Jocko Podcast - 523: Honor, Commitment, Sacrifice, and Faith. What It Takes to Get Through Hell. With U.S. Marine, Landon Longgrear

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground<Landon Longgrear was a United States Marine who answered the call to serve with quiet resolve, carrying the weight of duty far from home into the unforgiving terrain of Afghanistan. His life stands as a testament to courage without fanfare—proof that honor is often written not in words, but in sacrifice.U.S. Marines at the Battle for Sangin is a battle-intensive and deeply personal war memoir following a small Marine infantry detachment who arrive in Afghanistan with acts of killing beginning immediately. Not a week goes by before the Marines experience the deaths of friendly forces, Marine casualties, enemy combatants killed, numerous IED strikes, air strikes, predator drone strikes and around-the-clock patrolling in hostile territory where death is ever present.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocco Podcast number 523 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. My gear was fast and tighter than normal. I had 12 mags on me loaded to full capacity. My rifle was well cleaned and lubed. I had two grenades strapped to my chest, my tops, fixed blade fighting knife under my left arm, four tourniquets at different grabable locations across my torso, three smoke grenades, two flares,

an extra sawdrum, a metal detector, and plenty of water in my daypack, a lot of. alongside my plate carrier and other typical gear. We loaded two MRAPs and departed P.B. Alcatraz in full expectation of a fight. As we drove, I quietly recited Psalm 2713 and asked God for strength. The truck stopped at the 605 north. I opened the back hatch of the MRAP and dismounted.

This was our first foot patrol into enemy territory, and I was the first out as point man. I made my way 400 meters south on the 6-11 with the rest of the second squad behind me patrolling in Ranger file formation. My rifle was at the ready and I surveyed the road closely for disturbed earth, command wires trailing off into the green zone

and other IED indicators. My head was on a swivel, going from ground to buildings to rooftops to tree lines and back to the Marines behind me. My attitude and posture were brazened. My jaw was clenched. My chest puffed out and my face as scowled as I could make it. There were two voices in my head.

The first was that recon sniper. Act like a bunch of bulls and they'll fear you. I embodied that. The second was my dad. Dish it out with no reservations and all the fury you can muster. I was ready to scrap. rifle, grenades, fixed blade, bare hands, or rocks on the ground. I was weaponized and in the zone.

Team 1 began pushing across the field toward building 61, which is 100 meters in front of us. They moved slow, carefully surveying the fresh ground they were on as they traversed across a lush green poppy field. Before they made it 20 meters across M, who was with us in Team 2 picked up Taliban, Icom chatter, and called out they're about to hit us. This wasn't good. Team 1 was in a wide open field at our 12 o'clock. Lieutenant Huff radioed to Sergeant Ashley that we were about to get hit

and then almost immediately br-h-br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-h. The enemy started in on us from multiple positions as the sound of machine-gun bursts and incoming rounds enveloped us. Everyone hit the deck. Despite all my training and mental posturing, The moment those rounds rattled off, I froze in a brief state of shock, and everything hit slow motion.

So that right there is an excerpt from a book called U.S. Marines at the Battle for Sengen, and it's written by Landon Longgrere. A Marine who served in that battle, a battle that saw incredibly intense fighting, vicious IEDs, severe casualties. in fact the highest rate of casualties in the war in Afghanistan and it is an honor to have Landon here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned Landon thanks for joining us man yeah honored to be here very much so yeah incredible job right in this book obviously I've run a lot I've read a lot of combat memoirs and this is a really an outstanding job and really takes in my mind what's almost the classic of American story of a kid growing up fairly normal environment goes in the Marine Corps straight

into very harsh combat. And you capture that so well in this book. So it's really an honor to have you here. And also, I think it's great. You know, there's always a lot of focus on, you know, the special operations community. And I've always had to try and have as many grunts and infantrymen on this podcast. And I've had them from, I've had grunts and infantrymen from every war on this podcast. Yeah.

From World War to Korea and Vietnam and, obviously from Iraq and Afghanistan. And so to get another grunt, ground ponder here to share your perspective and let the world know what it means to be an infantryman is just, it's just awesome. So thanks for joining us. Before we jump into the book, let's just get a little background on you. I said you grew up in a fairly normal kind of American way. Is that an accurate description? Yeah, yeah, very accurate.

Grew up in a suburb in DFW, North Texas, called Arlington, relatively standard. Like you said, just an all-American upbringing. I mean, I grew up with two parents in education, started out as teachers. Dad ended up becoming an elementary school principal pretty early on. Mom stuck with teaching for a bit, then became a college counselor, had a lot of really tight community in my upbringing. and you know back then it was the it was 90s I was a 90s kid no cell phones internet was barely a thing

and so we and we just renegated the neighborhoods you know that you know I think about my childhood it was probably as close to like a sandlot childhood as is as anybody had been able to experience my generation you are familiar with the movie the sandlot I am not familiar with the movie sandlot oh oh it's like iconic America I think like 1950s 1960s it's kids playing baseball and getting into all sorts of neighborhood shenanigans that are you know incredibly innocent but like life changing to them as they're going through it incredible story when the movie come out uh probably in the 80s or 90s i think echo approved yeah yeah it was cool i didn't i always see bits and pieces of it when i can but the you ever watch

a stand by me i think yeah stand by me it kind of reminds me of that like the groups you know yeah yeah yeah kind of vibe i think for sure but i you know you you know, not going into the premise of that movie, but most of the listeners will, a lot of the listeners will know it. You know, we, I would, probably from like third grade on, I would hop on my bike for the day. Well, first of all, I'd call one of my friends

that lived a mile or two away on their landline. You know, hey, Mrs. Lost Corr and is Eric there? You know, chat with my buddy, he said, hey, what are you doing? You want to hang out? You know, and he'd say, yeah, sure. So I'd hop on my bike and take off for the day. Parents had no idea where I was or what I was doing.

we had general rules left and right lateral limits of what we couldn't couldn't do but like outside of that it was just disappear and have fun and you know we'd be off on our bikes doing anything we wanted at any point in the day wherever we wanted to go and it was just total freedom the city was relatively safe back then didn't have a ton of crime to worry about didn't have that you know the concern that that we have as parents today with abduction and crazy people doing crazy things and it just all that was just over our heads. And so we had parks that we had bike jumps in and we had, you know, different friends' houses and different places and specific stores that we like going to and creeks that we would go into and catch turtles and set fireworks off in. And, you know, it's just total,

total freedom. Was any of this oriented in a military manner? Because when I was doing all that stuff when I was a kid, it was all like to put camouflage on my face and pretend I was going to war. Was that the same with you or are you not quite there? No, we weren't quite there. I definitely did have that element as a kid. I would say a big part of my childhood was growing up in suburb life, you know, 90s suburb life, which is great. Another big part of my childhood was getting into the outdoors. We had a family ranch in the hill country that had been in my family since 1912, I think. The original folks on that side of the family that made it there came by Chuck Wagon and just set up and established in the hill country and maintained presence

down there ever since. That side of the families of all farmers and ranchers or were through the generations. And so we, being my, my family would travel down there two, three times a year, especially during hunting season and just experience the outdoors. And that was a hundred percent military. I was camoed up, you know, sitting in deer blinds, picturing myself as a sniper in Vietnam, you know, multiple times a year, every year. And then the other half of that is me and my dad would go camping up in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, Lower Missouri, which is where his family kind of originated from a few generations back. Same thing. Just be hiking the hills. Yeah, it's a beautiful country down there. Oh, man, it's amazing. Yeah, boulders and caves and bluff lines

and forests and creeks and draws and I just love the outdoors. Love how rugged it was, especially up in Arkansas. It's way more rugged than the hill country. Winters are a lot harser. You know, and in that time, we would backpack sometimes our way in through snow and ice to get through our campground and then set up a fire and cook everything on top of it and anything that we had is what we backpacked in, you know, some trips that we couldn't get to where we were going by vehicle. So, oh yeah. Met like picturing myself in the military, in the outdoors, every year. And what did you have for veteran history in your family? Both my granddad served. It wasn't really something that we talked about a ton. My granddad on my mom's side died when I

was one and a half. He was in the Army. And he had, he had photo albums of pictures of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, maybe both, he was going to be a part of the big, big invasion force into Japan. Had we not dropped those bombs? So, you know, had we not dropped them? Maybe my mom never came around. I don't know. They were projecting incredible losses had we made that. U.S. forces made that movement.

But he was ground zero during that time frame. And that's about it. He was a chaplain for a time. But I think he did some with the active forces, but predominantly with the VA. and then did other ministerial things with orphanages for the majority of his career, or majority of his work life. But again, I didn't know him, and we talked about him throughout the years. My other granddad was in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

It was in Europe for a time. I think it was a radar tech. And, you know, we didn't really talk a ton about his service. He did serve. I don't know that he saw any action in particular. So the military wasn't like a. a huge thing within your family that you guys like lived up to and thought about all the time. It really wasn't, but the call to service was, you know, a big part of my upbringing was that

this wholesome Christian community, my grandparents, my parents, aunts and uncles, friends, you know, we, we have this, I grew up in a devout Christian community that really believed in putting others first and serving others and doing our part as benefactors of what people before Hus had sacrificed to provide us the way of life that we had. I mean, you know, part of that all-American upbringing was we were true believers in the American dream. It was that America is a bright and shining star in this dark world. And throughout the history of generations of societies, nobody has ever lived freer, has ever had more chance, more opportunity to grow and prosper on their own terms by making their own decisions outside the weight of others' tyrannical control.

And that was fought for. That was there was a price. was paid to provide that for us. And we, I always knew that growing up. And so while I didn't have this incredible military presence, the understanding that serving in the military was a part of, of a, part of duty to take what those who had come, gone before us provided for us and carry it forward to our part when the time, time calls for it.

That's a big part of it. I can't ever remember a time I really second guessed if I wanted to serve in the military. I think that call to duty was always there as a kid. And, you know, the majority of my formative years were during the GWAT. I was in seventh grade whenever 9-11 occurred. I remember watching the second plane hit the second tower in my gym coach's office in seventh grade early in the morning. And after that, the early battle, the early air bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, and then the invasion of Iraq, then the battle for flu.

And then the battle for Armadi as I was, you know, approaching the end of my high school years, you know, internet still was not super widespread back then. So it was evening news. We had it on every night. And every night I was saying U.S. troops advance against, you know, these tyrannical, oppressive regimes, how I saw it in my mind back then. It's still true today. And I just knew I needed to be a part of it. I needed to go do my part and serve. So what did it look like going down to the recruiter for the first? first time. Yeah, I cultivated a relationship with multiple recruiting offices pretty early on. Again, I always knew I was going to serve. I just didn't know which branch I was going to go into. I'd say probably midway through high school is when it started getting to the point that it was worth actually having conversations. And, you know, the Marine Corps is automatically the pool. I mean, man, their marketing scheme in the 90s was just so on point, you know, and the uniform and the presentation, but whenever I saw Marines, I just saw things that I didn't have back then, things that I wanted. I saw resolve. I saw incredible strength. Those guys were just unbreakable.

And when I looked at Marines and I would just watch them, watched how they operated, watched how they talked, watched how they treated each other, how they treated people. I just saw the pinnacle of excellence. I thought, whatever they have, that's what I want. I want to go be a part of what they've got. And I went and talked to the Army. I was looking at potentially going a Ranger route at that point. There's a ton of opportunity in the Army also. You know, I had a pretty good understanding of like all the schools you get to go to, all the training, all the different experiences, the military bases. They're everywhere in the U.S. You get to go to Germany. You could go to Spain. And like there's this breadth of broadened experience that I could have done in the Army.

And that could have been a great route also. Looked at the Navy and Air Force. I just didn't, neither of those really called to me. But the thing that the Marine Corps that really spoke to me is, I could join the Army and do amazing things. I could join either of the other branches, but I could become a Marine. And man, Ed, that's what sold me. I wanted to be a Marine. Yeah, the Marine Corps just does an outstanding job with their,

I hate to call it a brand, but with their heritage and letting people understand those things. You're totally right. Now, how did this, now you mentioned before we hit record today, there was like a punk rock element to your youth as well. What was that all about? Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I grew up.

been in a great youth group with very well-intending, you know, amazing, genuine faith-filled people. And that was my family also. The other side of the 90s was punk rock was super heavy. X-Games was in, you know, there were TV shows like Jackass and MTV, just people being wily and rebellious, which is like, that's kind of, you know, every generation has some form of that. And so I had friends that were very great, you know, wholesome Christian people. And then I had friends that were just total renegades.

and we were just caught in between and, you know, all relatively innocent, but going back to those, you know, biking the neighborhood days, you know, we'd be at Youth Group Wednesday night. We'd ride our bikes up there. And then on Friday night, it was, you know, it was the weekend. And so it's midnight and we're setting off a little light bulb firecrackers in neighbors mailboxes and then, you know, riding off as fast as we could and just creating all sorts of like dumb, innocent havoc that we could is, you know, just little punks. And then there were like elements of little kids in different parts of the neighborhood. We had some guys that were graduating 2006 instead of seven. So they were a year ahead of us. We knew who they were. It was a group of friends. They lived in the same neighborhood. And they'd be walking down the street, you know, and we're like third or fourth graders.

And we'd be hustling on our bikes. They weren't BMXers. You know, everybody had their clicks back then. There were skaters. They were inline skaters. They were BMX bikers. And then there were, you know, sports guys or whatever. So they'd be walking down the street and we would ride up on them behind them, you know,

and like, you know, flip them off and cuss at them and scream. And they'd get enraged and chase after us and we'd just sprint off. And then they got to the point that they started driving and we were still on bikes and now the table turned. And we'd be riding our bikes down the street and we'd see, I don't know, I don't know name guys, but we'd see this white Mazda pickup truck with three guys in it. And we'd think, oh, no. So we'd shoot off into a drainage ditch and, you know, snake through the neighborhoods to get out of the way.

You know how like a like pet or baby lions they like play with each other and they fight each other and they wrestle each other and they kind of dogs do it too. They fight. They kind of play and they kind of. It's it's like when you're a young boy, that's what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. You're going through kind of these experimental games of like, okay, how can we be in some form of combat? That's not real combat.

The consequences aren't death, but you know, it could be like getting in trouble. Could be maybe getting a bloody nose or whatever. I never really thought of that before because this is all the same stupid stuff that we all did like when you're in fourth fifth grade. It's like, oh, we're going to go brush up against a little bit of danger, a little bit of risk. And we're going to keep. And then hopefully most people kind of pull back from that. Some people, some of the risk that you can take are, you know, you can experiment with drugs. People try and then sometimes that leads down a path or sometimes any of these paths, if you continue down them,

all of a sudden you are in a bad spot. You know, people can ruin their lives. People can end up in jail. But there's a certain amount of that kind of cub playing and simulated combat that happens as a kid that I think is probably pretty important developmentally. Because I don't know too many people that didn't do that kind of stuff as young, 12-year-old, 13-year-old boys.

It's pretty common. I think so too. I think it's completely normal. And it's nice to have, it was good back. then to have certain outlets that, you know, we had pretty strong borderlines in any given season of life just with good parents and a good community of parents that were kind of looking out for everybody. And we did have sports as an outlet. You know, when things got to high school, they did start to get a little bit out of hand. And you could start to see. There was some

bifurcation of that group that's really going the distance in some of those areas that you mentioned that I got into quite a bit. And then, you know, groups that were staying away and like keeping themselves away from that stuff. I mean, I, drugs came into play midway through 10th grade probably when my friends started smoking pot and man, I got into it and stayed in it. And I loved it. And I knew it was, it was detrimental for my life, but just for a season, it hooked me. I didn't do anything hardcore. I knew I had a, I always felt like I had a really addictive personality. And so should I do anything manmade is where I drew the line. I knew it would end up bad for me. I had some friends that were getting into some pretty real stuff. You know,

cocaine and LSD and some PCP, just a couple friends. And I saw some of the outcomes of those decisions and they ended up so bad. Some of those friends went into college and continued down that path and they're not here anymore. I have a good number of friends actually that have OD'd or had drug or vehicle related deaths that could have been avoided. But even on the lighter part, like parting in high school, like drinking parties. You know, that was huge in my sphere of friendship. And I was way deep into all that. I mean, I just had a, once I got into high school, I had a very rebellious stint.

They're looking back, like, I've got some regrets from that season of life. A lot that I learned through, though, had some real pivotal turnarounds. And I always knew, it's worth mentioning. and just always felt the call of God on my life. I just always felt the testimony of Christ in my heart. And I always felt the invitation to come back. Just like, man, Landon, this is just not for you. This is not your life.

Like, I've got something better for you. You just need to turn back. Just take my hand and I'll lead you. And thank God I did pull out. Yeah. You know, really lucky for me. I was into hardcore music and straight edge was kind of a part of that whole thing. And I kind of got into that when I was a young kid.

And so I didn't drink. didn't smoke pot, didn't do anything like that. And then went right from there into the military. So I kind of got forced to not partake in any of that stuff. Yeah. Just by, I guess it was kind of the choices I was making, but I feel like it's very lucky. And I wish that that movement was a little bit stronger in the world.

Perhaps it will be at some point in time. Certainly hope so. So what does it look like when you're now, you're now, like you're joining boot camp? Like, what's, did you leave? right after high school? Yeah, yeah. So,

thinking back to the time frame. Oh, you don't even need to think back. I'm going to go to the book right here. My war journey began on June 4th, 2007, four days after my high school graduation. I said goodbye to everything I knew

and boarded a nervous flight from Texas to Southern California alone with only the clothes of my back after a short bus ride from the San Diego International Airport to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. I stepped off the bus and claimed my place

on the infamous yellow footprints that every Marine before me stood on and began my baptism into the brazen, cultish heritage of the United States Marine Corps. So right after high school, it's on. How'd your parents feel about that? They were, man, they were, they were shell-shocked by it. I mean, they struggled. They always knew I was going in. I mean, I talked about it from the time that I was a kid.

You know, I'm going to be a military guy all throughout high school. It's funny, I was, I've got a file folder at home that I keep like special things. in and I was looking up this really old, I had to have been freshman year of high school. It was these compilation of papers that we did as an assignment. And I remember the teacher saying, keep these for later in life, you're going to want them, just randomly ran across it. I was talking about my future life and sure enough, the military was in there. I'm going into the service. I'm exactly sure how it's going to go. I don't know if I'm going here or there. I just, they knew. Because Iraq and Afghanistan were going on, man, they were concerned. I mean, what parent wants

to send their kid into the military during a time of war and joining during the time of war. I mean, I think it's worth mentioning and always remembering, especially during the GWAT, but even now, America's a 100% voluntary force, but back then we had two active wars going on. We were already suffering pretty incredible American losses on top of casualties that were like life altering in the worst way. And all of that was very widely known amongst American society. And so for parents being willing to let their children join into that, volunteer into that, knowing the ultimate outcome, most roads lead to some form or fashion of war-torn involvement,

it's got to be so hard on them. I have such a higher appreciation now being a parent for everything that they endured and went through as a part of my going into the military now that I have my own kids. So it was rough on them. It's very rough. But at the same time, going back to the mentality that we had as a family, was that there are things in life like this that are worth doing that are on behalf of ideals that are more important than our individual lives and that sometimes we have to make

sacrifices. And so they also saw that I was completely convinced that I was going in. They knew that it would be good for me. I needed some discipline in that season of my life. And I think that they had a lot of hope that it would bring out a lot of the best attributes in me and it certainly did. So very difficult for them, but they were supportive because I was fully convinced that I was going in.

Yeah, that's such an interesting perspective for people that were joining after September 11th and even maybe two, three years after September 11th, now we're fully engaged. And now you're talking 2007. Like this is, it's on. And there's a, I don't know if you'll have the chance to do this while you're out here, but if you drive up to Camp Pendleton, they built this giant, beautiful, beautiful hospital up there. and you can see it from the highway.

And I just, you know, I told my wife, I told my wife the first time I saw it, and we were just driving by, and I said, you know, in 2005 and 2006, 2007, that place was filled up with wounded Marines. And it's just crazy to think that now it's like, you know, it's Marine Corps families, and there's people that are in there

with normal everyday injuries, but at one point in time, that place was filled up with wounded Marines. So, yeah, you going in 2000, Definitely has to give a different a different perspective to your parents. Yeah. You know, you have a really good, you know, and get the book. Listen, I'm obviously not going to read the whole book today if you're listening to this right now.

Get the book. The book is just an outstanding account. But you, when you're talking about boot camp, you have this, this part, and I thought this was just very, I hadn't really heard this so clear before in any account of Marine Corps. boot camp I'm gonna go to the book exhausted emotionally shocked and in immense pain from the negative effects of seven simultaneous injections I broke down in tears I remember wanting just a little relief from it all but as I looked around the dark quiet prison like squad bay I knew that there was no relief I realized I was flagging myself as being weak and that should I wake up the other recruits or

the drill instructors the agony would be further amplified by more merciless punishment In that moment, it all clicked for me. My personal sovereignty was gone. If I was going to make it through, it was going to be on their program. I knew in that moment that I had to suck it up and accept it. I was already broken and they'd managed to get me there that quickly, which is exactly the point of it all. Every one of us recruits showed up with an ego, confidence in our personal strengths,

pride in our previous life achievements. and the boast that we would, we had willinglyfully chosen to join the fiercest fighting force in the world. And during a time of war, none of those platforms of self-confidence would carry any real weight in the intensity of war, and they would all inhibit the developmental process of becoming a United States Marine. At Marine Corps Depot, at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, they pull out all the stops and rip out the foundation of a person

so they can effectively build that person back up as a Marine. It is all part of the process of indoctrination, and it works. That's it. I had a good feeling about that back then. I had some friends that went into the Marine Corps a year ahead of me, and they told me a little bit about boot camp, told me a lot about boot camp. But looking back especially, I just recognize that.

You know, there's a lot of ego that goes into boot camp that shows up there, They've got to tear that all down. They've got to humble everybody, bring you really low. And looking back now, I mean, I, you know, may have not had a full understanding of exactly why all of that was happening at the time, but I just see it clear as day now. And I hit my breaking point quick, which I'm thankful for.

And I remember that very moment thinking it's their program or nothing. I'm not like, this is all their program. But then it started getting easy. I mean, it was still hard, but from the standpoint, that like I didn't have to figure anything out. I just needed to follow orders explicitly, do exactly what I was told when I was told, how I was told to do it, just pay attention to detail and then go execute on what they were telling me to do. And then I started thriving. And it was, it was fun from there. And you ended up being the platoon guide, which is kind of the

leader of your platoon. I have never been more gung-ho in my life than in boot camp. I mean, it just, it checks so many boxes for me. It was such a pivotal moment because toward the end of high school, I just did not like who I had become because of some of those bad decisions that I had been making, some of the crowds that I've been, or some of the, you know, friendships that I had been running around with. I wanted, I, I just, I just didn't, I needed to change. Getting to boot camp was a fresh start. It ripped me away from everything that I had known and it had placed me in an environment that leveled the playing field for everyone around me. And it was like, all of you have the same chance of being successful as the guy to your left or right. It's whatever you're going to make of it.

And we'll show you the way, but you have to choose it. And I was all in. So I picked up squad leader relatively quick. And then platoon guide, maybe a week or two later, was still during first phase here at MCRD before we went to Camp Pendleton. It held on to it all the way through. And man, I loved it. I got close proximity to the drill instructors. I had the highest performance expectations, but the pressure brought like this great performance out of me. It was like they, they expect 100% all the time and eyes are on me. They're not going to let me out of it. But that gave me the chance to like prove up to it. And it, man, it just, it just brought the best attributes out of me in a great way. So good. So good. You end up Platoon honor man.

Platoon honor man. No joke. I mean, that's legit. And we had 90 guys in our platoon. I mean, our battalion, we had six, six, six platoons of 90 guys each. It was during the surge. If you remember that time frame, George Bush had was trying to surge up the military. I think the Marine Corps at the time, I don't remember the numbers specifically. I don't remember if there's 100,000 or 300,000 Marines, but they were trying to bump up like 20 or 30,000 back then. So recruitment numbers were huge. There was a lot of guys to compete against. But I remember in boot camp, similar to like what I've heard about buds and some of you, you know, Seals' experiences is I would look around and see some really stout-looking dudes.

I mean, just they had the figure of a bodybuilder and they seemed to move like a fullback, you know. And I played a lot of football. We didn't get into that as a kid, but man, I love football, love contact football and a totally different topic. But I'm looking around everybody in the squad bay like I'm looking at a football team. And I can see who the heavy hitters are. I can see who the fast movers are. I can see who the, you know, the jokes or whatever. But some of the guys that have the physique and have the look ended up not being able to make it because they didn't have the mental strength.

or maybe not they didn't make it as successfully they didn't turn out to be what you would have thought them to be just on appearance alone once i started to realize that that i really could be the top and then i became determined to stay the top and made it all the way through that way man just loved it loved it so where'd you go after you got done with boot camp so you're part of a reserve unit is that right yeah so this is where things get a little uh start taking a downturn whenever i joined the Marine Corps initially. During a time of war, my parents are obviously very concerned. One of the things that my granddad had always told me growing up is if you're going to go

into the military, go as an officer, and the standard way to do that is graduate high school, go to college, and then go into the military through OCS and officer training. I just needed to get in. I just didn't see that being a successful route for me. I couldn't really envision going to college for four years and then still going into the military successfully. In addition to that, man, I just wanted to get in so bad. So I chose this middle ground called the platoon leadership course program. I can't remember if I actually contracted under it or if that was just the intended path, but that's what I initially signed up with the intent of

doing. You go in, you go in through boot camp combat training, MOS school, however that looks, drop into a reserve unit, start college and do OCS in the summers in tandem with college. And then whenever you graduate college, you commission as an officer. So it's, there's not really a, I wouldn't say it's a faster route to becoming an officer. Maybe you can make the argument that it is. It's just an option. It happened to be the option that I chose. So because of doing that, I took whatever MOS, the drill instructor or the recruiters,

put in front of me because it really didn't matter ultimately. Once you go into the officer corps, you reestablish MOS, whatever field you're going to go into and you pick it at that time. Man, it was, I initially signed up for, I think it was 2887 artillery electronic technician, which is fine for some people. It's a terrible decision for me. I ended up going to out of boot camp, went to combat training back at Camp Pendleton, which is about a month. Everybody goes through it.

