Jocko Podcast - 540: Saved By The Corps. From A Path of Destruction, to Success. With Ben Ingram.

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< Ben Ingram was headed toward prison or worse. Drugs, street fights, and survival mode defined his youth—until one decision changed everything: joining the Marines. Warriors In Need <Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 540 with Echo Charles and me. Jocko Willink, good evening, Echo. Good evening. You may have heard me offer advice, especially for people getting out of the military, because it can be a rough transition. And one of the core piece of advice that I give to people that are getting out of the military is to find a new mission. Find a new mission.

That's a really good move because in the military, when you're in the military, you have a mission, you have a purpose, you have a goal, and every day you wake up. and you're applying yourself and the people around you are applying themselves to accomplishing this mission and then one day you get out and it's gone it's gone poof and that lack of a mission has caused quite a few veterans over the year years to go down a bad path and it's not good at all so you have to find a new mission now that right there is often easier said than done right oh just go find a new mission like it's just going to pop up um it can be challenging to do that well marine corps vet ben ingram recognized the

same thing that veterans need a new mission and he has one for them which is awesome to be able to give a veteran a new mission is an outstanding thing thing to be able to do. And we're going to talk about that today. The military and the Marine Corps specifically got Ben on track when he was heading down a bad path. And it's interesting because we actually grew up in the same town. I was thinking I went to high school with his sister Heidi, but it wasn't just high school.

I went through like every single grade. You know, she was my age. And I went through first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade with his sister Heidi. and Ben was maybe a year or two behind us, and this was in a small, small rural town in America. And when you're in a small town in America,

you have lots of opportunities. And some of the opportunities that you're presented with are very good. And some of the opportunities that you presented with are not very good. And depending on which of those opportunities you take, growing up can be rough, send you down a bad path.

And Ben had some rough times growing up, made some bad choices along the way. But thankfully, praise God, he joined the Marine Corps. And now he's paying it back by helping veterans with a career after the military. So, Ben, we'll get into all of it. Thanks for coming by, man. Good to see you. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I can't tell you how much I appreciate being here.

And praise to God. Yeah. It's funny because I think you came to the muster a few years ago. And you came up and you said, you're probably not going to remember, but you went to school with my sister. And I was like, oh, who? And you go, Heidi Ingram. I go, as if I wasn't going to remember Heidi Ingram. Very cool.

And, you know, we graduated. I think we had a graduating class in my high school of like 80 or 85 people. So, and like I said, spent. 12 years with all these kids. So it wasn't like I wasn't going to remember Heidi Ingram. And she was, she was always kind of a front runner. Yeah, yeah. She was awesome.

She was a great athlete. She held records for a long time at the high school. And she was academically like she did good. Yeah. She was on a good path. And that's why when you started telling me that your path wasn't quite as, wasn't quite as productive as a child, I was like, okay. But I can see, like I said, you know, you're in a small town.

There's all kinds of different opportunities that present themselves and it depends which ones you take. So let's get into it. Let's talk about it. You're growing up, what were your mom and dad doing? Yeah, so early on, dad was a welder. He worked for a company called Treadwell as a welder building oxygen generators for nuclear submarines. And mom was he a vet? Was he a Marine Corps veteran.

I didn't know a lot about and I still don't know all. a lot about his service. But yeah, he served in Vietnam from through 68 and 69. And he was motor tea. So he drove a fuel truck in Vietnam, I think, out at Danang. Mom was working our homestead, mostly. You know, as a small kid, five-year-old, six-year-old. I, you know, I remember always out there in the fields, you know, in the, our hundred acre freaking, it was only five acres, but it felt like 100 acres when you were five years old, but out in that garden that was endless. you know, working the strawberry patches or something. Yeah, so that was the early days.

And then how to go from there? So then you had Heidi was, how much older is Heidi than you? Like a year and a half or something? Yeah, she's a year older. You guys are a tight shot group, huh? Yeah, Heidi was a year older, and then Chris was two years younger than me. And, you know, Heidi and I ran hard for a few years. And, you know, Chris kind of tagged along.

He got drug into a little bit of my mischief. And, you know, but. But yeah, it kind of came to an end when dad left when I was about 10 years old. So, you know, mom had to go to work. She worked at a, ended up working at an islet factory down in Thomaston, Connecticut during the day. At night, she worked at a liquor store. And then on the weekend, she was at the general store. So we were Lashke kids early on, you know.

There's three of us there, you know, just trying to make our way and get ourselves off to school and that kind of stuff. And she was able to hang on to the house, though? Do you guys were able to stay there? Yeah, my mom is, you know, God bless her. She's awesome. She did. She threw everything, you know, she had at it. Yeah, when I think back, I love my mom for doing that, you know.

Sometimes I think, you know, she didn't really need to do all that, but she did, you know, held onto the house, the farm, tried to, you know, keep the whole family together best she could. But she struggled to do it, and she did the best she could. But there was no supervision for us. So, you know, shit went south for something. of us really quick. So what did that look like, man? Man.

You know, dad was an alcoholic. And, you know, towards the end before, you know, before he left, a lot of dishes breaking downstairs, a lot of, you know, it just, it was, it was painful. And I just remember being afraid of them all the time, you know. And, you know, a little bit of abuse inside the house, you know, probably more so for mom than anybody else. And then after dad left, it kind of started coming from the outside. We became really easy targets, being really poor, you know, living in a small town.

So we got hit pretty hard, you know, both inside and outside the house. And, you know, for Heidi, you know, she just doubled down and, you know, went, you know, went sports and swimming and all in with academics. But for me, I just went to a dark hole, you know. And I would say by the time I was 11 years old, I was, you know, snobes. sneaking liquor out of the cabinet and, you know, probably by 12, 13, raiding the neighbors' medicine cabinets and things like that. So just into a dark hole for me. I'd like to say I remember what Chris was doing, probably following me around a little bit, but a lot of chaos, a lot of, you know,

a lot of ugliness there at the house for a while. And you end up hanging out with a lot of Heidi's friends, too, because these were my friends as well. You know, these like the whole crew, the whole crew of guys we were talking about before you had record. These were all guys that I grew up with all great dudes, you know, but just hardworking, you know, kind of standard American young kids, man, getting after it. Yeah, yeah, it was almost Sandlot, you know, ask. We, we would, you know, like playing hockey was a big deal for us. We didn't have a lot of sports. I played a little soccer when, when I was young, like, you know, eight, nine years old. Later on, after dad left, no sports. I wasn't good at any sports. I couldn't throw a ball. I couldn't hit a tar.

I just never played sports. Didn't have somebody there to show me. None of us did. But I loved hockey. From the minute I could put a set of skates on, I've freaking loved a skate. So I could not wait for winter to come. And I mean, it was like the daily.

I'd be waiting there at the end of the driveway to see, you know, skip, Boner, the Gooch, peepis, you know, the crew come walking down Newton Hill with their skates and sticks, hodgepodge looking, you know, maybe a whaler's jersey or a Bruins jersey and a pair of gloves or something. and sticks and we'd go down and the whole town would play hockey. You know, if you were from 12 to

90, if you could skate and hold a stick, you were playing hockey. Our goalies would wear, you know, softball equipment, you know, catchers, mitts and, you know, shin guards and everybody else was just, you know, broken teeth and, you know, busted eyes. But, you know, Billy Gill would come down and make our one-by-one and chicken wire goals. We were all volunteer firemen. We'd get the truck to come over and, you know, put a new coat, new top coat on the ice, you know, once in a while. And everybody would be down there playing hockey. And I loved it, man. That was like, I actually thought, I saw that movie called Youngblood.

Did you guys ever see Youngblood? There's a hockey. Look it up. It's a good movie. So Youngblood, you know, his guys, you know, he's hoping to get picked up by some, you know, whatever Canadian, you know, team. And I just imagine somehow somebody's going to notice some kid out in Northfield. And I'm going to go play pro hockey somewhere. Um, never happened, but, but we, we used to play hockey rate at the end of the Austin family, uh, boat, boat launch.

And so we'd drag down this giant log and, you know, build a bonfire, you know, sometimes the moms would come down and make hot dogs and, you know, marshmallows and shit. And dude, the whole town would be down there. There'd be 30 guys on the ice rotate now. One day, I'm with the crew, with Skip and Boner and Pepus and the gooch. And, uh, we show up to play hockey. And there's a pro team, or what it looks like a pro team, warming up on our ice, in our goals. And we're like standing around like, what are we going to do?

Like we want to play. Like who are these guys? You know, what's up? Finally one of them comes skating over. And he's like, hey, come on out. Hey, we heard about you guys. We're the Hartford Stingers and we're here to play you. Dang.

Dude, best day of my life. We got our asses kicked. I even, I took a puck in the mouth, dude. I had a piece of something stuff through my lip to try to keep the bleeding down. but we must have played for 10 hours, got our asses kicked. It was probably 30 to nothing by the time we were done. But I swear, we played the Stanley Cup that day. That's awesome.

It was awesome. But that was Northfield. Yeah. That was north. So then when, like, you know, that all sounds good. That all sounds like maybe you could scrap together, you know, finishing up school and everything like that, but it didn't really go like that, right? No, it didn't.

Like I said, I, you know, I spiraled downhill pretty quick. school just it didn't it didn't work out for me i would say eighth grade is probably the last grade i would show up for but i didn't really show up you know i kind of did what i wanted there i was more of a menace they were pushing me off into the sweeney class or into this or that just anything to get me out of the classroom and you know away from society um and that was pretty much it uh i think i i started ninth grade at oliver wolkatech um but mostly in the first front door out the back, I'd jump in a car with a buddy or walk the train tracks home and just, you know, do my own thing. Yeah, true officers would call and I'd just be like, come get me.

By the way, there's two pit bulls, so be careful, you know, nobody ever came. So that was it. And that was pretty much it, you know. So then what's the path to get in the Marine Corps? What did you do? I mean, how'd you make money? What were you doing? I went to work. My first job, Heidi, shows up in her little chivette. By the way, she got taken out of the house when I was like, maybe 13, I think. Our dad came and got her and she went to live with him. But they were still about a half hour, 40 minutes away.

And she shows up one day. I think I was about 13. And she's like, hey, get in the car. Our dishwasher just quit. You're the new dishwasher. And I was like, all right. I didn't have anything else going on to jump in the car. And now I'm the Beanie's restaurant dishwasher there in Torrington.

So, you know, that was my first job. and I hated being poor like you know being poor sucked like I mean when I say poor dude like we had that house like you didn't want to go to mom forgive me but we didn't even have a door on the bathroom like there was a curtain hanging and you could see your feet when you were sitting on the shitter

like and it was only like three feet from the kitchen nobody wanted to come to our house you know what I mean pretty fucking poor so so yeah so I you know once I started making some money I'm like oh fuck this is for me you know like I got to get to work so that turned into construction jobs I did roofing. I hauled shingles up ladders. I was like 15 years old, you know, skinny little fucker trying to get up a ladder to the fourth

story and, you know, Waterbury or Torrington hauling shingles and pulling concrete, you know, just all sorts of odd jobs. Yeah. So, you know, just trying to get by. And what about your, you know, mischievous activity? Did you get more and more, you know, tempted by crime as you get older? Not, you know, I was never tempted by crime. Like, I didn't like it.

Like, I had this conscience, you know, but you start hanging out with the wrong people and you sort of get sucked in, right? You know, let's back up a little bit. By the time I was, I want to say 14, I'd been in and out of two institutions and in a youth detention camp. in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I hadn't seen my dad in a few years. He came to pick me up one day. And I thought, oh, I'm going to go live with dad, you know, like my sister. You know, he's going to come save me.

And he drove me straight to this fucking prison in the middle of nowhere. You know, I get stripped, de-loused, hosed, throwing in an orange jumpsuit and, you know, in my four-man tent with the other four dudes there, you know. So was that like a state-run thing or was it a private facility? I don't even know. Like, I didn't even know this one was coming, you know. And, and, I mean, this was kind of like the beginning of, like, me being completely autonomous because I'm in there and I'm like, three days in.

And I'm like, you know, you're in your orange jumpsuit. You got your little tennies on and shit. And I don't even really remember what the curriculum was in there. I don't even know what the hell we were doing. I couldn't tell you. I don't remember. But I remember meeting Dale Rinaldi. The guy, like, targeted me right away.

I don't know if it was because of my size or what. He was a couple years older. I was probably 14. 13, 14. He might have been 15, 16. And he says, he's like, hey, look, dude, we're going to escape. And all I can think of is like, I got to get out of here. He's like, we're going to escape. Here's the plan. He's like, you've got to be good for a whole month. Like, if you can keep your shit together, they're going to take us to the movies. And I got a plan. And it was simple. We were just going to go into the head. We're going to pretend to piss. Security guards were

going to go with us. The minute they piss because it's a long trip to Torrington from wherever the hell we were. We were going to just bolt. And I mean, that was it. That was a plan. It was It was simple, Jocko. It was a really simple plan. Beyond that, no clue. So sure enough, I mean, it worked like, it was like clockwork, dude. We go in, one guard, he starts pissing. Dale, like, boom, and I'm right behind him out the door.

He already knew where the side exit was. He'd scoped it the month before, out the side exit, over a six-foot concrete wall across the freeway down into some backyards and under some tarps in a lawnmower shed in somebody's backyard for two hours where we can hear the cops and everybody looking for us. hit out and you know that that turned into a hole yeah there's a we can go down a rab a hole did you make it or not yeah yeah yeah so we we we we we we snuck out of there once it got dark uh found some change i called i called the girl i knew to come pick us up and uh she did and

uh that was a gnarly ride um i'd already been into some shit but uh yeah i'll tell you this one so so i'm i think i'm 14 and uh you know we're hiding in the back of this car and and Dale, this guy is a junkie, like heroin addict junkie. Like you could see his tracks on his arms. And I mean, I hadn't gone there yet. Like this was kind of new territory, a couple years older, so a little experienced in the dark shit. And so him and the girl that was driving, they were kind of connected on this. And so first thing we do is he talks to her into driving us.

She's got money and we go right to Hartford. And we're out in front of these projects. And I'm sitting in the back of the car like, holy shit, he's going to go in and buy some age. like, wow, like, what's this going to be like all this shit going through my head? And we're sitting out there in the middle of the daylight. I'm like, you know, I'm running from the cops. Like, I'm about to get picked up. This guy's buying drugs.

Like, this is not going to go well for me. And finally after what seems like a year, it was probably just half an hour, but it felt like an eternity. He comes skipping across the grass, the brown dead yard in front of the projects. And he stops and he picks up a can off the ground. And he starts working it in half as he's walking. of the car and I'm watching him. I'm like, what the fuck is he doing? He tears it in half. And just before he gets in the car, he scoops some sewer water out of the drain into the bottom

of the can and hops in and slaps a bag of heroin over the driver's shoulder. And she grabs it and starts snorting it. And I'm just sitting there watching like, what the fuck? So he takes his heroin and he pours it in the can with the sewer water, pulls a lighter out of his pocket and starts cooking it. And I'm watching. I'm watching it, this brown sewer shit, turn into little bubbles and straps off his arm with a rubber band, pulls a needle out of his pocket, plucks a piece of cotton out of the back seat, out of a hole from right in front of him,

rolls it up, throws it into the bottom of that can, and then sticks that needle into that shit and pulls that sewer water into that needle. And I'm watching this whole thing like, what the fuck? Like, this is how you fucking do heroin? Fuck!

And he just sits back. shoves that into his arm, slowly pulls some blood into there first. And I could see the red sort of swirling like a candy cane with the brown. Just all I could think of is shit water and then right into his veins. And he sunk back into the, into the freaking pulls the needle out, drops it on the floor, pops his little rubber band and like slumps down into the end of the seat. By the way, he's dropped the bag of heroin next to me for me too. I never even fucking touched it.

I'm like, that ain't for me. I mean, it was the grossest thing I'd ever seen. So where this ends up is, well, he's all fucked up. She's all fucked up. I don't know how we make it back to Torrington. We drop him off somewhere and I get dumped out on 202 and I'm hitchhiking home. And so I don't know. I don't have a plan.

I don't know where I'm going. I'm figuring the cops are probably going to pick me up. And so as I'm coming down 254, you know, back towards home, Northfield, I get picked up by Todd's mom, you know, and she screams at me. She opens up the door. She's like, everybody's fucking looking for you. The cops get in the car, right, commands me. And I follow orders, right?

It's a mom telling you to get in the car. I jump in the car. And she takes me home. She's like, you can live in the back room. I'll tell your mom you're here. You're safe. And that was kind of it, you know, like, you know, now I'm out of the house. Like I've left home.

My dad obviously doesn't want me. You know, the one time he comes to get me, he dumps me off in the woods. So I'm like, fuck it. I'm on my own, you know. And from there, it's, you know, living in people's backyards, living in cars under a bridge, making money however I can, selling whatever I can, you know, doing whatever I can to survive. And that turns into even worse shit, you know, hanging out with even worse people. You know, when you're not in school at 15, 16 years old, 17 years old, like,

you're hanging out with some pretty shady fucking people, you know. Yeah, because they're just looking to freaking take advantage of you and you're a little kid and they're not doing it. I mean, why is, why are you hanging out with a 16 year old if you're, if you're not in high school? Yeah. You got issues. Yeah, dude. I had, I was doing this construction job. And these guys were complete assholes, drinking on the job, like talking shit all the time.

I mean, these guys had like warehouses full of fireworks. They'd take me over to like all their illegal shit. you know like they're doing construction work up front but all this shady side stuff and I had no idea just somebody said hey I know this guy needs a handyman you know Ben you need a job and whoop I'm there next thing I know they're trying to talk me into killing their wives right like and at first I thought it was a joke but then it felt like it was like serious talk and then one day I'm I get invited by one of them or you know they pick me up drop me off so I'm sort of at their mercy end up back at one of their houses and a guy strips naked starts swimming the pool and he starts

chasing me around his house trying to rip my clothes off me. His wife comes home just in time to see us, see this dude fucking chasing me around his pool. And I'm just like, I'm not going to say their names, but I'm like, fucking take me home, get me the fuck out of here. Like, done. Never went back to that job. But that's the kind of people you run into when you're 15 and out there in the world

trying to survive. Just, you know, everybody's taking advantage, you know. Just one after another. That's a freaking nightmare. Wasn't there some kind of shooting that went down? Yeah, so ultimately, yeah. So we're in Waterbury. Me and a dude, I'm not going to say his name.

And we wouldn't be friends. We're not friends today. And we'd never be friends then if I was the man I am then that I am today. Does that make sense? Like, okay, all right. So we're coming back from Waterbury, buying beer. You know, you can always get beer and Waterbury when you're underage. and we're cruising down Torrington Road.

It's called Torrington Waterbury Road, whatever. It's a back road between Torrington and, or I'm sorry, between Waterbury and Thomaston. And, you know, you take that road because you can stay off the freeway, you know, stay out of sight, whatever. And it's dark, there's no lights, nothing. It's, you know, it's an old, there's a bunch of old factories out there and shit. And we're just, we're just cruising, cruising back.

And we, you know, out of nowhere. set of headlights come and I mean it's coming fast from behind and I feel like it's come this car's gonna crash right into us and as the headlights disappear behind the wing on the back of the Camaro I brace

against the you know the dash like this car's gonna freaking hit us and it doesn't instead it yanks out alongside and does a pit maneuver on us like you know as if to drive us off the road or to drive us off the road and we just happen to be rate at an open parking lot with a giant entrance that the driver, we'll call him Rick,

that's a make-believe name, dives into that driveway, you know, full speed. We're doing, we're doing like 50 mile an hour into the parking lot. And, you know, the cars rate door to door with us. And he slams on the brakes. They slam on their brakes and kind of pit maneuver 180 to where we're now almost nose to knows. I'm freaking the fuck out. Like, what the fuck?

I think I'm, I think I'm 18, probably just before my 19th birthday. I think I'm still 18. And all I could think of is the fucking car is still running, throw it in reverse, throw it in reverse, throw it in reverse. And these two dudes get out. And they're like 30 old men, you know, like beards and fucking grown men. And now I'm shit in my pants. and I'm just like, fucking go, back up, back up.

And Rick gets out, pulls a bat from behind the seat that he'd been carrying around, and just starts fucking swinging like a madman at the passenger and screaming, come help me, help me, Ben. And the driver is belining for me in the car, and I'm sitting there feeling like a fucking, I mean, I'm getting out. I mean, this is a split second, but I'm vulnerable as hell.

