Jocko Podcast - 542: Stronghold: War, Rescue, and Resistance. With Ephraim Mattos

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< Ephraim Mattos explains how Stronghold Rescue & Relief trains local people to save lives in one of the world’s deadliest ongoing conflicts.Stronghold Rescue | https://strongholdrescue.org/The Overwatch | https://www.theoverwatch.co/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko podcast number 542 with Echo Charles and me. Jocko Willink. Good evening. Good evening. On the morning of Thursday, June 8th, 2020, just a few miles from the location of the massacre. The Burma Army attacked several villages, looking to root out and kill any of the villagers

who would dare defend themselves from the Burma Army's tyranny. Mortars rained down on unsuspecting civilians, killing some and wounding others, as the Burma army assaulted the undefended villages. However, on this day, things went differently. Reacting quickly to the mortar barrage, the civilians knew what to do. They stopped the major bleeding of the wounded using makeshift tourniquets made from bandages and clothes in the village, tightening them with sticks and other items until the patients were stabilized enough for immediate evacuation.

Relying on a series of strategically placed handheld radios, the fleeing villagers, communicated with other nearby villages and coordinated for a safe place to run, and they took their wounded with them. At the outset of the battle, local village defenders moved into place to slow the enemy advance and by enough time for the families to escape. Some of these young, brave men were killed and wounded. The defenders used cat tourniquets to stop the bleeding of the wounded and tactical field litters to quickly evacuate the patients when the defenders could know longer hold the line when the battle subsided the villagers who fled or provided rice and medicine that had been stockpiled in secure locations around the jungle the critically wounded

were taken to the bank of a large lake where a medical boat was waiting with medics extra supplies and advanced life support and that right there's a little section of an article from the online magazine called coffee or die and the article is written by ephraimatos and although the article paints a pretty gruesome picture just a few months prior there was another devastating attack that had taken place only in that attack the villagers were not prepared they were not ready they were defenseless and 17 people including a handful of children were not able to escape and they were captured by Burma army soldiers they were tortured they were violated they were murdered and their bodies were set on fire and the difference between these two

situations one ending in a massacre and the other ending in people actually escaping was training and preparation and supplies provided by an amazing charitable organization called stronghold rescue and relief. And this is an organization that was founded by Eiffram Maddos, who is a former seal that fought in Afghanistan. He also fought as a civilian in Missoule in 2017 where he was shot by ISIS during the rescue of a young girl who was hiding in a pile of corpses in front of ISIS HQ. but that wasn't enough for Ephraim. He had more to give and he founded Stronghold Rescue and Relief and has been working all over the globe with a particular focus in the violent war in Burma, training the locals and giving them the ability to fight and survive. And he's joined us before a podcast 398.

It's an honor to have him back with us again tonight to share some of his experiences from the front. lines and the incredible work that he, his people, and his organization do. Ephraim, welcome back. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. And do we need to talk about your name change? Sure, why not?

I feel like, I feel bad. So you have a new podcast, and your podcast is called Overwatch with Ephra Maddos, and I was listening to it. And in the beginning of it, you introduce yourself as Ephra Maddos. And as soon as I heard that, I felt bad because on the podcast, on the podcast, you from Maddoz, the last time you were on this podcast three years ago, I called you Ephraim the whole time. And you responded perfectly well.

And it seemed like normal. And then when you got here today, I said, hey, man, did I mess up your pronunciation of your name last time? And you said I kind of didn't. So what went down? So basically what happened?

So growing up, I was called Ephraim. My parents called me Ephraim. But then when I joined the military, literally like the day I was leaving from boot camp, but just sort of in my head, I just said, well, you know, I'm just going to start saying my name is Ephraim, because it's going to be easier for people to pronounce. And that was the entire amount of thought that I had put into that.

And so for the past decade and a half, since I went to a boot camp in 2010, anytime somebody asked me my name, I said, well, it's Ephraim. But then about a year, year and a half ago, I was just sitting there and, you know, I'm married now. I have a daughter. And I was just thinking about, I was like, why did I change my name? I was like, my father named me Ephraim. My mother named me Ephraim, why am I saying Ephraim? I just had never really thought about it.

And so I just was thinking, I was like, well, you know, if I keep, if I just double down on Ephraim, that's what people know me as like, that's what Jacco calls me. That's what everybody calls me. I'm going to look like an idiot if I, if I go back. But I was like, no, I was like, no, my father named me Ephraim. My mother named me Ephraim. So I'm going to go back to Ephraim and, you know, so, yeah, it's, is my first person to like call you out on this?

Publicly, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what did you do with like your friends that had been calling you Ephraim for the past six years or whatever. Well, most of them call me Matos or some, some people still call me

Ephra. I mean, it's still totally fine. I don't, I don't correct people on it. I don't, I don't really care. It's not, it's not that big of a deal.

Usually just let it slide. The only, so my nickname has been Jocko since my parents gave me that nickname before I was born. And so everyone called me Jocko. My family call me Jocko. My friend,

my immediate now family calls me Jocko. The only time I didn't go by, it car, I got a, letter. This is how it got to the teams because I got a letter in buds and they handed us letters and it said jaco on it. One of the instructors was like,

Jocka, what the hell is that? And so that's how it kind of got back into the teams or into the teams because otherwise I didn't really bring it up. But when I went to college for three years, there was, you know, they have a whatever roster sheet. What do you call that?

A roster sheet. Like a class list. There's some real particular name for it, isn't there? Attendance. Attendance. Attendance sheet. And on there it's John Willink, right? And so that's the only place where the teachers and the students called me John. Because I didn't say, well, actually, it's really, actually my nickname is John. Like, it didn't, it didn't ever feel it was a professional. I guess if I go into a bank or something, of course, you know, they're like, oh, John.

So I felt the same way about college. Like, this is a transactional relationship. These people don't really know me. So their, John is cool, whatever. And that's kind of, that's kind of how it's been. Yeah, that works for me. Pretty much for anybody, anybody that just calls me the letter, anything with the letter E, I'm like, okay, I know you're, I know you're talking about me.

I know you're talking about me. E, big E, easy E. I was like, okay. Because most people, they don't even try to pronounce it. They just go, here go E, whatever. And I'm like, all right. What does your wife call you? E for him, yeah.

What did she call you five years ago? Well, I didn't know her five years ago. Three years ago? Three years ago. I think I, I think I was saying Ephram still at the time. So she's, made the transition. Yeah, yeah. She's totally, she's totally fine with that. She thinks it's funny. So she's, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Right on. All right. Well, um, you've been, you've been done a lot. And

anybody that wants to hear your story, which is an amazing story, and including how you grew up, very, very fascinating kind of way to join the military, growing up in a pretty sheltered environment. And then you just go straight into the SEAL team. It's pretty awesome. But go listen to 398, you know, you did, you did your time in Afghanistan and seal platoon, another, I think, a paycom deployment and then eventually end up over in Iraq as a volunteer trying to help people. And then from there, you eventually get this stronghold rescue and relief going. And like I said in the beginning, a lot of this centered on Burma, although you guys have worked in Ukraine, like a bunch of places.

Yeah. Besides Burma, but Burma certainly focus. So before we get into stronghold, let's, Let's get a little bit of background on Burma because it's one of those things where it's, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of people that probably couldn't find it on a map, but there's been so much history there.

And before we hit record today, I was talking about my childhood and how I remembered as a child, the Burma being this brutal battle that was fought in the jungles. And, you know, when I'd be out with my buddies in the woods, if things got really gnarly while we were having BB gun wars, Wars, you know, if I really had to break it down, I'd be like, yo, boys, we're Burma.

Because World War II is brutal. Imperial Chinese, it was the monsoon season, the jungle, the whole nine yards. But a lot of stuff has happened there. Let's get a little bit of history. I mean, starting with the fact that the Brits ruled Burma from the 1800s up until 1948, with some excursions by the Japanese Imperial Army in there. What else? What else we need to know about Burma?

Well, I think the most important thing is, to kind of just basically start from World War II up to where we are now. So the important thing, like you said, before, the British had controlled the country. And then after World War II, what I always say is that World War II basically never ended for Burma. Like the war has basically just continued on. The generations of guys that I go and work with in the jungle, their fathers fought, their grandfathers fought, their great-grandfathers fought. It's never ended. So when the British were there, it was called Burma.

and then after 1940, the British leave. But there was an important thing that happened during World War II. And so during World War II, the Japanese, they invaded Burma specifically because they actually wanted to cut off China, which is very important to modern-day geopolitics, by the way. But so the Burma army attacked, or sorry, the Japanese attacked Burma. And their whole purpose was to cut off the British and allies from resupplying China because Japan was trying to take over China at the time.

And so during the war, there was this, like you said, brutal fighting in the jungle. But the very interesting thing about what happened in Burma was, so the ethnic Burmese, they originally sided with Japan against the British. So they were fighting alongside the Japanese. So the Japanese show up and the Burmese are like, oh, thank God. Thank God the Japanese are here, der Riddis of these foul British people. but many of the ethnic minority tribes, and particularly the Karen tribe that I work with,

they loved the British. The Karen loved the British because the British would protect them from all of these ethnic conflicts. The British wouldn't allow the Burmese to come in and attack and try to take over their land and stuff. So the Karen loved the British and fought with the British the whole time. So the Burmese, they side with the Japanese and they work with the Japanese not only to fight the British,

but also to fight against these ethnic minority tribes. in some of the hills and some of the valleys that I still work in today. And so then, so the, so the Japanese make it all the way to, um, India. And there's these, there's these big battles. And then eventually the, the Japanese are defeated. But the logistics lines are impossible to keep going through the, through, through, through, through, through the, through the, through the, through the, through the war and start to push the Japanese back. And it's this brutal march. Way more Japanese soldiers were killed just trying to march back, uh, to Thailand, but at the time called Siam.

then were actually killed by the British. They all just died in the jungle from starvation and disease and all this. But so as that's happening, the Burmese suddenly decide that they now like the British. And so they actually switched sides during the war and started fighting with the British and started to help expel the Japanese. And so then during the war, they were eventually able to push the Japanese out. And then, you know, war ends around 1945. and then around 1948, just a few years later, the British, obviously, they've taken heavy casualties across their entire sort of empire.

And so they were pulling back from all these different places. And one of the places they pulled back from was Burma. And so when they pulled back, they have all this weaponry. They have all this stuff. And they leave it there. And now the Koren had some weapons. The other ethnic tribes also had weapons. But the Burmese, who lived in the middle of the country, they sort of live in the coastal lowlands

and the sort of bread basket, the rice fields in the middle of the country, they got a large amount of these weapons as well. And so basically from 1948, the Burmese then just immediately started doing what they were doing before the British showed up, you know, 150, 200 years earlier. They just started immediately trying to subjugate all the ethnic minority populations, including and specifically the Karen. Now, also before we go on, there's multiple other tribes. There's the Rohingya, there's the Kachin, there's the Shan, there's the Wa, there's

these other major tribes. but just for just for ease of explanation I work with the Karen tribe specifically but I don't want to make it sound like the Burma army isn't attacking these other people because they definitely are. Is the Corinne tribe the most prominent tribe? I think the largest tribe I think is actually the Kachin.

I think they're the largest but the Karen are arguably one of the most prominent because they also are on the border with Thailand and they've been yeah they're one of the stronger tribes for sure And so then during, so then during World War II, or so after World War II, this fighting then continues on. And long story short, over the last 75, 80 years, the Burma Army has just become stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And the government of Burma now is the military. The military just says we're in charge.

You know, they call it a junta. We are now in charge. It's like, again, imagine the U.S. Army, whoever is the, you know, top general, the U.S. Army says, I'm the president now. and the Army's in charge. And that's what's been going on for the last 75 years. Now, what the Burmese want, what the Burma Army wants is they want to subjugate and control all of these ethnic minority populations that are basically around the rim of the country and all the borderland areas.

But it's very difficult to do because the borderlands are, a lot of them are very mountainous, particularly in the Karen area. It's very mountainous. So if you go into the mountains, so mountain warfare is hard. jungle warfare is hard. Mountain jungle warfare is even harder, especially if you're the attacker and you're not, you're not used to living there. You're some guy from the city and the lowlands and you're trying to go up in the current hills.

It's like you're going to get smoked. So, but the Burma Army for years has been trying to build roads into these areas. And that's, that's in short kind of what's going on now. But there's an important inflection point that happened in 2021. So during the last sort of decade and a half, the Burma Army has been sort of making these kind of fake overtures, putting in civilian rule and some democracy, but it's totally fake democracy. For example, under their constitution, the military was given automatically no matter what, at least one third of all the seats in their parliament or whatever they call it. And then typically what would happen is basically another third of the people who were elected, quote unquote, would be just guys who used to be, they were a Burma Army officer yesterday.

and now they just got elected today. And so basically the Burma Army had total control of the government. And then maybe a third of the seats were actually, you know, legit, were legitimately elected people. But then in 2021, the Burma Army basically just said, we're no longer, we're no longer going to, you know, play this charade anymore. And we're just going to take over. And we're going to get rid of any of these semblances of democracy.

Now, when they did that, as far as governance, nothing really changed. But what did change was now the ethnic Burmese, who were, the ethnic Burmese, the younger generation who were excited about this idea of democracy and they're not, they're not this sort of warring tribe, you know, they're not, they're not, they're not fans of the Burma army because the Burma army became corrupt and started to oppress their own people and that kind of thing. So then in 2021, when this coup happened, now the ethnic Burmese, young people fled to the hills and started joining all the resistance groups. And so now they have the people's defense force, the PDF, which is this large ethnic Burmese army

that it's now fighting against the Burma Army, whereas that did not exist four years ago. So now it is full-on total war. The Burma Army is almost like an occupying army in their own country. So they're almost like a foreign army that's occupying their own country, whereas before they were the dominant power.

And the war, unfortunately, over the last year or two has shifted. The rebels, when I say rebels throughout this, the rebels are the good guys. I think Star Wars rebels. So they're fighting against the empire. But the rebels have been, unfortunately, losing a lot of ground because now Russia and China are heavily backing up the Burma Army. And so just so we understand the geopolitical situation on the ground there as well.

So both if you look at a map of sort of the greater Eurasian continent and you look at Russia, let's start with Russia. So Russia, they have multiple ports, but all their ports are really far north. So they can get through the Baltic Sea, Black Sea. But most of their ports and most of their access to the ocean is very far north. And it's only accessible during parts of the year because the rest of the year it's frozen over. And China is in a fairly similar situation where they only have their east coast and they're pretty high up. And so if China wants to do any kind of shipping or expand their naval power, whatever, they have to go past Japan. They have to go past the Philippines.

If they want to get over to India, if they want to go through the rest of the world, they have to go through the Straits of Malacca, which is, you know, Malaysia, Singapore. or Indonesia right there, which are nominally allies of the United States. And so you basically have a Strait of Hormuz type situation in the Strait of Malacca down there in Southeast Asia. So what are Russia and China supposed to do if they want to have access to the rest of the world and not be sort of beholden to the entire world with these naval choke points? Well, you go through Burma because Burma is the one place where both Russia and China can get access to the ocean and that's what they're doing.

So if you go to Burma, down in the south, you look at a map. So down in the south, China has these special economic zones, and Russia is setting up a special economic zone as well, where they're building these deep water ports, and they're bringing in large amounts of weapons, they're bringing in fighter jets, they're bringing in massive amounts of firepower to back up the Burma army. And the Russians now are even, they're in the process of,

they're in the planning phase right now, and have already announced their intention to build a nuclear power plant there in Burma. Yeah. And it's so that's, which is obviously not a, not a great, not a great look. But basically so Russia and China are heavily involved in supplying weapons to the Burma army. And so the situation is very dire because now all these new drones and with the advent of, and with the advent of drone warfare and obviously, you know, Russian fighter jets and all kinds of, you know, Chinese weapons and stuff. The Burma army is now using that to just pull. Hummel the rebels anywhere that they can find him. So the war has greatly shifted over just the last couple of years as well. Now, the last time you were on was 2023, and you ended up going to Harvard and getting a degree from where?

The Harvard, Harvard Kennedy School, HKS, yeah. And so what did you study? I got a master's in public administration. So I focused on decision science, policy, that kind of thing. how was it going to there through your lens of life that had to be kind of crazy yeah no it was it was very crazy so um so the funny thing is i actually got my acceptance letter to harvard when i was in burma so i'm sitting in i'm sitting in burma and i got an email and uh i was like hey you've been accepted to this program and i thought oh this is great and actually maybe six months earlier i'd

been sitting in a in a jungle or sorry in a in a village that uh is now controlled by the burma Army and I had sat there and used Starlink to put in my application to Harvard. So I was sitting there on my phone writing out my, you know, application essays with a bunch of, you know, guerrilla fighters. I'm the only white dude there, you know, within, within 50, 60 miles. Let's face it, bro. You both had a sick essay. Yeah.

It was like. Right now in the jungle. Yeah. Surrounded by. That's freaking as unique as it gets. Yeah. So, so I, you know, wrote my essays. I had submitted that and then and then a few months later.

Yeah, I got the, I was in Burma. And, you know, I was like, oh, I got the acceptance letter. This was really cool. Now, the only reason I was able to apply to the program. The only reason I was willing to do the program was because it was a 12-month intensive program. So you have to go to Harvard. You have to move to Boston. You got to go to school in Cambridge in person.

But it was a one-year program. So it was 12 months. And so you did a summer term, and then you had to do two semesters at more than full-time. So it was 12 months straight. But it was designed specifically for people who are mid-care. It's called a mid-care MBA program. What other unique people were in there with you? All kinds of, all kinds of people from all over the world, different high up people in different, from different countries.

There was some, there's actually a bunch of guys who were active, active military who were sort of getting master's degrees. So officers who were there working on master's programs as well, guys who were going to be stationed at the Pentagon and that kind of thing after. So their next duty station was going to be the Pentagon. So they were also going through this program as well. So yeah, lots of very interesting people, people who were going to be. going to like run to be, you know, prime minister of, of some country in, you know, Africa. And so very, very, very interesting, very interesting classmates. Lots of, lots of Chinese people who were clearly, you know, clearly loyal to the,

clearly loyal to the Chinese Communist Party, we shall say. So that was an interesting experience to kind of interact with those people. But yeah, so I did the program. And so it was actually really good because it forced me to do two things. So with Strongholds, my full-time job is running Stronghold. But my, so I just gotten married and my wife is pregnant. And so I needed some stability in my life. And I also needed to learn how to kind of let go and let the other operators, let the people,

let the employees at Stronghold go and work in the field without me there. And they're totally able to do it. They're totally competent, like really incredible people. but I needed to let go as a leader. Just like, hey, let you go do that. So this forced me to do that. I was home for the birth of my daughter and school and stuff. But then during the Christmas break, which was like six weeks,

it was a pretty long time. I would actually, I still went to Burma on a mission. So I went to Burma. So that was, and we can talk about that later, but basically I get back from that mission. And, you know, people were like, oh, how was your Christmas break and everything? And I just, I didn't want to talk to anybody about. snow at Aspen.