If you're a grunt, you go to SOI, which is two or three months, I think, depending on which route you go. So MCT and then basic electronic school in 29 Palms and then to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for Radar Technician School. It was so tough because I just did not want to be there at all. I just so regretted deciding to go that direction. Now the goal was still drop into the reserve, start college, start OCS for summer, and continue through to ultimately become an officer. but getting through that MOS school was so bitter and I was so, it was just so bitter because

it just felt like a total waste of time. A lot of great guys went into that field. I mean, there's a lot of great guys that go into a lot of fields in the military. And I just, I honor anybody that chooses to serve. It's all voluntary and everybody has a part to play. It just was not a good fit for me. Dropped into the reserve unit, started college, and my rock bottom just got even lower. I just thought, well, I just, I just revved up.

I finally got into the Marine Corps, made it through boot camp on top, absolutely loved it, building some momentum towards this career that I am going to absolutely love. And now I'm just right back where I started before any of it. And it just feels like not a waste of time, but like I'm just taking steps back and not really going anywhere. In addition to that, the wars are progressing. And I'm over here on the sideline. And I hated that. So I gave college a go, tried to do my best to stay motivated,

keep the ultimate goal in the forefront of my mind, and I just couldn't do it. It was so tough. And being in the unit that I was in, it was in Fort Worth 14th Marines, which is an artillery battery, the headquarters unit in particular, which is support staff to the main artie battery.

Not sure where the battery was located. You know, we did some trainings, did a summer AT. It was all fine, but again, it just was not what I signed up for, not what I wanted. So I had a first sergeant at the time who was very high speed. End of career.

I think he was just kind of riding out his final years of his 20. And then he was a police officer in Allen, Texas, which is in the Metroplex and company first sergeant at this unit. And he was a prior grunt,

had a ton of wartime experience in Iraq, had been around a few different units, maybe did a stand or two in recon. I'm not sure. I know it was a sniper for a time. I went to talk to him. and laid it out flat. I couldn't talk to anybody else at the unit about it,

but that guy I went to talk to. And I said, I need something different, and I really need some advice because I'm not sure what to do. And we talked about inter-service transfer to some of the other branches,

talked about going active duty and doing an M-OS change. All of that was possible and on the table. While I was at 14th Marines, there were two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan that I missed out on.

And looking back, I'm thankful that I missed, out on those, but I didn't see it that way at the time. One had gone right before I got there, and they were taking groups of guys and then attaching them to active duty units as kind of augments, fill-ins. The first one happened right before I got there. The second Iraq deployment happened maybe two or three months after I got there. I missed out on that because they had too many volunteers. And then there was one to Afghanistan missed out on that because there were too many volunteers and guys that had been at the unit longer than I have so they had seniority in picking

and I was very concerned that I was going to miss out on both wars and I just thought I joined the Marine Corps during a time my generation's war to go and be a part of it and if I don't do something I'm going to miss out on it and I'm going to turn 50 55 60 65 70 years old and I'm going to look back on my military service and think I joined to be a part of the war effort my generation's war and I missed out on the whole thing. And I just couldn't live with myself. So the last piece of advice that that first sergeant gave me is he said, there's this unit in Houston, Texas, Alpha Company 123.

I've got some friends down there. They're on cycle for deployment 10 months from now, and they're all going, and they're going to Afghanistan. It's a grunt unit. They'll take you. I had top tier, I always had first class PFT, always shot expert. My proficiency in conduct ratings were above average, always. I mean, I was doing really good.

Presented well on paper, was super fit and very motivated. He said, I'll make a call down there. You make a call down there. And let's push to get you into that unit. And so that was it. And that became the plan. So did you have to go to, did you have to change your MOS? Well, I tried to.

I checked into 123. The way that I, the way that I was told at the time is if you are moving from air, from from one city to another. and there's another reserve unit closer to wherever you're going to live. They have to accept you. And then it's up to that unit if they send you to the school or not. So my plan was to move to Houston. I had an apartment picked out.

I was going to restart college down there. I didn't know anybody there. But if that's what it took to get to the unit, that's what I was going to do. Didn't end up having to follow through with it once I transferred down. But that was always my understanding was, you are going to send me back to SOI. I said, great. I mean, send me tomorrow. I'm just, I'm ready to go and I want to go.

I want to get overseas. I never did. Check. I checked in, yeah, to company Gunnery Sergeant Coleman, iconic Marine Corps guy. He's named in the book, and that was one of the very first conversations. Lo and behold, off topic here, I found out a Gunny Coleman's funeral. We just unfortunately buried him six or seven months ago, died of cancer.

But he was a prior non-grunt guy, first four or five years of his Marine Corps career. He was, I think, a mechanic of sorts. and then he switched over to the infantry. And when I say that this guy's Marine Corps icon, he was McMap, black belt with two red tabs. He'd served in every role in the Marine Corps infantry. He saw combat in Somalia, was a part of Desert Storm, Desert Shield,

did maybe three deployments to Iraq, saw a lot of activity there, and then our pumped to Afghanistan. This guy was freakishly strong, super big, and, like, not one to be trifled with. I mean, there's not many men alive that garnered the respect that this man did. And come to find out, he had a very similar start.

Check. So picking up the book here, fast forward three years is October of 2010. And you come out to Pendleton and you guys are on pre-deployment workup for Afghanistan. And again, a bunch of really interesting, you know, you talk about what that looks like. You talk about what you guys are doing. You give some background on kind of the emotional part of it as well. The start of the five month pre-deployment workup, you're doing, and again, this stuff is detailed in the book, but you got live fire ranges. You got ID lanes. You got combat lifesaver training

picking it up here. You say training intensified as the weeks progressed. We packed on more gear, carried more ammo, went longer distances, and engaged increasingly more complex operational scenarios. Everything escalated. We would regularly perform things like five-mile hump with 75% full gear, 100 pound plus followed by combat patrols all day in the mountains, which often proved worse than the humps and finished the day with NVG patrols in the middle of the night, capturing only a few hours of sleep before the next day's regiment begin. So you guys are in it. You're also learning about Afghan culture, learning about Middle East tribalism, learning some of the language of Pashto, working on your call for fire stuff, just doing everything you can to get prepared. And you go into this point. here where there's a couple Marines that had just been in Helmand Province. And, you know, this is Helmand province. I think everyone's heard of it now, but this is a very hostile place to roll into. And these guys, you know, they roll in to kind of give you guys a brief and explain to you

what it's like on the ground. You say very monotone, glazed over and rigid. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You say they insisted that at times death in the platoon was entirely run. random and that knowing the rolls up and down the patrol element would be critical. Radio, corpsman, machine gunner, point man, grenadier, anyone at any point could take a round in the face and it was incumbent upon all of us to be able to pick up the slack in an instant when it occurred.

This is a point that Staff Sergeant Smith, our platoon sergeant, positional title, second in command behind the platoon commander in second platoon asserted regularly and we all took it to heart. We closed out discussions with the two Marines and as I shook their hands, they both looked me right in the eyes, brother to brother and issued their goodbyes. Good luck, boys. Stay sharp. One of them said as he turned to walk out of the squad bay. We talked amongst ourselves after they left and reaffirmed what they all asserted. It was going to be more real now. We could all feel that. yeah those guys i i remember being taken aback by just how they presented themselves they what i picture in my mind now what even back then i remember thinking man they both look the

exact same they both talk the exact same and they both just look weathered they look like they've just come out of something that has really shaking them up and there's just no highs or lows they're just leveled off and a really really weird way and you know our unit was very heavy with prior service guys. In fact, my whole experience in the Marine Corps was interacting with prior not prior service, but

prior active, like prior active and prior deployed guys. I mean, my drill instructors in boot camp had just gotten back from Iraq and then became drill instructors. One of them was, two of them were grunts. They were very rigid. Combat instructors in MCT, grunts with Iraq experience.

And then when I dropped into 123, a bunch of prior active guys that had two or three to Iraq already and even the guys that were in the unit in their reserve unit are our corporals and above had just gotten back from Iraq two years before I got there everybody had wartime experience and a lot of them saw some stuff these guys in particular it was just so fresh I mean all those guys that I had talked about they'd had time to get back and kind of like level off a little bit these guys were probably just back maybe a couple weeks I don't know just thinking back through the time frame I'm not sure where they were in Helman I don't know if they line up

up with the marja push or not. But regardless, I just, it was a, it was a market moment. I remember looking at those guys while they were telling us about everything that was going on and just thinking, what have they been through to, to be so obviously torn like they are? Like, they'll bounce back, they'll recalibrate, they'll come back. But oh my gosh, they, like something impacted them deeply for a long time. So it was a moment. Fast forward a little bit. You talk about the spiritual impact going on in your head. My reputation as a Christian made its way around my battalion early in the workup. I began the deployment determined to maintain my faith in the highest regard.

Eat and drink for tomorrow we die is the reigning mentality of Marines. We work hard, fight hard, play hard, and die hard. The cascaded severity of life in general yields limited lifestyle restraints in the ranks and getting caught up in it is all getting caught up in it all is much easier than avoiding it. I knew the cards were stacked against me when our workup started, but I'd committed myself to Jesus, and as much as I could stand it, I was going to be bold about my faith, stay true to my convictions, and be a light in the dark places we were headed into. I determined that as much as I would be a vocal witness, I would show the love of God by my actions even more. No one was going to outserve me in my platoon. I meant that to my core.

You know, there's this verse where Jesus says that the greatest among you will be able to be. a servant and that those who exalt themselves will be humble but he who humbles himself will be exalted. I just had this core Christian value system that gave me such unction to go and be a light and to be an example of service to the guys that were around me. I remember a conversation I had with my granddad Jack, a couple, I want to say a couple months before he activated for the deployment. He was telling me about a good friend of his name H that was struggling with the thought of joining the World War II effort. H had apparently seen quite a bit of combat in the Air Force,

and I guess he was a college buddy and my granddad's all the way through. H had gone to see this old Baptist preacher, and he was at, this is, you know, World War II time frame, and he said, I'm not sure what to do. I feel like I need to go be a part of this, but I'm not sure if it's the right decision. I mean, people kill people in war.

Like, am I supposed to go be a part of that? And the old Baptist preacher said, if it was me, I would join up and I would save every one of those guys as I could as a part of the effort. And I just took on that mentality. When I joined the Marine Corps, but especially whenever I joined 123,

when I decided I was for sure going overseas, I was determined to be an incredibly effective warfighter. I wanted nothing more than to honor my Marine Corps heritage by being as good of a Marine as anybody before me, being highly effective at my job, which in that context was killing the enemy. But I also wanted to be a light. You know, I know the experiences that we go through in war,

are about as traumatic as anybody can experience. You know, they say there's no atheists in foxholes. I think that brushing up close to death starts bringing up some of the bigger life questions that we often forget to ask, which is something I try to remind myself of all the time. The bigger picture, why are we here? What are we a part of?

Life is so quick and fleeting. And, you know, we look up at the stars at night and there's profoundly more up there than we think to remember. You know, I just, in this season of life, for all these guys around me, Every one of them is going to start asking those questions at some point. And I just wanted to make sure that they knew where to go to ask. So I just presented myself real.

And I thought, I'm going to evangelize these guys. I'm going to, you know, like do some of the, like, I'll be verbal about it. But I'm going to try to not be pushy. I'm going to show them what it means to be a real Christian to serve and to be real about that. To have an attitude of gratitude wherever I go, as often as I can force myself to, to abstain from certain things that are bad for me and to drive really hard in the things that are good for me and to always be open. And I found myself recruiting some of the guys that were on the social peripherals that were struggling in different places. Maybe they didn't

quite fit in. You know, and I volunteered so belligerently for working parties when they come up, which is huge in the lower ranks. All throughout the day, when you're in the field, when you're in garrison, some, you know, sergeant or staff sergeant screams out, I need two, you know, I need two Marines. And God forbid, two guys don't immediately run. You know, run up to him to go figure out what he needs and half the time he needs trash taken out or something stupid but you know if two guys don't run up there everybody pays for it and and so i just like i'm i will always be one of those guys no matter what um man i gave it my all and you know i've fought through periods of ridicule you know being a christian and in a sincere sense especially in the marine court the marine court just does

not allow for weakness you know i seal teams i'm sure obviously don't either and like a commitment to any type of religious persuasions generally seen as weakness. I just, I just had to stay true to it. I remember being, I remember realizing after, you know, two, three months of real intense time with these guys as a part of this workup where we're spending 24-7 with each other in and out of operations in garrison, back in the field at live fire ranges and the like. After a while, it didn't, didn't matter anymore. They're like, man, this guy's performing really well.

He's always willing to lend a hand. He's he's helping us in ways that we're not asking to be helped in. And he happens to have this sincere faith. Like, so what? Like, he's rock solid. And I remember thinking it just takes standing through those periods of ridicule. And then people start to respect you for it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that performance of your job duties is so paramount in the SEAL teams for sure. In the Marine Corps, like, can you do this job? And the way you've kind of phrased this thing here, you have like, two sentences that you use or maybe it's three sentences, eat and drink for tomorrow we die, is the raining mentality. I just want to make sure people understand what that means. That means when you're 19 years old and you're going on to deployment to Afghanistan, there's a part of your brain that says, you know what? There's a chance I'm not coming back. And so guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to live life to the fullest that I can right now. And generally speaking,

for a 19, 20, 21 year old living lives to the fullest is we work hard, we play hard, we fight hard. That's what we're going to do. And so you can that that's that's definitely what it was in seal teams. When I got the seal teams, that's what it was. That's what you want to be a good frog man. Here's what we're doing. We're drinking. We're fighting. That's what we're doing. That's, that's how it is. And we're going to show up at work the next day and we're going to bust our ass at work. That's the way it is. So for you to step back from that to not engage in that and you literally say, I knew the cards were stacked against me when our workup started. You like, it's it's very hard to not get caught up in that.

And there's a lot of peer pressure. There's massive amounts of peer pressure. So for you to hold the line and have your faith and stick with that. And like you said, that's a speed bump in the beginning, right? Because people, if you and I are going to bond and I offer you a beer and you say, no, well, now we just didn't bond. So we have to bond at some other way. Well, guess what?

When I'm having a hard time carrying my rucksack and you say, hey, let me carry your extra ammo, boom, and you're stepping up and you're proving that you're willing to make the sacrifice, because there's a weird thing. There's a weird mentality of one way that I can show you that I don't care about myself and that I'm willing to make a sacrifice is to down a freaking fifth of tequila. Like it literally is a way of saying like, hey, look, I don't care. I don't care. Doesn't mean anything to me. Smoking, drinking, like, I don't care. I'm just going to, I'm so, I don't care about myself. I'm willing to sacrifice. It's a weird way to put it, but it's true.

I saw that mentality. I had that mentality. So if you don't have that, you have to do it another way. And the way you do that is by performing your job exceptionally. And like you said, oh, you know, out serving everyone in the platoon. You can only do that for so long before people go, thank you. And you are part of this. And we respect you.

And we, you're our brother too. So that's just a great way to put it. If you're a young person that's going in the military, that's an outstanding. any example to follow. And you know, it's interesting because when I was telling earlier, like I didn't, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke pot when I was growing up in high school. I thought it was weak, you know? And then I got in the seal teams and peer pressure and me wanting to be a good seal,

like, okay, well, this is what the good seals are doing. Drinking, like going out, that's what we're doing. Okay, that's what I, that's what I did. It is weakness. But I think that nowadays there's more people with a better example, they're more mature. And there's also that whole mentality of, um, You know the crabs in a bucket type thing where you see someone starting to step up. They're starting to do well.

They want nothing more than to pull you back down into the into the bucket, right? They think you're going to get out of the bucket. So they want nothing more than, you know, you see this. I would see this like some guy, you know, I think I only, I've thought about it. I think I only knew two guys when I was in the SEAL teams that didn't drink. There's way more than that now. But when I was a young SEAL, let's say my first two or three platoons, there was only two guys that didn't drink. Two guys.

And these aren't just in my position. I'm like, I never met a guy. So when a guy was like, even a guy that would say, hey, you know, I'm not drinking tonight, it would be like, dude, get this guy three shots right now. You know, like that kind of thing. Like get back down in the bucket with the rest of us. Oh, you don't want to go out tonight. Oh, you know, we're going out tonight.

You know, you're not designated driver. No, you know what? You're designated drinkers. Like that, it was like that. It was always trying to pull people back down. And look, is there bonding that happens? Sure there is. Is it worth it in the long run?

Nope. There's better ways to bond. There's better ways to unite. So really cool that you put this forward in this book and set that example so clearly for people. Yeah, I appreciate that. And some of it was just like just youthful zeal to try to do it right. You know, I honestly today I really don't have, I really don't have a big hang up with drinking. I'm not a big drinker.

I'll have a drink on occasion. And I think to your point, like there is a lot of camaraderie. There's some great bonding that can come. there. But on the whole and like, you know, being a part of the big party scene, going out to the strip clubs, like doing things that are, you know, just very secular society, just fine, you know. It was those types of things. I just tried to keep myself from. I just thought, man, if I can just maintain a pure heart, I just think it would be best for me. And I just wanted to honor the legacy of my family and, you know, and do it right. So it's just trying to do it right. Sometimes that

pendulum swing would go a little too far in one direction, you know, or the other. other and, you know, of course, nobody gets it right all the time. I think also it's worth noting like nobody was going to out-served me in the platoon. There was a lot of hard-charging guys that were very committed. You know, I had that as a mentality. That doesn't mean that I always did it. Yeah, yeah. I should have said that as well. Of course, there's going to be people that are, you know, the Marine Corps is filled to the brim with Marines. Yeah. And they are not looking to get outshined by anybody. That's, that's right. I mean, I just give so much credit to the guys that I deployed with. I have so much respect for them.

But anyway, so. Fast forward a little bit put on notice from the start of our workup through the end of October, our intended area of operations in Afghanistan would be a place called Del Aramamam. Am I saying that right? Delaram, yep. In the Farrar province, which resided roughly 100 miles east of the Iranian border, our mission would be to uproot the Taliban's foothan region and enact drug interdiction mission to diminish the Taliban's heroin operation. So that's kind of what you were planning for.

That's what you're looking at. Fast forward a little bit at the start of November. a major shift happened. We received word that Delaram was being put on the back burner for Alpha Company and our mission focus was changing over the month of October in 2010. A large-scale Marine Corps operation mission began in a highly strategic region of Helmand province called Sangan. Sangan was part of the vast agricultural plush river valley that flowed the mighty Helmand River River,

which snaked out of Afghanistan's northern mountains. Fast forward a little bit more. In the preceding year, the Marine Corps had taken over command of the entire Helmand, province a major shift in the war and was launching large-scale enemy eradication operations in townships both north and south of the Sangan region, including Kajiki and Marja in particular, which effectively pushed the enemy to regroup and dig into Sengen. In this regard, Sengen was reminiscent of Rammadi and Iraq after the Marines pounded the insurgents out of Flusion 2004.

It was primed to explode the moment the Marines stepped foot there. So you go into, and there's some really good background that you give on Sengen, you know, the Brits were there for the preceding years. They were kind of doing peacekeeping. And then the Marine Corps shows up. They took command and control. The strategic intent shifted entirely to affirmative combat action. Third battalion, fifth Marines was essentially tasked with sweeping the valley and eliminating enemy forces.

Overnight, regional stability deteriorated, and Sangan turned into the most kinetic combat operating zone in Afghanistan. Three, five sustained, ten killed in action and 35 additional wounded action in their first three. days of operations in Sangan. And that swelled of 15 KIA in the first month and 40 amputees and 70 wounded in action. Those guys, what they had to have gone through, man, I just, you know, talking about respect for the guys that I deployed with, the respect that I have for anybody that served with 35.

The opposition that they were up against during that time frame, apparently the SACDev, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was trying to pull them out of Sengen just because of the opposition and the casualties that they were taking, the commandant of the, the commandant of the Marine Corps said, hell no. I remember reading somewhere, he said, you will break the spirit of that unit

if you pull them out. They have to go win that fight. And so instead of pulling them out, the Marine Corps doubled down, started packing out support units to go and become a part of their effort. And we went to town. So Sengen flipped overnight

into the most kinetic combat operating zone in the nation during that time of the war. And it was just, it was all out. So. Fast forward a little bit. General John Kelly, the commanding general of the 4th Marine Division at the time, came to speak to our battalion in person about our upcoming deployment just days after received word that Sengen was our new destination. His son was coincidentally a platoon commander with 3-5 in Sengen at the time.

He spoke at length about the strategic importance of the region, the mounting casualties given the ferocity of the enemy fighters there and their determination to hold it and the dynamics of the combat operations we were soon to be engulfed in. He said that Sangan was one of the last major Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan and that they would fight to the death to retain it. He wished us luck and assured us that the eyes of the Marine Corps and of the nation would soon be upon us. It was extremely bolstering. On November 9th, 2010, just one day after General Kelly came to speak to us, his son, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, was killed in action in Sangan. It seemed surreal when I heard it. General Kelly was so optimistic and resolute in his speech about Sangan, and one day later was dealt the most crippling blow with the loss of his own son in that same battle space.

If anything, this put a postmark on the confirmation of confirmation of all that we'd heard. We were about to be part of a major operation that could result in a large-scale shift in the entire Afghanistan conflict, and it was sure to be as bad as we had been told. Just one of those additional markers during the workup that was like, man, this is this is real this is as real as he gets you know i remember general kelly coming to speak to us and we thought this is a big deal i mean you don't get a commanding general of a marine division coming to speak to your unit very often like this must matter and he came to speak to us and he spoke with incredible confidence and i remember thinking man i he talked about the strategic importance of saying

in the heroin trade you know you talk i mentioned that i go into the context of the book but at that time of the war we were told that at that time at that time period we were were told that 70% of the world's heroin originated in fields in Afghanistan where poppy, the poppy flower grew. Poppy's a waist tall flowering plant and the bulb in top of it has raw opium that can be extracted and then used for, well, used for heroin and on top of other morphines and codines and things of that nature. But the Taliban were apparently receiving 50% of their annual funding from exports. And then it would be refined in Pakistan, Iran and other surrounding nations and then shipped off to the world. So we were going out to their supply economy.

We were trying to cut that revenue stream off and Sengen being just south of Kajaki. Kajaki is where there was a big water dam and a damp water would flow out of the mountains in the northern part of the nation, hit Kajaki and then flow down into the Helmand River. And so the river valley was 30 miles long, longer if you extend south pass Sengen and sometimes in some places two miles wide. It's just this plush oasis of croplands and farmlands interlaced in asymmetric fashion with these mudwall compounds, but it was just huge amounts of farmland. And apparently the poppy flower, they could get maybe two or three harvest a year. So it was a cash crop for the locals. Of course, when the Taliban came in, they were taxing them out of a lot of their profits from what I understand.

But it was very, very strategic. That's one of the things I think that undergirded the big push into the region. and man there's so much more context that that needs to be covered that I don't have the knowledge or experience for to be able to speak to with 3-5 and everything that they went through. I mean I and there's some stories out there. There are some books that have been written. But man, those guys have a story to tell. So we just got to be a part of, a part of supporting the effort there just as a part of it.

But anyway, yeah, General Kelly came in and then we found out someone's killed. I mean, in Sengen. right after he talked to us. Just thought, holy shit. Like, this is, it's got to be real. You end up getting promoted. You got a good story about getting promoted in there. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit more.

Sure. On the last day before, again, get the book, everybody. The book is just outstanding. On the last day before our scheduled flight out of the U.S. Staff Sergeant Smith gathered many of us around the TV in our squad bay to give us a potent dose of reality. He played a handful of real raw videos where insurgents had filmed themselves barbarically beheading their tied up helpless victims. I remember some of them in vivid detail and being both sobered and enraged.

The hopeless pleas of some of the young victims and the sounds they made while their lives were mercilessly sought away from them by their bloodthirsty, malicious evil captors struck a deep cord within me. It was easily the worst thing I'd ever watched, but I needed to see it. We'd often talked about the potential outcomes of capture and we knew all the risks. There would be no mercy given by our sadistic enemy and watching those videos removed any doubt. The brutal reality seared deeply into my mind and heart. I committed myself to right then that at any point should I wind up in a capture situation that I could not get out of, I would forcibly fight to the death no matter what. Kill them all, force them to kill me or I would kill myself.

but I would never be captured alive no matter what. We all felt that way. You know, all throughout the workup, we were getting intel briefs about Sengen in particular because we were relatively confident at the time that Alpha Company was going to get assigned. And so we thought we had a strong confidence that was going to follow through

and we were going to end up there. A lot can change, but even if Sengen wasn't the target, we still would have been getting intel briefs. But if you remember back to that time period, there were beheading videos popping up on, like national outlets regularly. And it's important to always remember going into the war, the Taliban's oppression of the locals and the foreign insurgency forces.

