Jocko Podcast - 519: A Soldier’s Pain, Purpose, and the Brotherhood That Endures. Crazy Joe Claburn Pt.2

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<After a catastrophic parachute failure, Major Joe Clayburn’s life became a daily fight: against pain, against odds, against losing who he was. But what emerged was something deeper than survival. Joe talks about recovery, fatherhood, leadership, the impact of losing Seth Stone, and what it means to carry forward the stories of fallen warriors. A powerful look at resilience, identity, and the lifelong strength of the combat brotherhood.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 519 with Echo Charles and me Junkle Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Also, still with us. Crazy Joe Claiborne. If you haven't listened to 516 yet, we, that's, we just, that's the first podcast that we did, talking about crazy Joe Claiburn, who served with us in the Battle of Armadi and was just an integral part of the operations there and just an amazing human being.

We started, we went four hours deep on that podcast. Of course, I opened it up with, uh, welcome to Ramadi bitch speech from crazy Joe Claiborne. We talked through that, but we were at four hours. So we called it, but we came back and now we're going to talk about, we're going to pick up that story, which is you were had orders to Ranger school to be an instructor at Ranger school. This is post, this is post one deployment to Afghanistan.

The initial deployment to Iraq. your Ramadi deployment to Iraq, a period of time spent with a pathfinder element where you trained them up, and then you finally get orders, you're going to go to ranger school and be a ranger instructor, company commander,

and you get a little phone call that the army needs something else from you. And what the army needs from you is they need you to swap with another guy who had an exceptional family member need, and that guy needed to go to be the ranger, instructor, company commander, and you, Joe Claiborne, instead of going to Fort Benning, Georgia, we're going to England to be an officer in the British Parachute Regiment. That's where we were at.

Crazy, isn't it? Yeah. It really is. Were you pumped to go to England? Were you still single at this point? I was still single at this point. Yeah, dating, but we had agreed that I think that was the road that was going to split. So the relationship came to an end

And I don't I don't to be honest with you three deployments now within a Three and a half year time period I don't know how you make a relationship Work especially when you're trying to start a relationship and you just have to say I'm sorry I to go And unfortunately that that's what happened so yeah so I moved over to England as a as a single guy With well you know the entire England at my fingertips. And how's it checking out in town? Do you have a house?

You live in town? Do you have a house? You live on base? What are they doing with you? Yeah. Like, talk about a weird, you know, I don't know that the situation could have gotten any weirder because, you know, I get told that I'm going out there and there is a guy that I'm replacing. He's a major as well. But he's coming back to the States earlier because of my delay with the, you know, Ranger Pathfighter company changeover. Um, he, he had already been gone. So the only thing I got from him was really a four page memorandum of such and, uh, a cheat code for what to expect. You know, when you get here, um, how to basically function, if you will.

And thank God I didn't bring a family with me because I can just imagine it would have been even more difficult. Um, but I get my, my flight info. I checked my car in, which is a big old Chevy pickup truck that I put on a ship and sent over to England waiting on me when I got over there. And I land and I guess I was expecting someone to meet me. But I land in Heathrow and I get my bags and I'm just kind of standing there. Like one of the largest airports in the world, possibly the largest airport in the world. 30 minutes pass by.

45 minutes pass by, an hour passes by. Like I literally do not see a single person in military uniform at all. The one phone number I have, I don't have a cell phone because I'm in a brand new country. Just rings and rings and rings. Nobody answers it. And come to find out, and I didn't know this at the time, but I had come into England on what the Brits call a holiday. and no one was at work. No one was expecting to receive me.

I show up to England, brand new country, no knowledge at all about what to do. But I do know where the base is. And it's 2007, by the way. So like, you know, you mentioned, you know, cell phone, but 2007, it's not like you could pull up chat GPT and say, hey, I need a place to stay in a way to get there. No, that ain't happening.

You're just looking around for a damn pay phone. for one number that you have, which by the way, don't exist. They're just props nowadays. They're red phone booths. But I do know where I'm going. I'm going to a little town called Colchester out in Essex. It's about an hour and a half outside of London to the east. And so at least I had that.

And I'm not kidding you, I walked over to a rental car place. I rented a car and I bought a map book, old style map. Didn't have the GPS or anything else like that. I just bought a style map. I opened it up to the page that said Colchester, and I did the old reverse planning, just like I did with an air assault. You know, this is where the objective is.

This is where I'm located now. And here I am, never having driven a car on the opposite side of the car, more or less on the opposite side of the street, and I am cruising down the M4, a major interstate, well, I can't call them interstate, but a major highway

that leads out to Colchester. The only thing that I had in the book was the actual address of the guy who I was replacing. So I literally drove to that house. I get to Colchester. I pull in late in the afternoon. I parked the car out front

and I'm sitting there. The house is empty. He's no longer there. I don't know what I was expecting to find. And I have no idea what to do at this point. Well, the British officers, they live on sort of like base housing, right? So they all live together,

but they're all like independent little houses. Some of them are what I would consider like duplexes. They're two houses that are attached together. Well, that's what this house was. It was attached to another house. And while I'm sitting there, again, just sort of watching the, you know, seconds tick away.

The neighbor gets home, at which point I introduced myself and come to find out He is one of the battalion or the brigade officers who's there. And I said basically like, hey, here I am. I'm the new American. I have no idea what to do at this point. So he basically says, all right, man, we're going to get you situated. So I follow him over to the base.

And the base isn't like your normal base. It's, I mean, it's slap up in the middle of a city. And a lot smaller than I would have. normally been used to, you know, like huge mega army bases in the U.S. This thing was predominantly pretty small. It only held one brigade, but the brigade headquarters was there with the parachute regiments that were there. And then the other units in the brigade were actually already stationed around the other

the parts of the country. So you didn't have a base where like all the units were. These guys were spread all over England. they just happen to report into this particular brigade headquarters. So they take me over there and they check me into the officer's mess. And boy, this is nice. They've got a bar that opens at four o'clock in the afternoon, breakfast, lunch and dinner, catered meals on nice, you know, silverware and plates and stuff like this is going to be all right. So no sooner do I get checked into my room.

I'm finally, I finally have a place at least where I'm going to lay my head down. And then that's when they tell me, hey, by the way, you're like, we're on holiday, we're on vacation. We're all not coming back to work for like two more days. So sit, get your adjustments with you. This is everything you need, food, shower, everything else. And while I was there, I met really my, I would consider my best mate during my time there, a guy that I will refer to as the Bevster. and I meet the Bevster and he is wearing a top gun t-shirt, right?

And I just knew like the moment I met him. He was very outgoing, very eccentric. And he basically takes me under his wing and says, you know, I'm going to take care of you for the next couple of days, at which point the beer drinking and the, fraternal sort of behaviors sort of so I mean the officer mess is like a fraternity house in the most proper sense that that you can do I mean we're talking like afternoon tea which was the thing you know I had to learn how to drink tea and slowly but surely everybody comes back to work I report into my duty and one of the first things that I have to do is I have to go in and check in at the

embassy in London because you actually work as a part of the attache office at the U.S. embassy. And the United Military has these exchange officer programs all over the world. So it just so happened that and thank God, because I don't speak another language. Thank God I went to an English speaking country. But we have guys that will go to all kinds of different countries around the world and they will integrate with that unit and they will bring their knowledge and their experience of being a military. representative of the United States and really help to formulate relations and then also

think through different training options that they have. So I get to the U.S. Embassy in London and I meet my boss, Full Bird Colonel, is the attache in London. So kind of a big deal, right? And I get there, I check in, do the paperwork. You know, I'm on jump status again because I'm with the, you know, the British parachute regiment. And she looks at my orders and she says, yeah, I'm very surprised, but like it says here that you're, you're up for major already. And I said, yeah. She goes, how old are you?

I said, well, I don't remember how old I was in time at 27, 28. And she goes, I think you may be the youngest major in the United States Army. And I said, ma'am, I'm still a captain. my number has not come up yet. I have to wait till my sequence number comes up and then I'll be able to pin it on. She goes, no. She goes, you're the youngest major in the U.S. Army.

She said, I won't be there when your number comes up. There will be no ceremony. There will not be a cutting of the cake. There will probably be not a lot of people who pat you on the back. And you're probably going to get more respect from your counterparts

being a major, then you are a captain. So she said, I'm frocking you right now. You are hereby Major Claiborne. That was months in advance to where I was supposed to be. So she was right. At that time, I was a pretty young, a major, still getting paid as a captain, obviously, but she was right.

Going into the British headquarters, there was a significant difference between the way that they treated captains and the way they treated the field grade officers. field grade officers and and for that reason I mean we're talking hundreds of years that they you know you make it to field grade in the British Army it's a it's a big jump you know for them and so so I get frocked I'm walking around as a major I feel like a fraud by the way I'm like this does not feel this does not feel weird but you know so we let it happen and I get integrated into

the brigade headquarters 16 air assault brigade is what they're called and underneath 16 Air Assault Brigade, you have all the parachute regiments, you have the Scottish Regiment, you have an Irish Regiment, a bunch of different, you know, and they actually have a Pathfinder Company. So I thought that was pretty cool. And so I said, you know, what exactly do you want me to do? I would have loved to have gone down to the parachute regiment and actually spent time with the Tom's, you know, what we call the Joe's. I would have loved to have spent more time with the soldiers. But they said, no, your, your knowledge and expertise on air assault operations. And that's what we are. We are a brigade air assault unit. And we really need you to be a part of brigade staff.

And in order to help us sort of develop operations and, you know, give us your hindsight. It didn't stop me from getting down to the paris as much as I could and going to jump school with the, with them. What's their static line jump school? Yeah. Even though you'd already been to American Jump School? That's right. How different was it? Pretty similar. We basically allow anybody to go to jump school. Their is a lot more restricted. You have to have a reason to go to jump school. You specifically have to be in a unit. And I'm going to cover this when we talk about my tour in Afghanistan. They had a lot more limitations, budget, equipment, equipment than I had ever experienced in my military career.

And what I mean by that is that they only had like a couple aircraft that they could use for jump operations. So their jump school on a calendar had those aircraft that they could only specifically do airborne operations out of. If those aircraft got pulled to do anything else, then all jump school stopped until they could get the aircraft back in order for them to do it. So you didn't just get to go to jump school. You actually had to go through basically like hell week before you even earned a slot to go to jump school. At the time that I was there in 2007, they still had not had a female complete their version of the P-course is what they call it. Is that the time for parachute? And so you have to graduate that before you get your slot.

So you went to P-Course. Oh my God. I didn't go to P-Course. No. How long is P-Course? I think peak horse is maybe a week or two. But they kicked the shit out of you. They kicked a shit out of you. Yeah. And it's and I may have my timing wrong. So forgive me Brits, if you're listening. But I didn't have to go through it because I was already a jump master in the United

States Army. So I had already gone to jump master school. I'd already had the jumps under my belt. I'm you know, I'm drop zone safety officer. I'm, you know, I'm putting paratroopers out of the side of aircraft. So they basically looked at me and said, all right, we're just going to take you up and run you through like our sequence of events. And it was predominantly about the same. But they jump what's called an LLRP, a low level LLPR, a low level parachute release system. And that parachute can actually, you can actually jump out at 600 feet. Damn. The static line and the parachute deployment bag on it is really, really short. So that means your 1,000. and 2000, 3,000 count is a lot shorter.

1,000, 2,000. Yeah, it's, you know, so you're jumping out and you're basically, you've got a parachute. So they can actually jump in a lot lower. I would say that from an American standpoint, we would never have jumped that low. And we didn't jump that low either during training jumps, but the possibility was there. So the parachute was a little bit different. The jumping out of the aircraft was a little bit different. I mean, it's much more of an opening shock.

will on the on the parachute and um we uh we landed in like people's farms like there was a training area but it was also used to like raise sheep you know like it was you know it's like you're in band of brothers the it's small it's a small country you know um so i remember jumping out and literally like i'm i'm floating down to the ground and i'm i'm seeing sheep below me and I'm trying to yell for the sheep to clear. And I land, you know, on the ground and it is not, it is not cleared to be a drop zone. You know, you go to Fort Benning and it's like nice sand, you know, I mean, this is like literally a farm. There's divots and I'm surprised you don't have more injuries than what you have.

