Jocko Podcast - 514: Devastating Loss, and Everyday Combat in Ramadi. With Army Medic, Adam Anderson

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Everyday combat, devastating losses, and the weight carried long after leaving the battlefield. Army medic Adam Anderson shares his raw story of Ramadi, recovery, and the ongoing fight at home — with Ryan Jackson on Canines for Warriors.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 514 with me, Jocco Willink. On 18 July 2006, Lieutenant Blackstone's platoon was conducting census operations in Teme when they came under a sustained enemy attack. In the initial barrage of gunfire, a bullet ripped through staff sergeant Michael Mears fives. Pinned down behind a five-foot wall surrounding the water tower in Teme, the platoon laid down a furious gauntlet of suppressive fire. Lieutenant Blackstone and specialist Anderson realized that Sergeant Muir was unable to move and lying exposed in the street.

They ran out under the hail of enemy fire and pulled mirror to safety. Next, Blackstone and his men attacked from their base of fire and aggressively assaulted the enemy occupied building that was the source of the hostile fire. only to have the enemy slip away. Such was the nature of the battle and to meme against a lethal foe who knew the terrain and would not stay in fight. And that right there is a little excerpt from a book called Ramadi Unclassified,

which was written by Colonel Anthony Dean and is one paragraph from that book and it's about a 400-page book and it gives one small example of the incredible heroism that was displayed by troops on the ground in Ramadi on a daily basis in 2006. And that particular unit was team dealer, the death dealers,

Bravo Company, second battalion, 6th Infantry First Armored Division. And this is a company who suffered immense losses during that battle. And yet they never hesitated. They never backed down. And they continue. took the fight to the enemy.

And we have had Colonel Dean on this podcast number 452. And we talked about his book and his experiences as a battalion commander. We've also heard from General McFarland on this podcast, number 439. And he was the brigade commander in the Battle of Ramadi. We've also heard from some other Ramadi vets. We've had Rob Black and Scott Husing and Greg Knight and Elliott Miller and Joe Hildebrand. We also heard from Ryan Jackson on podcast 491, and he was a squad leader in team dealer.

And tonight it's an honor to have Ryan back. And also joining him is Adam Anderson, the soldier I just read about who braved enemy fire to rescue one of his wounded comrades. It's an honor to have you guys with us here tonight. Ryan, Adam, thanks for joining us. Thank you, brother. Welcome back, Brian. Thank you.

Yeah, man. Good to see you guys. And just out of the gate, the reason that we're sitting here right now is because of Ramadi Reunion20.com. This is a reunion that's taking place, January 16th and 17th, 2026, the 20 year, the 20-year anniversary in Fort Bliss, Texas. And we got a bunch of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines that are going to be coming to this event.

So if you knew anybody that was attached to the 1-1-A-D for a day, for a week, for a month, for the whole time, and they served in the Battle of Ramadi, check out Ramadi Reunion20.com. If you know anyone that was killed there and their families might want to go, tell them to check out Ramadi Reunion20.com. We're trying to get as many people down there as we possibly can. and for me you know getting you guys on here we were just before we even hit record you know Adam you you were talking and you're saying like you like hearing from Grunts on here and I was telling you like what when we looked at you guys

and what you guys did every day out there patrolling and we'll get into it but you know you guys were on like an eight hour cycle eight hours on patrol eight hours on QRF which was bound to get called up and then eight hours to allegedly rest but you're actually just refitting and replanting to go back out there you guys you guys put in so much work over there it was ridiculous so it's an honor to have you guys here um you guys are the ones that that fought the battle house to house street to street neighborhood to neighborhood um and so it's it's awesome to get your stories out there and and um yeah like i said ryan we kind of heard your story if you haven't if you're

listening this right now you want to want to hear about Ryan's background what he did listen to episode at 492. I'm sure you're going to chime in a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But Adam, let's get into your story a little bit, where you came from, a little background before you joined the Army. I was born in East Los Angeles. East L.A. East L.A. Get some. And what was growing up like? What was your parents, where's your parents' situation?

My parents were pretty good. My mom pretty much took care of me. And my biological father was never in my life. So, yeah, there's that. And my mom got remarried. to my dad. I call my dad. Yeah. Sounds like he earned it. Yeah, he did. Yeah. And what'd your, what'd your mom and dad do? My mom was a courthouse clerk. She works right there next to the judge. Well, she's retired now, but she's to work right next to the judge. Okay. And my dad's a tool and I maker where he was. He's retired now, too. Right on. And did you have, did you have brothers, sisters?

Yeah, I had a brother and a sister. My brother's name is Gabriel and my sister's name is Francine. Old or younger? They're younger. I'm the oldest. Uh-huh. And then was there any like military history in your family? Any veterans or anything like that?

Yeah, my grandfather served in World War II. Okay. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. Did you know him growing up? Was he so alive? Yes, he was.

Did he tell you stories? No, not until afterwards. After when I came back from Ramadi, 2006. Yeah, that's when he started opening it up. I didn't even know he was like in Yuajima. He was all over. Japan. Oh, damn. Okay.

Yeah, he fought a lot of places. That was crazy. Damn. He always just to talk about being in Guam and a bootleg and liquor. Yeah, he, he, they set up a still inside of a, in the jungle somewhere in Guam, I guess. Jack. Selling booze. Selling booze, yes, sir.

What were you into when you were in school and high school? Do you play sports? Yeah, I played baseball for a large part of my life. I love baseball. Big Dodgers fan. Sure. Well, isn't that, like, required when you're growing up in East LA? I guess.

Yeah, I guess so, yeah. And what were you into school? Was like, did you study? I was pretty smart in school, I guess. Towards the beginning and then in high school, I started screwing up a little bit. I got kicked out of high school. What did you kicked out of high school for? For having weed.

There was some kids tagging right near us in the school cop. I had some pot in my pants. and yeah so he caught these kids tagging and we're walking by he made us all stop and he searched us all looking for the markers and stuff and he found weed on me what year what year was that 1992 okay and so I guess weed was pretty illegal back then oh yeah so it's not it's not as illegal anymore especially out here it's super illegal back what kind of music were you into I was into a lot of different stuff man I grew up listening a lot of punk so skater skater dude so a lot of punk a lot of

old new wave like the cure depash mode and stuff and what punk rock bands were you into dead kennedy's okay just going old school decay okay yes sex pistols what else so you were like a legit old school punk rocker yeah into the late 70s early 80s punk yeah bad religion okay and were you any good at skating oh yeah it was pretty good i used a lot of different pro skaters Could you hit an Ollie Impossible? Probably. I don't even know what that is. It's one of those Rodney Mullen tricks that's like really hard to do.

I guess everyone does him now, but back then. You met him? Yeah, back in the day, he came and did a thing at her junior high. Jack. Yeah, some kind of like exhibition or something like that. And did he encourage you to keep skating? Yeah, but he's more of a freestyle skater. I was more like a big ramp skater.

Oh, you were like a ramp skater? I used to like, right, right, big ramp. Chuck. And what about, I know that your future, in the future, you, you do tattoo art. So was art always something that you were into? Definitely all my life. Beyond just tagging school property. That wasn't me.

I was tagging the school property, you know. You're innocent, bro. Yeah, I'm innocent from that. Yeah. That was in me. But, yeah, art's always been part of my life. I've always been a really good artist. Even from a young kid.

And did you do something you naturally were able to be, good at and then you practiced did you just no it was always pretty good at it my uncle gregg he used to uh he was a good artist and he kind of motivated me he said man you can't draw like me and so i draw exactly like him and that's what kind of motivated me yeah i tell me i can't do something i proved him that i could i looked at your uh tattoo artwork online and it's freaking badass thank you like it's freaking legit like you you're highly skilled thank you sir now as you're going through high school, I guess before you get kicked out or once you get kicked out, like, did you have a plan in life? No, not really. Well, I was supposed to join the Navy. My buddy Eric and me were going to

join the Navy. And I ended up getting that bust. And so that screwed up my Navy chances. He ended up joining the Navy, though. Okay. So you were going to join the military. Yes. But then you get busted. And now you go down to the recruiter and they're like, hey, bro, sorry, you got a record. So you ain't coming here. And so then what did you end up doing? I ended up. selling my records and I ended up started working for the city of pica rivera doing what as a public works worker okay and how and how did you like that job it was all right it was okay i guess it was just a job to me how long did you do it for i did it for about two years three years something like that and then i became a a union fire sprinkler fitter sprinkler fitter okay yeah and that's what i did for the

the rest of the time before I joined the military yeah and how'd you like that job I love that job you're working hard you're getting a sweat every day you see the the fruits of your labor each day which always I always like jobs like that where you can actually see what you did pass by buildings nowadays and I'm like yeah I did all the fire sprinkers for that yeah I built the risers for that and all that stuff so so where are you on September 11th what are you doing that you must I was hanging pipe I was doing a Costco we're building a Costco right there in a lot And yeah, I remember that day, because I remember my former running up to us and going, hey, man, a plane just hit the tower. And we're like, what the heck?

And then he came running back and he's like, no planes at the tower. So we're like, oh, man, terrorist attack. And I remember being really, really heartbroken about all that stuff and seeing all the people die. But then afterwards, like, I'd come home from work and I'd sit down and watch TV turn the news on. And I see soldiers fighting for us. That's what motivated me to join the military. What year did you actually join? 2003.

So did you know what you wanted to do? I wanted to be infantry. I wanted to go and shoot some people. That's what I wanted to do. But I wanted to, actually, I wanted to try. No lies detected. I was trying to, trying to, I was really trying to get a tower of power. I wanted to go Ranger and special forces, but I just never got that far.

Yeah. But, so did you go, you, did you, did you, did you, you had the opportunity to go infantry right out of the gate no no um they wanted me to wait like three months but i wanted to join right then there because otherwise i don't know i just wanted to get the hell out of the east l.a you know so uh yeah no so they offered me a job being a combat medic said i could go to the infantry right then in there it's like right i guess i get helps with people out boom just like that how long did you have to wait before you left for boot camp once you told him you go combat medic it was super quick like a week oh it was yeah

Yeah, I was gone. And this is because your records were juvenile records of you getting rolled up for for weed. I had my juvenile record sealed. Okay. Yeah. So that way I was able to join the military. Check.

So now you're a 28, what, 20, 28 year old man. And you're going to boot camp. How was that? It was pretty strange. I was old man. Oh, yeah. You must have been like literally. But I was out running all these young kids, man.

How were you always in good shape or did you train for boot camp? I trained for boot camp. I trained for it. So I was already starting to work out. And the, the, the, the recruiter took me out to go work out and stuff. So I was getting back in shape. Chuck. Yeah.

And then how was boot camp for you? I mean, it was pretty cool. I loved it. I went to Fort Benning, Georgia. So, yeah. When you say you loved it, there's a, there's, most people don't say they love. I loved, I loved all the training, man. You got me motivated.

I was into it. motivated. Yeah. And you didn't have any issue with like, here you are an old punk rocker. Did you have tattoos at that time? No, I didn't have any tattoos at all. So you were a clean slate. Yes, there.

So mentally you were a punk rocker, but no one could tell. Yeah. Absolutely. You were able to slide under the radar. Yeah. Well, what about mentally when these people are yelling at you and, you know, barking orders at you and stuff like that? You're like, oh, it's all good.

No factor. My dad, there's nothing. No factor. I just kept telling myself, like, this is nothing. Yeah, no factor. Exactly. And then from there, when do you go to medic school? Right after boot camp.

We went to nine weeks of boot camp at Fort Benny, I think it was, nine weeks, and then went to street to San Antonio, Texas, to Fort Tam, and that's like four months. Okay. How was that school? Did you feel looking back now like it prepared you for what you were going to experience? Not at all. I mean, kind of. I mean, the trauma was not really on point there.

I kind of learned it on my own. It's pretty early, too. Yeah. This is what? This is still 2003 when you're going through this. Yeah, when you think about the medical advancements that we made as far as combat trauma between 2003, 2003, 2004, 2005. Yeah, definitely. We got so much better.

And it's weird, too, like for special operations medics, they go to a school that's like a year and a half, two years long. Yeah, definitely. It's a lot. And they're very prepared, you know, for what they're going to be doing. Especially nowadays. I was pretty confident on my skills, though. Good, good. Yeah, definitely.

Because I remember when they started implementing like T-T-T-T-C, you remember T-T-T-Riple-C, but I also remember when they didn't have T-T-T-T-C. So like all these basic things of like how to put on a tourniquet, you know, those fundamental, what we think now is the absolute bare-bones basic. We did not, we did not know that. Especially I can go back to the early 90s. Like in the early 90s, what we learned about combat trauma. was shit.

Definitely, yeah. It was shit. It was like, hey, give the guy an IV. We spent all this time practicing giving IVs. Oh, yeah, definitely. Like, oh, under a poncho with the red lens in her teeth, you know, giving someone an IV.

But we never practiced putting on tourniquets. And we would even, at that time, we would talk about tourniquets. And it would be like, oh, you'd be like, oh, if you need a tourniquet, you can make one with your belt. Like, that was the extent of tourniquet training. As opposed to what we should have been

doing, which is having like a pre-fabricated tourniquet and practice putting that thing on at night. Like that's what's way more important. So you go to the four-month school. But you, so this is now 2003. Like, you're feeling pretty good about the combat trauma medicine training that you're getting? I thought I was at first. But my confidence got a little bit more when, so I went to Iraq, my first tour in 2004, 2003. In 2003, beginning of 2004.

Yeah. Did you did you go from medic school to a IT? No medic school is our a IT Oh, that's what it is Oh, that's your advanced training, okay, got it So then where you go, Germany? And then I went in Germany and this is where you guys mean?

Yeah, right on same deployment So you guys already there I ended up showing you'd been there for a little while Yeah, at that time And how was your When you get with your unit How much time did you have to get prepared to go to Iraq? I think it was a couple weeks

Once I got to Germany Yeah, they just rock and roll, man. They just ship you out. So I was in Germany for a couple weeks. I got to meet my brother. My brother was teaching at Ramstein, so that was pretty cool. And what, was he Air Force? Yeah, he was Air Force.

Oh, sweet. So you meet up with your brother. How long had he been in the Air Force for? Oh, he'd been in there for a minute already, a couple of years. So you're the new guy, but you're all, you're heading over to Iraq. Yeah. How'd you feel about going into Iraq in 2003? I was kind of nervous at first, and I was really pumped up.

motivated, you know, I just wanted to go and help our soldiers. I was ready. I felt, I felt very confident in my skills at the time. So, yeah. And so when, when did you deploy to Iraq? What year was it? Was it 04? Yes. Or was it still 03? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So it took us a while to get out there because I hadn't been set to a unit yet. I was just known I was going to be in part of 26th symmetry. Mm-hmm. I was unsure which platoon or which company or nothing like that. So we go out there and I remember just going to, I remember this Llanian Biaop. I remember going to Kuwait first. Sorry, sorry.

We were going to Kuwait and I remember seeing the tower all shot up and stuff. I was thinking like, man, that's crazy. And then we flew into Iraq and biop. And I remember walking that night, for the very first night, walking towards to go take a shower and these rockets go flying over our head and popped like a hundred meters in front of us. I was like, God, dang, we can be in California anymore. I was like, what the hell?