It was the same in Iraq. I mean, they just had brutal savagery that they enacted on the populace through fear and coercion. I mean, torture in the worst, in the worst ways, severe repression of women. They pulled everybody out of the schools. They had barbaric criminal justice practices. It's just very, very old world cruelty. and obviously we knew they wanted nothing more than to get their hands on us. So as we're preparing for combat and thinking through things,

it was great leadership on Smith's behalf and I think on behalf of Huff's also. They sat us all down and they said, hey, let's like we're about to be there just so let's just remember what we're up against. And we probably watched 15 or 20 videos of, I mean, as real and explicit as they get, you've probably seen some of those two start to finish and there's just nothing i've never seen anything worse than that in my life just absolute mercilessness um so that's seared it it's just like there's there is there is no possible way i'd have to be so unconscious and near death to allow myself to be captured alive i will force them to kill me if i don't kill every single one of them that come up against me or this bullet in my pockets going straight in my head and i have no problem

with that. And, you know, we, we talked about it a lot. And we all thought, this is exactly the way that it is. Um, just there, there, there's no outcome that I, that we will allow if we can help it. We'll all end up on one of those videos from my parents to see, you know, it's just terrible. Um, fast forward a little bit. C-17. Yeah. Into Afghanistan, C-130 to Camp Leatherneck. You start getting your introductory briefs, the IED briefs, you know, the coin briefs. briefs, the ROE briefs. Interestingly, in the ROE, got some snarky attorney, as you call them. One rule I'll never forget which the attorney stated emphatically was that if we were engaged

in a gunfight with enemy combatants that were positively identified and actively shooting at us and they dropped their weapons and ran, we could, under certain circumstances, be held on murder charges if we continued to engage and kill them. I was shocked and immediately demoralized. Rules of engagement are necessary. there are many heinous outcomes that can and have resulted from two loosely governed combat units engaged in regularly in battle. But still, this brief left me with sickening feeling that I should be very afraid out there on the other side of the world of my own U.S. government military court system and all the possible punitive outcomes I may face should I even by accident slip up in combat. In that moment, it was more concerning to me than the thought of being maimed or killed on the battlefield.

field that my same government sent me into in the first place, it felt like betrayal. I understood the reasons behind the rules, but it didn't shake the feeling. We walked out of that briefing tent and we were handed our ammo. I pondered all I had just heard as I loaded three magazines one by one in my personal magazines, each individual 556 green tip bullet having the same potential sending me to military prison as the last. I might as well have been had had one hand tied behind my back for the rest of deployment. we all felt that way.

It was as real as that. I've heard some other people talk about, talk about this in the more recent too. And, you know, I look back and I have a much higher appreciation and understanding than I did back then. And I understood back then. You know, I remember hearing that Vietnam was one of the very first wars that got televised. And that was a major part of what lost the war.

A whole lot that you can dig into that. I wouldn't, I won't go there necessarily. But, you know, I think videos of wartime occurrences if taken out of context can be so incredibly damaging. Not to mention, just they're hard scenes to be a part of. They're hard scenes to watch. And so I can envision what could happen.

Should we be engaged in a firefight? And then some guy, some enemy combatant, drop his weapon and run and get shot in the back by a squad of Marines. And then that front end context be completely left out. and then, you know, what's propagated is what's shown, like, I get it. But back then, man, it was tough. It's just like what? We just have just spent all these years, like, from the, from day one at MCRD, all the way through. Your whole world is kill the enemy.

Did anybody reinterpret kind of what they, what the lawyer meant for you? No. Well, I think just adding in, I think adding in the context the way that I just, played it out. Like, guys, the reason for this is that, you know, there's, like, there's bigger things at play here. And should one minor mistake be made or something happened that could be construed another way? Like, it could really damage the war effort. And so I understood that. It's just very high pressure. The problem is it made a second guess on the battlefield. I mean, I, you know, there's a place in the book that I had a guy lined up in my sights. Very obviously an enemy combatant. He had a

tactical gear on. He was wearing brown fatigues. He had a radio in his hand. Did not have a weapon. But I, like he's around a building and you know there's more context to the story but I ended up not taking the shot a part of that context was uh is this positive identification like I'm second guessing myself um and uh it's broader story with more details but but again that those ROEs man they're necessary like I get it but it did result in some second guessing made it more challenging that's for sure one thing one thing I think is important to go back to uh before we deployed one of the things that was a real marker was my last trip home with my parents.

You know, we talked about that a little bit on the front end. I've had a lot of conversations here in the last couple months of people being impacted by, like the story of me and my family in this book, particularly me and my parents. And I remember my dad took me to Veterans Park. It's a park that we frequented a lot when I was a kid. Called Veterans Park, it's got some woods in the back.

We go mountain biking there. He took me in his 1959 International Harvester Truck. He wrote a letter to me. so that he would be able to get out every single word that he had to say. And he pulled up in this parking lot and he read the letter. And we had this very heartfelt moment, this last time. This was it. I'm headed overseas after this moment.

And I remember thinking while my dad was reading the letter, just kind of going back to what we talked about on the front end, like, I'm in his eyes. Like, I'm his little boy. Like our memories in this place. I'm a six, seven-year-old kid that doesn't know anything about the world. and he's so excited about everything that's happening. And my hero, my dad, is showing me how to mountain bike on these dirt trails.

And he's having that feeling and then thinking, as this little boy's provider and protector, he's going into war where people are going to actively try to kill him, and I could do nothing about it. I'm just stuck here hoping that it all goes well. And I just, again, the pressure, you know, we there I just I'm so appreciative to the emphasis on thanking veterans for service and you know that like we have it really good today compared to generations before us um there is a widespread

recognition that people volunteer to go into the military serve honorably get put in these crazy circumstances and have to make the right decisions when there's a whole lot of wrongs and on and on and on but man the parents the parents that send their kids um and have to deal with all of that pressure and all of the fear and all the bitterness and the anger and God forbid they lose their kids or the kids get seriously maimed or wounded and come back never the same. I just want to constantly cast light onto the commitment from the families back home that send their loved ones away. It was a big moment. You know, in that same trip home, I had some defining moments with my mom, but one of the things that I remember thinking about is she's just holding me a lot more. We'll be sitting on the

couch and she just want to hold me. I mean, wrap her arms around me and, you know, small ways. Just, just a lot more of that weekend that I was home than before. I just thought she's feeling the same thing. You know, her little baby's going to a really, really, it's going to war. Were they tracking you going to saying again? Were they tracking the casualties? Were they tracking what's going on with three five at that time? They were, but we were being very, very quiet about the details. I mean, I, there were things that they were allowed to know. There were things that they were a part of. They were, if memory serves me right, I think they were there when when general Kelly spoke to us. I can't remember exactly, but there was a parents

weekend around that same time frame. So they, if they weren't there for it, they had heard some of the speech. So they were as aware as they could be. Now, I was very aggressively trying to not share many details and tried to do that throughout the deployment up until a point that I had to share some details. But man, just just so tough on the families. So salute to the parents, salute to the families for sure. Big time. Yeah, but yeah, so we're we're there. Your mission tasking. Here we go.

Lieutenant Huff, our platoon commander at Alpha Company, second platoon, huddled second away from the others and let it out. Alpha Company was tasked Sangan exclusively, and second platoon would be fully operational as a gun truck, quick reaction force attached to Marine Corps. Second reconnaissance battalion in the northern Sengen Valley, who was also there in support of 3-5's main effort further south. When we weren't needed on QRF, we would be running our own combat patrols.

I couldn't believe my ears. All our hard work and training actually was going to pay off. We, second platoon, landed the hottest mission of the entire battalion, and we were ecstatic. Man, what a moment. You know, all throughout the workup, we knew we were competing. And I remember Staff Sergeant Smith and Huff, you know, just exclaiming over and over again. Huff was a relatively green L.T. I mean, he was a stud.

awesome dude but this is his first deployment Smith had already been on three deployments to iraq very senior very very very seasoned guy and i remember him telling us over and over and over again top performers get the hottest missions and that's all we wanted you know i we joined the marine court to go be a part of the fight now we're finally going to get our chance to and especially in my mind i'd already had these experiences passed me by you know and i'd already had some regrets of like man i should have made this decision it could have turned out better for me in my military service in that way you know mOS active duty versus reserve plc and all that stuff and just like we we want to like we're finally going to get overseas we're finally going to get to play that Friday night lights i talk about it a little bit in the

book but one of the things that i think presents a real struggle for combat forces is is not getting to go experience combat if you join the marine corps join the seals join army units i mean if you join a combat force and then you spin yourself training and sacrificing enduring pain and agony and being away from your family going through long nights early mornings being in the field and you know to get to the point that you can finally see if any of it is going to prove out and be what you're told it's worth you know if we go play football one of the things I loved about football is you practice football where you practice just like you play games I want to go hit somebody you know we you go hit somebody in the play.

But even still, as a team, you're operating in football, you're running plays and running drills, and you're making, you know, hard decisions to try to be the best. And then you get to go put it to the test every Friday night against another team that's doing the same thing. And then you really see who's the best. But in combat, in training for combat, you don't get that. And so there's just this weird mental exercise of like,

I've got to stay in a position of being ready for the most, extreme violence that humanity can come up with, but there's no real ultimate outlet. Nobody's shooting back in me. All of this is imaginary. Like, we're assaulting this enemy position, but the enemy's not really there. It's just these pop-up targets. And so either I'm getting geared up and I'm super aggressive and I'm ready to let it out, but I can't because any type of hand-to-hand or, you know, like gun battle combat, like you can't go

up against anybody and test that out or you're going to hurt or kill them or they're going to hurt or Like there isn't any of that. So you're either like, you know, pent up, ready to be super aggressive and violent, but you can't be. Or it's hard to take seriously at all because, again, it's all ultimately imaginary. And so just getting the news that the Alpha Company was getting sang in and that Second Platoon in particular was going to be this mobile quick reaction force unit. It was like, finally, all this actually does matter. And it is going to, we're going to go get to test these skills. man it just meant the world

yeah you used the word ecstatic and we were and man we were ecstatic and this chapter is by the way called the big show yeah right yeah yeah yeah um fast forward a little bit going outside the wire here you're doing your relief in place all that stuff is taking place

route 611 this is kind of a critical road give us a little description on 611 yeah route 611 uh it traveled the north south from saying it all the way to up to kinjaki I understood that there was just a part of the coin mission, the counterinsurgency mission in Sengen, maybe taking a step back. You know, whenever we invaded Iraq,

it was like the objective is very clear. We're going to take over this nation and establish ourselves and root out the enemy force that's in our way from doing that. Thinking about World War II and Vietnam, it's, you know, there's an enemy force over there and here we are and there's a front line. and, you know, it's more complicated than that, but just to oversimplify it. But in Afghanistan, the lines weren't so clearly drawn.

Setting up and establishing ourselves was not incredibly difficult initially. It was maintaining stability after the fact. And, you know, the opium trade in particular was very convoluted because that supported the entire local economy in Sengen. And in these rural areas, we can't just go wipe out the fields. We'll pit the entire community against us. And then we lose the war because the people were trying to liberate. we've just killed off their way of life so we couldn't just go do that so we were trying to

institute uh like economic boost in the area and bring about new opportunities while we were also kind of putting a damp on or pushing back against the opium trade it was all just very muddy but a part of that uh part of the initiative was up in kanjaki in the dam there were some energy turbines I think we're trying to maybe bring a couple more online and improve them to improve electricity in the area to create more modernization, which opens up more opportunities for who knows what. So Route 611 was very critical to own and maintain. In addition to that, I think just maintaining our footprint and stability in the valley in general, that was the main arterial road up and down the entire valley. So it was very critically important. We had a few friendly institutions up and down the valley.

but the further north you got, the more hostile it became, the more rural it was. But that main supply route, it was a part of our logistics hold on the region and was very strategically important because of it. And that's why it was so heavily attacked. There's ideas all over it, but, you know, crater holes, choke points. Just it's, it's the main area of use and therefore the main area of attack. Fast forward a little bit. We pulled up on another marine unit that had been hit by a,

an IED and ambushed less than an hour prior. Their six by six MRAP was flipped over and laid out on its side, 20 meters off the road. It looked like a beached whale. All four marines inside had just been airlifted out in critical condition before we arrived. Fast forward a little bit. There's a freshly dug hole. The 325 Marine in the front passenger seat looked back at me with a smirk and said, ready to get your hands dirty?

Let's go check it out. The driver chuckled. I took a deep breath and said, let's do it. Then went to open the back hatch of the MRAP. I stepped out of the first metal great stair step and scanned my surroundings with no noticeable immediate threat I started to step down to the road and all of a sudden brr-rah An AK-47 auto burst blasted off and rounds whisked and cracked crackled in narrowly missing my turret gunner I jumped back into the hull of the MRAP slammed the door shut and the driver yelled hold on and

Punch the gas in reverse to get us off the X the turret gunner was just days away from going home and nearly had his head shot off on one of his very last patrols. Unable to identify exactly where the firing was coming from, we cautiously drove around the hole and pushed south out of the target area to give the enemy the impression that we were not interested in a fight that morning. The three, two, five guys had a plan though.

So they use ISR, bring it overhead, bringing a predator with hellfire missiles, and take that guy out. Again, but it's kind of your first time getting shot at. This was the very first time outside the wire. I mean, we were a day, I think this was day number two in Nolay in Sangan. So we, we flew into Fob, there's three major Fobbs in Sengen, Fobnola, Fob Jaxon, Fib Incrumen.

Fob Nolay is the furthest one south, and I think it has the biggest, I don't know if it's the biggest, but the biggest, like, airstrip area. There's no air strip. It's all Hilo, but anyway, we landed in. We linked up at 325 to do our transfer of authority or relief in place. This is the very first patrol. and like very first time we leave in the early morning and while we're going they're telling they're downloading us with all the information so for anybody unfamiliar the way the relief in place works worked back then unit leaders from the new unit will tag along with the existing during

their typical operations and pick up all the information that they can and the in the existing unit is sharing a lot of information anything pertinent real time what's going on in the area and then after a couple patrols, then the new unit will take over and then unit leaders from the existing unit will tag along in an advisory role just to make sure that everything's really sealed in and then there's a full handoff. So this was like first patrol, we're going in to learn about the area. It had been heavily, it had been really rainy apparently in saying in the few days prior. In fact, I guess all over southern Afghanistan, we're supposed to get there five or six days ahead of when we officially did, we kept trying and kept having to either turn around or

knocking on the planes in general, autumn and o'anast, just because the rainstorms are so bad. Saying in being as rural as it is, the roads were sloppy, muddy. So 325 had not been on the road. Nobody had, relatively speaking. So yeah, we traveled up to 6-11. Another unit had been hit, and the thing if it was, they got hit and ambushed 30 minutes before we got there. I mean, had they not gone on the road that would have been us. And I'm like, oh my God. And these 325 guys who had been there doing that QRF mission for the last few months, it was just like another day to them. You know, they just, no problems. Here's your assessment.

This was my first time outside the wire. Only days in country encountered the aftermath of an unfortunately successful enemy IED strike and accompanying ambush for critically wounded Marines. Another IED near miss and controlled detonation in place. A very close enemy small arms attack. A 500 pound GBU drop on enemy compound and two hellfire missiles. Strikes from a predator drone resulting in three enemy KIA. All this in just a matter of few hours on my very first patrol outside the wire, and it wasn't even fighting season in Sangan yet.

So welcome to Sangan. Wild West. Yeah, that's exactly what it felt like. Fast forward a little bit early March. We're fully operational. Once everything was set, we started mounted patrols around the clock. And you talk about kind of what you had of our 10 trucks. We had four MRAPs, four by four MRAPs, two, six by six MRAPs, and four.

for MATVs, Matt V's. Yeah, initially the mission focus was for us to try to basically always have presence on the road. You know, if we're up and down all the time, we limit the enemy's ability to plant new IEDs. We're showing presence constantly. We're, you know, the initial onset was, hey, we want you all to be on the road all the time and your mobile quick reaction force ready to go in an instant. The problem was there was just so few of us. We only had enough guys to man two independent squads.

So we're on 12-hour shifts. 12 hours patrolling, 12 hours off. So we would set out at 6 p.m. and patrol until 6 a.m., pitch black and sang in, except for our trucks. For the first couple weeks that we were patrolling, we're lights on, just getting used to the environment. But it was just us on the road. And once we get out of, we patrol out of Nolay past the main urban epicenter of Sengen, which is where Fobb Jackson, and is and then hit kind of the northern part of the road. Bob Ingramman was up there and we would push out further north.

Second Recon was in P.B. Alcatraz, even farther north. It's a very, very small establishment. And then their Bravo company had another patrol base, I guess, that was probably named. I'm not sure what the name of that one was way up there, but that was it. And we were just on the road. And so we would get calls while we're out there for any number of things. Another unit would come under attack and they would want. want us to come in and just provide some road presence, maybe cut off the flanks from the north-south

depending on what the unit was doing internal into the green zone or, you know, check out IED suspected locations or maybe the ISR drones would pick up some enemy activity somewhere on the road and we try to rush in and keep them from planting an IED. The early days, we were just trying to figure out what all was going on. So we were just out there all the time, trying to constantly patrol and figure everything out. We'd pace five to ten miles an hour. and then we'd stop somewhere for 30 minutes and just kind of surveil everything. We had G-Boss cameras that could zoom in,

I think a mile or two. We had really good IR screens for nighttime patrolling, and we would stop, scan, try to get a feel for the pattern of life in a particular area at a particular time during the day or night, and then continue pushing on, do the same thing somewhere else. We were starting to scout out the road

and then the offshoots and get our minds wrapped around where everything was. And even while we were ripping with, 325, we'd be pushing up and down the road and we would, they would stop at a particular point and say, hey, listen, this alley right here goes back a far distance. We've taken pretty consistent sniper, sniper fire from this alley. You need to really watch for this one. We travel up, you know, three, four miles further. And then they'd stop and they'd say, look at that rock on the side of the road. It's turned up, not flat on its belly, but on its ridge. That's a marker that the Taliban's

trying to show the locals or mark for themselves that there's an IED somewhere in the vicinity. We'd see trash tied in trees. They'd stop and point that out. They'd say, you need to watch for that. See how that trash is up in the tree? It's not just there. It's tied there. Somebody put it there.

If that means something, you need to watch for it. And on and on and on. And that's what we were trying to do in the initial days. The problem was we had a mission methodology that was not sustainable. We hit our first IED, the very first patrol on our own in the middle of the night. It was our front truck. Thankfully, the mine roller hit it, which is this extension. on the front of the truck.

It's like a row of tires with metal plates on top of it that hopefully hit a pressure plate IED, which is an IED that explodes from downward pressure so that enemy would set it up that if our tires ran over it, two electrical leads would close on each other

and an explosion would happen. So the mine roller took the initial blast. Wasn't that bad, thankfully, for the guys in the truck, but it destroyed the mine roller. And then over the course of the next few days, first squad took two more IEDs, and then we took a huge one to our,

truck directly, a little ways after that, which we could talk about, but it was like, where each other's QRF and where everyone else is QRF, and we keep hitting IEDs. I think we got a couple weeks in, and we had four IEDs, and the last one that we got was a very near miss. A massive explosion, way north in the valley at like 2 a.m., exploded just under the back left tire of a Matt V, shut the truck down, rattled all the guys inside. We thought it killed all of them. And it was like, man, we're three mine rollers down and now a truck down. Like, we're barely in country a little while.

It's not even fighting season yet the trees are just barely starting to green. Like, this is not a sustainable mission method. And so we eventually some changes happened, which, man, were very much for the best. But those first couple weeks trying to just get ourselves figured out out there was near miss after near miss. Yeah, the details you give on that one. I mean, just this, when the Matt V gets hit and, you know, you're, what, your couple vehicles behind him and you just see nothing but smoke, your vehicle starts getting hit with pieces of metal.

Yeah. In the book here, Vic 2, Vic 2, how copy you guys? Okay. Silence from my vantage point as the dust settled. I could roughly make out the shape of truck two, but it was mangled and without any flicker of tail lights, cab lights, etc. a concern grew by the second they're freaking dead is it all of them or only one or two which ones do we need to rush for an aid for we step on pressure plates if we do the first 60 seconds following

the blast crawled by and our anxiety grew math has decided to go survey the carnage just as he started to open his door the radio sounded off it came through broken but we could hear make out what was said all vicks all vicks be advised this vick two we're all right say it again we're all right Yeah, my best friend was in that vehicle And of course, man, I loved all those guys So tremendously But Alfredo Garcia was in that vehicle He was the driver

He was, uh, we did boot camp together Here at MCRD and San Diego Back in 2007 and ended up at the same unit And you know, one thing led to another He ended up, he was the best man in my wedding And I was the best man in his But he got hit And again initially, you know, for that

First 60 seconds, we couldn't see anything We couldn't hear anything It's middle of the night that explosion though I mean you alluded to it but it's sent out a dust plume that I'm looking through the windshield and it was taller than I could see through the windshield I had to lean up to figure to see how high

it was it was so big we just thought there's no way every single one of them are dead you know and they but thankfully they made it out rattled but they made it out and then that truck hobbled along you know we what happened is second recon squad from Bravo company

came to help us out They brought an EOD guy with him. The EOD guy said it was over 100 pound, 100 pound IED. I can't remember if it was 100 or 120. And I have no idea how they make that determination. But that's what he said. We managed to get that truck off the X and out to the Bravo company establishment. And then like we went to go change the tire and half the back rear tire,

half the bolts were seared off from the explosion. When we went after it, put the new tire and wheel on, and it was just as jerry rigged as it. could be. I mean, nobody had any confidence that it was going to make it all the way south. But the second recon unit agreed to patrol with us, just to escort us back down to NOLA. And so I made for a long night. You know, that IED hit it. I want to say it was somewhere between midnight and 2 a.m. We made it up to Bravo Company's position, stayed there for an hour while we tried to get the new tire on, and then pushed out before sunrise to make it back to Nolay,

pulled in just right as the sun was coming up. And that, That was just the pace of things. So, yeah, early days. We just got our taste of it real quick. Now, you mentioned that there was, it was like literally too much to do. And you go here for the section called Mission Refocus. Lieutenant met with our regional commands

and negotiated a new mission focus for us. Our current operational method was not sustainable. We were being hit left and right and we're pushing crazy hours with extreme sleep deprivation. So he comes up and tells you, All of you should make a call home today. We've been assigned our own A.O. And tonight we're moving up to our new home at patrol base Alcatraz.

It's about to get even more real, and you should all be thankful. No way, my jaw must have just hit the floor. This was unexpected, but exactly what we needed. P.B. Alcatraz housed elements of second recons command and their own alpha company. It was as remote as things got in Sangan, right in the heart of enemy territory, in the northern Valley. Our newly assigned AO was north of P.B. Alcatraz and was the worst stretch of road on the 6-11 for IED strikes and ambushes. So you're going from the out of the frying plan into the friar. Yeah, yeah. You know the trick of it was though, if you think about it, I mean, we just

got in there three, five and second recon like they were already, they've been fully in it for several months. So to us, it didn't feel like we, it was, it didn't feel like it was escalating into like territory that was unknown. It was like, finally, we're going to get to do what everybody else here is already doing, which unknown to us, relatively rare, you know, in the Gwatt, I think overall. And certainly hotspots like Fallujah and Ramadi were nuts, you know, in Iraq. I think that you can make that argument for Afghanistan and other battles too. But like the whole valley was like that.

And the frustrating thing to us in the front end is we're here to fight this enemy, but we're just kind of this big, fat target on this, on this route, serving a purpose that, needed, but they're able to hit us and we're not able to hit them. On that Garcia IED in particular, our interpreter tuned into their ICOM and there were two enemy combatants reporting to whoever they they were reporting to that they just killed a bunch of Americans and they were going to stay in place, that they had eyes on us. And we're scanning around the area looking at all these buildings and like half of them are filled with, you know, just locals. Like we have no idea where these guys are. There were other patrols in those early days. We'd stop in the middle of the night. I would get my

IR camera and scan over into a field and I'd see two or three guys laying down like obviously trying to hide and on the IR screen there is wide as snow against a black backdrop and I see him moving around and they're watching us. I mean they're planning but we can't be IDM they're not attacking us. We can't be the first ones to shoot. It's just it got so frustrating, so frustrating. There's a huge battle that we missed out on during that time period also where the valley was it was obvious that the Taliban and insurgents had playing this massive attack because the entire local populace was acting way off the pattern of life they were all exiting the northern valley they were all wearing brown there was afghan flags everywhere the road was littered with false flags like rock strings across the road

rocks turned up everywhere like all the signs that they use and they know that we know that they use they just put them everywhere and it was like man we're headed in we're finally going to go toe to tow with these guys that have been hitting us and hiding. And it just didn't manifest. Not for us. It did for somebody else. But getting to go up to P.B. Alcatraz and take over a particular area that was exceptionally bad for IEDs along the 6-Eleven and start doing foot patrols into the green zone.

We hadn't talked about it, but in saying again, probably one of the most important distinctions we should have already covered, the green zone was off the road and into the agricultural valley. most of that road what lined the valley was a wadi system like a stream engineered stream that was three to four to five feet deep

maybe in any given spot maybe 10 to 15 feet wide which is kind of the main stream that will come off the river and then they would use it for agriculture once you cross that and actually drop down in the crop fields now you're in enemy territory and what everybody had told us from day one

is if you go into the green zone you're going to get ambushed Nobody goes in and doesn't get shot at. So always be careful when you do. When we were doing the patrolling on 6-11, we never went in. We're always right beside it. It's right there. It's just across that wadi. And they were hitting us with IEDs on the road.

And if they got a unit hit with an IED and bogged down, then they would engage a small arms fire and IDF. But if you go on foot in the green zone, they're going to fire at you no matter what. And so going up to P.B. Alcatraz, the communication that LT gave us was we're still doing QRF but we're not going to focus on southern

7-611 so much anymore we're going to stay focused on the hotter spots northern wherever second recon wants us to really focus on which for now is going to be these particular grids is going to be our aO and our focus was not to really go deep into the green zone but to own that part of the road

and the green zone associated with it specifically to fight that IED threat there you know the the IEDs the engineering that the foreign, that the enemy forces came up with was, I mean, very noteworthy. But they would have command wires, they would have wires strung across the field

that they would connect to IEDs that were push button activated. And so there would be a trigger man in one of the compounds or in a tree line or something in the green zone just across one of the first crop fields that would push a button whenever we were going to drive by.

Then they also had pressure plates. They had cell phone call-in IEDs that would pick up a signal like we've seen in some of the movies. And they had magnetic, IEDs and tripwires and directional blasts and on and on and on, just very, very crafty. But anyway, so that portion of the green zone was going to be ours, and that was the communication. We're going in on foot whenever we have the chance to.

We're running our own operations when we're not needed elsewhere. We're going to take the fight to them. And we all thought, it's about time. I mean, given, we, like, we'd only been there for, I don't know, a couple weeks at that point. But we just didn't, I didn't want to be a target. I wanted to go on offense. Test the skills. That's right.