So I ended up, you know, going and doing their jump course, earning my British jump wings at the time. and then going up to brigade and sort of helping through that effort. In that process, I check in to the closest military base there is, which is Lake and Heath Air Force Base, just north. It's about an hour north of where I am. So as far as like Americans are concerned, the closest place for me to go to get any kind of support at all, dentists, doctors, you know, help with pay or whatever, that's, that's an hour away at an Air Force base that houses the F-15. and other strike fighters in the European theater. And so once I get checked in there,

I come back down to England, and I find out that I'm eligible for a house. I no longer have to live in the officer quarters. So I'm like, cool, if I don't have to live in the fraternity house, I would rather have my own house. So I am the only single officer living in family housing on the military base.

And part of the argument from the U.S. standpoint was we know he's single. We know this is specifically used for married couples, but the U.S. Army did not want to lose the house. They wanted to retain it for my replacement who could be married and have kids. So I got to move in the house. And let's just say the parties at the Claiborne Casa were epic. We had a Halloween costume that was one for the book. And, you know, I got guys jumping off the roof. I mean, the parrars are crazy, right?

There's a reason why there's, you know, the old, you know, break glass in case of war. And there were even bars in downtown that said, you know, no parr is allowed. I mean, you know, they would go in and they would break stuff. And, you know, I was like, my people, right? And Colonel Clark used an analogy to describe gunfighters at one time where he said, they're outside dogs. And I was like, sir, what do you mean? We're outside dogs.

He was like, you guys are great outside dogs. You bring them inside. Something's going to get broke. Something's going to get peed on. You know, something's going to get ruined. These were outside dogs. These were my kind of people. And more than that, they were doing so much more with so much less.

And that was something that I learned early on in my time with the Brits is like, Like if I wanted to just go and take eight Chinooks, 12 Blackhawks, and do a brigade operation, I could have had it. That would have been every aircraft the British had. That would have been all of them. And they were in Afghanistan. They were doing rotations. They were doing combat operations in the Helmand province with other units.

So like a lot of their combat power was actually being sent and deployed. So they didn't have. a whole lot. And so part of my training regimen, my philosophy never changed, which was how do we make realistic training, but now it was how do you do that without having all of the things that you need to do it? So we come up with this plan of sending the para battalions to Belize to do jungle warfare. Now, at the time I was like, we're going to Afghanistan in like seven months and we're going to Belize and do jungle warfare training. Like I have been to Afghanistan and I've never seen a jungle.

But we're going to go there and we're just going to make it suck for the two weeks that we're there. So there I am. I'm literally in country, not more than two months. I'm already on a plane back to the United States. States, drop off in Miami, pick up another flight. We fly into Belize, and we start jungle warfare training. They're in the jungles of Belize, which they own.

The Brits own a whole training area down in Belize where they train all their jungle guys and stuff. And so I'm there to help sort of develop the training program to insert realistic, react-to-contact, you know, ISR, you know, looking at their training. plan and trying to do the absolute best. So we're in a vehicle and I'm traveling out to do a recon with the planning staff that's looking at several locations. And we do recon a couple locations. This would be great for this. This would be great to train this. And then on the way back from a beltmoban, my driver hits a very large pothole, loses control of the car at about 55 miles an hour, we go careening off the side of the road down into a ditch, a goalie type style, and we flipped the car five, six times. I'm surprised nobody was thrown from the car.

I was in the back seat. Seat belt. No seat belt. Damn. Yeah, you're lucky. Sitting in the back seat of the car. I was literally reading Heart of Darkness, the book, when we got in the car accident. it and I had a GPS in my front left ACU pocket so that we could coordinate, you know,

positions that we were going to use. So when the car went into a roll, all of the equipment that we had in the back of the car became objects that started throwing around the car. So I was getting hit in the head with, you know, cots and bottles of water and I'm, you know, flipping. And I mean, we flattened this car. I mean, by the time we rolled it a couple times. and and I the car lands sideways so I have to climb up out of the driver's side no sorry passenger

side window to get out of the window and the car is leaning on the driver's side and when I look down I see the lower torso of the driver underneath the vehicle like his upper half is out of the vehicle his lower half is still in the vehicle and I just I remember thinking to myself like oh my God this guy is crushed, right? But that car landed perfectly to where like when we flipped, it caved in his side of the car to the where when we finally got rested and he fell out of the car window, he actually had enough space where literally we could push the car one inch and we could pull him out. So he literally dodged a bullet.

About that time, I have blood like profusely just. running down my head. I've split my head open on something that was inside the car during the flip or whatever. And then right then and there, I feel like this like a chest compression, like real tight. And I'm, I'm starting to have trouble breathing. And I realize like the GPS when I was flipping inside the car buckled four of my ribs directly underneath my left arm. So I've got a concussion. You know, I'm bleeding from the head. I've broken four ribs and I have a compressed spine from doing the flip. Ambulance shows up and they take me to Belmonton Hospital in Belize, right?

And I'm given some sort of a narcotic to kind of ease me down and get me off a pain. And this guy walks in with dreads. He's got like a LeBron James jersey on. No gloves or anything else like that. the light above me and the OR like doesn't even have a cover on it. The ballast is burning out on the light so it's making the buzzing and and I look and there's a freaking gecko on the wall, right? And he's literally sewing up my head with stitches as I'm sitting here thinking to myself like this isn't where I plan to be after, you know, all this time.

So I get some x-rays. I find out about the broken ribs that compressed spine. I clearly got a concussion, what takes me a couple days to get over. And I'm laying in the hospital and, and I'm like, this, this can't, this can't be it. Like, I've got to get up and go do something. And so, um, I get up and just walk out of the hospital. Like, there's no one to stop you. So I just got up and walked out and walked back to the base from where the hospital was, showed up to the base and they had already taken off to jungle warfare school so I got left behind and um so I'm waiting you know reading in another book and then I see the Huey come in and land over at the base this is the resupply for the operations so I grab my bag and I walk over my you know my rucksack

or whatever I throw it on the helicopter and I's like yeah you guys are my ride I'm supposed to I'm supposed to out there like two days ago. And of course they're like, yeah, yeah, come on. Like, I'm the only American, right? Like, why would I lie? So I take this Huey ride out into the middle of the Belizean jungle. I get dropped off. And like, I'm having the sleep in like, not cots, but like, and with three broken ribs

and a compressed spine, like, it just really sucked. You seem like you were real anxious to get out there just saying, bro, for three, three or four broken ribs and have compressed spine and you're like, hey, there's a helicopter. They could probably drop me off in the middle of the jungle. There was nobody around. Like, I was there all by myself. And I was like, this isn't, this isn't going to happen. So I basically earned a little bit of my cutting the teeth, you would say, with the British parachute regiment when I finally showed up. And they had already known I was in the car accident. The driver was, you know, pretty banged up. He didn't go back out again. Passenger in the front right. He was.

He had his seatbelt on. He was absolutely fine and kept training. But for the next two weeks, did jungle warfare walking around the jungles of Belize. And by the way, that place is like constantly trying to kill you. There's like some real dangerous stuff in the Belizean jungle. I just remember they're like, don't touch that, don't drink that, don't eat that. You know, and I'm like, Jesus, this is not going to be good. I don't know how it was going to really prepare us for, you know, Afghanistan, but it was a fun, fun exercise.

guys. So the I get back to England and the guys are hearing the story. You know, I'm left at the airport. No one was there to pick me up. I had to find my own way to Colchester. I get sent out on this training and I get in a freaking car accident. And now the Brits are just basically like, man, we are so sorry. Like this really, really shouldn't be happening. And oh, by the way, we're leaving for Afghanistan in three months. And I was like, cool. So, you know, deploying with them was quite interesting. I, you know, I have no American equipment. So I've got to learn how to use their SA80. I got to learn how to use all their machine guns. I got to learn their tactics. I'm reading their manuals. I'm reading their doctrine.

I'm reading, like, how they do things. And really trying to not be, and this is the great, the best way that I can describe it. I was the cousin that you have in your family who got everything that they ever wanted. Like the spoiled cousin where you're like, God, I got to hang out with that guy, right? I felt like as an American soldier, I would just be like, what do you mean? You don't have three helicopters. Well, we can all be America where you just have like, you know, helicopters falling out of

the sky and you can just use or whatever. But it was at that moment that I realized like, man, these guys really know how to do more with less. And operationally, you struggle a little bit because you're having to find new ways to think about problems, both detailed and conceptual, right? You're having to do that. So we get over to Afghanistan, and I find out that our AO is going to be the Hellman Province. Hellman Province in 2007, are you ready? Is the most dangerous place in Afghanistan. during the war and Helman province is kicking off. I mean, it is it is go time. And what's your job? At this point, I am a, I am like their air operations officer, operations officer. I can battle track.

I can create operations. I'm a liaison. And that's where they realize that I could probably end up doing my best work because as Helman was really kicking on, off the 24th Mew Marine Expeditionary Unit got called in as reinforcement. I mean, Hellman was, I mean, the Brits were fighting their ass off. I mean, it really did remind me of Ramadi in some places, but not city to city fighting. This was like, you know, Pueblo, the Pueblo fighting. I mean, it was, you know, mud huts and open lane. And the IEDs, Jocko were insanely powerful.

They were packing, you know, pressure cookers full of explosive material, you know, ammonium nitrate with gasoline. And in the very basic nature to which they were doing it, it was like the pressure plate was nothing more than two saw blades spread apart by erasers with two electrodes at the end and a nine-volt battery attached to it. so that when you stepped on it, the two metal saw blades would come in contact with each other. Close the circuit. Close the circuit of the 9-volt battery, which would then go to the receiving end of a pressure or a pressure cooker ID.

And when these things went off, they would remove the entire front end of trucks. I mean, it would send trucks up into the air. And the Brits were, they were burying these things. There were no hardball roads out there. You could just dig a hole and everything looked like dirt. So again, you know, sort of manifesting some experiences that I had. I was like, oh, my God, like this is more dangerous than what I actually experienced in Ramadi. And I get down to Lashgougar and the Hellman and that's where the brigade headquarters is.

And I'm helping plan ops. I'm, you know, I'm writing several reports. they have to get me read in on T.S. clearances. So even though I was an American, I was privy to top secret information that technically I would have been unqualified to have being an American citizen. So I actually had to get permission to get my hands to do good analysis, right? Like that was the only way that I could do is I had to get all the information. So I got read in. I got their version of a top secret security clearance and was able to write reports and do almost like significant activity AAR briefs for the other units in the area to say this is what we're finding out about this

TTP or this is what the enemy is doing or this is how they're employing systems and I was able to get that information out to the other units all around well you can only do that for so long before things get boring. And I found out that there were several missions going out. And I went over to the Irish guards and was like, can I go out on a patrol with you? Copy and Seth Stone, huh? Can I go with you guys? Can I go with you guys?

Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any experience on a 50-cow gun? Yes, I do. Rock and roll. Yes, I do. So they put major Joe Claiborne in the turret. of one of their land rovers and I am cycling

through a 50 cow machine gun in the middle of the desert running missions with these guys two missions two troops in contact the Irish decide we're not going out with you anymore man they literally are starting to look at me

like bad luck because by then the word had gotten out that I was a Ramadi guy and you know that I had received decorations for valor and they just knew that like, okay, this guy, again, bullet magnet, maybe, I don't know. But I ended up doing a couple missions with them. I mean, I travel all over the Hellman province, both by helicopter, by road and convoys, man in a 50 cow.

I get all the way up to Cajaki Dam, which is a huge project that the USAID published to get the Cajaki hydroelectric dam up and running so we could get electric. to the people of Helmand, huge project. And one that we worked on for months. Imagine trying to take a turbine for a hydroelectric dam, which is not transportable by like helicopter. It weighs too much. You got to get this thing by truck. And you got to get it from Candaharre Airfield into Helmand

and up to Kajaki using designated roads that are specifically designed to be able to hold a truck that's carrying a hydroelectric turbine, which is thousands of pounds. So literally, every single bridge that that truck had to go over, we had to send the Pathfinders out and do with the engineers a bridge analysis.

What happens when we get this, $10 million turbine on this bridge and the whole bridge collapses? Falls into the river. Or how about this? As soon as you get to Hellman, there's 300 miles of road that we don't own. It's enemy territory. And this is a $10 million target on a flatbed pickup truck. So we literally had to begin operations to kind of like seize certain areas in order to secure this one piece of equipment.

Hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, thousands of soldiers all involved. in an operation to do nothing more than to get a hydroelectric generator into Cajaki so that we could get them like tons of people risking their lives just so we could get electricity for these people and months of planning. So as soon as the Brits found out

that this was going to be a joint operation, they asked for them you to show up. Of course, they look at me and said, you know how to speak American. Why don't you go over and basically be our, liaison and tell them where we are in the planning and then take whatever you get from them and then basically come back and and you know the brits are cousins separated by a common language right we speak the same language but our terms and everything are my wife's a Brit I didn't know that

yeah yeah my wife's a Brit so I speak a little bit of it too so you get it I can definitely understand it most of the time yeah it's uh it's an acquired taste I'll give them that uh but You know, so at that point, I'm spending a lot of time on helicopters, flying to different bases, talking to the Mew. And I tried to make the Brits understand, like, these are Marines. Like, I don't speak Marine. There's another alternate language. A whole other language that I had to be involved in.

And imagine the confusion as you walk in as an American soldier with, and I'm wearing British uniform. I just can't wear the British flag on my uniform. So I'm dressed like an American. I'm carrying an SA 80. I have all of the standard equipment that looks like I'm not. I'm clearly American. And the Marines are looking at me like, wait, what?

And I go, yeah, it's an exchange program. It's pretty cool, you know? And so we do these huge operations. You know, 24 Mu, 1-6 is getting pounded up in the north. We do a huge operation in the South. Well, I don't stick around again. I hear it we're about to go toe-to-to-to, southern helmet. Is it the same one six that was in Ramadi that took over for three eight?

I wonder. Yeah, I wonder too. I think it actually is. It might have been. Yeah. Yeah, 24 mute. Well, it's hard to say. And I could also be getting my numbers wrong.

Yeah. But I end up going. I should say if it if it's one six, it's one six. I mean, that's the one six Marines. If it was them, it was them. Yeah. Pretty amazing. I mean, they got really beat up there in the north.

I mean, they took a lot of casualties, um, fighting in the, that area and in a lot of it was those damn IEDs man like they just they were really really good at it um but you know different from Ramadi these dudes wearing pajamas and sandals they would come out and fight like and you could see them you could see them running across with AKs and RPGs like there was a mystery in Ramadi about man like when are we going to see them when are we going to make contact with them there was so many places to hide in the city and little rat holes that they could run into and escape out in the middle of the farmland. Like you could literally see them 800 yards away and you could just be like,

man, I'm going to just try to maybe defalade some fire over in that direction. But they were not afraid to come and fight you, which was a huge, huge difference. So I volunteered to go down and do some mission prep in the very, very southern part of Hellman, which was rather difficult for the Brits to control.

And it got so dangerous that, helicopter that was supposed to come and get me back out to Lashkar, they canceled all air. And at that point, they were basically like, we need every single person we have like on a gun. And so I started to go out on more missions on a 50 cow, you know, and again, the, the fear now of these IEDs was like, you know, the pucker factor was was really there because, I mean, I got to see what these things were doing to these trucks. and it was just ripping them apart. And so again, you've got to swallow that fear and you've got to really put, you know, all yourself into this.

And it messes with you. When you see a truck and it's split in half and you get the report that every single person in this truck is dead, I mean, that's a realization that, okay, this is a little bit different. So let's just say I got to see portions of Afghanistan that I had not got to see. when I was there for the initial invasion.

So when I flew into Kandahar and I was like, yep, this is Kandahar Field. I remember when we were here and we took this place over and, you know, and seeing the bullet holes still in the airport, a Kandahar airport, you know, and I'm like, yeah, those are probably some of ours. So I, you know, I, you know, fly around with him. And I'm on a mission up to, I think it was Garmseer. And I'm in a British CH 47. And I'm sitting in the seat.

This time I got my seatbelt on. Learn that lesson. Learn that lesson really good. And we end up getting incoming fire from what I assume to be a large caliber machine gun. And it literally penetrates the bottom of the CH 47. And it hits a hydraulic line inside the helicopter. and the hydraulic line hits something that was hot because then all of a sudden now we've got a fire and I've got the crew chiefs who are actually manning guns on each side of the CH 47 and I am sitting

there looking up and I'm watching this fire start and I'm like I'm not an airman but this does not look good so I unbuckle and go over and I'm tapping the crew chief on the arm and I'm tapping the crew chief on the arm and I'm basically pointing up again in the movies everyone can have these perfect conversations while they're on the helicopter and unless you're like screaming in somebody's

ear and it ain't happening so I get his attention I point he grabs the fire extinguisher right behind him well right as he's putting out the fire a Chinook has to fly with hydraulics it controls everything from the rotor blades so we're losing hydraulic like pressure because of the line.

And the helicopter is, for all intense purposes, it is falling out of the sky. And we are close enough to the base that we think that we can get there. So we're limping the helicopter there. A man, put your seat belts on. Like this is, this is gonna be, it's gonna be a hard one.

Now pilots call these things a hard landing. Yeah. You know, they talk about it in the Osama bin Laden raid. They were like, yeah, the pilot said it was a hard landing. No. It was a crash. It's a crash. Like, that is a crash.

And how dare they take away that moment from me? You know, like pilots wanted to protect their ego by saying, well, it wasn't really a crash. It was just a hard landing. But, you know, you can really control a Chinook to like almost auto rotate down. So it's real easy to put it down. But when you're falling at a higher rate, we slammed into the ground pretty hard that it actually jammed the wheel system up into the, the bottom of the Chinook. And so I don't care what they say. That sounds like a bit more of a crash I mean, we didn't go flipping, you know, like nobody was injured except, you know, it knocked the wind

out of my breath. But, you know, I had been next to a couple C4 explosions on a door. You know, if you're that close to an explosion, it'll just knock the wind right out of you. And that's what it really felt like. So I'm involved with that and I get back to the base. And the Brits, of course, are just looking at me like, dude, we're so sorry. Like these things just keep happening. And I go,

that's okay. So they only do- Did anyone else get injured? No. Okay. No. Freaking good job by the pilots. Yeah.

Great, great job by the pilots. And, and, you know, they had the helicopter up on pieces of wood for a while and they,

you know, another team came in. They refitted it. And the helicopter eventually flew off and they put it back in service. But this is what I'm talking about. Like the Brits were just basically like, yeah,

Get us some duct tape and put some rip it in the fuel line and we'll be okay. You know, so the Brits only do six-month tours. And so I only had to get through six months, which was really kind of easy at this point. And, you know, we do all the significant operations and no firefights. I never actually get to fire my gun during this one, which, you know, is a blessing. but it does not still remove the fear that you have going out on some of these missions. And by the way, just once again, prompts to the Army because the Navy, we do six-month deployments. And occasionally it may stretch to seven or eight, sometimes even nine.

But for the most part, the vast majority, 90%, 95% are six-month deployments. And that's based on our rotation of our ships because our ships go out on six-month deployments. And by the way, that ties us in with the Marines as well. So when I started seeing Army guys that were doing 12, 11, 12, 13, 15 month deployments, it's like full credit. That's it's freaking savage what you guys do. Yeah. And the other thing that was really cool is they take their soldiers out of theater and they land them on the island of Crete for like a week and a half. Like in the middle of deployment or?

No, on the way back. At the end of the deployment, when you leave, the plan lands in Crete, and they open the bar. And they go, boys, like, drink to your heart's content. What's on the island of Crete? Nothing. So it's basically like a romper room for freaking grown men that are just coming back for the call of that. And their idea is like, you know, you don't want these very high strung that have been wound up for six months. So you don't want these guys to literally go.

And I mean, imagine I came home from several of these where you go from theater and you, you're in the hangar and the doors open and your family's there. But like literally a week ago, you're dodging mortar rounds. Like it's a, it's a really neat decompression for them. And so I get home, I get there about September timeframe. It's right at the end of September. And this is what? This is 2008 or 2007? This is still 2007.

Okay. Yeah, 2008. No, 2008. You're right, 2008. And while I'm there, I have a couple of my Brit friends that were just like, hey, man, we got, we got something exciting that you may want to do with us. I go, bring it. Let's go. They go, we know some German commandos down in Bavaria, and they have some slots open for us to come down and train in their German commando course.

How we go? I was like, well, what's that? stuff well you know like you know repelling off the sides of buildings you know using explosives to blow windows and you know infill in buildings and get to use some of their machine guns and you know it's a it's a german command of course there you go cool man so we land and so this is after crete yeah so i don't i don't even spend two weeks in creed i'm like basically like get me home i think i spend 24 hours in creed i don't even have a beer i just i'm on a plane i'm back and that's because they offer you this german commando course yes

God. So I am like hell bent on getting back so that I can drop my kit off, refit, and get down to Germany, which I do. I ended up getting my bags. I spent maybe two or three days in my house in England, just kind of catching up on sleep and, you know, doing whatever. And I grab my kit and jump in the bus. And we drive all the way down to southern Bavaria in Germany and the German command. guys are there. And we're talking like these are, they're all the pictures of these guys, their faces are blurred out. Like, these are guys that are real, they're doing the business,

so to speak. And I'm walking around the headquarters and you're like looking at all these pictures and they are like straight up. I would assume that they're probably like they're Delta Force guys. They're doing raids on airplanes, you know, very specialized, targeted mission type G-SG-9? Exactly. Yeah. Got it. These guys are, you know, the real deal.

So we link it with them. They put us through their fitness course. And it's pretty substantial. I did not know this, but their commando course was actually designed by the German Olympic committee. And so, like, you've, I mean, it's, it's everything all into one. It's like, I'm, I'm literally, you know, doing the swim test, trying to, to get from pull side to pull side without servicing.

You know, you're doing a six-mile run. You're doing... This is coming off of your deployment to Helming the promise. Yeah, I hadn't been home a week. Dude. Hell yeah. Again, thank God I was sick. Can you imagine your wife going like, no, you're stay-ed-ed-old.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the shot put, javelin throw, high jump. Like, there's all these different things that you have to do to even be qualified to go to this course. So we're in it. We're training. I'm doing the rappelling. I'm in the, we're shooting the machine guns. We're doing the whole train up for this thing. And the last thing that we were going to do was we were going to go and do a low level parachute descent and knew an objective. And we were going to prove that we could snatch a target through airborne operations. So think of it like a targeted point raid, low level jump, full combat load. And then,

And as soon as you hit the ground, your target assault right there. And I was like, cool. I mean, this is things that I would read about in a book that I never would have gotten a chance to do before. So fuck it. Let's go. You know? So because I'm a jump master, I actually get to do the JMPI, the jump master inspections of the jumpers that are at least on my side of the aircraft. We're jumping a T10 parachute.

I'm very familiar with it. I've had, you know, several jumps with it before. And I'm, I'm inspecting all the jumpers before they get on the airplane. I have somebody else inspect me. But before I put my rig on, I obviously inspect the outside portion. You have to be a parachute rigger to inspect the internal parts of the. So I only looked at my, my rig and I, you know, assumed it was okay. Once I get suited up, I have one of the German commando guys do the inspection on me.

And I'm pointing that out for a very specific reason, as you know where the story is going. I am the number three jumper on this plane. We jump a C-160 double prop German plane. And we get up at altitude. And the plan was to jump at about 1,000 feet. We wanted to hit the target pretty low level. We didn't want to be up there for very long because we were trying to prove concept,

which is you could do a low-level parachute descent and not spend a whole lot of time up in the air. And so, you know, I'm in the aircraft and we're banking left, we're banking right. You know, the combat lights are all on. We're red lighted and we're all face camoed up. I mean, it's, it's, you know, full blown. Got the weapon systems all on us. And your, your weapon isn't in a leg bag like normal paratroopers are because you're supposed to hit the ground and be ready to engage and you don't want to be fumbling with a leg bag trying to get your shit out. So you have everything strapped right to you. And, um, and you've got your rucksack with all your gear in and stuff. So the door opens and that cool Bavarian air comes rushing through the aircraft. And I'm

like, yes. Like this is, you know, you just have to be there to, to recall it as well as it was. and all the commands are in German, but they're very, they're the same as the American commands, you know, stand up, check equipment, sound offer equipment, check, you know,

one through, I don't remember what the German number was, but I was like, three! You know, three okay, and I slapped the guy in front of me. And there we are,

planes banking, and all of a sudden, we do a increase in altitude. And the, it sounds like the, the pilot, kills the engine and we go into glide pattern. So now aircraft is essentially silent.