Close. Yeah. I was actually my first deployment to Iraq, which was 0304, we were in a little base that was adjacent to biop. So we had this little camp for seals that was called Camp Jenny Posey, which this badass Vietnam frogman who is still in. And his daughter was Army ROTC. And her name was Jenny Posey.

And he named the camp Camp Jenny Posey. So that was his little camp, but it was right there on biap. So we, you know, we were. you probably ate it the same chow hall that we did so maybe even uh cleared our weapons in the same uh weapons thing there i remember just remember when getting in biop in that went oh that big old uh that is it called man those damn um clear barrels no not the clearing barrels uh the hangar no yeah it's all blown up and stuff yeah it's all yeah those big um uh bunkers they were like There were some hangers that were like bunkers.

Yeah. You know, they were super like concrete, like big ass thick, concrete bunkers. And some of those you could see had been hit with some munitions that were pretty specific meant to take out those things. When we were seen that. TQ too, right before we went to Ramadi, remember that? Yeah. So then where did you work out of when, once you got on the ground in Biap, where'd you go? Did you work out of Baghdad?

No, they bust us out to, do one of Saddam's palaces? and that's where I met our unit. And they asked me where I wanted to go two six or one six. I said two six. Did you have any reason for that? No, I just, I just wanted to go with my buddies. Oh, so you knew where some of your guys, some of your buddies were? Well, just the guys that I went with.

Okay. Yeah. And then where were you, so where were you guys working out of? I ended up meeting up with these guys in Meal Skinner. Can't Meal Skinner. Okay. And then as you're there and you start working, how's that job being a medic now?

It was kind of different. I got sent to HAC and then I wanted a little bit more. I wanted to hit the line so I'd go out with Bravo Company. I met Chris Watson and met Ryan. A lot of those guys. And what kind of operations were you guys running? We were doing like we'd hit some houses here and there. They always kept me in the back of the Bradley.

I'm like, what the heck, man? Let me get out, man. What's your perspective on that, Ryan? You're like, hey, we got a brand new guy. He's a medic. He's been here for a week. He's been sitting in the back of the Bradley. I was pretty fresh myself, so I was seeing new guys show up.

Had you been there longer, though? Yeah, I was there for the invasion, like the whole push-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all the way up. So we would get replacements in every now and then they just show up and just welcome the team. Welcome aboard. Get your shit on. Yeah, we're going out.

Yeah. We were talking about, we were talking about Najaf and all that stuff. We got extended that first tour. And I remember going in the Jophe, and then we were talking about, what was that, First Sergeant's name?

First Sergeant Copp, Coppridge. Copridge. Yeah. And I remember going in a Jophe and sitting in this Honduran camp, Camp Hotel. And there was a bunch of little Honduran guys, man. This little dudes,

the Camp Hotel, the Captain Baker. It's like a two-mile stretch and they got ambush like four times just rolling out there. And I remember when we left that place, because this is when we went to Al-Qut. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, Al-Qut. And now, it was a Ukrainian base?

Yeah. Yeah, we had the whole operation where we went to three cities in like a week. Yeah, something like that. And that's what you ended up at the CPA building and eventually. The CPA and Ajaf? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think we might have talked about that because we, yeah,

we were going to go down to the CPA. We did go down to Najaf. And that's actually classic because we got called to be QRF for the CPA and Najaf. We're in Baghdad. It's like a five-hour drive. No helicopters are like, hey, we ditched down there. And I'm looking at the battle map and I'm like, hey, there's a whole bunch of cities

with bases in between us and them. Why us? And I remember specifically the, they're looking at Alcutt and being like, what about these guys? and they're like, oh, no, those are Honduran's. And I'm like, okay, well, what's wrong with that? Like, said them, they can still be there faster than we can. You know, like, it's a five-hour ride.

But, yeah, that's the way it goes sometimes. I remember the wall was like six feet tall, so I remember when we were leaving Jop because we got Sentel Kut. And I remember the tracer rounds flying over the, right over the wall, right above our heads and stuff when we were leaving. I remember this when we were driving out there, remember? I was talking about this. When we were driving out there on our convoy,

And I remember just it was nighttime. I remember seeing a streak of light and a rocket popping shooting at us and some gunfire coming at us. And so we started shooting back. And I hear over the net, they're like, who's the hell shooting back? And they're like, the medics. Yeah. We're still a soft skin home viz and five tons.

Yeah, we were rolling a five ton. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know when the armored, up armored Humvees got there, but I didn't really see any up armored Humvees. I left in 2000 and like the spring of 2004, and I hadn't seen any uparm around this yet. You know, we definitely didn't have them.

Ours were just like the kid, we took the doors off those things, you know, so we could like maneuver our weapons and get off faster and just have those things out of the way. Eventually, we started doing some Mad Max stuff though and guys were like well door, like stick steel doors. We got a bunch of steel from somewhere and started putting that on just to give some kind of protection

at least to the driver, you know what I'm saying? We didn't have bulletproof windows or anything like that at all. We put sandbags on the bottom of the V's trying to protect us. Yeah. I remember all that stuff. Yeah, I remember the last podcast I said, my 240 was strapped down on sandbags and told me about soft skin on the V. It was redneck. I have a picture of one guy had a sure fire, not sure fire, a BS maglight.

Maylight. Yeah, we duct taped into our rifles. Yeah. You guys remember, you guys may or may not remember, but. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, like he was getting asked questions like, hey, like these guys need this and these guys. And he said, hey, you go to war with what you've got, not with what you want. And I was like, hey, bro, you might want to rethink that statement. You're making all of us who are sitting out there with 240s strapped to a freaking sandbag.

They changed our uniforms. We got ACUs. Yeah. And so how's the op tempo for you as a medic? Did you, because, you know, are you, did you work on any guys on your first deployment? Yeah, I did. The first time I saw somebody was at Camp Moumedia. What was it?

What was the name of the camp? Camp St. Michael. I think it was. And this was after we got extended to Camp St. Michael's. And there was this kid. They got hit by mortar, direct hit, and you know, spilt of his legs. I remember bringing him in today's station and working on him.

And that's your first. That's my first time seeing. First guy you're working on that. Yes, it was. How did you feel about that? I don't really see the injuries. You know, it's more like it's weird. I close my mind off a little bit.

You can just start working. You know, it's always been my, I guess, my talent. Stay calm and just start working. Try and stop bleeding. You know, just going through my mind, like what I need to do and stuff. So I couldn't get a tourne again on one of his legs because his stump was, his leg was completely blown off. So, yeah, but the kid ended up living, I guess, from what I heard.

Was he one of your guys or was he someone from a dentist? different unit. No, he's from a different unit, but he was, well, he's one of our guys. He's American, so that didn't really matter. Yeah, yeah. But you, but you don't, do you know his name? I remember his name? I know. And that's the first, so that's the first time you actually worked on somebody real time. Yes. Yeah. And, and then what about the rest of deployment? Were you, were, did you have more unfortunate opportunities? Yeah, we had 17 guys go down in a mortar attack Because we were sitting in a basin and two miles out of camp St. Michael's, that place they were always mortaring us. Every day, like almost.

They dropped nine mortars on us within like a minute on the same spot. And these guys were out there doing sandbag detail. And, yeah, he had 17 guys go down three critically injured. And we were just pulling guys in and started working on them. So how many medics did you have with you? Like, how many of you are there? There's like one of us per platoon. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. What was it you're saying this morning? The most purple hearts since World War II? Oh, that's like that. Yeah. They said that our union had the most purple heart since World War II. No kidding.

At that moment. At that time. Yeah. Yeah, Momadea. There was like Momadia and Akhmadia or something. But they called, that was the original like Devil's Triangle or something. They ended up, they would say like Fallujah. They ended up saying it about somewhere else too.

but in that time frame like that's south of bag that we go down there and it would be bad it would always be jacked up so so the guys got mortared you take 17 casualties yeah you're working on as many as you can three of them were critical and the rest of them weren't as bad they weren't as bad but they still were all shook up you know they had some pretty bad wounds on them yep and uh yeah Did, so three of those guys get Kazavac to out of country? Yeah, definitely. And then? One of his name was Swift.

I remember the PA was trying to, he got hit in the neck. And so he was trying to get an airway down. So he tried putting a laryngoscope down his throat to get a tube down his throat. And he couldn't get it. So I jumped in there and got it in there. I remember doing that. So that's a life-saving activity right there for sure. Definitely.

We thought he was dead when he left. Yeah. Like we thought he wasn't going to make it, but he's live and kicking down. Yeah. Damn, dude. And where were you when you were performing this? We had got him in the aid station. First aid, so you were in the aid station?

Yeah. Had you been out in the field with him? Yeah, I was already part of Bravo Company. Damn, dude. Two-six, yeah. So, but all the guys, I remember running outside after hearing the attack, and all the guys were all scattered. Everybody was lying on the ground and stuff.

and all the stuff, you know, the chaos behind all that stuff. And I remember just grabbing guys, just running them over to the A station. Damn. Yeah. And how deep into, like, how long in deployment? What month was that? It was like June. Yeah, it's after we got extended.

So it was like 14 months in. Oh, damn, dude. Yeah. What about on like a daily basis? How often are you guys taking casualties? At that time, we weren't really taking that many. I remember who was on the Bradley they got hit. Sorry, copper, is when he got shot in the hand?

No, not there. I'm in Moumedia. Oh, I can't remember that. They got hit with a big IED. I remember running up there afterwards because we're on the QRF to go check it out. I remember the medic was just sitting there, just not even doing anything. Like in a shock situation? Yeah, just shocked.

So you had to roll in and make things happen? Yeah. I only did. Still get mortared. every day. Yeah. Weren't that effective. But for some reason, our building was like the highest point of the city.

Yeah. Good aiming point for that. Yeah. Aluminum building and just like it was an easy target. Yeah. It sat in a basin. So two miles out, they could see inside our whole camp. And then we started running patrols out. Remember that?

And we, they brought in some paladins. So they would get a poo point of origin. Sorry, just saying that for everybody else. They get a poo. And we just, start shooting Paladin's back. That was crazy. Oh, they started.

Yeah, we had the Q36 where they can detect where it comes from. They started freezing the mortar round in the top of the tube, and they just let it sit out there. They figured out what we were doing. And so it would just freeze and slowly, and then it would go down and hit, and they just set those up all over the place. Damn, dude. And like, we'd shoot back.

We'd shoot back. Yeah. Like almost immediately. We'd shoot back, but they figured out what we were doing. So. Yeah, the counter battery never seemed to be as effective against like some moge running around with like a little 80 millimeter mortar or whatever. They just pull it out of the car, drop a couple or do what you're saying. And it was, you know, then they just pack it up and go by the time we'd return fire on them.

It was like they were already gone. That's a tough, that's a tough situation. It's a tough enemy tactic to overcome. Yeah, definitely. Mortars like that. Now, I guess nowadays with the drones and the. You know, you'd probably be able to do a little bit better because you can see him setting up, hopefully, and put it on them beforehand. It's going to be a little different this next war, you know?

Do you guys watch what's going on over Ukraine? It's freaking crazy. Yeah. Like, you, and I don't know. I was talking about this with a young military guy, just about the fact that, you know, when they're trained right now, there's drones. Like, even during training, they're training against drones. And he was talking about how it's, like, terrifying. because you're like in a position

and you'll get like an intel report like hey there's drones coming so they stop and they try and hide and then they're hiding but it's like all of a sudden you just hear mm-hmm and they just know where they are and they have the drones that watch

what's going on too just so they can film it for propaganda too like I watch clips of that stuff like they're just hiding a box hole and just dropping the unit you just out on top of them so as I was talking to this young military guy I was like, yeah, that's terrifying. And I said, I was thinking about for our generation, it was like, there's no indication whatsoever.

You're just walking and all of a sudden you're blown up. You know, like that's pretty scary stuff. At least when there's a drone, you're like, oh, there it is. I can react to it of some kind. But as opposed to just like, oh, you're just walking down the street or driving down the street. And then the next minute you're engulfed in fire. you know I think they both have their own form of terror

I'll leave it at that I think they're both pretty freaking heinous They got kids playing Xbox controllers Controls control these things That's crazy Yeah that's the That's what everyone keeps saying About like what skill set

Is it gonna be needed for the next generation Those what are they point of view Point of view drones They go first person view FPV drone where it's like They're like a little pilot Looking through their iPhone And flying in and just

going into buildings and like it's it's definitely uh it's definitely next level right now definitely yeah the it'll be it'll be interesting how you fight that yeah it's going to be weird it's going to be weird to see how it unfolds you know are they going to come up with you know some kind of a weapon like some kind of a high speed shotgun that you can just blast those things out of the sky i saw one the other day that that that you basically shot a counter drone at it at an enemy drone and it just goes out there and picks it off so you know things will escalate and we'll keep getting better and better. They can make something like a laser gun, honestly, like a laser gun that can hit something

and knock out the electronics in it and it falls out of the sky. Like there, we will counter this stuff. Definitely. And it'll hopefully level out the playing field as opposed to just being a infantry soldier on the ground getting freaking chased by these things. It's just horrified. The psychological aspect behind it that just messes with you. Yeah.

You know, just thinking you have the advantage and the drone just comes out of nowhere and just flies right into you. Yeah. And the other thing that's going to be weird is like, you know, we build, you know, ships that cost $3 billion, you know. And it's like, well, how many really badass drones can you build for $3 billion? Even like, because they make waterborne drones, you know, things that are like basically smart torpedoes. You know, how are you going to stop when 400 of those things come out your? Yeah, swarms. Yeah, swarms.

So, and then you start getting swarms below the sea and then swarms from the air at the same time. Crazy. It's going to be, we got some shit to figure out here. Definitely. So I'm very grateful that we didn't have to put up with that. Me too, man. Definitely. So you guys are deep into this deployment.

But so for me in 03, 2004, like just the, there was obviously there'd be enemy attacks on a regular basis. but certainly not comparable to what it was like in Ramadi. Not at all. Yeah. That was crazy. Not at all. So how are you feeling as you kind of get towards the end of this first appointment for you? I'm pretty good.

You know, just so eye-opening, very eye-opening for me. You know, yeah. And it had to be a little bit different for you because you were a little bit older. I mean, you're now what? You're probably close to 30 years old at this time. Yeah, definitely. I was 29. 29 30 almost so that's a you have a little bit more of a of a perspective of the world yeah then

you know guys that are 18 19 20 21 22 23 you know you're still pretty freaking you know i didn't feel they're younger than me yeah super young but everybody was pretty cool with me you know and nobody ever believed how old i was when i tell them like no way i'm like yeah i'm 29 bro yeah yeah so So as you're wrapping up that deployment, are you thinking that the Army is going to be something you do for a long time? Oh, definitely. I wanted to be a life for it. I wanted to be in there as long as I could. Obviously, you didn't go that route, but, yeah, I tried.

I only lasted almost 10 years. Check. So how was a reintegration when you get back to Germany? It was pretty fun, yes. I mean, you talked about it. Yeah, because we all got drunk. Everybody was getting all loaded. Uh-huh.

Yeah. We ended up going in that stupid That gym Oh for like to To decompress you guys or whatever Yeah so yeah And you're like oh do you have any nightmares? No

Do you feel scared? No do you react? Are you short temper? No. Just want to get out of here Can I go to the bar? Yes Yeah Remember all the guys hitting all the bars and strip joints Yeah

Our community was really really small When we left That whole place just fell apart So we came back like we were wild It was like kings of the world had returned We wild out And you guys had been gone for what Was it a 14 month appointment?