Yeah, it was wonderful. Yeah, and I'd literally been just sleeping in a hole getting, you know, hit with airstrikes and, you know, getting mortared, living in the jungle, like, you know, stabbing scorpions as I'm trying to jump into a trench as like air strikes are coming in. And, you know, obviously we had some guys, one of some the local guys were killed and some of the missions out there. And so, yeah, so then I get back from that and it's just walked back into class at Harvard and everything's just totally, everything's, you know, totally normal.

So it was a huge culture shock. kind of interesting to see that. And it was also Harvard during an election year, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government during an election year. So that was very, and, you know, obviously I was there when the, you know, attempted assassination on Trump when he was, you know, nicked in the ear. And then also obviously the election and stuff as well.

So it was just very interesting to sort of just be a fly in the wall. I wish I had engaged a little more with everybody, but I quite frankly sat back and was just a little bit more quiet and just didn't engage a bunch. I was also dealing with a lot of, I don't know what it was, shell shock or something. So we, I'd had a, between submitting my application to Harvard and getting accepted to Harvard, during that time, I was in a battle and we'd been hit with air strikes and I showed you, I showed you some of the videos before we started recording here.

But when that happened, I was like, oh, I'm totally fine. I felt totally fine. but I think I think it did something to my nerves. And so I found when I was at school, when I was at Harvard, I would just raise my hand to answer a question or whatever in class. And I'm not shy. I'm not particularly outgoing, but I'm not shy. Like I'm not, I don't get nervous speaking in front of people. But anytime there was any kind of, if my adrenaline was coming up a little bit or just a little bit of nerves, social nerves or anything, my hands would start to shake.

I would get all clammy, not noticeable for other people to see, but I could feel it. my voice would shake. And so I knew, I knew something was, I knew something was up with me. And so that time at, at school was a good time as well to just sort of let my,

I had some sort of underlying stress level going on that I didn't understand. And that was able to kind of come down a little bit during that time. Now, were the, were the air strikes? And again,

you showed the video, it's horrific to watch. It's horrific to watch because, like I've been mortared before, which is, you know, one thing. but the airstrikes is kind of next level.

You know, when you're on the ground, you can hear the aircraft coming in. And of course, you know, I've seen air strikes from the perspective of we're dropping bombs and they're going to hit someone else. It's a lot different clearly from that video when, you know, as an American, that's just not supposed to be like that,

especially, you know, for our experiences in the Gwant. There is no, you know, we have total mastery over the air. We do whatever we want up there. So for you to be on the receiving end of that, when did that start happening? The airstrikes and such? Yeah. Well, I mean, the airstrikes have been going on for forever, but I guess I can kind of just get into that specific story and dive into the details on that.

So I was on the podcast. It was, whatever that was July, 2023. And so then a few months later, I was in, I was in Burma. So now the rebels, so the Koran, I was again, with the Karen. and one of the things that they were trying to do was try to take back territory that had been taken by the Burma army. And so there was this town. And I'm going to leave out some of the little identifying details just for OPSEC reasons because these places are still under threat and still, you know, there's still a lot of fighting in these areas. But so there was this town.

And the Karen wanted to liberate the town. Now, in order to understand why they need to liberate the town, we've got to talk a little bit about what the Burma Army does when they go into these places. So you alluded to it right at the beginning. But the Burma Army, basically, this particular town, they had been occupying it. So they weren't trying to, like, ethnically cleanse people in the town as a fairly large town. But it was a very important river crossing. So there's a large bridge there to cross a strategic river. And so the Burma Army had been occupying it for the longest time.

But they still commit these atrocities against the local people because there's sort of this domineering, occupying power. One of the things that they will do is they will take the civilians and they'll have the civilian population. They'll take Karen people and they'll make them walk in front of Burma Army patrols as the Burma Army patrols out to these different villages. And so if there's landmines, if there's booby traps, if there's claymores, if the rebels are wanting to ambush the Burma Army, it's like, well, you can't do it because there's civilians intermixed with the Burma Army soldiers. And so basically they'll use people as human shields. obviously there's going to be sexual assault, there's going to be, you know, beatings, there's going to be, you know, all that kind of stuff that's going to go on, you know, forced disappearances, murdering people, things of that nature.

And so that's a, that's kind of what's going on in these towns. So anyway, so the Koren want to go and take take back this town. And so they assembled around 500 men to go take back this town. And now keep in mind the Karen, their entire life for the last, you know, 75 years has been guerrilla warfare. So they're used to working in groups of maximum 20, 30, 40, I mean maximum? And they're used to hit and run tactics. And they're used to fighting in the jungle.

So they're excellent at ambush, excellent at reconnaissance, excellent at sort of all the unconventional warfare stuff, sort of Vietnam-style war, like Viet Cong style fighting. But they don't know anything about urban combat. They've most of these guys have never fought in a town where the buildings have concrete walls. They just don't know. that's just not their not their culture so um so essentially what happened was the the the karenne they went to take this town and um they they crossed over this river um by night knocked out a couple of enemy bridges um and then that same night as they knocked out these enemy bridges which is where the reinforcements

would come from then the main assault of several hundred men then attacked the town um from one side of the river and uh you know this massive urban battle um ensues now during this I was with a team of a total of three of us, so myself and two other stronghold guys. And our mission was to provide emergency medical care for them. And then myself, I was basically acting as an advisor to the commander. So if there was any sort of tactical stuff we needed to talk about, I was there as a sounding board for him as well to, you know, because he's obviously dealing with this highly complex situation and okay, how do you, how do you get your logistics? How do you move hundreds of men?

How do you make sure they've got ammo? How do you make sure they've got food? it. How do we have an evac plan to get our patients out of here? How are we going to move them the several miles through open ground with all these rice fields to get them to back to the mountains where they can, you know, be safe and that kind of thing? How are we going to set up communication? So this is a whole new level. And so one of the things we do at stronghold, 99% what we do is emergency medical care. But if we're in these situations where there's a tactical situation where we're trying to liberate people, it's like, yeah, we're absolutely going to help you

if we're able to in those situations. So we go into the town, a part of a three-man team. We go in there. We're embedded directly with the locals and the C2 element, the command and control element, the commander of the forces.

We move into the town, which in hindsight was not a good move. We should have stayed back a little further and just sort of coordinated comms. But we also needed to provide that emergency medical care because, you know, a lot of stuff, obviously a lot of wounded in an urban battle. So the battle starts, we get in there now.

The Burma Army, these guys are professional. This is not, you're not dealing with some army that isn't motivated, that isn't well trained, that is poorly supplied, that has no experience. That's not what you're up against. You're up against a military machine that has, that is decades and decades old. And it is part of their culture. I hesitate to call them sort of, I hesitate to call them Spartan because, you know, I hesitate to call them Spartan because, That's too much of a compliment for them. But it's sort of like that they are raised.

A lot of these Burmese guys are raised and with the understanding that they're going to be a part of the military. If you're ethnic Burmese, it's like you are going to be an officer in the Burma Army and you are going to help take back, you know, you're going to help take back your country from these, you know, inferior, these inferior ethnic tribes. And many of the Burma Army soldiers, many of the Burma Army officers in particular actually go to Russia to learn how to fight from the Russians. So they go to their military academies, they go to their flight schools, and they're supplied by, you know, Chinese and Russian fighter jets. And so they learn all this stuff. And they have artillery. They have mortars. And the Burma Army actually makes their own weapons.

They literally pull raw material and they go, they have their own factories. They make their own bullets. They make all of their own stuff. And so they are highly, highly self-sufficient, which is one of the reasons why sanctions and stuff doesn't quite work with them because they're highly self-sufficient. sufficient. But my point is the Burma Army troops that are defending this strategic town, these are not, these are not chumps. These are not. They're legit, legit. And how many, what do you think, what do you estimate the Burma army forces are in the town? Probably 75 to 100. Okay. So we have 500 on our rebel force. Yes, but we have them, we have our rebel forces is spread out a little bit.

So the main element is, I'll say a few hundred. We'll talk after about specific numbers, but the main element is a few hundred guys that go in. So it's not a huge numerical advantage. It's enough, but not quite enough. We're going into an urban environment where they're in the defensive position. You're supposed to have 10 to 1, by the way. Like that's the doctrinal number going into an urban environment.

So this is rough. We're well short of 10 to 1. Let's put it that way. So we get in there. And the Burma Army, they, they were ready, they were ready, because the rebels had attacked this town before. And so they were ready. They knew exactly what their defensive strategy was going to be.

And they sort of hedgehogged, fell back to defensive positions, and they fought ferociously because they know that, you know, if the, if the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, if the, you know, the, you know, the Keren guys get in there, it's like, yeah, like, you know, you're going to go be a prisoner of war, best case scenario, you know, somewhere for the next, you know, when are you ever going to go home, you know, it's like, you're done. Or obviously, you're die fighting, that kind of thing. So they prefer to die fighting.

And, um, so. So we get into the town and now the Burma Army is several miles away. They also have howitzers set up in these positions. And we knew the howitzers were there ahead of time. We just didn't know specifically what types they were or whatever. Anyways, the Burma Army starts firing artillery into the town and it's fairly accurate. So we go into the town and we are under a almost 24 hour artillery barrage. There's a few hours in the middle of night where they would stop the artillery.

But every couple of minutes you would have one, you know, I think I've been like 105s. I'm not really sure what size they were, but artillery is coming in. And you can hear it coming. So you're just, you know, you just, you hear it coming. You just lay down flat. Hopefully it doesn't hit you. And that's it.

And then it goes off. Boom. Wait for the shrapnel to fall. And then you kind of get up and keep doing what you're doing. So, and we're in this for several days. We're in this for three or four days. And we're in the town. And my team and I, we were, our little headquarters slash medical aid station was a,

was a Buddhist temple. And so we're in this large kind of Buddhist temple area. And we're treating the wounded as they're coming through. Now also, while this is happening, civilians are fleeing the city. But they're not fleeing on mass like you would see in Iraq, for example. I don't know what it is, but culturally, I just think they didn't quite understand what was happening or what was going to happen. And so in their minds, they're thinking, well, I'm just going to stay here in my home, lock the door, everything's going to be fine. you know, the rebels are going to leave or the rebels are going to win and like, I'm good,

you know, so not enough of them left, quite frankly. And so we were getting civilian casualties and there were, so for example, the Burma armies firing artillery into the town, but then they're also bringing in air strikes. Now, keep in mind, just a 15 or 20 minute flight away from this battlefield is a Burma Army air base where they have Chinese built fighter jets, you know, with Burma Army pilots. And so they are just, they're just, you know, putting a little bit of gas in the tank, load up some bombs, go, go hit targets, you know, that are being called out by the Burma Army soldiers and then go back and refuel and just do it again, do it again all day. Basically from more from from sunup till sundown, they're coming in and just constantly doing sorties. And they're dropping 500 pound bombs, sometimes multiple 250 pound bombs.

And then they're also strafing. So they drop a bomb, come back around and strafe. Drop a bomb, come back around and strafe. And they're doing heavy sorters plus artillery. So that's that's that's the world. I'm living in. And so the reason I mentioned the civilians, so some of the civilians are leaving in, and there was one particular case where there was a man, he, him and his wife, he was relatively more of a poor guy, and he lived close to the river, and artillery came in. I don't know, he probably,

somebody probably saw him, the Burma Army probably saw him and thought there was like rebels in his hut or something like that. So they called in an artillery strike on his, on his house, and he's got, it was a guy is maybe 45. He's got three young kids. And the artillery round comes in, lands, and basically blows off the top of his wife's head. And her head was completely sort of like watermeloned by this artillery right in front of all the kids. And so he grabbed her body, dragged her down to the river and just kind of pushed her body into the river. And then he walked out. And, you know, as he was walking out of the town, he, you know, came over and showed us and explained to us what had just happened to his wife.

and I have a video of that conversation that I was having with him. But so civilians are coming out. So we're several days into this. And the rebels, they're not used to this urban fighting. And so one of the things that we would do, like if we were urban fighting, is you kick in the door of any house and you use it as a firing position. You get the civilians out of there, but you use it as a firing position. You get up high. You're kicking in the windows.

You're kicking in the doors and you move house to house. they didn't want to do this because they didn't want to sort of be disrespectful. They didn't want to be, they didn't want to damage the local civilian population. They felt bad about that idea. And so they're basically just fighting in the streets. And they're in some of the houses that they can reach a little bit more easily, but they're not doing, you know, they're not fighting a proper urban battle. Anyway, so they get exhausted. They're trying to rotate their troops back and forth.

So they're, but they're not able to, um, really. rest and they're very they're very stressed out obviously because of the constant artillery and the constant airstrikes so everybody's you're not sleeping you know things are things are rough and so I think it was a third or fourth day they said okay we're gonna we're gonna hold where everybody's going to hold positions we're calling for reinforcement so there's more rebels are going to come and keep in mind during this time the Burma army is also sending reinforcements and so the troops on the other side of the river are holding off these air strikes as the Burma Army is trying to gather their forces to come liberate, you know, quote unquote,

liberate the town. And there are guys that are stuck inside the, stuck inside the town. And so on this particular day, I just so, my team and I all just so happen to get sick. We realized, we realized it afterwards that we were getting sick. But so that day I was like, man, like, I feel really, I feel really bad. This is not good. So it's on, on our end, it was relatively quiet. There's still artillery occasionally coming in, still an occasional gun run, which at the time, I think I was recording, I think there was 30 or 40 impacts just within the first sort of 12 or 13 hours of the day of daylight of bombs going on from artillery or airstrikes. And I was keeping, I was keeping track of it. But on our end,

we're not advancing. And so the Burma Army is sitting quiet. They're not going to come out of hiding. They're conserving ammo and just waiting for their troops to come. And so it's a relatively safe environment for us. Like, we're not going to get attacked. No one's going to come through your window and start throwing grenades at you, that kind of thing. And so we're sitting there. And so I laid down in this Buddhist temple. And the other two guys on my team, they lay down as well. We have no patience to take care of.

And the one and only time I took my boots off. I took my boots off and laid down. And so we're laying there. It's relatively quiet. Nothing's going on. well, we're sitting there and what we don't realize is that one of the civilians who left the town ratted on us. They saw, they were loyal to the Burma Army because there's ethnic Burmese who like the Burma Army and then there's people who are Karen who don't, you know, who don't like.

So in these mixed communities, it's very dangerous. You don't know who's who who's loyal to who. Anyway, so somebody had spotted us. They'd spotted the white guys in the building and they had contacted the Burma Army. And I don't know, I don't know what day they had contacted them. But anyway, they'd got word up there and they said, there's white guys in that building. And they had, I think that through Facebook or something they had, we found, we saw something later. Basically, they had contacted the Burma Army through social media and said, hey, there's white dudes in this building over here. And of course, at the time, we don't know this. And so what the Burma Army did was they, so the entire time that they had been doing these gun runs on the town that we're in, they would always come north to south.

And so we would always hear them coming. So anytime a plane would take off from the base, you know, obviously there's an early morning network. The Burma Army knows that. So we know, okay, there's aircraft taking off. They're going to be here in about eight minutes or ten minutes or whatever it was. And so we were kind of mentally prepared for that. And we could hear them coming because they'd come from the north. Well, what the Burma Army did was they cut all the cell phone towers.

So there was no communication. Of course, we didn't pick up on this until after. But there was no, all the cell phone towers went down because the Burma Army controls them. So they cut all the cell phone towers. And they took three aircraft. and they flew from west to east and we're on the east side of the river. So they came at us from an angle that we would not hear them coming. And there was no early morning except for radios and things like that, but it was just way too late.

So I'm laying down on the ground. And the Burma Army, they use this tactic where their first bomb, they typically drop it short of the target. So their idea is they drop the bomb just outside of a building. If they're targeting a building, they drop it just outside the building. and then the idea is the frag, the directional frag, wounds everybody in the building, like, forces them to sort of freeze in place, and then the next aircraft comes in and drops on the building. So the idea is you want people to run to the building or you want people to be wounded, and so they're stuck, and then you come in and then you hit the building. And so they use this tactic on us. So we all just so happen to be laying down.

So I'm laying there and just trying to rest. And then no warning, no sound, no nothing. the roof of the building I'm in is blown off right on top of us and the windows are obviously just blown in just huge frag, huge, you know, huge explosion. And I look over at the guy next to me,

Adam, and we just, we both just kind of look at each other and for a second we're thinking, like, okay, was that just like artillery? Did the artillery get close? But we're like, no. Because keep in mind, this all happens over the space of like two milliseconds. So we're thinking, okay, was this artillery?

We're like, no, because we hear the artillery when it's coming. and then we hear the jet fly right over us and so we're like get out get out get out get out so we run out and I'm barefoot and there's no time because we know that second we know that second plane's coming in

and so I run out I'm barefoot I leave all my stuff behind the other guys one of the guys had flip-flops on the other guy had his shoes on thank God but we run out we jump in these trenches we're maybe 100 feet of the way from the building and we hear the next aircraft coming in

and I pull out my phone and I'm just I'm huddled in the in the in the in the in this trench and I just pop my head I just pop my phone right above my head because I'm just going to record basically record my death or record whatever's whatever's about to happen nothing I can do and um that second jet comes in boom hits a direct hit on the building completely destroys the building again we're within you know they drop a 500 pound bomb we're within you know a hundred feet of it and so we're in the trenches and um we don't know how many aircraft there are and we don't know how quickly the next gun run is going to be. So we just

hold tight for a second. And because sometimes they would bring, sometimes the Burma army would attack in volleys of two. So they'd bring in a flight of two aircraft. And sometimes they would bring in a volley, a flight of three aircraft. In this particular time, they brought in three aircraft dedicated to this one specific target, which we had never seen them do before. Because the white people in there. Because the white people are in there. Yeah. So not, not big fans of the white people. but so we're in the trench so the first so the first bomb has gone off now the second bomb has gone off because they just bombed us when we're in the trenches and um so we've got about 90 seconds maybe maybe two minutes before the next bomb comes in we don't know that we have that much time so we're hunkering in place and one of our guys adam he's he's you know like you want to talk about a guy under pressure you see you see someone's true character so he i get up and i'm checking on my guys and like hey is anybody hit is anybody hit um and And I see Adam, and he's on top of a wounded soldier in a trench, and he's shielding him with his body, and he's treating his wounds. The soldier was lightly wounded, but he had shrapnel through some of his shoulder and stuff.