And we are in a fall slash glide. And the intent is we get green light, unheard, jump out at low level. So it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I've never done anything like that. Yeah. Well, I've only done it once.

Because I jump out, you know, green light, number three jumper. I exit the aircraft. I do my 4,000 count, and I go to lift my head to check canopy again, canopy control, and realize that I cannot lift my head. I have a complete twist all the way through my risers to my parachute rig itself. Not sure if it was something internal that was wrong with the shoot, or when the deployment bag came out, it sometimes can go into a spin.

It'll give you the cigar roll kind of feeling. A lot of times it'll only spend three, four, five times. and you can get out of them. You can get out of them as long as you have the altitude to be able to get out of them. Most of these parachute malfunctions are very easy to get out of. And if you can't, you just pull your reserve

and you're good. Because we're jumping at 3,000 feet or above. When you're jumping out of 1,000 feet, you're really running out of time. And so by the time I jump out of the aircraft and I do my thousand counts, I cannot lift my head. It is completely spun.

and I'm reaching behind me and I'm trying to pull my risers apart just so I can lift my head and see what's going on with my parachute. But I do know one thing and one thing for certain. I am falling feet first. I'm not tumbling. I'm not in a free fall. So there's something up there. And but I also realize it's 1130 at night.

I have no depth perception at all. I cannot see my rate of descent based on a horizon or. Or, you know, I see the moon off the tops of the trees. And as I'm really trying to like kick and I'm trying to spread my risers, I'm trying to get out of this malfunction. I'm almost to the point where I'm like, I probably need to pull my reserve. Like we're talking seconds. And as I look down, I see the tops of the trees coming at me at a very back. And, you know, as a, if you have enough jumps, you always keep your eyes on the horizon because you can see it shift.

You know, especially when you're jumping high altitude. You're 12,000 feet. You can really see. And then as you start getting closer, that horizon starts getting level with you. And that's really what you can determine. So I see that coming. And I just go, fuck. And I put one hand over my reserve.

And I put one hand over my face, grabbing my helmet, because I'm going right into these trees. And the secondary story is that there's a drop zone safety officer with night vision gogg who is guiding the aircraft. But we are the initial jump. there are several passes that the plane's going to make. So we as the initial jumpers are sort of like the test run to make sure that the wind carries us to the jump zone. The first two jumpers barely make it.

Like they go in like right on the edge of the trees and the rest of the stick lands in the drop zone. So then they adjust and the rest of the jumpers come in behind us with a release point that's a little bit further than ours so that they don't go. Well, since I had the parachute malfunction, I had no. glide. No glide whatsoever. I was going straight down. And so to be honest with you, I think the trees saved my life. Well, yeah, I would definitely say how much how much cloth did the drop zone safety officer say you have? Did they see? They thought I was dead. He said he didn't see streamer. It wasn't flapping. It was almost like if you if the parachute were to be like this and you just began to spin it,

What happens to each line at the corner of the parachute is it gets closer and closer and closer together. So I had a bubble. I didn't have the full. So it was sort of going down, which is why it makes sense. My feet were always pointed down. Did you not, did you, as you were, you were that close to the trees that you did even have time to pull your reserve at all. And the one thing that I did go through my head is because, you know, they always tell you if you're going in the trees, just let the trees grab a hold of you. because if you pull your reserve,

there's a chance that all that comes out at your belly that it can get wrapped around your neck and there's always these horror stories of guys getting hung, you know, and literally, I didn't know that. Suffocating themselves, yeah,

on their own lines because it'll just come out and pop. And because there's not enough air to fill it, it'll grab a hold of the trees and sometimes those lines can, can hang up. So it was a conscious decision to not pull it. Yeah. Okay.

And at that point, I knew, how about this? The amount of time that I was coming onto the trees was enough time to me to realize like that reserve wasn't going to do enough for me. That was really the thought like it was useless. So the reason why I put one hand over the reserve is so that it doesn't pop open and you're able to go through the trees. And then the hand over the face is to just make sure that you're, you know, gouge your

eye out on a tree branch. As again, luck would have it. I landed in two in between two. Bavarian pine trees. And those branches actually acted like arms and slowed me down. So as I broke through those branches, typical rate of descent on a T10 parachute is about 22 feet per second. I was probably falling well over twice that, probably about 45, 50 feet per second with what

I had in the rate of descent that I blasted through those trees. And a German Bavarian pine tree is very much like the pine tree. trees of the east coast, South Carolina. There's no branches. They just go straight up and then they mushroom at the top. So basically, when you break through that initial canopy, it's just air. It's just air. And so as I broke through those trees, my body broke through first. Then the branches grab the silk and the lines and everything else. And I just heard snap, crack, pop, you know, sounding like damn rice Krispies, right? And then I heard. heard a significant crack.

It sounded like almost like, I don't know, Bo Jackson breaking a baseball bat over his leg, right? It was a broomstick snap. And the entire air got released from me. And I was in straight free fall. I'd say about 100 feet between the mushrooming of the tree to the ground. And as I was falling,

I mean, there was a noticeable difference between free fall and what I had above my neck when I came out of the airplane. I was in free fall at this point. So whatever happened to my parachute, that last 100 feet wasn't working anymore. And I hit the ground so unbelievably hard that I landed at an angle. So my right foot hit the ground first and completely shattered. my right foot. My knees and feet were bent expecting to come in contact with the ground and I never released my equipment. So my rucksack was still in between my leg. So the rucksack hit next and saved my

knees from and my femurs from exploding. But that rucksack jammed up into my midsection, all my bits. And it forced me backwards, which then landed me on my buttocks. which then snapped my pelvis in half, shoved my tailbone, my coxick, up into the middle of my intestines, broke my sacrum into seven pieces, and then I had burst fractures in my spine up to T-12. Then I hit sideways.

So as I'm describing it, I'm doing it in really slow motion, but this entire thing happens. 0.02 seconds was all the first injuries, and now you... And then I hit my head. So I crumpled to the... the side and my head hits the ground. I have a significant helmet mark from where my head hit.

And it would, Jocko, it was just like the cartoons, man. And you, and you talk to guys that get blown up by ID sometimes and the head trauma that you get. Um, my vision went black. Like, I went blind. And all I could see were bursts of light. It was just like the cartoons. You know, when the cartoon character gets hit and they see the stars and stuff. It was exactly that. And from that point, I do not know if I was knocked unconscious. I don't know if I hit and was still conscious, but I do know that I went blind. I could not see anything except my optic nerves firing inside my brain.

I laid there for a minute, and as my vision slowly came back to being tunnel vision, I was literally looking up at the sky in between these Bavarian trees and seeing the beautiful night sky and all the stars. and I was in the most excruciatingly painful state that I've probably ever been in my life. Like it just, when we talk about like unable to move type of pain, I was having a hard time breathing.

I thought maybe I had buckled some ribs and punctured a lung. So I'm thinking through like, what if I have attention to no more thorax and I've got to release the pressure on my lungs or I'm going to, I'm going to bleed and I'm going to literally choke on my own blood and die here on the ground. So I'm looking for a knife to try to figure out how I'm, you know, I'm reaching around for my rib to figure out where I'm going to do. And then I realize, like, I can't feel my legs. Like I haven't moved my legs at all in this point. And I feel a tremendous amount of pressure. And, you know, being in the grappling community, you know, when somebody bear hugs you and it's like you can't breathe in like the only thing you can do is exhale and

then then you just realize it like it just hurts yeah um and I I felt that like right in the middle of my back at that point I tried to move my legs and and I couldn't I had this like really like it was almost like a burning sensation that started in my lower back and went down my legs It was almost like I was on fire. It felt like it was just burning. And I reached down. I had a kim light in the very bottom pocket of my ACUs. And I reached down and I pulled the kim light out, ripped it out of the packet.

I popped it, shook it, and threw it over in the grass. And then I took my silk parachute, which at insult to injury, literally fell on top of me on the ground. But because I thought I was going into shock, like I covered myself up with my silk parachute to keep me warm. It was still a chilly night, you know, out there. Um, while all this is happening and they see me go into the tree line, um, they, they did tell me afterwards that they, they just didn't think they were going to find me alive. So it was like police call. They got 10 feet away from one another. And they just started to walk through the woodline expecting to do find nothing but my, my crumpled body on. the ground until one of the German soldiers who didn't speak English found me and he ran back,

got another guy, they came forward and they basically picked me up and put me on a poncho liner and carried me out of the woods dense, dense forest. And once I got to the edge of the woods, the field ambulance was there. The German commando commander, Lieutenant Colonel was there. Maybe it was as a colonel. I can't remember. And put me on a back brace. And he's like, you know, Joe, don't worry. Everything's going to be fine. We're going to take care of you. We're going to call the U.S. Embassy. Let them know what happened. We're going to take you to like one of the best trauma hospitals that we have down here in the south. And as they're loading me into the ambulance, he says, is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything you need? And by this time,

they had hit me with the morphine. So I'm feeling pretty good. And I said, sir, I could really use a glass of scotch right now. And the doors close. I try to relax and I get to the hospital. And the last thing I remember is them cutting my pants upwards. And the mask comes on and I'm out. I'm in surgical ICU for two days. They've got me peeled open to try to put together all of these orthopedic problems that I have.

I wake up at some point on day two for them to tell me that like I need to sign a release because my pelvis has been snapped in half and my sacrum is in seven pieces and they're going to try to like a sniper put two bolts with washers in each side of my hip and try to drill these bones back together and I sign the release. I got no family with me and I'm, you know, I'm there by myself. So they wake me up just long enough for me to be like, and then out I go again. I wake back up and they go, well, we just took an image of it. And your left one is way too close to your spinal cord.

We're afraid that if we don't relieve it now, it could probably cause. So I go back under again for another surgery. When I finally wake up, my right foot is in an external fixator. My right foot's completely shattered. I've got over 28 fractures going from my right foot all the way up through the L1 vertebrae in my back and I am unable to feel anything below my belly button. I do everything I can to try to move and create that motion. I just, it's not working and I'm starting to have that realization that,

oh my God, man, like this could be the end of not only my military career, but I might end up in a wheelchair for the, the rest of my life, you know? So the German commander shows up on day three to come in and check on me. By this time, I've heard from the embassy. Things are tracking for me to fly to launch dole and hand me over to the American so I can get some American treatment. And as the German commander comes in, he makes me an honorary German commando. It's my consolation prize, I guess. So I get, I get to become a German Commando. I get my own German Commando Barre.

I earn my German jump wings. And then he reaches in a bag. Yeah, you did. You definitely earned those German jump wings. He pulls out a bottle of whiskey and said, the last thing you said to me was that you could use a real good glass of scotch. So he pulls out a bottle of scotch. And he goes, just don't drink it while you're on your meds.

I was like, Roger that, sir. So they load me up in a German black ops helicopter. They fly me up to Launchstool. And, you know, imagine you're the hospital base commander. You just watched a German Black Ops helicopter land. The British liaisons who are also getting treated at Launstool, the British soldiers, they come out to greet me, but then they take me to the American side of the hospital, which, of course, there's tons of questions, like, who is this guy?

what has he been doing? Like what is going on here? So those questions came about a lot sooner than let's talk about your injury. And a full bird colonel in the hospital doesn't like a major telling him, if you have any questions, you can contact the US and embassy and London. Like let's talk about like what's going on here. So needless to say, I spent like maybe 48, 72 hours in Lawnstool. but we have now confirmed my bladder doesn't work, my bowels don't work, my legs are in really, really bad shape,

we need to get you back to the states to figure out what we need to do for you. So they put me on a C-17 at a lawnstool to fly me to Edwards Air Force Base. I get loaded on this plane, and there are service members coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of these kids are clinging to life. There's guys missing arms and legs and hooked up to machines. And I'm being carried on the airplane. And I'm thinking to myself, like, is this the trip that my guys took when I sent them home? You know, and I'm looking around the airplane.

And I'm, you know, I'm laying on my back because I can't do anything else. And there in the C-17 up in the front is an American flag hanging from the top of the aircraft. And I remember just staring at it and thinking like, you know, I, felt unworthy that it was on the same flight as these young 18, 19 year old kids who literally were clinging to life. I mean, I'm looking around. I mean, and the plane is packed full of casualties. I just happened to be one of the ones there. And yeah, they hit me with narcotics. The nine-hour flight from Lodzol went pretty quickly, but still an excruciatingly painful state, just pain all over. It's just really hard to describe the amount of discomfort that you have.