15 month deployment Damn dude Yeah I was only there for like seven Eight months So when you guys get back You guys begin another workup cycle Start training again

Yeah we ended up doing Grafton Holmes fells Yeah I didn't even got to go to like October Fest or nothing like that because we were always training. Yeah. Dude, you got jipped. Yeah, I know. The Army should have to...

Four years I was there. They owe you, man. You should get some more VA pay for not getting to go to October Fest. Oh, yeah. While in Germany. I used to travel everywhere because we used to celebrate German holidays too, just like almost every weekend. So we get a three-day or four-day weekend every other weekend. And so...

So you got to see Europe a bit. Yeah, definitely. We used to have a thing where we'd buy like a case of beer. I bought a liquor and get on train. and drink it until it ran out and then we just get off wherever. I was tattooing there too so that I used to pay for all my trips.

Oh, so this is when you started your tattooing. Yes. How did you get into it? I just, well, when I was in high school, one of these guys, he was an old Cholo guy, got me into it. And so... But you didn't have any tattoos yourself?

Not the time, no. So you were just tattooing other people? Yeah. Well, I tattooed my legs. That was it. I had some tattoos on my legs. I did on myself first. Or how old were you in you?

Was that in Germany when you did that? Yeah. Yeah, I just started, I just ordered some stuff and started tattoo. What was the first one? What was the first one you did? Probably, I think it was a skull on my, hell, yeah. On my shin, like a skull crossbones.

Right on. Yeah. I did that. Is it upside down? No. You're good enough in art that you figured it out. No, I figured it out. It's not upside down.

It's just, yeah. I did it with a single needle. I remember due that. It took forever to fill it in and stuff. Oh, you didn't get like the shading needle in the tattoo kit that you got or whatever. I went along. Because they have like starter kits for tattoo. You can get like the tattoo guy starter kit.

It comes with a few different types of needles and stuff like that. That's what I bought. And you know, knucklehead infantry guys, man. They're just like, yeah, you tattoo me a dog. I'm like, all right, man. I got you. So were you charging anything? You're just doing it for free service?

I was charging people. How much you charge for a free? You can ace of spades with a skull on it. I don't even remember. It was cheap. It was pretty cheap, though. Did you feel like you had a pretty good talent for it out of the gate? I did, yeah.

I picked it up really quick. Did you tattoo any chickens? Did you ever hear about, like, tattooing chicken skin? Yeah, pig years and stuff like that. You never did that. You went straight to human skin. Yes, I did. Straight to your own shin.

Yes. Kills my shit. Shit sucks. That shit and stuff. I never trust him because he was doc. Oh, that's right. So we know at least he's going to be keeping shit clean. Even our first sergeant, yeah.

Did he do any on you, Ryan? No, he's supposed to do one this weekend over here. Oh, damn. Yeah. What was he going to do? I don't know anything. Just whatever. He just wanted to get a tattoo.

Yeah, just from him because he did a lot of other guys. Did you, most of the work I saw that you did online was like all black and white. Did you always just do black and white or did you do other stuff too? No, I did a lot of color too at the beginning. When I came out here to, well, when I got to Colorado, I was doing a lot of color. stuff. When I went to Walter Reed, I was working at this other shop. I forgot the name of it, though, but I were just some really badass artists. One of his names was Chris Lowe and a really badass color artist. So I kind of treated off. I did a lot of black and gray and he kind of picked

picked up their color work from them. So pretty cool like that. Right on. So you're traveling on trains, drinking beer and tattooing people. Oh yeah, definitely. And you're doing your workup. Oh, yeah. And then we're playing guitar too. Traveling. around. Oh, real. You play a guitar? Yeah. What kind of guitar you have?

I don't have any right now. What kind of car did you have? Who's you playing acoustic? I had acoustic, yeah. We'd go and travel around and go pick up, play open mics in Germany. That was awesome. Jack. I used to go to this one bar when I was in Germany and every night at like two or three

o'clock in the morning when it was the end of the night, all these freaking Germans would sing John Denver country roads. Really? It was like a It was like a religious moment for the bar Like everyone would be like All right, all right, right, right, right, fight, fight, Did they all get quiet

And then they'd put on country roads And all these drunk Germans were in Germany Burbligin Which is outside of Stuttgart That's a mouthful, isn't it? It's the, it's where the It's where the seals used to have like a base there I didn't even know that.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome Panzer-Cassern It was like an old pan, it's an old Panzer base in World War II In fact, the building where the seals were was a Panzer like mechanic or a Panzer garage so they still had cranes that they would move the engines out of the Panzers during World War II yeah it was it was pretty freaking cool it was pretty cool to be there we were talking about bomb holder too they had like

Nazi swastikas built into the Kong on a tight headboarder wall damn still with the bricks just straight up yeah that's pretty surprising because they're pretty uh they're pretty strict about the way they allow that. Yeah, yeah, they keep. Like the, uh, the, the, the, the, graveyards for the German soldiers are like hard to find. You got to look around to find them. And they got these black crosses.

It's like, you know how Americans we have the white crosses. Right. They have black, like real heavy looking crosses for their, their soldiers from World War II. Yeah. The, they're very strict about that stuff. What base was at where they had the Swazis in the clear? That's crazy.

That was bumwater. Damn. Our battalion headquarters had swastikas in the brick. In the brick. Yeah. That didn't even try. I didn't put a sign over it or anything. The library had a swassi on the in the brickwork too.

Damn, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't put something over there. Because like I said, they're strict about like you can't, you can't be in Germany and have swastikas. Like that's illegal. They're strict. Well, check.

All right. So tattoos are going down. like I said, we're drinking beer, we're getting ready for deployment. You guys find out your goal, but you guys didn't know you were going into Ramadi, did you when you guys were out at first? No, no.

No, we ended up going to Kuwaiting out there for a few. Yeah, you talked about that last time, Ryan. Way too long. Like, the waiting game did not do you guys well. I remember though right before we were supposed to deploy a member, and we had this one kid committed suicide outside. With a saw in the porta party. with a saw

yeah like he wasn't playing around dude how many rounds did he get off a lot enough to do you like like damn i think he just put under his chair just laid on it and just I think it was still going off

but of course somebody stopped it I remember being downstairs in our because we're moving out the arms room member and yeah he was one of the kids that they put in charge of guarding our weapons and removing them out of arms room into the truck

Oh, you're talking about burns outside the... Right there. Outside the company steps. Yes, yes. Oh, that's different. That's not the guy in Kuwait. Yeah. So, yeah, right before we left, there was a guy that...

He was schizophrenic. Like, people would... He was a new guy, though. Yeah, he would be talking to himself in the room and stuff. He spoke German, too. His dad was German soldier or something. But, yeah, we were getting ready to go to the field, and he was guarding the weapons and put his weapon on three-round burst

and just underneath the sign that said we set the standards. Yeah. We all got called in. Lost her four day weekend. I know. What do they tell you? What did they call you and just tell you? They got the guy killed himself?

Yeah. Do they do any like mental health checks or anything? No, they were investigating us. They were asking like if somebody was bullying him or something. Oh, yeah. It was stupid. Yeah. Everyone knew he was schizophrenic.

Like he was like, he would yell at himself at night in the barracks and stuff. That's weird. That's weird. You know, there's, I did a couple of podcasts about, um, in Vietnam, they like lowered the standard of what you could get, what, who you had to be to get in the army. And like, they let in guys that were, or were basically mentally handicapped, you know, and it caused real problems in the Vietnam War. Now, a lot of them, they'd be like, okay, dude, you're going to be a cook or what you're going to take some job, like some menial job that, that they could get by with. But occasionally, you know, sometimes they'd be like, okay, you're an infantry guy. and like there's a guy that wrote a book about it

and he had to teach one of his fellow guys in boot camp how to tie his shoes because he didn't know how to tie his shoes and when he asked him they had to write a letter home and he said hey what's your address of where you live he's like he didn't know his own address he didn't know how to write home and he was in that freaking army

so yeah occasionally that's what that's what that's what you have to say about the army yeah we're all a bunch of retards I don't think I can say that. Sorry. So you guys were Kuwait. Now you guys eventually find out.

How long were you guys went Kuwait for a while though? Yeah. Five months. Damn, dude. Yeah. That's a long time to be sitting around. Yeah. That's what I said last podcast.

Like people wanted to go to war. Like young soldiers are like wanting to go to war. It's better than sitting in Kuwait. Yeah. It really was. It was boring. We would walk like a click to the child. We had to wear all of our gear because we were climatizing.

So you had to wear all of our gear, chaw back every time. And it's stupid training. We did EIB, X-Ridifference badge. That was an excellent shape then, though. Yeah, everybody. Just working out like crazy. Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Eventually, you guys hear you're going up to Ramadi. Now, you went up on an ad. Didn't you go up early? Yeah, I went with Colonel Dean and Capulence on. So you're back still in Kuwait. What are you hearing when you're back in Kuwait, Adam? Not really much. We just knew that we were going to like this crazy city.

And I guess, what was his name? Sorry, Kawe. Oh, Zarkawi. That's where he was running that city at the time. They got killed. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, wow.

So this was right after Fallujah, too. So they were saying, telling us that the city's really crazy. We're going to expect to see a lot of casualties on both sides, I guess. Did you believe that? Or you're just like, oh, it's another hype speech? Oh, no, no. I was preparing myself and my guys to deal with that, training them all up. We were all training up really heavy.

I was going to do my old, like, all combat scenarios, you know, and stuff. And trying to, because by that time, I guess our military, our medical knowledge has grown up a lot. So a lot of things have changed. So we got like those Israeli bandages. We got stuff like that. turn it gets the cat turnigets yeah yeah so you're training your individual soldiers to be able to work on each other yeah yes that that definitely like I said we went through T-T triple C which was our kind of uh is a three-day course or something like that so but my guys used it to save lives

100% you know so that's awesome that you did that with your guys as you were getting ready to go definitely training all these guys steal the infantry deeds so yeah yeah that's freaking that was awesome You guys get up there. I'm going to read a little something from, from Colonel Dean's book of when you guys get up there. He says, as we formed up for the transfer of authority ceremony at 0,700 on the morning of 7 June, we had three soldiers dead, six very seriously injured, and two more wounded in action before even taking over. So just to explain that to civilians, when you go in to a new area.

of operations to take to relief in place to what it's called. Basically someone's gonna leave, like a group is gonna leave and a group is gonna take their place. And so the group that's there, another group comes and takes their place. You do left seat, right seat.

Yeah. Like basically you go out on some patrols with them to familiarize them with the area of operations, what the enemy TTPs are, what to watch out for, how the area functions. And then the people that have been there leave and now the new unit takes over and that's called a transfer of authority.

So by the end of the transfer of authority, just by the end of that transfer of authority, the day that you guys are supposed to take over, you already had three soldiers dead, six very seriously injured, and two more wounded in action, before you even start your time on the ground in control. So imagine that, you know,

this is just like the worst case scenario. And I remember it very, clearly because you know we we actually went like Colonel McFarland said can you go and talk to Colonel Dean you know just like see what he needs see if you can help him and that's exactly what we did but you know we went into his office and it was like here's a guy that is looking at another eight months a year who knows how long to be in this area of operations and he's already taken you know lost three guys before that that time clock even starts ticking.

Right. What do you remember about the turnover there? I remember ECP3. That was pretty crazy. I was in at Bradley at the time, and I remember we saw the explosion go off and we're like, what the heck was that, man? So we're looking at the portholes and stuff,

and you see all the smoke coming up, and we're like, come on, let's get out of here. Let's go help them. Because we heard it was our guys that got hit, or the MIT team, Sarn Garza and Sarned Reinhardt, were on there. So we're like, we got to help our guys, you know. Finally, we got the old case. We ran out there, and I remember hopping out of the Bradley and running up,

and this one of our racquet was shot in his thigh. I remember helping him out. And then I remember looking up and seeing this lieutenant run out of his vehicle. Got shot right in the back of his calf. The front of his calf got blown out. And I was just like, man, this is crazy. we were starting right heart he's like a he was pretty cool man he was a good dude but um i remember him just they got hit when they were sleeping and i guess this big old truck came rolling in there

and just exploded on them i remember getting a ward too because i helped with the crispy critters the iraqi guys there's like dead iraqi guys so i helped uh like burned in a oh yeah they were in a vehicle or were they on the in a barracks they were in barracks yeah they were all they were gone but sarned right now i remember him going over this embankment shooting all pissed off at these guys i remember looking at i'm thinking man this dude's badass you know like yeah but i remember also remember colonel dino were there shooting yeah yeah so i'm sorry it's interesting reading his book you know it's like he hey is that the best spot for battalion commander to be in i know no but guess what you the enemy doesn't

care the enemy doesn't see that you're lieutenant colonel or you're a private like they're going to do something they're going to do it you got to react to it i remember my two sergeant tommy doc tell uh colonel dina get down stay down i was like young like colonels i'm like sir get down he's just like he's over smoking his stogie yeah yeah that's awesome um so as you guys are taking oh how did how did you feel here you are you've been there for what probably a week or something like that and you've already had all these casualties lost three guys uh uh trible love and and crombie these guys are yeah you know trible was probably the most heartfelt one because triple was a good friend of mine and uh knowing that he got hurt and got killed and the way he got

killed it was pretty sad to me what what made it uh what made that one hard particularly hard well just because we're just good friends we'd always be boxing back of the bradley and stuff you know just being stupid you know all of us just the camaraderie that you build with all the soldiers you you're yeah i guess we called them each other a team we're like a team too and so you know i mean uh yeah it was just pretty sad so you got like colonel dean with the burden of having all these soldiers and thinking about hey i'm gonna lose i'm gonna lose more of these soldiers Yeah. And then, but for you on the front lines, your burden is like, hey, I'm going to lose my friends and I might die myself.

Yeah, definitely. The way I felt was like as long as you give up, give up to the fact that you're probably going to die, you're better off. When you resign to that fact, then, you know, you kind of kick ass, you know, you do your thing. That seems to be the most common theme of just like if you're scared at being paranoid and worrying about dying or being wounded all day long. I can't even see how you'd get outside the wire. Oh, definitely. If that's what you're thinking about, I can't see how you'd get outside the wire if you were like, today could be the day.

It's like, yeah, today could be the day and that's the way it is, you know, as opposed to today might be the day and I better try and avoid it at all costs. It's like that, that must be horrifying for guys. Yeah. But I guess as long as you resign in the fact you're going to die, you're going to be okay. I guess it's the way I felt. I mean, and I felt, I was just wondering like, like who's going to die today or something

because we were in contact every day almost seemed like that I think it was I said we couldn't be in one spot for more than 13 minutes without being attacked yeah so I just kept it moving keep it moving

especially during our day patrols and you guys were mostly working into meme yeah so we talked about it with Ryan but what did the day what did the day look like for you normal day kind of like warfare the movie war a fair

like that's a Monday for us kind of deal. Yeah, it was crazy, man. I love, a lot of good times, a lot of bad times, you know. The good times were like when we came in firefights, we jack them all up and leave them dead, you know, that was a good day. But, you know, sometimes our guys got hurt too. Yeah, I lost one of my best friends, Christopher Swanson out there.

and I went through two squad leaders in one week. How'd that happen? Michael Muir and Swanson. So Michael Muir is the guy that you dragged out of the street. But he was wounded and he's going home. Oh, yeah. Well, he got shot. It was weird.