And Adam is, you know, he's wearing his stronghold shirt. And there's an image that we have of it, because I was still just filming with my phone. And I thought, like, that is what stronghold is. That is what we are about right there. got a guy with a stronghold shirt covering covering a patient with your own body as bombs are falling you can't make that up you can't stage it it's just you see someone's true character in that moment and we're literally in the trenches with these guys and so then I hear the aircraft I hear the next aircraft coming immediately jump in the trench and I start yelling you know go ball you hey

which means airplane's coming airplanes coming and the next the next aircraft comes in and drops another bomb right on that same building. So they'd already hit the building two times before that, but then they hit it a third time because this was like a big, you know, they wanted to make sure that they killed whatever was in that building. And there was no chance of survival. So they expended a lot of,

a lot of ammunition on that. And then we knew now they were going to follow up with gun runs. So they still have three aircraft, and they still have machine guns on these. These are Chinese built aircraft. And so we just ex-fill on foot. We're like, go, go, go, go.

Let's just get out of here. We need to put some space between us. You're barefoot. And I'm barefoot, and there's shrapnel and stuff everywhere. So we get up and we start running. And, you know, I'm showing the guys, all right, we're going to go out this way. We're going to go out this way. And as we're going, the Burma Army had placed, they placed these bamboo sticks in the ground.

They sharpen these bamboo sticks and they push them in the ground because they don't want the rebels crawling in through the exact routes that we would use to kind of go through alleys and stuff. So they don't want, you know, they don't want the, they don't want the rebels to come through these areas. And so, and they also put down broken glass because it makes noise, you know, cuts people's feet if you're barefoot, that kind of thing. And so as we're, as we're running to kind of go through this culvert, this drainage ditch, which is, which has a bunch of these bamboo spikes and glass. I look over and there's a pig five or six feet away from this and it's been blown in half.

And so the shrapnel was was more than had been, had been flying everywhere. So we're extremely close to like we're in the killbox. And obviously a pig is pretty close to the ground. And so there's shrapnel flying from these airstrikes that was, you know, that was low enough to, you know, again, kill this pig very close. Just one of those sort of odd memories you have. So we start crawling through this and we got to get, we got to get under this culvert and get out of there. And Adam was in front of me. And so he was kind of pointing out.

He's like, hey, glass, glass, glass. So I was luckily able to make it out of there without a scratch and sort of tiptoeing through all this stuff as everybody's screaming at me like, go faster. So we get out of there. And sure enough, the three jets come back. and they start then doing machine gun runs from different angles, just leveling the whole area, just spraying the whole area. At this point, now we're maybe 150, 200 yards away, so we're pretty safe as it goes in war.

So we were able to move out of that position. And then we found out later on. So then basically all the cell phone towers suddenly came back on. As soon as the air strike was done, all the cell phone towers started working in and then the Burma Army started doing all their gun runs north to south again and this was during your Christmas break

did I think no no this was this was not no that we'll get to that story later this was this was actually ironic after you let after the last podcast after the last podcast this was actually this was just a few days after Christmas actually so I was this last year I finally had my first Christmas at home with my wife because I missed

the first three you know two three Christmases we had so yeah So did the rebels get the village back, get the town back? So the rebels held the town for about two months. And then they ultimately lost it. Now, there was just no way to hold. There was several tactical blunders that were made during that, which we can talk about offline because I don't want to give away TTPs

or like basically let the bad guys know because they'll certainly listen to this. I don't want them to know why they won. But there were several tactical errors that were made. But the Burma Army, so this is crazy. and also entirely true. So one of the days were, is before, before we got bombed out of the city. So after I got bombed out of the city,

we, my team and all of our gear was destroyed. And so I had no clothes. I had no shoes. Everything was, everything was leveled in that building. So there was a, our guys were able to go in the rubble and find a few things for me.

My backpack with my passport and stuff in it. So that was good. So we got that, we got that out of the rubble. And so I was, I moved back to a village where I could still advise and help a little bit, but our guys had lost everything other than their passport. So anyway, so I'm there sort of alone at that point.

I'm sick. I'm literally crapping my pants because the day that we got bombed out of this village or this town was the same day that we all got sick. So, but anyway, so before that happened, so before the bombings had happened, I think it was like maybe every day two or three. I was hearing this, I was hearing this noise coming from the Burma army side of the river. we have guys over there. We have our own troops on that side.

But I'm hearing this like, like, sounds like, you know, like a beat coming from. I'm like, what is that? And so then our guys radioed over, our guys from the other side of the river, they radio over and they say, basically they told us the Burma Army was driving down the road to come attack the rebels who were defending the other side of the river. And they were coming down this road and they had these giant trucks with huge speakers on them, Mad Max style, and they're blasting some sort of like war, death metal music. And all of the soldiers, or many of the soldiers, at least, were on meth. So the Burma, it's a totally normal

tactic for the Burma Army. So they'll give their guys meth when they want to hype them up for a particular fight. And so you have these meth-addled troops high, and then they're, you know, shooting their guns in the air, just, you know, raging on this music. And then they were assaulting our guys positions, you know, doing a ground assault to try to clear out our guys. And while, while there's air strikes also coordinated air strikes before the ground assault comes in. And so needless to say, that's not something you're going to defeat with, you know, a handful of guys and some, you know, rusty M16s that barely work. So, so anyway, so like that's, that's sort of like the level of commitment that the Burma Harmony had to get this, to get this town

back. And so, but our guys held it for two straight months. They held it for two months, which was a massive victory, actually, because that prevented the Burma Army from resupplying a bunch of different bases deeper in the hills. And so the Burma Army actually had to surrender, or not surrender, but they had to abandon five of their bases that were at the most extreme edge of their territory and had to pull them back to this main base because they couldn't resupply them because these guys had held this ground for two straight months. They held it for long enough, and so they were able to pull these guys back.

So basically we liberated five enemy camps, which would have cost many, many lives and an ordinate amount of, you know, firepower that these, that the rebels just quite frankly just don't have enough of. So it was, it was still a strategic victory, even if it was not ultimately a tactical victory in that, in that moment. But yeah, it was quite the, quite the ordeal. Now, another video that you showed before we hit record today was the, a village that you're doing like a reconnaissance. mission of through thermal and it kind of presents how the how the Burmese army operates when they take one of these small villages what they do yeah so yeah the video I showed you it was um I that was a few months before this this operation in this town but the so basically the Burm army like I said they they use people as as human shields whether it's to go through an era that they think

might be mined or also they'll use the civilians and force them to basically carry military supplies for them just as either forced labor or to go through a dangerous area. So for example, they might tell the local guys sort of at gunpoint, and again, they've got your family back here to say, hey, take your motorcycle and take this bag of supplies and go drive it over to this other Burma Army base. And if you don't make it, you know, we're going to kill your family. And so those guys, they don't want to help the Burma Army, but they're forced to.

And so they're driving through these areas and they're like, wait, I don't know what to do. like, please let me, you know, if the rebels capture them, they're like, please let me deliver these supplies that they're going to hurt my family, that kind of thing. So it's a horrible, it's a horrible situation for the civilians caught in the middle, which again, is everything that Stronghold is about. It's about helping those people. And so there was one particular day where we were down in that, we were down and working in this area in Burma, sort of in a flat, in the flat area. So we're not up in the jungle, up in the jungle mountains. We're down in the flat rice fields. And, um,

It was actually during the deployment and time that you read right at the beginning of the episode where we had been working in this area for a few months and had, and so the, the locals were able to respond properly when an attack happened. So this was during that preparation time. And so one of the, and there's all these different villages spread out over like hundreds of square miles of just rice fields. And so it is not abnormal for the Burma Army, like for a Burma Army patrol of 20 guys to or 50 guys to walk into a village and sort of say, hey, we're going to post up here tonight because

we've got somewhere we've got to be. And either as a patrol or just as a, to sort of relieve other Burma Army positions later on. And so while we were out there, there was a, there was a particular village that had gone dark. It had gone silent. And we knew the Burma army was moving around. And the rebels knew this. And they, they were looking, they, they were kind of looking at the situation and going, we think the Burma army's in that village. because we can't reach anybody there. And so the rebels aren't able to go in and just sort of smoke the Burma Army in those kind of cases.

It just doesn't work like that because you don't know exactly where they're at in these villages. They're highly complicated and you don't have any kind of night capability. But the rebels do have, in some cases, they have some thermal and some night vision stuff. It's like civilian-grade stuff that they get on the open market. It's nothing military grade or very fancy.

but the the the the the locals were like oh we don't know if the Burma army is in that town and it's like well let's go do a reconnaissance mission let's go let's go get eyes on the situation and so um I led a I think it was a five-man team as myself my interpreter and then three other um sort of uh some of their like reconnaissance guys and we we moved over um it was maybe a thousand yards could have been a mile I don't remember exactly how how big this open area was but it's a large open area of just rice fields and so we moved at night and got to within, we crawl in there and we get to within 100 yards of the, of this village. And we're using, we all have these thermal scopes that they have.

And so then I pull up, I pull up the thermal scope. And the thermal scope allows you to record what it is that you're looking at. And so I start recording the edge of the village and what I see. And there are these orange blobs of, it's people. There's these orange blobs of people laying at the edge of the village. And I'm like, what is that about? There's also a dog in the video and he's kind of, you know, looking at us. And he knows something, this dog knows something's up, but he never gave away our position, which was nice.

So we go in there and we can see that there's, we can see that there's villagers. We can see there's these people laying on the ground. And so we're like, all right, cool. So we pull back because we got eyes on the situation. And then the rebels explained to me, they said, oh, yeah, the Burma Army is in that village. And I said, well, how do you know that? And they said, well, because those guys laying on the ground, that those are villagers. So what the Burma Army does is they'll go into a village and they'll go to someone's house and

they'll say, hey, congratulations. Tonight, I'm sleeping in your house under the same roof as your wife and your kids. And you are going to go sleep at the edge of the village. And you need to sound the alarm if any rebels are going to come in here and try to get us out. and you better sound the alarm because again, I'm sleeping 10 feet away from where your wife and your kids are in your hut. And so the people that we saw sleeping at the edge of the village were men who were forced to go sleep there

while the Burma Army is sleeping in their homes. And then the Burma Army was there for a couple of days and then moved on. And as shocking and as crazy as that is for us to understand, and obviously I witnessed it firsthand and saw it. it's kind of a normal Tuesday, just a normal Tuesday in Burma for a lot of these people in these areas where we work. And again, that's why that's why the work that we do at Stronghold is so vitally important because there's nobody else there helping. Obviously, it's a very difficult place to operate. But you have these people that are caught in the middle of these wars.

And what can you do to help them? How can you help them? And that's our mission is to try to help them as much as we can. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking that, you had a story about a girl that was wounded in an airstrike, and I thought it was a good example of, like, how the stronghold team can help. Yeah. So the way that we operate is, so I'll take one step back and kind of explain our mission, sort of our bigger picture mission in Burma. So right now, like I said, 99% of what we do is going to be

emergency medical evacuations. Now we're up there on the front lines, getting mortared and shot at with the locals. But the vast majority of the work that we do is, is that medical capability. So currently in Burma, we provide, Stronghold provides the only ambulances, the only ambulances for an area inside of Burma that is larger than the state of Delaware.

And to put that in context, that is one million football fields. So we have the only ambulances for this war zone that that's that big. And we currently have eight ambulances in an ambulance boat to serve all these people. And people are stepping on landmines is particularly in sort of the edges of the areas where we work.

So the more extreme edges, you know, people are stepping on landmines. People are getting shot all the time. And now with the drone wars, the drones coming in, now villages are getting bombed all the time. Air strikes are hitting villages. And there's no strategic reason. And there's no, and the Burma Army knows there's no strategic reason to hit these places. Basically, the Burma Army's mentality is if you're not with us, we basically can just kill you. sort of like an ISIS mentality where like ISIS would kill, you know,

Muslim Iraqi civilians who are running away from ISIS controlled area. They would just start gunning these people down and shooting them, shooting kids in the back of the head and stuff because their thought process is, well, you're, you're abandoning us. You're now a pa state. We can kill you. The Burma Army feels the same way. It's like, well, you're an ethnic minority group that is not,

that will not bend to our will. Therefore, we can just bomb your village. And they will do it. They will intentionally target weddings. They'll intentionally target, you know, funerals, things of that nature just to inflict mass casualties. It'll intentionally bomb churches as well and things of that nature. So this is very normal.

So even in the areas where we're working where there's not like fighting where people are throwing grenades and shooting rifles at each other, these airstrikes still happen. So the way that we operate and we run our ambulances, I have a very small team. And what we do is when we go in, we train the locals entirely on their own. So it's local leadership, it's local medics, it's local drivers. It's local managers, and we teach them everything, the logistics. Here's how you get your supplies. Stronghold, we provide the money for all this, right?

We provide the truck. We provide all the logistics support, all that kind of stuff, but they run it. And we provide all the supplies and stuff that they need to run these ambulances. And we transport hundreds of people every, I think last year transported 600 people. 40% plus were active like war injuries from gunshots and things like that. And so, again, this is all run, maybe 30 plus, whatever the given day is, or more than 30 locals who are running, who are running all these ambulances. So the reason I say that is because we run everything that we do based on a concept called Charity with Dignity. We talked about this last time on the podcast, too, by with and through the locals.

You need to build up their capability. And the way that we measure success, the way that Stronghold measures success is what the locals are able to do, we are not there. That is how we measure success. And so now with that being said, we're working in a very volatile area and it's extremely difficult to move through these areas. So you think, well, oh, it's okay, the state of Delaware, that's pretty small. You can just, you can drive, you can drive across that pretty quick. Well, when you're in the jungle and the maximum speed that you can do is 10 miles an hour over extremely rough terrain, you know, all of our ambulances are in souped up high luxes with winches and bumpers and lift kits and everything in order to be able

to move these people. And so the only way that it works, though, is we have to do relays. There's not, there's not a, there isn't a medical facility in every village. It doesn't work like that. And there's only one or two places where they can actually do legit surgeries where they have either Western volunteer doctors or local people from Burma who work in these different clinics sort of deep in the jungle. And so we have to get, we have to get these patients to these, to these clinics. Well, um, the problem is, is when you're dealing with, um, traumatic injuries from gunshots, lots, we deal with lots of amputations. Every single week, we're moving an amputee, every single week, um, usually multiple times. And when that's happening, people are losing a lot

of blood. And obviously there's, I am not a, for the record, I'm not a medic. I used to be EMT qualified, but, um, I'm not like a combat medic. The guys who work for us, are. But basically what we realized very quickly was we kept on losing all these patients because we just needed to do blood transfusions. We're like, we just need to give people blood. That's the only way that we can stabilize them because, you know, you have somebody steps on a landmine. There's no gold an hour for them, right? You don't, you're not seeing, you're not seeing a doctor within an hour. If you're lucky, if you're lucky and we're there, you might be seeing a doctor in 12 to 16 hours. And so you've got to go through the jungle in the back of this truck.

up and down jungle mountains with half your leg hanging off. And so people are dying all the time. But we just had a young girl a few weeks ago. She was hit by an airstrike. I believe it was a drone, triple amputee, both legs and an arm. And she unfortunately passed away. She was maybe 10 or 12 years old. But that's like a normal.

That's a normal day in Burma in the areas where we work. And so what we did was one of our guys, on our team, Adam, the same guy who's in the trench, you know, shielding the patient with his body. We sent him to a school to basically learn some more advanced kind of combat trauma techniques. And he learned about blood transfusions. And so he came back from the school and he goes, hey, I think I can set up blood transfusions in the middle of the jungle. And in my mind, I'm thinking, no way, dude. I was like, give it a shot. Like how much is it going to cost? What kind of equipment do you need? And he had gone through and done all the research and figured

out, okay, here's how we can do this. And I said, okay, like, I'll, I'll approve funding for one set, go, you know, go let's see if we can get this thing up and running. And lo and behold, he got it up and running. And so we are now, and he trained the locals on how to do this in the middle of the jungle. So you're, like, it's, it's so difficult to explain if you haven't been in those environments, but man, like, we're pulling blood from one person from a donor who's just sitting there and then you're putting it into another person in the middle of the jungle, in an active war zone. And it's just the level of care that we're now able to give in these situations is just

astronomically higher. And so a lot more people are surviving these injuries. And it's all thanks to Adam figuring out how to do this. And then now we have a bunch of different places where people can get blood. So now that 12-hour journey, you can get topped up on blood two, three times in some cases. Sometimes it's just a one-stop. You can get topped up on blood. But now there's a much higher level capability there.

Now, I say all that because we had this event just recently. This was just a few months ago. After we had established the ability to do this, this blood transfusion, we wanted now all of our medics and all of our ambulance teams to have an understanding of how to do this. And some of the medics are advanced enough to do it. Some of the medics are not advanced enough to do it. But we wanted everybody to be trained on it on how to assist on these operations. And so Adam, he was in there and we brought in all of our ambulance teams.

And he showed everybody, gave him a full training for several days on how to do blood transfusions. And these guys are doing blood transfusions on themselves where they basically take their own blood out and then they put their own blood back in. And you're just doing this in a hut in the middle of the jungle. And it's just incredible that we're able to do this stuff. And so they finish the training. And again, everything we do is about charity with dignity. It's about you need to stand on your own when things happen. So they finish this training and literally the next day, it was within 24 hours, they

finished this training. All of our medics are in one location at this clinic in the middle of the jungle, which again is just, you know, wood, wood huts. And this jet flies over and boom, hits a village, you know, the next, you know, on the other side of the other side of the mountain. And so our guys immediately respond. They kind of know the general area of the village. they just start going and then they're on radio's kind of coordinating and they they go in.