You know, there's nothing I can fucking. do. So I reach in the glove box and I grab the barretta that I know he keeps there. And by the way, Rick has two years in the army and he's out. This is his post army. And I know he's got a barretta in there. So I grab the barretta. I jump out the passenger side. And as this dude's closing down on me, I start fucking screaming. Get in your car. Get in your car. Fucking leave. You know, backing up. I'm retreating. And he's coming at me. Now he sees the gun. And he says, I'm going to take your gun and kill you with it. and dude like I can still feel it like my heart fucking sank and I'm just like fuck and by the way I don't have any skills like I've shot a couple of guns but this is way beyond anything I've ever fucking you know been involved with and I'm backing up now and I raise the gun to his body and he just keeps coming.

Well Rangers yeah he's like 10 feet he's like 10 feet away and he gets to about five feet away like almost to where he can fucking grab me but I I can start smelling the liquor. Like, these guys are drunk. They're fucked up. Like, you know, so part of me is thinking, okay, we're straight. Like, I might have an advantage here, but now I'm backing up fast. I'm on full retreat. And he's closing and, you know, threatening me.

And so I pop him a couple of times in the body. And he flinches. I can see him take the hits. I mean, I don't know. I didn't even fucking aim. I just bum, boom, boom, you know, or, you know, shot fired. And he kind of flinches. and then he's like, I'm Superman.

I'm gonna fucking kill you with that gun. And so I bring it up to his head and I squeeze. Nothing happens. No click. Fucking nothing. And so I fucking panic. And I'm like, I don't know how to clear it. Like I'm trying to clear it.

Now I'm trying to back up fast. And as this is happening, the other two, you know, Rick and the passenger have worked their way back to us. And while I'm trying to clear this thing, the dude that I'm fighting or that I just shot turns and jumps on Rick's back, folding his arms and containing the bat. And I'm worried now it's going to be two on one and they're going to get this bat. So I shove the gun in my pocket and I start fist fighting the passenger. And I'm trying to work him away from the bat and Rick. While he's trying to hit this dude over his shoulders with the bat, I'm fist fighting. and I take a couple of hits.

I hit this guy three or four times. Like, we're just going at it. And I'm trying to keep track of where Rick is at. Next thing I notice is they're down on the ground, and I'm just fucking paranoid. He's going to get this fucking bat. And I can see Rick's head is turning purple. Like, he's got him in a choke.

He's got one arm down. The bat's pinned. Like, it's not looking good. So I just start swinging like a madman at the passenger. I clock him a couple of times, and he's backed up a bit from me. So I go running back to where Rick is on the ground, and he rolls this bat to my feet.

And I pick it up and I step back, and I tell the dude on the ground, I'm like, fucking let him go. Get out of here before the cops show up. Like, let's fucking get out of here. And the guy's like, nope, give me the bat. And I didn't even hesitate, dude. I fucking backhanded him so hard across the forehead.

The last thing I remember seeing is a big softball-sized hole, fucking open up. And honestly, I don't remember shit until driving away. I'm in the passenger seat, believe it or not, I'm looking back. And I can see them scraping themselves up off the ground trying to get back to their car. And then we drive off and where do I go? Heidi. And I get there and she's waiting for me at the door.

She's like, nope. They want to see you down at the police station. Get the fuck down there. And so we went and turned ourselves in. And it looked like a bloodbath. the fucking police station was gnarly they booked us printed me pictured me up threw me in the cell and i thought fuck this is it like this is how it starts this is my i'm now an adult i'm fucked and uh yeah so believe it or not a couple hours later they let us go and said hey you'll get your

you'll get a court date we'll let you know and so we uh i don't know made it felt like a year I mean, dude, I don't even know what I did. I think I just sat in a chair waiting for a year, for a fucking year. But it was probably like three weeks in that time. My mom got me a lawyer. You know, mom always comes through. She fucking got the family to come together,

scrape up some money, got me a really good attorney. And then we got our court date. And we show up for court. And I'm like, I'm already thinking, like, I guess I'm a criminal. Like this is the beginning of, you know, life I don't want. want, but apparently this is, you know, this is what's meant to do.

Did you ever figure who are these guys just drunk idiots or? No, no. Yeah, we'll get to that too. So we're, we're in court. And it's the first time I've seen these dudes since this happened. So I'm, dude, I'm kind of freaking out. Like these guys are going to see my face. They're going to know my name.

Like, like, I mean, I wasn't even really, I was more worried about them and, you know, whose friends or whatever, you know, like I didn't know what to expect. Dude, I'm shit in my pants. And so we show up at court. and, you know, they, the first thing that happens is the judge, she, she reads the, she reads the charges against me. And, no, I'm sorry, she reads the charges against the dude I'm with, Rick. And it was like two. It was like assault with a deadly weapon and assault and battery.

And I'm like, okay, that's not too bad. And then they read my charges. It's five. And I don't remember them all exactly, but it was assault, assault and battery. assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a firearm, and attempted homicide. I mean, big,

and like my fucking knees buckled, and I'm just like, fuck me, like I am going to jail. And then, obviously, our lawyers were countering with our own,

you know, charges. And so they start reading the charges off for these two gentlemen that attacked us, by the way, you know, the aggressors,

the fucking bad guys in this thing. But all I could think of is I've shot somebody, right? Like I, you know, the whole rest of that story escaped me. All I'm having nightmares about is the part where I pointed gun at a human and fucking pull the trigger, right? Like, I'm going to jail. And so they, they start, they read off the charges and they're minor, you know, compared to us.

And then the judge starts talking about the background. and she's like, all right, so, you know, Ben has no priors. She's never been arrested as an adult, you know, and a bunch of shit as a kid, but she didn't bring it up. And then, you know, Rick stuff, veteran army vet, blah, blah, blah, no priors. And then these guys, armed robbery, assault, assault with deadly weapons. I mean, dude, I could go on. This speech went on forever.

And I'm like, holy shit. Like, what did we just narrowly escape? right in my head I'm like these are bad dudes but then I'm thinking all right well I guess I got the first five of their list coming to me you know like this is how it starts you know am I going to be working with these guys later in life I don't fucking know right but um after that the judge says hey you know she calls both the lawyers actually I had two lawyers there calls everybody up to the bench and they're up there for about two or three minutes the lawyers come back I'm standing there and he's shaking trembling the whole time you know like this is not good and

And the judge says, she says, Mr. Ingram, this was self-defense. Makes me what a cry, dude, just thinking about it. Because when she said that word, I was like, what? Your case is dismissed. We're going to know this. I didn't even know what that word meant. I didn't care all I heard. It was case dismissed.

I didn't want to say a word. I didn't say a word. You know, and she said to me, she said, you better go join the military or something. Because if I see you see you here again, it's going to go a little different for you. I don't know what she said to anybody else. All I heard was what she said to me. And you were all ears. And I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Like, just where's the exit? Let me get out of here. I'm cleared. I'm fucking out of here. And so we got, we left, you know, again, a lot of stuff is kind of fuzzy, you know, with the excitement, I think. But yeah, so we left, kind of celebrated outside a little bit. Never saw Rick again. That was the last day I ever saw him, you know, and I'm happy for that.

Made some really bad decisions. And that wasn't the only bad shit I got in with him. And I'm not going to blame him for the start, but we could have definitely avoided that. And you would think that I would have just got my shit together. But I actually kind of looked at that as, I'm going to get out of jail free card. And I kind of went back to doing some pretty horrible shit. I was a limo driver at the time. I was, you know, working down in Manhattan.

So I was making money and still making bad decisions for about the next six months. And then Todd comes home from boot camp, which, by the way, Todd, you know, was the last guy I would have expected to join the Marine Corps. He joined his brother-in-law, his sister, Michelle, married Pete Bazerini, Baz, who was the first Marine I ever saw on a set of dressed blues. When I saw him, dude, I was like, fuck, what is that? I mean, he came home for their wedding. I think it was their wedding. And he put, dude, he was standing there in the kitchen with those dressed blues. And I, dude, it was just floored me.

Signed me up. Well, I never thought that. I never, for me, like, I never thought about college and never thought about the Marines. I never even thought about military. I'm like, that shit was not in the cars for me. I never even thought about it, dude. I was like, where am I just getting my next sandwich from, you know? But I saw him.

And I knew what it was. I mean, it just commanded respect. And then to think that Todd thought. and went in the Marines like I never would have expected that like you know but he was home on recruiting duty and he comes to me immediately he's I mean he probably just saw easy target hey let me go get this shit and drag him over the Marine Corps get my little you know my little recruiting duty award but Todd and I were friends we go way back I saved his ass from his older brother that would whoop his ass a lot when he was little and we you know I was like Todd he always got along really good

and but we weren't really we weren't really we weren't really tight, you know, until he came back from the Corps and, and he was on recruiter duty. And so he's like, yeah, I can get you in. Come see Staff Sergeant Hare. So we go down to the recruiting office and in my head, I'm like, this is not going to go the way he thinks. And sure enough, Staff Sergeant Harris, she's like, yep, the Marine Corps will take like a certain percentage of guys every year.

This is your golden ticket. This is your lucky fucking day. We'll get your waivers. We'll get your waivers. I had a tattoo at the time. So she's like, we'll get you a waiver for your tattoo. We'll get you a waiver for, you know, your record for all this shit. And we got to get you a GED.

And we started straight off with the GED, passed it as soon as I passed it. Like you needed a 50. I got like a 51. Pass the GED. And so she sets me up for the ASFAB. I did great on the ASFAB on the technical shit, like mechanical. I've always been really technical and mechanical. Excuse me.

So it would have been great to pick a cool technical job, but she's like, no, because you're the one percenter, you got to go an open contract. You're going to be a machine gunner. And I was like, well, fuck, whatever. Like, I thought that's what everybody was in the Marines anyways. I didn't know any different. It didn't matter to me. You know, the part where you passed was all I cared about.

And so now it was off the MEPs. And I got through the medical and then I entered the delayed entry program. I did pull-ups and push-ups for the first time of my life for like, I don't know, three weeks and maybe a little bit longer. And then before you know it, I'm on a 737 headed to Paris Island leaving Bradley International Airport just going fucking holy shit I escaped like I did I was beside myself. What year was it? 1992. Yeah. I just turned 20.

It was July. I checked in. I started July 15th. So it's probably like July 12th of 1992. I got on that airplane. And you get to boot camp. Did they prep you for boot camp? Did you feel like you were ready for it?

I saw full metal jacket. Yeah. Yeah. So. And dude, I'd already been through so much shit. Like for me, like when I got there,

following orders, like doing, you know, I mean, dude, I was embarrassed. On that airplane, there were guys bawling,

crying. I'm just looking at them like, dude, suck it up, you fucking pussy. Like, we ain't even there yet. But looking back,

like a lot of these guys just left home for the first time, you know, they never did anything. I'd been living on the street since I was, you know, 13, 14 years old.

So, you know, just whatever. For me, it was... Three hots and a cot. Dude, let's go. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I'd seen full metal jacket, but I mean, that really, that's only like one little piece of it. I had no idea what 12 and a half weeks was going to look like. And it was pretty fucking gnarly. It was, it was, uh, boot camp was, it was freaking awesome. Did you, did you feel like that, uh, you know, you get broken down, you get rebuilt? How much did you love the Marine Corps when you were getting done with a boot camp?

Dude, I fucking loved the Marine Corps, like the minute I got there. Just like, I never, I didn't, I didn't feel like I had a family as a kid. Like I saw like the history and just the discipline. Like it's what I needed. You know what I mean? Like I bucked the system as a kid. Like, you know, I avoided it all. But then all of a sudden, you know, here I am.

I'm like, you know, you're kind of forced into it. And you're like, well, fuck, I'm, I'm making all these gains. Like you realize. oh, this is how you do it. This is how you get ahead in life, you know. But I had an awesome boot camp experience, dude. It was, I got there and, you know, the receiving part of it, you know, footprint, shave your head, get your uniforms, that kind of, whatever.

We got dropped to the receiving platoon, which is where, you know, there's like 15 of us there. And then they, you know, they start building you up to you. You got about 70 guys. And then you get dropped to your platoon. And there's, there's in boot camp, at least in Paris Island, you've got a company. we were a hotel company and then there's there's six platoons

the 20 series and the 30 series we were the 20 series I was platoon 2098 Marine number 25 and we were on the third deck but in the receiving platoon because I was the tallest

they made me the guide and the guide stands in front carries the guide on and you're the leader of the platoon I didn't know what it meant I just at that point I'm going to walk the platoon that we have to chow

and walk them back and we're going to all just sit here twiddling our thumbs on our foot lockers. But when we got to, when we got dropped to our platoon three or four days later, as we're getting all of our trash dumped out on the ground in front of us, 50 DIs running around, scream and hollering at us, you know, creating all the chaos. Senior drill instructor, staff sergeant Wetzel belts out, guide, where's my guide? And I, you know, for a minute, I'm like, is that me? I'm like, fuck, that's me. So, dude, I jump out there. And I'm, you know, right up on the quarter deck.

And then he calls for the squad leaders. And then we all get pitted right there by ourselves. We're up there doing fucking PT, you know, just getting bent hard in front of the whole platoon. And I'm like, this kind of sucks, you know. Like this is the part where they said don't volunteer for anything, right? So, but he made me guide immediately. So I'm guide day one receiving.

I'm guide day one. I'm getting punished day and night. Like everybody's fucking up. I had to stand fire guard, fire watch for 24 like well 12 hours all from taps to revelry and and uh I'm like this sucks so I left my boots untied thinking I'm going to get fired I got fired and it sucked worse not being the guide I was like ooh like this really sucks so that night I got already developed a relationship with my squad leaders two of them were on the airplane with me down to Paris Island so

I saw a full metal jacket. I'm like, all right, we're going to go meet the guide tonight. And we tied them down under his sheets. And I whispered in his ear in the morning, don't touch the fucking guide on. And so when we formed up, I just ran up there and grabbed the guide on. And senior drill instructor looked at me like,

what the fuck? But he didn't say anything. And dude, I was the guide again, just like that. And I was the guide all the way through boot camp until two weeks before graduation, when I got fucking medical dropped. You got medical dropped two weeks before graduation.

For what? Dude. So I didn't know how to run. There's a lot of things I did not how to do. My body fucking ate, right? And we're out in the field. And we're doing the combat. It's our combat training, right?

You're crawling underneath barbed wire. You got 50 cows going off overhead, like, dummy rounds blowing up and shit fucking fun like dude I'm having a good time like you're stabbing dummies with your bayonats and shit like fucking fun I dive over this barrier and I crush my left knee into this

fucking barrier so hard dude I'm like there's no way my kneecap is left it's fucking left my body it's there but dude I can't hardly fucking walk but I'm like I'm sucking it up like I gotta get through this I got two weeks to go but come that following Sunday

when we normally go to church. I asked to go to medical. I'm like, I'll just tell them I got shin splints like everybody fucking says and get me some Advil, right? A little something. So I go to medical, shin splints, I need some Advil.

And as I'm sitting there, fucking Doc's like, oh, no, let's x-ray this thing. And I'm like, well, no, no, let me go back to my platoon. I'm good to go. I don't need shit. No, dude, there was no going back. So there they are dragging me into x-ray

and they tell me I have a stress fracture in my shin. And I'm like, I'm good. I can walk on it. Like, I'm good. No, you're dropped. You're going to the medical platoon. Wait, dropped is a rollback or dropped is like you're out of the Marine Corps?

No, rollback. I'm getting rolled back. I'm getting dropped out of my platoon. I'm going to go to MRP medical recovery platoon. And when I'm good to go, I'll come back with another platoon. And I just remember standing up there in my, I've got my fucking crutches and this leg brace and I'm up there on the third deck watching my platoon with Matt Goddard, my number one, squad leader now as guide march off and they do a what do they call it fade to the wind maneuver

which you're in perfect bitch in marine corps formation by the way these guys are like 12 weeks in so you can drill they can march they look fucking awesome and i've never seen this actually i've always just been a part of it i'm up there watching and they do this fade to the wind where they poof they go off into like a million different directions and then suck back together in a perfect formation dude i started balling like a fucking baby i was like what in my senior grader grabs me, throws me in the pickup, and dumps me off at MRP, medical platoon. You know, I'm like so stupid. Like, you just, why couldn't you just suck this up for two weeks?

And so I'm sitting there, dude, like, like three days, maybe five. I couldn't tell you how many days went by, honestly. Maybe it was a day, but it felt more like three. You know, just I wouldn't use the crutches. Like, I'm belligerent. Like, I don't need to be here. And let's say three days, I'm sitting on my foot locker reading my knowledge. Like, in my mind, I'm still competing for a company honor man, right?

Like, that's what's coming. And so I'm studying my book of knowledge, you know, doing just, I'm going forward. Like, I'm graduating in my mind. And I hear senior drill instructor, staff sergeant Wetzel's high-pitch Irish voice, guide. Where's my guide? Dude, I couldn't get up quick enough. I fucking ran out of there, met him at the door, jumped in the pickup, and he drove me straight out into the field, and I rejoined the platoon. Matt Goddard comes running up to me with my guide on, hands me my guide on, and I'm on light, he's like, you're on light duty.

I'm on light duty for the next week and a half now. And we're literally, like they're done in the field. We're marching back to the barracks to roll into photos, uniforms, you know, get your blues ready. Final drill is about all we have left, which I kind of dreaded. because you're really kind of drilling your heels and that was kind of painful. But we sucked at drill, so it's not like we were giving up a trophy

or something by me limping around up front. You know what I mean? So we were good at everything else. Our platoon won all the fighting awards, everything. We kicked everybody's ass. We were a physical platoon, but looking good and marching, we're going to get to the fight,

but we're probably going to look a little, you know, rag tag on our way there. But, yeah, I ended up graduating on top. time. I competed for company honor man. I took runner up. I ended up graduating number two. I did get to graduate with the 12 of us that got to stand 10 feet from my mom at graduation. You know, I could see her. She could see me 600 guys behind me like 300 yards away and then we're right there getting our medals and looking at mom. It was a proud day, dude. It was it was pretty awesome. Freaking outstanding. The Marine Corps does it right. You know, so we're talking to Kerry the other day

And he was just talking about, he joined the Marine Corps. He was also like on a, he was not on a great trajectory in life. You know, he had gotten bumped a couple times. He got a DUI or two. Like he was, it was not going well. So he finally, the recruiters like, no, you're signing up now. I'm getting you out of here now. And he said he got there.

And he was just like, this is what, this is what the way things are supposed to be. Like, this is the way things are supposed to be. I'm supposed to be doing this right here. Yeah. So when you get there, dude. Dude, when you're in, you're all in. Like, when the Marine Corps gets its hooks in you, like, it's just, it becomes a part of you, man.

Yeah, the Marine Corps does it outstanding. I went to my buddy's son's graduation last year, man. It's just, you're like, yep, this is just outstanding. So would you, and would you end up with for an MOS? Oh, yeah. So out the door or on the way in the door, just before I got to boot camp, I can't, I don't, I don't remember. Anyway, at some point, staff Sergeant Hare had reached out to tell me she had gotten me an MOS as an aviation ordinanceman, right?

I didn't know what that meant, but aviation. So I'm going to go into aviation, whatever. Like, again, it didn't matter to me. Okay. In fact, that's what Todd did. He was aviation ordinance F-18s out of K-Bay. So, cool. I'll hang out with Todd.

You know, I'll get to see him. You know, awesome, right? It didn't really work out that way. I was going to say that's, kids that are low of that happening. There's a lot of things I didn't know about the Marine Corps, bro, and they were like unfolding themselves. You know, the book was opening up.

I was literally, I had no read ahead. So you get done with boot camp. Did you go to that infantry thing, like a four-week thing? Yeah, yeah. I forget what they call it now. I don't know what it's called now. But it's like four weeks of infantry.

Yeah. Every Marines are riflemen, get some. Yeah. Awesome. Two fucking awesome. So, yeah, I went straight to MCT in North Carolina. You're at Camp Geiger, which it's still there. It still exists.

I actually got to visit it just a few years back when I was working for the Navy, but we'll talk about that later. Go to Camp Geiger. And again, I'm picked for freaking platoon guide. So I'm a guide again down there in Camp Geiger. But it's a little different now. You're like a platoon lead. But nonetheless, we're down there.

Camp Geiger was awesome. You know, first time I ever fired a Mod Deuce. 50-cal machine gun fucking nothing like it dude I mean I fell in love with that thing I'm like how do I get on this I want to be part of this what do they call it a crew

this crew served weapon you know and then I had to carry the receiver and I was like oh man maybe maybe an M16 would have been better I'm humping around this freaking it's like a 55 pound square block of steel you know on your shoulder you know and I was a skinny fucker dude

like I didn't work out I didn't like I was I should have been in the air wing like I had didn't look like it actually it's funny a lot of grunch you look at them and they are skinny twigs when they get there but they get developed um so yeah we got to fire that 50 and then the mark 19 grenade launcher awesome throw some grenades around you know learn how to do your combat um i remember you know you finish up with like a full-blown like mock-up combat scenario and you know we're out there in the woods it's raining it's like november freezing ass cold and uh you know

There's some trenches and foxholes that are already dug, you know, but you got to dig in a little more. I just remember standing there. Like, the flares are going off. The guns are going. Like, this is the last night. You know, we've won everything up to this point. And I'm just standing there. Like, I graduate tomorrow.