We were right there by the water tower, the big water tower, off of Spears, I.S. That was funny, too. It was talking about the street's names. In Romadi, how they're named all after hot chicks. And football teams. And football teams, yeah. Like Spears and Love, Hewitt and all the stuff and crazy stuff.

But, yeah. So you were talking about, so what happened with Swanson? Swanson, we had originally, well, we should start with MIR first, kind of go through that whole week. Yeah, let's go. So, sorry, Muir. We had heard that they had a cashier weapons underneath the water tower. and so we got sent out to go check that out so we patrolled out there and so was this during your

time uh like the eight hours a day that you are patrolling yes so you guys get a call from the talk yeah from the battalion talk and they say hey we get intel right now that there's weapons up by the watertow well we prepared for this already okay so it was pre-prepared it was pre-prepared so we went out there and uh of course we you know we have to walk out there because of browley's can't go certain areas because there's IED rid and rid places, you know. And again, for you civilians that are listening, think about what he just said. There's so many IEDs in the ground

that you can't send Bradley's in because most of the IEDs are meant for vehicles because that's a much better target for the enemy. You know, they'd much rather take out a vehicle and kill Americans than just kill Americans. Yeah, definitely. The burning tank is very good. propaganda for the moge.

Oh, yeah, definitely. So they put in big bombs. Fortunately, they would sometimes be, you know, activated by the tank itself or the vehicle itself. And so it would be easier and safer to be on foot. Oh, definitely. So that's why you guys are foot patrolling to this water tower as opposed to just taking brads in there.

All right. So you guys are on foot patrol. Sorry, I'm trying to know, no worries. Describe it a little bit. Yeah. And so we set up, we had set up a, sorry. We set up security, sorry, around the area. I have brain for it, man, TBI.

It's too many TBI. It's all good, match. Yeah, so we set up security around the area. And sorry, we heard one gunshot just go off. Sorry, I'm here you got shot, and he's lying in the center of this intersection. And he's screaming. So I run over across the street and I run over to where Lieutenant Blackstone was. And I was trying to get Mike, I was trying to get some of the mirror to crawl over towards me because, you know, we all heard about the old scenario that every train's for.

Like, you know, don't run out there because there's a sniper out there. He's going to smoke you. But I got tired of hearing him screaming. I'm not tired of it. I just didn't want to hear him screaming because it was kind of sad. See your friend screaming. man. Yeah, he kept trying to get him to crawl towards us and he couldn't. So I was like, and I remember seeing his, the bullet went in his left thigh and opened up a big old, big old hole in his inner thigh

went underneath his right and that's that came on the back of his butt. But we, I didn't know, I didn't see that he was shot in the right leg. I was just worried about that big, the big open wound in his left thigh because I was thought it might have taken on his femoral or something, but there wasn't hardly any blood. Yeah, that's a good sign. Yeah, definitely. So I just told Lieutenant Blackstone, I'm like, hey man, I'm going to run out there and snatch them up. I'm not going to leave him out there. So I yelled out to everybody pulling security. I go, just run out 360, just gunfire, man, just cover my ass.

So as soon as I hit that ground, started running, started zigzagging, and I'm like, my head, I'm thinking, please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me. And Bulls start snapping at me right off the bat. And so I just kind of zigzagged, and I slid on top of him, and I grabbed him by his IB, and I told him to get him out of there, and they dragged his ass. Hell of you. And then the town Blackstone and our interpreter helped me out.

The last few feet as I got them over to the corner where we're at, I got them under some cover and I started working on them immediately. And I remember everybody's screaming, all the chaos that goes down when, you know, somebody, when your brothers gets hit. And I'm just trying to yell at everyone. Like, everybody shut the hell up, you know? Like, I got it. I got this.

Don't worry about them. And so they were trying to call in our support. port element so we had a couple of hundred vs roll up and I'm trying to ask guys to help me get them up and some of the guys were kind of like just kind of you know you can never really tell what goes on in people's mind this is the first time though I remember St. Randall was like apologizing like man he's like I'm sorry he's like because some of the guys weren't listening they were just standing around watching me work on I'm trying to get him up I got a tourniquet around his leg and I packed his wound up with Krill X and wrapped it with an ace wrap yeah

And then we threw him in the back of the Humvee, so his legs are all up. You know, with Humvee's a big old hump in the back. His legs are all up there, and I'm on top of him working, and we're driving down Spears, just racing. And Molinix is just dumping around, trying to clear the road for us. But, yeah, it's one of those moments that we can't talk about. Sorry. And back to Charlie Med. Yeah.

And that's when his lips started going cyanotic, which is blue. he's going into shock really bad so and I always used to try to make my my patients like laugh a little bit so he's like bro I think I'm shot in my other leg too so I started doing blood sweep on him and my finger went in a bullet hole right below it was not saying well I got bad news I got some good news and which one you want to hear first he's like the bad I go yeah you're shot the good news he's both your twig and berries are still there man so he starts laughing so he kind of brought a little color back in his face yeah yeah But yeah, and then we get a trail in, man, they're pretty tight.

We called it in already, so they were already waiting for us, and we got in there. And I remember the crew, the, all the medics running out there with the litter teams and stuff, trying to pull them in there. I remember getting out of the vehicle, my hands were covered in his blood. I'm like, man, I asked some of the medics, I'm like, hey, do you have any place where I could clean off my hands and stuff? And they're like, oh, yeah, come over here. so and then I get called in I had a hot weapon on my chest when I'm four I still you know ready to rock and and they're like hey he wants to talk to you for a minute and so I was like okay

so start walking and I know you can't take your weapon inside here so I'm like okay it's like hey doc we got your weapon so I walked in there and we're seeing all these docs working on them and and he called me over and I was like He's like, thank you, bro. And shook his hand, and then that's when the first on the shot. I was like, hey, Doc, you got to get back out there. You guys are still in an active firefighter right now. So I was like, all right, bro.

I'll see you after. See after. And that's when we left. Went back out there. You took the same home V? Yeah. The Kazavak Humvee took you right back out there, huh? Yep.

We finished off our patrol. We couldn't even find the enemy after that. No, I'm sure you guys scared the hell out of it. of them. Probably. I don't know. I hate that. What about that weapons cash?

Did you find that? I don't even think so. I don't think there was a weapons cash there. But yeah. And then that was 18th July, the 20th July. I got wounded. Sorry, I got my purple heart. And would you get blown up?

What happened on that one? We were moving right by Jolie, right by the Blue Mosque. And we were passing right by there. And I remember walking down in the open area thinking, I was remembering my head telling myself, pick up your pace man you're out in the open right here soon I said I said that on my head I started picking up my pace I look over to my right and it's like everything went slow motion I see this rocket skip and bounce and pop they shot an RPG and popped in the air and I

remember seeing Raymond and it's pretty quiet they got swept off their feet and I guess as I was running another another one popped in is peppered my whole left side so I had a like they thought I was shot my shoulder and stuff but I wasn't but I didn't realize that even something popped right behind me and so Luka Bill's like comedy in combat man Luka Bill's down on the ground I'm above him shooting right and I'm firing and one of my hot brass went in his neck and he's like god damn it I'm like I'm sorry bro pop pop I'm sorry and he reaches up and one another one of my hot brass goes inside his sleep oh damn dude and so he's like oh god damn and I'm laughing right and there's shoot there's bullets smacking right behind me and stuff and I'm

shooting and I'm laughing I'm like I'm sorry bro I'm sorry dude hot brass it's hot brass bro I hate that it's very hard not turn out to that yeah that was one of the things where they would take like the big cans of vegetable oil and they would cut a hole in it and they had those 72

millimeter katusha rockets and they would put them in there and they would just wire it like all the way down the street hook it up to a cell phone they would detonate it like they just sit in a window and just sit it off I say when they stripped the wires down just was like a small little fine

copper wire you couldn't even see with a naked eye unless you got close and they'd run that stuff all over the place and then they detonate it yeah they were

they were definitely professional at making professionals that make an IED so that's for damn sure yes they were what happened with Staff Sergeant Swanson and so Swanson

well let me finish this and so yeah so me and Lugabill sorry I'll get this one here. No, it's all good, no. Me and Lugabeel started,

we're like, Hey man, we need to get out of here because we're out in the open right there. We only had this wall on the right side of us to cover us. What was they're shooting at these guys? At the muzzle flashes coming from the stupid mosque in these houses nearby.

And so, we got to run down this, go check on Raymond and Spree Quetta. And so we start, I go, let's start running down. And so I'm shooting. I remember in the glass breaking because all these stores were right there.

I remember the glass bust in from them shooting at us. I remember just running, shooting like this when I am for. And, yeah, it was crazy, man. And then we all met up, right? And we started shooting down the street, like walking like reservoir dogs. This way I felt at the time,

like, walking down the street, like reservoir dogs were shooting. And then we go in this house, and I remember doing a, the heck, is his name, water boy style. I went, boom, a retort strain.

You know, I knocked down this. this big old gate. And I remember Raymond and me, we start clearing this house and this dude coming up, mista, mista. Yeah. I got him by the hair. And when I grabbed him by the hair

to put him down the ground, I remember all this blood dripping from my arm. I'm like, dude, I'm hit. Raymond's like, hey, bro, you're shot in your shoulder. I'm like, no, I'm not. I started moving my shoulder and he's like, yeah, you're shot, bro. I'm like, no, I'm not.

Whatever. Anyway, so. Yeah. So at that time, we had done something. many rounds I went to my whole combat load I had three quarters of a magazine left damn yeah so that was a pretty mean fire fight how to wrap up um so our support element started showing up and so we started directing fire and they started dumping rounds and then the rest of our squad that's where teams are rolling up because I thought for sure that somebody's out there's out there dead or dying you know because they there's a well well planned to ambush on us but we just fought through it as usual

and so that kind of scared them a little bit because they realized that we won't just because our SOP at the time was just we built through an ambush and just keep on rocking you know but we take it back to them yeah I think that's one of the very few times we actually got air support

and got they dropped a J-dam or something all of those buildings I think that's a firefight they did a compass call I used to hate that compass call remember that they fly the jets or they try to set off all the

they set off frequencies or whatever trying to set off IDs yeah planning IDs but yeah and so uh I remember Sarm Poor we make it all back in the house and we're all bumping chest like yeah that was crazy man you know and uh well I was making sure everybody's okay and I forgot I was hurt and then one of the guys said hey doc you're all bleeding man what's up I'm like oh yeah I forgot about me so I started dropping my gear and stuff and I remember Lieutenant Blackstone calling it in and Sarm and Sarton's on the radio and he's like hey doc's hit doc's hurt and I remember silence and then I remember starting before coming back like well is he need to be evacked or what and I remember um um um um um um black don't look at me going hey bro you know like what did you be

evacked I'm like no man let's Charlie Mike this hell yeah I'm like just Charlie Mike this so strap me up so they patched me up and we went back out there hell yeah and I remember I I remember Colonel Dean was out there. We were going to go back out there to go find out and see how many people we kill, see where they were shooting at us from. So me and me and Swanson were walking together. And I remember Lieutenant Colonel Dean yelling at us like, hey guys, watch out the used to fire an RPG at you guys from that side.

Like Roger checks her, you know, like whatever. We just, he didn't even say anything about me. I'm all bloodied up and bandaged up and stuff. I look like a mummy probably. But, yeah, I love Colonel Dean. He's such a good guy. That's when he got shot. No, and then after that, I ended up going to,

this was pretty cool, man, because when we got back on Fobb, Ramadi, I remember my platoon starting, my first time were waiting for us because they knew it was hurt. And I remember I got my aid bag, because I never used to go out on patrols with an aid bag because they shoot me because they knew it was a medic so i just have a trauma pouch that i'd be able to

take care of like four or five casualties and so yeah anyway so i grabbed my aid bag out of the back of bradley and we're walking out and they're both looking at me like she's in their heads like god dang doc like what the hell and i'm like well whatever and i remember until swanson they're like getting to charlie med and get them patched up and i got sent out they evacked me to uh anaconda real quick and then I was there for a day I remember thinking man my wife's gonna flip out when she used about

this and uh did you call her and tell her what's up when I got to Anaconda I was able to I'm like I'm sure you probably heard but I'm fine and just want to let you know that they heard about what because they were calling her she got like 3 o'clock in the morning calls

like guys got hurt or guys got dead you know and so I figured that they'd call her nobody called her so she's all all panicked at that moment. I was like, oh man. Sorry. But yeah. And then, uh, ended up flying back to Ramadi. And I went back on patrol and 22nd of July was when Swanson got killed. That was a whole shit show, man. We had originally moved into this, this part of town in Ramadi. I forgot where, I forgot what it was called, but the people there were, were more, uh, they were cool with us.

And so we sat down, drank some chai with them. And I remember Christopher Swanson and his family sent a bunch of, like, kid toys and stuff, like bears and basketballs and soccer balls and all kinds of stuff. So we gave them all this stuff. And we were about to go out to go set up an S.KT at the White Apartments. Yeah. Yeah. And so we moved out. I remember Spiriqueta fell on the, you remember the, like the shit trenches.

Yeah. Feltz. Yeah. Fell in one of those ditches. I don't know how he did. did that but they put them back into bradley sent them back and so we we patrolled ren there made it into the white apartments we set up in s kt so we're all set up and uh i remember we get the call that they wanted to pull us off that and i remember telling chris i'm like man i have a bad feeling about this hey bro this what we do i was sitting on the couch chilling like on the throne yeah for

people that are listening skt is a small kill team it's basically a sniper overwatch position that you guys were setting up where you're going to be able to be in a relatively secure position relatively very relatively secure but at least you're not out in the open but you can keep an eye on what the enemy's doing and interdict if you need to and so that's what you guys were doing and then you get called to go and do something else what they want you guys to go do i guess there's a possible trigger guy a possible trigger man and he was supposedly in this call center right on spears so they call us out there so we we pack up all our stuff we start moving out, you know, wherever duty calls we're going to move out to. And I remember thinking my head,

I'm like, man, I got a bad feeling about this today. And as soon as we hit Spears, one of the main roads that's riddled with IEDs, and this car didn't want to stop. I mean, Raymond, we're in the rear of the pack, we're the team. So we're moving up the street. And this car didn't want to stop. So we both shot up this car. And so I was thinking, man, this is already starting off pretty bad. So we started moving. We move up and we get to this house. house where the supposedly grid coordinate was because they had an AUV up there that's watching these dudes, I guess. And we're like, there's no call center here. You know, so we go in this house and same time, I guess, that there was a couple of guys paralleling us on the stupid mopad, stupid scooters.

And so, yeah, they were watching us. And I remember going inside and talking with the owner of this house and stuff. and we're like, hey, where's this call center at? He's like, there's no call center, sir, maybe across the street. So I remember hearing two gunshots going off up top, and I called on my internal calls. I'm like, hey, what's going on up there? And Raymond's like, oh, those guys on the bike, I took him out.

