a V on his Navy combination. Well, I remember the story. And Hackworth wrote that article and the chief of naval operations, Admiral Borda, who created the program that I, eventually used to become an officer, Admiral Porter killed himself. And so this stolen valor is a thing, but man, you're going to get busted.

Yeah. So don't do it. I think I'll let Ben talk about it like when he does the show, but like one of the things too, like we've thought about is we're, you know, we continue to develop what we do with solid copy media is, you know, advise guys on like, you know, make sure it's accurate, you know, before you hang it out there like it's great you got a deal you got this but like it's got to be sniff checked man and air on the side of maybe what you did you know air on the side of like hey i jumped onto a five foot wall make it three feet you know what i mean like you know it's okay

no one really cares it's like and part of it i think people get sucked into is if i'm telling you a story you and i're sitting here face to face and i'm telling you a story and especially if you're a civilian and I want to I want you to feel how I felt right I want you to feel how I because I'm telling you a story so when I tell you that the I got mortared I tell you that mortar landed right at my feet now what do I mean by that because it scared the shit out of me I mean like 40 yards away because when you get bordered you like that might as well be right at my feet because it's scared the shit but you're you know your civilian you go oh damn you know that okay and I made you feel it like damn a mortar right at your feet that's scary

But then when people go from the, hey, you and I are sitting here and I'm in a conversation to, hey, we're going to put this, the words that you said, we're going to write them down, and we're going to publish them to the world. And when you make that transition, you've got to make the transition from storytelling and trying to make the small group of people that you're with feel emotional like you felt, which is good. That's good storytelling. It's good if I make you feel like, oh, damn, that must have been scary.

Yes, I just did a good job telling you a story. But when you're writing a book, you can't make those. kind of, you can't make those kind of exaggerations. You just can't do it. Yeah, I think there's several guys have gotten their asses in a sling over that. But I think what Ben has, Ben had a good idea. He's like, hey, sir, you know, should we, you know,

like start asking guys? I'm like, yeah. The thing, too, is, like, what we're doing is, like, we don't advertise. I don't know if it's by design or not, but, you know, through word of mouth. Like, even what, I work with the pollist on D.C.

And he's like, how is it that your name comes up like when we're at this thing got and like but you don't ever advertise i go i don't know man i'm like maybe because i'm honest and like you know it's an anomaly in this uh industry or something like actually you know give a shit about people like i do care um you know uh i think it's you know normally most agents are you know their only job is really just to sell the book and then send you your royalty check like they don't do all this stuff i do like i do i enjoy it though you I work with some cool dudes. Yeah. Well, it's cool that you're so directly, you know, passionate about and it's part of you.

You know, you're not, if you were publishing cooking manuals or whatever, you might not be quite as, quite as dedicated as you are to, you know, these are stories from people that have been out there, you know, hanging it out there. Yeah, and I've had a couple civilian clients as well. Yeah, I work with some ghost writers, you know, co-writers. And then, you know, one of my clients is, you know, the CEO of, uh, you know, Johnsonville Foods. You wrote his story and found out about me.

And, you know, Ralph's first book sold, you know, Flight of the Buffalo sold like 450,000 copies. And then, you know, a giant, obviously, you know, Johnsonville Foods, like, you ever read Johnsonville brought? Yeah, yeah. Awesome. That's Ralph. Like, you know, like, again, here's this dumb kid from, you know, Waukegan, Illinois,

barely graduate high school. Like, how do I know the guy that owns, you know, Johnsonville Foods? They're like, how do you know anybody? But I think one of the things. and you'll probably be the victim of this. It's like, we'll change numbers. Like, I check in on people. I'm like, just, I cultivate relationships.

And, you know, it's the little trick I've done is, like, when I fly, like I'll kind of go through my, and you've got thousands of them. Well, type up a message and, you know, I'll text it out to a few people, like, you know, a couple from A's, B, C's. And then when I land, kind of who responds back. And, like, just checking in, Jocko, like, want to see what's new in your world, like having heard from, you know. it seems kind of canned, but it's something.