And it's just our just our Karen guys go on this ambulance call because we didn't know if they were going to be patients or not. Our guys didn't know. And we sent one of our camera guy, he's a former ranger who works for us full time doing video editing and that kind of thing, Garrett. And so Garrett goes along just to observe, get some footage of what the guys are doing. So they get to this village. Keep in mind they just finished blood transfusion training and they get there and there's two

wounded people. One of them is a 14-year-old girl, and she was, you know, got traumatic injury from the, from this bomb going off in her, in her village. Zero warning, you know, middle of nowhere. And so our guys, they realize they, and the strike is just like one strike. Just one drop bomb and just, just a bomb, just a bomb for no reason. No warning, no reason, no rhyme or reason. There's no troops there. They just show up and they, and they intentionally do the attacks now. They're doing them very quick. So they kind of pop up over the mountain, immediately release their ordinance and then, you know, jump out of the way. So used to be that they would kind of circle, look for a target, and then bomb it. Now they just pop up, hit their target and go. So there's zero warning.

So a 14-year-old girl in the jungle, just living her life, hanging out. And then all of a sudden, the next second she's laying there, you know, and she's heavily wounded. And so our guys, our Karen guys, I realize, oh, we need to do a, we might do a blood transfusion on her because it's going to be a couple hours until we can get her back to the hospital. And so sure enough, our guys right then and there. And it's the, it's the perfect sort of image of, again,

what Stronghold does. It's, we have a Karen guy. He's in his, you know, Stronghold uniform. He's giving his own blood to help his own people.

And we aren't doing it. He's the one doing it. It's the local Karen team doing it. And we have, you know, luckily our camera guy was there. And so he filmed this whole thing as they, as they give this girl blood.

They were able to stabilize her. They get her back to the hospital. And we talked to the doctors. And the doctor said, yeah, if there were, was no blood. There was no way she would have survived the hour or two to get here.

She would, she would have died. And so this is the day after the training happens. And so that's just a perfect example of blood transfusion in the middle of the jungle. That's the kind of stuff that we're doing over at Stronghold now. And it's really incredible. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

And amazing to get that training done and then have somebody utilize that to save someone's life the next day. and have it be all Corinne staff. Yep. Across the board. Now, I know we mentioned World War II. I mentioned it. And there was a story about a World War II village, too. What was that all about?

So remember the Karen were very loyal to the British during World War II. And now when the Japanese invaded Burma, they came from Thailand at the time called Siam. They crossed the river. and they then, you know, started moving from east to west across the country. And they had to go through the Karen Hills. The first place the Japanese had to fight was the current hills, the place where we work today, like the exact villages and roads and rivers, the same spot. Well, when the Japanese, they advanced really quick, and it was, you know, during, you know,

at a time when you can't just evac all of your people. So there was a British officer, there were several British officers who stayed in the Karen Hills to sort of work with the people, and the British dropped some, like, radios to them so they could, you know, radio back occasionally. And so there was one guy in Major Segram, a British officer, and he stayed with the Karen people. And during his time there, the, he was, he was training the locals and making sure that he was coordinating, you know, supplies, getting brought in and things of that nature. And he's basically, his whole thing was like, I'm going to stay here until the British show up again. And so I'm going to make sure that we have,

you know, our forces are ready for when the British finally come back in a couple of years. And so he's out there completely by himself. One or two other times he was able to kind of link up with another one or two British guys in the area. But that was very seldom. So he's on his own out there. Committed. Committed. Fully committed. Committed to the cause. Yeah. And so during this time, now keep in mind the Japanese are going through the area and the, and they're working with the Burmese to, again, attack the local population. Well, word gets that there's British officers. in the mountains. And so the Japanese were like,

okay, because they're hearing radio signals. The Japanese know that air supply drops occasionally happen in the middle of the night. There's British here somewhere. And so they start going to the locals, and they start, basically they demand that the locals,

they demanded the Karend. They say, tell us where the British are. And the Keren won't do it. They're totally loyal. They say, no, we're not going to do that. Another element to add to the loyalty aspect. So many of the Kareen in this particular area,

most of the Kareen, I would say, are actually Baptist. Because hundreds of years ago, a missionary name Adonairm Judson went to Burma. And the Koran have this, they have this legend that goes back thousands of years. And it's this legend that they passed down. And it says, one day a man, one day a man with white skin is going to come to you with a golden book. And he's going to tell you the truth. And so Adoniram Jutson several hundred years ago, he's in Burma.

And he's working with the Burmese and the Burmys aren't interested. him at all. He didn't get any converts. And then one day a Karen man comes out and out of the jungle and he meets Adonairm Judson and he says, he said, oh, I know, I know who you are. You're the white man with the golden book. And so then Adoniram Judson goes into the Karen Hills with the Bible and many, many of the Karen convert to Christianity. And so now there's, so there's like this deep, there's this deep connection that they have with, so that, you know, with the, the Western world, with what they call Galawa, white people,

just anybody that's not from, from Burma. And so Seagram, Major Seagram, he's deeply religious. The locals are deeply religious. The local pastors are protecting him as well. And so when the Japanese come to the Koran and they say, hey, tell us where the white man is. Most of them don't know exactly where he is, because the Karen are trying to keep it hidden,

but they have a general idea of where he is. They refused to tell them. And so the Japanese start killing Karen people. Tell us where the white man is. And so Karen people are dying, being executed by the Japanese for refusing to give up where this British officer was. That's how committed he was to them and they were to him. And so he was a younger guy, I believe in his early 30s.

But the Karen, if they greatly, greatly respect you, even if you're young, they'll call you grandfather. just as a as a as a as a as a as a as a as a as a as a sign of respect and so his his nickname was long legs because he was a really tall British officer and so they called him grandfather long legs was his was his name and so so the so the Japanese and the Burmese are killing this Karen people well eventually it gets to Seagram that the current people are being killed and they're dying to protect him and so he says hey guys I can't have any more any more of you die. I'll just go turn myself into the Japanese. So he leaves the hills. Now, he was hidden in

this specific area. Now, there's a cool, a cool little anecdote that happened on my first or second trip into Burma. So I'm in this, I'm in this mountain hill area. And my, my, I didn't know much about Seagram at the time. I hadn't really looked him up much, but they told me, my, my interpreter told me, he said, this is the area where they kept the, where they kept the Galawa during the war. And I said, the Galawa, the white man, they're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, This is where they kept the white man. They kept him on this mountain in this hidden area here. And one of the generals, one of the Karen generals,

his mother was one of the people who helped hide him. And so they're like, yeah, he's from this area. And so that Corinna very like under understated. So I'm trying to pull more information out of him. And he's like, oh, I don't know. I don't know more than that. He's like, I just know this is where the white man was. And I'm like, this is so cool.

I want to know more about this. He didn't have much more information. But so he tells me that. I keep mind, this is a few years ago. And then there's a villager comes out of the jungle. because he heard that there was a white man with the Karen and he comes down and he's looking at me funny

he's kind of doing his third world squat just kind of staring at me and smiling and my interpreter is kind of talking to him a little bit and kind of giggling and he looks over me my interpreter looks over me and he says he's like yeah that guy right there he's never he's never seen a white man before and so he's this guy's only ever heard of white people

and they've only heard pictures of them but he's never seen he's never seen a white person that's why this guy's like squatting there kind of like staring at me with this big grin on his face. And so he, and he had, and so I asked my interpreter something about it. It's like, well, it's like, is it the only white people? He was confirming. I said, I'm I the only white person he's ever seen. And the villager said something along the lines of.

He's like, yeah, I've heard about white people. And I've heard, and I know that we used to protect white people here. He said something along those lines, but you're the first one I've ever seen. So that was a double confirmation that we're in the right spot. So they kind of know within the, within the, tribe. Anyway, so Seagram, during the war, the Japanese are killing the Koren. And so then he turns himself in. And he goes down to this village, down in one of the valleys, and there's a relatively larger village. He goes down there, and he turns himself into the Japanese.

And the Japanese, so he'd been up there, major Seagram had been up there for one or two years at this point. So his uniform is in tatters. He doesn't have any, you know, Western clothes. He doesn't have any more military uniform. And so he's wearing sort of like local garb. And so the Japanese go, ah, you're in civilian clothes. You're a spy. We can kill you. And so the Japanese, he turned himself in and the Japanese basically just sentenced him

to death. So he turns himself in in this village, this Karen village. And then they take him over to another town, like a larger town. And then they execute him as a spy and kill him there. Now the Karen, you know, never forgot about, never forgot about him. And so they greatly and deeply respect this man who died for them so that way people would stop, you know, the way the Japanese would stop killing them. And again, there's a very strong allegor there with Jesus, Jesus dying for your sins and dying so you can go to heaven. Big props to the Gulloa of the region.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So a couple months ago, or no, not even a couple months ago, maybe a month ago, one of my guys, he's in, he's in Burma. And this village where Major Seagram turned himself in, we go through that village all the time. I've been through that village a hundred times easily. And so our guys are at this clinic that's relatively near where that village is. And they're at their, I think our guys were just doing some training or something. And all of a sudden they hear three or four fighter jets, like a full squadron of fighter jets, come over the mountains low and fast, real low, real fast,

and then boom, boom, boom, boom, they just start bombing the crap out of someplace that's, you know, a couple mountains over, a couple hills over. And then these slower bomber planes called Y-12s, these are Chinese-built planes. They're basically cargo planes, but they push packages of 120-millimeter mortars out the back of the plane. And so they use it as sort of a strategic bomber,

like World War II-style bomber. And so they'll drop. So the 120-millimeter mortars. just land on impact and blow up. Just land on impact and blow up. Yeah. So they're like bombs. Yeah, just dropping bombs.

Like, just dumb bombs, yeah. And so then those planes show up and start circling that village and then dropping bombs around, around where this village was. So our guys get in their vehicles. And they're the, again, just the amazing thing about Stronghold, our guys are the first ones on scene. So they get there. And this village is completely decimated. Half of it is gone.

Many people were killed. And luckily, luckily there weren't that many people in the village at the time. I think people were kind of outworking or something. But many people are killed. Many are wounded. Houses are destroyed. Our guys got there right around dusk. And I have video footage of this as well.

And so they get on site and it's just a lake of fire. And the entire village is destroyed. And there's just folks, you know, dead laying in random places and people who are wounded and people who put their legs amputated from the explosions. And our guys go in and, you know, evacuate. evacuate all the wounded and that kind of stuff. But the village that was destroyed is the same village where Seagram surrendered himself to the Japanese to give his life for the, for the Karen people.

And so we always call it Seagram's village when we go through. But that's just another example of the Burma Army just coming in and completely annihilating a place. No reason, no rhyme or reason for it. There's no military stockpiles there. There's no rebels there. But you're not loyal to us. You're not going to bow the need to us. We're just going to wipe your village off the map.

No warning. So they rebuild the village, or is it just gone? They're going to rebuild. They'll certainly rebuild, most likely. Obviously, many of the people are unfortunately dead, but they will, it's at a strategic, well, not a strategic, but it's in a valley. So it's close to water, so they will rebuild the village. And most of these people live in bamboo huts, so they can kind of have it up and running again

within a couple weeks. So when you were at Harvard, when you did the, uh, Christmas break trip. What went down with that? Because that sounded like it was a pretty horrific scenario too. So yeah. So we, we finished class and I think I turned in my,

I did my, yeah, I did my final like exam for one of my classes. Again, this is just the first semester. So I know I still kind of come back and, you know, submit my exam, whatever.

And I think the next day, my wife dropped me off at the airport. And she's heavily pregnant. at this point and so how are you getting away with this when you're well she's well she's well she's ridiculous well she's correct so she's she's correct so she's correct i stand corrected yeah yeah and and uh you know it's don't get me wrong it's it's still a struggle um but uh so i i go out there i get out to burma and um i go in and the the the rebels their plan at the time is to go in and basically liberate and basically knock the Burma army out from this particular outpost.

Now, we're deep in the mountains now. So now we're now longer in the flat lands. We're sort of deep in the Koren, in the Koren hills. And there's this mountain, not a mountain, it's just sort of a large, very, very large hill. And there's a Burma Army outpost. So basically what the Burma Army does is when they go into the Karen Hills, they set up these outposts on like the most prominent hilltops. But they then use those positions and they fire mortars. They're, big on mortars and they fire these mortars into the villages. And so I'm there at it's, you know, Christmas time. So for example, as the, as the rebels are kind of getting prepared to go and launch this assault to take this hilltop, not fortress, but this hilltop enemy camp,

Burma Army camp, the Burma Army, just one or two camps over, was on Christmas Day was firing mortars into Christian villages. And I got photos like on Christmas Day or was the next morning of multiple little girls who had been killed by these mortars. So these mortars had just gone in. These little kids are celebrating Christmas, and then they're just blown up in front of their families. And this is all this, this same, same road very close to the area where, you know, that did the reconnaissance, the thermal reconnaissance mission.

So I get out there to, I get out there and we're, you know, the rebels are planning on taking this town, or not this town, but this, this hilltop outposts, which has been controlled by the enemy for 50 years. They've never, they've never had a friendly boot stand up there in 50 years. And now they're, they're going to try and take it. And so I'm helping coordinate the medical evacuation plan, just making sure, you know, everything's set for them to be able to liberate this area. And I'm, at this time, my team had been in Burma for like the previous couple of months. So I was like, hey, you guys go home for Christmas. I'll go in solo. So I'm operating solo out there. And so, so the,

the rebels then sort of launched the attack and they're using drones. So the rebels are using drones and they're dropping these bombs on the Burma Army base. And the Burma Army has jammers and things. So there's this interesting whole other topic and conversation about drone warfare in the jungle, which is a very, very another, talk about another weird thing that Americans are not used to experiencing, you know, being on the receiving end of that kind of thing. So the rebels are bombing the hilltop fortress and then eventually they, launch a ground assault to go and to go and take it and um it takes several days of uh fighting to

really to really take the um to really take it because they had to do several different like sort of fakes and attempts and um it's not just a clean hollywood style charge and take the take the enemy camp it's it's a lot more strategic and you're kind of battling like how many enemy fighters were up there on that hill you think 30 or 40 maybe 60 yeah and our guys had a couple couple hundred. And so as that's as that's going on, eventually our guys push push the Burma Army out. The Burma Army leaves. Our guys take the hilltop. And when they when they take the hill, the Burma Army has like placed landmines all around this all around this all around this all around this place. And so in the days keep keep on I you know I developed very close relationships with

a lot of these, a lot of these guys. They're like, they're like brothers to me. And you know obviously how it is. It's like there's a, there's a deeper tie than just a familial bond when you're in battle with, with these guys. And again, I'm not a direct combatant in this situation, but I am on the receiving end

at this point of like mortar fire and, you know, air strikes and stuff coming in. And so as the rebels are trying to take this town. So what do they call you? Do they have a nickname for you? Yeah. Can you say there's a classified? I probably better not to say well it's not it's not a classified thing

I'd rather I'd rather just not say I'll tell you off I'll tell you off line yeah but but so so I'm there you know working with them and so as the you know the the Burma army knows that this camp's about to get you know attacked and so they're dropping you know they're bringing in fighter jets and stuff and dropping in the jungle and you know looking for us and so but so before this attack it happened I had slept in an abandoned village, maybe a couple of miles away from this Burma Army outpost. So I had slept in this village, abandoned village.

And the hut that I was sleeping in, I had been, one day I was sitting sort of in the doorway of it as some civilians on motorcycles came by, and they were driving toward the Burma Army territory. And they saw me, and I saw them kind of, and I understand enough of the language that are like, blah, blah, blah, blah, galawah, galawah. And so they're kind of point.

thing and they're like, oh, there's a white guy in that in that hut over there, you know. So I'm just, yeah, I don't think anything of it. Well, once the attack starts, once our guys start the bombing campaign, it's the middle of the night. We have now moved to an entirely different location. I'm laying in my tent. It's 11 o'clock at night, you know, pitch black in the middle of the jungle. And I don't hear it because I was, I was asleep at the time and I had, we'll sleep with earplugs in.

And I'm waking up, I'm woken up by this huge explosion, just boom goes off. And keep on it, keep on mind, I'm in the middle of jungle. I'm like, what the heck? So I pop out my earplugs and I hear, you know, a jet flying over. And then you hear it just sort of circling, you know. And it was very, very close, very close to where we were. And the next morning, we realized, so we had moved out of that village, but the jet had come in, middle of night, popped up over to the hilltop and put one bomb right outside the one building in the village that I had been sleeping in.

And so I don't know for sure that they were targeting me, but somebody said something somewhere because they only dropped the one bomb and then they dropped another bomb somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. So how did the battle turn out for the hilltop? So our guys take the hilltop.

After several days, they take the hilltop. But it's because the Burma Army sort of fell back. So the Burma Army falls back into the woods or falls back into the jungle. And I learned later, like months later, that actually the Burma Army had done a gun run, had dropped bombs, trying to hit the rebels, and it actually hit some of their own Burma Army guys. So they had their own sort of blue on blue or red on red, whatever we want to call it. So they bombed some of their own guys, which is nice. So our guys take the,

take the hilltop, and we're very excited about this. This is wonderful. This is a big deal. But we know the Burma Army is realistically going to take it back. We can't hold it. That's not the, it's just not going to happen. But anyway, so our guys are in there. We've got about 30 or 40 guys in the camp and they're cutting down all the trees in the camp and trying to pull out all the Burma Army guns and weapons and stuff like that that they can that they can get from this hilltop fortress so they can use it against the Burma Army later. And to get and again, there's landmines everywhere to get into this camp. So but our guys had sort of cleared a foot path that's maybe a foot wide to get into the into the camp. And so I believe at the time we had

40 guys in the camp. So we have 40 guys in the camp and one of the guys I'd become good friends with. I'm not I wouldn't say good friends, but, you know, friendly with. One of the guys, he, he was, so there's 40 guys leaving the camp. So they steal a bunch of supplies. Our guys can't hold a camp. You're going to get bombed. So they're walking out. So 40 guys, so 39 guys, walk down this single, you know, single lane path.

And this other guy that had developed, you know, some friendship with, he was the 40th guy. And he's walking out on the same little path. He steps on a landmine. 39 other guys stepped over it. He was the last guy out of this camp, steps on a landmine. Now, it's a kind of landmine that just sort of blows off half of your foot.

So it's not going to kill you. You're going to be fine. So it blows off half of his foot. But he panicked. And he, I was told later that he had made some different comments before he basically said, I never want to live as a cripple.

I don't want to, you know, whatever. So he flipped around his rifle, put it on fire, and shot himself in the head right. there on top of this, on top of this mountain.

And the other guys are four or five feet away from him. Obviously, they dove for cover when the, when the explosion went off. And they, you know, they're trying to reach him. They were screaming. No, no, no, no, no. And then boom, he killed himself. And so they pulled his body off the top of the hill. And he was early 20s.