Like, I literally pull out a cigarette. And I'm standing there smoking. It's pouring rain. I'm up to my knees in my, in my freaking foxhole and water, you know, flares, everything. And I'm like, man, battle's kind of glorious. And all of a sudden, I can hear this freaking. Gunny behind me. Hey,

I don't know. That smoking lamp ain't lit. And I'm like, I'm slowly putting my cigarette down. You better drop that thing. And I drop my cigarette. Get down in that hole. And just as I go to get down in my foxhole,

I look, and the gunny's actually behind the dude next to me and chewing him out. And so there he is down doing pushups in his fucking hole. And I'm kind of like, man, I got off the hook. But anyway, MCT's over.

We graduate. We're done. A lot of fun. Got to shoot some cool weapons. You know, got an introduction to what, you know, being a grunt would be like.

And I actually like. it. You know, I loved to camp as a kid. I like being outside. I was, part of me was disappointed that that wasn't the path I was going. And so from there, I went on to Memphis, Millington, to aviation ordinance school. And that's where most of the aviation schools are. And then how's that you down there? It's basically like learning a trade. Yeah, he basically, yeah, you learn your trade. And I had, I'd gone home in between, you know, for some Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever, But, you know, home life wasn't great. So I went back, I went down to Memphis, Millington, a little early.

So I'm in there, you know, running the floor machine, the polisher's with the rest of the guys that showed up a little early for school. And, you know, getting ready for aviation ordinance. And one day this gunny comes in, he's like, hey, everybody fall in. You know, it's like, maybe 10 of us. We're short on aircraft mechanics. You're all aircraft mechanics now. You start tomorrow. And I was like, fuck, all right.

That sounds way cooler than aviation ordinance. And so the next day, bro, I fall into my little platoon and we show up at basic helicopter. And I'm going to be a helicopter mechanic. And, you know, you're just, you know, I actually learned that we have something other than Huey's and Cobra's. Because at MCT, that's all you see is the Cobra's up there doing your close air support. Hughie's doing their thing. But I realize, oh, we have a CH53, which is a monster of a helicopter. I'm like, oh, I wouldn't mind being on that.

And then this flying banana-looking thing called the CH-46, affectionately called the frog. I learned that later. And then Harrier Jump Jets. I'm like, holy crap, I want to be on Harriers. Like, those are fucking cool. But honestly, I just, I want to be on the cobra, right? You got sidewinder missiles, big old 30-millimeter gun off the nose. Like, put me on the cobras.

And it had two seats. So, like, there's a possibility of flying in the thing? I don't know. Right? So now I get picked for the H-46. I'm going to fly. I'm going to be on the flying banana. So I don't know this at the time.

And I learned quickly because the same gunny while I'm in CH46 class, he shows up. And he's like, where's all my swimmers? And I kind of thought we were going to play water polo. I don't know why I thought that. But I thought, okay, well, if we get to play against these cobra guys, we're going to fuck them up. They got the cool helicopter, but we're going to whip their asses. But it turned out to be a swim qual. And I had to do this treading water with a little brick over my head and swim a bunch of laps.

well, I grew up with a pond on my little farm, so I could swim like a fish. Good luck trying to drown me. And I passed. And so next thing I know, I'm on my way to Florida, Pensacola, for aircrew school. Got to be a crew chief. Now I'm going to, and had I got cobras,

this never would have been an option. Got it. But now I'm going to fly in the back of the helicopter. And so I did another, I don't know, six, eight weeks down in Pensacola. It was like, I don't know, 30 Navy guys and four Marines, totally outnumbered down. there blue versus red every day was a competition does the air crew does that like trump your aircraft mechanic or do you do both jobs you do both you know you go through all the basic maintenance

you're you're a you're a line mechanic first actually i take that back you're a crew chief now first your mOS actually changes from 6112 to 61 72 so you're a crew chief but you you do you actually do more work, right? I mean, mechanics will say now we're a bunch of, you know, fucking glorified pilots, but you do line work, you do maintenance, you know, later on, you'll actually test the aircraft, you'll use specialized equipment to do post inspection engine and flight set up to get the aircraft to fly smooth and put them back into into the operation. So it's pretty awesome. It's actually, I got to tell you, dude, if you can't be a, If you can't be a grunt, you know, a boot slugger, then you want to be a pilot.

And if you can't be a pilot, you want to be a crew chief. Like, it's a great job. And so then where do you end up getting stationed when you get done? So I put in for California, Hawaii, and Japan, I think. I was, you know, I tried to hitchhike here. I've always wanted to go to California. I think it was probably from the old Led Zeppelin going to California song. I loved Zeppelin back in the day.

Yeah, so I was destined to get here. And I had a roommate and later good, good friend, Frank Stolfe, who introduced me to my future wife, Michelle. And so she was here. I knew she was here in California. And it turns out I ended up staying with Frank when I got here to California. And he did, in fact, introduced me to my future wife, Michelle. And we're still married today, 30 some odd years later. Let's go, Frank.

Yeah. Thank you, Frank. So where did you get stationed? ended up stationed at it was mcass tustin the large blimp hangers right there in santa an about three or four miles from newport beach so really freaking awesome location that's pretty cool and what year is it 1993 i got there in i think february of 93 to nam tradets h mt 301 it was the last crew chief school the last class behind us they shut it down 3-1 went away the osprey was coming so the marine corps was making the transition we are i am in the photo of the last of the wind walkers that's what we were called um wind walkers out of tustin california and when we finished and graduated and got our wings pinned on they shut it down they shut it all down that was it damn that was in 94 1993 but there were still 46 is

There's more ever, man. There is because there was and they still are flying, even for the State Department today, because, well, the Osprey had big problems and it actually didn't deliver for another 10 years. So they had to turn things around. They started building crew chiefs out of North Carolina off a cherry point. Yeah, because the 46 is like the workhorse. They actually, it is. Of the Navy.

For sure. Oh, yeah. Dude, that thing, that helicopter is so awesome. I have no regrets. I would not go back unless I could be a pilot and fly a cobra. I'll be a 46 crew chief all day long. It was rat. You could go places of 53 camp because of size.

All the vert rep hauling all the ass and trash. Like if there was work, if you were going to have a mission, the 46s were going. Oh, yeah. You know, they were going. The 46 is no joke. Yeah. I remember watching my first vert rep at sea on a ship. And I was like, God dang, dude.

Like this is insane. It's crazy. Just watching those hills jumping back and forth. There's freaking pipes going between the two ships. It's a crazy evolution. Most of that craziness

that was the Navy, right? And their D models, right? And those guys, they just lived on the ship, so they whipped those things around like nothing. You know, we did a lot of vert rep, but it didn't look as cool

as the Navy on the vert rep. But they didn't haul the grunts around like we did. Roger. They didn't do some of the missions that we had. So, yeah. And so then how'd you like being, when do you go on your first deployment?

Oh, that's funny, dude. I didn't know we went on ships. I had no idea that was coming until I got to my squadron. And somebody was like, yeah, we're going to deploy in like nine months. And I'm like, okay, where are we going? Like, the USS Essex. I'm like, a fucking boat? Like, what?

We have airplanes. We have helicopters and we have boats. Yeah, I had no clue. So it was, it was 94. October of 94 when we were going to deploy. So I want to say I got to my squadron around, I don't know, it must have been June, July. So we had about a year of workups and whatnot.

You know, I had to go through the squadron syllabus to get my wings. Actually, I already got my wings. They pinned those on it after Namtroditz. Why don't you go through the crew chief? How was that pinning ceremony? All good to go? Dude, guys were fucking passing out.

Like, I thought they were going to do it, chest, but I realized they had us put our white skivy t-shirts on because you can see the blood better. But dude, anybody that had a set of wings showed up that day. I didn't know there were so many crew chiefs in the Marine Corps. I got like 40 freaking sets of pin holes in my chest, pluck them out, find a new spot, pot him in. Frank, I love Frank to death, but Frank did not like blood. And I just remember like after the second stomp, he was he was on his like leaned over hands on his knees. I was holding his neck. And, you know, a couple

of guys came and got him and brought him outside. You know, he just didn't like the side of blood. And so I just imagine he's outside, like escaping this. And I kind of felt bad like, oh, dude, like, this is a right of passage. You got, you know, Frank's missing out. I was fucking bummed. Dude, I go outside because I was at the front of the line. So I'm done.

You know, I got my wings hanging in my chest. And I go outside to show Frank and high five, whatever. There's Frank laying on the. fucking picnic table they pinned him everybody came out there and pounded those fucking things in his chest laying on his back dude it was awesome it was fucking awesome that's legit now um Pete Bazz oh yeah dude yeah so how that strike you so he he gets killed in the in a helo crash yeah he's I'm literally a guy you know just uh refresh us on your relationship with him Okay.

He's the guy when you talked earlier. He's like the first guy you ever saw in Marine Corps dress blues. Yeah. Yeah. And coincidentally, he gets killed. Yes. Oh, man. And, and I knew, like, the family loved him.

Like, Pete was, like, he was untouchable in the family. So he was Todd's sister's husband. Husband. Yeah. And they were tight. Like, everybody was tight. I was like the adopted kid, you know, like, I live in the back room. Like, you know, but we were tight.

They were tight. They were super tight. Everybody loved Pete. Pete was, you know, Pete was one of Todd's heroes. You know, everybody talked about Pete, you know, just he was untouchable. And he's in the Marine Corps, and he's doing great. He's a crew chief. He's got the same job that I ended up with, except he's on the Huey.

And so probably maybe two months after training at Tustin, I get a call from Todd that Pete got killed. and, you know, I was just like, fuck what? Like, you know, training accident out at 29 palms, you know, they ran it into a mountainside, killed all four on board. And I was just like, you know, fuck, you know, and then the calls start coming in and all the questions, like, you know, could it be mechanical, could it be, and I didn't know. Like, I didn't know shit about helicopters, dude.

Like, you know, I'm just moving from one station to a next at that point, you know, in fact, I just started getting excited about my. job like holy shit like and then I'm like well wait a minute we could die you know just a training like not even on a deployment you know like fuck so yeah so we buried Pete went down for the ceremony you know part of the you know we're there everybody's there graveside you know and and it was just yeah it was pretty surreal you know he had a young son I think Christopher was not even a year I don't even think it was a year, you know, and Michelle, I just, you know, I was so heartbroken for her, you know, and then, you know, all the questions. So, yeah, it, it hit hard. And I don't know how

this happened, but I ended up with his gunner's belt, like later on, Baz, you know, written inside of it. And, yeah, I don't remember who gave it to me or how I ended up with it, but I still have it to this day. But, yeah, dude, that was, that was kind of eye-opening, you know, like, what, you know, holy shit, we can die doing this. I mean, you know, you know, you know, But you expect, you don't expect it to happen in training, you know. And again, I didn't have a lot of experience or knowledge of what it is that I had gotten into or signed up for. So it was just kind of unfolding itself in front of us. And then with that, you're going on deployment.

It's October 1994. You know who you relieved on that deployment? No. Me. What? No shit. I was on the ARG prior. Okay.

So we were over there. Actually, I'm trying to think if we were on the same deployment or not. I was on the USS Essex. We had the Garibaldi with us from Italy. We had the Bella Wood showed up later for support. We had USS Ogden, and we were the constellation was our carrier in our battle group. Yeah. So I deployed.

How long did you stay on deployment for? We were out for six months. Yeah, we left October. I got married two weeks before we left. So Michelle was broke in proper. We stayed, we were out for six months. We went straight to, well, we went straight to Hong Kong, partied the shit out of Hong Kong, Singapore, hit Singapore for a week,

and then dropped into Kuwait. And we were up out of Ali Asalim. And then there was a small outpost, like with an airfield north of there. I don't remember the name of it. But we lived out of containers for like, I don't know, a month. Yeah. I'm trying to remember if I was coming home at that time because I met my wife at that time, but we were on deployment.

Yeah. I think you either relieve me or we were on the same deployment. Well, did you guys, did you steal a bus in Singapore? No, no. That was not me. So yeah. Do you know about that? Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah. That was my deployment. Yeah, okay. So we weren't on the same deployment. By the way, that was all we needed to hear. And then it was on, dude. We tore up every time we went to. We're like stealing buses is cool.

Yeah, that's on the agenda. That was like such a disaster, you know. This is why alcohol, you know, I don't know if it's 100% or 99.9% of the bad decisions that seals make involve alcohol, but that one's a classic. Like, he did. I forget the whole story, but it was like a moped chase and then finally ended up on a bus and decided he's going to steal the bus to get away type scenario. No, not good.

Yeah. Work out good. Dude, we decided that since the Navy was doing it, we started stealing rickshaws, ended up in a paddy wagon with my really good friend, Jason Robbant. We were going to get caned. They were going to send us to get caned. Dude, they drove us around in this tiny little, I mean, it's like three foot. It's smaller than the box at seal at sear training.

And you're just shoved in the back of this thing for, I don't know, four hours. My legs were going numb. And then they dumped this off in the middle of the job. jungle and said, nope, you walked back to the ship. We thought tigers were going to eat us. Dang, dude. That's not a good program. Yeah.

Getting caned, by the way. There's a book I read about a guy that got caned. He was a, I think he was a British guy, but he ended up in the French foreign Legion maybe. Anyways, he was like, oh, you're going to cane me? Because he did some stupid thing on Liberty, right? And so they're like, oh, you're going to cane me? He goes, no big deal. Like, you know, what's some little Asian guy going to, you know, try and hurt me?

And he said he walks at the place. where they're gonna cater him and he sees the guy and it's like a giant like the biggest like Mongolian Samoan looking just like 300 pound dude who's getting warmed up like he's getting warmed up and then they do you know about this shit echo Charles then they take they like strap you over like a over like almost like a like a like a bench but like a taller bench like a gymnastics you know that yeah like a horse horse yeah like strapped him on that thing you're not going anywhere you're not going anywhere and then it was something like seven lashings each one causes open lacerations on your ass he had to fly home face down on a medical

evacuation dang there's no joke so you're lucky you didn't get cane oh yeah we had we had no idea how lucky we did look into caning later on and realize how lucky we got super belligerent you know we just but thank those navy seals because they started it man we had to outdo them. Not good. Not good. So what else on that deployment? Yeah.

So we, yeah, we did work out of Kuwait, Ali Asalim. We were up there on the border. Iraqis were building up again. So we got to, you know,

dump some troops out there, do a lot of night ops, a lot of NVG stuff. You know, really, I mean, I was in during the dry era, so not a lot going on.

So we, yeah, we left. we left Kuwait on our way let's see I think it was yeah we were supposed to it was Christmas we were going to go down to the UAE for Christmas Day and so Christmas Eve I remember we get woke up like red alert you know 2 a.m everybody down to the ready room and you know they're briefing us like it's on we're going to go take down a a you know a ship ranking sanctions out of Iraq whatever and it's like oh yeah right on this is you know this is the shit this is what we're training for

And honestly, we thought it was a drill. We're like, you know, most of us were pretty nonchalant. Like, this is kind of bullshit. Like, we're training on Christmas Eve. We're supposed to be in Kuwait or in UAE in the morning, you know. So it became kind of surreal as I walk out onto the flight deck. I'm heading out to prep my helicopter. And we had to check out our weapons, which we don't normally do.

and then we bring, I meet Rocky Torres, our armor, like halfway to my helicopter. And I'm looking, you know, I'm looking at the cobra and they're cranking the rounds in the nose. You see all that 30 mic, Mike going in. The sun, it's not up, but you can see that, like that silhouette, you know, of the cobra with the warm, like, red glow in the background. And just the nose of that thing and the gun and that, you can hear the rounds going in. you're just like the hair starts standing up on your neck and there's rocky he's got the receiver for the 50 and you know guys are hauling ammo and they're throwing shit up on the ramp and I look at the ammo and I'm like fuck that's not 1950 whatever Korean that's API like that's

real bullets and I look over at Rocky and he kind of looks at me and just kind of swallow like whole shit man like it's on um but it it turned out to be sort of like Jake jillenhall in you know, jarhead, you know, get all spooled up to go take a ship down. And I don't remember. We, we dumped like three seal teams, you know, on the boat. They take the boat over. I end up hanging out in Starboard D watching the whole thing unfold. Don't even get to dump my guys on the deck. I think, you know, dudes were like running around like ants and then disappeared. The seals had the boat wrapped up in about 30 seconds and they're steaming along behind us down to the UAE. And, you know, whatever they handed over so that was it but walking up on that flight deck i'll never forget those

you know just those first like i don't know 20 minutes you know just holy shit like yeah when you get to lock and load your weapon it's it's definitely uh it definitely in the 90s lock and load your weapon was like oh dude like it's on and it was a it was so gratifying every time i got to lock and load my weapon in the 90s you know it's so crazy that You know, by the time, you know, the war started, it was just like, that was just a, that's just how we, that's just a way, that's a way it was, you know. Yeah. It was just a totally different story. And then, didn't you guys lose a guy, a couple, a couple guys in that deployment too, of aviation-wise?

Yeah. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't long after. I want to say it was, um, maybe, maybe January. Actually, during, so we did eyes over Mogadishu. I think it was December, January. January. We didn't go in country there. We were offshore, but the Harriers and the Cobra's gunships were doing escort and Overwatch or whatever. And so we, one, you know, moonless night, we lose, we lose a Harrier. We lose Captain McKay off the bow of the ship, about a mile out. And we spend

the next, I don't know, felt like a week, just combing the ocean, looking for traces, you know, Nothing. Not a sign, not an oil spill, not a flare, not a, not a seed eye marker. I mean, the only thing we can assume is he just, it just submarined in, you know, and never to be seen again. Really, you know, hit home. I, you know, I didn't know Captain McKay personally, but, you know, you see them. They're pre-flight and I was always hanging out with the Harrier guys. I fucking loved Harriers.

They pulled a wing off one. And, you know, so you're just, you're all. part of the community. It's tight. Everybody's doing their briefs together and the ready rooms together. So you know all these guys and yeah, that, that sucked. You know, that just sucked, you know, thinking about the letter home, you know, somebody's not getting their dad back, you know, like that really, really fucking sucked. And then not long after that, we lost another Marine. We had a helicopter crash and it was right off the side of the side of the the ship. I was in the forward slash, maybe second Hilo-in, prepping my helicopter, doing my

up on the rotor head servicing, doing my checks, and spot one, maybe spot two, had a Huey going up. And there was a guy, you know, I knew all the crew. I mean, we were tight with the Huey guys. We're all in the line together, so we're all tight. But they were taking up a, I want to say This guy was a hydraulicsman. His name was Justin Harris. He's a good dude. You know, a lot of guys knew him, liked him. He wasn't in my shop, so we weren't bros.

But I knew Justin. I knew who he was. I knew in that day, super excited to go fly because he hadn't been up. He had to go do some qualls or something. We needed as many guys, you know, trained and ready for us to go into Somalia later, later that month. and so they were they were getting ready we're off the coast they were going to do a training op and I remember you know I'm looking at the guys you know there's three in the back

two crew chiefs and Harris is in there and they're you know they're looking out the right side doors open getting ready to come up into a hover I'm giving them the shock uh you know fuck yeah like get some and and uh they slide left and they do this maneuver that looks like something out of Vietnam, you know. And I start laughing and I'm like, oh, fuck, they're giving Harris a ride for his life. And then I realize you can't do that off the side of the ship. Like, they're fucking crashing. So I jump off my rotorhead straight down to the door, down to the ground, and I run to the side of the ship.

Just in time to see the helicopter roll on its side. It's in the shadow of the boat. So I can see clearly, like straight down in the water. and I can see a couple of helmets pop up, and I'm counting them, you know, and I see the rotor, tail rotor kind of disappear, and I can only see four guys. I mean, they're 77 feet down.

They're right there, and I'm kind of running along the side of the boat, looking at them, and I'm the only guy standing out there. Like, there was a yellow shirt flagging them off. Nobody's on the line yet. And I'm just like, fuck, like, I just remember thinking, where the fuck is everybody? Like, there's a helicopter in the water. And so I scoop back to my helicopter to grab my raft.