Like I'm trying to maintain a friendship or something like me. Like, because when you have thousands of contacts and thousands of people in the network, I don't say you have to talk to everybody all the time. But it's cool to check in. And normally when I call people, I'm not asking them for something. It's just like, hey, man, how are you doing? Like, you know, like me calling you, you know, like, hey, how's Helen doing? It's like, shit.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. So I got this going on. You know, like Mike, you know, I have termites today. It's hard to make time though You know I think especially with what we do But you got to make time Yeah it gets um In organizations training

Education like are you making time to do that Like reading every day Like you have to I have to force myself to do it Especially when I want to read something You know that I Is new Yeah yeah Well right on man does that get us up to speed

I think so man It's been good I'm it's good to be back in California for a nice visit um I'm excited to get back to Texas um it's a great veteran friendly state man I uh I love it down there so but gates always opened for you guys for down that neck of the woods let me know that's awesome um Ramadi reunion 20 dot com so the reason you and I got reconnected was because there is a reunion for people that were in the ready first brigade or served with the ready first brigade or were in Ramadi and Gold Star Families, Ramadi Reunion20.com is January 16th through the 17th, 2026.

It's going to be an awesome event putting together so many cool things. If you were there with us, we want you there. Yeah. Just like think what are the last world? Over 400 people show up. Like registered. Just registered. Yeah.

Yeah. So we, you know, like let's get representation from all, you know, whoever you You guys know the deal. You guys heard all the freaking stories we were talking about today. If you were there, come down. We're gonna have a good.

I think there's golf. I won't be playing golf, but I think they're doing golf, but then we're gonna hang out. We're gonna meet each other, going to see each other. It's gonna be cool to, you know,

all those different lost perspectives, you know, the person that slapped you on the back as you got into a Bradley, the person that pulled you out of a Bradley, the person that, you know, stood overwatch while you were walking down the streets, people that were walking down the streets

while you were standing overwatch. Like all those people, their perspectives, their stories. And it's going to be awesome. We've got some Gold Star families that are going to be there. So Ramadi Reunion20.com. And register, if you can,

register for it so that way they can put you in the headcount. But this is going to be an epic deal. Our fearless leader, General McFarland, is the guy running the show. They don't get any better than McFarland than General McFarland. He's the guy that when we started talking about, this. He's the guy that stepped up and made it happen just like he did in Ramadi.

So please, if you, if you can, if you were there, then come here. Ramadi Reunion20.com. People can find you, Scott Husing.com. I know you don't like social media, but you are on Twitter X, but you haven't posted in a while. You're on Instagram. It's at Echo in Ramadi. Now, we also have, which I didn't know about the solidcompi media.com. Correct. And do they have any social media presence or no?

No, not really. Again, we, we have just been word of mouth right now. And it's been good. So we work with the right people for the right reasons. And it's, it's really cool. That's awesome. You go to solid copymedia.com and see what we do for people. And then also you can see what Ben does, like with his web design and guy's a triple thread. Right on.

And Ben's got a cool book, which I'm looking forward to chatting with him on here. Echo Charles, any questions? Oh yeah, quick question. Do you journal? I don't. I write a lot of notes down, but I don't journal every day. Have you ever thought about it and like, not wondered, but like a, like, do you have a reason why you don't? Because obviously you're not, that's not a foreign concept. I don't, I don't journal, but I do, I am pretty disciplined about writing something. Like, and it's, again, it's not every day, but I used to do this thing where I would do, I call it 500 words.

And it's like a fold, just a folder on my desktop. And I would sit down and anything I could think of, I'd write 500 words. And not more, not less, 500 words. And that's like wordsmithing. It's staying, you know, finally honed in your craft. There was a time where I never used to remember my dreams and my psychology first. Like, well, you're dreaming. I go, well, if I don't remember it, am I dreaming?