He was like maybe 22. His wife, two kids. And so you want to talk about the generational impact of these wars. his father was like a platoon commander or squad commander or something as part of this force as well. And so his father was in a different spot. He wasn't, his father wasn't on the hill. But yeah, his father was was there as well and had to, you know, come take his body. And yeah, so the just the reality of the horrors of war and what these people, you know, go through is, is, yeah, it's very difficult.

I went through that. So I'm in Christmas break. This is my Christmas break, yeah. And then the Burma Army comes back and takes the hill. And then our guys take it a second time. So it changes hands two or three times while I'm there. We had a couple of other guys get killed. But ultimately it was still a strategic and tactical victory.

We knew we weren't going to be able to hold the hill. So that wasn't ever the objective. But it was basically letting the enemy know, like, hey, we can, we can punch you guys in the face too. And it was a big symbolic victory, knocking out these mortars, which are being used to murder people. and subjugate the people. Now, the Burma Army still now controls that place again, but they now know that they're no longer vulnerable. And so that was important.

One really bizarre thing that I still don't fully understand. So the Karen, a lot of them are Buddhist and a lot of them are also animist. And so animist, the best way I'd like to describe that is to sort of like think about maybe like Native American sort of style of spirituality. like the rocks and the trees and the rivers have you know have a have a spirit that kind of thing think about you know pocahontas that that sort of religion but uh i think because of that they have this they have this interesting um custom where if somebody commits suicide they punish the weapon that was used to commit suicide because they believe that there's you know it's just culturally just believe like hey this thing needs to be punished it's sort of a cultural

remnant. And so the weapon, this rifle that the soldier had used to commit suicide, you know, they unload it and they go put it in like a hut in a prison and they tie it, tied up. And I think they were hitting it with sticks and some stuff like that. And it granted, it sounds really hocus pocus and like really superstitious like they're like they're complete bumbling morons. That's not it at all. They're, these are very intelligent people, but this was just their custom and they, um, they, yeah, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, basically imprisoned to this rifle for a short time for what it had done to kill this guy and punished it. And then, you know, now it's back in circulation. Somebody, somebody else is

using it. So I guess the point of that little anecdote is, it's a whole different world over there. There's an entirely different world, entirely different way of thinking out there. And so that was, and that was, yeah, so that was, that was the world I was in. And then so the way that that ended. So the Burma Army eventually kind of takes back the camp. We go back and forth a few times. It's still a victory. It's still a really good thing. So I'm, so I now need to head back. I need to go back to the United States to go back to school. So I've got maybe an hour, hour and half left there. And I'm going to leave in a short amount of time before kind of before the sun goes down. And I'm going to start driving back through the jungle to start my long journey home back to

the United States. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden we hear this, we hear a plane. The plane pops up overhead and it's just one plane. And it's again, it's one of these Y-12 bombers where they just drop payloads of four or five 120 millimeter mortars at a time. And it starts circling the camp, the Burma Army camp. But its circular path actually took it right over us. So it was right over. I'm literally, I can stare up and I can look directly at, this at this bomber. I can look at the bottom of it and it's flying right over us. Now, it's just one bomber. I've been through a million times worse. This is not that big of a deal. It should not be that big of a deal. And so I go and I, we get in the trench. I'm in the trench

in the trench with my interpreter. And I'm sitting there and I'm just going, I was sitting there and mentally I was very calm. I was like, okay, but this is not that big of a deal. The chances of the dropping bombs where we are, very, very low chance. But I started getting that shaking. My hands and my feet are shaking. And this thought was just going through my head the whole time. And it was just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. And it was this intrusive thought that was just poking through in my brain because my wife was going to give birth in just a couple of months. She was maybe six months, eight months pregnant at this, six or seven months pregnant at this point. And so I'm sitting in a

French on the other side of the world with this Karen guy. I'm just, you know, and my hands are shaking a little bit and all I can think about is I just want to meet my daughter. And as only as I can meet my daughter, I'll be happy to die, but I need to meet my daughter first. And, and that was, that was, again, not a, not a particularly dangerous situation. The bomber drops all of its bombs nowhere even close to us. But it did multiple sorters over, right over our head. And each time, I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. And so then the plane goes away and I then hop in the car, I start hopping, you know, off-road vehicles and I just start, you know, start my,

my drive back. But yeah, that really, that really stuck with me. And I just, I thought, man, like, what is my, my heart and my head are like now in an entirely different place. And so I, you know, I drive, you know, I drive out of there and, you know, eventually I get home and, you know, create my, you know, pregnant wife. and I miss Christmas and all that stuff. And then I just walked back into school at Harvard. And, you know, and then, yeah, and then people go, well, how was your, how was your, how was your, how was your Christmas vacation? How would you do?

You know, all that kind of stuff. So, and I just, I, I, there was like a, there was one or two other guys there that were, uh, former, you know, uh, former, you know, uh, SF and stuff. And so I kind of told them a little bit about where I'd been and what I've been doing, but not all the details and stuff because I was just like, you know, it's like, it just, yeah, I don't know, I just didn't want to. talk about it. And so, yeah, that was, that was definitely, definitely an interesting experience kind of walking back into the classroom and then everybody's, you know, talking about whatever,

whatever matters to them at the time. And, yeah, so just kind of an interesting mental, mental roller coaster to go from one extreme to the other and back. And, yeah, and then a few months later, my daughter was born. And, yeah, I love her to death. Yeah, that's awesome. I had the little bit of the feeling of, you know, coming back from combat of a little bit of, hey, all this other stuff, this doesn't really matter.

It's not that, nothing, like this doesn't really matter. This is where you're going to teach me about something. You're going to do something. Like, I remember I had to do, like,

evaluations and fit reps and stuff. And you're, I really had to, like, like, actively, consciously focus and be like, all right,

this is my job. I have to do this. And I would break it into a smaller, Or like when I went to college, I was a grown man that was already a seal and stuff and I'd gone to college and I would sit down without a second thought and do academic schoolwork for eight hours. I would just get, just go.

And even up until that deployment, you know, anytime we had to do fit reps or we had to write e-vals or I could just, I could just kind of lock in. But when I came home from my last deployment, it was like, it was, I had to really kind of actively consciously go, all right, dude, like, you got to do this right now. This is your job. This is important. I had to tell myself that. And that probably lasted for about six months and I kind of got back to normal. But it seems like rolling from, you know, sitting in a trench waiting to have mortars dropped on your head from an aircraft above you. And then the next thing you know, like, okay, tonight's assignment is, you know, I want you to read this article about whatever thing. Did you find that a little bit difficult?

Yeah, to an extent, a little bit. But honestly, I mean, I, for the last, you know, five, six, seven, eight years, I've been going back and forth from sort of civilian world to, you know, these war zones and back and forth, you know, a bunch. You figured it out. I have not figured it out. No, that's not true. I've learned how to suppress it. And that's why I'm sitting there in class, you know, but before the, before this little deployment I had done, I'm sitting there in class and my hands are shaking just to answer, just to just to say something simple in a class of 25 people. and, you know, nobody there is, you know, super, super impressive that I need to be, like, you know, nervous around it.

Nothing like that. So there was, there was definitely a, you know, a lot of stuff kind of pushed down. And then also, too, I think there's this sort of a certain level of emotion and part of my brain and my heart that I didn't even know existed until I had a daughter. I just didn't even know it was there. And, you know, one example was this past summer, I was, you know, at home. Milwaukee and a couple of my young cousins had come over. They're like 14, 15 years old. And then they had another one of my cousin's sons was there, and he's also 14 or 15. And so these three young men are there at the house. And my aunt said, she said, hey, can you can you show them the video?

And so there's a video of me getting shot by ISIS on this rescue mission on Iraq as a civilian. And so I was like, yeah, no problem. I'll use this as an instructional time because I don't really talk about. that unless I'm you know doing fundraising or something I don't I don't talk about it but and so I said yeah this is a great learning opportunity for the for the young men here and so I I sit I sit the boys down in the living room I you know have the video kind of ready to go on the TV and I explained to them what was going on and sort of the context and then I and then I show them the video and

they're they're watching this and he's like 14-year-old boys you know or just they don't they don't really know what to say they're just like what the heck you know what are we watching here because keep in that video there's you know I'm getting shot. There's dead bodies everywhere. And I started explaining to the boys that there's about how the ISIS had massacred these people. And I, and I was telling them about some of the different, some of the different people that I could see in the bodies, little young girls, but their heads blown off. And then there was one particular, when we talked about this last time, but there was one particular casualty that

stuck with me. It was an Iraqi husband and wife, and their dead baby was laying between them. and just based on the pattern of, you know, how the, um, where they were laying and stuff, it was very obvious the father was carrying the baby. He'd been shot in the back by ISIS and he'd fallen forward in the rubble, dropped his baby, and the baby's head had been bashed open by falling into the rubble. And the mother was also shot and died right next to them as part of the, you know, this massacre that I, that I'd seen. And so I don't remember if I told the boys that, but it was vividly in my head.

But there was this moment where that wasn't. That wasn't some other kids baby. That was my baby because my baby is now that same old, you know, whatever, just a few months old, four or five months old. And so I told the boys this story. And then I just, it emotioned me. And I went to the bathroom and I just started weeping. I just started weeping uncontrollably.

And my wife is like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know what's wrong with me. And I'm just sitting there all weeping in the bathroom. And then, you know, I got control of myself. And I was like, okay, okay. you know so there's like a lot of a lot of deep stuff there I just didn't even know was there

but you know I'm having having a daughter now but you know the it's it's all come to to all come full circle because the reason I started stronghold was because a firefight in Afghanistan were you know almost had to kill two little girls and you know and then I go to Iraq and I wounded while rescuing a little girl and then I have my own little girl now and so this I don't know, just sort of this, and now I feel all that protective instinct is now to protect my daughter and to keep her from all the evils of this world that I know are out there. Did the, how long did the shaking hands last? It lasted pretty much for the most part. So what I did was, so it lasted most of the school year.

I got back from Burma, obviously that did not help the shaking. And so what I got back, basically what I started doing was mentally I felt fine. Mentally I felt fine. I wasn't having like crazy nightmares. You get you have a few when you first come back as you're decompressing. But I was like, that was normal, totally fine. So what I started doing was just for a couple of months. I basically just started every morning.

I would just wake up and I would just take a freezing cold shower and just force myself to not like wince or, you know, not allow myself to shudder. And so that's what I just, that's what I did. Literally just to get sort of control of my nervous system, just to force my mind to just, stop the shaking and that and that helped. And so then, since then, it's pretty much gone away. I just needed to kind of get control of my body and my nervous system or whatever were just not linked up with my mind. So I just did that for, I don't know, maybe two months or so.

And that really helped with the shaking anytime, you know, my adrenaline would go up. Because again, mentally I felt fine. It was just my body was not reacting how my mind was reacting. It's interesting. You're kind of like a person because the last time you were on, you kind of told the story of you had gotten to a pretty, dark place. You were addicted to food. You weighed 325 pounds. Your life was just not going well. And you went to a hotel in Florida, rented a room. And you like parsed your life mentally to try and figure out what was wrong and how you were going to fix it.

And you made those decisions like, okay, this is what's wrong. Here's my problems. And here, here's what I'm going to do to fix it. And then you fixed it. It's very interesting that you have this capability. to assess yourself root cause the problem and then figure out what you can do to solve that problem. Yeah, I just, I guess I probably spend a lot of time. I'm very introspective. I believe Aristotle said the unexamined life is not worth living. And that's one of my favorite quotes. And it's just, I'm constantly trying to examine myself and just, where am I at mentally? Where am I at? Emotionally, why am I doing what am I? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I here? Why am I there? doing this kind of work. And then also just trying to analyze anything that I'm doing,

like how can I be more effective at this? How can I be better at this? And by no means am I a perfect person in any way. But it just, I just think it's kind of, maybe just comes naturally me to try to just try to, you know, figure out what's up. And sometimes it works. And the other, but the danger of that mindset

is sometimes you can't figure out the problem. And so you're just spinning and you're just like, why can I figure this out? Why can't I figure this out? What is wrong with me? Did you get any advice on the, on less shaking? Did you read anything?

Because the last, you know, the last one you talked about reading Russell Brand's book, and he had a book about addiction, and you figured out that you were addicted to food, so you read his book, and these are the protocols I'm going to follow. Did you have anything similar here with, you know, getting over this shaking of the hands? No, because I, no, I just sat and thought about it a bunch because I thought my mind is fine, but my body is not, is not fine. So I was like, there's a split between my mind and my body, and that would seem pretty obvious to me. Because none of the shaking had happened before we'd been hit with these.

bombs in in in in in in in in in in in in and so and again during the the Burma bombings we weren't like we we had you know there was like a structure kind of between us and where these bombs are hitting so it's not like I had TBI it's not like I was concussed there was nothing like that at all it was just purely my nerves and so I thought okay what can I do to calm my nerves I'm like well go back to buds just got to sit there and just just be calm just be calm you're very cold you're very tired you're you know you're pissed off yeah you know you get a long you know Monday night a hell week kind of thing you got a

long way to go dude so you just you just mind over matter and so I just realized that there was a there was a separation between my mind and my body and I was like okay I just need to sort of force my body I need to do something that's gonna be very uncomfortable that I don't want to do and so I just did that ritually every morning for yeah like I said like two months and then that that helped massively what's the current status and the trajectory in in Burma right now so right now the Burma army is starting to gain ground and the reason for that like I alluded to earlier, is both that Russia and China are heavily backing the Burma Army.

So there was a period from 2021 until maybe 2024, mid-20205, where the Chinese in particular, because they share a border with Burma, with the Kachin tribe up in the north. But the Chinese specifically were kind of playing both sides, and they were going to see who was going to win. Because at the time, back in 2023, 2024, it looked like the rebels might win. and it looked like the Burma army might fall. And so the Chinese actually gave a bunch of drones and weapons to some of the rebel groups to help them. Ultimately, the rebel groups never united. There's cultural differences.

There's language differences. It's very difficult to unite in the jungle like that. But then also some of the tribes, so the Corinne tribe are very, very, very, very good people. There's, you know, splinter groups within them that are there's criminal elements like you'd have in any tribe. but some of the tribes are heavily involved in the drug trade, in weapons trades, things like that. And so it's very hard to unite sort of the pro-democracy, you know, Baptist, you know, peaceful Buddhists with, you know, the people that are trying to traffic crystal meth to Southeast Asia, some of those tribes. And so the Burma Army is able to also use that against, you know, against the tribes to kind of pit them against each other. So basically, because the tribes did not unite, the Burma Army is just sort of reasserting control is what it appears to be at the moment.

and China and like I said, Russia are backing them heavily up with weapons and that kind of thing. And that drone, the drones in the jungle. Did you have drones coming after you while you were there? I have in the past, yeah. So the first time I ever had a drone come after me, this was a couple of years ago. I was at night and I was in a just in a village sleeping in a hut. And I hear this, I hear this, you know, the, yeah, the motorcycle, the motor, or the, The lawnmower sound was like it was a little bit more deeper.

It was like a bw. It was a big one. And I hear it fly very slow, low and slow, middle of the night, right above us. So it either has night vision or has thermal because this is being controlled by somebody remotely. So it probably had thermal on it. And so it flies right over us. And I just immediately start sweating because I'm like, I can't get up and run out of this

hut because they're going to see me. So you just have to sit there and hopefully everyone else stays in their huts and hopefully they bomb someone else's hut and don't bomb my hut. and so I'm laying there laying there still as if it matters but I'm under like a you know a straw roof

and so the the drone comes right over I feel buzz right over and then it drops a salvo I want to say of 15 or 20 bombs this was like a large one that dropped like a smaller amount of a smaller

a larger amount but smaller projectiles and they dropped maybe 150 200 yards from where I was at and I knew building that they were targeting because there was like a concrete building that wasn't in the jungle. I was like, oh, I know exactly what they're bombing. And so sure enough, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, these bombs start going off.

And then we hear a second drone. And so the Burma Army had launched at least two drones. And then I was hearing reports of up to three or four, who knows, but they were also bombing some of the villages that were close to where we were. So there was multiple places that had been bombed that night. And again, I don't know if it was the same drone, but it was at least two or three. And so my interpreter, he comes running up to me. And we're like, dude, we got to go hide in the jungle because they're going to come back around.

They're going to start bombing all these huts that we're in. So grab my AK, throw my gear on. I got my bolt bag, you know, with my water and, you know, water and passport in it. And we just run into the jungle and we can hear this drone just and we don't know if it's right above us. We know it's on thermal. It was at a very dry part of the year. And so a lot of the leaves on the trees aren't there. So it's not like thick green jungle to hide under.

It's like many of the, it's almost like fall time where many of the leaves are gone. And so we're hiding under these trees. We're literally sort of hugging trees as this drone is trying to fly over because we're just trying to stay under the branches so the thermal doesn't pick us up. And it starts, boom, boom, boom, boom, dropping bombs in this, you know, in this local area. And so that was that was not a pleasant experience to put it, to put it mildly. So that was, yeah, so we've been hunted by drones in that case. And so, you know, you talk about GWAT, you know, global war on terror. We're used to, when our drones or our aircraft show up,

we have what we call squirters, guys who run, they squirt, they get off target, they start running off target. That's you. I was that guy. I was that guy just grabbing my rifle and just sprinting into the jungle, just get away from the path of this aircraft. And there's nothing, and I mean literally nothing

you can do to stop it. Horrifying. No, it's the worst. It's the absolute worst. It's being in combat when you are at least equal with your enemy is one thing, right? That's already terrifying. enough where you're relatively equal with your enemy.

When you're dominating your enemy, it's kind of fun, right? You're out there, like, you're out there with, you know, your seal platoon and you're like, yeah, we're going to go smoke these dudes, daylight. I don't care. Like, we're going to crush these dudes. We're going to call them the AC130 and A10s and we're going to own this. But then you, but then I was in situations in Iraq where we were sort of even with ISIS. So they're entrenched.

They're dug in, but they don't have air power, but they've got rockets and mortars and, you know, and we're sort of equal. And that was terrifying enough. And then now you go to Burma. It's like, no, now you're the dude with an AK running through the jungle as bombs are going off everywhere. Yeah, and fast movers overhead. And there's fast movers. And strafing runs and thermal on drones.

So you want to, so the first time I ever felt like my hands completely shaking in Burma. So after this bombing it happened. I was back there a month or two later. And after the drone bombing? No. So this is after the jet bombing. The jet bombing. Yeah.