Like, they need a raft. So I grabbed the raft and I come running back to the side of the fucking boat. And by now they're at the fantail. Like, you know, what am I going to do? So I dropped the raft and I'm like, fuck. So now, you know, there's a crowd forming. I can, you know, I see the SAR helicopters, you know. It was probably already airborne, but now they're over the scene.

I run back and I grab. I actually was one of the guys. didn't follow orders and I bought a nice minolto with a 300 zoom and all that shit. So I go grab my camera and my zoom so because I want to look and see what the fuck's going on. So I get the zoom and I'm sprinting to the back of the boat and I see the rib boat take off towards these guys. You can see the C-Dye marker now. The smoke's going and I get my zoom going and I can see, you know, as clear as these cans on

our on our desk, I can count four helmets and guys are over my shoulder like, hey, how many? You know, can you see anything? And I already knew we lost somebody. And so I'm just like, nah, you know, I can't see anything. And I wasn't going to take any pictures. I didn't take any pictures of that shit. You know, so I just waited, you know, and I could see them get in the boat. And I just watched the whole thing, monitored them come in.

And, you know, I remember the guys standing in the, in the, they came back and, you know, they're up to the flight line and they're all sopping wet, taking their gear off. And in the flight deck triage and, and Harris was gone. I don't know why that hit so hard, but it does. You know, I didn't know him that way. Well, imagine. And I kept telling myself, I'm like, it's only 77 feet. Like, why didn't you jump in there now?

Why isn't there a diver already in the water? Like, all this shit going through my head, like, you know, how can we have all this equipment? How can we do something so fucking dangerous and not have anticipated and have safety measures in place? Like, that fucking boat should already been in the water. Like, why don't we, you know, I mean, obviously, that's ridiculous. We can't do that, right?

But that's what went through my head. And years later, well, it always kind of haunted me watching that. Like I felt I carried so much guilt, dude, because I was fucking high-fiving these guys and, you know, and laughing as they were crashing. And I think I was ashamed. Like I just carried a lot of guilt because, you know, I think it was ashamed, like how I reacted that I couldn't do more. Yeah, I think that's one of the toughest things I think guys deal with is when they look back at, situations that they were in and they feel like there's things that they should have done or shouldn't have done and they didn't perform the way they wanted to. Yeah. And they're, you know, people's expectations of

themselves are so high higher than can be expected, you know, like what, you know, like the expectation that you're having right now as if there was anything in the world that, that would have benefited by you jumping in the water. Like that is zero benefit. In fact, it would have made things worse. Now we're doing, man, but in your mind and in our minds, you know, we tell ourselves, well, I could have done better. I should have done better.

And that's the kind of thing that that haunts people because they feel like, oh, I should have been better in that moment than I was. And instead of recognizing most of the time, most situations, guys are doing the best they could in that moment. And like they did what they were supposed to do. They were trained to do. Like, I'll tell you why you didn't jump in the water, because you don't freaking jump in the water off of a Navy ship. You don't do that.

It doesn't happen. And so you were doing exactly what you're trained to do, but there is something where we feel like we could have done more. We should have done more. We wanted to do more. And, you know, I've had, I've told many guys over the years that the only acceptable, uh, result in our head is we don't come home alive. You know, like that's the only, you know, we, we, we, in our own minds, we think, you know what, I should, I, I, I didn't do enough because I came home. And that's not the right attitude, you know, it's not, it's not the correct answer. I'm just telling you what we feel like. Oh, if I'm here and someone else isn't, that means I didn't do enough. And, and that eats people up, you know, because it's, it's a feeling that we have of, you know, we let down our brothers, we let down our friends, we let down ourselves in that moment. But you did exactly what you were trained to do. And you know, because it's, you did. You know, do exactly what you're supposed to do. And that's the way it is.

And it is, you know, that's why, that's why guys struggle so much because they look back and go, man, I, I think I should have behaved better. You did what you were supposed to do. And most guys do. And, hey, occasionally, when you don't do what you, maybe you made a mistake, you know, you go, oh, well, with what I was dealing with at the time, cool, I made a mistake. That's what I'm a human being. I'm not a perfect person, you know, like, okay.

That is like ownership of, hey, I didn't, I wasn't perfect. I didn't do everything perfect. Then that's okay. You know, like that's, you were there, you know. And that's another thing I get with guys that, um, they feel guilty because they didn't go to combat. I'm like, man, you put your line, you put you signed your name on the dotted line like everybody else did. And that's a commitment. That's the biggest commitment that you can make.

And by the way, you know, in the 90s, you know, I did three shipboard deployments in the 90s. die on all those deployments. And people die in training, you know? Like you've got examples. You've already talked three examples today. One guy died in training, two guys died on deployment. There's no war going on. This is just what happens.

This is a job. You sign that dotted line and this is what you're going to do. Are you going to do a day in day out? And you're not going to ask any questions about, you know, is it the right day to do this? Could we die today? Yeah, you're damn right. You can die today. You can die tomorrow.

We don't know. But you know what we do know. We're getting our gear on. We're going. So that's. That's that's what I've found talking to a lot of guys over the years is that that feeling of I feel like I should have done more and of course we're all going to feel that way But the reality of hey you did what you were trained to do and or you did the best you could do in that situation is all right bro

It's hard. It's all right. Yeah Well that turned into you know over training for the rest of my life. Yeah just ask my kids as the neighbors call over go, hey, what's going on over there at 10 o'clock at night? I see flashlights and some sort of ladder hanging out of the front of your house. Running some drills. Running some drills, bro. You never know.

Yeah, yeah. So you get back from that deployment. At what point do you decide you're going to get out? Yeah, we get back from that deployment, which, by the way, we spent another, we spent another like two and a half months in in Somalia. We did the United Shield while we're there. And I heard a podcast with Jason Gardner.

And I wonder if we were on the same deployment because there was some combat there that sounds very similar to what we, you know, what we experienced that I think Jason was a part of. Yeah, yeah. Could well have been. He was one of the seals that was a seal sniper. in Somalia. Yeah.

I listened to that story carefully because I'm like, man, that sounds like I think that's my battle group. I forget what year where that was, though. I think it was 94. It might have been. Hit him. It might have been. I'll ask him.

Ask him because I'd love to know. I heard that. I heard him on that. And I'm like, fuck, I think he was on. I think they were the seals out there raising hell. We did a lot of SAR. We did, I did 20 missions into Somalia from, from like February through April. And what were you guys doing?

Mostly ass and trash. No, you know, we were evacuating. Okay. We did a few ops with, um, there was some, uh, Pakistani forces still in there. We had the Italians in there. Um, our infantry were, we're holding security at the airport. So you got to lock and load a bunch. Oh, every day.

Hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But, yeah. But it felt like, you know, yeah. I mean, I got to see tracers and multiple colors, you know, it was, it was fucking, it was pretty cool at the time. Yeah, you guys, so you guys relieved us because we were doing gator squares off of Somalia

for months. Okay. And, but we didn't do anything. We were the last stop. So we relieved everybody. So when we left, there was nothing there. Like it was, that was United Shield. We pulled everybody out.

Then we packed up our grunts. They left all those connex boxes and all that whole perimeter, you know, piled in. I was one of the last 46s to leave Somalia. And then it was done. We left there and headed straight for Australia. Damn. Australia. Perth, Australia.

Yeah. Three days, four days maybe. Dude, we had we got cut loose. We had to wear our charlies the first night. You know, your shiny little shoes, all your ribbons and shit. Dude, we came back from the Fremantle Prison fucking stage diving all night. Dude, my shit was I didn't have anything left. The Fremantle Prison?

What's that? I don't know. It was like a bar, you know, entertainment venue. Dude, we were so drunk. I couldn't even tell you. But it was like, yeah, it was where the, everything was happening. Guys were stage diving and, you know, we were fighting and all your shit was getting tore off, like trying to get back on the boat, all tore up like that, you know, it was, it was a good time.

We had a good time. Three days of drinking and partying. And then back home, you know, back to Pearl and then back home. And, you know, when I got home, the, you know, the squadrons get sort of dismantled, right? You've done your deal. The other squadrons are building up, so everybody kind of scatters. And I was asked to go to, we call it shit canning, but, you know, I was a test crew chief. I had some specialty skills and HMM 166, the sea elks were struggling to test aircraft up.

And they had one stuck down in Yuma, Arizona. So it might have been El Centro. I can't remember. It was a fucking hot hellhole or whatever. So I got asked to go to 166 when I got back. And then that was your next duty station? No. Or you just went down there to work on some birds. I went down there to test the birds up, get them back home. That was a funny story. we so to test these aircraft we have special accelerometers and test equipment we hook up targets to the blades you do what's called the track and balance each one of the targets has a reflective line on it that's at a different angle and you know typically you make a with your strobe light you can make an X out of it get them get them to track flat put your vibe you know machine on there make sure

the plane's not going to shake itself apart usually it takes about four or five runs to get you know get a helicopter tested up and flying smooth so we can put it back to into service and this one was a mess and I get down there and I just pick up where the last guy left off and I'm sure somebody well maybe somebody will hear this that can laugh at it so I just I'm going to be the hero I'm good at what I do I got a lot of confidence I just come back off deployment like dude I'm a fucking badass and I'm going to have this up in three runs we get there and by the time we got to the third run when we came up into a hover I can't see straight it's vibrating so bad I don't even know how this thing didn't come apart right so we come back down we put it down and we

taxi back and the pilots are like, they're shaking their heads and I'm like, just give me a minute. And so I go up and I recheck all the test equipment. I'm like, I got to start over. And so I go ahead and I check and they fucking, the guy ahead of me hooked the accelerometer for the front up to the back and the back one to the front. So everything you're supposed to do up front, I'm doing to the back. It's all ass backwards and just making the shit worse. So I get this thing up in like two more runs and we fly at home and I'm the fucking hero, right?

I didn't tell anybody this story. I'm just like, five runs. Got it. You know, we're good. And so I spent the next like three months with 166 and they asked me to go do mountain warfare training with them. And so I was like, all right, I'd never been up to Bridgeport. I heard there's good fishing and, you know, sounds badass. Let's go.

So we go to Bridgeport. And Bridgeport was cool. But it's high altitude training. And for a helicopter, that can be a challenge. And we, you know, we had some fun, but it started heating up. And you know how in California you can have, you know, in the middle of the winter, you can get these SNAs and this warm air come through. And all of a sudden, you know, it's January. It should be, you know, negative 20 up there at 12,000 feet.

But it's, you know, 60 degrees. Fucking warm day. Snow is melting. Grunts are in their t-shirts, you know. And we're coming in to pick up guys at like 12,000 feet. And I got a rookie crew that I don't know that well, to be honest, you know. And we're coming in hot. and I'm calling for wave off and he's like, I can't.

Like, we're coming in. Like, we're landing. And, dude, we slam into all this gear, you know, hit fucking hard. It's called a hard landing, but it felt like a crash to me. And the crew chief is standing in the back. And I get fucking thrown into my crew seat, you know, inverted backwards, so fucking hard, I can't walk. And so I come out of that, you know, we, you know, the aircraft's okay.

You know, everybody's fine. Just me. I'm fucking beat up. And so we come back from that mountain warfare training. And I'm like, I'm fucking done like with 166. Like I'm like limping around. I've been to medical twice. You know, I'm, you know, Advil, go back home, rest.

I got put on light duty now. And so now I'm not flying. I'm on light duty. I'm limping around going back to my squadron. And, you know, I'm just not feeling good. And, you know, the, it's time to talk to the career planner. they closed my MOS. I told you earlier that we were the last class for the 46s.

We're going to go to the Ospreys. So no re-enlistment for me as a 61-72. The bonus went away. The guys, like literally a month before me, got a $20,000 bonus. There's no bonus for me. And, you know, there's no job. And I'm like, I got the best job in the Marine Corps. Like, there's no way I'm going to whatever avionics or whatever geek job they had for me.

Like, fuck that. And so I tell him, I'm like, send me, send me to the fucking grunts. Like, send me to Pendleton. I'll go carry a fucking machine gun. And career plan is like, no, we got too much money invested in you, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, fuck you then. I'm going to get now. You know, and so, fine, get out.

And there was nobody talking me out of it. There was nobody trying to keep me at all of a sudden the Marine Corps that I loved that, you know, I remember Major Murray back when I first got to my squadron, we thought we were going to turn in our wings. after a close call in the middle of the night. Pilots almost flew us into the side of a fucking mountain. And by the grace of God, I flipped down my MBGs in time to call for power and save my own ass. I thought I was going to quit. Like, you know, like Cougar slapped my wings down on the table.

I'm out. Like, you know, turns the shit around on me. Like, hey, Marine Corps needs guys. Like, you know, you're exactly what we need. And so you leave there all proud, like, you know, with a whole, you know, no outlook, new outlook. And, you know, here I am, you know. four years later and court didn't need me anymore. So I'm like, fuck it, I'm getting out, you know.

And so I started looking for a way to get out. And then how long did it take you to get out? It wasn't long. I mean, I was probably two months away from needing to reenlist. I thought I was going to reenlist. I actually thought I was going to get extended to be a, you know, to go do a second deployment. Because it's kind of mandatory.

You have to do two deployments. Everybody knows that. But I'm a one-pump, dude. Like I got away with just doing one deployment. And so I thought for sure they would extend me with 161, and I'd do another, you know, I'd do another six months deployment. But there was no, I'm like, man, I'll get out. And so I'd like two months to go.

And I had a friend on the outside world that owned a tractor trailer, and he said he'd teach me out of drive. So I thought it was going to be a truck driver. Now, you were, does this when you became friends with Josh before you, this is before you got out? This is actually, yeah, right at the same time. So when I got back from 166, I show up to 161, my parent squadron. And at this time, I'm driving the 68 roadrunner that, yeah, it was supposed to be a car.

I was supposed to drive to see my wife on the weekends because I was borrowing a motorcycle to go visit my girlfriend, later wife, and bought this car and ended up yanking everything out, you know, big block. All of a sudden, I'm a motorhead and I'm blah, blah, blah. bl blip-blip up into the parking lot and I got the only mopar you wish you still had that thing i wish dude that's a whole yeah I wish so I come rolling in my roadrunner and and in my parking spot is a 1971 kuda 340 kuda mine's all primer this thing's all painted nice like it was nice and I'm like who the fuck is this in my parking spot so I blip blip blip-blip pull up next to it and I'm checking it out I'm shoving my head inside the you know inside the driver seat and all of a sudden this fucking like Honda Civic,

we, we, alarm goes off. Like on a, on a 71 Kuda, I'm like, what the fuck is this? You know,

and I'm like laughing and the lights are flashing. And I'm just thinking, what a geek. And this skinny little Mexican comes around the corner and he's like, hey, dude, if you want to go for a ride, just ask.

And that was Josh. And I'm like, all right, dude, let's go, you know? Fuck, we jumped in that thing.

And it was on. That was a, I think it was a 340, six pack he had in that thing. And, We were just, you know, just hammering around. We just, you know, we hit it off. Like, you know, two peas in a pot, man.

Our mopars, you know, he's a mechanic. He was a 6112. I'm a 61, 72. We're on the flat line together. But I only got two months left. But we're, you know, dude, we hit it off. Good. That was, that was day one to a long friendship right there.

And now you get out this truck driver job. How's that work out? That was fun. I was, I would, dude, I would. I would test aircraft all day, sunrise to sunset, and then at like 9 o'clock at night, I'd jam up to Reed's house. We'd drive out to Ontario, pick up his truck, grab a Kmart trailer, drop it in Blythe, go north about a half hour, pick up a load of dog food, drop it in San Diego, and then he'd drop

me back off at the base for about half hour worth of sleep before I'd show up at the flight line again. But I was determined, like, I'm going to drive a truck. And dude, drive on a tractor trailer, fucking badass. It was one of the coolest things I ever learned how to do. But Reed got sick when I had about two weeks to go before I got out. And I was still like two weeks away from getting a license. It was kind of timed up to getting my full-blown license testing.

I still needed a little bit of drive time and some practice before I tested. But he got sick. And so, you know, we delayed. And then all of a sudden I'm getting out and I don't have a job. So I'm at the in-law's house. My father-in-law worked for Arrowhead Water at the time. And, you know, he's like, well, you're not. you're not sleeping on the couch, you know, you married my daughter, you got to provide, you know,

and I'm like, all right, well, you know, I'll figure it out. Those are facts. Yeah. Like, hey, that's the way it is. We'll figure it out. And so he says, well, if you can't find something, call this guy. And he hands me a business card. And it's a food brokerage called Bromar, Southern California.

And they repped the Arrowhead products. Like, I can't hire you. That's nepotism. But these guys, they'll love to have you. And so I go down and I interview with. Jack Tar and he they hire me on the spot. And they have a United States Marine on their payroll now. So they're going to capitalize on that.

And they decide to start a new territory selling premium water in South Central, East L.A. and Compton. And so they send me to Luckies and to Ralph's in a store that does not want, you know, premium 250 a gallon water on the shelf. And when I show up, there is no arrowhead. It's all in the back with like 20 years of dust on it. And my job is to now convince somebody that this is the water table and half of it belongs to me.

And you got to let me put your product on the shelf. So you know how that went. So I spent the next nine months, you know, battling that shit and going, you know, I got to do something different. This sucks. I mean, I made it fun, dude. I mean, I sold like 2,000 freaking cases into a store and put a jet ski, you know, in the front of this grocery store and like I mean I made it work um you know I I'm not going to say on you know live some of the tools I use to to get that product in but you know we made it work but it sucked

dude it sucked um so I'm driving home from work one day just thinking what was this A and P shit that David Bill one of my mentors in the Marine Corps had mentioned you know because he said you better get this you know to everybody but I didn't know what the hell it was you know I mean I knew it was a license, but I didn't know anything about it or how to get it. And so I just peel off into the Long Beach FISDO, FAA office on my way home from L.A. one day. And I just, you know, asking the questions, hey, how do I get an A&P? I'm a crew chief. I was in the Marine Corps mechanic. And they're, they lay it all out for me. They're like, well, you got to go back to your command. You're going to have to get this recommendation letter, you know, get your DD-214, gather up all your training records,

bring all this stuff in and let us have a look at it. So I went and, you know, over the next, you know, month, you know, I still was close with my command. I was still hanging out with all my bros. Like, I'd still go to my squadron, dude. Like, I mean, there was a point when I thought I was going to get back in. Like, this sucks so bad out here, like, sign me back up. So I gather up everything I need and I show up at the FAA and, you know, I'd walk them through it. And they're like, okay, here's your 8610-2, sign you off for airframe, sign you off for power plant.

Here's a phone number for a school that can prep you for a couple of weeks. go do this prep class and take your written exams. There's three of them, general, a airframe and a power plant. You have like 1,200 questions to study for 100 of them that are going to be on your test for three tests, passed. And then you move on to an oral and practical where you, you know, somebody that's already an expert in the industry and designated by the FAA, they interrogate you and make you physically do work on, you know,

you know, magnetos, engines, you know, whatever. And then they decide whether or not you can actually get a license. And I passed. And they signed me off and hand me my temporary certificate. And now I'm an A&P aircraft mechanic. Now, what would a civilian path to get to their have looked like that just means somebody went to like a school? What school do you go?

Do you get to like Embry-Riddle, aeronautical? Do they teach aircraft mechanics or no? Yes. Oh, they do? Embry-Riddle does. There's a lot of colleges. that do. There's a lot of vocational schools and even more so popping up now at the time. And even now, there's two paths to getting an A&P license, an actual certification.

What does A&P stand for? Airframe and Power Plant. Got it. There are two individual ratings. There's an Airframe rating and then there's a power plant rating. They're individual. But really, I'm not going to say useless, but together when you have both ratings, that's the golden ticket.

That's what you want. The airframe is the easier one to get most, you know, Most guys can get an airframe at least. Getting the power plant add-on is a little more difficult. Yeah, it's a specialty. So it could be a little more challenging unless you went to school. So there's two paths. The common path is to go to school to an Embry-Riddle.

A lot of universities have schools, I'm sorry, have airframe and power plant and pilot training. So the university of, I can't remember. remember all of them. But anyway, a lot of major universities have this, have this training. So in the federal regulation, there's two paths. One is, I think, under Part 147, and that's your formal accredited school. It's a two-year program. You go to school at the end of your training, you get a certificate that says you can take your testing and test out and get your license. So you've basically gone to school for two years. And then the other path that's less common is an OJT path that falls under part 65. So if you've worked in the industry for more than 18 months in airframe, 18 months

in power plant, or collectively 30 months, you rate the same opportunity and you can get this form called an 8610-2 signed off to test for your airframe and power plant. And so how that applies to us in the military, most of us that are mechanics, you know, we meet that 30 months. And it doesn't, the regulation doesn't actually specifically say what you have to do. You just have to be eligible and have worked in the airframe field, which would be like, you know, sheet metal work or line mechanic, you know, where you're daily servicing and testing, returning aircraft to service, and then power plant where you're actually working in like a shop where the motor would go to once you removed it from the aircraft and tear it down, build it up, things like that.