You end up calling home while you're calling home. Your dad was actually writing you an email. You get off the phone. You talk about that in here, but I want to get to this email. He said, here's the end of the message. He said the following, stay focused on what really matters and pay attention to detail.

When the time comes, dish it out with no reservations and all the fury you can muster. Give them hell, son, dad. A wave of emotion hit me in that moment, and a weight fell off. my shoulders. A father's words can be so powerful and his approval was second to none. I was eager to be in the fight and was at the point, that point completely resolved to pull the trigger without hesitation when the time came. But deep down, I still felt the heaviness from it all. Reading those

words from my dad shot right to the issue as if he was speaking directly to my inner man saying, it's okay, son, I understand and approve of what you have to do. I wrote dad's words on my Kevlar as a reminder every time I geared up that my father approved of the often rage-fueled harm that I was tasked with inflicting on other human beings. Right or wrong, in that moment, I needed his validation, and I had it. Those words meant the world to me. They really did. And it was just, it was amazing timing. Just one of those God things that you couldn't have prepared for. Whenever we first got there, I'll never forget the first time I lined somebody up in my sides. It was before we really started patrolling on our own.

It was a 325. And won't go into all the details, but we were on Fobnola. Somebody appeared around a corner, and it just caught me off guard initially. So I racked around and put my ACOG on him. And I was searching for intent. And only a few seconds went by, and it was kind of obvious that the guy was just kind of going about his day. It was still a little peculiar, but he didn't have a weapon. He wouldn't about to fire on us or anything.

But it struck me in that moment. Like, I just lined that guy up, and I was about to shoot him without thinking twice about it. Like, no problem. And I just thought, I'm, I'm there. Like, I'm a, I have, my, I have mentally crossed this moral boundary that I wasn't sure I would ever cross in my life. Like, I always knew joining the Marine Corps, going to war, like, we're going to see combat. Until you face it, though, until you face the moment where you now have the decision

to pull the trigger or not, to end someone's life or to spare it, man, it was a momentous moment. And I just thought, you know, I wouldn't overly emotional by it, but I recognize. the significance. And after that moment, as it led up to this one with my dad sending the email, starting to feel some aggression against these guys, like some real vengeance, because they're hitting us and they're getting really close. And it's not like other combat experiences weren't also happening in the Valley. 3-5 was still taking losses from, you know, from their foot patrols, from IEDs and the like, as was second recon, as were other guys. There were still Medevac and Medevac helos flying into

the valley left room right we're still getting reports and hearing about the other battlefield happenings like we're up against an enemy that that's taking their toll on us and we're taking ours on them but not us personally and so i i just i had all dad speaking that to me didn't it just validated everything you know a father's words to his kids can be so powerful more powerful than we think at times as can of mothers but man him saying that to me it just it just gets me this release where it was like I'm I'm toting this line between trying to trying to hold my heart right before God being a Christian valuing humanity acknowledging the tragedy of all this but I'm also trying to be an effective

warfighter and a part of getting in the fight is feeling that aggression and feeling that sense of vengeance and being willing to go there from a retributional mentality of I'm gonna get in there and do it you know you try to pull back and keep it very non-personal and keep it very professional. But the environment that we're in, we're fully engrossed in it. You know, some units, wartime experiences were being a part of bigger bases and then going and doing a mission and then coming back to the bigger base, which is great. We were in enemy territory 24-7, feeling it left and right.

And I mean, it was just, it was hard emotionally and mentally to maintain. Wanted to be professional, non-personal. it got personal. It was really hard for it not to. So hear my dad just say, it's all right, like I get it. But listen,

I want you to go do what you're there to do. Oh, man, it just gave me such a release. And it was perfect words at the perfect time. So.

So you guys make the move up to P.B. Alcatraz. You guys set up camp. You do some, you got time to write some journal stuff. And I'm going to read one of your, this is great. to hear your thoughts at the time.

We just had a sniper from second recon come over here to brief us on his experience in the green zone. He reiterated a certainty of making enemy contact and insisted we increase our ammunition loadouts in the event we get pinned down for any lengthened period. He admonished us to maintain an aggressive posture and exude strength at all times because the enemy fighters are more emboldened to hit harder on weaker looking units that they think they can decimate. He said emphatically, boys, you're heading into the killing fields. Act like a bunch of fucking dick swinging bulls and they'll fear you. He said the two grids we are going into are among the worst and with the heaviest attacks and a high density of pressure plates.

He asserted don't play the Taliban's pressure plate game. When you make contact, pin them down and drop ordinance on their heads. Don't be quick to pursue them. That is what they expect and are planning for. We motioned an agreement. In closing, he said, good luck, boys, stay vigilant and kill them all. We shook hands and he walked off. Big moment there too.

I think, you know, we had just moved in to P.B. Alcatraz. Yeah. And we, our first squad, we determined they were going to go set up a picket line along the 6-Eleven in that AO, which was not far from P.B. Alcatras. I think the first truck we could even see from the board. order. But they set up in trucks for two days on the hillside just surveying the valley, which we determined after that was really not going to work long term. So that was the only two days that they did that for. But we were going out, our second squad was going out on our very first foot patrol the next morning. And so one of the second recon guys came over. I suspect

somebody asked them to come over and just kind of share some things. But it was great, man, it was great to hear from that guy. You know, they had been there for, I think second recon made it to Sengen in in January. So just a couple months before we got there, had some great experiences up to that point. You know, and man, we looked up to those guys. They're a solid unit. They were doing some really high-speed stuff.

And so to have them come over and just share insights. Let us ask questions, you know, let us kind of glean off of their experience and try to build out our understanding and what we were stepping into. It was really meaningful. And I was very glad to hear from him. Yeah, we, we, I just had a guy,

in the podcast, Joe Claiborne, who was a company commander in Ramadi. I listened to that one. Yeah. Like it's the same thing. He goes, he goes, hey, we're going to have, he goes, we'll be in contact. We're going to the mob district will be in contact in 42 minutes. And I'm like, okay, you know, sure enough, you know, whatever it was, 38 minutes in, boom, we're in contact. I remember, I had one of my elements of seals and Iraqi soldiers was heading out.

And with this, this, uh, assistant platoon commander, one of Lave's assistant platoon commander, one of Lave's assistant and the platoon commanders was taking this patrol out. And I'm like, it was downtown Ramadi going out of combat out post falcon. I'm like, how long you think it's going to be before you get contacted? Because you're going to get contacted. And he was like, uh, he kind of gave me that look like, oh, yeah, like, I need to be ready. Yeah. Um, and he, they, they commenced their patrol.

I hit my stop watch 12 minutes later, big gunfight, Iraqi soldier killed. Iraqi soldier wounded, like, but. And then the other, I remember when SEAL Team 5 came in to take our place and I actually had guys that got wounded. Do you see the movie Warfare? Yeah. Oh, not yet. Not yet.

Only because me and my wife want to watch that one together. Yeah. And we just haven't found it with little kids at home. It's very heavy. But the two guys, there's two guys that got severely wounded. And I had them both on the podcast. But, you know,

when they showed up in Ramadi, I was, you know, I was saying like, this is what's going to happen. And I remember, I told them, you are going to take casualties,

which is such a weird thing. Like, looking back saying, you know, there's only 35. seals I'm like you are going to take casualties it's kind of like when you get to seal training and they go take a look to your life take to look to your right two of you aren't going to be here at the end of training you know you're kind of like really is that really true and believe me it's true

but uh you know telling guys hey you are going to take you are going to take casualties and of course and this goes back to dean lad who's a marine that we had on the podcast who went into uh did a bunch of the island hopping campaigns in the pacific and he was going into tarawa and i asked him i said you know, were you, you know, because they told him, hey, we're going to take massive caps please. That was the first one, if I remember correctly, going into Tarawa, they told them, hey, listen, if a Marine goes down while you're heading to the beach, leave him. We have to take the beach.

That's a priority. I don't think they said that for the other ones. And I said, so were you, you know, were you nervous about getting hit? Were you nervous about getting wounded? And he just said, no, that always happens to the other guy. You know, and it's like, and that's kind of the feeling that when I talk to the team five guys when I'm telling me you're going to take casualties all their attitude is like that's going to happen to someone else yeah um so that's what you guys are getting into but there is a at least some

level of reality hitting when someone's telling you like hey you are going to get contacted because like you said earlier you go through years and years of training and for you it was a few years of training for me going to iraq for the first time it was 13 years I've been in the military and even my first deployment there was no gear you could go on patrol we went out on hundreds patrols didn't get contacted yeah so when Joe Claiborne's telling me hey when we go out on this op tomorrow we're gonna get contact in 42 minutes and I'm like okay yeah sure enough he was right yeah um and you know that's kind of the story that I open this the the podcast up with and you know when you were going out how you were prepared that thing where team ones pushing across and uh lieutenant huff rated sergeant

actually that we were about to get hit almost immediately. Brab, bra-p-da-p-p-d-rot. The enemy started in on us from multiple positions as the sound of the machine gun burst and incoming rounds enveloped us. Everyone hit the deck, despite all my training and mental posturing, the moment those rounds rattled off, I froze in a brief state of shock. Everything hit slow motion. From the moment the firing started, Lieutenant gave notice to command and began coordinating

air support. Within minutes, we had two helo gunships inbound. At this point, we seemed to have gained the initiative. by establishing battlefield superiority and Team 2 held in place while we maintained a steady pace of alternating suppressive fires and select shots in the various murder holes, trying to catch the combatants as they popped up to fire. Team 1 managed to crawl up against a couple of small berms in the field. One set, Team 2 also adjusted position down along the smaller branch, Wadi, that I had moved into alongside Mathis. We maintained contact on and off until the gunship showed up,

An Apache and a Huey began circulating the area, and the enemy shooters were still engaged with us, stopped firing and turned for cover. Team 1 scrambled to mark the target compounds with smoke grenades, but they were positioned so close to do it to it without any cover egress, and there was too high a risk of blue-on-blue-friendly fire from the air. The helos performed a couple mock strafing runs instead, which gave us a brief window to reposition for our next move. While doing so, Word came over the radio that a recon unit, a few clicks south, had also done. just declared a tick and helos gave us notice that they would be depart our position to help them under the helo's cover under the helo's cover though team wanted move 20 meters to the north of their first position to an into an irrigation ditch along a walk path they kept their distance from the compound where the pressure plates would likely have resided now it was our turn l t gave us a heads up long gear

we're about to move get ready all eyes were on me the point man first to leave cover and advance across an open field that had just been riddled with gunfire toward a new building a rapid analysis screamed through my mind we are in a battle lull and both us and the enemy have now regrouped our helo's left and i'm about to get up and move across this open field with no cover straight toward the compound that the enemy most likely repositioned themselves in and i'll be target number one when they open back up on us if there ever be a time to get shot in the face this This is it and I'm walking right into it. So this is what it means to be point man. LT gave me the word, long gear, push forward. My heart was pounding and fear hit me hard. I started quietly reciting Palm 27 again and a surge of faith welled up in me. I postured myself with strength, reminded that I had nothing to fear and pushed straight

toward building 70, walking speedily through the crops across unchecked ground, fully aware of both the risks of stepping on a pressure plate and getting sniped, I continued reciting the prayer King David recorded from his own wartime experiences. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? He is a stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Step after step with my rifle at the ready, I scanned corners, door opening on the doors opening and roof line of Building 70 while trusting that my other Marines had be covered everywhere else. I was ready at any moment to re-engage whoever popped out to draw on me. I looked back to scan the rest of the patrol and noticed that most of Team 2 was still in the Wadi, except for Sergeant

Peck, who was 30 meters behind me. L.T. appeared to be tied up on the radio with command. I looked at Peck who gave me a nod to keep pushing, and I continued another 40 meters. I was now far ahead of Team 1 and starting to close in on Building 70. My heart was racing again as I anticipated the enemy's opening shots. I continued to scan the potential firing positions that I was walking straight towards, raising my rifle at some to peer through my ACog and continued taking step after step. Without any warning, snap. A single shot rang out from Building 70 right at me. I hit the ground quickly and immediately realized that my entire body was numb. I couldn't feel anything and was completely uncertain if I had just been shot or not. I frantically crawled up into

a small path embankment in front of me. It wasn't good cover, but better than nothing. Peck screamed out from a distance. Longrear, are you hit? Longreer. I yelled back, I don't know. And then started to belt out, alert, direction, description, range, assignment, and control. Ad rack. While trying to catch my breath. I was in a bad position with no good options. After a few seconds, physical sensation started to come back. I ran my hand up and down my body. I didn't feel any external blood flowing or any sharp pains long greer are you fucking hit i screamed back no i'm good i'm good the enemy shooter had the drop on me for sure and i felt the round wisp and snap but they missed thank god they missed man what a nervous moment that was you know that those dude i was freaking nervous when i was reading

this yes the past couple days gosh yeah i mean just getting up to move you know the way that those battles transpired most of them they were they would be super intense for a few minutes and then they would kind of lull out and then they'd be super intense again and then they would lull out and the way that we trained to engage with with enemy forces because of their uh because of their iED tactics was was not to aggress the buildings you know the three five and other units it just as tactics evolve daily as we're force on force we're adapting to their tactics they're adapting to ours they knew that our you know standard mission of the infantry's to locate close with and destroy the enemy through fire maneuver.

We locate them and then we start aggressing towards them and try to get close enough to take them all out. And so they they would try to lure us in to IED lace minefields essentially or try to get us into the buildings that they were positioned in. They'd take pop shots or full open on us so that we would aggress into that building into all their booby-trap IED snares as we're trying to get there. So the standard procedure that all of the units in the region wanted us to operate off of was to get under contact, try to pin them down, try to cut off their flanks, and try to keep them consolidated, and then drop air overhead, which is not incredibly personal. And, you know, it stands against some of the conventional Marine Corps, you know, fire maneuver training.

But that's just what was working at the time. So the battlefield lulls. You know, we'd be under contact and our immediate focus was to gain the initiative, just gain fire superiority, keep their heads down more than our heads are down so we can figure out what's going on, make tactical movements as it makes sense to, try to get close enough without getting too close all the while calling an air support. And because Sengen was so hot at the time, the moment any unit called in a tick, a troops in contact, any air asset that was open was automatically allocated. So we had predator drones.

high Mars. We had jets. We had Huey helicopters and other attack helicopters all just kind of primed and ready to get out there and get involved. Didn't have any artillery just because of all the air support. But that was a known thing. It was, hey, you have all the assets that you need. The number one killer in this valley right now is guys stepping on IEDs. We don't want any more of that. We want you all to get in contact, call in air, and then let's take him out that way. it took a pretty incredible amount of restraint even to great frustration at times to operate that way but but but that's it's how they wanted us to yeah so echo charles just to it eventually and i don't know if it was like this for you guys but eventually it escalated for guys where when they'd get contact with the enemy like shot at

they weren't even they were like kneeling down where they were because even to move four steps to the right to get next to a, a wall or a berm or something like that, that's unclear space. And so you might get blown up. Rob Jones, this is where Rob Jones got wounded in 2010. It was insane and lost both of his legs.

But yeah, so you guys are, you guys are constrained by the enemy tactics. And yet with all that constraint, your LT says it's go time. Oh, big time. I know. And here you go.

Longrear, you're up. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And Team 1, like, everybody's down. And, you know, it's first one up. And we didn't cover it, but I volunteered for Point Man once we got in country. And, you know, it was a, man, it was a big decision for me. It meant a lot. One of the things that we talked about all the time when we were in training was that

Point Man's the first guy to get his legs blown off. We're operative if you're on foot patrols. We're foot patrolling in Ranger File, which means we're one behind each other. No staggered column. No wedge formation, nothing. It's the point man's up front. Everybody tried to put your foot where the guy's foot in front of you was because you know for sure, a reasonable confidence that there's not an IED there.

And that's how we tended to operate. So that was the first real moment that it was like, oh, no, I volunteered to be point man. And we're in a battlefield lull. The hughies are gone dead or the recon unit. Like they're going to open back up on us. And, you know, it had just happened. happened to the other team. They were wide open in a field like it, but it was a nervous moment.

And I just in my head, you know, and in my heart, I just reminded myself. You know, we're all influenced by everything as kids. One of the moments in saving Private Ryan that always marked me as a kid is in that last battle defense whenever the team is trying to defend that bridge against the German's aggression. and there's a sniper in the tower. And he's got a cross around his neck and he's reciting Bible verses

while he's trying to stay alive. And he didn't make it. But I mean, who couldn't be marked by a moment like that? Just connecting to the father in the middle of like, whether if this is my last moment, at least you're with me, you know? And so, man, I carried those Bible verses. And I recited Psalm 27 and, man,

it just gave me so much faith. Just in that moment. It was just a quick reminder, a quick mindset shift of like, wait a second. What am I afraid of? Yeah, exactly. And from LT's perspective, I mean, for all of ours, the plan during that patrol was, we've got buildings, 60, 60, 3, 70, and then 71, 72, maybe.

There's four buildings that we're going to go hit. It's like, this is going to be a three to four hour thing, minimum. Like, we're here to do this. So the fact that we took contact, it didn't, there was not a thought in my mind, like, okay, we're just going to pull out now or whatever. It's like, well, we've still got a mission to go do. So pushing the building. 70 and then getting shot out again.

While that was happening, though, what slowed everything up? I mean, you read it. I was patrolling toward building 70. PEC was behind me, but the rest of my team was still in the Wadi. And that's because LT was caught up on the radio with Second Recon Command, and they were in the process of telling us essentially, hey, we want y'all to egress out. Another unit is now heavily bogged down just like y'all are. We don't need two elements bogged down.

That's exactly right. And if y'all get hit and if, and this is the very first patrol outside the wire and our internal backup is in that picket line up on the road, they're not coming in to get us. So second recomb was like, we need you all out before one of y'all gets hit because we will struggle to send somebody in to help you out if you need it. Meanwhile, you're charging forward going into a day late, a dollar shirt for that word. I know. The other thing that's really kind of not totally unique, but it's a little bit of a, of a

differentiator is that you have time, and this is going to sound very minute, but you have time to think about what's going to happen. There's a lot of times in combat. There's times for me when like I was doing something and it wasn't until it was over before you're like, oh, that maybe was pretty dangerous what I just did, you know, 17 seconds ago. But then there's other times where it's like this one where you're getting told, hey, stand by to go. And now you have whether it's four seconds or eight seconds or 12 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute to ponder all the horrible things that could possibly happen to you and luckily you were able to overcome those but that's just a little bit different. I've always I've always said that you know the it's the waiting it's the once you go once

you're going you're thinking about the job that's about doing the thing but in those whether it's three seconds or even like tomorrow oh we're going into this area tomorrow it's going to be bad a high chance of IDs. That's, you get 24 hours to sit there and think about all the bad things that can happen. Yeah. Those are way worse than the, okay,

now I'm going. Like once I'm going, and that's become sort of my protocol when something seems like it's going to be, like I'm afraid of it or there's some danger there. Like, okay, I'm going. I'm just going to like, just get out of my way because I'm going.

Yeah. So it's just a little, little note on fear. The more time you give it, the more time it's going to work on you. Big time. Big time. In the mentality shift,

you know. Correct your mindset. Get in the positive. Start thinking about the positive and stay there. And, you know, that one turned out okay. Go ahead. I was just going to say, you know, after that shot was taken, BMX biking and skateboarding and everything,

I broke an unusually high amount of bones as a kid. Most of them were compound fractures or compound breaks. Dang, okay. Like shoulder blade, not shoulder braid. Collarbone three times. One wrist. Compound? one of them was a tumor compounds the other one that maybe was a hairline fracture yeah both BMX biking one was at an ex at like a skate park yeah

went way over a tabletop jump and went straight into the concrete uh just total bust another one was on a wooden like handmade launch ramp or something launch ramp yeah and just in a cul-de-sac you know being stupid and oh but back then it's like oh we're x games you know it's seventh grade but anyway and then wrists and i'd but I when those injuries happen your body like my body your adrenaline is just pumping so hard like you go numb for a second

and then afterwards the feeling hits and when that shot rang out I could feel nothing and I'm like this guy's gonna like steady his aim and put the next one right where it's supposed to go and I'm in this wide open field I'm like I got nowhere to get

I mean there's just and so I that's where training and repetition kicks in you know we trained over and over and over again there's a reason you do mag drills you know, in the thousands. It's so that you don't even have to think about it. Chaos is happening or whatever your body just kind of reacts.

So belting out an ad rack, you know, identifying where the enemy's at, you know, contact front and then a particular direction where I think he's located, trying to give some intel, just, you know, some of the other guys that may or may not have seen it. That's helpful. That training to take over. But we, yeah, it was a moment. Yeah, you guys get that situation under control. Again, get the book, but you go on to, this is kind of your debrief.

It had not been 24 hours, and I had flirted with death five times. And again, you go into these. The first machine gun burst of the enemy's ambush where I froze in place. The shingle shot at me while I approached Building 70 in the open field. The enemy's reengagement while we aggressed. Again, I didn't cover that, but that's in here. The pressure plate that I almost stepped on, again, didn't cover that, but it's in here. And now this, almost being crushed to death between two massive combat vehicles in the middle of the night along the mountainous, IED-infested roadside.

I pulled off my gear at my dirty, smoked out caught, and thought about the conversations I had with my parents a few days prior. They nearly lost their son numerous times at the past 24 hours and obviously had no idea. It was now day three at P.B. Alcatraz, and our next foot patrol was hours away. I debriefed Sergeant Smith and others, received an add-a-boy for completing the night's tasks and hit the rack just in time for direct sunlight in my face. within a couple hours, I was awoken to begin prepping for our next foot patrol. That's three days in one op. Yeah, yeah. Just extremely fast-paced op tempo.

But you know, like all those guys were facing that too. Books my story, but every single one of those guys were right there with me, they were doing the exact same thing. The IED was nuts. I, you know, I just seeing it for the first time. Won't go into the details, like Jocko said. It's in the book. at the, while we were egressing out and still getting shot at from overhead, I took a step

and my toes were just over the crest of what we called a disturbed earth patch, which is a, if you did, just imagine digging a hole in the ground, then filling it back up. You can tell where it was dug out. And coming out of that hole was a faint piece of dirty cloth that had a string wrapped around it a whole bunch of times. And it was just a very clear indicator. Taliban would do that because they didn't want the locals getting their legs blown off because then they put the locals against them and and man just one thing after another and then getting nearly crushed you know between combat vehicles just a you know would have been a terrible way to go you know in the midst of a war details are in the book but just get put

in these extremely dangerous environments of course you're going to have close calls you know and then like you said while they're happening you're not really thinking about the significant of them but then you said it was always afterwards i would sit down afterwards and just kind of replayed the scenes in my mind and just think i cannot believe i'm involved in this and that i just experienced that and that like nothing happened i mean i we would get ambushed um it's probably the proper word but we would get engaged all the time well on foot um you know the enemy would have the drop on us left and right sometimes it'd be multiple automatic multiple um fighting positions sometimes it'd be just one but automatic fire would rain in and we take off running.

It's like, what are the statistical chances that 20 bullets hit you when you're running for cover whenever they have the drop on you? I don't know what those are, but I just have to think there's so many close calls that we had, that you guys had in Ramadi that, you know, take a step left or a step right and that's it. But just because you were where you were, you made it through. Yeah, one of the nicest things about Ramadi,

because that thing you just said, the enemy always had to drop on us. That's something when I was on my first deployment to Iraq, that's what I felt like all the time I'd feel like. You know, you get out of the vehicle in downtown Baghdad and you are surrounded 360 degrees, maybe not 360 degrees, but whatever percentage of degrees around you is enemy threats.

Every window, every door, every rooftop, everything is you could get shot. And if they're there, they're gonna get you. And it was when we got to Ramadi, we got to oftentimes flip the script where we would set up our sniper overwatch positions and the enemy would come walking down the street, having no idea that were there. They got their RPGs over their shoulder walking to go

or a mortar tube. They're walking to go and hit one of the combat outposts, and we just be able to, my guys would just be able to shoot them. And it was just very nice to be able to flip that script. And if you're listening to this and you're in the military as often as you can try and flip the script so that you are on offense,

It is a sickening feeling when you're out on patrol and you know that the enemy, as you just said, man, the enemy is going to have their drop on you. They live there. They're there 24 hours a day. Home field advantage. They got the home field advantage. They don't care. You know, that's another scene from the movie Heat. You've seen the movie Heat.

Echo Charles. Yes, sir. Of course. Like the enemy can get it wrong a hundred times in a row and it doesn't matter. You get it wrong one time and you're dead or one of your guys is dead. And that's what you guys are dealing with. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here. As the days progressed, our operational pace and range of mission activities were all over the map.

We were on the road at any point throughout the day or night responding to calls for reinforcement, road security, investigation of suspected IEDs or enemy activity, routine check-ins at the three major fobs and more. Every day, the valley was filled with the echoes of explosions, gun battles, and the roar of air support periodically thundering overhead. You guys are just in it. Big time. You know, anybody that was in the valley was, but we, and all like just, you know, thinking about anytime a helo was in the air, it's like somebody's in contact somewhere. We hear an explosion and it was very, we could very quickly get to the point that you can hear and feel the concussional difference between an ammonium nitrate explosion and IED or a C4

controlled detonation. So we would know like, okay, it's a friendly unit. They found an IED and they're blowing in place. And we did a ton of that on the road. We would find locations and either we would have the, you know, in our trucks or we would note it hold security until another unit could bring them along and then they would use the robot or handplay C4 and you know blow the IEDs in place and then rocket drops and hellfire missiles and high mars and you know harrier jadam drops i mean they all had distinct sizes and

concussions and fields and the blue force tracker also as we're going as we're up and down the road we're also receiving intel input from units in the area and so it's just non-stop everywhere somebody's involved in something yeah it was just incredibly active yeah the interesting thing about Ramadi was it was so small it's only four miles and like saying is what did you say 30 miles if you really broadened it out I mean not operationally it we probably made it almost to Kinjaki a time or two but the whole valley yeah big valley yeah but then you guys had more heloes and stuff like we didn't really have heloes coming in very often to Ramadi because it was too dangerous but uh for you guys but it's just

like constant activity constant activity yeah constant activity yeah you say fast forward a little bit at this point in the deployment we began to really come into our own we were bullish on in our operations confident in our strategic thinking creative in our tactics and very heavy-handed in the blows we dealt we had plenty of close calls already though without any serious casualties and it was on all our minds how much longer it would be before that changed everyone paid the pipe piper and sang and it seemed obvious that we couldn't be the only exception we we all knew it but we knew it was coming at some point. We already had a number of close calls.