So then I started remembering my dreams at some point in my life. And I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would type. And I would put my fingers on a keyboard because we all know that's how books. get written and I would go through this drill and then I'd have to edit it because I'm half asleep and I'm writing these things down which are foggy. It's interesting but I don't have a reason why I don't journal. That's a good question though. But it's kind of like journaling though, what you're talking about. Yeah, I try and stay sharp, you know, writing and then I also again, like I love to read, you know, current events and fun stuff and do this, but like I also like

learning more about writing and the business and what's going on and trying to stay current. And so I get feeds for articles. So when I'm coaching people and they're giving me their time and money, I'm current, you know, and I'm not teaching them how I did it, you know, well, this is how it was done eight years ago. Like, I know now, you know, through trends in social media and talking to advisors that, like, have educated me, it's like what they should be doing best practices. And I do that with, I mean, we have discussions with presence of publishing houses as, you know, some of the concerns with writing and what they're taking in or what authors are expecting and what's new. it's again never thought i'd be sitting here doing this stuff that's a good question here here you

are anything else echo charles that's it good to meet you sir yeah right on just got any closing thoughts man closing thoughts um yeah this is good time that's that's what i'm thinking glad i got i came back to california man thanks again for having me on and uh i uh looking forward to seeing you in gorgeous el paso right in january of january of july 2026 by the ways when the reunion is. Yeah, January 2026th. It's 16th and the 17th. And yeah, you're right.

It's in El Paso. I didn't mention that. It's down in Texas. So I will say this like, on a serious, no, it's important to reunite. You know, we talked about a lot of things, a lot of different stories, how you navigate, you know, post-military service and dealing with stress and unpacking trauma. Reuniting is cool. Like, you have to make time to do that.

And, you know, so if you were in the 05, Tech 07, Ramadi deployment, like, yeah, out there. We'll be there. We're making the drive. We're making time. So you got no excuses. So thanks again, man. Thanks, brother. Thank you, brother. Semperify. Yeah, man. Thanks for, thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. And thanks for your service and sacrifice. Thanks for what you and your Marines did in Ramadi. It was a hell of a fight, as you know. And we won't forget those heroes that didn't come home. And thanks for what you're doing today, getting these veterans stories captured and out there to the world, man. Appreciate everything you're doing, brother.

bro and with that scott husing has left the building great to sit down and talk with him definitely brought back some memories and awesome to see what he's doing right now with our veterans and the books he's got all that stuff so check those out also if you want to support this podcast while simultaneously supporting yourself one of the ways you need to support yourself is by working out training getting after it you need some fuel check out joccofuel.com get some protein

I ate some some what I it was like a high low nutrient high calorie low nutrient food the other day yeah sure and I did not feel full at all like at all yeah if you drink a mulk whether you get the protein powder

or the protein ready to drink shake either one you will be satiated it's incredible yeah so don't eat some nutrient less food get some protein in you jocco fuel we also have a bunch of awesome supplements we're talking about eyesight dude my eyes are solid knock on wood and also take time more yeah because my time my my vision got better we did like a we did a muster we do a muster every six months or something like that sure and i showed up to one muster show it to the next muster six months later and I look down at the downstage monitor and I'm like oh did we do we are we using a bigger font and they're like no oh because I can see this

more clearly now only difference was taking time more anyways we got a bunch stuff that's really good for you check out joccofuel dot com or go to your local store we're really getting around so check it out joccofuel dot com the clean the good get some also origin usa.com I was wearing origin pants the other day, pants, not jeans. Me too, correct. But pants. Actually, at C.J.I. C.J.I was wearing origin pants.

And someone was like, oh, dude, I thought you'd be representing. And I was like, I am representing. No, no, origin pants. And I was like, no, origin jeans. And I go, these are origin pants. Right. And why was I wearing pants instead of jeans? Because Vegas was hot.