Or in my case, you're a crew chief where you do the line service every day, but because of our job and our specialty, we actually work on the engines. So we tune them, we trim them. And for me, I'd actually gone to the power plant shop because I was interested. And I'd actually done some tear down and build up with the guys on the GE motor. So, you know, some of these MOSs is they kind of straddle both the airframe and the power plant. So if you have the time in service, then you rate the sign off on the 8610-2 under Part 65. Less common path, but, you know, Very available. Yeah, very available for basically anybody on the aviation or many people on the aviation side in the military.

Yes. Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Army. And Coast Guard. Yeah. So everybody. They're included. Yeah. And, you know, there's actually some specific tools that the FAA has to address all of those MOSs and all of those technicians.

Now, you're, you're employed. You get a job. No. Well, what happens? I got to go find a job. Okay. So I immediately start reaching out to these contract companies. In fact, the test facility had the name of this company.

I think it was called like STS Services or something. And so I just call them. It's the first company. I call them. They're like, oh, yeah, you've got four years experience, you know, aviation, a license, good to go. I think they hired me at like, I don't know, $18 an hour plus per diem. My first job, Dothanab, Alabama. I got to go all the way to PEMCO World Air Services and pack up my S-10, you know,

with, you know, my wife's already used to me deploying, just another deployment. And Jam across country to Pemco, I arrived the following Monday, and I started as a mechanic. How long do you stay there? I stay there for like, I'm on contract and the contract's three months.

Actually, I think the contract was like six months, but at the three month mark, a spot opened up in Santa Barbara at Santa Barbara Aerospace. So I transferred to Santa Barbara, home on the weekends, and then from there I can start shopping around local for a job. and I eventually find a job at Martin Aviation at John Wayne Airport. And that's where I really cut my teeth as a mechanic.

And how long are you there for? I'm at Martin Aviation. Dude, I'm busting my ass. Like, again, my nickname is Golden Boy for a reason because just shit falls in my lap. So I get there. I'm the new guy, right? There's already like, you know, 12 employees. And I get picked to work on jets.

It's a piston shop. It's a class four repair station. And we work on everything from piston engine, little Cessnas, to turbopop, Pilates PC12, to the general William line that owned the place. At the time, it was a 731 jet star that had four turbine engines on it. And later that turned into a golf stream. So John Walker was like the jet guy. He was known as Johnny Jet. And I get paired up with John.

And I think what happened is John just saw I was busting my ass. He's like, okay, I need somebody that'll just bust their ass day and night. and so I end up on Jets with John and you know before you know it General's turning his Jet Star into a Gulf Stream G3 and somebody has to go to school

I get picked to go to school I go to Gulfstream manufacturer training it's like a three and a half week $20,000 school and all of a sudden now I'm a factory golf stream mechanic with an A&P license and I mean I got guys walking around the shop going who the fuck is this guy

like how did he hop over us just busted my ass and I actually showed up with four years of experience. A lot of guys think that because we come from the military, that we got some, you know, that we don't have that experience. It's all the same. Oh, yeah. And airplanes and airplane.

Yeah, especially when you're working out on a boat in the middle of nowhere. They have no idea. Yeah, I remember when we were going to put our, we own, I'll fast forward for a minute, but to give you some sort of boat examples and how, you know, dangerous and tight-quartered and just the shit we did on an aircraft carrier. We used to stuff all those helicopters, all except for like Ford down into the hangar bay. We went through a hurricane with that USS Essex.

Waves were coming over the bow, dude, like 77 feet out of the water. You're out there on chain watch, like with a rope tied to your ass. And then sooner or later, you can't even go out. Like the captain won't even let anybody go on the deck because the waves are potentially going to wash the helicopters off the deck, right? But we would put that shit like two inches apart down inside that. hangar bay and you're chain down you got like eight chains on each corner like they're not going anywhere they're strapped to the deck but that shit is inches apart and so fast forward to like last year we're

trying to fit a global 7500 which is about the largest business jet you can buy it's got a hundred and i don't know 112 foot wingspan on it and a 26 foot tail and our fixed base of operations fbos saying nope you can't you know our policy is no 7500 won't fit it on the ramp won't fit in the hangar i walk out I look at the ramp. I'm like, nope, it'll fit here and it'll fit in the hangar. Dude, we had to get lasers out. And then finally, they're like, now you got to actually bring one here. We get bombardier to bring it out and we stuff that thing in the hangar.

So we know what we're doing, you know. Yeah, they need like three feet of clearance. We need like three inches. All right, back up. Sorry, where were we? Yeah, so now you're doing this job. You're kind of kicking ass. You're showing up early.

You're staying late. Yeah. You get the qualifications. Didn't you start your own cleaning business at some point here? All right, a little bit later. So, you know, I cut my teeth. I get to jam along at Martin Aviation. After I go to factory school, I felt obligated to give them a couple of more years.

You know, they paid for my school. A lot of guys kind of ditch and run after they get a school like that because you become very marketable. It was probably 2009-11 happened while I was at Martin. So I want to say it was 2002. I jump, ship, and I decide to start my own company. I meet a pilot, has a couple airplanes, not our clients at Martin. I've got, you know, morals. I wasn't going to steal any clientele.

I, you know, drummed up some work on the side. And I, you know, I resigned and started total aircraft management where we manage just a couple of jets. And, you know, no sooner do I show up in my new hangar, the neighbors start coming over. Everybody's asking me to help. And then a G4 moves in across the, hey, you got any golf stream experience? Yep, before you know it, I got like 10 airplanes. I'm managing, like doing light maintenance, helping them get in and out of the maintenance facilities, you know, just, you know, it's taken off, right?

I got all these customers showing up and then it gets kind of dry on me, you know, all of a sudden, you know, as fast as it came, easy come, easy go, right? It goes away. And so I got a bunch of guys, contractors, a couple employees. And I'm like, well, you know, let's just start cleaning airplanes, figuring out how to make some money. And you clean one or two and all of a sudden, you know, the word gets out, you're cleaning airplanes. And next thing you know, you're out there wiping, you know, wiping everything. down on the field. And it was pretty lucrative. It was pretty awesome. Margins were good, low overhead.

You're not paying rent anywhere, just bodies out there wiping planes down. So yeah, that was my first experience with airplane. And what happened with that? Well, you know, it was my first time in business and cleaning airplanes. And, you know, you get tied up with the wrong guy or the wrong client and they can sink you really quick. So I didn't have that wisdom to steer away from those bottom feeders and got tied up with a couple of customers that, you know, tied up some money and things like that. And it just went south. It was just, you know, I was owing money. I was, you know, chasing a paycheck, trying to get guys paid.

I could not stand the thought of not making payroll. It was just, it was going south fast. Did the market crash have anything to do with that? This is like 2007 or something like that. Yeah, it did. It had something to do with that. They started parking airplanes. I actually did a couple of repos.

We jumped in a couple of jets. and repoed them for banks. It was kind of fun. I flew right seat for a couple of those. It was cool. But yeah, it kind of dried up. And, you know, I had, I still had a lot of guys, a lot of buddies that were deploying. You know, I was watching the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, you know, from the couch. I hated that. I did at one point early on, try to get back in the Marine Corps. We talked a little bit earlier about some of that. I had some, you know, some damage coming out that really prevented me from going back in, which my wife. wife was very grateful for. But it just didn't feel good. You know, I hated watching. And so when

things were drying up with the cleaning company and, you know, maintenance wasn't going well, I had run into an opportunity to get, get on board with Navy Department of Defense out of Point Magoo. Again, it was like one of those Golden Boy opportunities. You know, it was like the neighbor, like, hey, it's photo. And I'm thinking, okay, photo, you know, camera, like Echo, you'll like this, you know, getting nice. What's photo? Photography. You know, it was like the photo branch needed a guy at Point Magoo.

Oh, to like maintain their aircraft? Had nothing. Well, I didn't think it had anything to do with airplanes. Photos, like cameras, like what Echo does? Like, it was, you know, the photo department. So that's the job you wanted to? Right. Doing photography and whatnot?

Well, I thought it was. And so I get on the phone with this guy, Steve Tack, that ran the program. And it turns out it was airborne photography. And so I'm like, all right, I'm down. This will be cool. And, you know, we talk about it a little bit. And, you know, I don't get the full picture until I get there. It's airborne photography running a $1.5 million telescope out the side of a P3 Orion.

Looking at missiles, XO atmosphere. Freaking awesome. Like, I get there. And I was like, what? Like, I'm going to get paid to do this now. So it was easy. It was easy to jump. I had to come on board as a contractor, and I was kind of doing the math.

I'm like, okay, I can live at this salary for a little while, I'll support my family for a little while, but I got to make GS. Like I got to get on with the Department of Defense. And we needed medical, and, you know, I was actually physically really degrading. You know, that's a whole story by itself. I was being led down a path by my doctors and whatnot to deal with a back injury and a couple other injuries that I had that really had me limited to just write riding a bike at the time, you know, no more weightlifting, nothing.

I was just riding this bicycle. And I loved riding a bike, but it just, it wasn't doing it for me. And I just, I had a lot of physical problems at the time. And so I get on with the Navy Department of Defense. And in about a year and a half, I pick up GS. They open up a spot for me. And now I'm full-time GS-11. I think I got, I got in there as a GS-11 step five or something like that.

And, dude, we are, we're doing work for missile defense agency for Air Force. The Air Force had, they had determined, you know, mathematically they were due for a disaster on one of their launches. So our asset was contracted for like the next, I don't know, five years or something like that to image all of the launches out of Vanderberg Air Force Base. So you're talking Delta 5, whatever, anything they were launching out of Vandenberg. We were on it. And to put this in perspective, our telescopes, we could resolve 12 inches at 30 miles. We could see the moons of Jupiter, right? So I've seen the spot, you know, through our telescope.

We had two. The forward one was visible. It was near infrared through Viz or Viz through near IR. Mine was near IR through long wave. And I ran that one on the back. And so, yeah, we were just, we were doing all those missile launches, which were freaking awesome watching the staging, the plumes, the, I mean, it was, there's nothing like it. And we're calibrated.

We're spatially, spectrally, thermally calibrated. Like, I can tell you the temperature of the exhaust coming out of the ass of that thing. It was cool. It was cool. And how long did you do that for? I did that for a total of eight years. Two as a contractor, six as a DOD employee because I got a 10-year award. They applied my military time to my service, so I got a 10-year government service award.

And in that time, I got to work for NASA. We got contracted to be part of the NASA high-therm, hypersonic, thermal dynamic, infrared measurement team. I mean, I was just along for the ride, dude. my my boss Steve Tack who was fucking awesome he was the grandson of R.G. Smith the fucking greatest aviation artist and Douglas engineer ever known. His artwork was on and maybe still be on display at the Smithsonian look him up one day fucking awesome well Steve was his grandson and he was an artist He went to USC, graduated with a degree in film and whatnot. You know, he was that kid that was out back trying to film, you know,

filming like Star Wars shit and blowing stuff up in the backyard as a kid. But he was so dialed in, like he was so invested. He had developed the new near-infrared system that I was operating with an engineer, a physicist from Raytheon Photon out of San Diego. They had developed this whole system in the back. And he had worked with NASA who had reached out to him because of the capabilities we had out of this P3 to add their NASA sensor to our visible system. They had this special calibrated. It's probably some off the shelf shit.

But anyway, they had this special sensor that they wanted to test to see if we could image the space shuttle in flight on reentry. And they wanted us to grab it at Mach 18. right so here we here we go we went and calibrated our sensor we had our did our little blackbody thing and we go down to we were stationed out of corpus christi with the border patrol guys they ran p3s also so they supported our airplanes down there and we're gonna we build the test support point steve and i would you know we build the whole plan the navy their job is to fly the mission and they're waiting for us to give them the plan then they'll figure out how to get the plane down there and and prep and we basically, we get our trajectories, we have our little spreadsheets and whatnot,

and we figure out, you know, our standoff distances, the capability, the turning of the aircraft, and timing and all that just to get us, because you got to be in the right place, pointed in the right direction, looking through a straw, you know, for a needle in a haystack. Yes. And I'm like, I'm like, how are we going to find the space shuttle? It's so tiny, like, how the fuck are we going to find this thing? And by the way, it's all manual. There is, we have a computer, but it's like 1979 DOS base with a one-hurt refresh rate.

So even if it pointed in the right direction, a second later, it's going to move your telescope, you know, bounce it off whatever target it was pointing at a second ago. So we get out off of Corpus Christi and we get all dialed in. It's a middle of the night, like midnight. And perfectly clear night, though. So weather's good. We got our test point and we have three opportunities to catch the shuttle. There's three nodes that it can come in on. I don't know if you guys know this, but the shuttle, it actually decides the computer on board.

determines when and how the shuttle will return. It's not done by astronauts. It's not done from the ground. It's done onboard the shuttle from an onboard computer that determines which one of these three nodes, and there's three opportunities to return per day, so nine nodes that it could come in on. And the computer on the ground,

it only collects the same data that the aircraft does and tries to determine what the airplane is going to do, what the shuttle is going to do. It's always been correct, right? But anyway, just for a piece of information there. So our aircraft is only capable of covering two nodes because of the distance between. It's a thousand miles between them. So we park ourselves in between the two nodes that are most probable.

And we'll jump to the one where when we know it's coming in, we'll get on that node and get in position. And, you know, all this is going on. I've never done this before. I'm like the new guy in pitch black down there. We're over the Yucatan Peninsula. And I'm just thinking, how am I going to find this thing? like, you know, I'm going to get fired if I don't collect. Like all this stuff, I know I'm not getting fired, but like a lot of pressure to collect

this data. And, dude, when the shuttle comes up over the horizon, by the way, it doesn't come from outer space. It rises like the sun from the horizon. I realize how all these UFO fucking sightings and whatnot come in because we don't see them in the U.S. But if you're down over South America or Mexico, you see something on reentry for the space shuttle that it's the most amazing thing you ever saw.

this ball of light comes rising up over the horizon and comes screaming in at temperatures and streaking shit across this guy unimaginable that we've never seen in the United States because it doesn't enter over the U.S. It enters over South America. And dude, you can't miss it. Like, I didn't need a computer to point. Like, it was glowing in my scope so bright, like right there, all I had to do is move over to it. And in a microsecond, I was on it. And, dude, you could see everything. The windward surface, the tail flap. The tail. And I mean, it's ripping, like we caught it at like Mach 22. And at closest point at Mach 18, we roll underneath this thing and just collect all that heat shield data.

And I could see it all the way, all the way to landing in the Cape. And then two and a half hours later, we chase it in and, you know, we land at the Cape a couple hours later and deliver our data. But, dude, so, I mean, so fucking amazing to be part of that and experience that, you know. That's the kind of work we got to do with the Navy. So then what made you decide to leave? I had, I had, I needed, I needed to become, I needed to pick up GS-12. And to pick up GS-12, you know, our operation was tiny. There was only two guys in it.

We're the only two guys doing this. And there was no upward mobility. So I had to move into another job. And there was a UAV opportunity available to me being, you know, I had a bunch of technicians, or I'm sorry, a bunch of aircraft in this R&D department that they couldn't get off the ground. And so I went and inquired and sure enough, they were happy to have me over there. I was an aircraft mechanic. So, you know, helped these guys get these aircraft up and running, and they could carry on with their R&D work.

And so I jumped ship, you know, and at first it was awesome. I got the whole fleet up and running me. Was that still a GS job? Yeah, GS. I went from 11 to a 12, all GS. So I picked up my 12. And now I'm working on, you know, pioneer. We had Predators, Pioneers.

We had Gen 1 predators. We had pioneers, X-Drone, all retired UAVs. You know, they sent them down to the R&D department. And this R&D department was developing an electrical can bus system, a standardized electrical system and autopilot, and a standardized ground station. And the idea was that one ground station could operate all UAVs across all branches of service, right? If this became the standard, for instance, you're forward deployed, you need a predator or, you know, maybe even something smaller. need an next drone. You want to do some surveillance or whatever. You need a next drone. Marines have

one, you know, maybe a couple miles back. All you really need to do is bring it to a handoff point. And as soon as you guys can make contact with it, you could take over that UAV. But the difference is, is your ground station doesn't talk to our UAV. So we were trying to solve that problem. And once we got the aircraft running, well, then we needed a plane captain to run them on the ground. Well, I decided to write a syllabus and make myself a plane captain. So next thing I'm doing, I'm running them, and then we needed a pilot. So, you know, all of a sudden we got an R&D department building simulators, and I wrote a pilot syllabus, and I flew for about 50 hours in the sim, made myself a pilot.

But I got assigned to a couple of programs with guys that were higher outranking me, and, you know, I was relegated to just building hangers and picking up rocks in the impact zone for the landing, you know, in the landing impact zone. So I'm the only pilot. I'm the only mechanic. I'm the only guy that's, you know, that's trained in the simulator to fly these things, and I'm picking up rocks. And I, you know, I was kind of pissed, but I was like, yeah, fuck it, whatever, you know,

it's my job, I'm getting paid. But they, you know, they started doing really stupid shit. Like, these are non-aviation guys, you know, that need to be working off checklists that are accidentally stepping on the launch button and sending a 14-foot javelin at 700 PSI out into the impact zone that I'm standing in. this is two less than two years after we shot our own ship a DDG with a test missile on on range you know doing workups and luckily we didn't kill anybody but they came and relieved everybody the whole the entire base got you know all the upper command was fired the captain was fired like it was ugly and all I just imagine is hey we're

going to be that next freaking story so you know I give this guy I'm not going to say his name you know, kind of I read them the riot act. I'm like, you know, this is bullshit, you know. And he actually reads me the riot act back, you know, like. So I'm like, okay, I see how this is going to go. And then it all makes sense. Like I'd actually seen a lot of things over the previous year that I was going to question but didn't because I'm the new guy.

But then I'm like, oh, man, these guys don't know what they're doing at all. They're like, they're playing with shit that's going to hurt somebody. So I end up getting set on another op. I'm like, all right, I'll suck it up. I'll be careful, but what happens? Dude, they launched this thing again while I'm in the impact zone and This time my boss is there his boss too and when they brush it under the carpet I'm like you know now I'm this needs to this needs to go up the chain and I told my boss I wrote him a letter

And he was unresponsive. I got stuck on a hazmat program sitting at my desk and so as I'm sitting there Right in a hazmat program going man this sucks like I'd rather been a low paid G. I 12, GS-11, then, you know, doing this. And so that's when I started looking for an exit plan from the Navy. And actually, that's where I learn about Jocko podcast and your book. Jack. That's, yeah, that's nice. Where'd you hear about the podcast?

Did you hear about from Todd May a lot? Yeah, about a year before, maybe six months before this, Todd, we're rolling around in Connecticut. And he's like, oh, hey, you know, Jocco's got a new podcast. I heard it and we, so we throw one in. It was early, dude. Like, your mic sucked. You know, you're talking about, it was like some, you know, you were reading. I wish I remember what it was.

I don't remember. But it was a, it was a World War I think book that you were reading from. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was awesome. Like, I'm listening to it. I'm like, oh, this is fucking cool. Todd's not so impressed, you know. So we were back to Led Zeppelin or Bon Jovi or whatever.

And but I made a mental note, like, okay, I'm going to go back and check that out. And so, um, So fast forward back to, I'm at my Department of Defense position. I'm writing this, I'm writing this hazmat program and I'm disgruntled, I'm pissed. I get word back that, you know, nothing's going to be done about this dude that's running a program that I should actually be running. And I walk up into our cafeteria area that has a library. And I pull a book, a random book off the shelf. And it's called Napoleon's Maxim's.

I mean, I've heard of Napoleon, but I don't even know what a maxim is. So I start reading, I'm like, oh, this is like a law, a rule. And this particular rule happened to say, if you don't believe in your orders, you need to resign. I mean, it said something different in different language. I'm not a scholar, but anyway, it's probably if you execute orders that you don't believe in or that you don't think are right, you are culpable for them. Okay. So as I'm reading that, we covered those maxims. And that's when I go back to a lot because that's essentially, you know, leadership. You know, if I order you to do something and you don't think it's the right thing to do and you still execute it, you're culpable. And that's how I felt at the time. Because we were going to hurt somebody. We had guys flying equipment. We had guys in charge of operations that were going to lead to somebody getting hurt. And I already knew it was probably going to be me, right? Twice I've got this. We're talking. We're talking. We're talking. We're talking. We're going to be. We're talking. We're talking. We're You know, the javelin that launch it, it's a, it's a rod that weighs about, I don't know, 75 pounds that carries the UAV from the launcher. It separates at about 50 feet and the UAV goes off to fly.