And by the time I got to Walter Reed, again, it was the same thing. More tests, more scans, more x-rays. And, you know, just being moved over to an x-ray table was like, y'all better hit me with some dilauded because this is not going to go good, you know. And they attempted to pull out the catheter to see if I could. And I ended up like getting like 3,000 cc's worth of liquid in my, bladder and was still not even getting a sense that I needed to go, you know, and that's a lot. That's a lot of liquid.

So, of course, they have to, you know, put another catheter in me to release that. The bowel's not working. It just was really scary. It was a real scary moment. But I remember the doctors coming in at Walter Reed and they said, look, we've looked at your scans. The good news is, is we don't think you've actually severed your spinal cord. your last injury in your spine is located right at L1.

And at L1, your spinal cord becomes a bundle of nerves that go off into different areas, your legs, your bladder, your bowel, all that stuff. And at the spinal cone, right there where you got your last burst fracture is where all these nerve bundles are. And they said, we want you to think of it like this. you know how you hit your elbow you know funny bone and your whole arm just like goes numb um we think that that's what's going on we think that you're in something what we call spinal shock and um we think there's actually a chance now jaco that's all i needed to hear i was like you know at one point they were like you're probably never going to walk again i'm like do you know who i am

you know it was one of those moments um and so much so that i actually that i actually actually got sent to the sixth floor, which is the psych ward because the doctors were- Find me crazy Joe comes home. Yeah, I've been waiting to see you, Doc. They thought I was in denial, and they wanted me to like really come to terms with the fact that I had real significant damage

to my spine and orthopedically, it just, it was not looking good. Walter Reed does not have a spinal cord injury center. So they gave me the option to go to one of four in the United States. I think Minneapolis. There's one here in California, Palo Alto, I think. There was one right there in Richmond, Virginia, an hour drive. So I was like, put me in the ambulance, drive me to Richmond.

Let's figure out what's going on. And it was there at the spinal cord injury center in Richmond, Virginia, that I had gotten the final diagnosis that I had not severed my spinal cord. I had what was called Kata Equina syndrome. Cauda Equina is Latin for horses tail. I was going to say something about a horse there. Yeah. So right at the spinal cone where I described all those nerve bundles coming down, if you were to remove your spinal cord from your body and hold it up right there,

your spinal cord turns into a horse's tail. Looks like just bundles of nerves all going down. And my point of injury damaged that. And it shut everything down. Now here's basically what that means. For someone with this type of condition in a car accident or a major accident, or a major fall, you know, people get injured like this quite a bit. But the amount of time of recovery is really dependent on, you know, several factors.

I would probably consider it to be like the mental state to be one of them because you can reduce yourself to the thought of, okay, I'm never going to walk again. And if you're satisfied with that, then congratulations. Here's your wheelchair. I was not satisfied with that. I wanted to go to rehab. I wanted to do everything I possibly could to try to like fight this thing off. And so basically what happens is and people should get a little bit of an understanding about this.

If you control out delete on your computer right now, it will do a massive shut off. The thing will just shut off. And, you know, sometimes when they lock up on us, it tends to be what we do. Control out delete. We just hold it. The computer turns off. Reboot. Yeah.

When you turn it on, you get the blue screen of death. right and the blue screen says we're not exactly sure what happened but some kind of catastrophic failure happen in the system would you like to start in safe mode now I don't know anyone who likes to mess around with life and says no but most people will click yes I'd like to start back up in safe mode and so what the computer does is it has the ability to turn on all kinds of programs all at once lightning quick but what the computer does is it starts one program at a time to try to find out what caused this thing to shut down the human body did the same exact thing it literally started at my point of injury and it slowly started to turn things on all of a sudden i started to

feel my bladder getting full all of a sudden i got that burning sensation in my legs then all of a sudden I became like hyper reactive and hyper sensitive. So if you were to take your hands and rub them down my shin, it would actually feel like you were carving the flesh right off my bones. That was the interpretation because the body had experienced something so traumatic that it was really just protecting itself from doing any other damage. And so slowly as things started to come back on. It was like I was a I was a baby giraffe that was just born and I'm trying to, you know, or a horse, right? I'm trying to stand up for the first time. I'm falling all over the place. Huge amount of frustration. I mean, imagine you go from everything that I've just shared with you

to now I can't even put on my fucking socks or I got to have a nurse digitally stimulate my bottom in order to get me to have a bowel movement. Like, you, are reduced to the absolute simplest of creatures when you are having to rely on somebody else to take care of you. That wasn't me. That was an emotional, vulnerable moment for Joe Claiborne to say, I need help. You know, I need help to do certain things. And remember, I'm also dealing with PTSD from Ramadi. So I've got PTSD that I don't want to talk. about I've got you know I'm addicted to Ambien at this point the only way I can sleep is you know take Ambien and I've lived my life since I was a young man jumping on a

Greyhound bus all by himself and going off and do like I wasn't the type of person to be like I need help and I couldn't even put on my socks and I remember like tearing up and literally crying like this is pathetic I am just a big old piece of chewed up bubble gum right now and like I'm never going to get back in the fight. And how do you live with that when so much of your life was defined by what you did? So I had the epiphany. Maybe this isn't how I define my life. Maybe how I define my life is not by the things that you go through, but how you react to them.

And I decided at that moment right then and there at Ward 54 at Walter Reed, as I got sent back. I was in a room with a young kid who had been blown up and had shrapnel wounds all down his right hand side. And he was on a pain pump. And the pain pump was on an hour timer. And every hour you could hear the pain pump click on. And every hour I would hear this kid push the button that would inject the pain medicine into his body and he would be out. 45 minutes, 50 minutes after he pushed that pain pump, I hear him over in the corner pushing the button. And he would push that button for 15 straight minutes

until the pain pump kicked on. He'd inject himself with pain meds and he'd go out. And I remember thinking to myself like, I don't want to do this. And if I don't want to do this, and everything about my life has brought me to this point where I can say that I've overcome so much of within my life and that this is just another hurdle. Well, why can't I tell other people about this?

Why can't I? So there I am in my wheelchair. I would go room to room to room visiting every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine on Ward 54 at Walter Reed. And I would listen to them and I would talk to them and I would remind them. There are people back at your unit that are expecting you to get better and get back in the fight. Now, let's do this, right? Because again, it was the mental state. If I was satisfied with never walking again, I would have been happily rolling around in my wheelchair today.

But I wasn't. Instead, I hit three physical therapy sessions a day. I learned how to scuba dive at Walter Reed. during a, they have a pool session. Soldiers undertaking disabled scuba, shout out. Those, like, I couldn't even use my legs. So they put literally a scuba pack on me, sat me out of my wheelchair on the side of the pool

and literally just push me. And I would float around the water with just my hands. But that being underwater, the silence, the weightlessness, my pain went away like that. The calmness of being under the, underwater just was tremendous. So I used every opportunity. And as I'm walking out of a physical therapy session one day, and I had just been given like my walking sticks and I had braces on

my legs to sort of keep me up. You know, my drop foot was in. So I'm, I mean, I'm just a hot mess. But I'm refusing. I remember that when I pushed the wheelchair away from me and said, no more, no more. But I'm coming out of physical therapy. And I turn to my left and Gunny Gibson is standing there with his prosthetic leg. And he's looking at me and he goes, fucking crazy Joe. I said, Gunny, I've missed you, man. And we embraced right there in that moment. And, you know, it was moments like that that reminded me like, was I really going through that much?

I mean, like compared to what other guys are going through. You know, I met a guy in my journey who had been blown up by one of those EFP IEDs, energy force projectiles that came out of Iran and killed everybody in his vehicle except for him. This young man lost both of his legs, his right arm, lost his hearing in his right ear and his right eye. he's got one hand that basically, I think had three fingers on it. And I remember meeting him and thinking to myself, like, he's got to go to the physical therapy the same way that I do. Like, why is my struggle any more difficult than his? Like, it's really just about like the mentality of it, right?

Like, if I can do it, then he can do it. If he can do it, then I can do it. And then all of a sudden, you, like, you form this bond with other guys in the hospital. And I was the highest ranking casualty on work. 54. So guess what these guys ended up becoming? They were mine. I would end up going to the hospital surgeon and advocating for my other soldiers. My soldiers, they weren't mine. But, you know, I would say, you know, like, hey, look, his family's coming in a day. Is there any chance y'all can clean his bedpan before they get here? Or any one of those things. Like these guys end up becoming

part of my being able to recover. And then that young man that I just told you about, I met him in the hallway one day. And he said, hey, I just wanted to share something with him with you. I said, what's that man? He goes, my wife's pregnant. Here we go. And I'm looking at him and he could tell that my mind was thinking, how did y'all do this?

He's mussel in both of his legs, his arm. And it just goes to show you the power of the human mind to be able to, you know, overcome that. But I think it was important for me to be in Walter Reed. and to meet those other people and to realize that my struggle and the fight that I was going through was not singular.

It was shared. And mine was no different than anybody else's. How long were you in there for? About seven months as an inpatient. And then at what point, so when you switched over to outpatient, are you walking now with Keynes? At what point did you start,

Because I mean, you rolled in here today like a no factor. Like you look completely and not totally normal. If you didn't tell someone this happened to you, they wouldn't, they wouldn't have any idea. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. I do live in chronic pain. I do have things that did not come back and will not work ever again because of the damage that was done to the nerves. I've got portions of my leg that I just have no feeling. lean in. So, you know, if you were to pinch me on my behind, I, I wouldn't be able to feel it.

But living with that every single day, and again, I don't do any drugs. I don't take any meds. Cholesterol, that's about it, right? But I wanted to be clear because as I was leaving the hospital, I had bottles 60 to 90 pills each, morphine, morphine sulfate, morphine, I are hydricotone, hide you know like everything that you could pop and I I literally had it all lined up and I was thinking to myself like no wonder guys are accidentally killing themselves on this stuff and I just went cold turkey and said no more like I need to be able to live with this pain just to realize how far I've come from like you know all right look at this chart yeah level zero is happy face level 10 over here is like the screaming face like where do you feel like I know that I've been on the

other side of that pain chart. And when I go in and see a doctor now, I'm usually there like, what's your pain level? And I'm like, two. Because I've been at nine and I'm not anywhere close to that. Like I can live with two, you know. So it was about seven months. I do have canes. I still have the braces on my legs to keep my legs locked in. Not quite force gump, sort of quality leg braces, but enough that I'm like getting up and I'm actually moving. but with the nerve damage, the physical exertion happens quickly. So the muscles get fatigued faster. And there were a couple times where I would trip and fall because a muscle wouldn't activate.

I wouldn't be able to go up and downstairs because my foot wouldn't bend. So I would have to, if I had to go upstairs, I would have to sit on my bottom and I would literally like go up on my butt and then slide back down. on the way. The broken tailbone was never fixed. It's still up inside the middle of my gut. And that's a pain in the ass. But still to this day, it's really, really painful. It's probably, you know, one of the things that is the most painful every single day. General Keirelli comes in to Ward 54. I'm a brand new patient in Ward 54. And before he walks in, they go general. vice of chief of staff of the army. Oh, big, big general. And he said, general, we just brought this major in, parachute malfunction. He's probably never going to walk again. So he visits me right at

the beginning of October. He comes back in March and they don't tell him. He comes in my room and I'm standing up and I've got my canes and my braces. And he looks at me and he goes, major, what am I to do with you? And I said, sir, I've got an idea. How about you get me a fuck out of this hospital and send me somewhere where I can exercise my brain and exercise my body while still being useful to the army? Because I'm no use to the army here anymore. A week and I had orders back to England, return back to my unit in Colchester, finished out my assignment, took about two months left of my assignment, so I really got to spend hardly any time actually in England. And General Keirelli got me orders to go to the Command and General

Staff College at Fort Leavenworth to practice my brain power, enrolled in the CGSC. And why, While I'm in the Command and General Staff College, getting my education, I'm still in physical therapy, but every time they rebuild my foot, it falls back apart again. So I, you know, I'm in physical therapy, and then I'm like, it's really, really painful, and I go for scans, and the bones are broken again. And so basically I get a recommendation from the Army to go to KU Med, MED, University of Kansas, and get to see their top foot surgeon in the country. And bed manners were not very nice,

but he got the job done. Unfortunately, the fusion in my spine, the fusion in my pelvis, I probably could have continued on active duty with some limitations. But what he was recommending was one of two things. We either have to cut your foot off and you learn how to use a prosthetic foot, And there's a chance that you could probably stay on active duty with a prosthetic leg.