And so we ended up going, we ended up leaving that house running across spears to this mechanic shop. It was a wild goose chase, man. The whole day was a wild goose chase. It was just bad. It's mechanic shop and nothing's there and we're all, like, we're all smoked because, you know, you start bound and running around and stuff. And so we end up going across back, right back to white apartments. Mm-hmm.

Right back where we came from. And I went around the, the, our squad split in half, and half of us went this way, and me, Swanee, and the Tim Blaster went this other way. And we see these guys walking down the street, and they had, like, these track suits on. that I guess those are the guys they were talking about. So we snatched them up and pulled them in this bakery. And Swanson and the rest of the squad went across the street, and it was just me, Lieutenant Blackstone, is RTO and Raymond. And we're searching these guys, and the rest of the squad was across the street.

And I remember searching this guy and looking out the front door, and we started taking fire. I remember being all pissed off. I wasn't even, I wasn't scared of nothing. I just remember being pissed. Like, God dang, can we have one day that we don't get shot at? It's from what I was thinking about. So I zip-tied this dude and I threw him on the ground.

I told him if he moves, I was to shoot him. But just try to scare him a little bit. And all of a sudden we're here, co-c-c-c-cun, a heavy machine gun. It started blowing through the walls. And so we're all hit the deck and we're lying there. And we're looking over and seeing Blackstone screaming in the radio, we're under heavy contact. And all the stuff. I remember telling Roy, I'm like, don't you leave me here, bro.

you know it was crazy and so I remember the internal comms was screaming up and uh um yeah I guess uh I remember yelling at blackstein hey somebody's hurt across the street or something so he stacked up on the wall and he was a number one man out I was number two and uh Roy RTO was the number three guy so we went out that door and we were thinking if we're gonna get killed man fuck it let's just do this right now you know I can get my head chopped off somewhere you know becoming becoming some because we were so much under fire man and I just started shooting to the left at the muzzle flashes and 10 blasts are shooting to the right and we ran across the street and Raymond never made it across because he said that we were

so much under fire that there's no way he would have made it across the street he's like I don't even know how you guys made it man and I remember it's kind of funny too because the tan black starts slowing down so I was like sir I went don't slow down keep moving and a bullet ripped through his camelback he left a perfect toll through his camel back like less enough foot in front of me and so that's how crazy it was he thought he was shot because he felt the warm water dripping down his back and I was like you're fine sir and I guess my eyes looked all bug died because we made him in the house where all the brothers were and um yeah he looked back in me and he's like what and he said nothing nothing you're good sir just keep on moving

And so we went up and went up the stairs. I remember seeing this guy lying there on his back. And I didn't even realize it was Chris. Chris was a really good friend of mine. And we're still engaged in contact. So there's bullets lying through the doorway up on the roof and he was just lying there. And I got up to him and I saw it was Chris. Yeah.

And he was gone already. He's taking a bullet to his mouth, went out the back of his head. It's pretty sad. And so I started screaming down in the tent blast and I'm like, hey, sir. I'm like, Chris is gone. He's like, I understand. He started screaming at me. He's like, Doc, he's like, you do whatever you can save his life.

I'm like, shot in the head. What can I do? And everybody just went silent. And so, yeah, I try again. I told him, oh, he was a new guy. That was his very first foot patrol with us. He's already eating the shit with us. And so I got Chris up on my shoulder and I started carrying him down,

down those steps. and I remember him almost slipping off my shoulder. And I started screaming at the guys. They go, hey, man, I need some help. I don't want him to fall off my shoulders. You know, I don't know if anybody knows what he'd carry a body. Like, guys are heavy, you know, especially off a battlefield. And you're all smoke because you're bounding and moving around.

You know, a lot of people don't understand that kind of stuff. How smoke do you get? And so I was like, doesn't anybody have any lungs and their breath to help me out here? All the brothers started just staring at me. now the guy starts staring at me. I'm like, he's falling off my shoulders. And then I guess, Sergeant Randall came running in like an angel. Just came running in.

He's like, what's up? How did you come from? I was wondering. But I guess Raymond, the Bradley's couldn't find us because they had a different map that they were working off. Yeah, so they couldn't find us. They could hear us and engage in his contact, but they couldn't find us. And I guess just by pure luck, the driver saw Raymond popping his head out the door. and pulled up and yeah and so sarnrand rando came on up i go hey he's falling off my shoulders

started and grabbed him he grabbed him and ran out the door and didn't see him anymore after that and so i remember i was just kind of going through it i remember thinking in my head like god dang that dude was a warrior you know he was like he was someone like you you know something i really looked up to very big inspiration towards me yeah he just got hit with a mortar round oh yeah like a week Before an ID blast on the... He just got hit, and he was walking around with strapped on his ass, and still going out every day. Still in the fight.

I was in the Bradley when he got hit. Yeah, I used to love that stuff. Me and him always used to put her legs up on the rallies and the ramp went down and step out. You know, it was cool. It was awesome. We used to do stuff, stupid stuff. You know, it's funny things that you think about,

the goofy stuff that used to do. Yeah. But, yeah, so our and swan swan. Johnson was a he's a that affected me really bad especially afterwards because a you know they do the angel flight and all that stuff and I remember just getting back to Bradley and we're all kind of wasted and smoked and stuff and I remember Sarned Heinrich he was our T.C. at the time he came down he said I hope Chris is okay I'm like dude he's gone man remember time Sondon Hineering can you just shut the sat down and his you know in the

little, he's the Bradley commander. He sat down his little seat in there and shut the door, turn the turret, and just kind of, just saying much after that. Yeah, I remember we got back towards the Angel Flight. I remember he wanted his helmet and his nods and all the sensitive items, so I had all that stuff, had his weapon.

I was like, why do they want all that stuff? But they said, they wanted, they held the Angel Flight for us to come back to give it to them. So I handed it off, gave my salute, and the helicopter flew off and I remember losing my stuff. I remember going underneath the staircase and started bawling, but I thought it was by myself because I wanted some alone time by myself.

So I went in this dark spot underneath the staircase I started bawling. That's when it all hit me. And I remember starting to pour coming out of the darkness and just scooping me up and hugging me and telling me, hey, Doc, yeah, I get back out there. I go, well, I just didn't get my shit together. Just give me a moment.

I just need this moment. And yeah. And so he's like, you need to get back out there, Doc. I got this, I got this. I just need a moment. And so, yeah, that was pretty cool, so I'm important to do that.

That was a bad day. Also just a Monday. Yeah, it was. What did you say, Ryan? Also just a Monday. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the movie Warfare, and, you know, I said,

what was a regular day out there like? And you said, like, the movie warfare. And, uh, when did you do you go see it in the theater do you watch it home i watched that at home i watched it right before came out here oh really i was trying to get my back of my headset i'm gonna get back in my head back in romadi trying to remember some stuff that'll that movie will put your head back in yeah especially all the rounds going off the way they sound sounds almost just like getting shot at yeah and i think that's you know that was kind of one of the underlying themes of that movie is like

Realistic. Just this is what's happening. And you don't know why it's happening. You don't understand it. And you're going to go out there. It's going to be total chaos. And then you're going to like leave and some moos are going to walk out. I thought everyone's going, you know, they should just show the moose walking out afterwards.

Like what's that? It's like that's what's going on. Like they don't have to stand and fight against you. They can just walk away. Right. And watch you for a few hours, watch you suffer. And then they can, once you leave, they walk back out and go terrorize the family. family again or do whatever they're going to do.

So that was, I think that one of the underlying themes of it was like, this is just another day. Right. It was. And then, like you said, you got to put your gear on and go back in the field. Yeah. The war is not going to stop. The enemy's not going to stop attacking. And you got to get your gear back on and go back out there.

Yeah, I take a little break after that. Mm-hmm. I went to two squal eaters. in one week and I got hurt and so I went out the next patrol next couple patrols and I just got overwhelmed a little bit you know get emotional started kept thinking about Chris and so I told uh sorry and for I'm like hey man I need a break for a minute so what do you do with you he just said me kick back in the talk and help out just just yeah just gave you like a some time not going on patrol yeah because I was on

patrol every single day and we never got any breaks especially with medics so yeah I was always on patrol how long how many days did he give you before he was like hey man we're got to get me as many days I wanted but I ended up I felt like I was betraying my guy so I had to get back out there so I did yeah because his break was sitting in the talk listen to what's going on on the radio so you can't not out there you know and after Penling got hit penlin ended up losing both his legs I was in Newsweek because of that. I took a bunch of combat photos.

Oh, really? Yeah, crazy stuff. Yeah. When did the Newsweek come out? Did you know it came out? I didn't know until way after. And I had a copy somewhere. I think my ex-wife has it somewhere.

But, yeah. And Penelang got hit. And there's a really famous photo of me holding his buddy hand. And, yeah, I was holding his hand, holding him up. But, yeah, it's pretty crazy stuff. I remember them pulling him in. remember when family got hit? Where was that?

He got hit with an ID and I guess he was in a rally he was in an up armored Humby and he got hit pretty hard and I remember then bringing him in he was just mangled and I remember sitting because I was a medic

they wanted to have a familiar face there so I was like hey brother like you okay I'm holding his hand all the time talking to him trying to get him you know coherent but he's out I don't remember if he ever talked or showed anything, but I remember holding his hand talking to him, and there's pictures of me, just right there holding his hand and trying talk to him.

And, yeah, I stood by his side until we walked him in the OR. And the trauma teams out there in Ramadi were awesome. They were awesome. Heck, yeah, they were. I kind of got pissed at him when Sandra McCool got shot, though. Oh, yeah. They shot the other Iraqi guy. his guts are sticking out of his belly

and I'm at the town Doc, I'm like, hey man, take our guy in first you know, because they're like, no, we got to take this Iraqi dude in. I'm like, but he's the enemy, you know, what the hell? Oh, he was an actual, he was a moose? Yeah. Like not an Iraqi soldier? No, he was moose.

Damn. And, uh, yeah. So I sat there in doubt with all that stuff. I told I first started, I'm like, hey man, I wanted to take his army cool back there first. And they're like, well, it's like, well, it's like something that we have to do you know we help out everybody you as a medic should know that i'm like no i'm like screw that man so to me i would have left that's back out there

did what did you and i see each other or so you guys saw me at charlie met at some point yes what was that when jolly got shot in the year i remember that i remember meeting you there yeah i was that That was one of the times when I was taking a break. And Jolly. I was at Charlie Med when they brought Jolly in. And I remember you standing there and checking on her guy. That was pretty cool because he was out on the mission with you guys. And you got shot.

And you're like, hey, man, we knew who it was. We got him. We got him. We took care of you. We'll take care of him for you. Yeah. Yeah, that was, I always felt good. I always felt good being able to tell you guys like, hey,

we're gonna, we're gonna get these guys. Yeah, let me just feel good to you. We got, we got people out there right now. They're gonna lay some of these bad guys out, man. We put it down. And I always like the fact that that would come up on the radio, you know, it'd be like, you know, uh, the call sign would come in and be like, you know,

three enemy engaged with whatever 300 win mag resulting in two enemy KIA and one enemy wounded. He'd be like, cool. We're getting it done, you know? And, yeah, like you said, man, you guys were getting it done too. And as I started this whole podcast off by saying, like, the amount of patrolling that you guys did on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, going out in that city over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah, definitely.

I used to love watching you guys. We drop off a couple of your guys off and you guys would disappear for a while. And then we pull you guys out of running gun fights too. couple times that was pretty awesome yeah we we wouldn't we always say that we wouldn't have been able to do anything um without the support of the army and the marine corps because we didn't we didn't have enough guys to QRF ourselves you know like we just didn't you know we because we had guys split up all over the place so if we got into trouble we couldn't call ourselves there was no we didn't have the support to do it so it was always

you guys that that uh came and pulled us out so that's why happy to do it too yeah well it's freaking appreciated. Yeah, definitely. I remember us in the Marine Corps, we go to Chahal, and talk shit to each other. Be like, your side is, because, you know, you had the river right there.

Was it Euphrates? Yep. The Euphrates River running right, the center of the city separating Tamee and Romani proper. Yeah. Yeah, that's the Habanilla Canal. Because remember it splits off and the Euphrates goes, and then

the Habbinia Canal runs south. And that's what borders Tameem and keeps to me separated from downtown Ramadi yeah is that Habania canal yeah I remember uh that was like you can talk about TBIs man oh yeah well yeah the Marine Corps so the Marine Corps had a real bad a oh which was um kind of north of Michigan for the most part even though they did have the Gov Center and then they had everything north of Michigan all the way up to the Euphrates right so they had a you know a really bad ao as well with the Ramadi Hospital in there and

firecracker yeah those guys were those guys were in terrible scenario we'd always talk smack on us right and uh because we tell him man your a yo's all jacked up and like hell no weird you guys gonna fire fight yesterday you guys were all jacked up we'd always talk to each other back and forth yeah that thought that was pretty funny yeah my building where my tactical operations center was was kind of just across the euphrates from the marine corps a.O and but when we go to the rooftop We could see the whole city. Like, no, not the whole city. We could see a lot of it.

And you could just go out there at night and there's to be firefights all over the place. It was, that was a lot different than being in Baghdad in like 2003, 2004. You know, you'd see, occasionally, you'd see something going on. But Ramadi, if you want to see firefight, just go to the, just go outside.

Yeah, definitely. Heck yeah. In 10 minutes, start shooting at you. Now, you know, this is like July 22nd. You know, you still got all kinds of time left on this deployment. for you guys. And, you know, you end up losing more guys.

September 13th, Schaefer. And then September 26th, Lanzarin. I remember that day because we just got off patrol and we were walking up our steps and starting last was coming down. Kind of bump elbows like kick ass, you know, just saying, hey, man, you guys take care of business out there. And that was lost in my song. I remember that day.

It's our land. That sucked. I remember our guys finding his nods and stuff after that. Yeah, a building on a roof like almost a block away. Yeah. Well, how'd that, how'd that happen? From the IUD.

This is so big. It was so big that I think, yeah, they found his nods. Maybe not a block away, but very far away. They went in this random house. Yeah. Because I guess we had five target houses that were hidden. and to catch bad guys because we, you know,

we set up a lot of missions like that too, direct action stuff. And so, yeah, and I remember that they pulled off because they were trying to plan our last route and the sun had just came up. And so they went in this random house to go plan the route out to the last targeted house

that they were going to hit. And, you know, we snuck in or the guy snucked in, you know, instead of making a big noise and trying to breach the door and all the stuff. We used to just sneak in, houses. I guess there's a big picture window, and this guy took off running.

And, yeah, so that was when Korea ran inside, and the guy pulled a gun out on him. How'd that work out for him? Well, the guy doing, yeah. Yeah, the guy tried to put him putting a gun behind his head and tried to pull a trigger and create. It was a misfire. He lucked out, man.

God. You know, dumping all this whole freaking magazine, this dude's chest. Damn. And then this guy, this other guy, and chucked a grenade out the window, and they're like, frag it out. And this new kid, Johnson, it was his very first patrol, this replacement kid, like, hit the deck. And he didn't get, he didn't get hit at all. Yeah, that was a crazy time. And that's one kid's first patrol.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do you start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at some point? Or you start thinking about the end of deployment? I mean, not really, you know, because we still had a lot of time left. Just caught up in day to day. Yeah, just day to day.