You know, that IED that, well, I mean, heck, I was going to say the IED that Fredo took was a really close one for those three guys. But the firefighters that we started to get into, you know, when the enemy opened back up on us in that first one, nearly shot Mathis in the back, gosh, that was a close call. I mean, man, was that close. And there was, man, there was a lot of that. But we just, we weren't stung by it yet.

Everybody else was getting stung around us. you know there's this one mission uh in the book that uh it's probably worth going into but there in fact i will go into it but there's a aside from three five second recon and us there were route clearance platoons they were up and down the road fixing the road in different places and creating new routes into the green zone pushing you know widening it making it better and then there were somebody would get hit by an iED and there were um like mechanics crews that would come in rigors that would rig up the busted equipment and haul it out there were wasn't a ton of supply being trucked in. We would truck in our own supplies. The other units would,

but there wouldn't be supply units trucking up the Sangin Valley to the fobs. It usually be helo drop-offs just because it was too hot. But the route clearance guys, man, they got hit a lot. And like, because they're focused, they would be doing route clearance stuff. So, you know, they're softer target by nature of what they're actively involved in to no fault to their own and they got into some heavy stuff. There was this one patrol that we went on that we dropped off on foot. Second Squad did. I started to make my way across the Wadi and we took small arms fire.

Just a quick burst near the front of the patrol. It's kind of uncharacteristic. It wasn't super heavy. It might have been five or six shots. And we just kind of kept on going, but we got a call over the radio from command that a route clearance platoon had taken an IED and were really. in a heavy ambush and we thought okay that guy was trying to get our attention to keep us here to keep us from pulling out and going north but we loaded up quick and went to those guys and they had

i want to say four or five trucks in a convoy one of the middle trucks took a hit blew the front end of the mrap nearly off and they were getting hammered i mean it we pulled up i've never heard so much automatic gunfire in my life um and the way the story played out we uh we uh they were taking fire from the green zone. We pulled up and our turret gunners just started letting loose. Once we started coordinating with that unit, we got in between them in the green zone and just kept pounding back the green zone.

But before we got there, they were starting to get, I don't want to say they were on, I don't want to say they were starting to get overrun, but they were getting, man, they were getting hammered. There was a, in the truck that took the hit, there was a Mark 19 in the turret. and the Marine in that turret was trying to fix it to get it back up to engage in the firefight.

He took two rounds to the torso. Drop back into the hole of the MRAP, now critically wounded. I have no idea with the condition of the driver and the A driver in that vehicle where they might have been knocked out conscious anyway. In an act of extreme heroism, one of my favorite stories from the whole deployment. And it's secondhand information, but it came from one of the guys that was up there interacting with that unit. there was a female corpsman in the back of that MRAP and her her brother just got shot in the torso twice they're in a truck that's taking incoming fire left and right as far as they know they're on their own we're not there yet they have a heavy amount of gunfire coming in she pops open the

escape hatch which is right under right behind the turret she gets up through it turns toward the enemy with her M4 and starts ripping rounds to try to suppress back while you know know, since the main gunner went down. Just the decision, the courage that she had to have to make that decision to get up and start ripping rounds. Not only was she to a corpsman, but she was a female, but she was as a hardcore as any of those Marines out there. She starts ripping rounds at the enemy.

And then they turned their fire to her. And she, as she's leaned up on the truck with her M-4 shooting, takes around through her elbow and out of her shoulder and nearly blows her arm off. And she drops back in the truck critically moving. I don't know how many minutes it was after that we showed up, but thank God that we did. But I just think about those two. Oh my gosh. I mean, to your point, the fact that we hadn't had any occurrence like that yet.

And we're, that was what we're there for. We're supposed to be on the road taking all the heat. And a unit like this takes that. But oh my gosh, that female corpsman. Like, what a hero. Yeah. What incredible courage. You know, the story I was telling you earlier, that's outstanding.

The story I was telling you earlier, and I have not been able to confirm this. The story was told earlier when I had looked at the young assistant platoon commander and said, how long do you think it's going to be before you get contacted? Because you are going to get contacted. Fast forward, 12 minutes, they're in a big gunfight. They have an Iraqi soldier killed and Iraqi soldier wounded. And now I'm at the combat outpost and I'm watching, you know, we're coordinating the casualty evacuation and the fire support to go to them.

and in a in an M113 you know armor personnel carrier rolls out and the gunner I'm looking at this vehicle rollout and the gunner is a female soldier and I you know saw that for four seconds you know I was like oh there's a female soldier in there get some you know and she's manning that 50 cal getting ready to go get it and I never you know I didn't see her again I don't know you know who it was I never like talked to anybody about it until literally right now so if that female soldier that was rolling out of out on, I forget what the date was, it must have been sometime in June or July down at combat outpost Falcon and you were rolling out to go and recover, you know, some wounded Iraqi soldiers that were with my guys, get some. Hell yeah. And same with this female, Corman stepping up in returning fire, getting wounded. And like, that's what we're doing. That's right.

They were there and committed, committed to be a part of it all. It really meant something. So. You mentioned this in here. Be began to show between LT and some of the more senior enlisted, which was not unexpected or uncommon. LT wanted to maintain command of control, but some felt like he was overbearing. At times, he'd brush off advisement from some of the more senior guys who had been on several deployments already. They did the same to him, though. The position he was in wasn't an easy one, and at times,

we were not an easy group to command. This was Lieutenant Huff's first deployment, but there was not another platoon commander in one, two, three, better suited for our mission than he was. So that's just a natural tension that is going to develop. Typical. Yeah. And it sounds like they, you know, worked through it. They got it worked out. I mean, yeah, we, I, uh, I don't know why I felt that I should add that in, but it just fit into the story. And a part of it's because I just wanted the book to be a reflection of what it was like. And that was happening. But like you said, like I,

of course it's going to happen, you know. LT was, he was solid. And our, our most senior NCOs were also. I mean, I, you know, there's going to be differences of opinion in things, but just putting myself in his shoes, he, you know, we were a small detachment away from our parent unit that we had trained him in a part of. It's his first deployment. And he's operating in the most kinetic combat operating zone. He doesn't have the feedback of his other LTs and the other platoons. He's getting feedback from his boss, you know, Major Wood, our Alpha Company commanding officer, but Major Wood is involved with things that are going on down at Jackson, not up in the northern Sanging Valley.

Recon is, you know, we're getting some feedback from those guys, but it's good and bad. You know, they want us there. They don't want us there also probably. It's like he's in a very peculiar challenging situation. We all were, but him steering the ship, I just think all things considered, a lot of credit to that guy, you know. That's awesome.

And like you said, it's kind of normal, expected. Yeah, totally. normal. And you just have to make sure that it doesn't escalate to a point where now we have disrespect or lack of trust and all those things because I can disagree with you and still trust you. I can disagree with you and still respect you. You can disagree with me and still respect me. And that's what the critical component is. But if we don't trust each other, we don't respect each other, now we might have problems. I think it got worked at you're completely right. I think it probably what kept it from ever manifesting in any territory that it shouldn't have been was open

communication and confrontation. It seemed like there was never, we're around each other all the time. We didn't really have anywhere else to go either. And P.B. Alcatraz, we hadn't really explained it, but it was a four-wall dirt compound. There was no overhead. It was the size of maybe a football field

and a half and second recon occupied three quarters of it, which by the way, haven't said this, but we slept right next to the P.B. Burn pit because that's all the space that was left. There wasn't anywhere to go, so that's where we were. But I think that afforded like, as some of those problems started to occur, it all just had to be confronted up, you know,

up front. And I think everybody did a good job of like, of communicating, showing each other mutual respect, hashing out the problems when there were problems to keep them from manifesting into bigger problems. And so it worked out. Yeah, one thing that can really hurt an LT in this situation is,

you know, you say to me, hey boss, I don't think we should do this way. And I say, no, we're doing it my way. Shut up. As opposed to like, well, tell me what you think. Hey, here's what I think.

and instead of us using our rank to overcome the situation. And the same thing with the senior enlisted guys. Senior enlisted guys going to the troops and saying, oh, the boss doesn't know what he's doing. Like, none of that stuff is going to be good. Like you said, if we have open communications, we work through it, we make little compromises on either side. That's how we get this stuff done.

Yeah, big time. Fast forward a little bit. You guys are continuing all those missions. You guys are out on patrol in the green zone. The civilians were now out of the immediate area and the pressure was building, awaiting the inevitable fight. I requested permission to take out the shooter in the tree line.

LT was tied up on the radio with command, and I made the request, and I waited. I eventually made the request again, LT, permission to fire. A few seconds later responded, affirmative long, Greer, smoke him. I flipped my safety to fire and began to slow my breathing while waiting for the combatant to come back into view. It was roughly 200-yard shot, which was not a difficult distance, but it was with a heavy heartbeat. Thoughts began to flood my mind. I had experienced enough enemy engagement at this point to satisfy my use. beautiful Marine desire to simply participate in combat, but I had yet to have the enemy squarely

in my sights like this. I felt the height of dominating power and the pending fulfillment of that week's buildup of aggression, but it was intertwined with a sense of heartache. As I steadied my breathing, waiting for the combatant to creep back into my sight, the burden got heavier. By now, the rest of the squad was well positioned covering various sectors of fire and aimed in on the likely attack positions in front of us. Through the crops and trees obstructing my line of sight, I focused intently trying to identify body mass.

Suddenly, my right eye caught movement through the thick crop stocks near the location I had last seen the combatant. This was it. I quickly aligned my red acog chevron, began applying trigger pressure, and started my exhale. As my shot was just about to wring out, the combatant's body mass cleared the crop stocks that were obstructing my view. I rapidly released the trigger without firing while a surge of adrenaline coursed through my body. My eyes widened at the realization that the movement I locked onto was not a combatant, but a small boy that could not have been five years old yet. He was all alone and started running east trying to clear the area before the fighting started.

It had already been several minutes since the last group of civilians left the green zone, and this was very unusual. The kids were always the first ones to clear the area as the parents knowingly directed them to safety before the adults. I don't know how or why, but this little boy had been left behind and I was just two pounds of trigger pressure away from mistakenly killing him. My heart sunk deep into my chest and I dropped my head into the dirt. I almost just shot a little boy.

I called out to the child. I called out the child to the rest of the squad so no one else would make the same mistake and started to brush off the angst. Almost one of the worst moments of my life. you know the what we always talked about was pattern of life shifts whenever we're on patrol

pay attention to the pattern of life that's what we were trying to establish whenever we first got there just how was life happening here we want to try to set a benchmark so that we can understand when things change that they have changed so we know something's up

whenever we would step foot in the green zone every time as soon as everyone noticed that we step foot in the green zone in a very regimented awkward way the civilians would just drop what they're doing, go grab their kids and start walking across

the 6-11. Every time. It's like there's the pattern of life shift. Because the repetition had been okay, well there's about to be a fight and they need to get out of the area before there was. And we would never, we would never engage and I don't, I can't think of a time that the enemy ever engaged while there were still civilians

in a field. It was just a known thing. It was weird. We're taking a step back and thinking through it. When we were in it, it's just the way that things were happening. But it happened every single time. We'd step in the field, civilians would come across. The funny thing is, they would cross the 6-11 and just go sit up on the hillside, still fully in view of everything. Just they had nothing better to do. But like, stray rounds are going to hit half of you if the battle shifts in your direction and they would still just sit there and just watch it all happen. But in this instance,

the civilians had already made it across. I mean, we were well past that moment. And we'd already had enough engagements, you know, where we were confident in that pattern of life shift. Civilians are gone. We've got ICOM also. We're getting, you know, reports from them. I mean, we're listening in to their reports to each other about where we're at, how many we are, what, you know, where personnel's located up against what tree and what berm and what building side and so on, so forth. And, you know, they're talking about which machine gun is going to open up first. And we're just like it, man, it's coming. And as the civilians were leaving, there were two maims, two military age males that we BID'd his combatants. One was turkey

necking around a building head. I could see his thick black hair come around the edge of a wall, just very so subtly. And he kind of eyeball us for a bit and then pop back around. No idea that I had my sights lined up on him. And then another guy in the trees. Same thing. And that guy in the trees was setting up to be a part of the initial attack. So he went out of view. And when he came back, my mind's where it was whenever he first left. I just thank God that I didn't pull that trigger. You know, I think back to growing up hunting in Texas. I had some, I just spent a ton of time deer hunting.

And a rule that we always followed was you don't shoot until you can see the whole thing. You never shoot a deer through the trees. Always be positive. What you're shooting and what lies beyond, no matter what. And that's something that the Marine Corps taught also. Yes, indeed. But that shooting discipline, you know, I never hunted on public land.

It was always private, but public land in particular, a lot of people get shot because somebody gets trigger happy because they see movement in a bush and they start shooting. And it's another person, it's another hunter.

So I just, I was always in the back of my head, wait until it's clear. At the same time, what's competing against that thought in this instance is, I got this combatant right now. I got him dead to rights.

You know, if I don't take the shot and I wait, now he's got a chance to take one of us. I need to take him. um thank god i waited yeah and you didn't have to wait long because once that kid rolled out of the scene this guy tipped toes back into view and uh you zero on center mass squeeze and you take him out that's it you know and then the firefight kicked off immediately after i mean everything was just ready to go you know that 556 bullet small bullet um it was a single shot and he just slumped over

He didn't drop like people drop in the movies. It wasn't a big, you know, 308 bullet. But he slumped over. And just a weird feeling. You know, like after the kid was there, man, that just got me pretty emotionally mixed up. And I started trying to regather my thoughts and, you know, and just get logical. You can just get the emotion out and just kind of hone into the moment in a very cold and calculated fashion. And so when the guy popped back up, I'm still having that mental mix up and just trying to get myself out of it.

So I took the shot. It seemed relatively uneventful, but I, but it hit him. And then again, I would seem like two, three seconds afterwards. Now everything's just rattling off. Yeah, you guys get into a big gunfight, rockets going out, saws going off. And eventually you guys gained the initiative. and you say this, it got quiet enough for a moment to hear far off. Coming from behind the compound wall directly in front of me were belting moans of a dying man

in what sounded like excruciating pain. There was no way to know which one of us hit him. He whelped and cried for 30 seconds and then his cries started to die down. I pitied the man in that moment. It was hard to listen to. His screams eventually subsided after what I assumed to have been his bleeding out and things became very still. Fast forward a little bit. On the way back to Alcatraz, the mood was ecstatic, but I was bitter.

We leveled our enemy's attack again and left unscathed, but this one got to me. Hearing the whelping moans of the dying enemy fighter complete silence in the aftermath of apparently killing some of our other combatants, acknowledging how close I was to accidentally shooting a little boy and grappling with a growing resentment of our enemy really sank me. I was embattled internally. As much as I tried to stay disconnected and to just do my job, things started to get personal. It seemed that way for a lot of us and I don't know realistically how anyone could do any different in the circumstances. Yeah, I started getting to the point of the deployment that just it was starting to impact me internally. You know, things were getting very negative, very dark. I think just in reflecting back

on trying to keep things from being personal, you know, you try to stay very professional. You know, you try to stay very professional. This is a, this is war. You know, we are here to kill them, just like they're here to kill us. And if we just kind of set the playing field that those are the rules and now we are doing that to each other, then there is a coldness that can come about you. But gosh, it gets personal because we are adapting to what they're doing and they're adapting to what we're doing. Like I can feel that those guys, they are like not coldness. calculated like we have a scheduled time to meet on a battlefield they are actively hunting me and i am actively hunting them too and to get to the point that you can commit that on other human beings you either

have to stay completely out of the out of the loop like stay cold to it all or you have to dehumanize and almost hate them or else you just cripple under it all um and i just i started getting to the point that I started feeling ashamed, not from killing. I don't have any problem with wartime occurrences and being a part of it, but from wanting to, from harboring vengeance and bloodlust in a real way. It's always an internal struggle. And I think everybody has their battles and probably, you know, undergoes that, especially given the circumstances.

Like, I don't have any hang up with, with those feelings and emotions cultivating. I always just tried to combat against them. I never wanted to go there. I didn't want to hate them. I just tried to, I just acknowledged the tragedy of it all. I think that war was never a part of God's intent for humanity, and yet it's always been a part of it, and it will always be a part of it.

And I am not, I'm not anti-war, and I'm not for war. I just acknowledge it as part of the human existence. I think some of the greatest attributes of humanity come out in war, but it's ultimately in the backdrop of incredible cruelty from human on human. And if I take a step back and I just think about humanity as a whole,

I just think about everybody being a child of God, it's just so tragic that so much life destruction comes out of the decisions that we make that ultimately lead us into war. There's always going to be war. There's going to be justifiable reasons for war. I mean, there are just wars. And this war, we were the good guys,

hands down. We're fighting on behalf of freedom, on behalf of justice in the world, on ideals that establishes that establishes, liberty for the masses against a tyrannical, cruel, bitter, oppressive enemy. I mean, there are some savage human beings on this earth that don't deserve to live. I have no hang up with killing whatsoever. I just don't want to ever let my heart get to the point that I want it, that I want destruction

on other people. And so there were moments like this that, man, they just got to me. I just think about that little kid. And, you know, some of the fighters that we were fighting against were young dudes that were brought up completely indoctrinated from their earliest in, you know, remote mountain towns brought up in madrasas and taught that jihad is the only way to life, their whole lives. You just have to think given enough time and maybe exposure to the world that some of those guys would have turned. Now, there was a lot of others that knew exactly what they were doing that knew the way that the world

was, you know, they were just about their own, their own self-benefit, you know, at the pain and suffering of others and those guys um you know we took out a lot of them but uh anyway moments like this yeah there were just there were times that it was uh it was tough to act out those war duties and there was a lot of other times that it wasn't but um yeah and there was no uh slowing down either you say with the acceleration of good weather and blooming vegetation came a heightened intensity in the enemy attack so they're they're stepping things up that's right you know the valley was becoming more and more lush green and during that time timeframe, we're getting intel reports left and right of new influxes of enemy fighters.

The way that that combat arena was operating in Afghanistan in particular was that there was fighting season, which is when all the trees were green. It wasn't saying it, but it was elsewhere to the intel of the time was during those months, foreigners from all over the place flood into Afghanistan to fight against us. And then when winter comes along, they go home for R&R. and then they come back in the spring again. And so it was getting beefed up. There were maims everywhere. We passed by vans and trucks filled with military age males, mean mugging us hard.

We're like, we know exactly who you are, and we just let them drive right on past. We'll see you tomorrow. Exactly. That's exactly it. And we would just mean mug them right back. And it was just like, why don't you all just get out and we'll get out? Why don't we just do this right now? The first, like one of the first operations I did in Iraq in 2003.

And like we hit this big target in Fallujah and we were looking for a specific guy. But it was a hotel. And so we ended up rounding up like, I don't know, a dozen or 15 maims off the target. Yeah. And so now we got them lined up. We're kind of in a little perimeter. We got them lined up like trying to figure out. I don't know.

It was actually it was when we got, we got back to the Marine Corps. I think it was Marine Corps base. Yeah. And so now we got all these guys. We line them up. And we don't know who like the bad guy is. And I'm, you know, again, I'm been in country for a short period of time. It's my first like times doing operations.

And I'm like walking down the line and all of a sudden I just look at a guy and I was like, oh, this is 100% him. Like the way the guy's looking at me and it'd be compared to the way everyone else is looking at me. I was like, oh, this guy just hates me and hates us and this is the bad guy. And sure enough, they like went through the PID procedures. That was him. And you could tell. It was like, oh, yeah, this is good. This is it.

So it is interesting. As much as I always say, like, it was good to work with the Iraqi forces because the Iraqi force could go into a house and be like, oh, this guy's from a different region. This guy's a foreign fighter, whatever. Yeah. Whereas we could never tell that. But as far as just like a bunch of normal Iraqi civilians compared to a freaking straight jihadist, oh, it was real evident. The guy was not good with his disguising his feelings. No kidding.

At all. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. bit. Sure. And again, get this book. I'm just reading 5% of the book right now. There's there's so many powerful stories in here. This section is called Everyone Pays the Piper and Sangan. April 6th, 2011, you guys are going out in a patrol in the green zone. Your mission is enemy and IED identification and elimination and then come out. Fast forward a little bit.

this time the enemy fighters had set up a U-shaped ambush of sorts comprised of several fighting positions in the west and north and IDF indirect fire artillery team in the hills to our east round started coming in from the west and north and not long after mortars came down at our trucks from the east so this is not a good situation first squad was eventually dispersed widely throughout the compounds fields and trenches between 611 and the main wadi trying to locate and eliminate enemy shooters in the green zone. Fast forward a little bit. As soon as the shooting started, LT began coordinating with command and an ISR predator drone loaded with hellfire missiles was sent into overlook the battlefield. Coordination efforts among the dispersed ground teams, our squad and

the trucks, local command elements, and a remote drone pilot proved an immense challenge. Amidst the radio traffic, the order eventually came over for the guys on the ground to consolidate as a hellfire drop was imminent. The furthest inserted team in the green zone went to consolidate back along a wadi that lined up the eastern edge of a large crop field. Smith and Rast, these are two of your guys. We've heard Smith's name before, but we haven't heard Rast yet, but these are two of your guys.

One's your platoon sergeant, right, Smith? And then Rast is a corpsman. Yep. We're pushed into the green zone. We're pushed further into the green zone than most and held firm in their position to continue providing cover for the other Marines. The radio traffic was heavy. Mams were scattered throughout the area and we were taking sporadic gunfire from numerous locations. LT made his way on the radio amidst the traffic and yelled, break, break, impact in 17 seconds. Say again, impact in 17 seconds.

Moments later, the explosion ripped through the valley and I watched for my truck on the 6-11. The smoke plume clear the treetops to my west in typical fashion. We cheered excitedly, even though the It was a explosion seemed to be closer than it should have been. Quickly after the blast, the ground element came across the radio screaming, ceasefire, ceasefire, with the highest shrill of angst. Our exhilaration immediately halted. This was a very uncharacteristic response to an ordinance drop.

Sergeant Hammonds then came on with a gut-wrenching transmission. Break, break, break. That landed right on top of Raston Smith. Peck and I looked at each other shocked. Did he say what I think he just said? LT immediately came on, say again your last. Hammons replied a few seconds later. That dropped right on top of Smith and Rast.

We waited helplessly for further communication. One of the Marines on the ground came up on the radio. Corman up. I need Fleming on my position now. Doc Fleming and Mathis dismounted from the six by six and sprinted to the west disappearing into the foliage. A short while later, what we all feared came across the radio.

The ground element requested for immediate medevac, followed by two nine lines, one critical and one routine. We all knew what that meant. If a casualty situation, if in a casualty situation a Marine was badly wounded but alive with a chance to survive, then the communication was critical. Conversely, if a Marine had been killed, there was no rush. for the Medevac given he was already beyond saving and the communication was routine one of them was dead and the other not far from it one of the second squad marines in the trucks belted out a knee

jerk knee jerk reaction over the radio who is routine as if in that moment it mattered nothing came through even though we were all thinking the same thing staff sergeant jeremy smith our respected platoon sergeant was dead on impact. The missile obliterated his body. Doc Benjamin Rast, our brother and trusted Corman, also took a bad portion of the blast. Smith was gone, but we thought there was still a chance for Rast. We raced back to Alcatraz to get Rast on the chopper as soon as possible. Fleming and Mathis worked Rast's unconscious body all the way there. His heartbeat had apparently stopped before they loaded him into the truck, but they tried to get it back while en route. When he pulled up to Alcatraz, I jumped out of my truck and ran over to lieutenants to pull Smith's body out.

I opened the back door to a person-sized, thick plastic bag, slumped over in the seat and had an immediate reaction of pause as my brain struggled to grasp the situation. I hoisted Smith out of the truck gently and his blood that had pooled in the seat beneath him and congregated in the bottom of the bag splashed up on me and ran down my chest. I was shocked. It was all a little too real. Amidst all the chaos Turner who was in the truck turret for the entire event and focused on engaging enemy shooters had no idea who is in the body bag that had been loaded into the back seat right beside him. When I started to pull Smith's body out of the body. the truck Turner crouched down through the turret hole and said who the fuck is that I said it's Smith man he immediately burst into tears and sunk back into his turret seat I carefully

laid Smith on a stretcher and ran over to help the other guys offload rast from the six by six just as the Black Hawk Medevac chopper approached and touched down kicking up a thick brown cloud of dust six of us picked up Rast and ran him the helo. I gripped the stretcher in one hand up by Rass's chest and his right hand in my other. His face was turned away from me and I saw that he had a golf ball-sized hole right behind his right ear that nearly went all the way through to the other side of his head. At this point, I didn't know we had already lost him, but in seeing the gaping cavity in the back of his head, I knew things had to be final. I think the saving grace of the event for both Smith and Rast is

that they didn't suffer at all. They were gone quick. Under the thundering sound of the helo's rotation, I leaned in and yelled in Rast's ear, hold on, rast, hold on. The Lord's got you now, hold on. We slid him onto the chopper, and the on-board Corman immediately started working on him.

I ran back and grabbed hold of Smith with the others. When we approached the Medevac chopper with Smith in the body bag and the other onboard Corman, and hand saluted the body before receiving it into the helo it was the it was heavy and that hand salute sealed it all for me a rush of emotion came on as my adrenaline dissipated and reality set in we hoisted smith's body into the chopper and stepped back to watch them dust off we're stay of the deployment and no sugar coating it was it was blue on blue all the way which is just the worst you know you know leading up to that patrol, we had gained all those momentum. You know, we were talking about a little while ago, we all knew, like, the day's coming for us. Nobody is in this valley that hasn't taken their hits. Like, we're going to get hit.