A lot of guys do. Gunny Gibson. Yeah. Max Ramsey. Yeah, there's a bunch of guys that got to stay. However, if you want to keep your foot, I have to fuse the entire thing together. You're never going to be able to use it correctly. You'll never be able to run again because you're not going to be able to fix.

And he goes, unfortunately, this is going to end your military career. So keep your foot. continue or get out or lose your foot and be able to stay on active duty and I was like that's really not like seriously those you know this doesn't remember I told you earlier I don't want to be told no I want to know how we can make this happen so I send that up the chain of command and they say yes there is a way it's called a co-ed a continuation on active duty however comma when your packet goes before a medical review board in the Army, the review board is made up of doctors and non-doctors, but they have one question to answer when you go before the board. And that is, based on the

soldier's current MOS, can they perform their duties with the injuries that they currently have? I got a few spine, pelvis, right foot. It was very, very quick that like the answer was no. I was coded airborne ranger, right? Like I've been kicking in doors for literally the last five years of my life. And the answer to that was an unequivocal no. Do not pass go. Do not collect $100, yada, yada, yada. I could have done a coad.

And what a coad does is that you become needs of the army. And at that point, I could have been a finance officer. And I like, I, Jocko, I, I, I struggled. with this because I was made to be a soldier. I was made to serve. I was made to do the things that I had done up until this point and I did not like the idea that it was coming to a crashing end for me and that hurt in some way that, you know, because at the end of the day you still feel like you have some fight to give. You know, the same thing I told my soldiers, you get your your ass back here because people are relying on you.

Same thing I told the boys in the hospital. And now the Army was saying, no, you're good. So I ended up applying for the School of Advanced Military Studies, which is the Marine Corps has one called Sam's. I think yours is called Sals. Okay. And it's a very, like only 10% of majors in the Army are selected to go to this course. And you become basically a certified strategic planner.

So you can see where my head's at, right? Like, okay, I think I might be able to like go and get my certification as a strategic planner and maybe save the lives of other soldiers being a strategist, right? I mean, we've always said like this is the most combat effective tool we have because nothing happens without it. And I could be that guy, you know? And I get to the end of Sam's and they come back. And the Army at that time, this is 2011. In 2011, and remember, I'm injured in 08. So, you know, like I'm, I'm still five.

It's two and a half years of me to be in like somewhat recovery mode. That's how long it takes me to basically walk on my own without assistance, two and a half years. and the army had decided that they were going to cut the force by like 40,000. And, you know, if you're G1 at the Pentagon and you go, what's the fastest way for us to cut guys out of the force? Well, anybody who's, you know, on the fat boy program, you guys are out of here. Anybody who can't pass a PT test, you guys are out of here. How about all those injured guys that want to stick around that probably aren't going to be any used to us anymore because they're combat and effective? Let's get rid of all those guys too.

And I got 73 days notice to pack my shit and get out of the army. 73 days. I got an immediate medical retirement with no consideration, which basically means that like that was it. I didn't get to speak to a single doctor in the review board. I didn't get to play my case I didn't get to say like what I could you imagine if they would have just sent me to Fort Benning

and I could have done nothing but teach young captains tactics I could have just stood at basic training and told war stories and just been like guys this is what you're getting into and that would have been well worth it and there's very few people that could have done that as well as you could have done it

73 days notice I had no I had no plans You still single at this point? I am still single. Yeah. So I had no idea what to do. I was dating and the girl that I was dating did not know me in my life as Crazy Joe.

As a matter of fact, by the time I got back to England, they stopped calling me Crazy Joe because I could no longer live that life. So the Brits are who renamed me Lucky Joe. I was about to say there has to be some kind of luck and soft here. Yeah. So they ended up calling me Lucky Joe and just like the dog whisperer who had the dog Diablo, I could no longer live that life. And so I had to drop the lucky into my new vocabulary and finally put Crazy Joe to bed for the last time. But yeah, I moved to Texas.

and moved in with this girlfriend within a year to a shock to me. We got pregnant with our first daughter. Jack. And, you know, I think my first reaction was like, my boys can swim, you know? Like, I was really excited because I didn't know. I had so much trauma in that area that I didn't know, you know, if it was going to be a thing. And so, you know, married. I got a kid now. And, uh, you know, what do you do? You know, like what, nothing looked good on a resume? Like, how do you go to a company?

And I'm like, what can you offer the company? Coordinate. Coordinated combined arms fire on enemy targets. I mean, you know, I talk about loss, especially 73 days notice. It's not like I thought the army was going to get rid of me. I was like, no way. They've put way too much money. I got two master degrees at this point, four tours of combat, multiple experiences at all levels of command, like, no way, no way they're going to do it. Boy, that went, that was like Kaiser Sosei, just gone. And, yeah, I moved to Texas. How did you pick Texas? Costa Rica just kind of seemed a little far outside my, my web of, you know, it just, I, I wanted to go someplace where I knew it was going to be warm and I could ride motorcycles

year-round. Texas works. And the girl that I was dating at the time was there. And she's the one who told me, why don't you come down here and, you know, figure things out from here. And, you know, I don't know. It was like 25 different applications into various companies with not so much as a callback.

Damn. Seven months of unemployment. I got out February 28th of 2012 as my retirement date. In the old system, you weren't allowed to submit your disability paperwork until you were officially retired. So on March the 1st, I walked into the VA and my medical records fit inside one of those boxes. Like it was literally like that thick. And I handed it over to the technician. I said I'm applying for my disability.

It took a year for me to get anything back from the VA. I've heard that it's gotten better, but literally it was, and I, the only reason I remember this is because I bought a house a year later and we were closing in May. And in April, I still had not been given my disability letter, which means that I couldn't qualify for some of the loans and things that I needed

because I didn't have a VA letter. Like, I was clearly retired. I had that. I had separation. I had permanent disability from the army, but I had nothing from the VA and it happened in April of the following year. That's how long it took me to get my VA disability and needless to say, I'm 100%. It's hard to convince people that you're 100% when you are walking around like a normal. Yeah, but you know, it's what are your limitations can for you physically? Can you go for a run right now? I cannot. I mean, I can can you hike? I can hike all. day long. I've been hiking the shit out of my my areas. I can I can walk. Again, exertion tends to happen over a certain amount of time. It's gotten better as I go on, but the orthopedic pain is something that like if like yesterday I walked all over. I went to visit the midway and I spent four hours on the midway walking. By the time I got back to my hotel, my back was almost

like in spasm mode. Like it was just locked in from being on my feet. So I have to kind of and choose, but it's not like I'm not going to go do something because I know it's going to be painful. I just deal with the fact that I'm going to be in pain. Like, you know, I would tell people like, I'm going to pay for this tomorrow. You know, like, it's just sick that, you know, you do that. But I can't run. I can probably jog. But the flexing of my foot of the fusion, I don't have full mobility of the foot for me to be able to run. I can swim, which is great, very therapeutic. You got a pool? I do have a pool.

It's very nice. Yeah. And so what you sent, what did you say, 25 applications or 75? How many? 25 applications after I got. And then what did you end up getting for a job? Yeah. So as luck would have it, I've always said the Lord looks after fools and babies.

And I definitely haven't been a baby in a long time. So the good Lord has looked after me quite a bit. And after, you know, automatic generation. rated email saying, you know, thank you, but we're going in a different direction. I happen to stumble upon a teaching job at a local high school in San Antonio. And they happened to be looking for a history teacher. And I lied on my resume. I said I had all kinds of history experience, you know.

And I never finished my application. I think a week passed by or whatever. and my wife at the time said, hey, what about that job that you were looking at with the teaching thing? She said, I think you'd be good with that working with kids. I was like, well, let me take a look. So I actually logged online and found that this school had a military program and they were looking for basically a cadre member to come in and help develop these young high school students. in leadership. And I applied for the job, interviewed, and was hired in two weeks.

And I stayed there for 13 years. I took a little bit of a break in the middle. But by the time I left, I was in charge of the entire military program. So I got promoted all the way up through and ended up taking it. And I can tell you that, you know, company command was by far one of the greatest jobs I have ever had most satisfying jobs I've ever had but I got to tell you working with kids because you know I mentioned that light bulb and you get to see that every single day working with kids and to be influential in their lives and not just that but like to show them what leadership

looks like and to put it into practice right yeah that was important to me and and I did that for you know, 13 years before I finally hung my hat up this year and just said, you know, what, it's, I think it's time for me to do something else. I felt like I checked all the blocks. You know, we, I took the program to the largest population of students in the, almost the school's history, largest number of females participating in the military program in the school's history, you know, leadership is not a boy, sport, girls. I mean, you got to get out there and learn it too and the only way to do it, the only way to learn it is to do it. So you just, you know, I created the environment for these kids to not only learn about leadership, but to apply it in their

everyday life. And what I have is I now have hundreds of students that have graduated and have moved on to be lawyers and doctors and entrepreneurs and businessmen. And they all call me to tell me that they've done something successful in their life because at one particular moment when I told them, you know, you're trash and you do more pushups and, you know, not good enough, do it again. It's their one opportunity to come back and say, I wouldn't be who I was today if you didn't push me and make me who you were. So, you know, all roads lead, I think sometimes to like an ultimate goal and purpose. And I remember when one of my soldiers called me and he was like, sir, what do you? you doing now? I heard you almost die in a parachute jump and I was like yeah, you know, I'm a,

I'm teaching at a school and I'm the head softball coach. And he goes, do they know you used to kill people for a living? I said, I think, I think they might understand. But you know, it's, it's, it's, it's political. And there's a lot of politics involved in education. There's a lot of, let's just say that I'm a little abrasive. I think some of my style worked with some people. It might not have worked with other people. But at the end of the day, I knew that my entire goal was to make great human beings. Because very little of these kids were going to the military, but those who did, I got into military academies.

So I've got one at West Point. I got two at the Air Force Academy. I got one at the Naval Academy right now. Like those are kids that used me as their example for why they want to serve. And man, I can't think of a better pat on the back than that, you know? I tell people all the time that's like of everything that I've had the opportunity to do my life, there's definitely nothing as gratifying as a little kid that comes up to me and says, I'm a warrior kid.

I did. I can do eight pull-ups and I couldn't do any before. Or I'm a warrior kid. and, you know, I know my times tables now or whatever the thing is. And now actually that book, the first book came out, the first Warrior Kid book came out like eight years ago. Yeah.

So I meet, I met, I meet like cadets at West Point or the Naval Academy. That read it. Like, yeah, you know, I read this when I was 15 or 14 and it's like, yeah, it's freaking awesome. And they just think how old we are that. Yeah. Like, you read that win? When did you run into Seth over,

C's. Yeah. What was that scenario? Yeah, I was in England and it was around the holiday time before I went to Afghanistan with them. And again, being a single guy would know where to go. I was like, to hell with it. If we're shutting down for the holidays, I'm going to go backpacking through Europe. And so I jumped and bought a train ticket and went to all kinds of different places in England with nothing more than a backpack. And I'm in Switzerland. And I went in a this bar is it's December. It's like a couple days before Christmas, you know, maybe a couple days after Christmas. I think it was in between Christmas and New Year. And I'm sitting at the bar and I'm having a beer watching a soccer game and I hear the door behind me open of this little pub. And then I hear it open a second time and I thought, well, that's weird. And I turned around and I looked and I saw the silhouette of someone and I was like, no way. And I get up and I walk over the door and I open up just in time to see the person walking away from me and I go, stoner. And he turns and he looks and he's like, no way, dude.

That's insane. And he and I linked up with one another and we had dinner and we had beers and we got caught up. And it was so good to see him. And it just reminded me so much of the experience. And when I found out that he died, I can't emphasize how much I looked up to him. as a person and respected him and the time that we spent together and the stories that we shared

and um and to find out that he had a parachute malfunction and that was how he ended his life I remember when I heard it and I couldn't wrap my head around

why I lived and he didn't like I just felt like he was such a better person than me. You know, he just, he lived that life. He was just a guy that everybody loved. And, you know, probably wanted to be like when they grew up, you know, and I got the call and, and they told me, and, you know, there's a level of shock that's there.