Just hoping we all lived through this kind of a scenario, you know. Yeah, I started going back out of patrols and stuff. And we started doing our thing. We started taking less casualties because we started becoming way more aggressive. and yeah we became extremely aggressive trying to take after you guys so we're doing a lot more direct action hit kind of stuff and catching bad guys was our main our whole goal after that yeah it always seems to me that being more aggressive is actually safer you know absolutely like as opposed to being being less aggressive seems to make you less safe yes and taking the fight to the enemy and doing it

on your terms as opposed to like doing it on their terms. Usually works out better. Not always. I mean, you're still going to, I mean, when you look at the whole battle of Ramadi in general, when we started pushing into the city aggressively, like, definitely there's a spike in casualties. And, you know, it's your, did the enemy attacks go up because you're in their face every day, you know?

When you're in the face every day, they're going to come, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to bring it. And they did. But over time. Worst back on them. Yeah, exactly. Over time, you start making progress. And that's like, you know, you could start to see.

It sounds like even you could start to see like, oh, yeah, we're starting to make progress. And we get better, you know. Like, there's some stuff that you just can't teach. Oh, yeah, definitely. You can't get from a turnover op. Like, you can't explain what to look for. You can't explain like what something looks like or what looks suspicious or, you know, something that would stand out to you after being down the same street, you know,

20 days in a row, we'll stand out to you if there's some, you know, like something's changed, something's different. Oh, definitely. Whereas if someone new shows up, they don't have that pattern recognition yet, you know? So that's, I think, another thing that's really helpful. That's one thing that, you know, when

you guys are on these long-ass deployments, even though it's like brutal, at the same time, you're going to get really freaking good. You're going to know the neighborhood. You're going to know every street, every building, the whole nine yards. We became really good at clearing houses and stuff.

Oh, yeah. That was awesome. Yeah. I mean, I used to look at my guys with pride, you know, like we're fucking badasses now. You know, we're kicking indoors and doing all that. We're doing that every single day. They were badasses. There ain't no doubt about it.

Ain't no doubt about it. So you start, you do, when do you guys start ramping up where you start knowing when their replacement units coming? In November, I guess, wasn't it? Yeah. How did that did you start getting more paranoid towards the end of deployment like I don't think I did I was just kind of like happy a little bit we got like he said more aggressive like there was parts we got pissed up of the city that like you know for the longest time no one had even been into

and we're like fucking like we're just going to go let's go they haven't they're not expecting us so we're just going to go in there and that's what we do was do thunder runs down the street just waiting to see the IADs and catch them off guard go there and do it so thing at nighttime and that was effective yeah sounds reckless today but it was effective i mean i remember do this night this night operation and uh we had a couple of bad guys that we had to go get and uh i remember stacked up on this wall outside this house and uh there was a tank that was set up on an op right outside of uh right around michigan there was a tank out there and i guess some my some moose guys set up a bomb underneath and they went

went off. I remember us just thinking in our heads. Like I remember looking at our guys. Nobody even reacted. We just all went inside the house. We just did our thing, flowed through the house, cleared it, came outside, and then I remember us walking and, uh, Sergeant Randall's like, hey, man, watch out for that, that, that is a saw blade, the little trigger. Those pressure, pressure plates. Oh, yeah, a little pressure plate, saw blade, separated from another sawblade type thing that will fold on itself. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm like, what do we can do about that? And he's like, no. Just we'll call it in and let you know D D.D figure it out. Mm-hmm.

Just marked the grid because we had a bunch of houses that we had to hit that night Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember thinking that this is awesome, man. I like this is crazy stuff, you know. This is what I joined the Army for. Yeah. Yeah. And then you guys, did you guys not get replaced?

Like, did you guys do a turnover with another unit of your AO? Yeah, okay. First ID, I think it was, wasn't it? Yeah, but we set up cop dealer. That was our last mission. That was our last one. That's when my squad, like, walked all the way back. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, like four or five clicks, like just down through the city because for whatever reason, they didn't come out there. And we didn't have any vehicles left. All our Bradley was blown up, all our homoies were blown up. So, like, we just walked by static positions and check in with them and they were watching us the whole time. But, like, yeah, they didn't, like, they didn't take over a cop dealer. I don't know.

I don't know if we scared them or what. Crazy way to end deployment. It was a walk back. What do you remember about turnover ops with the guys? Like trying to explain to them the situation that they were facing? Kind of. I remember some of the guys were just like, oh, man, it's crazy. I'm like, you'll be fine, man.

Just keep your head on swivel and just be aware of your situational awareness, man. And just always watch over your guys, you know, because they're medics. Yeah. So I always tell them, just make sure you guys are all good. Did you do any tattoos on anybody while you were in her body? Never deployed. Yeah. Yeah.

Never tattoo anybody when I was deployed. No way, dude. When would I have time? I was going to say. When would I have time? Never. The only time that whenever we were gone, it was either at the gym or eating food at Chow Hall or sleeping.

Or whenever we had some downtime. How was the, so you're getting ready to go home? You're heading home. How was that was that was that was that emotionally like leaving Ramadi it's kind of sad I felt like left my heart there a little bit you know like I wish one day that we could go and travel back there just kind of see how this town ended up you know like World War II survivors you know they go up to like Normandy and stuff and just kind of like you know wow kind of reminisce I don't have that feeling yet I don't have that yet I don't have it like people are like oh you you want to go back there and like nope I don't I don't want to go back there maybe someday I will right now I don't have any freaking desire to go back there at all occasionally something like it'd be interesting to look at it like just stand up and walk around and not be like running around and moving from cover to cover it might be a little bit interesting to do that but no I don't I don't really have any like guys that go back to Vietnam you

know guys that went back to the Hanoi Hilton you know after they were prisoners of war there for five three four seven years or whatever you know like they go back there I don't have that yet for uh for Iraq at all. Like I don't want to go back there. I don't know. I feel like I haven't finished business, man. Mm-hmm.

I really want to. Maybe if it was just a freaking nicer place. You know what I mean? It's like a hot, dirty shit hole. Like I do not want to go back there. If it was like, maybe if it was like a tropical paradise, maybe I'll be like, oh, yeah, I'll go back there and check it out. Yeah.

I don't think so. So you get back to Germany once again. Yeah. And how's the decompression this time? It's pretty crazy. I mean, I was kind of pissed off still. I was getting fights and stuff. Just fighting these guys that hadn't been deployed.

They were just kind of sitting in the rear with the gear. And these guys always talk smack and stuff. And I'd lose my shit on these guys. Start beating them up and stuff. Did you get in any trouble? Not really. I mean, we always policed each other up. You know, we took care of each other.

So I never was alone, you know, so I had my guys with me. guys with me but yeah this is my stuff sometimes every now and then what was not you got you ended up you were saying earlier you got stationed at walter reed right yeah and then after that i i need to decompress i got stationed at walter reed i was there and that was in a cardiac step-down ward what's that like where they do a heart cast and stuff like that what's a heart castor i know what that cath catheter oh okay they put in splints or something like that you know heart cast so are you working on guys that were coming from combat are these like older veterans these are older veterans and stuff but i was also part of the incoming wounded uh incoming wounded warriors like uh where where

where i'd go in and process them so whenever they had incoming guys that were coming from lodgible or something that you know these guys lost their legs and they're all jacked up you know and i'd help them out plus panlin was up there too and korea and all the guys that were injured from umadi were there too oh that's kind of cool you got to see those guys how was it like welcoming or yeah i guess welcoming these wounded guys how's that affect you mentally it was okay i felt good because i remember seeing sarin mirror there oh yeah afterwards yeah it's kind of heartfelt thing i was sitting in the chow hall eating some food and i hear this guy yell hey doc turn around the sarned mirror

damn dude and he's walking over with this cane and he's like i just want to say thank you we hugged right there and the whole place when silent there's like hundreds of people in there the whole place went silent. And I just remember looking around. We're both kind of crying and stuff. And he's like, thank you, bro, for saving my life, man. And I was just like, man, you would have done the same thing for me, bro. It's kind of a heartfelt moment there, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And that was pretty cool. And so you keep that job for... I was there for a year and a half and I missed the line. So I re-enlisted into the Army. at this time it was like I my original enlistment tour was six years so then I relisted for four more and then uh yeah so from from there I went to Fort Carson

Colorado and so I wanted to get closer to home towards LA area but I don't know we're getting there yeah it's a little closer yeah closer than Germany closer than DC yeah that place was a dump It's crazy how From one street to the next How it turns into like Really ghetto to like you know Really nice

In Washington D.C. It was cool. I met a lot of cool people there A lot of cool nurses I got to meet Bob Dole A lot of Secret Service agents And all this crazy stuff

So we had a special elevator The gold elevator The gold elevator Yeah the president For like And all that stuff You had to have a certain clearance to get on the elevator

I remember getting in it. And there was all these secret service dudes in there, all tacticaled out. They go into the interstitial floors on Walter Reed and go set up there counter-sniper teams up there. That's cool. Pretty cool stuff, yeah. Check. So your next assignment is with the fourth engineers. Is that right?

Yes, yes. Is that the unit you picked to go to? Kind of. I wanted to go back on the line unit. I was hoping for an infantry unit, but they sent me to fourth engineers. Yeah, and I always have a good time talking to engineers. Yeah, because no one thinks engineers just build stuff. And it's like, no, engineers freaking clear roads for bombs.

I hate it. It's a freaking nightmare. I see it out in patrol. I see it out in the vehicles because they roll real slow. It'd be interrogating a possible IED or something I'd get out. And nobody really told me anything because I was an experienced medic by that time. I remember walking up to like Taliban

You know they looked apart And they're mad dog in you I knew they were Taliban And I'd walk up to it and start talking smack to them And I remember my commander Yali and me Anderson what how you do I'm trying to pick a fight You know

I would tell them all kinds of crap Like come on get your guys out here man Let's shoot this shit out right now And this is When did you deploy to Afghanistan then This was 2009 To 10 That was a rough time

Where were you? Kandahar, R.C. South. Mm-hmm. It was kind of cool because there was a little bit of rank on me at that time. So I was flying out all over Afghanistan, because they pushed out our guys all these different areas, these little, like little fobs here and there. So that's where I meant Sarton's at. He was on this little fob, a tiny little place, man.

Mm-hmm. So I'd fly around helicopters and all this crazy stuff just trying to check on my guys. You'd be checking on the medics that you have. medics that you had no checking on everybody okay got some medics making sure everybody got everything they need got it so but but is it would each one of these units have their own medic with them yeah that you were kind of overall in charge of but you'd go out there and check on them and make sure they have everything and everything's cool yep and how was that deployment it was okay we really have that many casualties uh i i got in there and they just deployed from iraq to afghanistan so they were

I think I had like six months in Afghanistan that tour, something like that seven months. Because they had already, when I got to the unit, they had already deployed. And so I was back there trying to train the guys up, all these new guys, using my combat scenarios, trying to train them up. And I was doing all these like the TC3, the tactical.

Yeah, T-T-R-C-T-R-C, yeah. Yeah, that was teaching them all that stuff, because everything had changed by that. Now we did M-SREA. reports for people getting blown up and stuff back then Ramadi man you get blown up just like hey man you're good charlie mike this let's get continue mission man what was the new protocol um they do mace reports you're even near a blast and uh it's like they pull you off the line for a couple days of protocol type yeah to make sure that your head was okay but i forgot the the acronym stood for

mace report but they used to do that because i guess they started finding out that all these blasts and stuff man yeah it turns out they might not be very good yeah that's why i say tb i man because i've been blown up like over half a dozen times you know it's crazy stuff and what they're finding out now is not just getting blown up it's when you're shooting a 50 cal it's when you shoot a rocket it's when you throw crashes you know crash bangs into a room it's when you're like anything like blown breaching charges like all these little might micro concussions over time, which we have probably literally thousands of them. You know, like, I mean, I used to be like a range safety officer.

We'd be shooting rockets. So you go out back in the old days. I'd go out and like every guy in a platoon is going to shoot a rocket. Right. You know, maybe two. So there's 20 or 30 rockets in a day and you go home and you're like, where you get back to the barracks, you're like, well, I kind of have a headache, but I'm not going to complain about it or anything. Definitely not normal.

And, you know, he's sitting there, like, shooting the 50 cows, sitting there, like, you're doing teaching CQC and there's guys crashing the rooms, right? And you're above in the catwalk, but you're getting crashed all day long. Like, so you get a lot of breaching charges. I mean, you know, you know, what's the minimum safe distance for a breaching charge? It's pretty freaking close. And what's the minimum safe distance for a breaching charge in combat? It's whatever you happen to get. So, yeah, these little things.

they add up and the you know you getting hit by a bunch of iEDs yeah those are big and then on top of that you put all these little micro concussions that you get over that time that's stuff they're finding out now that that stuff really adds up and yeah it does causes some significant issues um so when you get back home from that deployment is that when you start like uh you start feeling like maybe you need to get some assessments done no my back was kind of messed up already and so uh Yeah, I just I kept going on the dock because my back my legs would go numb every now and then Come to find out my back was jacked up so from I guess Gain blown up in Bradley's all the time, you know and that's a metal it's all metal in there so nothing hit

You know just kind of jacked my whole back man, so so did you have some kind of disc problem or? They couldn't figure it out but I got med boarded out honorably You know and then so we're 20 years of later just recently how do you feel when you get med boarded out today i was really sad well did they prepare you for it like what are they telling you well my my PA was like all right Adam Anderson or whatever these call me Andy or at ad or whatever sorry Anderson whatever um my um PA was like um she's like well you've been serving this country for long enough this time for us take care of you now so I'm like no ma'am I don't want

get out of here yet. You know, I want to do my 20 years, at least. And so, but she's like, now your back's not going to make it. You're not going to make it. I'm like, man, I'll overcome all this stuff. I'll make it. Whatever. I'm just a medic, you know.

But I didn't think about it. I'm not just a medic, you know. I was lifeline for a lot of guys. But they'd give you no choice eventually. Yeah, they didn't give you the choice. Yeah. And then how long does it take before, when they tell you you're done and then you're out, How long is that?

It was like six months. I think it was the whole process. It was pretty quick for me. Did you come up with any kind of plan or what was your plan? I didn't have a plan, man. I got out and I was like, man, what that can I do now? So I called up my old union hall. Okay.

And I asked him like, hey, is there any way I could get a job out here in Colorado hanging pipe again, sprinkler pipe and like, oh yeah, definitely. So I get a call that next day from the business manager from the union hall out in Colorado. and he's like hey man you're trying to find some work and he's like oh yeah but not right now bro I'm still in the military man I'm not out for like a couple more months

you know just trying to check in that's pretty cool that the union took care of you though definitely but I was tattooing doing pretty good work by then I got pretty good so I picked the best shop in town so I started working at West Side tattoo yeah and how's that living it was pretty good man

I was making a lot of money there so yeah it was pretty good and is it like when you're as good as you are at tattooing what percentage of people come in and are like hey I want you to do this particular tattoo on me and what percentage of people go do something cool on my arm oh I try to do something cool on everybody I try and talk to me in a cooler stuff

yeah you guys got an upcharge them but you get up upgrade their their ideas yeah so I'd always try and make it make whatever tattooman do on them really cool and how much does it cost for like uh for a tattoo like 120 dollars an hour that's charged by the hour huh yeah what's have you done like somebody entire back piece oh definitely and sleeves and then full torsos full arm sleeves yeah i've done a lot big work on people and you're you said it's 120 bucks an hour yeah so you're making good money you're working in freaking definitely five six eight hours a day or something like how long

How long can you tattoo before you're like tired or like 10 hours? Oh, you were doing 10 hour days? Yeah, sometimes. Damn. Yeah, my back's pretty jacked up because of that now. Need over, just working on people. Yeah. And how long did you do that for?