And we just kind of conceded to that on the front end. And to be frank, like going into the Marine Corps, leading up into the deployment, going through combat training, you know, pre-deployment combat training, and then getting briefed, you know, dropping country, like everybody knows. You know, it's like we signed up for this. You know, I just think in the mentality of the time is there really is no life after this. Everything's just right now. So whatever comes I'll deal with afterwards.

Well, let's just hit it hard right now. And man, we had gained so much confidence in that valley. You know, we, just ahead of this, we found out in local intel reports that the enemy identified us with the name. And it was so bolstering. You know, we all talked about it at the time. how Chris Kyle was dubbed the devil of Ramadi, you know, and that he had like the enemy knew that guy. The enemy knew other units ahead of second recon being in Afghanistan,

I think first recon, Taliban forces down in Marja, I think, dubbed in the black diamonds. And that reputation carried on with second recon because of the configuration of their NVG mount on their new generation Kevlar's. And so Intel reports finally came out the enemy called us the tanks. and we thought, man, this is incredible. Like, we're something. We're doing something.

Like, we're making an impact in a way that is hurting the enemy's objectives and goals in this region, so much so that they have identified us, that they know us to be a hard-hitting, heavy opposing force to them, and that they know to be very careful when they hit us. And so leading up into this, they had set that ambush up on us. And it was just, it felt like, I had a lot of, want to say fate, but it was just so coincidental how everything happened. You know, we, they, what started that whole combat engagement was a, thank God, a faulty IED strike on the six by six that had like 10 guys inside of it.

We had planned to drop first squad to go into the green zone that day with our new sniper element that we finally got attached to us. We've been running so skinny for so long that we finally got our battalion commander to assign us some support, and he assigned the entire sniper battalion team to us, which was fantastic, because the majority of our engagements were 100 to 300 meters. So we were not far away from our intended drop point, and a blasting cap went off underneath the six by six while we were en route there. Thankfully, didn't ignite the ammonium nitrate, but we dropped everybody off and went in,

and we're under contact. And, you know, everything that happened on April 6th is, you know, incredibly, controversial among everyone. I wrote about that event the way that I experienced it. I was driving one of the VIX. I was fully involved in my place. As a part of the mission planning, understood the objectives, understood where the drop points were, what the objectives were on the foot patrol,

where the pickup point was. We were going to stay on the 6-11, essentially the whole patrol, and just stay as mounted support and try to cut off enemy reinforcements from coming in from the east and north-south, which is very typical for what we did on most of our foot patrols. And, you know, things went wrong. I think there was a full investigation that transpired afterwards. That's where it gets controversial.

A lot of people have some really strong opinions about how everything happened. And I, you know, there are guys with opinions that have more information than I had. So my take on the incident is just the way that I experienced it when I understood at the time and what I found out afterwards. But, you know, in war, people die. And I think even if there was a smoking gun that somebody did something inherently wrong, which ultimately the investigation

led to a fog of war designation over the whole thing. And there were some processes and procedures with drone warfare that changed after this incident to try to mitigate, you know, future incidents similar going forward. But, you know, I didn't think that that was a wrong designation. There was a mismatch of information. the drone pilot had locked on to Smith from the get-go, didn't recognize that his muzzle flashes were shooting into the green zone instead of away from it.

Him and Rass were just pushed out far enough from the rest of the patrol element that the drone pilot didn't factor in the other guys. Or maybe he did, but maybe he thought they were all in the forces, I'm not sure. And they'd hellfire dropped. And whenever they drop a hellfire, the SOP is to identify a target, not to split the difference. They want to make sure that they at least kill. the combatant as opposed to like a group of four or five guys dropping one right in the middle and hoping to get all of them so smith was the target and it just obliterated his body and he was dead on

impact and i said it but that's the saving graces i just don't think either than felt anything so we all bore the the weight of the experience after the fact we were under it we were engaged from sporadic pop shots uh before that though we had a pretty heavy-handed volley or two of enemy fire the snipers taking shooters out in the fields beyond. But that hellfire dropped and everything paused. I think the enemy was just as confused as we were. It seemed like they weren't shooting back for a little bit. But then sure enough, we started getting re-engaged. The IDF teams up in the east, we had our gunners on. Mams were squirting around on their motorcycles off in the far distance, trying to gain position on us to shoot down. And, you know, while we were in the field,

we thought there was still a chance for rest. But when that radio call came over, one casual, I mean, it was on all of our minds. Like, who got hit? And then the nine line came over and then we had a pretty good idea. But... And you go into this investigation a little here. We were ordered down to Fob Jackson

to debrief with command as well as spend time with investigators to dissect the events of April 6 and determine what exactly went wrong. When we pulled through the Fob entry point, all the Alpha Company Marines who were not on post were lined up along. the road in solidarity. We pulled in, parked, and offloaded our gear.

Major Wood huddled us up to give his thoughts. He told us about a brief memorial ceremony that took place at Camp Leathernick, the last stop before Smith and Rass bodies were sent home. Major Wood told us he had already talked to the drone pilot who fired the shot and that the pilot asserted he would have put a bullet in his own head instantly

if it would bring back our Marines. If it's okay, I know where you go, this and I'd like to say it. In this moment, we had, you know, we pulled back into Alpha Company. It's our company. But when we got to saying again, we weren't attached to them. We're out doing our own

thing. And we were checking in with them here and there. You know, we made stops at no way all the we made stops at all the FOBs. And so we had a pretty good idea, like they had a pretty good idea of what was going on with us. And we, you know, we were checked in with what they were doing. They were doing patrols around the FOBS as a part of, and so we had a pretty good idea. And so we had a part of their FOB security and getting into some stuff, but we were still kind of out on our own. And now this, you know, incredibly tragic incident, but also just incredibly embarrassing.

You know, and again, I like, even back then, I just, in my mind, it was like, whatever was ultimately a cause, we will find out if there's consequences, there'll be consequences, but we're in war. Like, we're, this was coming, you know? But we get back to the Fob, to Fob Jackson, Major Woodp pulls us aside. And I just imagine being a CEO in that moment and trying to figure out the right things to say. This was the very first drone blue on blue ever, from what I understand, which made it even bigger of a controversy. So everybody's really concerned. How's this all going to go?

We're headed into an investigation. What are people going to say in that investigation? what do people think right now there was already some really strong opinions about who is at fault and why you know like what's going to happen with this and major wood again he could have said anything but him and gunning coleman received us in i mean these are our leaders up until we got to afghanistan these were the guys that are leading the charge we're following them into battle just had tremendous respect for coleman had tremendous respect for wood and major wood of all the things he could have done he huddled us up and he said listen guys nobody wanted this to happen you know we are going to go into

investigations he said uh i would just need you all to know you're doing one hell of a job out there but i want you all to listen to something i want you to listen to every single word and i want you to take it in and he read off a quote that i had never heard before um that i'm sure a lot of listeners probably have i'll read it off he huddled us up and he said listen to every one word. It's not the critic who counts. It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without shortcoming, but who knows the

great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spins himself on a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat he said y'all are doing a damn fine job and you're going into these investigations don't you let a single opinion sway your opinion about yourselves y'all are in the arena the eyes of the battalion are on you they're proud of you i'm proud of you and you need to bottle this up because once we get done with this investigation, you're going right back out. You're doing a damn good job and you have a lot more work to do. And man, I just, what a moment. I mean,

similar to my dad's words, whenever we, I just had my emotional mix up and then he validated me. Major Wood validated us, maybe for the first time in a real way, you know, and when it could have been, when it just looks so bad on us that this had happened, he, he accounted for all the good that we were doing. told us beat you are the men in the arena you know win or lose like don't let somebody else's opinion sway the way that you feel about what you guys are doing you're doing a damn good job man what what a moment he just handled it so good yeah the um bite of blue on blue um with uh iraqi soldier getting killed and uh one of my guys going to a few more other um iraqi soldiers getting wounded it was freaking terrible and the army understood it um the army understood

They've been in that battle space for five months, the army unit that we had the blue on blue with. They like understood it. The battalion commander's like, hey, here's what we do. This happened. We got more missions to do. But the naval special war for the SEAL community, like not in Ramadi with us, definitely because it's the mortal sin, right?

The mortal sin of combat is, you know, blue on blue. It's the worst thing that can have happen. But there was a one of the, the senior ranking seal officers who had actually been a Marine in Vietnam. And he was at the tail end of the Battle of Way City. And he got me a message and said, hey, Jock. And I knew him. You know, I didn't know him well, but I knew him.

And he said, hey, Janko, I was in way to tail end of Way City. He said, I didn't fighting it, but I was there when we were mopping it up. And I forget what the percentages were. But he said something along the lines of like 30% of the way. those casualties in Way City were blue on blue. Man. You got, you guys are doing a good job out there.

Figure out what you did wrong. Fix it and carry on. And like, again, very similar to what your skipper said, you know, Major Wood. And then Gunny Coleman as well. You know, Gunny Coleman in the book here, he said, gents, it's sad,

but it's what it's what it is. You just have to pick up and carry on. We are Marines. This is the life we choose. He was right. This is the life we choose, the life I chose. and I did so knowing the risks.

You know, you go on to talk about the fact that it was the first predator drone, you know, blue on blue, which was terrible. You know, interestingly, I was looking, just doing a little bit of research and I found an article from the military times and Smith's dad, Jerry. This is a quote, said, Jerry said he didn't want

to place blame for what happened. Quote, whoever that young man or woman was, they didn't send that drone over. there to kill my son or Doc Rast, Jerry Smith told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. If it was a royal screw up, it was a royal screw up. Make corrections because I don't want another family to have to go through this. He said trying to put a bigger burden on that person who fired the missile is not something I would do. I guarantee you if he was standing in front of me, he'd be asking for forgiveness and I would

give it to him. Jerry's salt to the earth. I have a great relationship with Jerry to this day. talked to him a few weeks ago as a matter of fact and saw him in person at one of our guys' funerals who just died of cancer, not Coleman but another guy that I could tell you about but what a word from a father

that gave that up and you know that was really his mentality one of the things that would well you read it that would talk to the drone pilot he said I put a bullet my own head today if I could take it back and you know the drone pilot he's got a limited view of the battlefield there are other checks and balances as a part of the

process to positively identify friendly and opposing forces. There's procedural approvals that have to take place before bombs drop. I mean, the process is beyond my scope of understanding, but, but broadly, there are checks and balances. There's just one or two mishaps in the process that ultimately led to, you know, to an error. But I, you know, combat's chaotic. Yeah. I just, I, I, I, reconciling the situation, you just can't, control every ultimate possible outcome. We plan these missions. We have our objectives. We've got our sequence of events. We know what assets are in the area. We know the timing of things. And then we set up contingency after contingency after contingency in the event that things don't go to plan

and seldom do they. So we pivot to contingencies. But even when all that's set up, I mean, you know, LT takes around in the face. Radio takes around. A big storm blows in. It's like, what are we going to do now? It's like, well, improvise adapt and overcome. We're figured out we go but any my point is whenever you set up all that you do everything planning wise it's like it it will still go wrong and people will still die yeah and so there's you can't mitigate every risk but on top of that i you you can't really even express the amount of times that air power dropped bombs and saved lives oh yeah huge you know the amount of times that a hellfire was dropped and people were saved like that happens over and over again and each one of those times that

with some risk that was like, well, can you be 100% sure that this bomb is going to drop at the right moment at the right time on the right enemy? You cannot, but you can't give 100% to that. Maybe, maybe if you're lucky, you could give a 94%. Okay, so because there's a 6% chance, we're just going to not do this anymore. No, there would be way more higher cost of lives. So this is a horrible risk that's occasionally it happens. But I can guarantee you, everybody that's out on the battlefield would say, oh, we would rather take you, you drop the bombs 96% of the times. And we understand that 4% of the time it's not going to land where we want it. And some small percentage of that is going to be friendly forces.

And that's absolutely terrible. Do everything we can to mitigate it. But it is such a devastating blow to the enemy and an advantage that we have over the enemy that we can't abandon it just because there is a small chance that bad things happen and they are going to happen occasionally. it's the way it is 100% and those predator drones gave us an incredible advantage i mean that the viewpoint of the battlefield when the enemy was moving from building to building and on and on i mean i sucks that we had to be the unit to take that first hit but uh but you're right on the positive game changer yeah absolute game changer yeah um we were back in full scale operations for the weeks following april 6 and pushing a fast pace again i mean it's like right back into it's like right back into

just as your gun, he told you. Like, yep, hey, we're going to get it back on. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit more. In late spring, as 1-5 began to find their operational flow in southern Sangan, the hellacious battleground that many had fought so fiercely to secure the valley reignited, air-to-ground ordinance drops, IED explosions and firefights all returned en masse.

We hope this would mean the continuation of our involvement in Sengen long term, but regional command had other plans. By the end of April, we received the news we all feared. I did not want to believe it would happen, but word came down that our time in Sangan was coming to an end. Worst news. Man, it was the worst news. Three five left, uh, left Sangan in April. 1-5 was already there, I think, or at least their Admon group was already there whenever four-six happened.

And they were a fresh, fully functional, fully man battalion, um, infantry battalion. And they, and second recon was also on their way out. They left in May just around that just barely after we did. So there was major regional shifts happening. There was some talk in Sangan of doing a Fallujah style clearance, just building to building, field to field. And we were so pumped about that because we just thought, let's just put an end to all this.

Let's fight it out for the next month. Let's eradicate everything. Let's just do it. You know, let's quit playing around. And, you know, that could have been strategically good in some ways and terrible in others. didn't end up painting out that way. But with 1-5 coming in,

they were planning on making P.B. Alcatraz and established, I don't know if they would have called it a fob or just more established PB, but up until the point that we left Sengen, it was still just two four-wall dirt compounds. And then OPD Young, which was this monstrous dirt mound on the side of the 6-11 that oversaw the entire River Valley

in that particular area. I mean, it was a very fortifiable, a strategically important position for sure. But combat engineers were on their way up to put in HESCO barriers and actually make a legitimate establishment out of it. And so with 3-5 leaving, 1-5 taking over, they had pushed Alpha Company maybe just a couple weeks before we left out to Delaram.

The Georgian military, the nation of Georgia, had had Delaram and were doing the drug interdiction mission, but they really wanted U.S. forces to head that up. So all of Alpha Company got sent. We were fingers crossed that we were just going to get to stay and saying in and keep banging it out and I just didn't work out that way So it was it was pretty bitter, but but we know we understood in the early dark morning of May 2nd we geared up and loaded our trucks for the last time at PB Alcatraz end up going to camp leatherneck You get some R and R and clamp camp net leatherneck. Yeah, this is when Osama bin Laden gets killed yes and you're you're at TV you're watching the TV in the galley or something when that happens yeah yeah it was so surreal and you know when

we showed up to leatherneck like leathernecks a legit establishment everybody's buttoned up you know they're wearing their black socks or non-white socks i should say like everybody's got a in-regulation haircut the uniforms are clean like they're actually washing clothes here you know and they're taking showers and stuff we never wash clothes i mean once every few weeks we'd take a longer stop at no and try to, but I go five or six days on the same pair of underwear and then switch over to others and I'd wring my socks out on the truck, you know, with water and that's how I'd wash them and it was baby wipe showers left and right, like it was just foreign to us. So we got back in this normalcy, which is nice. But yeah, some have been Laden. You know, we found out he was killed while

we were there. It felt surreal. I had a hard time believing it for some reason. Just it's like, I, you know, and I so appreciated it because it was the just end to this, you know, decades-long manhunt. But at the same time, the other side of my head, I thought, but that didn't change anything about tomorrow. I'm still out here. Those, my enemy's still right there. And now they can hit back even harder.

So I guess it's game on again. Yeah. There's a cool little story. I wasn't going to read this, but I just remembered it. Yeah. When you're basically going into the Chow Hall. Oh, man. And there's like a first sergeant there and he's ripping into a couple of junior Marines in the

Chow line for not moving fast enough. And then he starts coming towards you and I thought here we go. Let's see what let's see what he makes of me To my surprise the moment his eyes caught mine. He looked me up and down and his demeter immediately softened He approached me grabbed me by the shoulder and with a soft voice said come up here warrior You get to the front of the line and you take as long as you want corporal I was taken aback by by and began to get choked up I fully expected to be publicly shamed and ripped into my for my filthy appearance which would have been very much in keeping with the normal way of things in the core, but instead I was shown distinction and a warrior's respect.

I've never felt more honored in my life than in that moment. For some reason, it hit me so hard. You know, up to that point, you know, up to that point, like, we were, we were a part of it. We were a part of the war effort in a real way. And we got to Leatherneck and then you could just see the difference of us versus everyone else. And we were way out of regs. I mean, haircuts were whatever but we were just gross i mean i had dirt ingrained in my hands under the skin that wouldn't wash out all of us were that way we're just rag tag you know we're eating nothing but morees um most of the time really you know carcinogen filled sun baked water bottles i got to the point with morees that i couldn't eat them anymore i i i just i could not i couldn't and so i was

on crackers and peanut butter and i remember yearning for fresh fruit fruit. My body was just so done with all the preservatives and, you know, it was just so rag-tag. And so then we pull up to leatherneck and against the backdrop of everybody else. I mean, we just did not look great. And LT told us right when we got there, like, hey, let's go eat. Let's rest a little bit, but let's not, we're going to draw a lot of bad attention if we stay like this. Like, we need to get showers quick. So I'm going to line that up for y'all, but go ahead and go to the Chow Hall. And I got there and, man, Marine Corps, is super about regulations, especially the higher enlisted ranks.

And I just thought, this guy's going to humiliate me. And I'm going to, for the first time in my life, I'm going to rip into a first sergeant, just don't care at all anymore. You're standing by. Yeah, man. And all these other Marines are, I'm getting bad looks, and I'm just starting to get incredibly angry. You know, I'm just thinking, if you only, if you only knew, you know, man.

And he, and just another moment of incredible leaders. of just acknowledging a moment and having the right response to it. You know, just what a heart that guy had. He just saw me and recognized it. And he honored me. Such a great moment. Yeah. Really was.

Yeah. It's awesome. You know, one thing, just while we're getting all emotional, one thing that we didn't talk about that was a very pivotal moment in the deployment also that I should go back to. After Smith and Rast were killed, Smith was just in a weird coincidence my mom was his college advisor

and he grew up in Arlington he grew up where I grew up his dad raised him in the same hometown who's just a few years older than me went to a competing high school that I went to in Arlington called Martin High School and we were hardcore rivals in football

and Smith again I didn't know him at the time but he was just a few years older I just I knew this is going to be all over the news. And whenever people are killed overseas, communications, they go black. And it's also probably important to note back then, communications home were only in MWR centers, Marine Welfare Resource Center. Maybe it's what it stands for.

But at certain establishments, bigger fobs, there were computer centers, computers and phones. But that's all we had. We did have one sat phone, I think, but we never used it to call home. It was kind of an emergency thing. And I had the mentality while I was over there, I just didn't want to call home. Every time I did, that put my mindset back at home. And now I'm really concerned about what's going on back home, what my family's doing, what my friends are doing. I'm starting to think like, man, I really want to be back there.

It just kind of rattled me up and got me out of the mentality that I needed to be insane in. So I just never called. And I told my parents ahead of time, I kind of set the expectation without directly lying to them like I have no idea how often I'm going to be able to call don't expect it often also if anything bad happens at home don't tell me because I can't do anything about it and it's just going to mess me up I probably could have called them quite a bit more than I did but it just was bad for me so uh in in addition to that they there were moments that they were expecting information from me like what mission I had been given where we were going I had to tell them those types of things

but I was very shrouded with my answers I didn't want to give them any reason to worry I thought we're going to have so much time after this to talk about it all. I can give you all the details. But while I'm in it, I wouldn't want to be sitting at home worrying about my kid. So I'm just going to be super positive, very lighthearted, kind of, you know, give the high points, not really talk about things, just super rah-rah, you know, yep, we're beating them back and everything's great. But man, four, six happened. And it's like there's no hiding it anymore. And so up to that point, after they were killed, you know, especially that first, night a lot of guys are getting pretty emotional and there's a lot of tears I just wasn't emotional

I mean I was so angry and bitter emotional in that way but I just couldn't work up tears I was even a little bit frustrated I was like why is it not like hitting me like it should be and I love those guys man I looked up to Smith he was a mountain of a man and rast was every bit of marine as we were and he just had an infectious personality he's so fun to be around like I love those guys I just couldn't cry about it for some reason. But the band lifted while we were at Jackson during that investigation period. And I thought, my parents are going to see this on the news. And God forbid, I don't talk to them first.

What are they going to think happen to me? I mean, this is as close as it gets. It's not even my unit. It's a guy they know. They know everything about this guy and my relationship with him. And the fact that we're in the same platoon, he's my platoon sergeant, on and on and on. So I had called my dad. I was not going to call my mom.

And I, thankfully the phone center was empty, but dialed his number and my emotions started surging. He picked up the phone and said hello and it all came out. I just started bawling and bawling uncontrollably. The first time. And it, I don't know why it happened in that moment. But it was, it felt like, man, this is my father. like I'm not a hardcore war fighting Marine with him.

I'm this guy's a little boy and I'm hurt. And the man I need him. I don't even need him to say anything profound. I just need him. And I need my mom. And then I think the other half of it was like, God, what have I done to them? I can't hide it anymore.

Like it's really that bad. And now I have to give them a reason to worry. And oh my gosh, how hard is that going to be for them for my extended family. And man, he handled it like a champ. He had the right words to say, which were not a lot. Neither of us really knew what to say, but he said, I will find a way to tell the family, you know,

keep fighting hard and doing what you're doing. You know, I love you. We prayed together. And that was it. But what a defining moment, you know, I just felt so terrible for them. But it just highlighted this critical importance of the father-son relationship. you know, just he didn't, I didn't need him to say,

I just needed him, I just needed his presence in that moment. It was so powerful, so powerful. Just had to mention that. Yeah, that's, that would be incredibly hard for them, especially because they've been in the dark for four or five months or however long it's been, and now of a sudden they realize that, you know, well, those situations that you've been in for the extended period of time

and having to hit that close to home, yeah. Yeah, it was tough. And I, you know, heard from them after and my dad took a trip up to the woods you know where we frequented and struggled through his emotions up there and then you know and then they got past it but just goes back to the point you know the family impacts on military personnel they get deployed to combat zones it's uh it takes the toll on them it they deserve a lot of credit they really do so yeah um delhrom so well rested and tuned up in the morning of may 10th around zero four hundred

We loaded up and pushed a Fob Delaram Ready to hit it hard again And mission started immediately Back in the saddle, you say here In certain places pressure plates Were as bad or worse in volume As in Sangan. Just prior to our arrival, Georgian Army Patrol,

Which you mentioned earlier in Delaram suffered 11 casualties from numerous pressure plates hits and a follow-on ambush. It started when one of their guys stepped on an IED That blew his legs off. Another soldier came to aid him And stepped on an IED also. Then a third,

did the same and while the rest of their unit experienced the pandemonium of trying to save all three critically wounded soldiers, the enemy ambushed them with small arms, fire, and mortars. Many of the casualties didn't survive. This is absolutely tantalizing. You know, in 3-5 and Sengen had to deal with this, thankfully, I mean, we made it in and out of there without anybody stepping on an IED. The closest that any of us know, I guess, is that first patrol when I almost stepped on one, but just a matter.

I mean, the SOPs of somebody stepping on a pressure plate is, you have to assume that there's more than one there. You cannot rush up and give aid. But if the femoral arteries hit, you've got 60 seconds tops. And so it's like you're just going to stand there and let him bleed out and die. I mean, it was a part of our SOP to pull our own tourniquet and start applying your own tourniquet on your own severed limb because it was, that might be the game changer on whether you make it or not.

And so those guys, you know, they didn't adhere to that. SOP and and I remember reading another book or two. I mean I you know even even when you do adhere to it. I mean I three five had an incident or two like that. I think I remember that one guy got hit. You know, his buddy's trying to save his brother running up to save his life and he gets it to, you know. So that we were told about that story. We were told the Delaram had a lot bigger IEDs for trucks and then again the pressure plates are generally, generally clustered. So it was just one of the good examples to kind of. set the tone and pace for us early on just to be prepared it was crazy you have the enemy you know you're talking about the enemy adapting one of the things the enemy adapt was you know when they had humvies

when we had humvies they built bombs to blow up humvies and when we had you know tanks they built bombs to blow up tanks eventually when we had m wraps they built bombs to blow up mrops it's just like was it a little harder for them to put in an mrap bomb yeah because it was bigger yeah and it took a little more time to dig in there but like it wasn't totally different it was probably a 20% increase in difficulty, but it's still taking out vehicles. Big time. It's also important to note one of the things that we were told at the time is that a part of their tactic with the anti-personnel pressure plates is they wanted just enough

ammonium nitrate to blow your legs off but not kill you. If they kill you, there's no urgency. But if they take your legs off, now they create a chaotic situation. And now that unit is vulnerable to an ambush. And so they would try to make them just big enough to create a life or death situation. and take legs off where now guys have seconds to go save that Marines life

and then they can hit you with small arms attacks. I mean not like crafty hats off to them I mean very strategic in their thinking so and that's what you guys are dealing with again like you guys have already been through it

now you're back in it again and I'm gonna fast forward through some stuff here but just get the book people like there's so much in here here's a one point fast forward a little bit But the third squad, it's an IED, out on a recovery mission.

And things just don't let up here. Second platoon was now down nine Marines out of our total 38. Smith and Rast were KIA. Wade was sent home on a family emergency. One of our guys was pulled from a mission for mental instability. And now Klein, Deemis, Vega, and Apgar and Llewellyn were severely wounded and had already left Afghanistan never to return. That was nearly 25% of second platoon thinned out.