But this giant javelin flies like 100 yards. If that hit you, it will cut you in half. Like it will, it's a massive spear that comes out of this torpedo hole at 700 PSI. And so anyway, I'm, you know, I'm realizing that somebody's going to get hurt. I don't want to be a part of, you know, what happened a year and a half earlier or responsible for any of that. So it hit home and I left work and on my way home. Some random reason I throw in Jocko podcast. And I'm fast forwarding.

Like I'm just trying to just trying to get a sense of, you know, what this is all about. You know, it was like a longer podcast. It was like maybe four hours. And so I'm just like skipping through, skipping through. And I stop on this spot. And you're talking about Colonel Hackworth and how he was at odds with the Marine Corps, and he left. He retired and he quit. And you're like, Napoleon has this maxim, you know.

And, you know, you recite that maxim. And I'm like, holy shit, that's a sign. Like, I just randomly pull that book off the shelf. Like, I got to listen to this. Right. And so you also said something else. you were like, but you got to remember once you quit, you no longer have a say.

Like you're done. And so that's like ringing through my head. I'm like, man, I'm a GS-12. Like, do I really want to quit this? But, you know, it's the right thing to do. Maybe I could find another job, whatever. So it's only 12 miles home, so I don't have time to listen to the whole, you know, but I'm going to back up.

I want to listen to this whole thing because Hackworth is a Marine. I'm like, this has got to be good. Army. Oh, he's Army? Army. Okay, my bad. but I want to listen to this. So anyway, but I get home and before I get to the house, my cell phone rings.

And it's this guy and he's like, hey, this is Mark Foster from Martin Aviation. I don't know who Mark is. And I'm like, okay, yeah, what's going on? He's like, well, we had a vote today and it was determined that you are the best candidate to come back to Martin Aviation as the VP of maintenance. And dude, I'm like three. That's it. You know,

I'm done. I went in on Monday and I resigned. I left my position at the Navy and I, I, actually I went in on Monday and I interviewed. I went and met Mark. And, you know,

by the time I got down to Martin Aviation, which when I was there, it was, you know, it was owned by General Lyon, who I loved. He was a major general air force. He ran the guard.

He, his job was to take B-25's, Mitchells, across to the theater. like he transported. He probably did a few other things. I think he did some tours in Korea. I don't remember his entire history,

but I think he was a major general, I believe. Anyway, there was talk about buying property or extending the Martin Aviation property and building an air museum, and I was always excited about that. Well, when I got back for my interview and tour, the museum was there, and it had seven operational World War II aircraft,

airworthy, flyable. And Martin Aviation had been overhauled. So the little podunk shop that I had left was now a full-blown aircraft shop with like 40 or 50 Pilates PC-12s in their service center, a few jets. And it was cool. And I, dude, like, I couldn't sign up quick enough just to get into that freaking museum, right? So I resign. You know, I go back to the Navy and I resign. And it was no problem resign.

I couldn't, you know, like this was turn the page. and yeah and so with the it was funny because as I was resigning you know it's kind of like checking out of a squadron you got to turn a bunch of gear in you got to get a bunch of signatures and things like that and I remember um I remember somebody in admin who I knew she was like you're a G like why are you leaving you're a GS-12 like you got the golden ticket and when I heard that I'm like no I don't need a golden ticket you know save that for somebody else i'm out of here and yeah that was it turn the page so next up martin aviation you're you're the uh director maintenance you guys got the largest private gulf stream fleet in the world is that right that was trans exact that was the next stage

so i go to martin oh that's true by the way yeah so you'll appreciate this so i go to martin aviation it doesn't work out so well um i'm i'm trying out my new jaco skills i've got my my combat my laws of combat and I'm trying to apply everything there. I'm reading the book now. You know, I'm fully invested in making myself the best leader I can. And I try out all my skills at Martin Aviation and just fuck it all up. Like, it was not pretty. And so I'm looking for a way out.

And I get a call for, you know, from an operator out of Van Nu's, hey, we got this huge fleet up here. You know, why don't you come up and me, DOM for us? It was a charter operation. Martin Aviation was a repair station, you know, similar, but very different. And so I jumped ship. I hired somebody that could take over my role as VP of maintenance for Martin Aviation, better fit, you know, better for them and better for me. So I moved to TransExxac and I take over for the outgoing DOM and I take on seven golf streams.

It is known as the largest privately owned Gulfstream fleet. And I knew I was going to be drinking from the firehouse. I'm like, if I can't make it here, I'm not, you know, I'm not supposed to be in this industry. And I last three and a half years. I could have gone further, but I was just, it was a lot of work. And yeah, it got a little old grinding day and night, seven days a week. But again, a lot of opportunity to lead to apply my new skills. Really turn the shop around.

I built a 12-man team there. We did a lot of heavy maintenance, big, like 72-month inspections, which entail, you know, pulling all your flight control surfaces off, did a lot of engine changes, R&Rs on big, you know, 100-foot wingspan. you know, $80 million jets. So it was cool. It was incredible. I mean, we had a lot of help, a lot of team, a lot of support.

And so what did you do when you left there? I got, let's see, I went to Clay Lacey for a little while. I had a friend, you know, that had an awesome position for me to jump into. And sadly, it only lasted about six months before they moved the operation to Florida. My family wasn't willing to go there. So, you know, it was time to look for another role. I helped them move. We got them all set up in a hangar.

I told them, you know, right up front, like, I'm not moving to Florida. We'll get you squared away, find some help. Got them settled. And then I got on with a company called Salaris Aviation, and that's who I work for now. I've been here almost four years with Solaris. I've got a phenomenal a phenomenal customer that I support for them. We operate three multimillion dollar aircraft, about $100 million worth of assets. And my job is as I'm a director of maintenance, but they don't Title us DOMs because the company itself, which manages hundreds of aircraft, like three or four hundred now, there's only one DOM, you know, for the company. So they call us maintenance supervisors, but we're an extension of him.

We handle all the regulatory stuff, manage the scheduling of the maintenance, the daily servicing. I've got a three-man crew that helped me, two guys that are permanent full-time and a contractor. And then we'll bring in contract support or bring the aircraft to service center for heavy maintenance. we need to. But that's the day job now, and it's phenomenal. Great company and really awesome iron. Some of the best out there, Bombardier. I have two globals, and I have a Gulfstream G550. So, I mean, it's, I'm at the top.

It's incredible. Now, you're hanging out with Josh at this time, and then something happens with Josh that kind of, from what I understand, kind of launches the whole idea of win, warriors in need. Yes. So Josh and I, you know, we go all the way back to 1996. Raced cars together, you know, I got my first street legal drag pink slips or time slips. I still have them to this day. You know, him and his kuda, me and my roadrunner. Over the years, we transitioned into motorcycles, you know, track days, family camping trips. I watched his, you know, his daughters get born. I slept on his couch, you know, when I needed to, you know, We just, we've been friends and tight for years.

And even when, you know, he moved away, he went up to, he moved back to Modesto area. That's where his family's from. Worked for Lando Lakes. Great job, beautiful family, two beautiful daughters, beautiful wife. Just, you know, it's a solid dude, you know, smart, funny, the heart of our crew, you know, the funniest guy you ever met could, could chew you up, you know, spit you out. and you're kind of happy to do it. You know, like, all right, I'm cool being in the butt

of all your jokes because that was fucking fun. You know what I mean? Like, just make you feel good even while he's, you know, making fun of you. But super talented, great mechanic. Very fast on a motorcycle. You know, I chased him around for years. And unfortunately, in, it was 2018, there was an accident. He and his brother, Stephen,

were, they were at his mom's property, and they were shooting rifles. And they were transitioning from one position to do another. And Stephen handed his rifle to Josh. And when he did, Josh slipped, fell. The butt struck the ground and shot Stephen in the heart. Killed them immediately. And they did CPR, you know, and Melissa,

Josh's mom, mom lover, she is so awesome. They, you know, they tried to save him, but he was gone. And that was the beginning of the end. You know, that was, Josh loved being a Marine. His dad was a Marine. His uncle was a Marine. And, you know, there were so many things that, you know, reasons why somebody could hate themselves or not want to be in this world.

But had, when he no longer could identify as a Marine, when he was start talking about himself, you know, in derogatory ways on top of everything else. Like there were other signs. You know, that's, you know, I knew he was in big trouble. And it didn't matter how much racetrack we went to. We would go two times a month. It didn't matter.

I was on the phone with him every single day. It didn't matter. You know, he was going to take himself out. And we lost him in 2021. And then that hits you, obviously. Um, do it in a yard. Yeah. And what was your, you know, how did that thought process go from recognizing like what happened to your bro

and seeing something positive in, I can do something to help other people? That process was, it was weird, to be honest. I actually started feeling sorry for myself. you know like on the couch this has happened all right so we were let me back up just a little bit we were at the racetrack in might have been august of 21 Laguna Seika home track like professional circuit just having the time of our life we had the best weekend ever families are all there we're camping like two-day event We're there for like three.

Awesome. It ends up with Josh. His camper is parked on a hill. Not our normal spots. And I told him, don't load that bike without me. And by the time I get over there to his campsite, which is not next to mine,

he's already got the bike loaded. And I'm heckling him. I'm giving him shit. His ramp is pitched almost vertical. I'm like, how the fuck did you even get it up there? You know? And as he's turning around to pop off to me, he steps sideways.

And it was the queerest. thing I've ever seen. I'm looking right at his leg as the ankle buckles and the bone just pops straight out the side of the bottom part of his leg. And he spins around like a pirouette or something ballet, whatever on this broken lower part of his leg flips kind of off the ramp and lands on the same broken leg. And the bone pops out the top on the other side. And I'm watching.

this like how the fuck you know so anyway he's laying there legs like a noodle you know whacked out looking and uh i'm like i start barking orders you know to his poor little daughter like everybody's standing there get a towel get water get you know i'm like just focused like broken like we got to fix this thing and uh i want to call the ambulance you screaming at me now you fix this and so i start splitting them up We get him in the suburban transport him. And, you know, he goes in. He's going to go in for surgery right away.

Emergency surgery gets a rod in the leg and like four pins top and bottom. And I just, all I can imagine is, fuck, you know, he's going to end up on all these heavy meds. I already had, went through a whole addiction with pills and whatnot. And I'm just imagining, you know, what he's about to have access to and go through. and he did have a problem with some pills and things like that in the back in the day so it just I'm just seeing the writing on the wall like this is this is not fucking good and so um so he uh you know he he gets out of the hospital I think two days later um we drag all his shit home you know and um I'm checking on him you know daily he's supposed to in November do um this event called

Turkey Days with us. We do it together every year in Button Willow, California, about two hours north of me. He's obviously not going to be able to ride for this. So I talked him into coming out. Like, hey, just come out. And, you know, his wife's family lives close by. So they went and they're close by. And he comes out about 8 o'clock at night.

And, you know, I could already tell, like, you know, he's lost a ton of weight. You know, he shows up wearing a jacket. I bought him. You know, and it just hanging off of him. type scenario. Yeah, but it was like, I don't know. It was just weird. Like I saw him wearing that jacket and I'm like,

why is you wearing that jacket? Gave me something I'd given him. Gave it back to me then. And we're having some beers, take a picture, you know, about 11 o'clock. They leave, we're camping, texting all day the next day,

you know, giving them the play-by-play. My son's going to ride the track for the first time. So I'm updating him on that. I'm actually starting my race school that weekend. He was supposed to do this with me. You know, we were going to, we talked about doing it together. His wife was supposed to get on the track ride the first time. Like there was supposed to be so much happening this weekend, but instead, you know, he's broke and we're there alone.

So Saturday's great. Sunday, you know, giving them the update and I don't get any response. So I think, all right, we're going to drive there tonight. You know, it's a couple hours north. We need to go south. And by the end of the day, I'm like, I'm so fucking tired. I'm like, we're just going to go home. I'll drop my son off, drop all the gear.

I'm going to drive up at 5 a.m. I'll be there in the morning. And at 5 a.m. I get the call. It was gone. So I, you know, I'm talking to my Rue, his wife, his mom, our friends. You know, we're just trying to make heads or tails of it. But it's not like we didn't see it coming, you know. I'm feeling guilt again.

for not driving up there Sunday night. You know, here I'm feeling sorry for myself. Like his wife just lost her husband, you know. So then I start thinking that kind of shit. I'm like, what the fuck? You know what I'm talking. You go through all these stages of grief, you know. You're doubting everything you're doing.

You know, you're never doing enough. Whatever. So we, you know, I end up, you know, going into the holidays. I'm like slumped into the couch with a bottle of scotch. and, you know, I'm falling back into my old patterns, you know, I lost my best friend, you know, like, I have an excuse to fucking do nothing and drink myself to death here, whatever. And, you know, I forget, there's a piece here that's important, but I don't know why I'm drawing a blank. there's I'm on

Instagram which I don't normally at the time I never even did social media but I love motorcycles and I I find like this this guy Billy is called Moto GP two stroke legends and he's got like 20 followers

but he's got he's got these fucking pictures of Kenny Roberts Jr. that are so high res and I've never seen him before and he's like it's the coolest fucking picture I've ever seen of like a 1970 Yamaha doing like mock three at Daytona like and it's so fucking high-res. I'm like, who is this guy?

Like, and so I text him like, you know, there's a messaging thing. So I sent him a message. What a guy messages me back. I didn't expect him to, but he did. And so we start talking and, you know, I'm telling him like everything. Oh, I'm sitting on the couch. I'm fucking poor me. He lost my best friend, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he's like listening to me and, you know, we're texting. He's trying to cheer me up and he's sending me pictures and like now we're direct messaging. and, you know, he's trying to console me. And I'm like, you know, so what are you doing? He's like, oh, you know, I'm in Poland. I'm in the hospital. I've got cancer. And I'm waiting on a liver that I can't get because my cancer treatment has to be under control

before I can get a liver. And by the way, it's killing my liver. So every day I'm dying, you know. And I'm just like, fuck. Like, here I am, feeling sorry for myself. And here's a dude. in Poland fucking getting treatment for cancer

that until he can cure his cancer he can't get the liver that the cancer cure is destroying. I'm just like, what the fuck is wrong with me? You know, like, am I really just going to sit here and you know, feel sorry for myself?

I'm like, there's a whole family here that needs to be celebrated. There's there's fucking work to do, you know? And not long after that, I'm sorry, Josh. I don't remember when your fucking birthday is, but I get a picture from, you know, from Josh, of Josh's headstone on his birthday.

And I'm just like, fuck this. This is not how I'm remembering my best friend every fucking year. You know, a picture of his headstone on his birthday. We're going to have a memorial track day every year at Turkey Days to celebrate Josh starting this year. And so we put together the first annual.

Josh Covrubius track day. And, you know, that was the beginning of my philanthropy. And we had 60 people show up. We had, we had a, I had a friend that I didn't know. His family was into beef. All of a sudden, you know, hooked on Wagyu is coming down to smoke for us, like 25 pounds of American Wagyu tri-tip, which was as tender as any filet I've ever fucking had.

And they're serving. up, you know, sandwiches at lunch. We got custom t-shirts for everybody, not a dry in the room. The place is packed. We got like 60 people. Front row. The Track Days organization is given us, you know, front real estate. We're right next to the track.

Everybody's coming to visit, you know, it was awesome. We raised like $8,000, I think, for a Wounded Warrior Project. I teamed up with them. You know, let's turn this into a fundraiser. And we put my Rue, Josh's wife, on the track for the first time on a motorcycle. And I shit my pants every time. I couldn't wait for her to get off. Because she drove off the track on every fucking corner.

But she made it back in one piece. And I mean, just to see the light in her eyes, you know, just to see her daughter's, you know, so proud of her. And, you know, bringing the family together like that and celebrating Josh like that. Dude, I was all in. I'm like, I got to do this every year. And my wife's like, hey, dude, that cost a lot of money. You're going to have to figure out how to pay for this. And that's how, you know, that turned into.

the cleaning company that I bought. I'm sitting in my office. I'm like, how do I do this? Like, I'm doing this every year. I got to figure this out. I, you know, Michelle's right. Like, you know, we can't afford to fork out the money every year, but I'm doing this. And so I see this old guy out on the hangar floor, Glenn Graham, you know, wiping the wheels down.

And I'm like, man, that dude needs to retire. And I need a cleaning company. So I approach Glenn. I'm like, hey, dude, like, what do you think about, you know, selling me your company? And he's like, whatever, you know, like, we didn't really know each other well at the time. I was new to this contract. And I just inherited, you know, Glenn Graham, the cleaner with the airplanes. And normally I'd use somebody else.

But I didn't, he's an old guy. I felt bad. Sorry, Glenn. I didn't want to let him go, you know, I want to give him a chance. And so over time, we actually developed a friendship and a relationship. And, you know, he comes to me like three months later. And he's like, hey, I'm going to be gone for a few months. I got a procedure.

And I'm thinking a few months procedure. Like, that can't be good. But, you know, the planes will be fine. You know, my lead's going to take care of everything. So I'm like, okay, no problem. Plains will be here when you get back. Like, go do what you got to do. And we'll talk about buying your company when you come back.

Okay, yeah, ha, right? So he goes and it's only a couple weeks that he's, now, maybe a month. He's gone probably a month, you know. Turns out he does have cancer and he's going through surgery pretty bad. He's got to have his jaw cut out, prosthetic put in and a lot of other stuff. So gnarly, right? Just through the ringer. And in the middle of that, his lead texts me through social media an advertisement for this brand

new company that stood up and basically stealing all of Glenn's customers. And I'm like, man, this guy's balzy. He's literally on the floor cleaning my aircraft while he's doing this. So I walk out there and I'm like, we don't fucking operate like this. I'm like, fucking take it down and don't ever let me see this shit again. Well, he ended up quitting. Like me calling him out was like, now he's bailing. And I'm like, oh, fuck, you know.

So I start calling all the guys that I know that are using him like, hey. And they're like, oh, yeah, no, he already hit us up. So I don't want to tell Glenn because I'm worried he's trying to recover from cancer. Like, he doesn't need this shit. So he ends up in a call on me. He's like, yeah, I know. A couple of other customers called me. And he comes back to work early.

And he looked like a bag of shit, dude, walking death. Like, you know, probably lost 30 pounds. couldn't talk was, you know, anyway, I don't want to give you all the details out of respect for Glenn, but he was in bad shape. And I was super worried. So, and the first thing he says to me is, well, I guess you don't want to buy my company anymore now that it's falling apart. And I said, you know what, Glenn? I'll buy it for exactly what I told you I'd pay.

And I bought his company. And I thought, that's going to be the first guy I help right there. Glenn's going to retire, and I'm going to take this company. And we're going to turn it into something and, you know, fuck all these guys. You know, and we did. Like, in two years, three years now, we've turned this thing around. I actually had no idea what I was going to do. Like, I kind of was dreading the words as they were coming out of my mouth.

We tried to find somebody to help. I couldn't run this thing. I had a full-time job. Like, I wasn't going to be running a cleaning company every day. And so I call in one of my buddies, Nick Matthews, Marine, known him for years. and I hadn't seen him in a couple years. I didn't really know what he was doing at this point. And so I called Nick, though, for some advice.

And maybe he knew somebody out there that I could hire as a GM to come in here and help me run the cleaning company, right? I just needed it to run. If I could peel a couple of bucks off to help the vets, pay for my event, perfect. And so I called Nick, and he was driving home from work when I call him. And he's like, you know, I'm telling him all about it. I'm telling him my vision. Like, here's what we're going to do.

And by then it had turned into more than, you know, just, the helping, you know, doing the track day thing. I'm like, we're going to do this track day thing. We're going to bring vets out to the track. I'm buying, you know, I already owned a bunch of motorcycles. We've got all the gear. Basically, they just have to show up. We're going to have this track day event, bring vets out.

We're going to build some camaraderie. And then we're going to turn them on to aviation, right? We're going to give them, this is going to be the entry point for aviation careers. And, you know, I'm like, do you know anybody can help me? I got to run this cleaning company. And at the end of it, he's like, yeah, how about me? And I'm like, you. I'm like, well, what are you doing right now?

He's like, well, I'm just, I just happen to be general manager for the largest cleaning company in the country, right? And I'm like, what? Like, you're going to quit. He's like, Ben, he's like, it's not like it was when it was just our small little, you know, van eyes operation. He's like, this is national. It's, I'm absolutely miserable.

In fact, I was going home to tell my wife, I'm sick of this. And he's like, you're my exit plan. This is incredible. I want to do it. And so Nick jumps ship. We team up. And we take Glenn's company from the bottom to the top. We are probably the largest, not nationally, but like the largest market share in the Van Nuys Burbank area.