So I was out there kind of visiting, visiting some of the drone. the troops. This was during that two-month period where they still controlled the town. And so this was the first time I experienced the shaking. So I was just up there kind of visiting those guys, seeing what was going on, seeing if we could get them any medical supplies, whatever. And so I hop on the back of a motorcycle and there's a, you know, I've got my own motorbike driver, so he's driving me. And so we're driving across these rice fields, totally open. There's, you know, there's like maybe a tree or two in the, you know, over the, over like the next like two or three square miles. So there's just, there's just nothing.

And we've got to go a mile to get to this village where there's, you know, trees and stuff. So we're driving along and maybe 200 yards in front of us on this just one road going through the rice fields is a tractor that's pulling a trailer with like maybe 20 people on the back of it, just villagers kind of going wherever it is that they're going. And I look at the, I'm watching them. And all of a sudden I see all of the people in the tractor just jump up and scatter and they just start running. and I see them pointing. And I'm like, what are they pointing at?

So I turn in my look. I'm not even kidding. A hundred yards away from me. Maybe 100 feet in the air is a Russian hind helicopter paralleling me. Because I didn't hear it because we're, you know, all the wind in my ears. And this attack helicopter is paralleling me. I look up and I can see the pilots. I can see the pilots.

Luckily, and as a keep in mind, I've got an AK on my back. I'm with like three or four other guys who have like rifles. It's super obvious that we're, you know, part of the, you know, resistance. And this attack helicopter is 100 yards away from it. Luckily, it was staring. It was clearly the pilots were staring and probably laughing. Like, oh, oh, that's so funny. Look at all the villagers, you know, running away.

So the villagers are all running away from this attack helicopter as it comes in. And so the guy in the bike, he slams the brakes. We jump off because we're getting ready just to scatter as well. And I, and so I'm staring at this helicopter, like this. you know, it's like a dragon, dragon in the sky that can kill you. Just for a reference, Echo, this is the famous helicopter from like Rambo. Yeah, that's a little thing. Okay, cool.

Yeah. Just making sure you, you know, connect that. Oh, I'm with it. Yeah. Horrific. No, it's horrifying. And so you're just sitting there, all that has to happen is the pilot just has to look, all he has to do is like 45 degrees to his right and he's going to see me standing

there and me and like six other guys. And we would have to run, like I said, a mile across open territory just to get to a tree to hide in. We're dead. Like, we're dead meat. and he just never looks over at us. And he just keeps flying along, you know, 150 feet in the air, whatever. How, really low, really.

I could have chucked a rock and hit him super low. And he was, I don't know where he was going, doing whatever he was doing. But yeah, so that was, so anyway, my point is I was standing there on the road. And that was the first time I felt these shakes. And I was like, oh, okay, this is a new experience. But yeah, just these really just close calls, just nothing you could do. And so I guess that the thing that makes it so. terrifying is there's nothing you can do about it.

Again, it's different. If you can fight, like, okay, if we got a fight, you know, like, if you and me get into a fist fight, I know you're going to win. But I, like, I, but it's like, okay, like, I'm going to, like, put up a fight and I'm going to be less afraid than if I'm just standing there and I just know somebody's going to come up and stab me. You know what I mean? And I can't defend myself or someone's going to shoot me.

It's so much worse if you don't even have a chance to fight back. So. Yeah, it's, I've had some discussions with some guys about, like, what's more horrific. the drone that's coming after you or you're the next step that you take you know the iED environment of you know and i think it was is bad in ramadi bad in iraq afghanistan like it got horrific for guys i didn't i didn't fight in afghanistan but guys i don't know if it was like this when you were there but it got to the point where it was like the immediate action drills were like don't move you know so hey if we start getting shot at or something blows up no one move because there's so many IEDs.

So is that worse where you're like, well, this next step could be my last? Or is it worse to say, oh, this thing is hunting me down and finding me? At my beginning thought was, I thought it was like, well, it's scarier if you don't, kind of like what you just said, like you don't know what's going to happen. You take your next step. You could get blown up. But as I think about it more and as I see more of like the Ukrainian activities going on, I'm starting to think, yeah, that.

that seems like the most horrific thing is to have these drones coming that are just, it's like nothing you can do about it. So I would definitely say the drones are worse. And the reason for that is not because they're, you know, less deadly or more deadly or whatever than an IED. Obviously you don't wanna step on an IED.

The difference is the drone is hunting you. They're looking for you. They're called loitering munitions. It's sort of the technical term for it. So it's just sitting there. It's just watching. It's just watching. And once it finds you, you know,

you can jump into a trench, but it's just going to hit you from the top. You run into a building. It'll just fall you into the building. And so it's sort of like being, you are the prey. It's kind of like the movie Predator, right? Where, you know, like what's more scary? You know, there's room that you shouldn't go into

because, you know, you'll get hurt or this thing is actively hunting you and there's nowhere safe. And that's the, so that, in my personal experience, for at least me, definitely worse being hunted by a drone that's on thermals at night looking for you. It's got a ton of munitions.

there's just nothing you can do. And I've been in, you know, a lot of different situations where there's, you know, landmines and things of that nature. The only thing I could think of that was kind of nearly as freaky was, you know, clearing an ISIS tunnel because you're just kind of worried about getting buried alive. But even that, too, is different. It's just, just the fact of being hunted and there's nothing you can do about it is, is a whole other level of just horrifying.

Yeah, especially now, like, the thing about an IED is a lot of times the IED was not, was just victim activated, meaning like it's just going to go off. It seems like that's a little something that you can have a better chance against than another human that's trying to kill you. You know, like on the end of that drone is a guy that's looking for you going, nope, got one.

And you're just in a video game and he's just going to roll that thing in. Yeah, exactly. He's just sitting there having a cup of coffee, watching you on thermal. So, yeah, good luck. Good luck, you know, good luck running away. Yeah, definitely.

So it would seem that that it's almost impossible or it will be almost impossible for the Burmese army and the Burmese Junta to get complete control over the Corinne, right? Like, I mean, it's just insurgency, like a continual long-term insurgency. Is that what you see for the kind of indefinite future, just continued insurgency? There will be continued insurgency. and the Burma Army is not going to be able to control the hill regions. So the only reason the Karen even exist as a people is because of those hills. That's the only reason because they are, they are, the Burma Army so much stronger than them. So they have a terrain and sort of home field advantage when the Burm Army has to go in there.

You go, you know, you go into the jungle. It's a whole different animal out there. And that place is heavily landmined as well by the, by the locals because it's only, their only defenses. They're like, okay, well, there's three trails in. here. We know which one is landmined. We know which one isn't. We know which ones are landmined and we even know which ones aren't. The Burma Army doesn't know that. So that's the only way that the Koren can even defend themselves in a lot of cases. And so I don't see a situation

where it would ever be truly tenable for the Burma Army to control the hills. They'll go in and set up these hilltop fortresses, these fobs, and they can sort of, again, sort of, you know, fire mortars into people's villages and stuff. But as far as actually being able to govern and control the area, it's not going to happen. Where do the rebels get their supplies chain from? So they're obviously taking stuff off of dead Burma Army soldiers and then it's Southeast Asia. So there's a black market of all kinds of crazy stuff out there.

Yeah, so it's funny. You walk through the jungle and you're hanging out with these guys and you'll see like a Burma Army rifle. You'll see like an M16 with like a serial number. You know, that's from many, many. Yeah. It's actually funny that some of the guys were doing like target practice with their M16s and they were shooting a 25-yard target

just to zero their weapons. And at 25 yards, the bullets, the 5-5-6 round was hitting the target sideways. It was totally spinning, just at 25 yards. The barrels were that shot out. What's even crazier is there are still M-1 carbines, not the Garans, but the M-1 carbine from World War II,

standard, standard. Our guys are still walking around carrying those. And I have a picture of one. I saw this guy carrying it. I was kind of checking it out. And it was made in 1943. And he's, that's his, that's his way to defend his village,

it's this M1 carbine from World War II. Freaking damn good weapon. Yeah. Yeah, and it works great. It works great. Yeah. So there's literally stuff there from the British and Americans being there. So where do you see Stronghold heading right now?

So right now, one of the things that we're doing is, so like I said earlier, we have the only ambulances for an area inside of Burma that's larger than the state of Delaware, a million football fields. So one of the, we're constantly trying to figure out how to improve, prove that and to save more lives as much as possible.

The blood transfusions was a big part of that capability because now we can extend the amount of time that we have to get a patient to where they need to go. But now we just recently, just over the last couple of months, have launched a new initiative where we're sending out mobile medics. So we're local people who are already trained in, they already have medical training at different levels. There's like all the way up to like the PA level and there's sort of like community health workers and things like that who can administer shots and sort of assess people. And there's people

who know how to deliver babies and things of that nature. So what we're doing is we're strategically hiring some of these different folks because they have this training. But when you're a subsistence level, when you're in a subsistence level economy, there's no job for you. Like so you might know how to deliver babies or you might know how to, you might be a physician's assistant level of training because maybe you went to school somewhere. But you have no medicine. So you're totally useless. And also, too, your family has no money. So what does that mean? Well, it means you're going to go work on the rice fields. You're going to go try to hunt to bring home some meat for your family. You're going to just try to get, you know, rice. And so what we're doing now is we are finding

because there's plenty. People who have this medical training or people who are like medics with like the resistance, sort of like combat medics. And what we're doing is we're bringing in medical supplies and motorbikes and basically putting them in sort of in places where there's where it's harder to reach. And then they're going around and actively going to villages and doing medical clinics. And so they're finding, they're finding all these people who would have passed away from infections, easily treatable things, and who either would have needed a ride on one of our ambulances or worst case scenario would have just passed away in the middle of the night because, you know, they got infected. It's like, you know, a 12 year old kid, you know, getting sepsis or something

from an infection on his foot because he stepped on something, you know, in the jungle and there's no way to really properly clean it off. So anything from that to, you know, people just needing basic, you know, malaria medication or people needing, you know, people, people die in the jungle from a fever, right? Like, we have, we have, you know, basic stuff to help break a fever. They got nothing out there. And so what we're doing is, yeah, we're, that's our, that's our latest initiative. And we're sending out a bunch of these mobile medics and incorporating them into our ambulance service as well. And so just over the last couple of months,

we've had, I should have looked at the most recent numbers. I'm going to say easily 300 patient interactions in just the last one or two months from these new mobile medics that we just launched over the last three, four months ago. So Charlie Mike with the stronghold, to continue and to make that work. And then another thing you've got going on now

is you've got a YouTube channel slash podcast. Do you have a, is it a podcast as well as it just a YouTube? So right now I'm just putting it on the on the channel, but I'm going to be putting it out on Spotify and all that stuff and taking it one step at a time. Yeah. And, you know, in a world where there's definitely a lot of podcasts in the world and a lot of YouTube channels right now. And yours is called the Overwatch with Ephraim Matos. And well, first of all, first of all, I've been listening to it and it's freaking great. It's great because you're clearly a thinker. You're not high. emotional, but you're not like completely detached from your emotions, but you have them in check. You've been all over the world. You've seen war up close and personal, not just from our perspective as an American, not just

from the superpower, but from the other end as well as we just talked about. And so it gives a really, you give really great takes on what's, what's going on. I know that the time that you spent at Harvard, I don't know what you learned there, but maybe that plays into it as well. You have a really good, level-headed assessment of what's going on. I wouldn't say they're like reaction videos to, hey, what happened to the news today? I need to put the word out what happened today. But it's a little bit more strategic view of what's going on in various parts of the world.

It's just great. So awesome. What made you decide to start that? So when I was at Harvard, I was trying to have conversations with different people from around the world and obviously Americans as well. And we would talk about different geopolitical issues. So obviously over the last couple of years, there's been a lot of interest in, you know, the Ukraine, Russia, war, the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Israel's war on Hamas and Hezbollah. Obviously right now we're dealing with the Iran situation. And so there's all these different geopolitical events that we as a society are having conversations about. But I realize we don't quite have as a society sort of the sort of mental framework for how to engage with this. Americans are, we tend to be sort of more isolated. We don't, you know, we're neighbored by Canada and Mexico.

So we don't really think in terms of, you know, sort of global geopolitics. And so what I started observing was even people who I might agree with politically, they would just have these really bizarre takes on, you know, what was going on in Israel or what was going on in the Middle East or what was going on with, you know, like our border wars or, you know, narco terrorist groups or whatever. And I realized like, well, people just don't quite understand how war works and we don't really understand how geopolitics works. And the counter example to that is, you know, in America, everybody already has an opinion on what they, you know, think about, let's say, abortion or voting or. rights or, you know, any sort of domestic politics. Gun control. Gun control. Exactly.

You, we have the nomenclature and the ability to sort of have those conversations. But what's happening right now is the United States is, and Americans in particular, are sort of waking up to the realization that, oh, China is a threat, Russia is a threat, the middle, like, what happens in the Middle East does affect us? Yeah, we do have narco terrorists trying to get in here. Wait a minute. We just went and took, you know, Delta Force just went and nabbed, you know, Nicholas Mondora. Like, what the hell is that about?

Like, is that legal? Like, how does that even work? So there's all these questions about how the world works. And so I thought, like, well, this is something that I can contribute to. And so I started a, while I was at Harvard, I just started a newsletter called the Overwatch. That's at theoverwatch.co as the website. And the idea is just to help explain geopolitics to Americans. But then recently over the last couple of months, I've been experimenting with basically making it into more of a video.

And so right now what I'm doing is once a week, I'm sort of putting together a 25, 30 minute podcast. and just explaining, hey, here's six or seven major geopolitical events that are happening around the world. And here's kind of how you need to be thinking about them. Because people don't really understand what's going on in Burma, for example, because I always get the question, like, oh, like, where is Burma? Like, what's going on there? And I don't get upset at all that people don't know where it is. I'm not, well, how, how dare you not know? Like, you know, you're living over here. I don't, I don't care. Or I do care, but it's like I'm not, I'm not judging people for not knowing. So what I want to do is I want to help I'm helping to try to solve that problem.

I'm explaining different little conflicts and things that are happening in Africa down in South America and I'm intentionally the reason it's called the Overwatch right sort of a you know a nod to my time as a sniper right so you provide Overwatch and your job is to look at survey the entire battlefield and pass good information back to your commander so he can make a good decision. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to give a good overview of what's going on in the world strategically so you as the American voter or just you as the American citizen can sort of understand what's going on. So your first time, you know, hearing about, you know, this past week, you know, we took out a, you know, an ISIS commander in Nigeria using

airstrikes and it was like a joint coalition. And again, immediately, you hear people saying, like, why do we have troops on the ground in Nigeria and, you know, and all this stuff? And so people just immediately don't really have the nomenclature or the ability to kind of discuss it intelligently or they're totally shocked and surprised by it. So the purpose of the Overwatch is just just for regular Americans. Here's what's going on in the world. Here's why it strategically matters to the United States. And I try to come at it from a level-headed point of view. I am politically conservative and I am very pro-America, pro-Western civilization, but I'm not trying to beat over your head what to think. I'm going to tell you what I think

about something, but I'm going to try to teach you how to think about these things. Let's talk about the geopolitical, you know, ramifications of whatever's going on. So, for example, we just talked about Burma. Like, okay, well, why are Russia and China giving weapons to like some Burma army in the middle of Southeast Asia? Why does Russia care? Well, again, you look at a map and you suddenly realize, well, that gives them access to the ocean. They don't have to go through the Strait of Malacca. They don't have to, like, that gives them a huge advantage in the world. And they're thinking 10 years ahead, whereas Americans, we're only thinking to the next midterm election. And so I just basically, the purpose of the Overwatch and the podcast is just so people can understand what's

going on stay up to date. I'm not trying to get into, you know, grievance culture. I'm not trying to be overly sensational about it. Did you make up the term grievance culture? No, I did, I did not come up with that. I kind of like that one. Yeah, but that's, yeah, that's what it is. It's there's this grievance culture. Everybody's, you know, playing victim or they're, you know, blaming everybody else for their problems. And I'm just not, I'm just not interested in being involved in that. Yeah, one of the, I was telling you before we, hey, record today about the podcast that Echo and I did, it was called What's Going On? And, and one of the things that, I pointed out was the fact of when you start looking at the forces that come into decision-making

and how many there are, and I think I brought this up on the podcast, but the amount of forces that are in play when you have to decide where you and your wife are going to dinner, right? You and your wife are going to go to dinner. Like there are forces that play there. Hey, you know, have we been to this place before? She liked it. I didn't like it or I liked it and she didn't like it. What's our financial constraints right now?

What's our time constraints? How long is this going to take? What about the time three years ago when I took my wife to a restaurant and she didn't like it? And then we had a bad experience. And the whole, like, you got all these things to try and weigh and try and figure out, like, where you're going to go to dinner. And that's just you and your wife going to dinner. So now we start talking about some major thing happening in the world, some major world event going on, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria. Like, you name the place, Sudan.

Like, you name the place. And all of a sudden, people just chime in as if they have calculated all those variables. You know, all these variables that they probably can't even name 3% of the variables that are in play when you talk about these types of things. And so to think like, oh, well, that's bad because of this one reason. Well, there's a whole lot more everyone needs to know. And I like, that's what I took away from your channel, your YouTube channel is you're giving some very good nuance. And by the way, anybody that thinks they can sit there

and predict how things are gonna go is an idiot. You know, if you think you're just gonna go, oh, if we do that, this is gonna happen. You have no idea what's gonna happen. You don't know about, you don't know about the morale of the maintenance crew that's working on the Iranian drones. Like, how, how, do you know that? Like, and that's going to play, that plays a real role. That's a real thing.