Over the month of June, we continued to fast pace as the regional QRF gun trucks chasing IED placements, providing tactical taxi service running Marines to and from area outposts and performing mounted security patrols in and around suspected enemy activity and hotspots. We were undermanned and exhausted, but still in the fight. Did you even get any combat replacements? Are you guys just down? No, we got a few fill-ins. When Smith and Rass went down, we got Doc Sissly came to join us up there, and then I can't remember if it was,

I think it was Staff Sergeant Ferrari. He was a former active sniper that came in to help out. We got a few fill-ins. And then, but I mean, when that last IED attack happened, everything changed. We didn't get fill-ins,

but we didn't really need them. We essentially just kind of slowed down operations. And to be frank, Delaram was, it was just a different overall, tempo. Tempo is probably not the right word because it was still very fast-paced, but we didn't engage, like we weren't engaged in combat foot patrols as much. It was a very arid area. It had some densely populated areas, compounds and, you know, wadis and fields and things of that nature, but it was much more like a desert scape. And fighting the drug trade out there,

it was the main highways over into Iran predominantly. Now the enemy forces out there, were still very aggressive and very brutal to the A&A and AHP, which is Afghan Army, Afghan Highway Patrol and Afghan police. They would overrun their highway, highway patrol establishments, capture, torture, and mutilate bodies. I mean, they were doing some nasty stuff. There were some really big IEDs. There was an incident that a civilian bus got hit with like 30 civilians on board,

most of which were killed, babies on that bus. A lot of women, too. Very chaotic incidents. So it was just as real as elsewhere. It just wasn't as in your face confrontive. You know, that, but whenever third squad got hit, the other platoons were, they were itching for action also. They really wanted to get out there, and they deserved to.

You know, we didn't want to get pulled off as the main force. But after that last one, it was, Major Wood finally was like, all right, you guys, y'all pull back a little bit. We're going to let these other guys get. some action. And so, but that third squad IED strike, I won't go into all the details. And he would hate me for saying it, but Corporal Walker deserves, deserves recognition for what he did. You know, the, again, I won't go into all the details, but the truck was on fire. Rounds are cooking off inside of it. Mass casualty situation. And our turret gunner was on fire inside of the truck.

His body was completely battered. I think he had, he had a broken collarbone. Both MCLs were torn. He had ribs puncturing his lungs. I mean, we all thought he was dead. It was shocking that he was alive. But Corporal Walker and Sergeant Head, but from what I understand, Corporal Walker was kind of the main head. Headed up the just the casualty recovery, took command and control of the scenario while, you know,

being prepared for oncoming ambush, managed to get Vega out without him burning to death or shooting him to avoid burning to death. All five guys made it out of that en route. alive some barely and and largely because of Corporal Walker's heroism and what he did never recognized for it from what I understand and he should be yeah I'm again the the stories that you put together in here and the way you tell them I mean it's just outstanding and that's just one of the many that I was forced to so I wouldn't

just come on here and just read the audio book to everybody no doubt no doubt but Please get the book. And there's an audio book version of this as well. Yeah, sure is. Just get one. Get the, get the, get the, get the, get, just listen to these stories. You got to hear the stories of these, these heroes and what they did. Um, and like you said, recognized and unrecognized.

This might be the only recognize, recognition that he ever gets right here, you know, in your book. So, um, but obviously he didn't do it for recognition. He did it for his brothers, but it's good to pass that information on and let people recognize. why the Marine Corps is the Marine Corps. No doubt. No doubt. Fast forward a little bit over the remainder of the deployment alpha company sustained. No more casualties despite numerous close calls,

including very close mortar attacks on us at Fob Delaram. Fast forward a little bit more. We land, is your heading home. We landed in California in late September, having had the most incredible view flying over icebergs and crystal blue water in the Arctic Circle on our flight back. It was early evening when we stepped off the plane back in the States for the first time.

I remember the distinct smell of the Pacific Ocean and feeling the cool fall breeze under a beautiful sunset. Four fire trucks were on the tarmac spring. Their hoses in the air to celebrate our return. 30 plus freedom riders were lined up on their Harley Davidson's to escort us back to Camp Pendleton, all with American flags affixed to the back of their bikes. We felt like heroes. Walking off that plane was one of the best feelings I ever experienced.

And you're talking here about you. You were going to kiss the ground because you wanted to, but you thought it was. was too cliche oh i mean you know like some guys did that's the movie thing to do i was like somebody's going to do it somebody's going to for oh yep he did it what a jackass uh you go through the various classes and briefs um people are trying to get you to know keep your guard down um you you put in your journal you got a great journal entry here um i'm going to read it we we are just a couple days away from returning home and that's returning home to texas so you're in camp pelton

Yep. While exciting, our time back in Cali has been heavy. I went on a long run earlier today to clear my mind and ended up on some of the training grounds that we had trained on so rigorously almost a year ago as we prepared for combat. After a couple miles, I became overwhelmed with the motion and broke down. In what seems like such a brief blip of time, I am right back where it all started, but rather than just beginning, it is all ending. I remember all the anticipation, anxiousness and excitement as we look forward to all that may occur in my fight in Afghanistan. It was all that mattered to me at the time. I was on my way to war and I was completely committed to it and nothing else.

It is as if I'd come back in time and I can see myself preparing for all that I was about to experience, but now knowing fully all that would transpire. Now I am scarred by the brutality of all I just took part in and pained by my own hardened heart that at times was filled with the most bitterly intense hatred and desire for bloodshed. I am ashamed of that. My mind expended itself over and over on creative strategies behind acts of war that I have now committed on other human beings and I don't feel like myself anymore. I crossed moral lines that I cannot uncross.

I am back in this place that should feel normal, but I do not feel normal. I feel achieved but also expended. Will I ever make it back to this place? Will I ever step foot again in these West Coast hills where I gave away so much of myself? Maybe, but never again with all the men that were here with me, my own band of brothers. It will never be the same and I can see that. In the last year of my life, this was all that mattered to me and it is about to be gone forever. I gave away so much and what feels like and what I feel like now I am reaping from my sacrifice is just more loss.

I fought in my generations of war. I killed men who opposed me and survived their relentless attempts to kill me. I did my best to hold myself to the highest standard and keep my honor clean. I should only feel victorious, but what I mostly feel is sad. Badness. Painful. It was all so painful. And I was so confused why.

I just thought, man, we're like we did it. We did what we set out to do. We accomplished our missions. I mean, we stood up against the enemy force. We didn't talk about it earlier, but engaging in combat is the premier milestone for Marines, especially young Marines. It's what everything leads up to. I mean, from the, from your first day of booting,

camp, relatively speaking on your life, what your performance basis is on, your sense of identity, how you stack up against your peers, how your unit of Marines stacks up against other units of Marines, how fast you promote. You know, what people say is honorable and good and real is how effective you are at careful planning, premature, strategic thinking that ultimately leads to the death of your enemies, killing the enemy, and engaging in combat to doing so. And as a part of being in the Marine Corps, you're a part of legacy. You're a part of the Marines that fought through

the hellacious battles of World War II, like you talked about, the island hop in Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Iwojima and Okinawa, the guys that just sacrifice so much. Battle for Way City and Kaysan and Battle for Fallujah, that Marines went door to door. Army and seals were involved in a lot of that stuff too,

but it's like we're part of legacy, we're a part of heritage. And to honor those that came before us, we do our part now. But to achieve that milestone, engaging combat, your combat action ribbon, it's like there's no higher achievement. And we achieved it. And we did it the right way. And we, you know, we had our hits.

We had our missteps like everybody does. But we came back and, you know, we did feel victorious. Oh, my, we felt achieved. I've never felt better in my life in certain moments than when I got back. When we stepped foot on that tarmac and I could see California and the sunset and, you know, the modern American world, just, no better moment in my life, you know? And there were a lot of moments like that, but there was this other side that was just this intensely bitter emotional side that was like, but now it's over. And this is late 2011, and just because the unit that we were in and because of how things had happened,

it was like there may be another deployment coming up, may not. A lot of the guys that are there jumped on board with the unit because of the deployment. They were already kind of getting out of the Marine Corps and going to be done, but they thought, I'm going to go to Afghanistan. All of us during that time period, we wanted to do Iraq and Afghanistan, because that's what all of our peers are doing. That's what our seniors were doing. That was the honorable thing. These are the wars.

And so it's like, man, we're going to get back to Houston and everybody's just going to, you know, fly off. And I got back to California and I went for a run outside of Camp Margarita in those training grounds. But nobody was with me. And I just started thinking, you know, Smith and Rask, obviously, you're not here. you know, never see them again. And then a lot of these other guys, they're going to spread to the winds.

You know, we'll never, we'll never do this again. It just hit me. It was just so sad. Man, it was so sad. You know, the Brotherhood and the Combrottery, and that's one of the other big themes that it's kind of hard to grasp. I think I can articulate it in a good way, though. You know that the military relationship in your unit, you are closer to those guys

than I think any other relationship, including marriage, by nature of the way that life happens together. I don't mean that, you know, the feel of marriage or anything like that. But you do 24-7 everything together all the time. There's never a moment that you're alone. And you can't get away from anybody. And it's arduous things that you're doing together. That's right.

It's not like you're just watching movies. Like, you know, you're working hard and being stressed and being pressured. You're getting pressured into the difficulty of circumstances that you undergo together. It rips off all of the layers in the true person, gets brought. out like your core of who you are and you you undergo extreme suffering together and great achievements and you you know you work out together off hours you go to the chowel hall together you uh you know you do weekends out together like what you do everything together for a really long period of time i've never had a moment in my life that i've been able to do that with my wife shout out to my incredible wife

by the way could never have written this book without her commitment amazing woman i would not be where i am today without her. But the, yeah, even the amount of time that we spend together, when we've never had a season that we've done 24-7 of every single task all throughout every single day together, you get close to the point that you don't, like, you can't hide anything from anybody. And even if you don't want to be close to some of the guys that you're close with,

you're still very close to them. And so then whenever you separate, you start feeling, like, it's like, I'm losing a huge part of myself. Like, what do you mean you're not going to be there? You just got so accustomed to, them doing literally everything together. When I first got back into home into Texas, the first few nights were strange and tough. I would wake up frantic because I couldn't find my weapon, number one, and because I look around

and I couldn't see any of the Marines around me. And I just feel all alone. And I remember feeling that way when I left with my parents, too. I should feel like, man, I'm with my parents. Like, this is amazing. I felt so terrible when I left them the first time. I felt alone. You know, and now I feel.

feel lonely being with them because the Marines aren't with me. It's just a weird mental, you know, to be in. And it just takes a long time to adjust away from that. But yeah, that time period is very tumultuous. I mean, it is for everybody. I just wanted to make a point to really articulate it in a way that mattered. It felt incredible, amazing. Praise everywhere you go.

Back in the modern world, you know, modern amenities, modern comforts, just everything's great. But at the same time, like a little bit purposeless, you know, You know, you're not quite as aggressive. People are lazy and they're not moving as fast as you're used to people move in. And my own decisions and my own day-to-day, I don't have a mission that I'm going after. It's just, it's a very difficult transitionary period for anybody. We'll get into some of that. I want to kind of close out the book here with this section here.

It says participating in war was both rewarding and costly. I am not the same person I was before going to war. In some ways, I am stronger than before, more resolute in my actions, more determined in my decisions and more compassionate my understanding of humanity and the plights that people find themselves in. In other ways, my inner man has been scarred. My tendencies are now more rigid. My bent is more critical and my outlook on life more despondent at times than I care

to admit. I achieved my greatest childhood aspiration of becoming a United States Marine, which was, in my youthful eyes, the single highest representation of excellence. In performing my wartime duties as a Marine, though, I crossed moral boundaries which uprooted foundations of my identity and imprinted convoluted darkness in place. As a Christian, I struggled with fundamental contradictions. I was constantly trying to balance godliness with my duties as a Marine and they often conflicted.

I could justify fighting and killing in defense of greater good, especially given OEF was in response to real attacks that destroyed innocent lives and credible threats of more, but the heart posture behind the fighting was a struggle. I joined the Marine Corps out of sincere love and appreciation for my country. I had a good heart and was resolved to be a peacemaker the way God wanted me to be. The rigors of war are overpowering, though. Effectively acting out the commission of violence can require a tremendous amount of mental and emotional positioning.

To not crumble from guilt in killing or hesitate and be killed, you must you almost must hate your enemy or at least devalue their humanity, which is not much better. I think this is because God didn't design any of us to carry the burdens of war, as war was never a part of his original intent for humanity. War resulted from mankind's fall from grace and has roots as deep as Cain's infamous murder of Abel in the book of Genesis. war is one of the greatest tragedies of humanity and after having committed myself to it for years and partaken in its actions I really disdain it to the extent that it results in severe human suffering and the excessive destruction of lives I will however never succumb to the hopeful temptation of believing that this world will ever be without it

war is inevitable because evil in the human heart is ultimately incurable in this life The history of humanity is filled with man's seizure of self-benefit through the control of others. When left unchecked, tyrannical oppression and abuse of the worst kinds will always manifest. It takes a strong resistance and proactivity from moral people to combat this kind of evil. And that will always be. So again, like the book is just outstanding. It really is. And that's not the closing of the book.

That's the part that I read. But incredible job. So what do you do when you get back? You talk about, you know, you were a little bit reclusive when you got back. You went back to college, right? Yes. And you go into what? Philosophy and theology?

Yeah, yeah. I sure did. Just real quick, before we get to that, I just want to say a couple things. just in closing out the book. A part of the kind of continuation of just being intentional to do things that matter, a portion of all book sales go to Hunter 7 Foundation, which we haven't quite talked about, but Hunter 7 exists to kind of combat back critical illnesses, cancers, and other diseases associated with military service. I said I buried two of my friends in this last year that died of cancer.

One was Gunny Coleman, the other one was Doc Fleming, who's in the book. on the front cover of the book he's standing right beside me rock star corman had an exceptional military career in the navy and he died of MS and and a pancreatic cancer and it just ripped his body apart he told me before he died that there are nine guys that we served with

that either have had or currently are fighting cancer I know I have a couple other ones he said that some of them wanted to remain silent it's been one of the silent killers of our war you know sleeping right next to burn pits is a obvious presumption. We burned, burn pits just, you burn everything that you can in it.

You know, we're not trucking trash out, we're burning it. If it burns, we're going to have it burning in place. And so we breathed in that toxic black smoke on every base that we went to. In the case of P.B.

Alcatraz, we slept right beside it. I mean, I could wad up a chunk of paper and make it into the burn pit from some of the guys' cots. So it's going to kill a lot more guys. You know,

they're calling it the Agent Orange of our generation of war. and that very well may be Hunter Seven's doing a great job to combat that. So if you buy the book, some of the proceeds go to Hunter Seven. And I want to highlight that because I really love the work that they're doing. For veterans out there, call them up, they'll give you a free full blood panel cancer review, like an expensive one. Check you for any number of indicators for potential upcoming diseases and helping make lifestyle changes to hopefully mitigate. In addition to that, they give support to military veterans that are dying of cancer currently,

fighting it otherwise trying to combat it. So I just wanted to be sure to put that in there. Yeah, and that's that's that's, you can find them at hunter seven.org and um, again, the, I've, I've met with those people, uh, just, just seen them at events and talk to them. Yeah. Yeah. They're just doing an outstanding job. Yeah.

Hunter7.org. And like you said, the, the, the number of cases of cancer and other diseases that, that, that that are generation of veterans are coming back with. You know, it's like, it's astounding. The stats are heavily weighted. Yeah, and I can't name them off the top of my head, but it's a lot. So anyway, but yeah, going back to the topic, transitioning back, whenever I got back, so I went back to the plan, PLC, let's get to college, let's get it knocked out as fast

as possible, and then I want to go back in as an officer. I loved being a Marine. You know, I told you guys whenever I first got here, I'm staying on MCRD right now. And yesterday I went and parked on the parade deck or right beside it on the non-recruit side. You almost re-enlisted. I don't think my body or my wife would agree with a decision like that. But man, I just watched the recruits. There was four platoons just like I remember a bunch of gung-ho Marines that are going to graduate this Friday.

And they were going through their rehearsal for that graduation. and gosh, I just, man, I loved it. And being with 123 Alpha Company, loved that unit. You know, the thought of going into the fleet, absolutely loved it. I always, I just wanted to go back in. So started school, after all the experiences that I had overseas, you know, we just talked in-depth about going and do it. I had a big pendulum swing in the other direction. I don't know if you call it another direction, but into theology and philosophy, into Bible.

study, philosophy of religion, you know, making sense of all this experience that I had just gone through. It was so healing to me. I mean, it was a great, great focus. And going back into the military, the degree at the time really didn't matter. So I went heavy into biblical studies, philosophy of religion, theology, went to Dallas Baptist University, ramrodded my way through those courses, graduated with a 4.0, Summa Cum Laude. By the time I graduated in 2014, I met my wife, Stevie, at DBU. And we were, you know, after dating for a little while, asked her to marry me. She said, yes, thank God. And man, during that time period, I was rough. I mean, it was just a year or two back from all this experience and just had some rough edges that she was not accustomed to.

Her family wasn't accustomed to. In fact, the DBU community, in general, there were not many veterans. There were some, but not many people maybe that had, like it wasn't a community of people that had had any similar experiences. What does rough look like? What are we, what are we talking about here? Just rigid tendencies, attitude and mentality, very, very aggressive, very aggressive. I was aggressive about everything. That's probably what people would say would be the roughest. I took everything seriously. The things that weren't to be taken seriously I discounted entirely. I got back and I didn't care about anything that didn't matter. I lost all my care like my care for sports, didn't enjoy sports anymore, didn't enjoy meaningless

hobbies, didn't enjoy, I just lost enjoyment of stuff that wasn't a part of where I, what, what the mission was. You know, it was like, man, I just got, I just got a second lease on life after this last experience. There are some incredible things that matter a lot in this world that we need to be taken seriously and I'm going to go do something about it. Get out of my way or join me and don't bother me with little things that don't matter. And it, you know, I think, I think that intimidated people sometimes. And I've chilled out a lot. I mean, there's so much more to life than mission, mission, mission, you know, and I take a step back to the big picture. And, you know, it's just a big journey. We're just on a big spiritual journey, you know, at least the way the Bible

puts it from start to finish, you know, for eternal beings. And life is just a part of the journey. It's an opportunity to learn and grow and make impact on people, you know, and choose goodness over evil. And, you know, there would be more that comes after. So, but anyway, that time period, yeah, went and finished that degree with the intent of going back in. But the sequester had hit. Obama was shrinking the military. Both wars were effectively over. Now, looking back, Afghanistan wasn't.

But it looked like it was at the time all my buddies had gotten out. I had separated my shoulder while overseas. I have a pretty severe slap tear in my left shoulder and then just incurred other joint damage. Our combat load out was 95, 105 pounds at any given time with all the munitions. How much do you weigh when you were over there? We didn't have a scale.

Never got the chance to do you weighed. What do you walk around out right now? 160, give or take. So somewhere around 2.30 to 250, depending on the mission. When we started doing missions, we were underloaded. We got into our first couple of fire fights and some of the recon guys said, y'all are not taking enough. You need some 240s.

You need a lot more munitions because when you get pinned down and you will, you're like you're going to really regret not having it. So we started really beefing things up and it just killed our mobility. And we have four sappy plates in. I mean, we had the side plates and we were not getting out of wearing them. And that made a huge difference. So it just destroyed my body. But made a change.

You know, me and my wife decided it was just time to move on very reluctantly. and so we did. So I started a grad degree that just tried to figure out what was next. It's like, all right, I'm going to go do a business degree, figure out what I'm good at, figure out where in the economy I can make some headway and really gain value or create value

and started that degree and then we found out we were pregnant. And so it was like, man, I've got to get a job. Fast. So I tried to figure out what marketable skills I had. You know, I just graduated with a 4-0, which is no small thing on my bachelor's degree, but it was all conceptual. It wasn't a hard skill. And so the grad degree that I started, I was headed in the right direction. It was all straight A's economics, accounting, finance, marketing, but very unconventional, at least to get a good reputable job at a good company with a good career path.

And there's a lot of ways that it could have gone. I interviewed and applied, I think, over a six months. period I applied for, I want to say like 60-something jobs. I had in between 20 and 30 interviews, either remote or in person, before I got an offer that was like, this is great. It's a great company. It's a good offer from a comp standpoint, a lot of growth trajectory long term, something that I'm interested in. And what I realized during that time period, the best way that I could market myself was that the military is very project management oriented, structured. You know, you align you get your commander's intent, you put a mission together, you assign roles within that mission,

you have a sequence of events, you have assets that you have to bring into it, and you have objectives that you want to hit, and then you're playing contingencies, you go execute, and then you do another one. So team leadership, project management, ability to operate in uncertain environments. It was like, I got that. The qualitative skills are there and very firmly developed. I just don't have any hard skills. But I think very mechanically, I managed to sell my way into the Beck Group, a big, very reputable, great company in Dallas, Texas. That's a design-built construction firm. They, back then at least, were they're kind of the company that does a $150 to $200 million

skyscraper, decades-old dollars. That would be a billion-dollar skyscraper today. But that's how they're situated. And so they did very big high-profile stuff. Back then, I mean, at one point, a third of the skyscrapers in Dallas were built by Beck. they're kind of the legacy company in downtown Dallas that partnered up with tramble crow way back in the day, like the person Tramble Crow to develop and build out the city. And they had presence in a few different cities, but the hiring manager took a chance on me.

She said, this guy's got a very high aptitude and ability to execute, and he's got a lot of team leadership skills. We'll teach him construction. And I, it was a big chance. I mean, none of my peers had had the unconventional route in like I had. They all went for construction sciences degrees. They were all engineers of sorts or architect designers. Nobody had that. And so made my way in and started pre-construction, cost estimating on big projects in different places.

And eventually landed a role as a kind of assistant project manager for a very big high-profile, ground-up build in uptown, uptown Dallas for a prominent developer. in fact, I mean, it's not public knowledge, but it was for Crow Holdings, for Harlan Crow in particular. He had redeveloped this Old Parkland Hospital, original hospital way back in the 50s. The second Old Parkland Hospital

was the one that they took Kennedy to after he was assassinated in Dallas. But the original one, he gentrified and then built out another campus or two, another building or two. And then this final building that we were building, the North campus was probably somewhere in the tune of 80 to $100 million building. The most expensive real estate for lease in Dallas at the time,

George Bush was taking over tenancy in the building somewhere. And so we were dealing with secret service and different, you know, super secret squirrel design stuff. Man, it was awesome. It was just, it was a lot of fun. And I got baptized into the construction world, construction science. and processes and that whole supply economy, you know, where the products come from and where they get carved and how they get brought in, how the contract structures work, where the risk is hedged, how the insurance program gets set up, you know, legalities of breach of contract because

we got into several of those and it was great experience. And then just kind of continued on there, but eventually made my way into real estate development with very big, prominent asset manager that was setting up a shop in Dallas that are based in New York. It's called Brookfield. It was a part of their industrial logistics platform for about three years, helped kind of build out and establish that in the central U.S.

And that was also just great experience. You know, I took this construction sciences that I had, but through my grad degree, I really gravitated toward economics, financial market feasibility, just all the different types of, like, mental processes that come with big level investing. Loved that.

And in development, you know, construction is a part of it. But prior to that is design and then you have entitlements and then you have everything that comes with the land acquisition. And after that you have leasing and then your long-term asset management and eventual disposition. And like that's a very long business cycle. And as a part of that focused on development, I get to have my hands in all of it. And it's been great. It's been great.

So a couple years ago, I accepted a VP position at another company called Clary. partners and took on development here's central U.S. and west and cover a number of markets. I've since started pulling back from some of the West Coast stuff, but I have some deals that were still closing out elsewhere. And, you know, just got a lot going on. So. And when did you decide to write the book? In 2020, COVID had happened. Everything shut down. Coincidentally, I was doing hospital renovations at the time with Beck. And they, said we don't want anybody in this hospital that doesn't have to be here so project management staff don't come in superintendents y'all stay here as far as like the renovation jobs so i was working from

home and i just had a ton of time on my hands um and i decided i wanted to reengage with my journal i i kept a very intentional journal while i was overseas i just and thank god that i did i just always knew, man, these are pivotal years. I'm going to want to remember these details, you know, talking with my grandparents or my granddad's, you know, about their war experiences and thinking back to different movies, you know, you see guys journaling here and there. And just the idea was in my head, like, this is really going to matter. And that journal kind of dueled as my prayer journal. It was my, you know, prayer and devotional journal during that time period also. And that also kept me disciplined to actually write things down.

But I was ready to re-engage with it, and I really wanted my parents and the rest of my family to be able to read it. But just the raw journal wasn't a good deliverable for that. So I just started working on it. I started filming in details. There were things that I had forgotten about. I started looking at some of the pictures from the deployment and started filling in some of those details.

And I don't know. I just kind of, I just kept going. And I started really committing time to it. my wife and I joke, there was never really a moment that I'd sat her down and I said, hey, I'm going to write a book. So I need you to be committed to this for the next five years. I just kept saying, hey, can you watch the kids this Sunday? You know, or hey, I need to break away and do this. Is that what you would you do like a Sunday for three hours or something like that? Yeah. So at the start, it was mornings and evenings. I'm working from home. So I've got a ton of time,

no commute. And then once I really got into it and it seemed like the manuscript, was coming together. It was like, man, this is a real story. I thought I should make a run of this. Like, I should really try to finish this out. Then I started getting really committed to it. And I had to put it down at times for four, five, six months. People told me before, you know, I've heard some guys say, like,

man, that must have been a very therapeutic thing to do, as goes with typical conversation. But it really wasn't. It was dark. You know, at this point, I'm headed in a different direction in life, even just the military vernacular, the conversational pieces, the acronyms, like all of it's just kind of

becoming faded. And then having to re-engage also with who I was as a Marine and try to make it real. Like I had to go, I had to really get back into the zone on all these experiences and just made for difficult days. But I just kept doing it.

And, you know, there were sometimes that I would get to the point that I'd have to put it down because I couldn't allow, I couldn't allocate enough time to it. It wasn't something that I could do an hour every day. I needed to like do three days in a row to stay in it. So there were sometimes,

I'd use PTO to send my family on vacation and I would stay at home and write. In between going from Beck to Brookfield, I took some time off and I wrote. And in between Brookfield DeClarian, I had several weeks and I did nothing but right. And I'd take PTO days. I'd rent a hotel right down the street

and I go and stay in it for two or three days and I would write. I committed an incredible amount of time to it. And Sundays, you know, my wife and kids would go to the in-laws and have dinner over there and I'd stay home and just get after it. And I still spend a ton of time with my family.