I've done it till this past year. Yeah, now fully 100% retired from the military. Right on. Right on. I'm 100%, so. Are you still doing occasional tattoos if someone's kind of down for it? Just my friends. Yeah.

My friends, my family. Do you, do you, like, what kind of recognition? Because I look, like I said, I looked at your tattoos are freaking awesome. Thank you. Did you get in a bunch of magazines and shit like that? I've been in magazines, yes. I've done a lot of conventions. But, yeah, I've been in a couple magazines.

Have you tattooed anybody that's super famous? Hmm. Not yet? Not yet. I don't think nobody's super famous. Tattoo out of tattoo artists that are pretty cool. Right on. Yeah, I guess they call it.

That's got to be like the ultimate compliment is when another tattoo artist wants you to tattoo them. Definitely. Yeah. In my eyes. You know, they're like rock stars in my eyes and I get a tattoo. I'm like, that's cool, man. You know. And how was the how was like the highs and the lows of once you're leaving, you know, you leave the military?

I miss it every day. I miss the military every day. I miss all the discipline. I miss the camaraderie. camaraderie mostly you know because you build that up so I talk with this guy and how did you guys reconnect again was it the reunion? Let's do the canine

and from watching the podcast yeah that's awesome and I hit them up man I go because you guys are both inspiring you know especially you too bro and I heard about the canine for warriors so yeah I was like man I want a dog I needed something like that help me

right on my daily thing so the canine for warriors are working on that right now Yep. For Adam? Yeah. Applications should be, it's all submitted.

We just need to step them up, Lindsay. And then, and then it's pretty cool, for those of you that didn't listen to one with Ryan yet, they find the dog that's right for the person. Yeah. It can be like anything. It could be anything from a freaking chihuahua

to a damn pit bull to a Belgian Malmah. Like, like it could be anything, right? Yeah, they're really good at matching the dog to your personality and your lifestyle. So he's probably not going to get a bedroom out because it takes a lot of work and stuff like that. Yeah. You're going to get a chill dog.

You're going to get a poodle. A poodle. A poodle. So how long will that process take? Typically between a year and a half to two years, but we want to step it up so he could have his dog before the reunion. So we can present the dog at the reunion because KDONS is going to be there. And they're going to be there for other soldiers that need to help but haven't heard the podcast or haven't, you know, don't know about it yet so that's what we want to do is because it not just him just from being

on the podcast and talking about it two or three soldiers total that I know of like I've walked into the process of getting a dog that's outstanding yeah yeah what did you when you heard that on the podcast like what um made you think like oh damn that sounds like I could use that um I was going to kind of hard time in my life I was just kind of feeling down a little bit and uh I called him and told him I'm like, hey, man, I mean, what's up with the canine for Warriors? And he ran it all down to me. I'm like, do you actually use that in my life right now? That's awesome.

You know, having a partner, a little cool little, like, caliber over there. Yeah. Calibur, if you didn't know, is on the, is asleep right now. Getting some sleep over here. Calibur's Ryan's dog and just a freaking chill. He's a good dog. Yeah. It is amazing.

And the dogs will get, you know, trained to help out whatever, a person specific. needs anything from like medical issues to like physical challenges anxiety the whole night yeah we talked about you know the brace training they have last time i was on so that's something that he could definitely benefit like i don't use that with caliber because i can get up and stuff but that's something he could definitely use mobility issues so it might get a big dog so that's what we're doing yeah what do you got on your notes there man oh just things i wanted to talk about some dates how we doing them how we do we already got to them all pretty much did we did we get to them all pretty Did we get them done?

Yeah, we did. Do we get the important highlights of the scenario? I got this motivation from you when you went on Joe Rogan. That's why, yeah, we touched face on everything. That's like one of those habits I got from being in the military. Like, you know, you're going somewhere. You better bring a notebook and be ready to write down, you know, what your boys say, you know, what your boss says or what your, you know, whoever.

Like, if I don't write something down, sometimes it, you know, if I don't write something down, so that's a little bit of challenge you to remember. remember it yeah definitely uh so what's so what else what else have we got going on you're done tattooing you're trying what's your day what are you doing what are you doing to work out right now i do mobility issues obviously i go to pt twice a week and they work out there nice i mean doing like this uh stationary chair and stuff like uh like cycling and stuff and uh and they teach me how to stretch and all that stuff. Mobility, trying to get my legs moving. Have you looked at, have they started to figure out what's going on with your back yet? They say I have a quata, equana

syndrome. What's that? It's like a horse tail because your spine, the nerves on your spine come down and looks like a horse tail. Okay. And so my L-5 slipped over my L-4. No, my L-4 slipped over my L-Five, and the stenosis in there is causing a lot of nerve. And it's constant nerve pain. So you're going to get them to go in there and get that shit square away? I've had this thing going on for over a year now. So it's just kind of hard to VA. Is it, so the VA's slow right now for you? Yeah, definitely.

And you're not getting a response that you need? Not as quick as I want it. Yeah, so I have to go out in the community, outside the VA community, to get all my, like, everything is done outside the community because all the VA docs in Colorado are just all booked so far out. Yeah, with the new VA system, you're supposed to be able to go and get looked at by someone like a civilian. Yeah.

I've done that. Like, with a couple things where they didn't have the capacity. And it's like, okay, well, here's your civilian doctor. And you go to whatever normal civilian hospital here in San Diego for me, which is weird, too, because we have Balboa Naval Hospital, you know, which is a big-ass Navy hospital. But usually they have somebody that can take care of you. But sometimes, like, no, no, we don't have any appointments for,

four months and you're like bro. I'll be dead in my back. So I was to get shots to my back and they sent me out the community so I'm supposed to find out soon when I'm supposed to get these shots. Yeah. Well, the good news, I've had,

I had neck surgery a while ago, but the good news is like with something like this is like it's basically a mechanical problem. Like what you just said, it's like here's a disc or here's an L3, L4, L5.

It's a mechanical problem. Like it moved, you know? and you're just going to get that shit moved back and have them bolted into place. And like it'll hopefully be good to go after that. Hopefully. Most of the time they're pretty good at it. There are always risks.

You know this year a doc, but like there's sometimes they're like, hey man, if we, we could do the surgery and it might not help. That does happen from time to time. They can say, they'll tell you, hey, we might do the surgery and it can get worse. That can happen from time to time.

Generally speaking, most of people that I know, myself included, when I got surgery, got better, got way better. And so, yeah, man, you know, suck it up. 51 now, so. Yeah, you're going to like, you know, however long it takes for them to get it all organized, but then hopefully you get in there,

get under the knife, they, you know, again, I look at it just like a carpenter, you know, like, hey, there's a piece of wood that needs to get moved over a little bit and bolt it into place. Like, that's basically what they're going to do when they get in there, which is square it away.

And, and that's what, that's it, man. That's what we're doing right now. Yeah. Well, I went into a TBI clinic, too. And how's that working out for you? It was all right, because I built up a stutter, I guess. I noticed this. And I told the docs about the disseminate TBI clinic

and how to take speech classes again. And then what do they tell you to get rid of a stutter? Because isn't a stutter cause because you're thinking about the fact that you're stuttering? Isn't that like one of the things that causes it? You know, this army guys, we always talk smack. So being on the ball. and quick with your comebacks, man. And I noticed that I couldn't do that all that quickly anymore.

You know, it's hard for me to remember a lot of stuff. You know, I don't know if you noticed that. I kind of, and I talk kind of like slurry a little bit. But that's just for my meds, I guess. I gave a pen. And then, so you were starting to stutter. And then what they do in speech therapy? Like, what do they have you, like, say tongue twisters and shit like that?

They just have me trying to focus on saying what's on my mind, you know, instead of just like the, you know, like do to do all stupid stuff but yeah just try to focus on what's on my mind trying to spit it out that was my issue i kept having i think it but it wouldn't come out the way i would think it or i forget certain words and i just kind of like you know forget what that i'm talking about sometimes you know well you've been kind of knocking it out of the park today you only forgot one word i forget what the word was but you forgot one word security yeah you forgot excuse you remember it i did yeah you forgot the word security yeah other than that you're kind of knocking it out of

out of the park, bro. Thank you. Sounded good to go. And so one of the reasons that I love having you out here and Ryan coming back again just to let people know about canines for Warriors, it's canines for warriors. It's canines for warriors.org. There's a YouTube, there's an Instagram, there's a Twitter, and it's all at Canines for Warriors.

And if people are interested in supporting that, it's so helpful. Go listen to Ryan's story. And you can actually go on their YouTube channel. You can watch all kinds of people. you can see how massively beneficial it is for people to have a dog, a well-trained dog, a dog that becomes a companion, a dog that becomes a friend, a dog that becomes a, you know, like a battle buddy, you know, for all practical purposes. And, you know, I got, I have a dog.

I actually have a new dog right now because my last dog died and it was terrible. But I got another dog, you know. How did a dog do you got? I got a German Shepherd. My last one was a German Shepherd. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah.

It's one of those things, man. Like, they, whatever, what is it? What are the little chemicals I could release in your head when you pet a dog? Dopamine. Yeah, dopamine. It's like, that's for real. Like, where I just see my dog and my dog sees me, it's like, oh, it's, everything's cool. Yeah, that's something that, you know, I talked about last time.

Same thing happened, like, at the airport. Somebody sees Calibur, like there was a lady that was really nervous about flying. And she sat down on the plane next to me. And she was like, that just made my day. Like, I just made the whole flight. And I was led her, like, play with Caliber the whole time. Like, I got lucky in getting into it, getting like a whole road to myself. And she was just putting it the whole time.

Calibur is really good at identifying stuff because I was sitting there. Last night we were talking about some stuff. And I started feeling really anxious. And my body started, you know, kind of getting into anxiety attack. And Caliper came and sat on my feet. And he's like, see, she knows. He knows. I like, yeah, it's cool, man.

So I was petting Calaver. I'm like, thank you, Calvert. That's awesome. You had a Harley Davidson jacket on. Yeah. Earlier. You still got a bike? Oh, you got a Harley shirt on.

Yeah. You got a bike? Yeah. What kind of bike you got? It's a street bob. 2024 street bob. Nice. Pretty cool.

You're out there rolling still. Not really. Not all that much anymore, man. My back's so messed up right now. Were you into bikes when you were a kid? Yeah, kind of. Yeah. My dad was always pretty,

cool man you had dirt bikes for us and mini bikes what I said that kind of stuff growing up those are probably not going to be ideal for your back at this juncture no no right no but I just like I like having my motorcycle do you do art on your motorcycle no no pinstripes for anything like that like that no freaking skulls on the gas tank no no no sir

dodger blue dodger blue yes that'll do it dude awesome um does that get us up to speed Yeah. You think? Get us up to speed, man. We cover all the bases. Yes, sir.

Awesome. Brian, you got anything that we missed at all? Oh, no. I don't think so. Echo's still not like dogs. Oh, Echo is evil. I was funny. I'll talk about that afterwards.

For the record. Echo's had his run-ins with dogs. Really? No, I just wanted to poke fun at a little bit. This is good. Right on. No, it's an awesome organization.

And like I said, when you go and check out their website, you can see how much, how, you know, just talking to you last time, it's very clear how, how helpful it is.

And then when you see all the other examples of people that have been able to do so well once, you know, once they got their dog and, and they have that companion and, and a sense of purpose as well. Yeah. You know,

it's cool that you rely on your dog, but your dog relies on you. Yeah. It's like a two-way street. It does give you a sense of responsibility. Yeah. So, and hopefully,

you know, just from this podcast again hopefully it leads more people to go in that direction and also want to emphasize awesome if you need help it's out there so awesome awesome Adam you got anything else man any closing thoughts anything we missed no sir just you're a very inspiring

person man I've been doing a lot of research on you you're cool man I dig it I dig what you do man thank you so much for everything that you do oh thank you man it's awesome to it's awesome to have you guys on here it's you know thanks for sharing your experiences, telling your stories, like this is the kind of thing that people need to hear about.

You know, I mentioned it earlier, like the war that you guys fought, the grunts on the ground, the infantry guys, it's just outstanding. It gets overlooked a lot. And it really should be the, it should be the lead story, you know?

The lead story on the war is our infantry soldiers that were out there on the day-to-day basis, getting after it. So thanks for coming on. And obviously, thanks for your service. Thanks for your, service in the Army. It was an honor to share the battlefield with you.

Yes, absolutely. And for what you and for what your brothers did and for the brothers that you lost, we won't forget it, bro. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Adam and Ryan,

I've left the building. Great to hear from those guys. One of the things that I had in my notes that I didn't mention, which is pretty cool. It was a significant amount time after Ramadi Adam they like tracked down one of the one of the events with Adam it's actually the one I read about with him rescuing Muir and he was given a army calm with V for that action so I failed to mention that during the podcast I was

talking with him afterwards and that came up so pretty pretty awesome I had in my notes and I just failed to to mention it because it's pretty cool that kind of closure happens you know the military you know we always hear about the military screwing things up but the military gets some things right too you know i had uh i had some guys get their awards uh what elevated you know after several after like eight years or something like that how does that happen the way i understand it i don't i'm not a hundred percent um sure but what happened This is what I know happened. At some point,

three of my guys who had received bronze stars with V's were located, notified that they were, their award had been upgraded to a Silver Star. One of them is JP to know. He was awarded. He was, I put him in for a Silver Star and he got, initially got a Bronzer.

star with V. Seth Stone, who was given a bronze star with V, awarded us Bronze Star with V, and his award was elevated like 10 years later. And one of the medics, who I don't use his name, because I don't think he wants to be public, but a good friend of mine, he, who is a medic, Corman, and he was awarded a bronze star with V, and he, that was. That was. that that was upgraded. But again, it was after 10 years. And apparently, again, please don't quote me on this.

Apparently, the Navy did like a review of combat awards and handed out some of the upgrades after they reviewed what had taken place. So that was pretty cool. But it was 10 years later. So occasionally those things happen. And that's what happened with Adam. Adam Anderson, whatever.

I think it was like 15, 20 years later. They said, hey, dude, you remember when you freaking risked your life to go out and save one of your guys? Yeah, that should have been recognized. And so here you go. So he was awarded the Navy Com. With V, which is a huge deal. The V makes a big difference. It's a big deal.

Like an Army achievement medal or a Navy achievement medal or an Army Commendation Medal or a Navy Commendation Medal or a Navy Commendation Medal by itself. Like, I have Navy achievement medals for, like, keeping track of my communications equipment when I was a new guy seal. That's just way, it's just not even in the same ballpark. So, to what we're talking about here. I think Leif and Seth used to make fun of me because I had five Navy achievement medals, which is a Navy achievement medal is the lowest award you can get, like, in the Navy. Really? It's, good job.