If we're not, we're close and we will one day soon. We are the absolute best. Nick is an incredible Marine, one of my best friends. I couldn't be in business with a better man. This guy, he is an awesome leader. He embodies everything that you teach without having read the book, although he does have the book now. And his team loves him. He is, he, all the things that you say about great leaders, especially like this recent podcast, you were talking about how your men talk about you.

I hear his guys, our team talk about him this way. They love him. The customers love him. We have, we literally have the absolute best company you could have. I mean, I'm sure there's more we can do, but we couldn't be in a better position. So with that, we take this small little book of business, you know, and we multiply it by 10, and now we're able to fund a bigger project, which later turns into win, Warriors and Need. That as this whole thing is unfolding, I realize, hey, you know, we have this huge deficit,

this huge maintenance, mechanic deficit in our aviation industry. We're per Boeing, per NBAA, per Embry-Riddle, you go to any aviation institution, they'll say the same thing. We're like looking at being 30,000 short on mechanics within the next year or so. Like we're already like at the 20,000 mark. And it's just multiplying, you know, year after year. It's not, there is no sign of it getting any better. And I know we have this ready-made workforce in the military that can plug that hole, but they're not coming. You know, I went down this path.

I know how hard it was. I started doing some research, and I realized, you know, getting numbers from the FAA, like this is real. So we're 30,000 short. The military has 200,000 vets that get out every year. 100,000 of them come out of air wing jobs, Air Force, Army Navy, Marine Corps, Air Wing. And of those 22,000 of them are maintainers. 22,000 mechanics.

The FAA licensed in 2024, a real. record high of 1,500 mechanics of the available 22,000. And to drill down on that even further, there are 5,000 technicians that get out every year that have the exact MOS that literally just steps across the line. If you have your 30 months, you can walk into the FAA, get signed off on an 8610-2, and go test and become a licensed aircraft mechanic. But we're only getting 1,500 of them. So that's the goal of win.

That's the goal of win. So what are we doing at when? We first of all have to find the veterans, let them educate them to let them know that they have this opportunity on the outside. And then you have to get them the schooling that they need to kind of get across the finish line, prepare for the test. If they don't have the schooling that they need, you get them the schooling that they need. But then you got to prepare for that test, right?

Do you guys pay for the testing fees? Do you pay for the prep fees? Yes. and then a big part of this, which I didn't realize, is the tools. How much, how much, how many dollars worth of tools do you need when you start in this job? If you buy the right tools, and there are the right tools for the job, you know, they typically a starter set will cost you about $10,000 to $12,000. Most guys can only buy a couple of pieces of that starter set.

And then, you know, they'll start financing it, you know, from, you know, from the snap-on tool guy, right? But yeah, to get started to have all the basic tools that you need, it's about a $10,000 to $12,000 investment on the snap-on truck. Yeah. And you, it's a mandatory. There's a few large, you know, if you go to Delta or if you go to Gulfstream large manufacturers, they'll provide tools for those technicians. But everybody else out there, you show up with your own tools. And you don't borrow. Yeah, bring your own tools.

And Warriors in need is providing those tools. We are. Yeah. We actually have a partnership with Snap-on. They recognize us as a 501C3 in an education center, and they give us a 50% discount on tools through our local commercial dealer. Outstanding. Yeah, that was actually our first partnership was partnering up with Snap-on.

We realized how expensive those tools. And they're important. You've got to have them. You know, you're not, there is no mechanic job that you can show up to in general aviation without tools. So that's when? getting the people the tools that they need, getting them the testing that they need, get them the education that they need.

And then you also have relationships around the country with all the different places that are now learning that you're a guy that they can reach, or when as an organization they can reach out for to when they need mechanics. We're working on that piece. Yes, we have, we do have those partners and relationships. A lot of them are in the works right now. But, you know, more importantly, we need to get them the license. That license is, it's key. dude. If you don't have the license, you're looking at a 10 to 20 percent lower salary.

You're looking at your growth potential is limited, very limited. I mean, there's a few guys that work hard that'll probably move up. You can work for organizations that don't actually require the A&P, but most, the FAA is kind of leaning towards getting all technicians on the floor licensed. You know, it's sort of a trend right now. But the thing is, you know, when you have the license, you have the freedom to write your own ticket. If you're unlicensed, you're at the mercy of an employer that will hire an unlicensed mechanic. So, you know, half the industry is not available to you. You can't have my job if you're not licensed. I am considered a director of maintenance 30 years in the industry to get, to even step into that world or to be a,

to be a DOM, you have to first be a licensed A&P mechanic. And then typically it's a certain amount of time as a mechanic and on the particular airframes that you're going to be a designated a director of maintenance for especially if you want to go to work for an air carrier you're you're highly scrutinized you know you're not getting those jobs without a license right so that on top of sorry I was just going to say that that's it's it's the most important piece is getting that license and getting the license for a guy that was in the military he just needs to get the certificate that says you're what is it a 4682 dash two or something something like that was it 86 10-2.

86-10-2 gets that done and then study for the test, take the test, pass the test, and you get the license. Yes, it should be really easy and it sounds easy, but it's not. These guys in the military, they have no idea. Like they've heard of the license and a certain percentage of them, you know, know a little bit of the process and might go do it. Well, 1,500 of them are getting through. But the other, you know, what? 20,000 of them. It's a, it's a myth.

It's a rumor. It's something they heard about, you know, there is nothing within the military that shares how to do this. There are a few programs, but there's, it's just, it's not, you know, they're not targeting the group, the mechanics. There's nothing to bring this to all mechanics. Like, hey, you guys are all mechanics. You know, when we go through taps, here's this extra two-day class for you, you know,

for you mechanics. or you firefighters or you machine gunners. Like there's, that doesn't exist. You know, one of the pitfalls and as much as I love the military, they create these cookie cutter systems. TAPS program, I think, has been in place since the 90s. It's the same program. It's evolved a little bit, but we recently connected with the TAPS program out of Yuma, Arizona,

and we now have four in our program from Yuma after one TAPS event where this wonderful lady called us and said, hey, we just heard about you through another technician that was going through your school up in Riverside. This is what we've been looking for for nine years. Like, where have you been? And, you know, I explained to her what we were. She shared our program with the TAPS veterans. And we got, I think, I want to say we had seven or eight call, and we have four in the pipeline now from that one TAPS program, you know. And, and, and, and, and, And that's what we really need to do is provide specific training, specific transition programs, you know, two MOSs, two job fields.

Because using the cookie cutter method, the blanket, you know, even the VA, they've got five programs that are, their five programs are multi-billion dollar programs, right? And guess what? They haven't moved the needle on veteran suicide and homelessness in a decade. Why? Because they've got billions of dollars that they're supposed. spread now over millions of veterans, and they're not targeting anybody specific, right? Our program, it targets a specific demographic, and what we learned while we're doing our

research, I didn't know this, but as I was working on a growth plan and looking at this full scale, we learned that the tactical aircraft maintainers are the second highest risk group in the military for suicide. And we didn't know that. You know, obviously your machine gunners, your front line guys, you know, boots loggers are, obviously they're at the top at like 34 per 100,000. The tactical aircraft maintainers are at 30 per 100,000. The national average is 14 per 100,000. So we're targeting a high-risk group.

We have the pipeline and the solution, and we know it works. We've, we are working with, we've had 200 plus, you know, reach out to us in one way or another for anything from resume support to how do I get my A&P. And, you know, of those, we've got 34 in the program right now. Some of them are hired. Some are, they're at different stages. Some of these guys that have come to us were already in school, but not making it through the school or not passing tests. So we're helping them, you know, even though they went to school, they still weren't passing the test. So we're helping them get their license past the test.

But the most important thing is this morning, we had our very first Marine come out of Pendleton and go through our program from introduction all the way through licensing. This morning, he let us know that yesterday he passed his oral and practice. And he's now an A&P. So we have 200 plus in the pipeline for the next 12 months. We've partnered with a school, Aftech exams out of Riverside, California. they've been doing this for 30 years training these guys. It's a veteran-owned organization. Sadly, the founder passed away a few years back,

but his daughter had promised to carry on his legacy. It's kind of a quiet, unknown school. It gets a lot of guys from like March Air Force Base and through the Inland Empire. But now that we're teamed up with them and have our own, in our own pipeline, we're looking at over 200 vets coming through our program in the next 12 months. Boom.

Yeah. That's what we're doing over here. It's ramping up. But we only need another 10,000 a year. So we're at 200. We need another 10,000 a year, 5,000 a year at least to get these billets filled? 5,000 a year would be amazing. There's 22,000.

And you know our motto, leave no man behind. Jack. Yeah, we're looking at going after 22,000. Jack. Nice. Okay, so it's warriors in need.org is where you can find it. And there's some, you know, again, before we hit record, you and I were talking a little about the legislative.

There's some legislative things that we can press on as well and that you're going to press on. Yes. As far as making the pathway a little easier to navigate for guys. Yes, for sure. You know, FAA is a double-edged sword. they're a friend, but they're also their own worst enemy. They create so many, you know, tools to help, you know, understand the federal regulation.

If you've ever opened up a code of federal regulation, the book's, you know, a foot thick and it's written in, you know, a foreign language for sure. Like you got to, it's very hard to navigate. So even though the FAA has a lot of tools that are designed specifically to help evaluate veterans, their background and skill. You still have individuals that are interpreting that information. You know, it's not the same guy. There isn't a standard program.

There's nothing written on how who, like, it's not automatic. We just had a vet come to us who is the perfect candidate, you know, works on jet aircraft, has the MOS, has the letter, has everything he needs to meet the code of federal regulation requirement, not to mention he is actually a mechanic and he's denied. because the individual standing behind the counter, you know, does not understand or thinks that he knows better and decides that, nope, this guy really doesn't have the qualifications to be an A&P mechanic. And he himself probably went through a traditional school where you sort of learn about everything, but you really do nothing. You've worked on, you've never returned an aircraft to service. you've never worked in the industry

and the industry basically knows that anybody coming out of school, the last thing that's said to them by their examiner is, hey, here's your license to go learn, right? They really don't know jack shit. And if you go out to the industry, every one of our partners would rather have a four to six year, you know, F-35 mechanic,

Hewey mechanic, you know, somebody that's been in the shit and understands timelines, quality control, safety, you know, not to mention they already, they are mechanics. It's just an airframe swap is what it is. And we do that all the time in our industry. These guys forget I was a golf dream mechanic before I was a global bombardier mechanic. They are different aircraft. The hydraulics are not the same.

The landing gear is not the same. But they're both aircraft. You know, it didn't take me long to transition. Well, our vets are the same way. They're a well-qualified, very skilled, very disciplined workforce that is, completely untapped. Right on. Giving these guys a mission.

Giving these, that's a mission, man. Giving them a new mission. Outstanding. It's outstanding. And supporting America, supporting the economy, supporting aviation,

you know, I think I want to say I love the FAA because when I fly all the time and I want to make sure, I love the fact that there's somebody tracking and making sure that our, that our aircraft are well maintained. And, you know,

like I get in and out aircraft, probably every week I'm flying somewhere. So, you know, for them to hold the line and make sure things are supposed to be the way they're supposed to be, absolutely. But we got these qualified guys that should be in there making it happen and making it easier for them in the long run. We, with the right partner, we can change the headlines for years. All I see from NBAA, that's one of our largest aviation associations from Boeing, from, I think it's AIS, it's an education institution, you know, from all of these big companies for years, year after year.

We hear about the shortage. We hear about how it's growing, how it's outpacing. We're going to go from when we started, we were 12,000 short. This is four years ago. Just a few months back, NBAA launched an article that says we will be 30,000 short within the next two years, if not sooner. So the gap is growing. growing, you know, it's outpacing everything we've done for 30 years to solve. And I've met plenty of people that plead their case and tell me what they've done and how much they're doing

to fix the problem. And I just go, look at the numbers. Whatever we're doing is not working. We have to do something different. This program can solve that problem. We can take 20,000 well-skilled mechanics that are already paid for by our tax dollars. We can fast-track them straight into that 30,000 hole, and the article, the headline, will read something very different next year. Yep. It'll say problem solved by warriors in need. That's what we're doing.

That's awesome, man. On top of all that, you raised four kids. You got what, all the kids are in the workforce. You got one finishing college. Obviously, your wife, you talked about Michelle. He's been with her for 30-plus years, racing motorcycles. Are you a pilot?

I am. How many hours you got? I got a couple hundred hours, but I mean, dude, we can go down some holes. Like, I didn't tell you about this part. When I was working for the Navy, they found out I was a pilot. Dude, I got qualified in the ejection seat. I flew right seat in the S3 Viking, which is a tactical airplane. I mean, doesn't really have any guns, but had a couple of hard points.

You could drop a harpoon or two, some flares out the back or some sauna buoys. But I got to do some chase in that S3 Viking. P3s are up for 12 to 14 hours. So I can't tell you how many times the crew was like, Hey, Ingram, you're in. Yeah, I have flown through, oh, Echo, you'll love this, Kauaii. Oh, yeah. All right, forgive me, guys.

I don't help, but don't get anybody in trouble here, but I have flown the canyon that Jurassic Park was filmed in from the left seat in a P3O ride. Pretty badass, pretty freaking awesome. And then you train jihitsu? Yes. How often you train? I'm sorry, not often enough.

I do watch more videos than I do actually get on the mats these days. Hey man, I don't know if you saw this the other day. I literally watched an Instagram video from Miha of how to finish the double trouble footlock, straight foot lock there. I come in, he's my first role of the day. I get him in the double trouble straight foot lock and I legit have to do what I saw in his Instagram video an hour prior. And I did it. And it worked. I was like, you, that's ridiculous, man.

Hey, those videos are great. Yeah. I mean, I learned, actually, I started, so here's how I started. It's actually a fun story. So we adopted my oldest son. We took him in when he was 14. And he played football earlier, but when he gets here to Arr-to-Camoreo, he's like, I'm wrestling, dad.

Or actually, uncle, U.B. He calls me U-B. He's like, I'm wrestling U-B, and I'm like, what? No way. That leotard is the gayest shit ever. Like, you were not wearing that singlet. No, like, that ain't happening. and he's he's stubborn like he's he's gonna wrestle so I'm like fuck it all right I'm gonna come

down here and I'm gonna see what this is all about so the first the first training session is called midnight madness and I'm like you know they're all like they're like 14 so I'm gonna drive you know so I haul like four kids down there to midnight madness yeah big tough dad marine I'm gonna come in here and see what this is all about dude that practice was insane like I saw something that night I was like what I mean dude the shit they were when they did their first like up downs and like running around that room and I'm just you know I'm like up against the wall like holy shit and then watching them run the bleachers and there was football players in there they were dying oh yeah like there is nothing like wrestling practice and I'm like oh

well he could use some exercise fuck it but dude what I realized is my kid's going to come home in a couple months and he's going to be able to kick my ass and so I was like fuck that that's not happening Well, at the time, I'm traveling to Hawaii. Like, I'm doing like 100 nights a year out there. We're working out of PMRF, and we would stage up out of Oahu. We'd stay in the Hilton or whatever there in Hawaii. And so I'm scrambling. I'm looking.

I'm like, where do I go? How do I learn some fucking jihitsu, right? This is like 0, 0, 0,08, 09. And so I find this guy, Ron Shikari. I think it's Ron. I'm sorry, if I get your name wrong, Ron Shikari. And it was a Helsen Gracie Jijitsu Academy right there. like in this commercial area between Oahu and the airport, right?

Some like shady, like garage, right? So I sign up, right? Again, like surfing, I'm the only Howley in this place. And I spend the next fucking two weeks underneath some 280 pound purple belt's ass. I mean, just getting manhandled, dude. And it was horrible. Like I fucking hated it, but I'm like, all right, soon or later, I'm going to learn something. So it wasn't long.

You know, I mean, I stuck with it for several years, but I would come and go and that's where I was training. So anytime I came into town, I'd go down there and I'd train with Ron. And I was fortunate enough to Helson Gracie actually came in and did this edged weapon thing. I got to roll with Helson Gracie, like, well, like attack him with a knife and then get choked out. You know. It counts. Okay, thank you. Because, dude, it was awesome.

Like, and I didn't know, like, I've heard of the Gracies before. And I watched the UFC. I saw early, you know, I think it was hoist grays. Gracie on the beach. Like, I don't know if you remember these videos, but back in the day, they would challenge guys on the, like, down in what? Bro, did you just ask me if I remember the Gracie in action videos with Hakesy on the beach? What are we doing here, bro? Yeah, that was silly. I'm sorry.

That was a low level, that question right there. You're right. You're right. You're right. Okay. I think you talk about that at some point in time, too. That was a stupid statement. I'm going to, can I back that one out? Well, it's all good. No, that stays, man. That stays. But I didn't, I didn't really know. And so I had a guy that I was working with in, like, 05, that he was into Jiu-Jitsu and he knew who the Grace was were. We're literally walking into LAX one day and he's like, holy shit. That's, um.

Hickson. No. Hoise? No. Hoyler? That's helio. Helio. And I look and sure enough there he's sitting in the middle, like facing us, right?

And the road, I can see the whole thing, dude. He's sitting in the middle and I don't know who's there, but it looks like the whole fucking family. There's like 15 dudes like sitting there all around. the kids are rolling around on the floor in front of them. I'm like, holy shit. Like, okay, that's the whole Gracie family right there. I have a picture on an old flip phone of these guys.

I've been trying to get it out of that phone for years. I don't know how to get it to come back on. But took a couple of pictures. Glenn took pictures with them. I was a little shyer, so I just got a picture from a standoff. But, you know, but later, you know, I understood, you know. The power. The power.

Yeah. I understood the power. And so your oldest son, is his name Zach? Zach, yeah. So he wrote like a real nice note, you know, to me. I don't know if you knew that, but he wrote a nice note just saying that, so what, you adopted him? Was he a nephew or something?

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome, man. Yeah, Zach, we took him in when he was 14. And yeah, he's a great addition to the family. He's an awesome kid. And straight to wrestling practice. Does he do Jiu-Jitsu now? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. He trains Jiu-Jitsu. You know, he, yeah, he's an amazing kid. All my kids are incredible. Zach is an awesome, he's an awesome story. I mean, we can go off on some rabbit holes, but, you know, two things you wanted to do in life that I was like, no way that turned out to be awesome. The first was Jiu, and you're going to love both of them. Turned out to be the greatest thing for both of us.

The second was to be an English major. I support that. Right? I know you do. And I'm like, dude, you're going to be sleeping on my couch or a teacher. Like both these suck. He very well might be. Well, he ends up landing a great job.

He did four years at Cal State Channel Islands. And I mean, it went by fast. Dude, there was so much going on. There was so much chaos, you know. And he came with baggage. You know, it was work for everybody. But he's my boy and he's part of the family. All the kids, you know, they love.

He's our boy. It's awesome, man. And to go from the life that he had, which was really challenging, he'd been at like 30 schools before he even came to us. You know, to fast forward to his graduation from college, which I never even imagined he'd even make it to college, but he did. And he graduated with pretty high honors. He was a writer. And at the award ceremony, we got invited to listen to his, he had written like the script. and they were giving him like this little piece

where he could say a speech, something about his experience at Channel Islands. And so I'm coming home from work from Martin Aviation at the time. I'm smelling like fuel. Like I'm in work clothes. It was, you know, turns out it was kind of dressy. I was going to bail. My wife's like, no, I'll meet you over there.

She's coming out of work. We show up. I smell like jet fuel. Everybody avoids us. I'm like, let's sit in the back. Nope. It's a sign seating. We're at the front table.

You know, I'm just like, fuck. Nobody wants to talk to us. And then, you know, lights go out. We're just sitting there hungry, you know, and Zach gets up there, does his thing. And, you know, we get to the end of the ceremony. And the dean comes out.

He's like, okay, you know, we're going to give away the Dean's Dolphin Award. And it's going to go to this person. He's the editor of the newspaper. And I'm like, wait a minute. There's only one editor. And that's my son. Like all this shit, he's,

my wife and I are looking at each other. And then we're looking at Zach. And he doesn't even know, like, we're all starting to well up. And then they call out Zach's name. And we're like, holy shit. shit like Zach just got the fucking Dean's award and then the whole table just starts pouring on us like

we didn't want to give it up we're so sorry so they were like avoiding us we thought because I smelled like fuel but they didn't want to let the cat out of the bag and and so yeah he he ends up graduating you know just top of the class with the Dean's award and and he ends up making some really incredible friends with faculty there that that connect him with Sage publications and they eventually they hire him at Sage selling the criminal justice curriculum into the colleges and working with professors to write the, I guess professors write books and then they go on to write curriculums that they sell to other colleges. And so that was his role and he loved it. And then they ended up asking him to start a new territory in the middle of the country in Oklahoma. So he moved there

like seven years ago, you know, it was going to be temporary, but he loves it there. He dominates. in the space there. You know, he's, he gets his bonuses and awards every year, top guy. Just kicking ass. Awesome, man. Yeah, recently married and, you know, hopefully they can start thinking about some kids. It'd be nice to have some grandkids around,

but just fucking wailing on it, dude. So, and, and I know we don't have time to talk about all the kids, but, you know, my son, James is, is killing it too. He's recently started pilot training. He's an athlete, a runner. My daughter Paige just graduated college. She's an artist. a fucking amazing artist.