And I mentioned in this story, like Seth and I were so much, alike in so many ways, you know, outgoing and just ambitious and, you know, like, I'm sure that he would have gone off to be another one of those guys that we were like, yeah, you remember, remember the general or the admiral, you know, that he is today. Like, he was one of those guys that, um, that I just, I felt really close with. And, you know, I've had hundreds of jumps from airplanes, both in the civilian world and, you know, I own three parachutes. shoot rigs and used to when I came back from Ramadi I was doing 12 jumps a day just for the adrenaline rush coming back from Ramadi like I got addicted to skydiving because I wanted to create that chaos

and that that feeling of out of control but then you could still control it and I literally I remember going to the drop zones I'd go up in a plane I'd jump I'd land I'd hand my rig you know you have the the drop zone dogs that all you know you can just pay them and they'll pack your stuff for you and I'd grab my second shoot just as the plane was coming in. I'd jump back on. I'd go back up and I'd just repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. I even flew to California and jumped at the very same drop zone that Seth did. And I, you know, and I just think to myself, like, we were so much alike that, you know,

and this goes to all the soldiers that I served with, you have to say their name. You have to tell their story. And I think that that is a requirement of us who have done this work and had to say goodbye to people. It's important that you tell their stories and you say their name because eventually no one will. Yeah. That's why, you know, it's funny we link, like I said, we link. up in 2017 on LinkedIn and Seth died in 2017 and that's you know I've been waiting to have to for this opportunity to talk to you because I know that you know he he had the mutual feelings

that you're saying about him is is the exact same things that he would say about you but not that but I saw you two you two freaking knuckleheads there's like you know freaking dumb and Dumber, you know. It was like you guys are the perfect, the perfect freaking combat couple to be out there making things happening. Just like, you know, you had Senti. And, you know, Seth, Seth knew that all you guys,

if he called, he knew without question that you would be there for him. Yeah. In combat or out of combat. I mean, that's the bond that you create with these people. You don't have to have that bullet going over the top of your head to explain brotherhood to people. You know, there's a level of loyalty. There's a level of honor.

There's a level of brotherhood that goes far beyond the wearing of the uniform. You know, and, you know, I'm so privileged now that, you know, even though I've hung my hat up from teaching, I'm, you know, looking for that new opportunity that's going to challenge me even more and create that next chapter in my life. one of the things that I'm really proud of is,

you know, I'm in a combat motorcycle, uh, association of veterans, um, who are all linked together because we love riding motorcycles, but more important to that is like we're linked in by the common thread of service. And now our motto is like,

we're vets helping veterans. And, and, and, and I feel like therapeutic in a way, that I'm in a position that I can look at, you know, other people who have served in numerous branches of service and be able to have at least some connection with

and still be able to serve even when we're not out of uniform, you know. How often do you guys get together in the motorcycle association? Multiple times a month. You know, and it can be a group of five riding a lunch. It can be, you know, there's 130 of us just in San Antonio. alone, you know, over 27,000 nationally. The Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association was there for me when the Army said goodbye. And I felt like I was lost.

I felt like I was lost. If it hadn't been for my wife and probably getting pregnant with my daughter, I honestly, I don't know what would have happened. Because it gave me a new purpose, right? Like when you're, when you are mission oriented like me, it, it, it, you, you, you, you, you, you've got to have some purpose or you're just lost, you know, and being a father, just like being an educator, you know, I got a daughter Julia and a son William 13 and 11 years old and they're my purpose now, you know, and I think that that's what saved my life. But finding the CVMA, I think, did it because I felt like the army turned its back on me.

And what I found was a whole group of veterans that were like, hey, man, come over here with us. We got you. And I've been a part of them for 13 years. And it's been a real pleasure to, you know, see the organization. So basically since we're retired. Yeah. But by the way, we were talking about this offline, but how was that, how was that retirement ceremony that the Army did for you?

My last day in the Army, I was given a folded flag in a box by a civilian secretary, my DD-214. And she said, thank you for your service. And that was my last day in the Army, no retirement ceremony or anything. I did run into General Caslin a couple years later. He was the general in charge of Army North. And he had also been the CG at Commandant General Staff College. I didn't know him personally.

But he saw me when I was working at the school a year and a half later. And we started to talk. and and the more I spoke, the more curious, I think he got to the point where I was like, yeah, can you believe? Like, that was my last day in the army. And he looked right at me and said, that's, that's not okay. And I was like, well, I mean, sir, thinking about it,

if they were going to do this to an 04 major, you know, decorated, yeah. Imagine what they were doing to the 18 year old kid who was also wounded. Like that, you know, like you have to put yourself, in that position to think, like, are we treating everyone like this? And I'll tell you what, General Caslin's aide called me two days later and said, he wants you at the next retirement ceremony at Fort Sam Houston.

He wants you standing there and he wants to say goodbye to you appropriately. So by this time, I'm married. I have a kid, you know, and I'm like, it's a year and a half later and I'm finally being read out. And I, and so I did get it. That's awesome. But you know what it was? It was a general officer who said to himself, this isn't right, and we have to make this right.

And I give huge kudos to him because I think all leaders should do that. I think all leaders need to internally look and say, there's ways for us to fix this. You know. And so what are you doing now? What's the latest and greatest for Lucky Joe? Yeah. I mean, I think that. Besides writing your book.

No, I don't know what I'm going to get. to this thing. My daughter really wants me to write a book. How old you say she wants? She's 13. And the thing is, it's like, I do a lot of speaking events, just telling my story. And a lot of it is about resiliency.

A lot of it is about overcoming things in your life, not letting moments define you, but letting your actions define the moment that you went through. And so I speak to a lot. of different things and and she has heard me speak and you know when she was younger she'd be like yeah my dad fell out of a helicopter and I'm like that's not exactly how it happened so you know at least now she's got somewhat of the story correct but she's one of the ones that tells me I need to write a but as a matter of fact every time I go somewhere someone tells me you know you really need to

write this down I eventually I'll get to it but yeah you know I went and got my real estate license and, you know, focus on building a business for me, something that legacy I can hand down to my kids. And so I'm dabbling in that a little bit and really looking for. And, you know, I'm at that point in my life where I don't want to go and do something just for the sake of doing it. I'm wise enough now to say that I want to do something that's purposeful. And I want to go into something every single day knowing that I made.

a difference. I'd never be good putting the who's a what's it on the what you'm a call it every single day. And like that's not me. That's not me. You know, um, so I think when the opportunity presents itself, I think, uh, you know, I'll jump on it like a fat kid on a cupcake, but up until now, I'm probably going to relax for the first time in my entire life. I've been hiking a lot more exercising a little bit more. And your kids are how old? 13 and 11. Oh, bro. I know. spend time with that man yeah that's freaking outstanding and for you to have the opportunity to be able to do that that's that's that's that's that's the most focused mission you could ever want right there man because those those kids are going to grow up and they're going to be like before you can

before you can blink your eyes they're going to be adults oh god and i remember when i was i was such a pain in the ass kid you know you know and you know i do have to give a shout out to like all the spouses because, you know, it's not easy dealing with us sometimes. I say us. It's, you know, veterans, those of us who have served and especially served in combat experience. And, you know, my wife is a military brat. Her dad was a full bird colonel. Her grandfather was a four-star general. So, yeah, she's really scraping the bottom of the barrel with me. But she understood when she met me that there were things that I was coming with and the patience that I think spouses have to go through sometimes and to understand that sometimes there are things that are not spoken about that we're

dealing with and you know so kudos to her props and and and to all the spouses out there that really just put up with our shit no doubt about it man no doubt about it um well right on where can uh Does that get us up to speed? We good? I think so, man. We're good for this run. Because we're going to, like, when you start working on this book, we're going to talk through that. I'm going to, we're going to talk offline about the book.

Where can people find you? You got Instagram at Crazy Joe Army Ranger. Dude, that is legit right there. That is the best. At Crazy Joe Army Ranger. That is, if it wasn't 100% true on all levels, then it'd be like, wait, what the hell is that guy doing? but this is if there's going to be one crazy Joe Army Ranger, this is him. So that's where you're at.

You're also on LinkedIn at Joe Claiborne. Echo Charles, you have any questions? Yeah, real quick. You know, the computer analogy, when you reboot the computer in safe mode, those are really impressive analogy, but I'm very familiar with this process. You just get frustrated. You just hit the control, all delete just to. Yeah, and, you know, various things go wrong and the computer does that.

But when you were coming back, online how long was that process was that the whole process over years or was it like kind of quicker or like you know like what how long did each system take or each program take to come back online in your case yeah i would say um three months before i started to get the tingling uh burning sensation in my legs um that was about where like i could try to make my brain communicate and do something with my legs i still couldn't like curl my toes or anything um It was probably about five months after that that I was able to at least get my muscles locked in to like be able to stand. So I remember going into the bathroom of my room at the hospital and I would lock my wheelchair up against the commode of the toilet.

And all the toilets had the like the safety bars behind them. And I would literally pin my legs up against the commode and lock the wheelchair down. And I would just practice grabbing the poles and standing up. Yeah, yeah. And sitting down and standing up and sitting down. And there was a lot of that and a lot of physical therapy. I mean, I was really taken care of by doctors and physical therapists. But the entire process from start to beginning, I think, was disrupted because of the follow-on surgeries.

Like, okay, this didn't work. We're going to have to take you back in. And then you start all over with physical therapy. So you're just like, like, here we go again. And it's, and you're constantly combating the pain medicine. Because every time you go into Surrey and you come back, you're like, I can't live like this. Like I got to take something. But then being able to be strong enough to wean yourself back off to say, is it really that bad that I need to take this pill?

Or can I deal with it? So all in all, 2008, October 8th of 2008 was my live day. fast forward to probably April of 2010, I'm able to like finally put the cane down and walk on my own. So just short of two and a half years of full of physical therapy. Yeah. And you're just going to just goes to show we talk about this from time to time where like if you approach rehab as you would like, let's say like an athlete or a, you know, somebody really having a goal. to, you know, like in combat sports, you got to make weight, right? Let's say your weight is just way off and you're like, no, I got to make this weight and you approach it every single day,

you know, until you make that weight or whatever, it'll increase the chance. So a lot of times, like when, like if a doctor will be like, oh, there's like a 25% chance of a full recovery from this surgery and you know how like you, I mean, obviously, but to me it kind of lends more evidence to this idea when, you know, when you said, well, what did you say, you don't know me or do you know who I am? Like that, that approach to it, It's kind of like, well, I understand that 25% of the people that you know might make a full recovery, but I am 100% part of that 25%. That's right.

It's kind of like that kind of thing. Anyway. No, you're exactly right. And I think that, you know, again, your mental state of how you go into it, I think, says a lot. And this can go all the way back to whether or not you're going to Bud's training or whether or not you're trying to become a Ranger. The idea, and I said it when I was talking about Ranger School, is that you know, it's

is that it's one more step. Just get through one more day. Just just get up. Just get up and do it. And no matter what, don't quit. You don't quit, you know? You walk at the Seal Museum. The only easy day was yesterday.

Well, hell yeah, it was. Right? I mean, get up and just take the step and do it. And I cannot say that it was easy. was definitely it was definitely hard and and people are gonna listen people are gonna have my condition and they they're gonna take years to recover some people are gonna have my condition and they may not be able to walk again I'm not blinded by the fact that I am extremely lucky and extremely blessed and I don't think that it was

like the mental state that healed me or some you know powerful planet alignment, I just, I got lucky. And, uh, and I think a lot of it was just a part of that recovery of, you know, not letting that moment define you. Yeah. And I've known guys, you know, that suffered really bad injuries and, you know, it's even though they may not have recovered to the extent that you have, but they, what they've done is the same thing as you, which is take what they can do to the absolute limit, you know, what they can do. They are at the. absolute limit that they can recover to. And that's where you're at. And that's the mindset that shines through is like, okay, this is what I got. I'm going to do every freaking thing I can with it.

And that's how you win. That's how you win. You, I remember, um, I was getting some more scans and the doctors were looking at me. And I remember every time I would go see a new doctor, I would say like, so will you give me permission to jump out of a, plane again and and they would look at me and just be like what's wrong with you like you've just been given a second opportunity at walking and I'm just like you know it's it's like you know you always read the story of the you know the young girl gets attacked by a shark and you know bites her leg off but she's back on that surfboard like a year later and I just never got that you know I remember you're like, I'm going to run a marathon.