Jeans are hot. So I was wearing origin pants, the GTFO series. Anyways, we got to ever, and they're 100% made in America, made in American, uh, materials. Not communist materials, not sweat shop factories, but real American factories. So check out origin USA.com. Get yourself some cool, nice, comfortable pants or shirts or hoodies or boots or whatever. So there you go. Get some. I had some jeans on to the other day. No big deal. It was nighttime though. So the hotness. So it was the jeans. Oh wait to go in in C. J.I? No,

not C.J. I was, uh, this was not last night, but the night before. Where were you? Downtown sushi. Okay. The bunch of family members. Things happened. Got some family in town, you know, but that part that didn't matter as much as the fact that I was wearing the jeans. You see what I'm saying. I'm going to wear them anyway. That's all that's my whole point. Anyway, Also, speaking of apparel and representing jocco store.com, is where you can get your discipline equals freedom and good. Stand by to get some good after. All these expressions that we kind of say to ourselves, you know,

it's where you can represent apparel wide. Also, new stuff on the way. Give it maybe 30 to 60 days. Cool. Somewhere in between there. Thanks for the heads up. Anyway, everyone's going to sit around and freaking mark that on their calendar.

They're going to mark a 30 day period. on their calendar. 30 to 60 days. 30 to 60 days. Mark your calendar. Check the website each day to see if Echo got his shit together and got something up on the website. What are you doing?

What are you doing? How about this? How about this? Don't mark your calendar. Just go sign up on the, put your email on the freaking form on the front of the page, chocolate store. But email in there. I'll email you the day this stuff comes up.

So you don't got to miss out. Okay. But you're not going to spam them. You're not going to say 59 more days. No. 58 more days. No, no, no, no. Because you just tried to freaking basically span my mind right now with your dumb ass.

Yeah, we've been spamming my mind for a long. There's really new stuff. What is wrong with you? That's more of a disclaimer to you. I'm another go. Okay. Anyway, like I was trying to say, also we have what we call the shirt locker. It's a subscription scenario.

New design every month. I'm telling you. Now when you can get right now, just go on there, boom. You get this month's shirt, boom, on the way. Right on. Also, check out these books. Echo and Ramadi by Scott Husing. Check that book out.

It's a great book. And you heard him rattle off a bunch of other authors that he has helped out. Some solid books, which I haven't read yet. But when we got done recording, we were talking about getting some of these individuals on the podcast. Also, Dave Burke has a new book. It's coming out. You heard Scott mentioned Dave Burke. Dave Burke has a book coming out called Need to Lead.

It's a fantastic book. Pre-order that right now. that first a dish. And then of course, Eshlam Front, we have a leadership consulting company. We talk about these principles that we learned in combat.

We can teach them to you and your organization. We have events that you can go to. They sell out. So if you want to come interact with us live, go to Eshlamfront.com. And if you want to interact with us virtually, if you want to learn these lessons virtually,

go to Extreme Ownership.com where we have a online training platform. You can learn all this. So there's, there you go. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help Gold Star Families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom, Lee. She got an amazing charity organization. You heard Scott talk about Mark's mom today, Debbie Lee, incredible woman. She's got an incredible organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org.

Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, beyond thebrotherhood.org. if you want to connect with us. Scott Husing on the interwebs is scott husing.com. He's also on TwitterX and Instagram at Echo in Ramadi. And then they also have solid copymedia.com. I think he's going to get a little inundated with people that want to write books, which is awesome. That's what we're doing.

And if you want to connect with us and you happen to be in Ramadi, then come and connect with us. in person, Ramadi Reunion20.com, January 16th through the 17th, 2026. We're going to be there. We want to see you all again. Also, you can check out jocco.com and then on social media. I'm at Jocco, Willink. Echo Zeta, Echo, Zeta, Charles. Just be careful because there's a freaking algorithm that is curated to your brain to keep you highly emotional and insane. So watch out for it. Once again, thanks to Scott Husing for joining us. us. Thanks for traveling out here to talk to us. Thanks for sharing the story of your Marines.

And thanks to all our military out there on the front lines, protecting our way of life with a bold semperfy to the magnificent bastards of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. Thank you for carrying on the proud tradition of the Marine Corps. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service protecting us here at home. And for everyone else out there, listen once again, we heard about these sacrifices made by our U.S. military.

In this case, some of our United States Marines in the city of Ramadi, in the city of Ruta. And they lived in dirt and dust and grime and they fought and they bled and they died. And we get the benefits of their sacrifices. we benefit from it every day do not squander their gift relish it and honor their sacrifices by the way you live your life and that should be to the fullest and that's all i've got for it's night until next time this echo and jaco out