And my youngest just started college. Did you go to school for art? Yeah, she did four years at Channel Islands for art, but she was just a natural before that. Like, we knew it when she was like five. Like, her stick figures could jump off the table and put you in a choke, you know. And then our youngest has just started college and, you know, she's just killing it. So my wife has done a tremendous job raising kids.

I've deployed my whole life, so I can't take credit for what she's done. You and me both, man. Yeah, dude, you know. For sure. You know. Freaking awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, we covered a lot.

I'm glad you, you know, so, like you said, there's probably a million different rabbit holes we could go down and maybe we'll get, maybe we'll do it again and go. When you listen to this, you're going to go, I forgot this and I forgot that. We'll go do that. But I think does that get us up pretty much up to speed for now? Yeah, I think so. You know, I appreciate you inviting us on here. This is fantastic.

We need to get the word out. There's a lot of good work to do. and Warriors and Need has, we've got the path. We've got the, you know, we've got the formula. Yeah. It's, I see a lot of business ideas and I see a lot of things going on in the market. And it is very rare that I see such a clear solution to such an obvious problem. This is exactly that.

I think it's outstanding. For people to find you, it's warriorsin need.org. You're on Instagram, TwitterX and LinkedIn and YouTube. They're all just at Warriors in need. So if you want to reach out, what can people do to help? Just spread the word. Spread the word. You know, go to our YouTube, you know, watch our videos, like them, share them.

Spread the word. You know, right now our biggest path is really through word of mouth and through the veterans themselves. We're building networks inside of bases like Pendleton, Miramar, Yuma, March Air Force Base. But, yeah, spread the word. And, you know, like us, share us. You know, go to our website. There is an induction form for veterans.

There's also a link for sponsors and supporters. We could use volunteers, and we definitely need sponsors and supporters. There we go. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yes. Oh, oh, here we go. Rewin a little bit. I think we're going back to teenager years.

All right, all right. So when you guys were in the car, you guys endured that attack. You defended yourself successfully. Did you find out about the guys? Who were the guys? Why were they even attacking you? Okay, we learned a little bit about them. So they were, you know, roughly 30s, you know, about 10 years older than us, criminals, hardened criminals.

Why they attacked, don't know. The assumption is that they just, you know, they'd seen us. They were local from the area, too. We didn't know who they were. But a lot of people after that attack knew, I mean, it hit the paper. So, you know, everybody was asking questions. And so we learned a little bit later, a little bit about them and their names. I'm not going to say them.

but honestly, I believe they're both dead. It was within two years that they were both killed. One was killed in a motorcycle accident and the other one was shot by somebody with a crossbow. So they were both gone within a couple of years. Yeah, yeah, trippy, right? Bro, when you get that crossbow death, yeah, I already know, bro.

So another interesting fact, Jocko, is that, you know, that caused me a lot of grief, you know, shooting somebody. but it actually sort of got worse later on, especially as I was trained as a Marine. When I learned about immediate action and how to clear a weapon, dude, I can't tell you how many scenarios I went through if I had those skills in that moment, you know,

because it was a stove pipe. Like, I didn't know what a stove pipe. I didn't even know what was going on, you know. No tap rack bang for you at that time. No, thank God. Thank God. Yeah, otherwise you were to smoke that guy. It would have been ugly, you know.

But yeah, looking back, like there are some lessons. Yeah, when you said you had nothing, when you said you pulled the trigger on nothing, I was like, I must have been the snow stove pipe. Yeah, it was. Because if it was. Actually, actually it was a misfeed. It was like the spent round, the case was stuck in the chamber. And so another round had fed on top of it. So it wasn't really a, it was, it didn't extract.

The extractor was. But the trigger didn't pull either because it didn't. No, because there was a round sitting on top of the case, right? And again, I, you know, I sort of assessed that, but it didn't understand it until years later. Like now, I mean, I load ammo. I'm you know I train like I train I do weapons training four times a year I mean that's not enough But it's I definitely not a fucking tap rack bang you know and when I pull the trigger Somebody's dying if that ever had to happen in the future, you know, which I hope it doesn't but but yeah

It's crazy when you see in the movies you know like how easily people Manipulate weapons that have never used weapons before in the movies. Yeah, they make it look like it's not that big of a deal But number one it's hard to manipulate a weapon I remember what I I was training my, my oldest daughter. And she was probably like 13 or 14. And, you know, my, she could, she was very, very difficult for her to rack the slide on a sig. You know, like, it's not, you know,

you see in the movies like everyone looks all easy, but it's not, it's not an easy thing to do if you haven't done it before. So the fact that, number one, that dude had that gun loaded in the glove box. Right. And it was. It was a hot gun, like just ready to rock

He was Army. So he, you know, he'd already had tapragman and all that shit. I did not. But the fact that he had it in there, the fact that you remembered that he had it in there, the fact that you were like, well, I'm just going to get after it right now. Like that's, bro, I was terrified. I mean, having a 30-year-old man, I was, I was 18, I think not quite 19 at the time. And, you know, having a full-grown man with a beard, like get out of his fucking car.

And I'm sitting there, like, in the car by myself. Like Rick's already exited. Like I felt vulnerable. I'm like, what am I? All I could think of, I'm a gun. I got that gun and I fucking backed out of there as fast as I could. You know, if it wasn't for Rick being there, I'd have run. I'd have just run for the fucking woods.

It's kind of weird that Rick didn't, like you said, like put it in reverse and get out of there. You know? Dude. I fucking was, I was beside myself, shitting my pants. I was like, what the fuck? Like, all we got to do is back up. There's a weird He was a demented dude

But there's also a weird Like instinct It's not a good instinct to have But it definitely is something that a lot of us have You know like I tell the story I was out of the Navy and I was like on a beach cruiser Beach cruiser bicycle you know like a $50 A $50 bicycle and I'm driving down the road

And I'm going down a little hill by my house And there's an oncoming car And I got to make a left hand turn and I'm like and you know I just like increased speed and go into this turn right in front of this car any about 20 different things could have gone wrong and I'd been dead and there was this by the way there's just like a Tuesday afternoon just no reason like two o'clock in the afternoon I was going from point A to point B no reason to take any risk of any kind at all and and I got I and the left hand turn that I took when you went left then you started going up a little hill. So I immediately like I was going downhill. I take this left hand turn and now now and I barely miss this car and I'm going up and I slow down and I'm like, damn like I didn't I didn't even consciously think about what just

happened. Like I was like, oh, I'm going to do this because it was a little bit of adrenaline and I'm like, oh, I'm on this. You know, like this is going to be cool and I'm going up this hill going, damn, dude, like you're a grown man. I'm 43 years old or something. Probably whatever flip flops. Yeah.

No, I literally in flip flops. and a pair of shorts and a tank top and no reason at all to do this. And I couldn't, it was, it was like not even a choice that I made. It was just the way, what was what was going to happen. Period. And so I bet your buddy Rick was like, oh, scraps, you know, like, oh, we're fighting. Cool. Like not even having that muscle memory or not muscle memory.

The fight, flight, or freeze is just, oh, cool, fight. You know, like that's just a programming. And I did not expect that. Not that I hadn't been in a fight up to that point I had, but not anything like this and not with grown men, you know. It's like fighting my dad. Like that's what it was like. I mean,

I was fucking terrified. Yeah, because when they got that grown man strength. Yeah. And you know that. You're like, this is not. Plus I knew I was bullshit.

Like, I didn't have any skill. I didn't, like my dad left. He didn't teach me at a fight. Like my shit was like, whatever I learned, you know.

I mean, Karen. Yeah. Chuck. Echo Charles, any other questions? Nope, that's it. Good to meet you, sir. You seem like you want to go deep down that well. Hey, man, there's been a lot of lessons learned over the years. For sure. Ben, any closing thoughts, bro? I think we covered it all, you know. I can't thank you enough.

You know, huge fan. I love the program, everything you do. And very grateful to be here doing this today. I have a phenomenal team. I'd like to throw them all out there and our sponsors and whatnot. But we'll save that for another day. But thank you very much. Well, thanks for joining us. It's great to see you. You know, very cool to see you after all these years.

And, you know, to hear the story because I didn't know, I didn't know, you know, I don't keep in a lot of touch with the people that I grew up with. So, you know, just hearing Heidi and she's doing well and then know that you, you know, not only did you come out of it, but look at you, you know, you got your own kids that you raised that are now out there in the world doing good things, man. It's awesome. So great to see you. Thanks for sharing your experiences today.

Your lessons learned. Obviously, thanks for your service to our country in the Marine Corps. And thanks for what you're continuing to do today. You know, not only building your businesses, right, which helps the economy, helps our country, but most important, this thing that you're doing right now with the Warriors in need, yeah, I know it's going to help countless veterans find their next mission. is also going to help America stay on track with aviation. So thanks for everything, brother.

Great seeing you. Thank you, Jock. Thank you, Echo. And coming up on Memorial Day, I would just like to say, you know, thank you to all the veterans, all those who paid the ultimate price. And the best way that we can honor them is by helping the living. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

Thanks, bro. And with that, Ben Ingram has left the building. He has been getting after it in business, in motorcycle racing, in charity, and jiu-jitsu. He's been getting after it. And one thing I can tell you, Echo Charles, when you're getting after it, you need fuel. We recommend jaco fuel. We recommend jaco fuel. Right now, I am two jaco-fuel go energy drinks.

By the way, new flavors, and they're really good. I dig it. And not just new flavors, new ingredients. So we've evolved, made them even better. So I think it's definitely a step up across the board. We're always trying to make things better. So joccofuel.com, you can get protein. You can kind of get all the protein that you need.

Yeah. Kind of. I was watching my daughter go to school yesterday and she just like pattern of life just two mokes in her backpack and she's that's 60 grams of protein right there. That's just that's just a baseline level of protein intake. Yep. Two mokes ready to drink. So fruity cereal is selling like crazy because it tastes it tastes good but it also brings back the memories. You know I had some memories coming back today with Ben.

Yeah. Going to school with Heidi and The nostalgic feeling that you get when you drink the fruity cereal milk is Pretty strong and people people like that taste and smell by the way. Yeah, the whole lot of girl Did you did you did you did you did you did you did you did you drink? Oh, but the cinnamon toast crunch Is that the same as apple jacks? Remember apple jacks kind of had a cinnamonish yeah, that's apple cinnamon for sure I didn't get the Apple Jacks but you said that the RTD you're gonna have the horchata one right oh you will we have the powder right now I don't know if we're gonna go

or a chatta the RTD okay either way that's that's that's uh yeah that's the one that's probably going to bring some nostalgia yeah check so we got it it's the best stuff tastes great and it gives you the fuel that you need it is available at joccofuel.com and also whatever retailer you go to whatever store you go to retailer that's kind of a business Whatever store you go to. Whatever store you go to, check and see if they have Jocko fuel so you can get the good, the clean, and the best. Also check out origin, USA.com for clothing, American-made clothing. You probably couldn't see it today, but Ben Ingram was wearing origin boots, origin jeans.

So that's what he's doing. He served in the Marine Corps. He doesn't want to support communism. He doesn't want to support the enemies of our country. economically like why would you do that you shouldn't do that you should support freedom you should support America you should support quality you should be anti-slavery you should be anti-communism you should go to origin USA dot com and invest in freedom that's what we're doing Jiu-jitzugees rash guards I'm kind of at a point now where I have enough for my whole

collection of rash guards is all origin 100%. Yeah, I'm with you. So we got that going for us. And then all my shorts. I have a couple straggler shorts, but everything else. You know, these are shorts that are 10 years old or whatever, but all my other daily rolls origin, USA.com.

That's what we're in. And you were saying the women's jeans are out or they're about to be out? Women's jeans are out. They're out. If you need them, order them quick. Ready to roll? Yeah. Dang. Because they're going quick.

So there you go. Where did you guys that deck off? Get some. Awesome. Also, don't forget about Jock's door. Discipline equals freedom. Shirts, hats, hoodies on there. Good.

Get after it. Somebody gets some. This is where you can represent on the path. So quality stuff on there. I said this before. But I focused on the fit and wearability. A lot of people tell me that this is their favorite shirt. Sure, they like the design, but how it fits them.

That means a lot to some of us, by the way. Also, we have what's called the shirt locker. Jocko named it. Shirt locker, it's a subscription. I didn't name it. Somebody, a trooper named it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just approved it.

Approved it. But we put it out, like, we'll be good. I think you put it out. We'll be a cool name. Yep. Sherlock, hell yeah. Shirt locker was not, it was a far head, like, head and shoulders above the rest. Yes.

From what I remember. Agree. New design every month, subscription. Situation. Slash scenario. Also, I'm getting ready to release one of the past designs. I don't know if I told you this. One of the past designs, I'm going to release it into the wild on the normal store.

Be on the lookout for that. Which one? I don't know if I should tell you. Actually, it's the sugar-coated lies. One. People seem to like that one. It's one of the favorites. So I'm going to release it.

I can't say when, but very soon within the next two weeks, maybe. I'm so glad that you have this policy of, you know, national security on your Hey, brother, I'm trying to keep it. Keep it. You know. But if you sign up for the email list, I'll email you the day that it comes out. How about that? So you can get the first jump on it.

If you want it, you know, it's a good one. Some people have it already. So it's cool, you know, or if you want another one, if it's worn out, a few years ago, it came out. But, yes, you have access to that shirt very soon. So if you sign your email up on the front page of jocco store. I come on the bottom, if I'm not mistaken. Boom, I'll email you. I won't spam me, I promise.

So yeah, that's all on jocco store.com. Check. We got a bunch of books. Check out put on your legs by Rob Jones. Check out Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Check out the books that I've written about leadership, about discipline, and then a bunch of kids books. Check those out as well. Primalbeef.com.

Selling you some steak. Colorado Craftbeef.com also selling you some steak. Check those out. Outstanding people, outstanding companies. Outstanding American. Stakes. Check those out. Echelonfront.com.

So we have an event. We have an event called The Muster. It's two days, two, a little bit, two plus days, and it is teaching the skills of leadership. The next one is in San Diego, California, July 8th through the 10th. Now, going into this, the thought was, people like to come to San Diego.

People might want to bring their families to San Diego, give people a reason to come to San Diego, hit the Muster, and then hang with your family, take them to the Zoo, take them to SeaWorld. Take them to the USS Midway. Take them to the UDT Seal Museum. Do all those things. And so that's what we're doing.

It is July 8th through the 10th. Now, you can bring your family, like I said, and you can bring away the skills to lead your family. So go to eF muster.com or go to Asselmfront.com and check out the events. And then Extreme Ownership.com. This is our. Online Training Academy where we teach people the skills of leadership online. That is available now.

Also, I don't know if you saw on this, but the Ask Jocko is available as an app inside the Apple store and also inside the Android store. So if you have questions for me, but you forgot my number or you don't have my number. You can just go to Ask Jocko and download that app and then you can ask me questions. And I will be talking to you. Actually, I asked it yesterday. I was like, is Jocko a good person? And it said, yeah, I'm a good person. And I was like, but you're not Jocko?

And he says, well, technically I'm not. But because I'm always trying to ask it questions to trip it up or like, see what it says and see how it responds. So is Jocco a good person? He's like, yes, I am a good person. I was trying to help people out by covering and moving and taking ownership when I make a mistake. And I go, yeah, but you're not Jocco. And it was like, well, it was kind of like, listen, you can get technical over here, but I am pretty much like what Jocko thinks. And I was like, but you're not Jock?

And he says, well, no, technically I'm not. Oh, it told it. Okay. It took responsibility. It took a couple. So my son, now meanwhile, this is the, one of the prelim versions of it. It was me, my son, Carrie, and the Jocco fuel guys. We're all in there.

And we're doing the same. thing you know we're having some fun with it or whatever and but your voice not your voice the voice it's voice cracked a little bit for some weird i don't know it's weird but it's funny because it went oh like you know like how like oh really like if you're losing your voice it almost sounded like that that's what it sounded like oh yeah because my son brought this up the other day to my daughter and her friends and he was kind of kind of roasting it he was like um oh yeah then you're like hey jaco we heard your voice crack right there and he's like my voice did not crack you misheard Now this and it was like,

Oh, right. Did it actually do that? He literally did that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a little, Jocko, ask Jocko is definitely, he's a little bit, a little bit,

what's the word? He's a little bit more confident than Jocko actual. More confident. It goes hard. You know, when you live in a computer simulation, things go well all the time.

He hasn't had quite as many setbacks in life as I have. Like things are going pretty good, for him. He hasn't had, you know, things go wrong yet. Right. And he may or may not. Yeah, you know, because especially because he'll rationalize it to you and be like, oh, like, that wasn't, you heard, you misheard. Yeah. Yeah. That's a rationalization right there. But anyways, you can check that out. That is, that is, that is, uh, ask Jocko. I will say this. It, the answers that it gives, you know, it's, it's built for leadership questions. And it does an outstanding job. It really does. It is, it is very impressive. it will give you a very good take, a very good detached take, and it will give you some really solid courses of action. And it'll give you some things that you probably,

or yeah, you probably didn't think of a couple aspects that it's going to bring up, which is pretty cool. So check that out. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families.

You want to help the gold star families out there. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Momalish. Got an amazing charity organization. It helps our veterans so much. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's, Wighty Warriors.org.

Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. And don't forget about Jimmy May's organization. I think he's coming on the podcast next week. Beyond the Brotherhood.org. And of course, please check out Warriors in Need. You just heard what they do, how they do it. Like I said on the podcast, I don't think I've heard, I don't think I've seen such a fitting solution

for such a massive problem. Like this is such a, it's perfect. So if you want to connect with them, go to warriors in need.org. Please spread the word to people that you know in the military because this is such a great opportunity for them. And it will get them a job. It'll get them a new mission.

It's just a great, it'll help America. So check that out, warriors and need.org. And they're also that on Instagram, TwitterX, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Warriors in Need. And also, Ben, what's Ben? Fly Ben, 46. Yep, fly Ben, 46. On Instagram at,

Fly Ben 46. And that 46 is for the old CH 46, of which Ben was a crew chief, of which I spent many, many, many, many, many, many hours in and fast roped out of many, many, many times. And parachuted out of and just generally got after it. Those aircraft are like workhorse aircraft.

They're like a Ford F-350. You know, they're just like, hey, we load it up. It's going to keep going. It's maybe not the most beautiful thing to look at, but when it shows up on the job site, you're pretty pumped. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yes.

So check that out. And then to connect with us, you can check out jocco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink Echocatical, Charles. We're there, you know, sometimes. But we're also very weary of the algorithm that is being manipulated by a bunch of people with a bunch of agendas. And not one of those people has the agenda of making you smarter, stronger, faster, or better. They have the agenda of taking your time away from you and selling you something.

So use caution. And thanks to Ben once again for coming on. Awesome to see you. And thanks to all of our military, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Thanks for everything that you do. And with a special thanks today to the aviation maintenance professionals. like I said, I spent countless hours flying in Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps

aircraft, whether it was transport aircraft, whether it was helicopters, and having them flying overhead, overhead support, whether they were attack helicopters or whatever, attack aircraft. Our military aviation has never let me down and as thanks to those crews that keep those birds running. So thanks to all y'all. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics,

and EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for what you do here at home to keep us safe. And everyone else out there, you need a mission. And as Henry Rollins once said, not a gig or a good time, but a mission. And believe me, when I was 14 years old,

I heard that. See, a gig or a good time, they don't really have any challenge they don't have any real purpose and so therefore there's kind of a lack of meaning so you don't just need a gig or a good time you need a mission and i will say that most of the time a mission just doesn't appear this isn't like in the military where even the military it's not like hey we got this mission tasking it's time to go that that rarely happened to me normally we had to generate the missions so you got to work for the missions you got to look for the missions you got to find the gaps you got to find the opportunities you got to look where

people are struggling figure out who needs help and then go into those areas lean into those areas get active and eventually you'll find your mission and get it done until we've got for tonight until next time this is echo and jocco out