It's peacetime, nothing going on. You're an enlisted guy in the dames. And you kept track of your radios or you performed well during a training exercise. You know, with a host nation and, you know, your ability to make communications was recognized up to senior levels. It's good. The cheesiest. It's good. The easiest ride-offs, bro.

But hey, dude, we're in it. We're in it to win it, bro. Yeah, comparatively speaking, yeah, I see where, you know, what you're getting at. But, hey, man, you're out there doing a good job. That's literally what it is. You're doing a good job. You know what you say you're just doing your job? Right.

No, this isn't just doing your job. You're doing a little bit more. You're being recognized for doing a good job. But it is funny to look back now. Yeah. And you go, damn, dude, just having a rack of Navy achievement. That'll, oh, damn. Actually, the cool thing, like the Army commendation with the or the Army achievement with a V,

I don't even arm, is that a thing? Anyways, the Army, the R-com with the V is. a badass award and one thing that was one of some of my guys got it from the army and they are very including set stone by the way he was he was always very proud of his army com with the right i think he had one yeah he had one either was him or i know his guys so i little of his guys had the rcom with v and they were very stoked on it so there you go adam Anderson. Awesome to hear from him today. Awesome to hear is grunt perspective, infantry man perspective. These are the guys, I'm telling you, man. These guys rolling out there every day, eight hours on, eight hours on QRF, and then eight hours to prepare for your next mission. And, you know, like being on QRF is not like, you know, being on QRF in Ramadi is like, okay, we're leaving. We're guaranteed. We're just about guaranteed to have to roll out.

Everyone's getting in firefights. Everyone needs support. So that's what they were doing, month in, month out, and just nothing but respect and admiration. And thanks to these guys. All that being said, when you're done with that mission,

you've got to find your next mission. And we had some good talks once, you know, I'm always, look, we have more, we talk more than just during the podcast, so we're just talking about to Adam about, just, you know, we talked about a little bit on the podcast,

you know, his back and all that stuff. So he's, he's actually done a great job getting himself back into shape to try and get that handled. So you gotta, you gotta handle that physical piece. He looks like he lost a hundred pounds.

Yeah. So he's, he's handling the physical piece. Hopefully you get that back stuff straightened out. And, you know, we all, you gotta stay ahead of that stuff, is my recommendation.

Stay ahead of it. And what happened was he had a motorcycle accident. You know, when you get injured, Now all of a sudden you're not doing what you're normally doing. That's when things can start to slip away a little bit. So you've got to be heads up on that. When you're, make sure that your lifestyle, when you get injured or something, you can't be as active as you normally are,

you got to make sure you keep up with your lifestyle. Keep make sure that you're doing the right things as much as you can. Because if you can't, if you can't run every day, well, because you've got a bad knee, well, what can you do every day? Can you go on the hand bike? Can you, can you at least walk? you know, you go for a long walk, do you have to adjust your caloric intake? Yes.

Because that jams people up because people are used to, though, I'm working out all day and I'm eating, you know, 5,000 calories a day, then you stop working out. You're still consuming 5,000. Actually, you might even be consuming more.

Yeah. Because when you're working all day and you're working hard, doing something physical, you don't even have time to eat. Yeah. And so you, plus when you sit down to eat, me personally, not speaking for everybody,

I'm not, like, when I get done training, I'm not hungry right then. You know what I'm saying? Guess when I get hungry? A few hours after. Few hours after and boredom. That's what I was going to say when you get bored. Yeah, boredom.

Just boredom eating. And also, not to beat a dead horse, but I will. Also, you got to watch out for these sneaky calories. You know, when it's like, oh, yeah, I ate this meal and then you drink something with like 300 calories. And it's, you know, for an average person, you know what it takes to burn off? 100 calories 100 1 mile one mile run run or walk whatever you

whatever you want to do but 100 100 yeah damn dude so you had to run a marathon today to burn off 2,500 if you got to burn yeah I mean you got your baseline you know but these additional things if you're not tracking which most of you know who's tracking calories you know besides fitness people whatever but I'm telling you what you eat that's gonna be a bigger storyteller than most of the other stuff

yeah then you're working out and whatnot yep I think so. So if you got to eat, we recommend you eat some stuff that's good for you. That good stuff. Check out some jacofuel. jocofuel.com. This is, we have protein. We got energy.

We got supplementation. We got ready to drink protein. We were just up at the Olympia contest. So that was, you see a lot of people that are, they need protein. I need protein. You need, we all need protein. Sometimes you got time for a little powder activity. Sometimes you just need to get that RTD together.

So whatever it may be if you need it go to joccofuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart Wawa vitamin shop GnC military commissaries a fees Haniford Das stores Maryland Wakefern ShopRite H-Eb Meyer Wegman's Harris Teter Publix High V Lifetime Fitness she'll just it really can get in so many places now or you can go to Joccofield.com and check it out. We got what you need to be stronger, faster, smarter, healthier, and better. There you go. Also, there's been a lot of sacrifices made for America.

And yet, people go and buy a pair of blue jeans that are made by a communist country or by some other adversary. Maybe it's just an economic adversary of our country, but they're not our country. So don't do that. Look, do you want to train jiu-jitsu? Of course you do. But that doesn't mean you need to support communism while you train jiu-suitz? No, you can support America.

Do you have a cold head sometimes? Yes, you do. Does that mean you need to support communism? No, it doesn't. Do you sometimes need a pair of boots to wear? Yeah, of course you do. You got to work. Does that mean you need to thereby support communism?

No, it doesn't mean that at all. Do you need a t-shirt? Yes, you do. Do you need to support communism? No, you don't. You see what I'm going with this? Yes, I do. not need to support communism you don't need to support slave labor you don't need to

support the destruction of our environment you should support origin USA.com 100% American made goods jeans geese, hoodies jackets just everything that you need everything that you need we got you covered and it's all made 100% in America with 100% American materials so go to origin USA.com start working hard wearing American jeans and American boots. Start keeping yourself a little bit toasty with an American hoodie. Train Jiu-Jitsu, an American Ghee or an American-made rash guard. 100%.

That's what we're doing. Get some. What's that? So I have these, I have two of them. It's a long sleeve. It's kind of like a, it's not a windbreaker, but it's like, it's long sleeve. No buttons. Hood, there's a hood on it.

Kind of thinner material. Zipper? Is that a zipper? No zipper. Zipper. Joe Moss wears them all the time. No zipper at all. No, no, no.

It's like a shirt, but it's made out of like almost like a dry fit material. It's called something. RTX maybe. Burr. Yeah, Burr. So this is a material, American made material. It's called burn. It's like everything that you need.

Yeah, that's what I wear when I work out. Of course. Yeah. Like it dries fast. It's dry. It's hard. It keeps you cool. Whole nine yards.

Bro, I wear those kind of as a one of the standard uniforms. Like pretty much anywhere. Oh, you're just is. Is this a revelation? No, no, no. I've been doing it, but I mean, I'm revealing that. Okay. The reveal.

It's completely all purpose. I mean, look, I'm not going to the snow. We live in San Diego. Well, when I go in the snow, I wear it as a base layer. 100%. 400% is so comfortable. So good to go. You know, but yeah, that's one of.

So we got your base layer 100% made in America or your workout layer 100% made in America. Yeah. I thought you were talking about the stow jacket. No, no, no. Sto jacket I bring with me everywhere. You know my, you know my little, like, I guess it's a briefcase, but it's like a fabric briefcase that I carry everywhere.

You see me with it all the time. But in the bottom layer of that, I have the stow jacket. Black stow jacket. So if there's chaos breaks out. No worse. Rain, wind, whatever. Let's go. Bring it.

I'm good to go. That stow jacket is kind of mandatory. And then they just came out with something, I forget what it's called, but it's bonded fleece. It's basically like a windproof hood. hoodie. Yeah. With a zipper.

Do we know what bonded means? Yeah, it's like, uh, it gives it like a wind, water resistant and wind resistant layer on a hoodie. Oh, it's like a little shield.

So it's bonded means like you're, you're kind of blocked. Yeah, yeah. Shielded. That's it. Okay. I got one of those coming.

I just ordered it a few days ago and it's on the way. So that's good to know. So there you go. OriginUSA.com. Get some. They go deep. Also, jocco store.

com is where you can get your, apparel. We got shirts and hoodies on there. Got some hats on there. Got shorts on there. Got new designs across the board. The newest one standby to get some. But if you want to get the heads up on these new designs, sign up on the email list, easy money. I don't spam.

I promise I don't spam. You just all just valuable alerts. And not very often either too. They're kind of rare. But when they come, they're good. They're valuable. If you sent me spam, I actually wouldn't mind it too much. I know you're not going to. Yeah. You wouldn't mind. Yeah, usually you send some pretty good stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, because it's at least interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yes, but it won't be spam. I'm anti-spam. Yeah, I'm, oh, yeah, press. The whole spam is insane. It's an industry, isn't it? Yep, it totally is.

And then there's spam and scam, too, by the way. So, because they'll spam a bunch of people. Spamming means just mass sending stuff that doesn't have value or whatever. And then hoping that someone, like a real small percentage of people, will respond to it in a gullible way and get tricked by their trickery. My wife was showing me this real the other day. Oh yeah.

But it was a scam. This, you know, there was someone that was scamming made the phone call and this woman and she's obviously been waiting for someone to try and scam her. She had this thing set up. She was recording the whole thing. Yeah.

And basically she goes, you know, the person's like, oh, you have this some bunch of gold or money in a bank account. Right. We just need your. credit card number so we can transfer the money. And the one's like, oh my gosh, that's the best news. Thank you so much.

I'm driving right now. If you give me a second, I'll pull over so I can get my credit card out for you. And she goes, okay. And she goes, yeah, I just need to pull over. She goes, well, just give me your credit card number. And she goes, yeah, I just need to pull over my. And then she has a recorded car crash.

So she's like, she plays the recorded car crash. And then she starts acting like she's been in a car crash. She's like, I, I, I've just crashed my car. And the woman's like, can you get to your credit card still? And he's like, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm bleeding. And the woman's like, well, can you reach your credit card? It was pretty crazy to listen to.

Yeah, that's like, revealing just how freaking degenerate the scammers can be. You know, those ones that they kind of take revenge on the scammers, they're like, that's endless entertainment. I did revenge on the scammer one time. And it was a tax guy that was, you know, have you ever had that one? Yeah, the tax is, yes. Where they're like, hey, listen, you're going to be arrested, you know. this is a violation of the law. We've got,

we've got police officers that are gonna, that have been notified of your location. You need to pay this. This is a tax evasion, this whole thing, right? Right, right. I get them,

I get that one through text. Okay, I haven't gotten that. Yours is a call? This was, this was probably, this was probably at least 10 years ago. Yeah. Maybe eight years ago.

But the, the interesting thing was, I was being audited by the IRS at this time, actively. So I'm like, I was actively being audited and turning in documents

and all this kind of stuff. And so when they called my wife first, she freaked out. You know, my wife, she's not even from this country, bro. She's from England. She's like, and let's face it, in England right now, they'll, like, you can't make a post on social media without them arresting you.

So my wife's like, you know, so they're telling my wife, like your husband, he's going to be arrested. And she's like, oh, the funny thing, my son, who was like 10 years old at the time was in the background. He heard it on the speakerphone in the car. And he's like, it's a scam. It's a scam.

It's a scam, but my wife didn't believe him. Yeah, that's real. So she gave them my number. Oh, okay. And I was out an event somewhere, and so I get like five phone calls and three texts from her that are like, the IRS is calling you. Anyways, long story short, I took me 13 seconds to realize that this guy was a scammer. And then I kept him on the phone for as long as I could.

And here's why I'm telling you this whole story is because when I finally, when he finally realized, I wasn't going to give him any information. and he had just wasted a half an hour of time. Yeah. He was mad at me. Yeah, yeah, that's how. He was mad at me, bro, because I wasted his time. So there you go.

Watch out for the scams. I see those responses as well. Yes. So yes, I don't scam. Of course, I don't scam. I mean, it would be kind of easy to seek retribution on me if I scam. But I don't spam. And you don't scam.

No spam. You're anti-spam. Anti-spam. So there you go. Jocco store. Jocco store you get a good valuable email relevant the whole deal you know especially if you want to get the bite on these these new things that come out and there's going to be a few coming out so there you go anyway jocco store.com also a jocco store is the short locker new design every month a bit more creative but anyway go there you can check out some of the designs if you go on the on the page or whatever but yeah it's all in jocco store.com check uh Ramadi declassified this is the book colonel anthony dean wrote it it is such a good account of His battalion and the overall brigade, but specifically his battalion in the Battle of Vermont.

It's a great book, so much detail. Like I said, 400 pages. I read you one paragraph today. He was on the podcast for five hours. We didn't even touch the surface of that book. So it's a great book. Get that one. I've written a bunch of books about leadership.

Dave Burke, his book needs to lead. Check that one out as well. We also have a leadership consulting company called Ashlawn Front. If you need help inside your organization on anything, Anything? Yes, anything. Well, you mean the process that we add our material to our new fabrication? Like, yes, we'll help with that.

Well, what do you know about that, Jocko? I don't know anything about that. You know what I do know about? Leadership. And any problems that you're having are leadership problems. So if you have problems inside your organization, go to ashlauntfront.com and we will help you. Solve those problems through leadership. Also, extreme ownership.com.

We teach the skills of leadership online. That's what we do. And leadership is a skill. And it's a skill that you need to be taught. And it's a skill that you need to practice. And you can do both of those things at extreme ownership.com. So check those out. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help families.

You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Leach. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate, you're going to get involved. Go to America's mighty warriors.org. Also check out heroes and horses. dot org and finally jimmy may's organization beyond the brotherhood dot org and

lest we forget canines for warriors you can already you've heard what it did for ryan you can go look at some of those other uh stories that they tell canines that's k the letter k nine nine s for warriors dot org they're also youtube instagram twitter and facebook at knines for warriors great organization if you want to come Connect with Adam. We didn't mention this during the podcast, but he's got an Instagram. It's at Adam Anderson underscore Tattoo. And for us, check out jocco.com and then on social media, I'm at jocco Willink. Echoes at Echoes at Echo Charles. Set yourself a time limit of about 3.5 minutes and then get off that satanic device. It's not helping you in any way, shape, or form. Thanks once again to Adam Anderson.

Ryan Jackson for joining us. Awesome to see you guys. Thanks for your service and sacrifice in the Battle of Vermont. We will not forget you. We will not forget your fellow soldiers and we will not forget the heroes that did not come home. Also thanks to all of our military across the globe right now protecting peace and freedom. We will not forget you either. And thanks to our police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, the Border Patrol Secret Service as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting our peace here on the home front. And for everyone else out there, here's a little history

from the second Battalion 6th Infantry Regiment, where Adam and Ryan both served. This is from global security.org. And here's the quote. The battalion motto was, remember the regiment. The last word spoken by the then commander, Colonel Thompson on Christmas Day, 1837.

seven at Okeechobee swamp during the seminal war. The colonel was fatally wounded, having fallen below swamp waters, a private from the regiment, pulled his fallen commander's head above the water so he could utter his last words. His final order to the men of the six regiment, keep steady men, charge the hummock, and remember the regiment. End quote. So there you go. Remember the regiment and remember those brave souls that gave their last full measure for us. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

Out.