So if you don't know that, well, how are you making predictions about what's going to happen? It's very, very difficult. And so to think, you know what, I'm just going to listen more and not try and pass judgment on what's going to happen, but instead I'm going to listen and try and assess what's happening rather than pass judgment on what's happening. And it seems to me that's sort of what your take is. Like, hey, here's an assessment, not so much a judgment, but, hey, here's what happened. It could go a bunch of different ways. And I definitely like that. I also think it's interesting for you to be a, what did you say, a semi-conservative guy and pro-American, and yet you've spent like literally years of your life in trenches in Burma trying to defend,

defend this native population from oppression. Yeah, absolutely. One, I would say I'd actually very, very politically conservative, definitely not semi-conservative, very conservative, very conservative. But yeah, I don't I don't see a big difference between. So here's the thing. I and I think we as human beings need to be loyal to certain principles and certain ideals. And you need to be loyal to, loyal to humanity as much as as you realistically can. Right. Now your your loyalty needs to go to, you know, for me, my loyalty goes to God, family, country, and then other people's countries. But so what what I'm doing when I'm when I'm overseas is I don't see you know, okay, so I think the best way to explain this. So, you know, the event in Iraq where, you know,

I got shot rescuing a little Muslim Iraqi girl who is a child of ISIS fighters, you know, why would I go risk my life to do that? I'm a white conservative Christian male. Why would, you know, it's like it doesn't make sense in the modern mind why I would be willing to do that. It's like, well, because she's human and because it's the right thing. thing to do. And so because because it's the right thing to do, that's what I'm going to do. So for me, I have no, there's no cognitive dissonance in my head to go and serve other people and help other people, to whom much is given much shall be required. I got to grow up in America. I got incredible training as a seal. I was able to fight for my country. And now I've noticed that

there's other people in other places that could use my help, could use my background, could use someone to stick up for them and say something for them. and so that's that's that's what I'm doing. So I have no cognitive dissonance on that. I think it makes natural sense based on my values. And then specifically around the the geopolitics stuff, you know, yeah, I see all this, I see all this, you know, infighting and everybody having super strong opinions.

One of the things, so I'd already been writing the newsletter, but I was in the process of kind of setting up the video concept as well because keep in mind I'm still working full time running stronghold. but I was during this I the whole I ran things going on and I saw this influencer fitness influencer woman a nice person I'm sure she I'm sure she's a wonderful person but I saw this fitness influencer lady and I'm like why is she popping up on my feed and so she's got this video about the straight of Hormuz and she's got this 35 minute video explaining the straight of Hormuz and I thought I

got to click on this so I click on it and again she's just reading off of a teleprompter that somebody else had gone to Chad GPT and it explained you know whatever what the straight of whomews and why you know strategically important and um and i mean it had to have had a million views a million and a half views and i i got i got a little frustrated with that because i just thought nice person totally get it this is what's trending she's going to make a video about it whatever but i just thought okay we as americans deserve better than to be getting our geopolitical analysis from somebody who's never fought in a war is never served in the military doesn't is not educated on these things doesn't read books about these things two weeks ago didn't never even heard of the

of Hormuz, let alone the straight of Malacca, let alone, you know, like, whatever, all these different places. And so I just thought, okay, anyway, that just kind of helped sort of add fuel to my fire that I'm like, you know what, I got to start, you know, speaking up about this kind of thing. And really my goal, I'm sort of an educator at heart. I really enjoy teaching people things. I really enjoy philosophy. I love, you know, trying to figure out where I'm wrong about something.

I'm very comfortable admitting if I'm wrong about something. And so for me, this, you know, talking about geopolitics and what's going on. This is going to become more and more important to America and to Americans. We can already see that geopolitical events overseas are shaping our domestic politics, you know, whether it's like Israel versus, you know, the Palestinians or, you know, Russia versus Ukraine. I mean, you have people now that are saying stuff about Russia where they're going, well, like, you know, at least the Russians are trying to, you know, follow like Christian values or something or other.

And like the Ukrainians, they're all a bunch of heathens and, you know, or Zelensky and stuff. And you're just going, guys, like, what are you talking about? Like Putin is out there just like, you know, murdering and massacring people. And like his troops are like mass raping people. And it's like he's not, he's any, any sort of semblance of Christianity that that guy has. It's literally just a tapestry. It's just a covering so that way the local, you know, Russian Orthodox will follow him or something like that.

That's all that's going on there. It's not real. And so you need to think about incentives. You need to think about one thing is I was, you know, studying at Harvard was decision science. And so just kind of looking at incentives and psychologists, It's mostly just psychology type stuff. And, you know, you look at, okay, like, why do people do what they do?

And you need to, one of the biggest things is just incentives. And we're thinking in terms of, you know, again, being at the school there, the whole thing is you're thinking about grand strategy. You're thinking about policy. You're thinking about foreign policy. And so, again, this is just something that most Americans don't really spend a lot of time thinking about. You think about actually during the Biden-Trump. election, the one where, I believe, I believe it was the one where Biden, yeah, it was the one where Biden one, because he only did one election against Trump. But they skipped the second debate and the second debate is typically centered around foreign policy. The first debate is usually domestic policy. The second one is, you know, foreign policy. And then they refused to even have a conversation, you know, for whatever reason they're blaming each other for whatever. But my point is, is there was no outcry. There was nobody was, no American was going, I want to know Biden versus Trump's, you know, concept of foreign policy. We didn't, the conversation didn't even. happened and nobody was even upset by it. But it really matters because it matters to our borders.

It matters to our trade policy. It matters to our security. It matters where we send our troops. It matters. It matters as China expands, as Russia tries to expand. We're looking at Iran right now, you know, having a vice grip on this vital waterway directly affecting you at home. So there's that, but at infinitum going on in the world. And then now what, and then don't even get me started on like the mineral wars and drugs and all that kind of stuff and then human trafficking. So anyway, so there's so much there to kind of look at and just sort of generally be aware of. And that's my purpose with the Overwatch is to basically just try to help people kind of understand a little bit without being all overly hysterical. But while still taking

a clear stance, like I'm pro-Western civilization. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like we have some sort of moral equivalence with the Chinese communist. We don't. We're better. Screw those guys. And we need to win. We need to beat them on the global stage. And that's, that's, that's, that's what I'm focused on talking about. Yeah, it's better to be a, a friendly bully in the world. You know what I mean? Like, hey, if you should be a friend, hey, if you're the biggest, strongest bully, but you're cool to everyone, that's, life is good.

You know, if you're out in the school yard and the one bully is you and you let everyone play hopscotch and you let everyone use the jungle gym, cool. But the minute you, you know, get overtaken by another bully who decides, oh, only I get to play hopscotch. Or only these people can use the jungle gym. Now we have a problem. And by the way, there's nothing you can do anymore because you're weak.

And so you need to be the benevolent bully in the world. That's my political stance when it comes to that. And also, you know, from a neighbor perspective, you look, what your neighbor's doing is their business. But at a certain point, if you let your neighbor, your neighbor can get to a point where it's going to impact what's going on in your street. You know, you can't sleep at night because they're having big parties

or whatever the case. Their yard is, you know, a fire hazard. So if that starts to happen, you got to go, hey, listen, I don't really want to interfere with my neighbors, but my neighbor's behavior impacts the way I live my life and we need to come to some kind of an agreement where it works. Now, just to bring up one more thing that I thought was a really interesting take. You, on one of your podcast, you were talking about the woman that basically defected to Iran. and she went from being like an Arabic or a Farsi linguist of some kind in the Navy, right? In the Navy or Air Force? Air Force.

In the Air Force, she joins the Air Force. She becomes a linguist. She, what was he, Farsi? Yeah, Farsi. Learns Farsi, converts to Islam and eventually becomes a spy. What road does it, what does the algorithm look like that causes that to happen to her? your assessment. Yeah, absolutely.

So give a little, I'll just add a little bit more context, do a little bit more flavor. So this is a, her name is Monica Witt, and right now, to be clear, for a legal reason,

she's suspected by the FBI of, you know, allegedly spying for the Iranians. But she's white, grew up in a relatively Christian home, joined the Air Force, became a counterintelligence specialist, ironically.

And so then during one of her diplomas to Iraq, she started to read the Quran so she could understand, you know, so the culture, She was trained in Farsi at the Defense Language Institute here in the United States. It's where we send our military folks to learn foreign languages. And then after she got out of the military, she got a private sector job.

I'm not really sure what she did. But during that job, she went to two different conferences in Iran, which are basically just put on, basically just propaganda conferences put on by the Iranian government. And when she was there, she actually converted to Islam on Iranian state TV. So there's a video of it out there somewhere, I'm sure. her actually converting to Islam. And then while she was there, she was then sort of recruited by the Iranians to spy for them. And so she came back to the United States and, you know, started gathering information. And I don't, again, I don't know what her job was, but she had

a top level clearance job somewhere in the private sector having to do with intelligence. And then the Iranians, they arranged for her to be able to go back to Iran. So she moves back to Iran. They get her set up with the computer and all this kind of stuff. And then she's giving, she started giving the Iranians all this intelligence on. her coworkers and the bases that she worked on and all the different private projects that she has access to and this top secret clearance and all that stuff. So, you know, and so right now the FBI's offering $200,000 for any information that leads to her arrest or whatever. So, and again, this is all alleged. So, you know, she has a right to a fair trial and all that. But the way that the way that this

stuff happens is people become disillusioned with their own life. Obviously, I don't know the specific instances, you know, whatever it might have happened to her in life. I don't know. I'm not going to try to make a psychological evaluation of somebody I've never met. But what I will say is if you are not living your life by principle and if you are not explaining to people why America is the better force in the world, if you are not giving people the understanding of why that is and like why freedom is better than these other tyrannical ways of life, you will become easily susceptible because we take these things for granted. As Americans, we take the idea of, you know, private property. We take that for granted. Like we don't even understand. No, no, no, no, you go

overseas. There is no private property. You know, the tribal leader, he'll just take whatever belongs to you because it belongs to him. And there's nothing you can do about it. And we don't even understand that concept. And so what happens is, is people like Iran or Russia or China or just any nefarious actor because we also have freedom of speech, you can reach the American people and you can tell them anything that you want to. And if you are not grounded in your beliefs, if you do not understand why America is exceptional and we are exceptional, if you don't understand why America is exceptional and why we have set things up the way we set them up, you become very susceptible to somebody coming along and going, well, is that really, is that really the way it

should be? Well, what about the inequality? Well, what about this? Well, what about that? And you've never, you've never thought of these ideas before. And so then you go like, oh my goodness, my entire society has lied to me. And I remember that one time somebody did something mean to me. So now all of a sudden your heart turns against the very thing that, you know, your heart should have been, you know, engaged with. And so then that's how people become susceptible to being recruited by, you know, by these foreign adversaries.

And then also we also need to talk about that a little bit too. You look at, you look at modern warfare. We're talking about drones. We're talking about, you know, coming up against, you know, air strikes and stuff. The Intel battlefield now, like sort of counterintel sort of propaganda, war is now in everybody's pocket. It is in your pocket. Think about just this Iran war going on right now.

So Iran turns off the internet, right, for multiple reasons. But they then start pumping out all of these propaganda videos on social media. And they're doing it making Lego videos. They're doing all these things to try and change the minds of Americans. And it's working. We saw Hamas do that. So Hamas goes in and kills a bunch of Israelis, commits, you know, per capita, an attack that's 40 times worse than 9-11, and then all of a sudden they play the victim,

and they're pretending like, oh, my goodness, why are the Israelis coming in here to get their hostages back? How dare they do that? You know, and then so, but all of that information is being pumped into the brains of anybody who's willing to pick up a phone and look at it. Meanwhile, we don't have the ability to get them the same information, right? So, like, you're not able to tell the Iranian people like, hey, you know, life's better over here, because the information control.

If you look at China specifically with TikTok, the Chinese, the Chinese, The TikTok algorithm in America is entirely different than the TikTok algorithm in China. So in China TikTok, you're not going to be getting dumb dancing videos and anti-America, anti-Western civilization propaganda. No, you're going to be getting, you know, you're going to be getting entirely different stuff, you know, the teenagers there in China. You're going to be getting pro-China stuff. You're going to be getting pro-China history. You're going to be getting things that are less brain draining for you. And they're intentional about that because information does matter.

So my point is if you go back to World War II, think about this. Think about how World War II might have changed if Hitler, every single night in perfect English, was able to talk to the entire American population. Anybody who wants to tune in can listen to Hitler or give a speech anytime he wants to. And he's going to try to change the hearts and minds of Americans and try to get them to like, you really need to come over here. You know, you just stay over there. You know, whatever, whatever his mindset would be.

It'd be an entirely different world, but that's the world we live in now. Putin and anybody who works for him can put any kind of information on your phone anytime they want to. And same thing with China, same thing with Iran. And so you as an American, you now are part of the propaganda machine. It's no longer this foreign intel op. It's now in your social media. And people need to be aware of that. And again, that's another reason why the Overwatch is important because it's like, all right, let's just take a step back.

It's like a level-headed look at what's going on geopolitically. What are the incentives? What's actually going on here? Why does this matter to America? and being able to just explain that in a calm, intelligent manner, I think it's so important right now. Yeah, I couldn't agree more, man. Great assessment.

And, yeah, the thing's great. I guess how's the, how's your physical health, bro? Been pretty good, pretty good, yeah, could be better. That was a crazy story. Last time you were on, you were talking about weighing 325 pounds and just what you did to get your health back in line, all good? We good? Yeah, mostly good with the issue I'm dealing now with dealing with some low back pain,

but I'm dealing with that. But yeah, other than that, no, it's been good. It's been good. And I'll tell you what, too, you know, we talked about mental health last time I was on a lot more. And, you know, I'll tell you what, like having, you know, being married and having a child, granted, luckily I'd got myself sorted before getting married, right? So obviously, don't use marriage and children as a crutch to fix yourself. But what I find is, that may not work.

That's not going to work. But what I found is that, you know, the responsibility of taking care of my wife, taking care of my daughter and another kid on the way, that responsibility, if anything that brings, that brings us higher level of happiness, of contentment, you wake up in the morning, you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing. I got to take care of my wife. Got to take care of my kids. Got to take care of Stronghold. I'm going to, you know, do something for Overwatch today as well. You know, and that's your purpose. And I think a lot of, I think a lot of veterans in particular,

we obviously were dealing with the veteran suicide crisis and a lot of issues there. I think a lot of it, because when you look at a lot of the guys who are committing suicide, they're not committing suicide because they were in combat. A lot of them, they're committing suicide, were never really in combat. It's not like PTSD from what they saw in the trenches. That's not what's going on. It's this despair. It's this lack of purpose.

And I think that when you're in the military, especially as a young man, just experiencing myself, you know, joined when I was, or enlisted when I was 17, went to boot camp when I was 18, went right into the seal teams. The sense of purpose and meaning that you have and the sense of belonging, even if, even if you're not the most popular guy in your platoon, it's like you know what your role is. Like, hey, I'm the comms guy. Hey, I'm the, I'm the machine gunner. Hey, I'm the whatever, right? And you have a purpose and you have a and you have a meaning. And you have an identity that you've earned. and when you get out of the military,

it's like you lose that, you completely lose that. You lose this brotherhood. You lose that purpose. And so now you're going to go, all right, I'm going to, looks like I'm going to go,

become an IT specialist, you know, doing whatever. Maybe I'll do some investing. And there's this despair because you peaked when you were 25. At least you feel like you did. You feel like you peaked.

You're like, man, I was in, you know, Afghanistan and I'm 25. I'm like smoking bad guys, calling in air strikes. I've got responsibility. Like,

I'm a man, you know, I'm like doing, I'm contributing. to the world. And then you get out and all of a sudden, you're like, okay, what am I doing now? TPS reports? Yeah, TPS reports. Exactly. Yeah, you're doing TPS reports. And yeah, so I think there's a big sort of pandemic of despair that I think that is happening. And guys just don't fully realize that. And so my point with that is just for me, the added stress of being a husband and a father is,

it's like a good stress. It's a use stress. It's like it's a, instead of a distress, it's a use stress. It's, it's a stress that forces you to be better and forces you to be more locked on. You can't just, you know, have a bad day and, you know, not do anything or, you know, whatever. Let yourself go. You just can't do that. You have to, you have to stay more locked in.

And so I, yeah, so it's, long story short, yeah, things are good. It could not, could not be happier. Life is, life is wonderful. Yeah, very grateful. Right on. Is that good us up to speed? We're good for now. it yeah um where can people find you so you got uh on the underwebs it's stronghold rescue

dot org you have the overwatch dot co and then on youtube you've got the overwatch with ephrahmatos yeah people can just type my name in ephram mattoes you know i tried that and it's actually doesn't come up for a while oh okay so you'll get like 50 videos from andy stumph and me and like a bunch of other people yeah but as far as your actual show I think you have to put in the Overwatch with Ephraim Matos to get it to populate in there. Because I tried it. Yeah. But it's great.

It's great. I'm a subscriber. I'm on the newsletter. And so it's great. So check that out. And then on Instagram and Twitter X, you're at Ephrahmatoos. That's correct. Is that what we're dealing with here?

Yeah, absolutely. For people to find you. Yeah, absolutely. And then just a quick word, too, about stronghold. So, again, the way that we operate is we work off of a microdome approach. So again, we're nonprofit, everything that we do, everything, all the stories I told, everything that I was talking about, the ambulances. And again, I've only, obviously, we only have time to talk about a fraction of what's going on. But all of that, all the medicine, all the

ambulances, all the stuff, the operators that are going in the field. By the way, we do train our people, sorry, we do pay our people. We do allow, you know, our people like make an actual living and going and doing this professionally because the people we serve, deserve that. So the way that it all functions is 80 or 90% of the money that we bring in, comes in just from monthly microdonors. So if people are interested, they can sign up at this at stronghold rescue.org. And, you know, we ask if you want to pitch in, maybe pitch in a dollar a day, 20 bucks a month, something like that. And if you do, we'll send you a stronghold t-shirt. It's the same kind of t-shirt that our guys wear in the field.

And on the back, we have our motto. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And if you want to help be a part of that, we would greatly appreciate it. And people can check that out at strongholdrescue.org. That's what this is all about. Echo, any questions? Yeah, this is just for my own curiosity. So how long?

Uh-oh. Here we go. He's pulling up the mic. I'm like, all right, here we go. He goes 45 more minutes. How long at a time do you go over there? So I've done trips that were anywhere from four months. I've been also as short as maybe two or three weeks.