And they're like, you're never going to run again. And now I'm many years post accident. And I realize, like, that's really not going to come true. But there is a small part of me that's just like wanting to find one doctor who goes, yeah, you're good. You know, like, give me a 280 square foot parachute. Like, I should be able to come down all my tiptoes. And they're just like, that's really not what we're worried about at this point. So, yeah, I would absolutely love to jump again.

I know it sounds crazy. But like, I still dream about it. What about tandem? Would you be okay doing tandem? It all depends. I'd need to ask about that because, you know, now I've got some cervical neck stuff going on. So it looks like I'm going to get cut on again.

So, you know, and it's, it is the sort of realization that when a doctor says to you, like, do you want to put? your grandchildren around the block when you're older or do you want to watch it happen and you almost have to make those decisions like can I yes but you know do you really want to risk you know what the end result's going to be and and at this point I'm like you know what I'm doing pretty good I'm doing pretty good I can start my motorcycle and and when that hurts I'll go get a trike and I don't know right oh man echo Charles any other questions that's it great to meet you, sir. Joe, you got any closing thoughts? Yeah, listen, I say it all the time to people.

As you heard my story, I hope that what comes across is one of passionate leadership, taking care of your subordinates, setting the example and everything that you do, leading with your heart. And I oftentimes, when I give my speeches, you know, people always say, well, you know, I'm, I'm not an army ranger. I'm not, you know, doing missions in the Malab. And I go, you don't need rank to be a leader. You don't even need a uniform to be a leader, right? Like, you can just be a leader by setting the example and doing service to others. And it really, it can start in your community by just volunteering at a local organization. can start inside your church.

It can start in your own family. What you've got to do is you've got to look for opportunities outward to say, how can I make this world a better place? Because at the end of the day, you know, I could still be in a wheelchair. I could still be leading soldiers. There's any number of outcomes that it could come to. But I think that what has guided me in my life, has always been about making the world just a little bit better.

And I think we all have the ability to do that. Yes, indeed, man. Yes, indeed. Well, thanks, brother, so much for joining us here. I can't thank you enough. Like, there's no words. There's no words that I could say for what you did, for me, for what you did for my guys,

every, you know, all my guys over there in Corregoror with you. You kept them safe on so many occasions, as safe as anyone could be. in that wretched city and you know you made a post on your social media there had an image that listed the men of the first of the 506 that were lost in Iraq

between 2000 and 2005-2006 and it included you know speaking to saying their names include some of the names that you talked about today Marco Silva Corey Dan Greg Rogers Randall Lambersen Adam Fargo those names are on there and then included on that list

by the first of the 506 is Michael Monsor. And on that post, it's a picture. It's an image of those names on a plaque of some kind somewhere. And on that, you wrote, you wrote your caption, which said, quote, to my Currieh brothers, gone but not forgotten. I still see your faces. I remember you. End quote.

And I just want to let you know, we will not forget and we will never forget. The first of 506, the brotherhood or the men that we lost. Thanks for everything. Lucky, crazy Joe, my brother. Gunfighter 6. Out. And with that, crazy Joe, Claiborne has left the building. And actually, after he left the building, I went with him.

And we proceeded up to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. And we paid a little visit to a little visit to, our brothers and started off with Mark Lee and then Mike Monsour and finally drove over to Seth Stone's grave and as you heard me talking on the podcast Seth and Joe were in combat a lot together and supported each other a lot and it was pretty moving to be able to take Joe up there and visit Seth's resting place, final resting place. up there on Fort Rose Grants National Cemetery. So yeah, that's what we did.

I'm honored to be able to take him up there. And just an honor to be able to have Joe on the podcast. And I can't express enough the amount that him and his company and the rest of the companies at the first of the 506 and the first of the 506 itself, the staff, the command everyone was just, they were just outstanding so it's a brotherhood that will not be forgotten and i look forward to at some point bringing on many others from the first of the 506 and as much as i can others from the battle of romadi so a lot to battle through and battle back from and it's crazy to hear joe's a story about his recovery and what he had to go through the physical just devastation that

he went through on that parachute jump and yet as you heard me mentioned like you can't tell he's up he's walking around he's moving I guess he said he can't really run yeah but you wouldn't know that he's he's still getting after it so make sure you as much as you can stay tough mentally physically train workout and you know what that means that which Charles? Yes, I do. Means you're gonna need fuel. That's right.

Now in Ramadi, we didn't have Jocko fuel. We wish we would have. We wish we would have. We didn't have it. We had all kinds of crazy energy drinks. Rip It was one of them. Just the worst, like horrible trash you can put in your body. But there is some effects that you want from that kind of thing.

Maybe some energy, but that energy was not good, it's not healthy. That's why we made Jock Fuel. You get healthy energy, healthy protein, healthy hydration, whatever you need. If you need it, go to joccofield.com. Get yourself some, get yourself some protein. Get yourself some joint warfare. Oh, yeah.

Get yourself some time more. Keep that vision crisp. And cold war as needed. Cold war, yeah. Actually, heading here today, my youngest daughter was like, I need some cold war. She's like, I think I'm getting sick, Cold War. post up. And by the way, I will tell you, when I go Cold War, I go like, full, total full overdose,

you know? It's just like so many of those things. Yeah. Because it just powers back the issues. Yeah. You can feel the enemy being beaten. You can feel them getting crushed. I go four and four.

So four in the morning, four after dinner at night. I do like probably four in the morning, four in the mid morning, four in the afternoon, four before I got a bit. Full assault. Full assault. I got you. There's no going to be surviving. The cold's not.

The Colts going down for the count. So that's what we're doing. Joccofuel.com. Get it in any store. Get it online. Jogglefield.com. Check it out. Also origin USA.

orgion USA.com. And we make 100% American-made products. Jeans, boots, jihit-sugis, rash guards, socks, belts, hoodies, hoodies, hats, just everything that you need. Head to toe. We got you covered. And it is all 100% communist-free. It's made, it's built with freedom.

Built with freedom. Not built with slave labor, built with freedom. Go to origin, USA.com and get yourself some clothes to wear around. It's true. Also, when you want to represent on the path, discipline equals freedom, we got your more apparel shirts.

Got some hoodies, almost hoodie season, by the way. I don't think it gives me that. Some places. So yes, we have some hoodies on there. I got some kid stuff on there. Warrior kid and Discipline equals Freedom kids. by the way some shorts on there for those of us who

jump in the pool and beach and lakes during the falling rivers rivers all day or grappling or running or lifting or whatever you want to wear shorts for we got that too see what I'm saying? Discipline equals freedom shorts short lock which is a new shirt design

every month that's a subscription scenario of course we still have that go to joggester.com click on the top you can check out the design see what that's all about it's good also sign up for the email list if you want to be in the know because sometimes bro those things they'd sell out like i don't know when it's going to sell out like this is how fast how fast did the polo shirt sell out same day bro we just restocked them but by the time you hear this it's yeah did you save me any probably not i feel like i'm not

i feel like i am not you know i feel like you and i we just don't connect when it comes to hooking me up no you know what i mean i feel like i hook you up pretty good but i feel like you don't hook me up I feel like, I feel like there's a real lopsided scenario going on. Yeah, well, you know, look, am I going to say that you're wrong? You get hooked up a lot, actually. Now I think about it. Like, you're just like going, rolling with me to wherever. And I'm like, yeah, man, come along.

It's a good. And I ask for a one freaking shirt. And it's like, no, but I gave you the shirt literally off my back the other day. So what I'm saying? What shirt? The good shirt. That wasn't off your back. Well, in principle it was.

It's weird it was well nonetheless Okay, if I ain't getting one It's gonna be hard for you as a listener to get one Because Echo's not taking care of his Brose at all You're right, but it changes from this literally this moment on But oh but for the restock you wouldn't know because if you're signed up on the email I am signed up on email

Okay, so you're hooked up. Oh, you're hooked up. Yeah I got you I got you nonetheless Sign up for the E or if you put your email You feel like the word nonetheless excuses all your previous behavior sometimes yeah feels like yeah I need to teach that to yourself so you can be like yeah

you know what dad that didn't happen the garbage is everywhere garbage is not clean there's stuff all over the floor nonetheless because that's the way you make that word

seem like it's a magic word that excuses all over your shit behavior yeah I understand what you mean about that's yeah unless we got some polos on there

actually I forgot to talk about the polos really they're from hoolee yeah well you know that thing is quality yeah it's actually the best polo i've ever worn and i've worn some polos in my time not so much anymore now i do but you know in this past like i don't know 15 years yeah 20 maybe no polos but you have to wear a polo at uh when you were a bouncer yes sir i did no tie did you wear the fake tie or i had you wear a suit on the well if you work at the front there you wear a suit on what you would you wear for shoes like dress shoes on the weekends did you feel like you wanted more traction you know like if the scrap went down yeah i feel like i'd be super hyper over prepared for if i was a

bouncer yeah i'd be like ready for you know i'd probably have like like knee pads underneath in case i went to the ground you know whatever i understand but it wasn't it was downtown it was a nicer club so of me going through a full length fight is very unlikely in fact i don't it's going down i have never gone through a full full spectrum fight it was more The traction, yeah, it was good, but that's more when you work on the inside. So, yeah, you wear boots and inside. Nonetheless, polos, yes. These polos are better than the polos that are the bitter end.

And they're actually pretty good, by the way. Nonetheless, they're from Huli. So you know Leibob is putting in that work and getting that quality out. Now that quality can come to you. Yes, indeed. Just equals freedom. Polos. Anyway, sign up for the email list.

Get updated so you can get the jump on this new stuff. I'm going to try to have something new on there. Big, small, whatever, every month. So you'll be in the know. It's all in jocco store.com. There we go. Also, books. I've written a bunch of books.

You can get those books. Also, Dave Burke wrote a book called Need to Lead. Check that one out. I wrote a bunch of kids books. Check out the Warrior Kid books. And also for your kids, check out things my brother used to say by Ryan Mannion. Amazing book. Also, Aschlam Front, we have a leadership,

we have a leadership consultancy in the leadership lessons that we learn on the battlefield. We teach to every type of organization. about leadership. So if you need help with leadership inside your organization, go to Eschlamfront.com and we will help you. We'll teach you the skills of leadership. And also we have an online training platform, Extreme Ownership.com,

where you can learn the skills of leadership online from the comfort and safety of your own home at whatever time makes sense to you. Go to Extreme Ownership.com, learn the skill of leadership. And if you want to help service members active and retired, You want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Go to America's mighty warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization

Beyond the Brotherhood. Dot org. If you are in Ramadi with us or with the 1-1-A-D at any point, please go to Ramadi Reunion20.com. And if you can, If it's possible, meet us down there in Texas, January 16th and 17th, 2026. We look forward to seeing you there.

If you want to connect for Crazy Joe, best Instagram handle of all time at Crazy Joe Army Ranger. The only person that I think I would say, yes, you deserve that Instagram call sign. At Crazy Joe Army Ranger. He's on LinkedIn as well at Joe Claiborne. Also for us check out jocco.com and I'm at joccoquo's at echo Charles, but just be careful on there. It's freaking terrible. Thanks once again to my brother Joe Claiborne, one of the best combat leaders. I have had the honor of serving alongside. Thank you for what you did for my men, for the brigade combat team, for the army, and for the nation. Thank you, Joe. Also, thanks to all of our armed services with a specific salute to the incredible soldier, the first of the 5-0. It was an honor to fight alongside you all as you clearly upheld and furthered the proud tradition of Curahee. Also thanks to our police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service here at home.

And everyone else out there, that motto that I just mentioned to the first of the 506, the word curahee. It's a Cherokee word that means stands alone and it refers to the mountains in the training area there in Georgia where the original American paratroopers trained and in Romadi at the first of the 506 battalion briefings. They would end by saying Currahee stands alone together, which to me meant that every individual, every squad, every platoon, every company in the battalion was ready to stand alone and give everything for the mission and for each other, but although everyone would stand alone if necessary, the fact is we were together and together we are stronger. So be ready to stand alone if necessary. Prepare and train and push yourself, but support your team, support your family, support your friends together. curry

that's all I've got for tonight until next time this is Echo and Jocko out