I mean, it's really nothing. I prioritize higher in life. And it certainly has been the case over the course of the writing of this book, but squeezed out every bit of spare time I could. And then you submitted it to, did you have an agent

or did you submit it to publishers directly? No, yeah. So, uh, as goes with the, the way that I've picked up these new industries and things. I just started somewhere and just tried to build my knowledge to find a way in to

figure out how it works. Obviously never published a book before. Well, not obviously. I've never published a book before. This is the first one. Um, I reached out to,

I just, I looked out like Google, a few publishers in Dallas, uh, reached out to, three of them. I put together a letter of intent in the publisher world. It would have been a query letter, but that was my language, letter of intent. It was just a very basic high-level marketing of the manuscript, a couple pictures here and there, just a summation of the story of who I am as an

author and all that stuff and sent it to him. And one of them sent back. He said, it seems like a cool story, not my genre, but hey, you should really go buy this book on pitching publishers and read it and they do everything it says. And so I did. And I got that book, I can't remember the name of it, very prominent how to do the publishing world book. And it was a lot. It said, man, you need to do a full book proposal. You need to read five to ten comparable titles, do full book reviews on those, figure out how your book stacks up against it. You need to identify target audience, target timing, target price, marketing and advertising schemes. You know, why somebody want to pick this book off the shelf compared to the other one? And so then I did all

that. And I got seven or eight other books. I read five of them, did full book reviews, stacked up mine against those, did examples from theirs, examples from mine, made the argument as to why this should be on the shelf, why it has a place, and on and on and on. And then I had a list of 80 to 100 agents and publishers I was going to reach out to, but my first burst was publishers that published those comparable titles. I thought if anybody's going to be interested it's going to be them but pin and sword picked it up immediately they said this is awesome we want to run with it and i had been told by some other people like don't be discouraged if it takes a couple years you know like just just stick with it and they like they immediately and so that was also

it was like hey they're going to run with it so it worked out so there you go man um so what's next yeah you know the uh real estate industry feel like maybe we're entering into a new cycle that there's uh you know last couple years have been very difficult um you know living in the same world you guys are everything's expensive people are struggling in different ways companies are struggling uh just trying to make sense of it all you know i i think in real estate development i look at it like i look at products we're just trying to meet market demand where it's demanding and we try to design things that end users want and so as companies are looking to expand and they need more space to lease in target markets for strategic regions,

we want to be there to have a product on the ground that they can use that can help them be successful. So that's the game. It's trying to put a product out to market that any users are going to need. And very excited about these next few years to do that. Got a lot of tailwinds behind us for what should be some very excited developments coming up.

Well, I was going to ask where people can find you. I know you're on, you got a private page, on Instagram, which you should open up to the world. If you got like personal stuff with your family, you want to keep off that, cool. Sure. But you should definitely, your books about publishing didn't tell you this. They should have. You got a Facebook.

Yep. That I don't know if it's private or not. I think it's public. You got a LinkedIn, which you're relatively active on. You don't have a website, which is like a big mistake. I, this set me up. This is coming out in two days. So if you get home, go on Google and Google how to come, how to make a website so you can, at least people can touch base with you and get the book and get a signed copy of the book and all that stuff.

So I probably should have told you that a few weeks ago, but I didn't. I apologize. It's all good. But that stuff for real. Like people are going to want to engage with you. They're going to want to talk to you. I don't even think you have an X, Twitter, X type thing. Again, like people want to want some Marine that you worked with or some.

you know, somebody that you went to boot camp with or whatever, that, that freaking, uh, first sergeant that gave you props in the chow hall, he's going to want to reach out to you and say something. So,

you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, make that thing public so people can talk to you, uh, because people are going to want to talk to you. The book is just,

it's just freaking outstanding. It's no surprise to me that the publishers picked it up immediately because it's really well written. It tells a story. It's, it's a, unique perspective from a very, a very important part of the wars. So just outstanding on all that. That's where people can find you. Uh, echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah. Uh, did you get good

grades in high school? No, I got, I was average. I was so middle of the pack. And I, like, I think the, I think the machine was always up there ready to run. I just wasn't interested. You know, we didn't talk about it a whole lot, but I, as a kid, but my interest was outdoors. I was very active, sitting down and paying attention. and being slough like it was such a struggle so i i think i mean i graduated with 500 people in my class i was probably five off of 250 i mean i was dead nuts middle do you remember your gpia uh in high school was in the twos for sure yeah interesting right yeah okay so here's why when i got i when i got back from afghanistan i had a you know i had some months that i just kind of that i didn't

do school for a little while i needed to recalibrate and readjust but when i got into my very first semester i took five or six classes, think 12 to 15 hours, and I made straight A's and most of them were A pluses I was shocked. When was this shit? This was 2012, right after I got back from Afghanistan. I have never been a straight A student, but it occurred to me. I just got out of this environment where I do what I'm told to the extent that I'm told to do it and there is no not doing it.

I give my life before I not accomplished that mission. and then in school, all I did was what they told me to do. They said read the assignment. I read the whole assignment. I didn't skimp it. They said, do this study, pay attention to this. I just did what they told me to do. And I remember being so dumbfounded because I thought I actually am a smart guy.

Like I have an aptitude. I could really be as smart as a straight-A student. I just had to do what they said the whole time. Wait, so in high school, you weren't like that. No. You were just like, no, I'm just going to phone this. ever I could do to skate by. And thankfully, I was smart enough that I could wing it most of the time.

I mean, that's how it just wasn't a complete failure. I just wasn't interested. And I just didn't see it as translating. I think at the same time, like, my parents allowed me a lot of not too much freedom. They had some constraints, but they wanted me to enjoy my childhood and everything. I think they would have preferred. I would have been more disciplined than I was. But it just didn't click to me.

The man, it really matters to get good grades. So you can get into a good school. So you can get into good internships. and none of all that was just over my head right uh in my mind it was like i'm going into the military i just have to be a couple steps above completely stupid and i'll be perfectly okay and that was the wrong mentality but that was my mentality well i mean what kind of was it though was it the wrong mental i mean it takes a certain kind of person to go through that arc you know and obviously you're doing great and the reason i ask is because it's not like it's like this unique story i've

heard that plenty times where, you know, oh, Jocco, did you get good grades in high school? No, I'm the same exact way. And then when I went to college, you can crush it over. My man, 4.0, 4.0, you see what I'm saying? Yeah, for sure. So it's kind of like, bro, what, what up?

You know, it's kind of like, I don't know, I'm still putting the pieces together. I think it's going to depend on a lot of stuff. But yeah, it's interesting how you can have a quote unquote smart person, but this high school experience the way they're, quote, I'm quote trying to train you or develop you or whatever ain't landing with us. You know, what up?

What are we doing? I think one of the big, one of the big things about unit leadership in the Marine Corps is, it's troop welfare, but a part of that's motivation. You got to find ways to motivate your guys. I just weren't motivated in high school, but in college I was motivated. I had something that this was connected to. This matters for a very important reason, and I needed to go somewhere. Back then, I just didn't have that connection.

I just was not motivated at all. The other thing, though, I think, you know, it took me until I was 25 or 26. to kind of like figure out where the rest of my life was going. Got out of the military season and then transition and it took a while. But before the, I mean, when me and my wife got started, we had nothing. We were dirt poor. We had no good prospects. We just had, you know, a lot of rev in the engine.

And then ever since then, it's been working incredibly hard, but it's also been worked very smart. I wouldn't be where I am without very strategic smart work to try to find ways that I can create value where values needed. and then fill in my own skill gaps whenever there are gaps to get to where I want to get to. And that's the smart side of it. You know, a lot of those guys on construction sites, they will work so hard all their life. And they will get to the point that they can anymore in their struggle. And I hate that. I've got a huge heart for the labor force because they work in a tough environment.

But in order to be successful in life, it requires smart planning, smart work. You have to work hard, but that's like a qualifier. Everybody works hard. You got to know where you're going and then strategically find ways to get there. Have you ever got 100% in a class in college? That's a tough one. I don't, I can't say confidently that I have a lot of A pluses. But, no, I don't know.

Okay, so I was in a standout in college. Yeah, I went right after high school. In fact, I entered college at 17 years old. So I really didn't have the big picture in mine or nothing like that. Yeah. But I did because of what you just said where if you kind of connect like what matters and then you can kind of do well in it or whatever. I had, I got a 97% in a class.

It was kind of a higher level class, musculoskeletal anatomy. Oh, that's pretty much. 97% because I cared. Like when I went in there, I was all interested. Like this is the most interesting thing ever, like all the little muscles and stuff. Yeah. But, you know, and then I got a, what was it? I think it was like a criminology class or whatever that I just.

just barely went. I think I went like twice. Yeah, I got a straight up half. And then at the end, I appeal to the professor because you can do that as a football player? You'd be like, hey, you know, can I do some extra credit? I'll do some extra projects or whatever. He said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me look into your attendance. And I was like, Brian just knew from that. Like he's, and then he writes me back and he says, no, straight up. No kidding. But you see the contrast there, right? Like, well, I didn't look, I didn't want to do anything in the future

that involved criminology. So what, you know, like when I wake up, I'm like, all right, well, maybe I'll go next time. You know what I'm saying? And they just kind of don't, but, you know? There's a lot to say about that. I mean, having the right vision.

I've spent time throughout the years thinking back to my time going into the Marine Corps, not to shoot down anything that's happened. Man, I'm so proud of everything that I did, but I wanted to do so much more. That's like a big pain and regret in my life. And I had the gusto to do it, just didn't have the strategic planning, and I didn't make the right decisions at the right time. But I look back and a part of that has been. because my vision wasn't big enough,

which is a big thing. My vision back in high school joining the Marine Corps is to become a Marine. I didn't look past that at all. I mean, not at all. I wanted to be a Marine, and I accepted the other things that came with it, whatever the recruiters MOS was,

don't care, PLC program. That sounds great. I'll go in as an officer, but what I really care about is I want the EGA tattooed on my arm. I want to earn that title. and then I gave it my all and I earned it. But then I got in and I graduated platoon to honor men. It was like, man, I achieved that goal.

But now what? It's like I got a whole life ahead of me. And I have no, like now that I'm in, where does this go? And how does this translate? And oh, yeah, there's all these things you can do in the Marine Corps if you apply yourself and, you know, work hard. And could have done all that. Just didn't have the right vision.

Didn't make the right decisions at the right time. So I think vision matters big time. Well, looks like you're doing pretty well now. Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate that. By the grace of God, there are so many decisions I've made in life that could have ended up just terrible for me. I just think that I'm so thankful to be here. You know, the guys that didn't make it overseas in all those wars, you know, we honor them by living the right way now and living for purpose and making an impact. I want to be a light in this dark world.

Season of life is tough right now with very heavy hitting career and raising a family. but a big part of the way that I contribute to society is being just the best father that I could possibly be being a good husband and my wife making an impact on the home front and then in my sphere and circle around me you know and I often tell myself whatever you would do for many do for one you know you talk about having like the big platform or not big platform but having social media platforms

I struggle with time to work up that marketing mentality to just put stuff out. And it's not a part of my work life currently. But like who doesn't want? Huge following of people, lots of affirmation, you know, to get constant feedback

that you're having impact in people's lives, to be, have a platform that, you know, you can operate off of. I mean, and by the way,

your platform, Jocko is both of you guys, like huge impact. So awesome. I mean, keep running. You know, I've had a huge impact on my life.

I have extreme ownership here, by the way, for you to sign my copy. You've been talked about that. We can make that happen. That's right. But I tell myself, whatever you do for many, do for one. So I try to remind myself that individuals matter just as much as masses of people matter. And I can have an impact on individuals, and that can matter a lot.

No doubt about it. No, that's awesome. Any other closing thoughts? A couple things that come to mind. One thing with this book, I was asked recently, what do you want people, what do you want readers to get out of the book? You know, what matters to you? it's a it's a tough story um you know but it's a great story in some ways i think that my big takeaway from

the overall experience is that life is so precious you know we uh and and i've lost a lot of friends up to this point i'm sure you guys have to for you know for miscellaneous reasons not just military guys but um it life is so precious and people deserve second chances sometimes and not all the time but sometimes i think that war is tragic and you know the the book kind of showcases the dichotomy of it all Once I got the story written and got the manuscript, just once it was well-rounded, I started to realize, like, this is really showing two sides of the same coin. You know, I've got a couple quotes in the book that just talk about, like, the heroics of war, but the cruelty of it at the same time. And it's really both and. I said earlier, but some of the greatest attributes of humanity come out in war, incredible heroics, great sacrifice and selflessness from some, I mean, just some of the decisions that some guys.

have made to their own incredible detriment. I mean, every time anybody dives on a grenade, it's like what type of selfless courage did that take to just split second make that decision, charging a machine gun nest or, you know, into a, you know, into a hail of gunfire to save somebody in the street, you know, that had just been shot. It's just some of the absolute best, but it's in the backdrop of just cruelty of human being on human being. And I said in the book, I just don't like that loss of life, but I'm also not ignorant enough to think that the world will ever be without it. We will always have to prepare for war because it's here to stay. You know, whatever systems we come up with, whatever societal structures, there are things that are

much better than worse, but it's just in the heart of man. It's always going to be tyranny. There will always be people that try to domineer and coercively control other people. And into the conclusion of the book, I get into just quite simply, the best. existence for humanity is one that is free and clear of the unwanted control of other people and that has to be fought for from time to time so as much as we don't want war or i don't like we've got to be ready for it there has to be men and women that are going to be ready to fight it and and it's important that wars get fought at some sometimes um i'm fortunate to say so uh i just acknowledge that it's both you know war is a great thing in some ways liberating the masses you

know, freeing oppressed people. It's just very tragic that so much destruction comes with it. So that's probably the big, I guess the last thing that I would say is one more shout out to my wife. Love her a lot. And again, I just wouldn't be where I am without her. I think that just the big picture. You know, my Christian faith has driven a lot of my life decisions. I think it's the single most important aspect of my life. you know, the way that the Bible puts the story of humanity is that God created us for relationship. And then the fall happened and we created separation with God, but ultimately he wants a family, just like we are families. I mean, we care about our kids, I think, as a reflection of the way that God cares about us. And the Bible says that if we draw near to God, he'll draw

near to us. And people go through incredibly traumatic events in life, some very hard-hitting seasons, some worse than are detailed in this book. I mean, having children diagnosed with critical diseases or just you see yourself. I mean, that's just as tragic and terrible and hard to deal with as some of these combat experiences are. I just think that God invites us to just turn to them in those seasons. And if we draw near to him, he'll draw near to us. And the freedom and the purpose

and the connection to the bigger picture of what's going on and all of eternity is just offered to everyone if you want it. It's made an incredible difference in my life, and it's just so critically important. So that's it. Well, I'm end to that. You know, obviously, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Thanks for, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice in the Marine Corps. And, you know, thank you for setting an example. You know, I talk about the greatest generation came home from war, terrible war. And then guess what they did? They turned around and built the country and got jobs, moved on and carried on. So the example that you, your setting as a Marine, you know, not only on the battlefield, but now post-war, you've been

through some traumatic things and you're moving forward with a beautiful family, contributing to society, doing a great job. That's just, it's just awesome to see. So thank you for doing that as well. And of course, we salute you. We salute your brothers in arms, and we will never forget your brothers that did not come home. Thank you.

And with that, Landon Longer has left the building. man what a great example of the American story and joining the Marine Corps and serving with honor and leaving the Marine Corps and going out and doing great things in the world productive life productive great career great family amazing to see so And might add, not without his blows. You see him saying? Like he took some hits and here, you know, see him saying? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, for sure. Stood back up and made it happen. For sure. Respect. Yeah, those are, that's a rough deployment. Yeah. That's a rough deployment. And to come out of it like that.

And very cool to see. Very cool to see. So that's what we're doing. We, so we all need to do is despite, what do you call them setbacks? What do you say? Not without its blow. We're all going to take some blows. Yeah.

We're going to take some setbacks. We're going to take some shots. And when you take some shots, you've got to get back up again. And if you start, when you get back up, if your attitude is, well, I just took a shot and I had to get back up. And I'm actually kind of tired from getting back up. And I'm feeling a little bit dizzy from the shot that I took. If that's what you're thinking about, you're not going to be moving forward. So you can take your shots learn from it get up and then go forward that's what we're doing

Got apply that to everything in life. That's what you got to do you know a Critical node of life is physical health physical fitness That means you have to work out You have to train you have to run you have to sprint You have to get after it and and you have to get after it and in doing that you need fuel we recommend jacofuel.com check it out we have everything that you need protein i'm glad proteins proteins coming to the forefront of the world did you see the new food pyramid no the food pyramid has been flipped upside down okay so now the world is kind of on board

with what we have known for a long time which is you need protein you need protein you need fats And then at the other end, the small end of the pyramid is like you need grains. Yeah. You need sugar. Yeah. That's at the very bottom of the pyramid. Is that the one with the processed foods like way at the top, like kind of like not part of the pyramid? Well, the flipped pyramid is like processed foods.

I don't know if processed foods are on there, but the process, highly processed foods would be at the very bottom of the pyramid. But the bottom of the pyramid is the smallest part. The top of the pyramid. So it's upside down. Yes. It's upside down. It's an upside down pyramid. At the top is meat, fat, veggies, protein, that good stuff.

And so protein, everyone kind of understands now that protein is the most critical building block that you have. Not that you don't need any fats because you certainly do. Not that you don't need any carbohydrates, you can survive without carbohydrates, but it's fine to have some. But protein, everyone realizes now how critical protein is. And if you start paying attention to how much protein your intake is, you will, recognize, oh, I probably need some more protein. You know, that's the first in crew. Yeah.

They very, very strict about making sure you audit what you're putting into your body for like a week to make sure that you know what you're doing. Because sometimes people, oh, I get enough protein. Yeah. And then they look at the numbers. You run the numbers and you realize, oh, actually, I'm not getting enough protein. Oh, yeah. When you run the numbers, it's pretty devastating sometimes when you start looking. And then they think, well, I don't eat too many carbs.

And then you run the numbers on that and you realize, no wonder you're metabolically crushed. So that food audit that they do, I don't know if they even call it a food audit, but first in nutrition, you can check them out. But they do like an audit for a week. So you just know what you're doing. It's kind of like I say, if you want to, in life, the first piece, most, most, critical piece of information you need in combat is where you are. Oh, yeah. So by doing that kind of food audit, you figure out where you are on your macros. That's true. And people get surprised that they're eating a bunch of trash and they're probably not getting enough protein. Well, one of the things

that you can utilize to get those protein numbers up out of the rookie game into the pro game is this right here. We call it jaco fuel. Jococryphil.com, we got milk protein. We got ready to drink protein. We got powder. The protein is so tasty. That's the crazy thing. I just was having some vanilla.

Vanilla is probably fourth or fifth on my ranking of repetitions for eating. The powder, the protein powder. The vanilla protein powder is so good. If you were to a five-star restaurant. Yeah. And you ordered for dessert, you were kind of like on the path, so you weren't going to get the creme brulee or you weren't going to get the carrot cake because it's too much sugar and junk. And so you say, you know what? Give me those berries with cream.

Yes. And the person in the back was like a Michelin level chef. Yeah. And he was like, hey, you know what? Pass me some powdered protein milk powder from jaco fuel. And he mixed it up and he put it on the vanilla and put it on the berries and they brought it to you as like the cream with berries. Yeah. Bro, you would be beside yourself and you'd be like, man, this is the most incredible restaurant. Every what's worth with this creed.

Like you would be beside yourself. That's, yeah. That's what we make is things that will will make you beside yourself with how tasty it is. So that's what we got going on in a jockey. And by the way, it's clean, as clean as you can possibly make it. Protein, energy drinks, hydration, we got you covered, supplementation, time war, joint warfare. You know, they're like, well, you know, I don't know how popular these names can be. You use the term of war a lot.

Yeah. Like joint warfare and time war. Well, guess what? You are at war against time. Yeah. So you might as well use the weaponry that's available. Time war. Dr. War.

Dr.or fuel. Your joints are at war every day. Every time you do a kettlebell snatch, you need reinforcements because your joints are at war, joint warfare. So, cold war. Oh, wait a second. What's that? Oh, yeah, because your immune system is at war.

So listen, if you don't want to buy warlike products, go somewhere else. But we're at war here. Joccofuel.com. Check it out. That's what I got. Also, origin USA.com. Did I mention where training? Did I mention we're training jiu-jitsu?

Why we're training jiu-sitsu? Because you want to know how to fight. You want to know how to defend yourself. You want to increase your confidence. You want to increase your capabilities. You want to get in shape. You want to have cardio training. You want to have strength training.

You want to have flexibility training. You want to meet other people. You want to have social interaction. What am I missing? That's it, yeah. Yeah. So there you go. All those things in one evolution.

It's called jiu-jitsu. So we're training jiu-jitsu. In order to train jihitsu, origin, USA.com. We got geese. We got gisgars guards. But listen, it's not just about the training of jih Tutsu. It's about the rebuilding of America. Wait a second.

Jocco, what are you talking about? How can we rebuild America by training jihitsu? Easy. When you buy origin, USA.com, and we will help rebuild Americas. We're bringing back manufacturing to America. We are rebuilding our communities in America. And by the way, we're not only training jiu-jitsu. We're also making boots.

We're making jeans. We're making hoodies. We're making t-shirts. We're making training gear. We're making hunting gear. We're making jackets. We're making everything that you need to wear in America. We're making it in America.

What you need to wear in America, we're making in America. 100% American made from American made sources. So stop supporting communists. Stop supporting slave labor. Stop supporting the destruction of our environment. And go to origin USA.com and get yourself some American made gear. That's what we're doing. It's true.

And don't, hey, don't forget while we're on this path, don't forget, you can represent. See what I'm saying? Whatever you, you know, as far as what you're wearing, or you can represent. So discipline equals freedom, which has legs, by the way. You know what I mean by legs?

Yeah, yeah, it continues on. Goes everywhere. Exactly right. It can go everywhere. It applies to a lot of stuff. You see what I'm saying? Anyway, you want to represent, boom, we got your shirts.

You got hats, you got hoodies on there. You got a bunch of shorts, even, by the way. Also, good. We all know good. It became a popular video in the past. And currently, by the way. Yeah, you want to represent that. That's where you do it.

We got some new stuff on there. Get after it. Actually, it's not out yet, but it's in the works. Give me another week. It'll be out. But anyway, you want to be informed when the new stuff comes. Just sign up at the bottom of the website there and put your email in there. I'll let you know when it gets in so you can get the first jump on it.

You're saying before they sell out. Also, shirt locker. you like the designs you know you want to represent on a monthly basis you get a new design every month subscription scenario people seem to like down but yeah check that one out click on shirt lock on the top you can see what it's all about

if you like it boom sign up for that it's a good it's all on jaco store it's speaking of new stuff you heard of the warrior kid books yeah yeah hell yeah you heard of the warrior kid movie oh yeah I hear good stuff so that's great

I wrote a bunch of kids books Warrior Kid. We now have from joccofuel.com Warrior Kid supplements. Warrior Kid Protein shakes for your warrior kid. Do not feed your warrior kid trash. Feed your warrior kid the cleanest protein out there. You're gonna love it. I'm laughing because,

so my kids don't have Instagram on social media, but some of their friends do. So they sent my daughter like some videos and stuff about this new world. Your kid still she's like all excited coming to me. She's like, oh, we're going to get some of that? Are we going to get some of that? Oh, we're going to get some of that?

She was more excited than I've seen her about something like this in a while. Yeah. That is one of my. Warrior Kid. Warrior Kid Fuel. So check that out. It's at joccofuel.com. You can get some of that.

Also, like I said, I've written a bunch of books. Hey, books also. US Marines at the Battle of Sengen by Landon Langrear. You heard that today. You heard us talking about it. It's a fantastic book. So well written. Check it out for sure.

Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Also another Marine from Sangan Province was wounded there. You know him. He's been on the podcast and he wrote an incredible account of what it was like for him to come home without his legs and how he is just pressed on and has an incredible life. Dave Burke need to lead. Of course, Dave Burke, my brother was in the Battle of Ramadi with us on top of everything that he did in the Marine Corps, which was pretty astounding in its own. wrote a great book called Need to Lead. We also have Eshalomfront.com.

We have a leadership consultancy, and we help teach principles of leadership to companies large and small. So you can check that out. Also, you know, check out. If you need some steak, check out primalbeef.com, Coloradocraftbeef.com to awesome companies making awesome stakes for us. And there is also extreme ownership. Com, Extremeownership.com.

If you want to help learn, help yourself learn, and help others learn the principles of leadership that we talk about, go to extremeownership.com and we can help you there. If you want to help service members active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Leash. He's got an incredible 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.org. And if you want to connect with us for Landon, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on LinkedIn, he's at Landon Long-Grear. And it's L-O-N-G-R-E-A-R. And I just tried to convince him to be more active on social media

so we can connect with people. So hopefully he does. does that for us check out jocco.com and then on social media i'm at jocco willink echoes that echo charles just be careful of the artificial intelligence that is looking to invade your brain and take it over and use it for its own purposes and it's right in there and it's just doing that all day long it's actively doing that to you so use caution thanks to all our service members out there around the world with a solemn salute to the United States Marine Corps, specifically those Marines that fought in the brutal Battle of Sangan.

Thank you for your service and sacrifice. And we honor those that did not come home. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for your service and sacrifice here on the home front. Everyone else out there, here's one more excerpt from Landon's account, and this is actually the end of the book for him. And it's a poem that closes out the book.

And this is one portion of that poem. It says, may their names always be remembered and their stories frequently told, that others will emulate their example to be honorable, courageous, and bold. To the fallen, but not forgotten, farewell. and following seas may you enter eternal freedom good luck and Godspeed and that's all I've got for tonight and until next time the Zeko and Jocko out