So as far as acclimation, you know, how's the mosquitoes over there? Mosquitoes are actually very, very manageable. There's not a ton of mosquitoes. It's actually a very, very beautiful place. So the Karen Hills, they call it Kotulay, which the direct translation, there's no like direct English translation, but it means basically like the like the peaceful land of the evergreen land. It's like the beautiful emerald green land. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. There's a beautiful climate. Because you know how like, I don't know if you ever watch what that show, naked and

afraid. You've heard that? I've seen clips of it. I've never, I've never, never watched it. Because you know, when they go into these beautiful jungles and stuff and they're like, you know, all yeah, all good, but then they get eaten by bugs and, you know, like everything in there is trying to kill you, you know, in one way or another. So it's not like that. Well, it's not like that with the bugs. There are snakes and stuff. So I'll tell a couple quick snake stories. So I was in a, we're in a reconnaissance mission. We were within 100 yards of a Burma Army outpost. And this Burma Army was firing into this village. And so one of the local guys, he was a local sniper. And so he had this, he had a rifle. And so I was, we were taking turns watching this particular outpost waiting for the Burma

army to pop their heads out and fire on the villagers. And so I'm in this position, literally just 100 yards from the enemy, but I'm firing across a. river. The Burma Army has no idea that we're there. And so there's all these rockets and RPGs and stuff being fired back and forth by the Burma Army. And so what happens is the snakes, whenever there's a battle that pops off in the jungle, they get spooked and they're sort of disoriented and they just start going everywhere. They freak out. And so we're laying there at the edge of this village, 100 yards with the Burma Army. If you stand up, they can see you. We're hiding in these bushes. And I was with a couple of commandos, a couple of the Karen

commandos. And one of the guys, he like pops up on his knee. He goes like, ah. He's like, makes this like totally girly noise. And then one of the other commandos pulls out this giant knife and just starts slapping at the ground. And basically during this firefight, a snake rolled right up into our position. And then actually the Harvard Christmas deployment, I was, air strikes coming in. We hear the, you know, we hear the aircraft is, you know, is coming around. And I got to jump into my trench.

And so as I go to jump into my trench, I see a scorpion right on the edge of the trench. And so I pull out of K bar. It was actually my SQT graduation K bar. Got your first kill with that thing. So I slap, well, I slap at it. I try to stab it. I'm like, I need to get into this trench. So I go to slap at it.

I miss the scorpion. And then it falls right into my trench where I got to jump into. So I'm sprawled over the trench as this aircraft is coming in and I'm stabbing at the ground. Eventually, I kill the thing. And then I jump in as this gun run comes in. It wasn't a close gun run. But you never know until the last second anyway. That's crazy.

I was just that we did a battlefield. Review of chancellorsville and Fredericksburg and one of the I was doing a bunch of reading before we're out there But one of the one of the things I was reading about is when Jackson is making his flanking maneuver on the union troops and the union troops had no idea that you know he had to walk like 14 miles He did it in a very a very clandestine way so they had no idea and there's a a Yankee guy a union guy that wrote like they're sitting there and all of a sudden from the wood line Comes all these like squirrels and rabbits and deer they they like come out And he's like, oh, that's weird. And it took him, you know, whatever, three seconds to go, oh, that's weird. Why are all these things?

Oh, shit. You know, because it was, there was whatever, 30,000, 30,000 men were online coming their way and just drove all those animals out. And the guy sees them all break out in the field and goes, oh, that's weird. I wonder what the, oh, shit. And sure. Wow. There it was, yeah. That's incredible.

So that's kind of weird with the snakes getting disoriented and just going anywhere. Yeah, yeah. Other times I've been in trenches and the snakes are coming right at you and you're like start slapping the ground and throwing stuff out and you're like, get away for me, man. Yeah, not the, not the deal. Yeah, you know, you hear about all the experiences and stuff and then for someone who's has never been there, you've got all these little details that are significant in my opinion. Like Brad, because you have these huge, crazy, risky missions, but on top of it, you got the wildlife and everything else. Yeah, yeah. But that's way secondary compared to what you're doing. So a lot of us, we don't even, we don't understand the full picture.

You see what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Even your most minimal conflict scenario, which is like stuff that you're not even mentioning, the snakes and stuff, is like one of our real kind of spooky days back here. You want to hear something else that's freaky too. So there's these tree leeches in Burma.

So you know, you get in the water and there's leeches and they'll latch onto you and suck your blood. There's tree leeches and they'll sense you walking and then they'll sort of drop from the drop from the, trees to try to drop on you. So they're not they're they're pretty small. It's it's a little freaky. Um, I've only seen him a few times, but, uh, there's been a few times or like crossing rivers you get out and there's yeah, you look down. You got, you're pulling leeches

off. And I've got like videos too of like leeches sort of like inching along my hand. And I'm just kind of looking at it. Yeah, it's it's a yeah, definitely interesting. That reminds me of, uh, the first time I saw Jurassic Park. I saw it in the theater, but I was on my first appointment in the teams. And I had, I'd done like a, a, a, uh, a, trip to pan oh no I didn't I've done a trip to Thailand I'd done some time in the jungle in Guam and like I knew how just

everything that you're saying echo like I knew 100% like mosquitoes snakes hot freaking coral under your neck just just totally the like a tough environment and then in Jurassic Park they're like they're walking for a while and they're just like hey we're going to sleep here and they're just like all lay down on the ground I'm going to get some sleep

and I'm like this is bullshit Being the J is freaking harsh, man. Yeah, the J is extremely harsh. Yeah, it's not a fun place to be hanging out. If you're not properly equipped, yeah, it's horrible. And I use that term because when I first got to SEAL Team 1, there was, we used to have the Australian SAS exchange guy there. And so he would talk about when you're going out in the J, mate.

Oh, that's great. So that's why I call it, still call it the J. And then in Guamma, my first deployment, there was a bar, and it was called the jungle. So you can guess what we all called that thing. We called it the J. The J, right? That's so funny. My, my, so I did two platoons at Team 1, and my second platoon was Topekaecom.

We were based out of Guam and just doing, you know, training foreign forces out there. But, yeah, we started calling it the J too. We just started calling it. And I don't think anybody had heard that anywhere else. I think we just started calling it that. So it's just real quick. Everybody's like, it's the J, dude. Until you've been in there, you don't know.

Oh, you don't want none of that. Apparently, I go don't want none of the Jay. Totally fair. Totally fair. My dad was in Jurassic Park, by the way. Once you, what was you playing? Yeah, you know, background actor. Dang.

He's one of the first guys on screen. Did they film that in Hawaii or something? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. He's one of the first guys on screen. Well, you know, like, this is kind of a big deal. Why are we just learning about this right now?

I might have mentioned it. In that first opening scene when they're like, he's explaining to him, they're trying to walk over the rocks and stuff and you have all the native kind of work He's there. He's one of those native workers. He's a little of them walks by.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. He's still cashing those checks too, I bet. No, I don't know. Maybe. Actually, my dad was in pretty much all the movies shot on Kauai. Pretty much.

Mamed like three other ones. Okay. So outbreak, that's another one. Okay. Keep getting Jurassic Park and then there was one more, I forget. Okay. What? Oh, this one was, the other one was, it wasn't on Kauai.

It was on Oahu. It was like old school movie before I'm, before I was. I was born, I think. But he got in there. He was in there, yeah. He was like a cab driver or something like that. Any lines?

I don't think he had any lines. But still looking good. Looking good. Representing and looking good. That's great. Any other questions? That's it. That's it.

Good to see you again. Good to see. Right on it. Ephraim. Any closing thoughts? No, that's all. People check us out at Stronghold Rescue. And thanks for having me on.

I really appreciate it. Right on. Awesome. See you again. Thanks for coming back. I know it's always a gut check for you. I have to travel out here. But thanks for what you're doing.

Thanks for your service to the Navy, to the nation, to the teams, and thanks what you continue to do today. And I think you're going to do a lot. Obviously, continued work with Stronghold, but then the Overwatch, I think, is going to help open people's minds, get him to calm down, get him to listen, get him to learn so that we have a better world. Thanks for what you're doing, bro.

Excellent. Thank you. And with that, Ephraim. That else has left the building. He's clearly got a lot of stuff going on. clearly made a lot of good things happen in his world. So awesome to see him, awesome for him to come by.

You know, we touched last time on that, that little situation he got in when he was up to 325 pounds, man. God has went to a hotel and looked at the ocean for a month. Started working out, figured out what his problem was, food addiction,

the whole nine yards. Got to get after it. Yeah. But you got to be careful. Yeah. And, you know, what he said on that thing was he can't. He's like a, if you're an alcoholic, like a legit alcoholic, you can't drink anymore. Yeah.

If you're a legit heroin addict, you can't be like, you know what? The third Thursday of every month I like to shoot up. You know what I'm saying? You can't do it. I know what you're saying? The tweakers, they're not like, hey, you know what? Saturdays are good for meth. No.

Because it gets me fired up for Saturday. No, you can't do that. It's different. And so he straight up was like, no, I can't, he can't. have the sweets. It can't happen. Or he'll just be like full, fiend activity. Now, what we can do is we can eat stuff that's good for us.

I got some good stuff for you at Jock Fuel. Check out joccofuel. Check out joccoffield.com. We got protein. We got energy drinks. We got this right here, this hydration, which tastes so good. It's kind of a sweet. I worry if someone is addicted to it.

They could get addicted to it. But it would be healthy, so they'd be good to go. No red 40 or whatever. Red 5. Red 40. Dye. Red die. Red die 40.

Yellow 5, I think, is the two major ones. We don't know that. This one's clear. Clear. Because it's clean. We got the best protein powders. We got the best stuff. So check out jacofuel.com.

And by the way, you can also just go to your local retailer, wherever you buy your groceries, wherever you buy whatever. There's a decent chance there's jaco fuel in there. So go get some. Also, origin, USA.com. We don't want to support Chinese communism. It is very oppositional to what we believe. We believe in freedom, they don't. We believe in liberty, they don't.

We believe in individual prosperity. They don't. They believe the state. So when you go and buy something that's made in China, you're supporting slavery lack of freedom oppression that's what you're supporting so don't do that buy american made and that's why you go to origin usa.com and you get a pair of jeans boots hoodie sweatshirt gie rash guard training gear hunt gear you can get it all there and it all is guaranteed to be 100% communist free origin usa.com go get some also don't forget about jaco store

A little bit of hyper on Jock's store right now. Sugar-coated Lies, the shirt. Okay, because people seem to like that shirt. So we released it to the wild. Like I've been mentioning this for the past few weeks. So, you know, the people on the email list, they got dibs. We sold out, unfortunately. But I did another rush order.

So, you know, we're still available. We're still rolling with it. But you do have to kind of hurry up because they sell out like super fast. Anyway. Yeah, that's a good on sugar-coded lies. Do you want to defend your use of AI in your promotional video? No, no, no, no, I mean, no, I don't, I don't, okay, depends on what you mean, by defend. Get everyone up to speed.

Echo Charles made a video. In the video, he utilized some level of AI to make a creature eating a donut. Yeah, accurate. And there was commentary on your video that said, well, a lot of it said, cool, go, great shirt, blah, blah, blah, blah. But some of it said, why are you? said, why are you using AI? Why aren't you paying an artist? Why aren't you, why are you destroying the world?

Echo Charles. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I want to give you a chance to defend yourself. Sure. And your use of AI. First off, I would have to clarify. And I kind of tried to because it did hit me after a little while.

I'm like, wait a second. Is it? You got triggered. Are people? No, no, no. Oh, you did? Follow me. No, no, no.

You didn't get triggered at all. No, no, no. Okay, cool. Well, I'm the artist. Yeah, I'm like the computer is the artist well Oh, I got you No, but put it this way I think they're actually getting mad at you I think

Because it's like hey you you jocco you used AI for your thing Why couldn't you pay an artist? They didn't realize that like Oh I am the person who makes all the shirts and stuff So technically hey I'm the artist apparently And you got paid I got paid for that one yes we got paid for my work My labor my art right Now we made a video voluntarily I made a video voluntarily

I made a video and I used for the B roll of the video, I used AI to make a guy chomping a gross donut, make it extra gross and slimy, disgusting. It was a good way to do it. I thought. Sent it. Yes. So people got jarred, we'll say, by the AI.

Usually it's going to be a creative type, which I understand. But that wasn't the whole thing that kind of made a question mark come in my head. Mine was like, hey, are they mad because the video was made with AI? Or do they think that AI made? the shirt because that'd be way different. So I'm saying? So I didn't know because someone was like, oh, Jack was using AI sellout. I was like, bro, that was just a video,

fun video about a shirt that we're selling. Like we're not, you know, so I think, oh man, they think it's the shirt. So I kind of went in there. I was like, shoot, because that's the- Once you clarified it, did it get cleaned up or no? Did people say, oh, okay? Well, or people still was mad at you?

I just found one of the comments and, you know. You finally got some haters out there, bro. Yeah, yeah, no. Life's been too easy for you. No, no, no. You finally got some haters. Yeah. Oh, no, you wait.

Now that I think about it, you've always had your haters. Yeah. And that's, you've always had your haters. People that didn't want to hear Echo's opinion on anything. Amen. It's fair.

That's fair. And I don't even think it's haters. I think it's an accurate look. If someone's watching Jocco podcast and they hear me chiming in and they don't like that part of it, that's accurate. That's accuracy from the field. You see what I'm saying.

That's accurate feedback. True. I agree with it. Hey, man. Let's face, sometimes I agree with it. So I'm not mad at that. I'm not mad at that.

I'm not mad at factual feedback, you know? It's not like they were like they really loved it, but just for some weird reason. You know, it doesn't work like that. You see what I'm saying? These are real, this is real feedback. So I, from the, so I asked somebody like one of the people, I said, oh, shoot, do you think the video is it?

Are you mad about the video being AI or the fat guy in the video, whatever being the AI? Or do you think the shirt was made with AI? And then he said, oh, I think it's the video everyone's mad at. And I was like, oh, all right. Well, hey, man, fair. Fair enough. you know, I think the jarring nature of the A-I-ness, maybe. That's what's called the AI slot one.

It's like, brother, this is AI just for the sake of AI. So if it lands like that, it's like, okay, cool, noted, man. Doesn't change the fact the shirt is still dope. I like the video. I thought it was cool as hell. I was surprised when the comments were very hateful towards Echo Charles. It was more against the AI, but I didn't see my name. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Actually, you're right. Do people even know that you do any of that? I think a lot of times they don't. Yeah. So I don't know. To me it's accurate. It's like what do you call a data point, you know? Yeah.

And by the way, don't you have to design what that guy looks like and stuff? Yeah, it's actually, it's actually really hard to do. You know how people are like, oh, it's just a computer day.

It is. It is true. That part is true. But, you know, it's kind of hard. It's like CGI. You know, it's like, oh,

the CGI character. It's like, you know how hard it is to make a CGI character? Like good. It's, It's kind of hard. But that part literally doesn't matter. Like, let's say a shirt, like the shirt you're wearing,

are you like, oh my gosh, the guy who designed that shirt spent 12 years on the day. Like, no one really cares that much most of the time. See what I'm saying? So that's not the point. The point is if someone's going to put out a successful video, me put out a successful video, and it's unsuccessful. I can't blame other people and be mad at whatever. It's my fault.

You see what I'm saying? For doing the unsuccessful or for failing to succeed. Look at over here taking ownership. Good job. Look, I would love to take credit for that, but it's, like I said, if you're flying an airplane and you have a freaking bumpy landing and people are like, hey, I love your airplane, but it was a bumpy landing. What are you going to say, no, it wasn't a bumpy landing? You know how hard I worked on that landing? It's like the fact is it was a bumpy landing.

That's the fact. Everyone thought it was bumpy. Just because you didn't think it was bumpy. It doesn't change the fact that it was bumpy according to all the people you serve. You know what I'm saying? Got it, man. Got to take this feedback. Anyway.

sugar-coded lies is still available despite or in spite I don't know whichever the video having some AI in it Jocko's real you were real in the video yeah by the way so congratulations on that being a real person Jack yes also what that came from was the shirt locker it was the March 24 so I made the design way before I was even using AI ever March 24 edition of the shirt locker shirt one of the shirt locker shirt which is a subscription scenario. You get a new design every month. Sometimes they're bangers, apparently. But they're outside of the box.

Pretty much every time. Anyway, people think they're interesting. It's a subscription, new design every month on jocco store.com. Also, Independence Day is coming out. We're going to have this year's Independence Day shirt. If you want to get a jump on that, put your email in on the website, on the front page on the bottom. Put your email in there.

I need to confirm the design. Okay. I haven't confirmed the design yet. Okay, I'll show it to you after this. I already submitted it, but that was today. So we can recall if. No, no, no, it's good. You like it.

Yeah, yeah. You're not the judge. Okay. I've been the judge literally for 11 years, but okay. Yeah, yeah, maybe all of a sudden. You've thrown some things out there that have been not that I should have judged. You might be right. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. All right. Well, check that out. Also, we got some books. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Dave Burke, need to lead. Check those out. Leadership books I've written as well.

And then, of course, the warrior kid books, check those out. Primalbeef.com. If you need some steak, go get some of that. Or Colorado Craftbeef.com. You can check that out. Aschon Front, we have a leadership conference instructional in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th. It is two days where you will learn the skill of leadership that you will be able to apply in

every aspect of your life. So if you want to go, go to Eschon Front. and check out events. Also, we have an online training academy at extreme ownership.com, extreme ownership.com. And there's where we teach the skills of leadership through the interwebs. And if you want to help service members actively retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Cold Star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom and Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. And then, of course, check out Heroes and Horses. and Jimmy May's organization Beyond the Brotherhood. Check out Warriors in Need, bringing people into the aviation civilian sector. And then finally, as you heard about today,

stronghold rescue.org. To connect with Ephraim and Stronghold Rescue and Relief on the interwebs, go to stronghold rescue.org. Check out his podcast slash YouTube channel, The Overwatch with Ephraim Matos. And he's on YouTube, Overwatch with Ephrahm Matos and on Twitter and Instagram he's at Ephraim Matos. If you want to connect with us, go to jaco.com and then on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink.

Echoes at Echo Charles. Just be careful because you're getting force fed a giant propaganda sandwich that you don't even know what it's doing to your health, but it's not good for you. So be careful. Once again, thanks to Ephraim for coming by. Thanks for your service to the country and your continued. continued service to protect innocent communities in war zones. And of course, thanks to all of our military around the world right now,

in harm's way, protecting freedom and our way of life. Also thanks to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting our way of life here on the home front. And everyone else out there. Two things. First of all, be grateful for what you have.

Because as bad as you got it right now, and let's face it, it gets pretty rough out here. Gets pretty rough out here. But if you look at your situation, you compare it with other people in the world without basic food, without basic shelter, without health needs. Not to mention being under the threat of real violence, like random bombs from the sky or drones. or mortars or artillery just randomly hitting you that's that's a pretty rough way to live so be grateful if you're in a slightly better environment to that and the second thing is what can you do to help out how can you support what what might be a tiny little thing for you like 20 bucks a month to stronghold rescue.org might be a little tiny thing to you but that is likely

massive to someone that is in need so if you can help out and that's all i've got for tonight and until next time this is echo and jocco out